Armageddon?? (97 page)

“Speak.”
Chiknathragothem didn’t have time to worry about the usual genuflections.

“My
Lord, the humans have unleashed magery of unimaginable power. Beelzebub’s Army
is stalled, its casualties are beyond counting. He has forced a crossing of the
Phlegethon but is unable to make headway into the human defenses. The human
mages breathed death over his forces, their spells robbing his harpies of the
breath from their bodies, of the very air from their lungs. His harpies died as
one, nothing like it has every been seen before.”

“That
could well describe our whole war with these humans.” Chiknathragothem was
impatient, he had better things to do than listen to a litany of disaster, even
if opportunities lay in them. “Tell me something I have not heard before.”

The
harpy gulped but he had been tasked to deliver a message and deliver it he would.
“The humans also delivered a huge number of mage-bolts, so many that they
blended together into one huge cloud of death that drank Beelzebub’s army.
Together, barely one demon in four survives of his force. He has abandoned his
attack and is pulling back in defense to block the road to Dis. He charges you
with penetrating the human defenses and crushing them against that defense.”

“Is
that all.” Chiknathragothem’s voice clearly indicated that he was contemplating
a quick meal.

“No
Sire, the worst is still to come. The humans hit the city of Dis itself. They
have destroyed His Infernal Majesty’s palace, crumbled in and the rock it stood
on so that only a pile of sand and ruins remains.”

“His
Majesty…” Chiknathragothem had gone gray with shock. “Did he survive?”

“Nobody
knows Sire. If he was in his palace then he did not. More than forty Grand
Dukes and Dukes are known to be dead, and the palace staff are all gone. The
dead number in their thousands. And, My Lord Beelzebub says, if Yahweh gets to
hear of this catastrophe, and he will, then there will be nothing to keep him
out of Hell itself.”

Shocked
to his core, Chiknathragothem stared into the distance, trying to imagine the
full consequences of what had just happened. If Satan was dead, then the great
bulwark against Yahweh absorbing Hell into his own domain had gone. There was
more to it than that, the human life-energy that all demons gathered and paid
as tribute to Satan was suddenly without purpose. Satan had used it to boost
his faithful servants over the barrier that existed between this level and the
next. That was, after all, what the great pit of Hell was all about. The demons
served Satan and in exchange he used the life-energy he had gathered to save
them for eternity in the next dimension. All of this would be lost if Yahweh
was allowed to make his way in and seize Hell for his own. The celestial abode
that had been split apart so many, many millennia ago, would be reunited once
more.

Unless,
Chiknathragothem suddenly realized, another took over the role of leader,
seized power and used the system Satan had devised to guarantee his own
survival. In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly realized why Beelzebub was
abandoning this fight, he wasn’t blocking the humans from Dis, he was advancing
along that road himself, to seize power and take Satan’s throne. He,
Chiknathragothem, was being left as the rear-guard to distract the humans from
pursuing Beelzebub. He was a sacrifice to Beelzebub’s ambition.

For
a wild moment, Chiknathragothem thought of pulling back himself, of setting out
for Dis in an attempt to beat Beelzebub to the punch. Reality quickly intruded
itself and squashed that idea. Beelzebub’s Army blocked the direct road and was
much closer to Dis than Chiknathragothem’s. Beelzebub had the direct route,
Chiknathragothem would have to go around him. There was no way, no way at all,
that Beelzebub could be beaten to Dis. Then, another thought entered
Chiknathragothem’s mind. He had battered his way through most of the human
defenses, the end of the great zone of little fortresses that could do so much
damage was in sight. One more push, one more effort and he would be through.
Then, the human army would collapse. Beelzebub might enter Dis first, but it
would be at the head of a defeated army, a thin shadow of the great force that
he had once commanded. On the other hand, once this battle was one, he,
Chiknathragothem, could also enter Dis but at the head of a victorious army,
one that had defeated the humans who had destroyed Abigor and so badly crippled
Beelzebub. The inhabitants of Hell were practical, they would back a winner
over a loser any time.

