Armageddon?? (92 page)

“The
German and Israeli armored divisions are well placed for that. Order them to
make the attack.” Petraeus hesitated for a brief second. “Make sure the Israeli
unit has plenty of space around it.”

Dorokhov
frowned. “You expect treachery? Surely not.”

“Not
treachery, stupidity. The Israelis are too trigger-happy for their own good.
They will not shoot up one of our own units deliberately but they are all too
likely to do so by accident. We know that to our cost. It would be best to give
them an end-run so they are well clear of the rest of your forces. Get them
over the Phlegethon so the rest of us are safe.”

The
Russian General laughed. “Good advice Tovarish David. You heard the enemy used
burning brimstone on our troops? Well, know we will show them what we can do
when we wish.”

“Weapons
Are Free General. And give us the word when you want the Gray Lady to come
calling.”

Over
the Northern Front, Phlegethon River

It
had many names. Some called it 2-(Fluoro-methylphosphoryl)oxypropane, others
preferred O-isopropyl methylphosphonofluoridate. The military eschewed such
long-winded nomenclatures and just called it GB. The world at large knew it as
Sarin.

The
great black rockets with their gaudy yellow markings had been launched all down
the line. This is what they had been waiting for, when their ability to
saturate an area with fire could be turned to best advantage. As the rockets
had started to descend, the outer casing had been discarded and the ranks of
sub-munitions had been exposed. Further down, those sub-munitions had started
to be launched and they had formed a spreading pattern that resembled a great
shotgun blast. It was the same mechanism that the Americans had used to bring
down the hideous steel rain that had destroyed Abigor’s Army. Only this time,
when the sub-munitions detonated they didn’t bring down a curtain of steel
fragments or blast from shaped-charge munitions. First they started to spin and
the action mixed the charges of methylphosphonyl difluoride and a mixture of
isopropyl alcohol and isopropyl amine. They reacted to form the Sarin and then
the sub-munitions burst to release a fine gentle rain, one that none of the
screaming hordes of harpies below even noticed for the liquid was colorless and
odorless. The only thing that Beelzebub and his Army did notice was that the
human mage-fire that was pounding the bank of the Phlegethon furthest from the
Russian positions had ceased.

Every
so often, in a battle, for no apparent reason, the noise stops. The gunfire,
the roar of the artillery, the growls, whines and snarls of engines, the
demented shriek of depleted uranium bolts hitting steel armor, the crackling grumble
of fires, the screams of dying men stop and there is an eerie silence. So it
was as the Sarin descended on the positions under harpy attack. The Russian
guns stopped firing so that the passage of their shells through the air would
not disturb the blanket of chemical warfare agent that had been so carefully
calculated. Beneath, the Russian motor rifle units were sealing down, hoping
that the overpressure systems on their vehicles had survived the harpies and
that their chemical warfare suits were proof against the gas. In case it wasn’t
they had their atropine injectors ready but the truth was that even if they
used them the gas would wreck their bodies. With atropine they would survive
but they would never again be the men they had been once.

