Armageddon?? (63 page)

Aeanas
gulped. His throat, long charred by the heat and flames, was already feeling
better. "Aeanas," he replied finally.

"Anus?!"
another voice shouted. A similarly-naked figure, also carrying a trident,
stepped under the tree, into the range where Aeanas could see clearly.
"Your name is Anus?!" The man roared with laughter.

"Cool
it, DeVanzo," the first man snapped. Again, Aeanas was forced to marvel at
the fact that the two were speaking an entirely different language than his
own. The first man continued: "He said, 'Aeanas.' That's Greek,
right?"

Aeanas
nodded, then asked with some timidity: "Who are you?"

The
first man started. "Oh, right! Name's Tucker McElroy, from Tennessee
originally, though most recently I found myself in the molten river a ways that
way. This uncouth gentleman's name is Artie DeVanzo, from New Jersey."

Aeanas
nodded blankly. New Jersey? What was that? Where was Old Jersey?

McElroy
regarded Aeanas for a moment, then said, "Say, you ain't a new arrival,
are you? How long you been here, son?"

Aeanas
shrugged. "I...could not tell you. A long time, I am sure."

"Well,"
DeVanzo said, stepping in, "how did you die?"

"I
was struck in the heart with an arrow," Aeanas said. "Then, I believe
my throat was cut."

McElroy
whistled. "Ain't that a way to go. What was you doin'? Hunting? I didn't
know they did that over in Greece."

Aeanas
shook his head, his puzzlement now building into a frustration. "Of course
not. I was in battle!"

McElroy
did a double take. "Battle? Just how old are you, anyway? Shit, no one's
used bows and arrows in battle for five or six hundred years!"

DeVanzo
then interjected. "What battle were you in? Where was it?"

"It
was in Greece, at Thermopylae," Aeanas said warily. Were these demons,
trying to trick him into revealing something? What could they be after?

McElroy's
eyes went wide, as did DeVanzo's. "Holeeeeee shit," McElroy said.
"You died at Thermopylae? The Thermopylae? King Leonidas? Xerxes? The
Persians? The Spartans?"

Aeanas
nodded. "Yes. Do you know of it?"

McElroy
snorted. "It's only one of the most famous battles in history!"

Aeanas
shifted his weight. He fear was actually abating. Were they trying to lull him
into sedation? "Why?" he asked McElroy in typical laconic bluntness.
"It was a simple delaying action. What makes that so famous?"

DeVanzo
sputtered, "You faced a million Persians! And there were only three
hundred of you!"

"Wrong,"
Aeanas corrected immediately. "Thespians more than double our number
stayed, and we had the Thebans."

McElroy
shook his head. "That don't matter none! We got ourselves a genuine
Spartiate!" McElroy was now speaking to the other man, DeVanzo. "Man,
I can't wait to bring him back to base! A Spartan hoplite from Thermopylae! One
of the three hundred!"

"Yeah,
and the oldest member of the resistance!" DeVanzo chimed in. "I bet
that'll give Ori a thing or two to chew on!"

"Ori's
another old revival," McElroy said to Aeanas by way of explanation.
"He's a warrior called a Samurai, from a place called Japan, that...well,
shoot, it'd be outside what you'd know as the world!" The two men laughed
easily together.

"Stop!"
Aeanas roared. They would get no more from him; they would confuse him no
longer. From this moment forward, they paid for information in blood.

He
surged at McElroy and wrapped his arms around him. With fluidity that came with
years of practice, he wrenched the man bodily into the air and slammed him to the
ground. Most importantly, as he rose, he snatched up the trident and advanced
on DeVanzo.  DeVanzo was obviously some kind of fool; he wasn't even holding
his weapon properly. With three swift motions, Aeanas swatted the trident
aside, forced it from his grasp, and had a point at DeVanzo's throat.

The
man instantly raised his hands, and Aeanas jammed it in hard enough to draw
blood. He then rotated around DeVanzo so that he was standing side by side with
still-dazed McElroy. Through clenched teeth, he hissed: "Explain
yourselves, else I will destroy you both!"

