Armageddon?? (40 page)

For
a moment, Petraeus wondered if this was how Eisenhower had felt in 1943, then
stifled the thought; Eisenhower had known so much more about his enemy, and his
enemy had known about him. The two situations were only comparable if you
didn't think about it. Then, he noticed a small black figure far below the Hawk,
also making for the portal. “What's that?” He indicated the figure.

“Just
a moment, sir.” The feed one the screen jumped through the magnifications until
the figure was clearly visible: a large baldrick, running as fast as it could.

“Feed
this through to the nearest armored unit, with orders to intercept and – wait,
zoom in just a little bit more.” Something about the figure had triggered his
memory. The feed duly zoomed, and Petraeus recognized the baldrick: his
counterpart, the lucky one he'd missed with the artillery during the main
battle. “Orders to intercept and capture.” If this worked out, it would be a
huge intelligence bonus.

Hellmouth,
Western Iraq

The
roar of the Abrams engine almost deafening and the imperfections in the land
bounced her around in her commander’s seat, adding extra bruises to the
impressive collection she had already collected. Captain Keisha Stevenson
nodded as the crackling orders came through the radio, and then repeated them
on the company channel. “Guys, we've got a target. Orders to capture.”

In
the light of the Iraqi dawn, the Abrams tanks and Bradley vehicles under her
command sped up and veered left, the Bradleys belching black smoke and kicking
up sand that hovered in the air in their wake, slowly dispersing.

Abigor
ignored the pain in his side, pushing his legs as fast as they would go. The
hellmouth was growing larger, a black swirling void underneath the horizon. If
the humans didn't notice him, he was only a few minutes away from home. He
could almost taste the sulfurous air.

But
the roar of the iron chariots was louder dominating the sounds of early
morning. He didn't let himself look over his shoulder, only gamely pushed
faster. All he felt, his whole being, was now his feet pounding into the
ground, his heart thumping in his chest, and the tingle of the magic in his
back (he had long since abandoned his trident), all undercut by the gathering
rumble of iron chariots.

All
too soon, they were close behind him the cloud of dust they raised choking him.
One pulled ahead of the rest and was almost beside him its odd head turning so
that the long tube was pointing at him. Abigor tried to run around it, failed,
then he switched doubled back and ran behind it, the hellmouth just a few yards
away. His senses were overwhelmed by the cold and unyielding taste of the iron,
not at all like the friendly warmth of the bronze or tin he was used to. As he
dived behind the Chariot, he could feel a blast of heat, uncomfortable even for
his own thick skin. Even as he expected the deadly blast off human mage-magic
in his back, he continued to marvel at the humans' ingenuity and ability to
accomplish the seemingly impossible. Chariots, without horses, that generated
their own heat, propulsion, and magic fire lances while carrying humans within
them.

Then,
even as the muscles in his back cringed in anticipation of the expected blow,
the blackness of the Hellmouth enveloped him

“Alpha-Actual.
Sorry Sir, he got past us. No excuses Sir, he was so close to the hellmouth we
only had one shot and we blew it. Want us to go in after him?”

There
was a pause and Stevenson knew the message was going up the line and the
response was coming down. “Alpha-Actual, Command Prime was watching on
Eye-Five. Word is don’t blame yourself, that big baldrick would make a great
football player. Stay out of hell for now. Drop back one klick and go hull down
with a line of fire to the Hellmouth. The Generals are thinking.”

And
we all know that makes their heads hurt. Stevenson thought, and settled back as
much as was possible in the turret of an Abrams. “Biker, take us back one click
to the ridgeline we crossed. Time to have a rest.”

University
of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

“...
and remember that problems one, three, and four of section 37 in the Munkres text
are due next Tuesday. You may assume the Tychonoff Theorem; we will finish
proving it next class. Problem five is extra credit. Class dismissed.” As the
students in his Topology I class finished packing up their papers, Dr Kuroneko
turned to the board and began erasing the proof of a lemma for the Tychonoff
Theorem.

A
polite knocking at the door caught his attention, and he turned around,
adjusting his glasses and absentmindedly smearing chalk dust across his cheek
and nose. “Yes?”

To
his surprise, it was not a student wanting help with the homework questions; it
was three men dressed in military uniforms. “Dr Kuroneko?”

“That's
me, yes. How may I help you?”

“I'm
General Schatten, of the US Army's D.I.M.O.(N) section. I understand you are
the foremost mathematical expert in ...” He wrinkled his nose, fished in his
pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper. “... in 'higher dimensional
topology.'”

Dr
Kuroneko shrugged. “Some people say that I am, yes.”

“Well,
we have a team of physicists working on a project for us, and they recommended
you as the mathematical expert we need. We've already talked to the math
department here; they're more than willing to help with the war effort, so
they've granted you indefinite paid sabbatical. We will, of course, be more
than willing to provide you with additional compensation for your services. As
well, your landlord has agreed to let us pay your rent while you live in
Arlington and work for us, again indefinitely.”

The
mathematician blinked. “So, I'm working for you? On what sort of project?”

“Dr
Kuroneko, we have a problem. We’ve managed to open a portal to hell and we can
communicate with those inside on an individual basis. We need to communicate
with everybody in there, baldricks, humans everybody. We know it can be done
because they did it to us, there was The Message and then that bombastic
nonsense from Satan. We need you to work out the mathematics that underlies the
situation, we need you to analyze the basis of how this communications
phenomena works. The only way to understand something is to understand the
maths behind it. At the moment we’re doing it on a purely empirical basis, we
need you to make sense of it. Once you’ve done that we can start to use it properly.”