Uxaligantivaris
concentrated on the Iron Chariot that was under her claws. She and her
companions were ripping at it with their claws and breathing fire over it as
fast as their bodies could recharge their gas sacks. They had used so much of
the fire-gas that they had lost the ability to fly but it didn’t matter that
much. All that mattered was to keep the Iron Chariots under attack so that the
foot soldiers following them could destroy the defenses. Then she shook her
head slightly, Hell was a dim place, its light levels low and subdued but
suddenly she could see everything was becoming bright and clear to her. So
bright that the light was hurting her eyes in a way that she had never
experienced before. She looked at another harpy that had stopped ripping at the
iron projections on the chariot and saw that her flight-mate’s eyes were
strange, the slitted black pupil had contracted to a fine line, almost
invisible in the yellow of her eyes. Her nose was running, mucus streaming out
of it and coating her chest. Uxaligantivaris touched her own nose and realized
that she too was streaming fluids from her nose and that there was a strange
tightness in her chest, as if she was having problems breathing. In fact, she
realized, that was exactly it, she was having problems getting her ribs to suck
air into her lungs. The effort was making her feel sick and she could feel
herself drooling uncontrollably. She couldn’t help herself, she vomited
helplessly and felt her body loosing strength. Across from her, the other
harpies were collapsing as well, vomiting on to the Iron chariot that was now
forgotten as the agony took hold of them. Her flight-mates were defecating and
urinating like helpless kidling, their bodies twitching and jerking as they
tried to escape the unseen thing that was inflicting this terrible end on them.
Uxaligantivaris felt her muscles become paralyzed and she slipped down the side
of the Iron chariot to lie on the ground spasming and writhing as the Sarin
destroyed her nervous system. Eventually, what seemed like an age later, she
found herself slipping into unconsciousness and never felt the series of
massive convulsions that fractured her bones and tore her muscles while she
died of suffocation.

Command
Post, Northern Front, Phlegethon River Bulge, Hell

Beelzebub
looked at the horrific scene with utter bewilderment. When the human mage-bolts
had stopped hammering his forces, he had thought the battle was reaching its
turning point, that the human mages had run out of their magic and that now the
humans would have to fight on even terms. He’s even welcomed the eerie silence
that had descended on the battlefield. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, nor
would he ever forget what he was seeing. The silence was part of a human magery
that went beyond anything he could even imagine, more than he had ever
experienced. Not even Uriel could do what the humans had done to his harpies
for in the few seconds that the silence held, his great flock, still far more
than 100,000 strong started to die. Not just die, but die in horrible,
unspeakable ways, twitching and convulsing in a pool of their own body wastes.
Where a few second earlier the human Iron Chariots had been swamped in a sea of
harpies that were slowly reducing them to burning hulks, now they stood clear,
surrounded by the dying remnants of Beelzebub’s prized force of Harpies.

That
was when the silence broke for the iron chariots opened fire again, the
mage-bolts pouring from the long staffs they carried, sending the orange-red
fireflies lashing at Beelzebub’s foot soldiers on the other bank. They’d taken
the quiet, the sudden end of the mage-bolts to try and rush the river. The
forces at the back had pushed hard as they surged forward but those at the
front had seen what was happening to the harpies, the terrible death that was
engulfing them and they were reluctant to move. No warriors were braver or more
contemptuous of death that the foot soldiers of Hell yet this magery that
inflicted a silent convulsing death on its victims was hideous in a way nothing
they had previously experienced could be. They hesitated and the combination of
their immobility and the advance of those behind was squeezing the foot
soldiers of Beelzebub’s army into a dense mass alongside the river.

The
crackle of fire from the Iron Chariots was suddenly drowned out by the roar of
human mage-bolts slamming into his force. For a moment, Beelzebub thought that
the mage barrage had started again but he was wrong. For off to his left, a
line of eighteen great explosions had torn into one flank of his Army. They
were mage-bolts all right but their size was greater by far than any he had
seen to date. Even as he watched the first bolts swelling and bursting, another
salvo landed just in front of them, and then another line just beyond them. Then,
Beelzebub saw something that had never been seen in hell before, ahead of the
great mage-bolt blasts, a shimmering wall was starting to form, a faint
whitish-blue cloud that strengthened with every salvo of bolts that landed and
started to race across the crowded mass of his foot soldiers. The great orange
and black balls of fire and smoke marched along behind the blue cloud. When
both wall and bolts had passed, there was nothing left but bare ground and
chewed soil.