And
much to his surprise, both men smiled broadly.

"You
know, we could actually use you!" McElroy shouted, brushing the reddish
dust from his body. A cut on his knee bled feebly. "Alright, here are your
answers: as you've probably figured out, you're in Hell. You've been dead for
over 25 centuries. That's 2,500 years. The world as you knew it does not exist
anymore! You understand? Everyone you ever knew is dead, and probably here,
being tortured. You have a wife? Kids? They're somewhere out here!"
McElroy gestured wildly at the Hellscape surrounding them. "And they've
suffered exactly as you have for that last 2,500 years! Do you hear me?"

Aeanas
lowered the trident. McElroy went on, "But things have changed. The
situation has changed. We're fighting back, both here in Hell, and on Earth.
We're gonna free as many soldiers as we can, and we'll all fight against Hell.
Most times, it's modern soldiers, but hey, I can't wait for the guys back on
Earth to hear that we got Spartan warrior and a Samurai fightin' with us. Won't
that be a trip?

"Anyway,
Aeanas, we are the Hell's People's Liberation Front, and we want you to join
us." McElroy held his hand out.

Aeanas
paused, but just for a moment, then passed the trident back to him.
"Good," McElroy continued. "We could probably use some more
people proficient in your type of fighting. Word is that our cell won't be
getting supplied with modern weapons for a while, so for the time being, we're
stuck with more... primitive means of defending ourselves and killing
ba--demons. Plus a trick or two we've learned over the centuries."

Aeanas
then did something hadn't done since the day before he died, over 2,500 years
ago: he smiled. "So they can be killed."

"Betcher
ass they can," DeVanzo crooned. "How do you think we got these
tridents?"

"So,"
McElroy continued. "Will you join us? Maybe teach us how to throw a demon
like you just did to me? Or maybe how to correctly hold a spear? In return,
I'll show you some things that you'd call magic."

Aeanas
laughed. "Has anyone said no?"

Chapter
Forty Five

F-111C,
Koala Flight, Approaching Hellmouth

“Koala
Flight this is Hellmouth Air Traffic Control. Come to course three-three-fiver,
altitude three thousand feet for Airstrip Delta Approach. You are cleared to
use Runway 31.”

“G’day
cobbers. Everything bonzer down there? Throw another shrimp on the Barbie for
us.” Squadron Leader Mackay’s weapons systems operator gave him a pained look.
“Don’t blame me, that’s how the septics expect us to talk. Don’t want to
disappoint them now do we?” Mackay flipped back to the ATC frequency. “Don’t
get in tizzy about us landing, we’ll go straight through.”

The
voice on the air traffic control net sounded slightly strangled. “Koala flight,
be advised, it is against regulations to fly through the Hellmouth. Please land
and your aircraft will be towed through.”

“May
be against your regulations mate, not against ours. Anyway, you can’t tow an
F-111 like that. Nose is too long and the weight distribution won’t hack it.
We’ve got to fly though.”

Mackay’s
WSO looked appalled. “Sir, that is utter bullshit.”

“Charlie,
I know that and you know that but do you think the liability-obsessed septic
down there knows that? Its been almost twenty years since the USAF mothballed
it’s Pigs, that kid wasn’t even a lecherous gleam in his father’s eyes back
then. He’s not going to take the chance of these birds getting damaged on his
say-so. He’ll let us go through, our responsibility, you watch.”

“Koala
Flight, this is Hellmouth air traffic control. At your request, you are cleared
for flight transit of the Hellmouth.”

“Told
you.”

The
four F-111s, three strike aircraft loaded down with air-to-surface ordnance and
an RF-111 with a full surveillance fit, dipped down and started to skim across
the sand dunes towards the black ellipse of the Hellmouth. The book said that
the ellipse was 800 feet high and 1,200 feet wide which gave the F-111s plenty
of room to make their transitions. Beneath them, the desert was covered with
armored vehicles, some parked in long lines, others forming convoys through the
Hellmouth. The F-111s were low enough to see the commanders of the tanks and
armored infantry carriers sitting in the turrets, to see them look up as the
scream of the jet engines grabbed their attention. Some waved and Mackay rocked
his wings in response.