Kuroneko’s
eyes lit up. Secretly, although he was too polite to say so, he was amazed that
an Army General would understand the importance of basic theory. It never
occurred to him that Generals dealt with basic theory and applied mathematics as
a routine part of their job. “That sounds fascinating! When do I start?”

General
Schatten smiled. “Yesterday if possible. Today at the latest. We're already
loading your possessions into the moving van for you.” He stepped forward and
shook Dr Kuroneko's hand. “Welcome to D.I.M.O.(N), Doctor.”

Seymour
Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina

“Man,
what do we want with a piston-engined bird that’s fifty years old .” The F-16
pilot leaned back on the O-club bar, not noticing the slight air of reproof
that went around the room. The two old B-29s sitting on the flight line might
be relics of a bygone age but their crews were guests of the mess and the
comment was out of place.

“We
don’t know that jets can fly in hell yet, in fact we know nothing about the place
at all other than its pretty unpleasant. We know that there’s a high content of
particulates in the atmosphere, sulfur and pumice. The Predator that went in
came back pretty messed up. So, prop birds give us another option. Also, we
need every modern bird we can get up in the air, every second or third-line job
that gets done by a museum piece is one more modern bird freed up for combat.
That’s why we’ve got C-47s back in the inventory as well.” The scientist drank
his beer reflectively. The tour around the museums hadn’t picked up that many
usable aircraft, there was a big difference between a plane that looked good on
display and one that was able to be returned to flying status, but they had a
few. By a quirk of history, the B-29s had done better than most and even then
only a handful were available for service. The non-flying birds and the
aircraft too old to be of even fourth or fifth line use had their own role to
play though. They were in the Hell Jars, being experimented on.

“Yeah
but prop-engined bombers.” The F-16 pilot spoke with scorn and didn’t notice
the frown of displeasure from his commander.

“I
know, I know.” Colonel Tibbets put down his beer. He’d kept quiet to date,
partly because he didn’t want to rise to the bait and partly because he had his
own position in mind. He suspected somebody in Air Force Personnel had a sense
of humor and had searched through the Air Force list to find a Colonel Tibbets
to command the newly-reformed 40th Bombardment Wing. “We’re really going to
need you guys in the fighters to protect us. Like we always have I guess. Why
don’t we buy you a drink or three, show our appreciation?”

Next
morning Lieutenant Barham woke up in his quarters with a head that felt ready
to explode. The party that had started in the O-club had then moved to the
strip outside the base and turned into a real bar crawl. He didn’t remember too
much after the fourth or fifth bar but his head was dreadful. Those bomber boys
certainly knew how to party. He glanced at the flight-line, both the B-29s had
gone, probably on their way to whatever experimental station they would be
assigned to.

At
that point, Barham realized that it wasn’t just his head that was hurting. His
rear end was also feeling --- inflamed. With a dawning sense of horror he went
to the washroom and looked in the mirror and what he saw their confirmed his
worst fears. On one buttock was tattooed the unit crest of the 40th Bombardment
Wing and the motto “Old Age and Treachery Beats Youth and Skill”. The other
buttock had a plan view of a B-29 and the motto “Four Screws Beats A Blow Job”
tattooed on it.

Barham
was still dumbly contemplating the sight when the phone rang. “The Squadron
Commander wishes to speak with you. Now,” was the message.

Chapter
Thirty

The
Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell

Another
demon had died, his head grotesquely shattered by the human weapons. Rahab
recognized the signs by this time, the physical destruction that had been
wrought from a distance that gave the victim no chance of surviving, not even
warning that it was under attack. She wasn’t quite certain how many had died to
date, might have been twelve or more. She did know the number included some of
the demons that had once ridden so imperiously on their Beasts. The humans had
proved her wrong, they could be killed. In fact the humans had killed them
quite easily. There was much to think on there. There was something else to
consider as well. In her travels, trying to find the six new arrivals who were
causing this mayhem, she had watched the demons and learned something else.
They were scared, too many of their number had gone out on patrol and never
returned. Now, they were beginning to skimp those patrols, to head through the
area as fast as they could, not stopping for anything until they got back to
the safety of the walls.

Rahab
found herself asking, just how safe were those walls? She had seen what was
left of the mighty bridge over the Styx, a mass of destroyed masonry flung
around the way an angry child might scatter play bricks. A bridge that had
stood for untold millennia had been wantonly destroyed, with, it was rumored,
the best part of a whole legion that had been unfortunate enough to be standing
on it. There were work gangs trying to repair it, some of them humans driven by
demon overseers but the destruction had been so great it was defeating their
efforts. She had watched while some of the repairs collapsed again, the
foundations undermined by the power of the destruction. There had been other
attacks as well, on the great road that led from the depths of Hell up to the
city of Dis and from there out to the field of Dysprosium. Rahab had never been
outside the great pit of hell but she had heard the area outside Dis where the
Demons lived was quite pleasant by their standards.

Getting
there would be a problem for the demons now though. That road had been the
scene of one attack after another, the dead mounting as explosions tore into
formation after formation. Rahab shook her head, it made little sense but she
sensed the demons were losing the fight down here. They were trying to protect
themselves against ghosts who would strike and slip away before they could be
found. The new arrivals didn’t fight the demon way, for pride and honor. Rahab
realized they fought for other reasons entirely, they fought to win and woe to
anybody who got in their way.

Rahab
felt the slam in her back that threw her to the ground and knew the agony of
fear. Had she been caught after all this time? A figure was holding her down,
her arms twisted behind her back and she guessed what was to come next. An
agonizing rape certainly, then return to the hell-pit from which she had so
barely escaped once before. Her time of freedom was at an end, there was no
point in fighting and she went limp as she was rolled on to her back.