So,
he had to win and had to win fast. That made his decision obvious. He would
have to group his remaining forces here, at the point where victory was on the
point of being won. The remaining naga, the remnants of Belial’s wyverns, all
in a concentrated blow. Overhead, Chiknathragothem heard the wailing sound of
the human sky-chariots as they tore into his dwindling flock of harpies. His
army was mauled, badly mauled, but nothing like the scale of destruction that
had been visited on Beelzebub. The white mage-fire had been a shock, more for
the horror of its effects than its real damage, but that was all. And there
were fewer sky-chariots than there had been. His advancing foot-soldiers had
found the wreckage of two, brought down by the wyverns with their great spiked
tails, but it seemed as if the humans were running out of them. Everything
suggested that this battle was at the point of balance. His one more push would
win it, and with it a far greater prize than was being contested here on the
plains of the Phlegethon.

Command
Cave, Free Hell, Banks of the Styx, Fifth Circle of Hell

“Estimated
force of 35,000 baldricks, at least 30,000 foot, the rest harpies. They’re the
dangerous ones, not much firepower but they can get at us and our ability to
bring them down in droves is limited.” Colonel Jackson looked around at his
companions. He’d had an embarrassing discussion over the radio with his commander
when he’d had to admit that he’d been outmaneuvered, politically speaking of
course. In retrospect, he couldn’t honestly critique his decisions. He’d had a
very questionable maneuver to pull off, one that depended on a junior officer’s
instinctive deference to an officer of much higher rank. He’d gone in hard,
trying to bulldoze her out of the way and accept his command before she had
time to think the situation through. It had worked too, only how could he have
known he would run into Gaius Julius Caesar. Some historians had questioned
Caesar’s skill as a politician, well, he had been on the receiving end of that
expertise and could now testify that the reality of the man lived up to his
reputation.

The
infuriating thing was that he, Jackson, had been right and what he was seeing
proved it. The young American Lieutenant had done well, that was certain
enough, but she’d done it through luck, guts, the inability of the baldricks to
accept that humans could fight and, most of all, her serene ignorance of the
fact that what she was attempting was impossible. Her whole operation was
running on borrowed time, if this crisis hadn’t arrived, something else would
have done. Time to rub that in a little.

“So,
how many troops do you have Lieutenant?”

“Armed
with our weapons? Around thirty. Split equally between the two flanks. About
sixty more with captured baldrick equipment, some reinforcing the positions on
either flank, the rest string out along the river.” Jackson and Caesar
exchanged glances, the Lieutenant was a pilot, not a ground-pounder and her
dispositions had made that fact clear. They were an invitation to disaster. “I
know, I know, but we’ve got some things running for us. The whole area on these
flanks is a maze of minefields and demolition charges. Ever since we blew up
Asmodeus, we’ve got the baldricks too scared to put their feet on the ground.
Just often enough, when one of them does so, it kills them. The river is wide
open, I know it, but we can’t be strong everywhere. He who tries to defend
everything….”

“Defends
nothing. Quite right Jade.” Caesar looked at the map, probably the first
accurate one that had ever been drawn in Hell. “Colonel, you’re the expert, I’m
just the representative of the free human population down here, what do you recommend?”

Jackson
caught the fleeting smirk on Kim’s face and guessed that Caesar had been given
a quick introductory lesson on the concept of civilian control of the military.
And was now using it to his advantage. Oh, it was to his own advantage, Jackson
knew that, Gaius Julius Caesar was up to something. That insight came from the
simple appreciation that Gaius Julius Caesar was always up to something, the
only real question was, what? Jackson was highly doubtful that the man’s
ambitions were restricted to a few square kilometers of mud on the banks of the
Styx. Still, that matter could wait until later. As could the command issues
that this whole little skirmish had highlighted. He had no doubt they were
being discussed at a much higher level than his.

