Armageddon?? (116 page)

Satan
listened to the report quietly. Those in the chamber noted this, Satan had
changed, dramatically so. The destruction of his palace, his near-death at the
hands of human aircraft, his life on the run from the humans who made no secret
of their intense desire to kill him. “The walls are standing?”

“Yes
Your Majesty. Even the human artillery cannot penetrate them.” That was hardly
surprising, the walls were 200 feet high and more than 100 thick, made of the
hardest volcanic rock that could be found in Hell. In truth, the walls of Dis
were an architectural marvel than made the Great Wall of China seem
inconsequential. “But they are battering them with their guns. And slowly the
walls crumble at the points they have chosen. One day, the walls will fall. And
then we will see them attack. When we do we cannot stop them, our best troops
lie dead at the Phlegethon River. My own troops, the last of our trained
professionals, hold the city walls but they do so as lightly as dust falling on
a glass sheet. Every day their number gets fewer as the humans pick them off,
one by one.”

“Sire,
there is another problem. The humans have seized the Plateau of Minos. Minos is
dead, the work force exterminated. The humans redirect their dead to their own
camps in Hell. Since the assault, not one dead human has been received by the
Lords of Hell.”

“Then
kill the humans and take the Plateau back.” Satan’s scream was an echo of the
Lordly Demon he had once been.

“We
have tried Your Majesty.” Dagon spoke quietly, soothingly. The time was not
quite right yet. The hopelessness of the situation had to be made clear to all
so that when he made his move, he would have the support of all here. Quietly
he wondered how many of the surviving Greater Demons, the Dukes of Hell, Deumos
had recruited to their cause. And what she had promised them. “We launched an
assault with harpies and the few Wyverns we have left. The attack failed, the
human aircraft wiped out the formations and the few that got through were
destroyed by the garrison the humans left on the Plateau. We lost much and
gained nothing.” And that, Dagon thought, is the story of this war.

“The
supplies of new human life-energy have also stopped; all we have are the
supplies from those already in the pit. Those grow fewer every day, the loss is
slow but it never stops. Humans now dominate large areas of the pit and as they
take over each new area they remove their dead from it and send them out. Our
troops in the pit are defecting to the humans in ever-greater numbers and they
help the humans recover their dead. Already, armies that are part-human,
part-demon are forming. Demons armed with human weapons and taught to fight in
the human manner. The forces that remain loyal to you cannot stand against that
combination.”

A
shudder ran around the room. Humans and human weapons were bad enough but
demons with human weapons and human war-fighting methods? It was worse than a
nightmare.

“Even
Dis itself is not secure. The orcs are rising. Many areas of the city are such
that a single demon cannot walk alone. Those that try are found beaten to death
in the alleys. Even broad daylight is no defense, many of those who died, did
so in the full light of day. Your Majesty, we have lost the war. It is time we
sued for peace.”

“This
will not be!” Satan’s demented scream rang around the chamber, echoing off the
roof so that it seemed like a great choir was raging at the security report.
“Belial burned their cities, we will burn more. It is your cowardice Dagon that
is costing us this war.” Satan summoned himself to swat Dagon, to reduce him to
pulp on the floor. Before he could do so, Deumos’s voice cut across his scream.

“Dagon
speaks the truth. We must sue for peace. Terms have been discussed with the
humans, we demanded a third of their dead for our energy. They said they would
make their response clear to us and they have. By seizing the Plateau of Minos,
they have shown us they will comply with our demand. They have taken all their
dead so they can give us the third they demand.”

Deumos
looked around, in this confined space, her miasma was effective and people were
listening to her. She had spent her time well, bringing Duke after Duke into
her web, each with the promise that, once Satan was deposed, they would be the
one she supported for his successor. They would fight over the succession and
she could step forward as the compromise candidate that nobody really liked but
one that was better than interminable fighting. And a Succubus could reign in
Hell at last. She glanced around, looking at the painfully-thinned ranks of
Dukes. What was left of Hell, anyway. Then she became aware of a tickling
sensation in her mind. She sensed it, it was Lugasharmansaka trying to make
contact. Not now child, affairs of state are in progress.

