Armageddon?? (39 page)

James
Kirkpatrick started turning up the dial, artificially boosting the signal
they’d recorded connecting kitten and Dawkins. Soon enough, the now-familiar
ellipse started to form. As it increased in size kitten was threshing round
helplessly on her couch, her partner dabbing her forehead and whispering
comfortingly to her. Then, it was large enough and the Special Forces H-team stepped
through.

Inner
Ring, Seventh Circle of Hell

“Get
a poncho over him fast. Damn these blasted flakes, what the hell is this
place?” Madeuce was angry and hurried, this was nothing like what had been
described to them.

“Hell
boss. Sir, stay still Sir, we’ll get you out of this. Just hold still.” The
tool-steel bolt-cutters sliced easily through even the thick bronze shackles.

“Shit
we’ve got company!” A figure, tall and black had suddenly appeared. Madeuce
squeezed off a burst from his carbine at him and saw the figure lurch with the
hits. Then a streak of fire shot across the burning desert and the baldrick
exploded. “Well done Frankie. They don’t like them AT-4s.”

Behind
them the other two members of the team had freed Dawkins and dragged him through
the ellipse. Madeuce and Frankie Portello followed them out and the ellipse
closed behind them.

Headquarters,
Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

“We
got him!” The voice from the Special Forces team was triumphant. All four were
back in the room and the portal had been open for less than a minute.

The
body of Richard Dawkins was in the room with Doctors applying instruments and
probes. “We’re getting readings, he’s errr.....” The doctor was about to say
‘alive’ but stopped himself. “With us.”

“Richard
can you hear me.” Randi was urgent, almost frantic, far removed from the
gentlemanly, calm demeanour he usually maintained.

“James
how did you... what’s happening?”

“We
got you out. Don’t ask how but we did.”

“Mister
Randi, energy levels we’re getting are fading, its as if his life, if he wasn’t
already dead, was leaking out.”

“Right.”
Kirkpatrick was already speaking to kitten. “Can you contact Lieutenant Kim
please. Then we’ll open a portal to her.”

“All
right, please hurry though.” kitten relaxed on her seat and closed her eyes,
concentrating on her picture of Jade Kim. Over the other side of the room, the
H-team was loading up with supplies for the PFLH. No point is wasting trip.

“Richard,
we can’t keep you here, we’re sending you back to the Fifth Circle. We have a
resistance team there, they’ll shelter you until they can get you into hiding.”

“Ma’am.”
Lieutenant Madeuce was speaking to kitten. Don’t hold the portal open after
we’re through. Once we’ve arrived, we’ll be staying there for a while.” kitten
nodded with her eyes still closed.

On
the Shore of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell

Kim’s
eyes suddenly defocused. “Message coming through guys. Our resupply hopefully.

Lieutenant
Kim? It was kitten again.

“Yes
kitten”

“Get
ready, portal opening. There’s a special forces team and a passenger coming
through with some supplies. They’ll explain what’s happening. Get ready now.”

The
black ellipse formed as a point and rapidly swelled to its full size, large
enough for a man to step through. Five figures came through, four in red-brown
BDUs that matched the foul air of Hell very well. The fifth man was naked, his
body burned but already starting to heal. Kim recognized that, it was the
enhanced healing power of hell. This person was one of the dead, just like Kim
and her little unit.

“Ma’am.
Lieutenant Madeuce. Special Forces. This is Richard Dawkins, we pulled him out
of somewhere else in Hell and brought him here.”

“Why?
We haven’t room for passengers.”

“We
needed to know if people can be brought from hell to earth and stay there.
Well, they can’t, he was, well, dying for want of a better word. The egg-heads
needed to know if kitten could find other people, we needed to know if we can
do transits like this. So many things. Look, we’re staying on to help you here.
In your reports you mentioned a refugee organization. Can they look after him?”

“Why
can’t I fight as well.”