“We
must assume the force moving along the river is our first priority. I’ll string
my battalion out along that front, its thin coverage but with down here with
modern weapons, we can hold much longer fronts than in normal wars. I’ll have
to depend on your people to hold our flanks Kim. But frankly, if the baldricks
hit us with a coordinated attack, both flanks and the river, we’re gone. There
is no possibility of us stopping an attack like that.”

Caesar
got up and stared across at the great cloud of dust that hung over the site of
Satan’s palace. “Well, we’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”

Palace
of Deumos, City of Dis, Hell

Deumos
stood on her balcony, looking at the same great cloud of dust. For weeks she
had been struggling with the problem of what to do and where to cast her
allegiance. At first, she had been swayed by her vassal Lugasharmanaska’s
opinion that humans could not lose. She had seen them invade Hell, seen their
columns first make the Martial Plain of Dysprosium untenable to the demons and
then bring it under their sway. Then they had started to build up their defense
along the Phlegethon and Deumos had been on the verge of casting her lot
irrevocably in with them. Then, had come news of Belial’s success at Sheffield
and she had hastily reconsidered, to make a firm decision might yet be
premature. Dee-Troyt had confirmed that, or so she had thought.

Now
the humans had struck at the very heart of Hell, they had utterly destroyed
Satan’s palace. And, presumably, Satan himself. That meant the great ruling
force that dominated Hell had gone. As soon as Yahweh found out about that, he
would be on the move, trying to reclaim the lands that had been torn from him
at the end of the Great Celestial War. Deumos didn’t have to have explained to
her what that would mean for her and her kind. Succubi were despised in Hell
but reviled in heaven. Yahweh’s return meant death for her and her vassals.
Hell had to have a new leader, and quickly.

That
led to the obvious question, who. Like any baldrick, Deumos had a simple answer
to that, her. The question was, how. Once again, the simple fact that Succubi
were despised in Hell stood in her way. To make her own power hold, she had to
have powerful allies. Which Grand Duke would be willing to ally with her.
Despised or not, her Succubi were powerful allies who could offer much
intelligence and influence to the right duke. But who? Deumos realized she
didn’t even know which Dukes were still alive.

Then,
that thought made her kick herself. She had missed the obvious. The Dukes were
not the most powerful forces in hell any more. Humans were. The destruction of
Satan’s palace proved that. She went to the couch in the corner of her room and
sat down, her mind already roving across the gray expanse that marked some sort
of dimension she could not describe or explain. There were bright lights in
that expanse, the minds of her Succubi. Without being able to explain why, she
knew which light belonged to who. She was looking for one light in particular,
one that would be far removed from the rest.

Luga,
child are you there? Deumos’s mind had the sickly-sweet sound of an adult
cooing to a child

Yes,
my liege. How may I serve you.

Deumos
was momentarily irritated, she expected a lot more groveling than that.
Obviously too long an association with humans was having a bad effect on her.
Still, punishing her for that could wait. Child, what is the situation on
Earth? Are the humans in despair at the loss of their cities?

No,
my Liege. Not in despair. Furiously angry would be the best description. There
have been riots in the streets here, people demanding that the destruction of
Sheffield and Detroit be avenged by the ‘nuking’ of all hell. I do not
understand what they meant by nuking but it does not sound friendly. You must
have seen the action the humans have taken in response.

There
were riots caused by our action? The humans massacred their own then.

No,
my liege. The police and Volunteers restored order and they arrested those who
caused acts of violence but the rest were allowed to demonstrate. It is their
way. It was helped by the news that the volcano over Sheffield has finally
stopped and the Detroit attack is slackening quickly. Otherwise, the demands
for a nuking might not have been so easy to ignore.

Luga,
child, this war must end before even more die. I would wish to speak with the
leaders of the humans. Perhaps together we can find a solution to this horror.”