Armageddon?? (25 page)

Still,
it was the ground forces that were important. Fliers were important for
terrorizing a fleeing enemy but in a real battle, it was the cavalry and
infantry that counted. Abigor urged his Great Beast forward, keeping close to
the infantry as they surged forward. He could sense the uneasiness in the
ranks, the infantry felt exposed without the thick mass of the ranks that
usually surrounded them. And the Cavalry were staying back, normally they led
the charge, the shock of their weight and speed breaking through the enemy
lines. Now they were being held to wait on events. If the army started to fall
apart, it would be their job to stem the breach and hold the line. Abigor
suddenly stopped himself, he was thinking about what would happen if he lost?
Something had changed in him the previous night when he had listened to
Tomovoninkranfat’s account of how Merafawlazes’s Army had died. Defeat had
ceased to be unthinkable, now it was all too real a possibility.

The
sky to the east was changing, suddenly, the rising sun was shining through the
streaks of the human fire lances suddenly emerging from far behind their lines.
Their mages had to be at work already. The front like of the advancing infantry
lowered their tripods to the horizontal and let fly with a withering barrage of
lightning bolts. The ridge crest was at extreme range and man of the bolts had
dissipated before they made it there but enough hit the line to disrupt the
concentration of the human mages. Abigor was sure of that. Yet it did not seem
to affect the Fire Lances as they arched over and raced down into his infantry.
The rippling sea of explosions engulfed a whole section of his front line,
devouring it, shredding those unfortunate enough to be caught in its hot
breath. That was how Abigor found himself thinking of it, it was the Humans
breathing death over his infantry. They were faltering, looking around, seeing
the wire ahead of them and realizing what was to happen. Abigor drove his Great
Beast into the middle of their ranks, urging them forward, firing his tripod –
and hearing the wailing screams as yet more human magic was added to the chaos.

Headquarters,
Multi-National Force Iraq, Green Zone, Baghdad.

“Pumpkin-One
reports receiving heavy inbound fire Sir. The baldricks are firing on the
ridgeline as they come in. Fire is ineffective Sir.”

Petraeus
nodded. The truth was, he wasn’t that interested at this point. His artillery
was tearing huge gaps in the baldrick attack although the reduced density of
targets meant the death toll was lower than it had been yesterday. Standing in
front of his screen, he could see the baldricks surging forward, taking their
losses from the deadly MLRS barrages and the minefields. They hadn’t reached
the wire yet. Not that it mattered to him, the brigade commanders along the
front knew what they had to do and Petraeus had left them to get on with it.
They had enough on their plate without their commanding general peering over
their shoulder and second-guessing them. Petraeus had enough to do as well, in
addition to handling his corps artillery, he had to keep supplied of ammunition
and fuel flowing towards the brigades. He had truck convoys scattered all the
way between the front line and Baghdad, keeping them flowing forward was a job
in itself. He had staff handling that as well, his part of the battle was to
stand here in front of this screen and spot things going wrong.

“There’s
a flight of C-17s coming in from CONUS. Carrying reloads. Make sure our
fighters screen them from any harpies surviving out there. And have the
fighters report when the harpies are cleared out of the way. The Apache crews
will want to get their licks in.”

“Sir,
Yes Sir.” That had to be one of the Marines Petraeus thought. Still it was
better than the Rangers, that constant Oooh-Agh got on his nerves after a
while. Getting the AH-64s into action was going to be critical for more reasons
than one. The 25th Mechanized Infantry Division, known on the radio as
“Pumpkin” was already tearing the baldricks apart, they had the firepower and
mobility they needed. The baldricks in front of them were going to die, it was
simply a question of how many of them would do so before the rest broke and ran.
Not that there was anywhere for them to run to. In the west, the Shamshar
Division and the First Armored were rapidly closing the gap that was the
baldrick’s only escape route.