Dagon
still stood, defying Satan’s wrath. “Sire, if you cannot make peace with the
humans to save what is left, then you must stand aside and let those of us who
can rule!”

There
was a gasp, of shock, horror and fear. The idea of a direct challenge to Satan
was unimaginable to those not already in the plot. Even Satan was momentarily
taken aback by the challenge.

Watching
in the audience, Deumos felt the tickle in her mind again. I said, not now she
thought irritably. Then the tickle changed to cold, lifeless, impersonal
fingers that sank deep into her mind and took hold, twisting her brain around
as they established a grip that even her powers were helpless to break. There
was a shadow of Lugasharmanaska in the fingers but only that. As if she was
steering the power that held Deumos’s brain captive. She howled with the pain,
saw her vision blurring and saw the black ellipse of a portal forming.

Aberdeen
Proving Ground, Maryland.

“We’re
through.” General Schatten’s cry of triumph overwhelmed the rumble of the
diesels in the four large trucks far behind him. They looked like fuel bowsers
with the great cylinders on their backs but they weren’t. Anyway, all the real
fuel bowsers were in Iraq, supplying the armored forces in Hell. In front of
him, a black ellipse was forming, poised between the antennas that directed
their effort. Off to one side, Lugasharmanaska was writhing on a couch,
whimpering, mucus pouring from her nose and mixing with drool from her mouth.

“Hang
on, we’re getting there.” James Randi looked at the succubus on the couch, she
was certainly proving her new loyalty the hard way. She was in agony and would
stay that way until the other side of the portal was secure enough to get a
sensitive through and punch a gate from that side back to here. He shook his head
quietly to himself, when he had been asked to use his foundations expertise in
exposing fraudulent psychics, he’d had no idea it would lead to this.

Behind
him the trucks gunned their engines and the great cylinders on their backs
started to rise, elevating until they were at a 35 degree angle. Their crews
were already lifting metal screens over the glass in the truck cabs. Behind
them. In the control cabin, the launch crews were already waiting for the final
order.

“Fire
Missile One.” The button was pressed, the booster rockets fired and the missile
left its launch tube, slowly at first but with increasing speed. Then the
turbojet on the Progress anti-ship missile cut in and the missile arched
upwards towards the gate that was almost five miles away. In the control cabin,
the operator acquired it with his command guidance system and steered it for
the very center of the black ellipse. He had little time but he managed it and
the missile flew straight through the gate, parallel to the ground.

The
Amphitheater of Tranios, Underneath the City of Dis, Hell

The
great green monster flew through the gate, its roaring flames filling the
chamber with smoke and heat. A few feet from the gate, Deumos felt the blast
from the engines shriveling her skin, burning her with an agony that made the
pain in her head seem inconsequential. She was blinded by the blast so she
didn’t see what the missile did next nor did she see the fine fiber-optic wires
it was trailing behind it.

Satan
saw it and he saw that the missile was coming straight at him. He tried to
summon up the magic needed to throw the missile away. It just needed a second
or so to summon up the power but that was time he just didn’t have.

The
Progress missile was doing more than 600 miles per hour when it hit Satan in
the chest. The kinetic energy of the blow alone was enough to send Satan
reeling backwards but that was inconsequential. The missile also had a 3,300
pound explosive warhead that was configured as a shaped charge. Normally it had
a copper lining but this one had been modified with an iron liner and sintered
iron powder in the cavity. One thing hadn’t changed; the warhead on Progress
was behind the main fuel tank and that tank was filled to capacity with jet
engine fuel.