“Because
you’re not trained to. This is a job for professionals.” Madeuce’s voice was
curt. “Can we get him to safety. Ma’am. My orders are to place myself under
your command.”

Kim
nodded. Being dead had its advantages, if this war went on long enough, she
would be the most senior Lieutenant in history. “There is a refugee
organization, headed up by a woman called Rahab. We don’t know if we can trust
her, this will make a good test. OK, Bubbles, Mac, we better find Rahab.
Madeuce, you bring supplies?

“120
kilograms of Semtex, another M107 a lot of ammunition for same and six M4A5
carbines. Oh, and a video camera. The brass want pictures and films of hell.”

Kim
nodded, the Semtex wasn’t enough but it would do. “Who are you Sir?”

“Richard
Dawkins. I was an author.”

“I
know, I read one of your books. Guess you must be pretty embarrassed huh? Don’t
sweat it, we’ll look after you.

Chapter
Twenty Nine

Martial
Field of Dysprosium, Hell

Had
it been only two earth weeks ago? Then, his army had marched out, banners
flying, horns, and trumpets blaring, drums thudding. A sight to stir the blood
and induce martial ardor in all who saw it. A huge Army, 60 legions strong,
400,000 demons had sortied to defeat the humans. It was all supposed to have
been so easy, so glorious. Trampling humanity underfoot, ravaging their cities,
destroying their works and carrying their souls back in triumph to Hell.

And
what was left now? How many of the 400,000 had made it back alive? Or even
half-alive? 300? 400 at most and the majority were wounded, some so badly they
would be little more than helpless children. Neither the humans nor their
weapons had mercy, those who their weapons spared, they left crippled and
feeble. The sounds were as appalling as the sight of the shattered fragment
that was all that was left of his Army. No martial music, no bombastic speeches
either. Just the wailing of the wounded and the bereaved. Abigor didn’t know
which was worse, the cries of the wounded or the yowls of the females as they
hunted through the survivors for their mates. Mostly those howls turned into
screams of misery as they realized their mate was not on the tiny list of
survivors, on rare occasions, the scream of relief was moderated, diluted, by
the grief when they saw the awful wounds the humans had inflicted. Rare indeed
for a mate to find her demon whole and untouched. Not one in tens of thousands.

Abigor
heard the sobbing at his feet. A cavalryman was sitting down cross-legged on
the ground, the head of his Beast in his lap. The cavalryman was badly wounded,
his side laid open by fragments, but his Beast was dying. The fire in its angry
red eyes was slowly dimming and the cause was obvious. The wound in its side
was massive, blasted open and burned deep. A seeker lance had caused that,
Abigor knew from seeing too many.

“Sire,
he wouldn’t stop. I tried to make him stop and rest but he wouldn’t. He just
kept going, carrying me back here. I did try to make him rest but he wouldn’t
and now he’s dying.”

In
this case, the Beast had shown better tactical common sense than its rider,
Abigor reflected. If they had stopped, they’d have been caught and killed by
the Iron Chariots. But it was true, the Beast had saved its riders life. “What
is your name rider?”

“Visharakoramal
Sire, of the Right Wing.”

“Visharakoramal,
take your mate and go home. Go to somewhere quiet and remote where none who
might seek would look and make your home there.” On the ground the light in the
Beast’s eyes flickered and went out. It was dead. “Do not let his sacrifice be
in vain. Take your mate and go home, when hundreds of thousands are dead, one
more will not be noted.”

Visharakoramal
nodded and gently laid the Beast’s head down, then took his mate and quietly
left. Abigor looked around, catching another three figures coming through the
hellmouth. Two demons carrying a third whose legs had been blown off, probably
by one of the mage-bars the humans had scattered. That was new also, the sight
of demons helping their wounded. They must have learned it from the humans, at
Hit, Abigor had seen how many humans would risk their lives to rescue one of their
own who was in trouble. He’d seen the great Iron Chariots go places and do
unimaginable, terrible things to help one of their own. It was strange,
exposure to the humans was changing the demons in ways other than the nightmare
of the human’s crushing superiority in weaponry.