No,
25th Mech were going to be all right. The problem lay to their north, where the
10th Mountain Division, call sign Mango, held the line. They were a light
infantry division, they didn’t have the armor that had dominated the
battlefield so far. They did have four brigades rather than three and more
artillery but their force structure was light. Petraeus had put them on his
right for two reasons. One was that they covered a more inhabited and built-up
sector of the front where the armor would be at a disadvantage. The other was a
more ruthless one, Petraeus had to find out how human infantry would fight
against the baldricks. All the reports so far said that the baldrick infantry
were larger and stronger than humans and they took a lot of killing. Could
human infantry stand up to them? It was a question that had to be answered sooner
or later and sooner was better than later.

Hence
the importance of getting the Apaches back over the battlefield. They were an
important part of 10th Mountain’s firepower.

“Sir,
Mango reports the baldricks are moving to attack them. Should we divert artillery
support from Pumpkin?”

Petraeus
thought for a second. “Negative. Keep battering the troops attacking Pumpkin.
We can destroy that attack fastest, then we can thin out Pumpkin’s positions
and shift forces to support Mango.” 10th Mountain had its artillery and that
would have to do. The 25th Mech and 4th Infantry Division’s artillery was
concentrating on the baldricks assaulting Petraeus’s left, over 100 Paladin
self-propelled 155s and 60 MLRS launchers. The sheer volume of fire they were
pouring into the advancing baldricks was enough to stop even an Army from hell.
Or so Petraeus hoped.

“Gee
Sir, will you look at that!”

The
Marine’s voice had lost its dispassionate inflexion. In the middle of one
surging mass of baldrick infantry, pinned up against the wire, was a single jet
black figure that towered above the rest, mounted on a rhinolobster that
dwarfed the others.

“I
guess he must be important.” Petraeus raised his voice slightly and addressed
the fire direction center. “Put an MLRS battery on to that location soonest.”

Front
Line, Army of Abigor, Western Iraq.

Abigor
saw his infantry surging against the river of silver threads that strung across
the battlefield. Some of his demons had tried to grab the threads with their
hands, only to scream in anguish as the razor edges bit through their flesh to
the bones. Others had tried to force their way in through the coils, only to
become entangled and slowly sliced apart. The momentum of the attack was broken
and all the time the shrieking howls of the enemy magic drowned out any attempt
at thought. The infantry had to get through the threads, there was no other
choice.

He
saw the answer over his shoulder, on their way through to the threads, they had
crossed a field covered with bars that exploded when a demon stepped on them.
Many of them had been killed and their mutilated corpses littered the ground.
Others writhed in pain from the traumatic amputations the bars had caused. Yet,
Abigor thought, even the dead and the half-dead could still serve him. “Get
those bodies. Throw them on the threads and use them as a bridge.”

The
noise was too great for his words to carry far but some heard and started to
collect bodies and throw them on top of the coils of threads. Others saw what
was happening, understood and copied them. Soon the wire was sagging under the
weight and the first of the demon infantry was running across, clear of the
wire and into the open ground beyond.

“Sire,
there are problems on our left!” One of the lesser demons, a legion commander by
the look of him, carried the message but could barely make himself heard.

The
left, Abigor thought, ten minutes fast ride away. He had better get there and
find out what was happening. “Take over here, keep driving them forward.” Then,
he turned his Great Beast’s head and started the ride up to his left flank.
This was a problem he hadn’t thought of, in the traditional formation he could
see all of his forces, in this new style of attack, he could see only a small
portion of the battle at any one time. He was spending all his time running
from one crisis to the next, trying to solve each one before it became a major
problem. Time he should have been spending in finding the enemy commander so
Abigor could have the pleasure of killing him.

There
was another shrieking howl and the terrifying ripple of explosions that were
the trade-mark of the fire-lances. Abigor felt the blast and the sting as stray
fragments at the end of their trajectory flicked at him. Behind him, the area
where he had just been had vanished under a rolling cloud of dust and smoke.
Abigor had already seen enough fire-lance breaths to know that nothing was left
alive in the area he had been in just a few minutes before. Then it struck him,
he might not have time to find the enemy commander, but the enemy commander had
found him.

