Armageddon?? (119 page)

The
vehicle procession started again, the crews scanning the ever-growing number of
faces watching from the buildings. Eventually they came to a large open area,
backed by a second wall, one thinner and lower than the great outer wall. From
behind it, plumes of smoke, faint but discernable, were rising. The heat was
noticeable, not quite burning his face but giving him the same feeling he had
when he’s been out in the sun too long. Chisholm looked at his map just to
confirm what his eyes had just told him. “This is it people. The other side of
that wall is the Hell Pit. Now, our problems really start.”

Underground
Fortress of Palelabor, Tartarus, Hell

Belial
was in an expansive mood. In the five days since the demonstration of his new
Great Tridents, the workshops had produced half a dozen more, each with a naga
assigned to it. Perhaps the disaster at the second portal had been a good thing
after all, it had left a good number of crippled naga that were fit for little
more than power sources. They could all be used up in powering his new weapons.
Entering the Great Hall of his fortress, Belial saw something that made him
freeze in his tracks. A figure, only marginally smaller than he was, with great
wings that stretched out. Most of his court was prostrate on the ground in
front of it.

“Belial.”
The great voice boomed out, shaking the stone walls of the fortress.

“I
am here Messenger of Satan.” There was no mistaking who this creature was. One
of the surviving Greater Heralds, a member of the Corps of Diabolical Heralds.

“No
Belial, Not a Messenger of Satan. Here me now. Satan is dead. The Lord Abigor
now rules in his place. By my Lord Abigor’s ruling, the war with the humans is
over. The City of Dis has surrendered and even now the humans move in to occupy
it. My Lord Abigor commands you to lay down your arms and surrender to the
humans. The war is lost, the fighting must end. So says my Lord Abigor.”

The
Greater Herald crashed a staff down on the floor, sending chips of stone
flying.

“NEVER!”
Belial’s voice thundered around the hall, causing a stir of alarm from the
assembled court.

“It
is His Infernal Majesty Abigor’s will.” The Greater Herald spoke what was to
him a simple truth not to be countermanded.

“Abigor
is a traitor, a coward who surrendered to save his own life. Now he is a
mindless puppet of the humans. I say he is unfit to rule. I spit upon his will
and his commands. If Our Rightful Lord Satan has died, then it is I, I who was
his favorite, I who was the only one to strike a blow against the humans, I who
shall assume his throne.”

“So
you may claim. But Abigor occupies the throne and has been acclaimed as ruler
of Hell. He has challenged any who might disagree not to argue it with him but
to do so with the humans. Those same humans who have destroyed every army in
Hell at trifling cost to themselves. They stand behind Abigor now. And I note
that the Adamantine Fortress has already been the subject of their wrath. It
looks a little damaged from the experience. Submit Belial. And make your peace
with the humans. My message ends.”

Belial
looked at the Greater Herald and then looked at the Great Trident beside him,
one that had just been delivered and was fitted with a naga in place and was
charged up. His foot reached out and he kicked it so the barrel was in line
with the Herald. One closed contact and the bolt flashed out, striking the
Greater Herald full in the chest. The creature went down, its chest torn open,
its blood already starting to burn its flesh. There was an awed silence in the
great hall, nobody, dared to kill the Greater Heralds. Unless they were human
of course, they killed everything that got in their way, Greater Heralds
included. But demons never killed the personal representatives of the rulers of
Hell. Belial looked at the audience and measured his power. It was growing fast
and had just been confirmed.

“So
perish all traitors to Hell. Surrender? Never. My orders from Satan were to
destroy human cities and that is what we shall do. This Herald of the Traitor
Abigor has received my reply to his insulting message. Now the humans shall
receive my reply to theirs. Their cities shall burn. Yulupki, the chorus is
ready?”

“It
is Sire, although two more days…”

“Will
be two days too long. We move out tomorrow at dawn. Are the shrines at Okthuura
Jorkastrephas ready?”