The
explosion as the warhead went off was powerful enough to bring rocks down from
the ceiling and enough even to roil the lava far below. It blasted a mixture of
iron plasma, powdered iron and blazing jet fuel deep into Satan’s chest,
leaving him blasted burned and poisoned. The great figure, its chest ripped
open and splayed apart staggered backwards, slumping down to the floor to
sprawl out in a pool of boiling purple blood. Incredibly, the body was already
beginning to repair itself when a second missile erupted through the portal.

The
operator had done a fine job with the first missile, he’d hit a small moving
target with a weapon never designed for the task and which had been hastily
modified. The second shot was much easier. Satan’s body was almost still and
the few twitches it made didn’t affect the firing solution. The second Progress
missile plowed straight into Satan’s head, vaporizing it completely. The great
body gave one more jerk and was still. Satan was dead.

As
the echoes following the scream of the missiles and the terrible blasts, a
great silence fell on the Amphitheater of Tranios. It was interrupted by only
the falling of the rocks shaken loose from the roof and the whimpering of those
burned by the blast of the missile engines. Shock paralyzed and silenced every
demon present, even those in the plot to remove Satan from power had never
contemplated this. Dagon was first to recover his senses although his head felt
stuffed with mud and neither his eyes nor his ears were working right.

“By
right of succession I clai…..” He got no further for another roar filled the chamber,
this time one which too many demons knew all too well. The roar of human diesel
engines.

A
strange vehicle emerged from the portal, one with tracks like the tanks but
with high sides and an open back. Actually, it had been built as a carrier for Lance
missiles but that weapon had been declared obsolete and the M667 carriers built
for it had been in storage for years. Then, they’d been found and it had been
realized they made perfect armored carriers for Abigor’s troops. In it were
sitting figures, large ones and definitely not human despite their similar
equipment. More vehicles followed the first, one occupied by a single very
large figure that the Dukes recognized instantly. Despite his human-design (if
greatly enlarged) battledress helmet and body armor, the figure was known to
them all. It was Abigor, commander of the Free Hell Army.

In
the background, unnoticed, a Humvee skidded through the portal and a single
small figure climbed out, awkwardly and unsteadily. kitten was still recovering
from her surgery and was technically unfit for duty but this operation had
needed the best sensitive DIMO(N) had and she was it. So, for the first time,
kitten was standing in the hell her visions had warned her of so often and now
she was instrumental in destroying it.

“OK
Luga, I’ve got the portal. I’m punching it through from this side.”

Aberdeen
Proving Ground, Maryland.

The
portal shivered slightly then enlarged. Punched through from Hell-side it was
much more stable than before. It would have to be, in addition to Abigor’s
armored personnel carriers, an entire Marine battalion task group was ready to
roll in. The two companies of tanks and a company of infantry in AAV-7s would
be the punch backing up Abigor.

Over
by the gate, Luga was being disconnected from the equipment that created and
amplified the portal. She was so gray that she seemed almost white and was too
weak to stand. Medics surrounded her, working to help her recover from the
tremendous strain she had been other. Quietly, General Schatten made his way
over to the scene.

“Luga,
we pulled it off. Thank’s to you. Keeping a gate like that open so long, that
was gallantry above and beyond the call of duty. I’ll see to it that you get
recognized for what you have done today. Now rest.”

The
Amphitheater of Tranios, Underneath the City of Dis, Hell

Abigor
glanced down at the badly-burned Deumos as his armored carrier passed. She had
been quite incredibly stupid, she had been so sure that the humans could only
agree to her demands, she’d failed to see the emphatic refusal that the attack
on the Plateau of Minos had been. Then he transferred his attention to Dagon
who was standing with his mouth hanging open, his claim for power cut off
mid-sentence. His APC mounted the steps that led to the throne Satan had
occupied and stopped, just a few feet from the cooling corpse of Hell’s last
ruler. The noise of diesels was deafening as the coup forces moved in. Around
the perimeter of the amphitheater, humans and their tanks were beginning to
form up, their weapons covering the assembled crowd. Abigor noticed, with some
grim amusement that they looked at his troops with amazement but they watched
the humans with fear.