Armageddon?? (18 page)

“Mark
your targets as they come.” The voice over the radio was calm and collected,
the boyish pitch already well-controlled and only barely a reminder of how
young their officer was. It didn’t matter much, everybody knew a junior officer
fresh out of Sandhurst was still being trained in his craft. This one was doing
well, Bass thought. If he survived, he might go far. Even while he thought
that, his hands were selecting a group of baldricks as his target.

“Lase
them.”

A
brief pause. “5,003 meters boss.”

Another
brief pause and then Lieutenant McLeoud’s voice cut in again. “On my word boys.
Hold Fast and ….. shoot!”

“On
the way.”

Third
Legion, Southern Flank, Abigor’s Army

He
had survived the snakes, he had seen their silver bodies stretched out on the
ground, tape-like creatures that were threatening even in death. Those who had
stepped on their bodies had screamed in agony as the snake teeth cut their feet
apart. Demon skin was strong but the silver snakes were stronger.

He
had avoided the yellow bars as well, taught by the fearful fate of those who
had been careless enough to step on them. He had threaded his way through the
maze on the ground, catching only minor injuries from the fragments as more
careless, or less fortunate, as Krykojanklawas was quickly beginning to
realize, on a battlefield they were the same thing, had stepped on the bars and
been blown apart. Krykojanklawas corrected himself, the lucky ones were blown
apart, the unlucky ones just had their legs ripped off and lay screaming on the
ground.

The
bars weren’t the only magic in the ground here. Something else was hidden in
the sand and gravel, something nobody saw until it was too late. Something that
threw a metal ball up into the air so that it could explode and throw out a
slashing rain of fragments. The humans had a touch of true evil in their magic,
the balls always exploded at about waist height and the ones caught by them
were the unluckiest of all for they were rarely killed, just disemboweled and
castrated by the blasts. Their screams were truly dreadful.

That
was the worst thing of all, the overwhelming noise, the sensation that the bath
of sound they were immersed in was itself a weapon hammering them flat with
repeated waves of blasting. The explosions of the mines, the flat crack of the
balls as they were thrown into the air and exploded, worst of all, the howl as
the human mages created thunderbolts and hurled them into the mass of troops
advancing on them. They mixed with the screams of the dying, and those who
wished they were dying, in an all-embracing cacophony and the war-cry howls of
the humans in their sky-chariots overhead, hunting down the surviving flies.
Krykojanklawas had never heard anything like it before. If anything the sound
was worse than the magic that was being thrown at him, its pressure on his head
made it almost impossible to think straight.

He
lifted his head slightly, the human mages were up to something new. A ripple of
lightning flashed along the ridge crest ahead of him. His eyes focused on that
ridge, there were strange boxes scattered along it and the lightning seemed to
have come from them. Before that could really register, the bath of sound that
enveloped him was punctuated by ear-splitting screams, more human battle cries
Krykojanklawas presumed. How could such puny creatures give out such cries? Off
to his left, a tight knot of demons had penetrated the wire, using the body of
a dead Beast as a bridge. As Krykojanklawas watched, one of their leaders
seemed to be hurled backwards, disintegrating into a fine spray of mist and
parts as he did so. Most of those around him fell, spurting yellow body fluid
from wounds torn by fragments from the magic bolt. Along the line,
Krykojanklawas could see forty or fifty more such explosions as the magic bolts
tore into the demonic ranks.

For
the first time, he sensed that moving forward was impossible, that he could not
do it and survive. All along the line, the same idea was beginning to filter
into the minds of his fellows, the advance was faltering. Although he had never
experienced anything like this before, the simple instinct of self-preservation
cut in and Krykojanklawas took cover in a convenient dip in the ground. He was
just in time, another salvo of the screaming bolts slammed into the ranks where
the demons had clustered, spreading more death and destruction. At that point
he noticed something, the human mages were hurling their bolts where the demons
were most tightly packed, the area effect of their blasts ensured multiple
kills for each bolt. Krykojanklawas began to wonder if his survival in this
human-created hell, he used the phrase without any sense of irony, was due to
the fact that he was in a thinly populated section where most of the demons
were already down.