“They
are.”

“Then
there is no reason to wait. My first act as the new ruler of Hell will be to
bring the humans to their knees. I say this again, their cities will burn. This
is their legacy from Satan just as my supreme power is his legacy to me.”

Belial
gazed around the great hall again, drinking in his new-found power and status.
His planning and scheming had worked better than he had any right to expect.
With Satan dead and Abigor a traitor, all hell would rally to him. From a
humble and forgotten count to the Supreme Ruler, the Infernal Majesty of Hell,
he had much to thank the humans for. Not that he intended to show any gratitude
for their services to him of course.

City
of Dis. Hell

The
Humvee drove down the street, the center of a convoy of five vehicles. The
first pair contained troops from DIMO(N), the fourth was a communications
truck, the last contained more troops. The center vehicle contained Julie Adams
and a mass of electronic equipment. Every so often, her mind reached out,
amplified by the electronics and touched a mind she knew all too well.

“He’s
here Jack. That building there.”

“Got
it ma’am.” The convoy came to a halt and the troops started to dismount, their
.50 caliber M4s swinging into firing position with comfortable ease. It seemed
a long time since the M4 carbine had fired the puny .223 caliber round.

Julie
dismounted also, touching her hat to make sure the tinfoil screen that stood
between her and madness was still in place. These days, every cap on sale, be
it a baseball cap or a British bowler had its tinfoil lining – and the days
when a man or women was seen without a cap were also long gone. Building
contractors were making a fortune, rebuilding houses, apartment blocks and
office complexes with continuous metal linings built into their walls. Just one
part of the way humanity was reacting to its new reality.

The
soldiers kicked the door of the house down without any real effort. It was
flimsy, a nothing when matched with steel boots. Inside a group of demons, some
male, some female, cowered at the sight of humans with guns. They knew what
guns were now, there wasn’t a family in Dis that hadn’t lost many of its males
to humans with guns.

“Domiklespharatu.
Where is he?” Julie rapped the words out, impatiently, angrily. She was carrying
Desert Eagle handgun, also chambered for .50AE ammunition. It was a very
popular hand gun these days for people who liked semi-automatic pistols. People
who liked revolvers tended to go for the Smith and Wesson 500. Then she looked
around the house. It wasn’t what she had expected. She’d thought
Domiklespharatu was a prince living in a great palace somewhere, not a hut that
was barely more than a hovel. A slightly better hovel than those around it,
agreed, but still a hovel. Across the room, one of the females gasped, another
pointed to a curtain-covered doorway.

Julie
went through it, brushing the dirty curtain to one side. “Remember me
Domiklespharatu? Remember what…”

Then
she stopped. It was Domiklespharatu all right, but he was as little as she had
imagined as this house had been. He was cowering against a wall, shaking with
fear, his eyes already beginning to glaze over. As she watched, he started to
lose control of his bowels, urinating on the floor in sheer panic. And it was
hardly surprising, Domiklespharatu was barely a half-grown kidling.

“It
was a game, it was just a game,” he was whimpering with fear, trying to drop to
his knees to grovel in front of her yet he had lost the muscle control needed
to do it.

“Just
a game.” Julie looked at him with loathing. All the misery she had endured for
years was ‘just a game’. “And you think that made it all right.” She lifted up
her Desert Eagle, feeling the comfortable bulk of it in her hands. She had
dreamed of this ever since her tinfoil hat had brought her sanity back.

Domiklespharatu
looked down the bore, his mind seeing it grow by the second. “My father said it
was all right. He gave you to me to play with. It was just a game. Please, I
didn’t know you’d….”

“You
didn’t know I’d come here. You didn’t know you would have to face what you did
to me.”