“Have
you ever seen anything like that?” Charlie Cartwright was awed by the armored
vista spread out beneath him.

“Nobody
has, not since the Second World War and not so often then. Every armored
formation in the world must be closing in on this place. That’s the pattern,
armor comes here, infantry stays at home to protect the people back there. You
see the roads and pipelines being built as we came in? Hold one, here we go.”

The
ellipse was approaching with frightening speed but Mackay wasn’t aware of
having passed through it. The blue sky and brilliant yellow sun had simply
gone, replaced by the murky redness of the Hell environment. Mackay could feel
the engines starting to labor as they gulped air through the filters that kept the
worst of the dust out. The Pig was shaking slightly as the filters vibrated in
the airflow, casting off the dust before it could choke them.

“Watch
those engine temperatures like a hawk Charlie. If they start to climb, we’re
out of here. You got the nav beacons?”

“Both
of them. Realigning navigation computer now.” One of the purposes of this
flight was to establish a comparative base between the Euclidian geometry of
Earth and the non-Euclidian environment of Hell. Once that was done, navigation
computers could be reprogrammed and another problem facing humans trying to
fight in this, the strangest of all battlefields, would be solved. As they were
all being solved, just taking one at a time.

“Koala-Three
here. Cameras are rolling.”

“Roger,
Koala Three. Any electronic emissions?”

“Ours.
The spectrum’s full of them. Radar, comms, you name it. Nothing hostile or
unidentified.”

“Friendly
aircraft, this is Dysprosium Air Traffic Control. Please identify and file
flight plan.”

“This
is Koala Flight, three F-111C and one RF-111C on armed reconnaissance flight to
Dis and the Hellpit. We’ll let you know the course as soon as we figure it out.
This place just isn’t right.”

“You’re
telling us Koala Flight. Good luck.”

The
F-111 flight soared over the Martial Plain of Dysprosium, heading towards the
Phlegethon River that represented the front line of the human advance into
Hell. That advance had stopped temporarily while the infrastructure needed to
support the next phase was being established. More importantly, there was a lot
of evidence that a huge new Hellish Army was moving up against the troops
digging in along the river. That was one of the things the aircraft had been
sent in to check. In the meantime, the Russians were digging in, establishing a
defense in depth. The central portion of it was underneath them now, a sea of
platoon-sized strongpoints, the arcs of fire of each interlocking in a maze of
death and destruction. Mackay couldn’t see them but he knew the gaps between
the strongpoints were filled with minefields and razor wire. Backing the whole
defense position up was the artillery. The Russian artillery didn’t have the
flexibility or precision of its American equivalent but then, Mackay thought,
the septics didn’t line their guns up, wheel to wheel, for 30 kilometers
either.

“We’re
in hostile airspace now Control.”

“We
have you on radar, be advised, you are the only friendly aircraft in the area.
You can take it as read, if it flies, its hostile. You’re cleared to shoot.”

“Thank
you Control. Be sure to tell the air defense guys on the ground we’re here.”

“Already
done Koala Flight. If they open up on you, it will be in a friendly manner.”

“Reassuring
that. Charlie, warm up the AIM-9Zs. Be good if One Squadron gets the first
air-to-air in Hell. Give those upstarts in Six something to chew on.”

“Koala-Three
here, take a look below us. I think that’s the hostile army we were told to
watch out for.”

“You
think?” Beneath them, the ground was covered with demons moving towards the
Phlegethon River. Far, far too many to count, they turned the ground black with
their number. Some were harpies, they tried to climb and challenge the racing
F-111s but they lacked the speed and the ability to climb fast enough.
“Control, confirm sighting of hostile force moving on the Phlegethon.
Rhinolobsters, baldricks, harpies, you name it. Better tell our Russian friends
to keep their powder dry.