“Sire?”

Abigor
turned. Behind him was a figure, not as great as he but still larger than the
pitiful remnants of his Army. A Lesser Herald, but one whose wings were stunted
and malformed.

“Sire
I am Memnon, Lesser Herald. I have a message for His Infernal Majesty. May I
accompany you to audience with him?”

An
audience with Satan? Abigor shuddered, to relay the tale of this catastrophe
was certain death. “You realize my company might bring you death? Who is your
message from?”

“From
Yahweh. And death I think, is the least of our problems.”

That
was true, Abigor thought. It might be good to have company on this final walk.
He found himself urgently wishing he’d died on the run to the hellmouth just a
few hours ago.

Six
hours earlier, Hellmouth, Western Iraq

Abigor
crouched in the hollow. The hellmouth was clearly visible on the horizon, the
impossible geometry glimmering black against the dark blue velvet of the
predawn sky. For the umpteenth time that night – he hadn't slept; the quiet
desert sounds kept startling him from any pretence of restfulness – he began to
mull over the defeat, and stopped himself. There was just no way of explaining
how the humans had become so powerful.

Sighing,
he shook himself and peeked up; the huge portal was less than ten miles away. A
straight run would get him there in less than an hour. He would cross through
and – and then what? Report to Satan? Abigor frowned. If Satan had heard
already, Abigor was as good as dead; no other Duke would want to begin to
associate with him. His position in the court was gone, taken now, probably by
Belial or some other scheming coward.

Could
he stay with his former allies? The thought flitted through his mind, then was
easily dismissed as he began trudging through the soft sand toward his
destination. The Dukes who were former allies were just that – former. None of
them would touch him with a thirty-foot pole now; given the totality of his
defeat, he suspected that nothing could save him. But what alternatives did he
have? Stay here, where the human magic crushed everything in its path and they
sought out their defeated enemies to slaughter them like cattle? He had to get
back to hell, he had to warn the others of the nightmare they faced.

The
sun peeked above the horizon behind him, and his shadow stretched far ahead of
him. The cloudless sky was striated orange and pink, fading to purple in the
western sky before him. For a moment, Abigor stopped and looked around him, at
the last clear, white stars fading in the west, at the beautiful dawn panorama
unfolding in the east over the flat, unimaginably vast desert wastes. The
ground here was as like a part of hell as any he'd seen, and yet above it
stretched such beauty. The humans didn't know what they had, he thought; how
could they appreciate such sublime beauty? And demons didn't know what they
were missing either. With a twinge of sorrow, he contemplated again his ruined
future back home under the dull, ceaseless striation of hell's skies.

Suddenly,
his ears perked – a small buzz in the distance. Could it be a human implement?
He froze for an instant, and in that instant, he detected a now-familiar deeper
rumble: horseless iron chariots. He broke into a flat-out sprint for the
portal.

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

“Have
we got the Global Hawk feed up?” asked General Petraeus.

One
of the technicians, Bert, replied, “Yep. It should be on the main screen right
...” there was a ticker of fingers on a keyboard and a mouse click “... now.”
The screen blinked, fuzzed, and there was the hellmouth, black against the
pink-lit sand.

The
whole scene moved slowly as the cameras on the Global Hawk zoomed in on the
portal. The entire hellmouth surveillance mission had been on the backburner as
the Global Hawks had been used to control the allied forces that had
annihilated the demonic army. That was over now, the baldrick army was
shattered beyond comprehension or reconstitution, there were only handfuls of
baldricks free and alive between the hellmouth and the Euphrates, and that had
pushed intelligence-gathering back to top priority. Nobody ever won a war by
defending themselves. They won it by taking the fight to the enemy. It was time
to begin striking back at Hell, and that meant learning as much as possible
about it, especially the terrain near the hellmouth which was, in the plans
Petraeus and his colleagues were starting to draw up, the site of the first
beachhead.