Headquarters,
Multi-National Force Iraq, Green Zone, Baghdad.

“Missed
him.” The Marine sounded disappointed.

“Don’t
sweat it son, it was only a chance. He’s heading north, guess on his way to
Hit. Sitrep?”

“Mango-Four
is in Hit sir, they’ve dug in. They’re all west of the river and there’s only
one bridge out.”

Petraeus
knew what that meant. If Mango-Four tried to evacuate the city, there would be
a massacre as they piled up before the bridge.

“Sir,
Mango Four requests permission to blow the bridge. They say it won’t do them
any good and taking it intact might help the Baldricks.”

“Tell
them to do it. We can throw an assault bridge over easy enough. The baldricks
don’t seem to have heard about combat engineering.”

“Sir,
with the bridge gone, Mango Four won’t be able to…..”

“I
know, so did they when they suggested it. Order Cherry-One up on Hit. Tell them
to form up to the east of Al-Ramadi.”

Outskirts
of Hit, Western Iraq.

“We’d
just got this place quieted down as well.” Corporal Tucker McElroy looked out
at the advancing baldricks with certain level of disgust. A year earlier, Hit
had been torn to pieces by gangs of terrorists and insurgents whose attacks and
murders spared no one. Then, the Marines had moved into the city as part of
Task Force 17 and cleaned the city up. It had come back to life and its economy
had been improving everyday, so much so that a week before The Message had
changed everything, the City had been handed over to Iraqi security forces. Now
the baldricks were coming.

Not
as many as there had been, that was for sure. At first their long ranks had
been a terrifying sight but Mango-Four’s artillery had got to work as the
baldricks had stalled in the minefields and on the razor wire. By the time the
baldricks had swarmed through the artillery over the wire, their neat ranks and
serried formation had gone. In its place was a stream of baldricks in groups of
varying size making their way towards the outskirts of the city. McElroy heard
the 120mm mortars coughing as they lobbed their first rounds at the larger of
the groups, the brigade 155s were still pounding the baldricks hung up on the
wire. By now, the leading groups of demons had reached the great divided
highway that swung around the outskirts of Hit. It was time to do some real
soldiering.

A
few yards away Charles Foss was scanning the nearest group of baldricks through
the powerful scope on his M82A3 sniper’s rifle, well, it wasn’t actually a
sniper’s rifle, officially it was an anti-material rifle. There was even an
urban legend that it was illegal to use it against humans but that wasn’t true.
Anyway, the targets this time weren’t human. Foss checked his ammunition, the
tips of the .50 caliber bullets were green on white. That meant they were
Raufoss SLAP rounds, multi-role armor-piercing explosive incendiaries. They’d
been pouring in to Iraq for days now, the joke was that they had still been
warm from the production line in Norway when they’d been stuffed into a
transport and flown here. The infantry formations had been given priority for
their issue, they needed the firepower.

Magazine
in place, Foss squinted through the scope again. The baldricks cleared ground
fast, at least twice as quickly as a human. One figure in the nearest group
seemed to be the driving force, urging the others forward. Foss put the cross
hairs on his forehead, just between the horns and gently squeezed the trigger,
just the way he’d taught his six-year old son to shoot. Never pull the trigger,
squeeze it. The heavy Barrett rifle kicked and the baldrick went down.

“Damn.”
Foss swore to himself. The baldrick was down, his head mangled, but he was
still moving. What did it take to kill these monsters?. A second shot was the
answer, it fixed the leader for once and for all. Foss swung his scope to the
second in the group and fired again. This one went down hard and finally with
the first shot. The rest of the baldricks went to ground, confused by the
inexplicable outbreak of sudden death that had struck them. That was a fatal
mistake. The mortar teams saw the group stop moving and a pattern of 82mm
mortar bombs blanketed their position. By that time, Foss and his fellow
snipers were seeking fresh targets.