Armageddon?? (55 page)

A
mini-Hellmouth dominated the background nearby. In front of it stood four
uniformed soldiers, unmistakably United States Marines. They were all firing,
unloading their weapons into the demon. It was quite thoroughly dead when they
were done.

Corporal!
Have the team arrived? kitten spoke in his mind. The voice was in distinct
pain, as though someone were squeezing all the air from kitten's lungs. To have
that kind of effect within thoughts...what the hell was kitten going through to
do this?

And
how! They just smoked a baldrick. Merely thinking the words gave him strength enough
stand up. He mused that he must look like Anakin Skywalker at the end of the
most recent Star Wars movie, all burnt and freakish. He turned to the four
marines and saluted, and they matched him. One of them, stepped forward and
began to speak, his facemask wobbling slightly as he jaw moved beneath.

He
was still deaf, so he couldn't hear what the Marine was saying. Hurry, please!
Send them back! kitten suddenly squealed.

McElroy
held up his hand. Pointed to his ears, shook his head. Pointed at the marine,
then the portal, and made shooshing motions. The marine stopped, nodded, and
passed what looked like an old-fashioned rifle with a wooden stock and a
rucksack to McElroy. The four Marines vanished into the portal, which itself
closed a second later. He looked at the rifle, recognizing it as an M-1 Garand
but with a bigger bore than any Garand he’d ever seen.

You're
on your own, Corporal, kitten said, voice weak and dim. Your orders are to
evade and survive. You're the among the first we've extracted and armed
successfully, so you may be on your own for a while. I'll contact you on a set
schedule, its in the rucksack. Understood?

Affirmative.
Thank you, kitten. Please pass along word to my family that I'm out and
kicking. He didn't get a reply, but that was alright. McElroy was already
scanning the area. The wind was throwing dirt into his unprotected eyes, but he
could already see better than just a few minutes than before.

The
shoreline was deserted, aside from the baldrick corpse. The stream of lava
stretched on for miles in each direction, but there was cover further inland,
or so it appeared. He squinted; maybe it was a edge of a forest? Or tall grass?
Or just a rocky outcrop? His vision was still too bad to tell. At any rate, it
would leave him less exposed. He was like a piece of metal in a sand tumbler
out here, and the fresh burn wounds were all singing "Ave Maria" as
the grime and grit blasted him. They were healing fast though, he could feel
his ears returning already.

Placing
the Garand and rucksack down for a moment, he went over to the baldrick. It was
dead all right, big holes blasted in it and even bigger ones where the bullets
had exited the wounds. The monster had nothing he could use, except its trident
of course. McElroy hitched his pack to his back, slung the Garand over his
shoulder and took off, running up the shore towards what he could now clearly
see was a forest.

Throne
Room, Belial’s Palace, Tartarus

Belial's
throne room was, in many ways a microcosm of his lord's. A mason would note
that the columns were carved of adamantine rather than granite, and inlaid with
gold and silver rather than sheathed with brass. A soldier's eye would be drawn
to the assorted barons in attendance; much of their forms were covered by
burnished bronze plates, many set with gaudy jewels. At no other court in hell
would a demon show such weakness as needing armor to protect themselves. Here
in Tartarus the master proclaimed dominance through superior arms and the
servants competed to show their devotion to his principles. A politician would
ignore these trappings and focus on the occupant of the throne. The Count's
face was lined with the rage and exasperation of a master failed utterly by his
servants. The skilled politician would look through this to recognize the
desperation of a being that believes it is about to miss its only opportunity
for survival.

Euryale's
eyes took in all of this as the great doors swung open and admitted her to the
room, along with one final similarity to the His Infernal Majesty’s court - the
gutted carcass of overseer Oodusjarkethat still cooling on the floor. If Count
and King shared anything, it was a healthy respect for the demonic tradition of
taking out ones frustrations on ones underlings. That's the fourth one in as
many days she thought. The interrogations were proving disastrous, not only had
they failed to produce useful information but they had cut production to barely
a third of its normal level. The lack of success along with Belial's
retribution was crippling the demon's morale.

She
strode forward into the throne room, flanked on the left by the long slithering
form of Baroness Yulupki. As the most powerful of Tartaruan naga, Belial had
charged Yulupki with preparing the chorus that would provide most of the power
for the portal ceremonies. The first of the foreign naga had begun to arrive,
borne on makeshift litters slung between pairs of Great Beasts, and the
baroness's already inflated pride had swelled to new heights as she began to
drill her expanded chorus into harmony. Euryale was still technically in
command of the portal opening, but it was a strained relationship at best.
Yulupki wasted no opportunity to demonstrate her kind's great superiority in
psychic strength over the gorgons.

Euryale
reached the dais and kneeled perfunctorily, but the naga was even quicker.

"Count
Belial, my chorusss stands ready. The firssst of the foreigners are being
broken in and I forssseee no problems in producing the level of energy you
requesssted.", Yulupki hissed eagerly.

She
fancies herself a rival for the count's favor thought Euryale, what a
ridiculous notion. For a start, she has completely misjudged his mood.

Sure
enough, Belial rose to his feet and rebuffed the naga. "And of what use is
your snake pile when we have no idea where to strike? Four days! Half our time
gone and still no answers. How difficult could it be? Truly you are the dregs
of hell, if I cannot even count on you to wring a few simple facts out of an
ample supply of apes!"

Yulupki
drew back, coiling upon herself and seemingly genuinely bewildered to be the
target of the Count's ranting. "Sssire, we naga are ready to play our
role... it was the gorgonsss, sssire, who were supposssed to drag the truth out
of the humansss. It was Euryale who promisssed to find their armoriesss for
you!"