The
human magic was being concentrated on a section of the line far away, even the
terrible noise seemed to have slackened a bit. That gave Krykojanklawas an
opportunity. He had already spotted another, better dip in the ground ahead of
him, so he leapt up and sprinted across to it. On the way he discharged his
psychic force into his trident and aimed a bolt at the ridgeline ahead. The
blue bolt shot out, it would take time for him to recharge but at least he’d
taken a shot at the mages. Then, he was in his new hiding place, trying to find
another one that was both better and closer to the enemy.

The
Royal Dragoon Guards, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq

“What
the blazes was that?”

Bass
shrugged. Something had hit his tank, it seemed like some sort of ball
lightning or something. It had come from the mass of infantry they were
pounding. “No idea. Any damage.”

“No
boss, computers flickered for a second but that’s all. If I didn’t know better,
I’d say we got hit by lightning. If we did, the system hardening worked as
advertised.”

Bass
looked across the line, it seemed like quite a few bolts were coming in from
the direction of the enemy. “The old books said that demons could throw
lightning bolts didn’t they? Looks like we just got hit by one.” Ahead, down in
the valley, a group of baldricks had penetrated the wire in his sector. “Load
HESH.”

“Up.”

“Shoot.”

“On
the way.”

The
tank lurched as another 120mm HESH round went down range and Bass saw it plow
into the group he’d selected, blowing one baldrick into fragments while those around
it went down wounded. The thought crossed Bass’s mind that he was currently
firing the biggest and most expensive sniper’s rifle in history. It also
crossed his mind that snipers couldn’t possibly stop a massed attack like this.
He had to give the baldricks credit, the ground in the minefield and around the
wire was carpeted with their dead yet they were still pushing forward. It took
gutsy infantry to do that.

“Make
that a definite on the ball lightning.” Bass had seen another Challenger
getting hit by a ball of lightning and briefly lighting up the way a ship’s
mast sometimes did in an electrical storm. St Elmo’s Fire it was called or
something. He switched to the platoon net. “Lieutenant, Sir, we’re taking
incoming fire here. Some sort of electrostatic bolt, like lightning or EMP.
Doesn’t seem to be dangerous to us but worth reporting.”

“Roger
that Bass. For your information, other tanks and the crunchies in their
Warriors are also reporting the bolts. Hold Fast.”

Bass
switched back to tank intercom and picked out another baldrick target. Once
again, his 120mm gun crashed, sending the baldricks flying. Their casualty rate
down there was appalling, the AS-90Ds were still pounding them with their 155s
while the tanks added precision fire to the execution yet they were barely
making a dent in the mass of baldricks still moving forward. Bass got an uneasy
feeling that the battle was not going well.

First
Brigade, First Armored Division, Tel Ash Sha’ir, Northern Iraq.

“They
may not know what they’re doing but my word, do they have guts.” Colonel Sean
MacFarland watched the slaughter on his display. The Global Hawk was relaying
real-time video of the battle as it developed, sending back pictures of the
baldrick horde as they floundered under the lash of artillery fire. The MLRS
batteries were inflicting incredible losses on them, every time they fired,
whole sections of the baldrick front just vanished under the Steel Rain. There
were two problems with that, the batteries fired about once every eight or nine
minutes and that just wasn’t often enough. The other was that they had already
dumped more than a million DPICM bomblets into the target area. With a 2
percent failure rate, that meant there were already 20,000 dud rounds
scattering the battlefield. That would make it a hazard for years to come.