That
did it. Domiklespharatu lost whatever was left of his composure and burst into
child-like crying. Julie stared at him, her gun still aimed, held steadily in
the approved two-handed grip. ‘It was just a game’, the words running through
her mind. As if that made it all right. Then she thought some more, about the
people on earth who thought that adding ‘just kidding’ to the end of a phrase
made everything all right, no matter how rude or offensive they’d been. Or the
humans on the internet who thought that they could do what they liked to
people’s lives because they’d never have to face the victims of their ‘games’.
Were they actually that different from Domiklespharatu? If she killed this one,
shouldn’t she kill them as well? She thought of one friend of hers whose life
had nearly been wrecked by an internet user who’d tricked him into doing a
highly illegal search on the FBI’s server. Wasn’t he just as bad as
Domiklespharatu?

The
Desert Eagle was still aimed at the sniveling wreck on the floor. Quietly, one
of the DIMO(N) troopers stood behind Julie, watching her aiming the pistol at
the baldrick. “Is that really worth a bullet ma’am. Bit of a waste if you ask
me.”

“You
didn’t have him in your mind for all those years Jack. You didn’t have him
tearing at you, wrecking you. If it hadn’t been for James and all the others
who sorted this thing out, I’d still be like that.” Then she sighed and the
barrel of the Desert Eagle lowered. “But you’re right. He’s not worth it.”

Julie
Adams walked over and spat on Domiklespharatu. “We won, you little shit. Just
like I told you, we came for you and we never stopped and we won. And when we
did, you weren’t worth the effort of killing. Just remember that. You weren’t
worth the effort of twitching my finger and blowing your brains all over that
wall.”

Julie
turned and left the house, sliding into the front passenger seat of the Humvee.
“You know Jack, that felt good.”

Chapter
Eighty Three

Hills
Around The Underground Fortress of Palelabor, Tartarus, Hell

“Team-One
reporting in Sarge, there’s life down there.” Cassidy shifted her position on
the rocks and steadied her binoculars on the gates concealed in the canyon
walls. Whoever had built the approach had done a fine job of concealing it, the
canyon itself had a narrow entrance that was lost in the folds of the rock. It
was narrow, so much so that the baldricks had difficulty using it. Behind that
restricted path, the canyon opened up but the rocks had a marked overhang and
shadowed the gates that lay underneath them. Even then, those gates were masked
by more variations in the rock walls. Somebody stumbling across the canyon
would have to go almost to the farthest end before the gates became visible.
McElroy’s team had steered reconnaissance aircraft in over the site and they
hadn’t seen a thing. Even using the battery of image modification technologies
available, the underground fortress was virtually invisible.

“What’s
happening?” Tucker McElroy crawled up to the observation position. His team was
split in two parts, one was watching the gates themselves, the other the path
that led away from the canyon towards the daughter-volcanoes that marked the
flanks of the great cone overhead.

“Can’t
see anything yet. Team One reports that the gates have opened and that there
appears to be some sort of procession emerging but .. hold one Sarge.” Cassidy
listened to the radio again. “Make that a definite on the procession emerging.
Baldricks on foot, rhinolobsters with a burden, looks like those snake things,
Nagas intel called them. They’re going down the canyon now, we should be seeing
them soon.”

“Good.
DeVanzo, get the laser sight set up. Cassidy, stay on watch, let me know as
soon as that procession appears. Walsch, radio. Patch me through to Saber.”

It
took a couple of minutes to get through to Saber, the duty submarine on
Communications watch. As far as McElroy knew, there were three submarines
offshore who rotated radio watch between them. All used the Saber code-name as
required and there was no indication which boat was actually answering.

“Saber.
Sitrep?” Submarines didn’t like transmitting, it ran against their collective
ethos and the messages were terse.

“We
have activity, procession now leaving the underground fortress. From intel, it
looks like another volcano attack being initiated. We are setting up the laser
target designator now.”

“Confirmed.
Wait.” The radio went silent for a couple of minutes. “Ready to launch. Twenty
four cruise ready. Half and half. ETA 15 minutes from launch. Indicate when
firing is needed.” The radio went dead again.