It
was an obvious move and Euryale was ready for it. "Sire, no demon can be
blamed for the humans behaving so unreasonably. Something strange has gotten
into them, something new, as it has their brethren on Earth. Your genius
revealed the source of the earth human's new-found power and the stratagem to
eliminate it. I am sure that we can discover the source of the slave's
unexpected rebelliousness and counter it."

The
flattery went down smoothly and Belial sank back into his throne, his ranting
abating to grumbling. "If that hag Deumos would just send me some succubi
we'd have answers in no time."

Euryale
gritted her teeth. Every gorgon quickly became used to being told they were not
as effective at persuading humans as succubi, much weaker fliers than harpies,
less powerful witches than naga, poorer fighters than a common lesser demon.
And yet there was truth in his words, something odd had happened to Deumos over
the last few days. She’d become reserved, distant, as if she was watching and
calculating rather than participating. That didn’t change the fact that few
demons appreciated flexibility and fewer still valued intelligence over brute
strength. Belial usually did and that was the one thing that made being his
consort tolerable, but sometimes even he succumbed to the official propaganda
that cast the gorgon race as a failed experiment. She had long since learned to
bide her time and treat the other demon's scorn as a blind spot to be
exploited.

"Belial,
succubi would not help. They'd get the humans talking all right, every single
one would say whatever he thought the harlot wanted to hear. It would take
weeks to sort out the sincere ones and even longer to find the useful
ones." The truth of her words was plain and the count slumped deeper into
his throne.

Euryale
paced in front of the dais, her tail lashing across the floor, thinking out
loud. "Collective punishment isn't working. The humans were already becoming
inured to torture and now they think they can accomplish something by
resisting. There are far too many to interrogate each one fully in the time we
have. They now resist enthrallment so strongly that when we barb them
repeatedly they go almost immediately from refusing to talk to saying whatever
they think we want to hear."

Her
thoughts were interrupted by one of the barons speaking up. "With all the
chaos out there we can't afford to lose a significant number of humans anyway,
who knows when we'd get fresh ones sent up." Others began to whisper to
each other and murmuring filled the chamber.

Euryale
shook her head. Guruktarqor's statement was correct but irrelevant. The key
question was... where was the human resolve to deny them answers coming from?
They were actively killing their own kind to deny the demons answers. She found
it hard to believe they were just being perverse. What did it look like from
the humans point of view? Information about weapons, needed urgently, could
only mean the demons were fighting humans somewhere. With that thought,
understanding dawned.

"I
see it now." Euryale's voice rang out clearly and caught the attention of
every demon in the throne room. "By asking such direct questions, we have
acted as unwitting carriers of the disease of hope. Clearly all humans are
inherently prone to the insane belief that they can prevail against the forces
of hell. It took hold on earth and drove them to create magic weapons that
seemed powerful enough to justify their belief. Now thanks to our actions it
had taken hold here too."

"What
is that antidote for hope?" she continued. "We know it well, despair,
the proper natural state of a human. But merely restoring despair is not
enough, for apathy does not serve our purpose. We must corrupt their newly
minted hope into selfish desires, harness it to drive the humans we want, and
only the humans we want, to step forward."

Euryale
paused for a moment to let her words sink in and Yulupki took the opportunity
to heckle. "Pretty ssspeech gorgon, but just how do you propossse to do
that? You are no sssuccubusss, to manipulate the humansss emotionsss at a
whim."

The
gorgon flicked the naga a look of contempt, more for her utter predictability
than anything else.

"I
propose that we take the humans from one mine and have my gorgons enthrall them
all. We will convince them that they are recent arrivals from earth and that
the armies of hell are already marching triumphantly across the planet. But
there are many fortified cities that will take long sieges to reduce. We must
make it clear that the humans are doomed, but that it will take us many years
and many demon lives to eliminate them all unless we can strip them of their
weapons. We will release these humans individually into the other mines. Finally
we will present the humans with a new, false hope. Any human who gives us the
information we seek will be released from bondage and held in quarters on the
surface. We will promise that should their information proves correct, the next
human city to attempt surrender will be spared and given to them to rule. If it
proves useless, they will suffer the personal attentions of our best torturers
and then eaten alive."

The
whole court was stunned. Euryale's plan was so radical, so ambitious in its
exploitation of the human mindset that they did not know what to make of it.
Every head turned to look at the Count, looking for his cue on whether to treat
this gorgon as a genius or a lunatic. For a long moment Belial's face remained
impassive, unreadable. Then it broke into a vicious grin.

"I
find your suggestion most suitable Euryale."

She
inclined her head. "With my lord's permission."

"Granted.
All of you, give her whatever she needs."

Euryale
turned and fixed Yulupki with a predatory glare, which for a gorgon meant a
scaled face framed by no less than twenty four spine-fringed tendril-eyes
staring blankly at her target. The naga's will broke and she hung her head,
coiling around herself and folding her own tentacles behind her back in
submission. Thus vindicated, Euryale swept out of the throne room, her wings
fluttering impatiently while she barking orders to the retinue now trailing
behind her.

Belial
was still smiling. She regularly failed to give him due respect, and this
display had been forwardness bordering on insubordination, but somehow he still
enjoyed being reminded just why he kept that gorgon around.

{Thanks
to Alferd who contributed the first part and Starglider who produced the
second}

Chapter
Forty

The
Phlegethon Bridge, Dysprosium Highway, Hell

“Well,
its not boiling blood.” Captain Keisha Stevenson looked at the scene through
her electro-optics. It was one of almost pastoral beauty, the angry, gray and
red sky, the yellow-green river, the blackened-red grass, the shining black
demons on guard around the bridge. Thinking over the definition of pastoral
beauty, she decided that she had an unexpected talent for irony.