Still,
the gap between the MLRS salvoes was being filled by the Paladins. All 54 guns
in the First Armored were now pouring fire into the enemy army. A human army
would have broken by now, given up, known that getting through the artillery
fire was impossible, and saved their lives by pulling back. The baldricks
weren’t doing that. Not yet at any rate. MacFarland know they would, sooner or
later. They were fighting the United States Army on its terms, on its ground,
giving it exactly the target the Army was supremely good at destroying. The
baldricks would either run or die. Even as he watched, a new element was added
to the massacre, the Bradleys of his mechanized infantry were firing TOW
anti-tank missiles into the enemy formation, picking out the groups the
artillery missed and cutting them down. The tanks were silent, MacFarland
intended to hold fire with them until the enemy were 2,000 meters away. The
120mm smoothbore didn’t have the accurate range of the British rifled 120mms so
the Bradleys had to take over the long-range precision fire role.

MacFarland
looked at the mass of infantry threshing in the kill zone and shook his head.
They had to stop. Didn’t they?

Cavalry
Legion, Left Flank of the Army of Abigor, Tel Ash Sha’ir, Northern Iraq.

They
were hunched up, backs bent, heads down, looking for all the world as if they
were trying to walk through some ferocious storm. Same grim determination to
find shelter. And that wasn’t a bad comparison thought Zorankalirtagap, that’s
what they were. Facing a storm that slaughtered everything in its path. Ever
since his Beast had been killed, Zorankalirtagap had been advancing with the
infantry against the hideous magic of the humans. He caught his breath, suddenly
the sky behind the humans had turned white again, white shot with fire as their
fire-lances sped towards the floundering demon advance. He watched the sight
with fear in his heart, then sighed slightly as it descended on the flank of
the line, far from his position. It happened again, the same rippling cloud of
explosions that left no demons standing when it cleared. Anything was better
than the fire lances, even the magic bolts that screamed and caused the ground
to erupt under their feet.

There
was something new, from a position in front of them, more human chariots had
appeared, barely visible with just a small box over the ridgeline. For all
their skills, the humans were cowards, Zorankalirtagap consoled himself with
that thought, they didn’t stand proud and fight, they hid in hollows and dips
in the ground to kill. And kill, and kill, and kill thought Zorankalirtagap
grimly. Oh yes, they were very good at that.

The
boxes fired fire-lances at a group of demons on Zorankalirtagap’s right. The
targets scattered but it did them no good. They’d been lucky enough to escape
the fire-lances and the bolts but these new weapons were different. As
Zorankalirtagap watched appalled, the fire-lances changed course to follow
their targets. Even those who forget their honor and took cover in dips like
humans could not save themselves, the fire lances were following them into the
cover they had sought. It was more than flesh and blood, even demonic flesh and
blood could stand. The leading demons started to edge backwards, even as the
ones behind continued to push forward. The advance ground to a halt in the
chaos.

The
Royal Dragoon Guards, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq

“Air
Raid Warning Red! Red! Red!” The scream over the radio was just in time. A
group of about 30 harpies had managed to assemble themselves from the massacre
in the skies over the battlefield and attacked the tanks sitting on the
ridgeline. Bass could feel his tank lurch as a group of them landed on it,
heard their claws scrabbling at the armor. His radio went dead, at a guess, he
thought the antenna had probably been ripped off by the harpies. Then he heard
a ringing noise, the sound of machine gun fire bouncing of armor plate. The
Warriors were machine-gunning the tanks in an effort to drive the harpies off
them. Bass looked through his vision blocks, some were masked by clawed hands
trying to rip them open but he could see Bravo-Three was also covered with
harpies, the tracers from three Warriors converging on it as the infantry
protected the tanks from the sudden assault. On a sudden thought, Bass looked
up and made sure his hatch was firmly clamped shut. One harpy was driven off
the tank by the fire, it exploded in the air as the Warrior fired a few rounds
from its 30mm RARDEN gun into it. Others were dying as they were shot up by the
Warrior’s coaxial chain guns. That was creating a new problem, Bass could see
Bravo-Three was starting to smoke, the acid from the harpy’s blood probably.
The paint on the Challengers would resist the acid but there were other things
out there that could be vulnerable.