It
wasn’t magical of course, it was just a matter of physics and the great bomb
bays of the Gray Lady. The first of the 750 pound bombs that had poured from
them had hit the ground more or less where they had been aimed, hell’s
atmosphere was dust-gorged and murky but it also lacked the strong winds that
distinguished Earth. For the Gray Lady, this was an easy assignment. The bombs
had exploded and created a blast wave that had spread out in a hemispherical
pattern from the impact point. Sideways, each blast wave had merged with the
other 17 in that particular line to form a long cylinder, fronted by the
shockwave and centered by a whirlwind of fire and steel fragments. Normally,
with a few bombs, the blast wave would spread and dissipate but this was the
Gray Lady and her wrath was terrible. The next salvo of 750 pound bombs,
released by the intervalometers in the B-52s at a carefully chosen interval,
hit the ground just behind that advancing shockwave, adding its own fury to the
wave that was racing across the ground. The third salvo did the same, each
series of blasts adding its own power to the shockwave that built up in power
with every series of bombs that pounded Beelzebub’s helpless foot soldiers. The
shock wave wasn’t just the power of one bomb, it was the power of all of them
added together, a cumulative effect that turned blast into a solid,
irresistible and strangely beautiful wall that nothing human or demon could
withstand. By the tenth bomb, the blast wave was invincible and there were
seventy more to come before the second wave of B-52s took over and added their
loads to the holocaust that was consuming Beelzebub’s army.

High
overhead, so high where she couldn’t be seen or heard from the ground, the Gray
Lady wrought death and destruction on the forces gathered below, an apocalyptic
catastrophe that hell and its inhabitants had never even conceived. Watching
from his hilltop as his army was consumed, Beelzebub at last understood what
humans could do when they decided to stop playing with their enemies.

Chapter
Sixty Four

Free
Hell, Swamps by the River Styx, Fifth Ring of Hell

Human
laughter was not a common commodity in hell. Demonic laughter was, but human
mirth was rare in the extreme. So, the sound of three humans laughing
uproariously struck Lieutenant (deceased) Jade Kim as worth investigating. Even
as she made that decision, it struck her that she too had not laughed for a
very long time.

“Whoever
these people are, they certainly got you right eh Titus?” Caesar was wiping his
eyes clear of the tears that helpless laughter had caused. The three men were
gathered around a small portable DVD player, one whose eight-inch screen was
showing the end credits from an episode of the HBO series ‘Rome”.

“Yeah,
but Atia? She was to busy praying and trying to be sanctimonious to get up to
any of that stuff. Now, if they’d said she was Fulvia….”

“Enjoying
the show gentlemen?” Kim’s voice cut through the end music.

“Very
much thank you. I was quite flattered by my depiction.” Caesar leaned back and
started to sort through the disks for the next episode.

“I
wasn’t. Bit harsh I thought.” Pullo’s expression belied his words, Kim got the
impression he also was impressed by the television show. “And it got my army
life really wrong.”

“That’s
true Titus, you didn’t need to get drunk to do some really stupid things. You
nearly got us both killed over and over again without the aid of bad wine.”
Lucius Vorenus wasn’t laughing, his voice was quiet and melancholy.

“Yeah,
but if we hadn’t kept going, the gods wouldn’t have taken a fancy to us and we
wouldn’t have gained their protection here would we.” Pullo’s chin jutted out,
then his voice softened. “They got Niobe right didn’t they.”

Vorenus
nodded. “She didn’t have to do it. If I hadn’t lost my temper, she’d would have
lived.”

“And
so would I, Lucius.” Caesar’s voice was shot with mock severity. “Getting
killed wasn’t in my plans for the day you know.”

“She’s
down here somewhere Lucius.” Kim tried to sound comforting. “She would have
ended up here anyway as far as I can tell. We’ll find her and then you two can
make your peace. If you want to.”

That
was a good point and everybody around knew it. Sooner or later it was going to
have to be addressed, what would happen when couples who had been married were
reunited. Would they want to be? Kim quickly considered the problems Henry VIII
was likely to face and shuddered. Then she was aware of Caesar sitting close to
her in an uncomfortably familiar way. That fitted what she knew of him from the
histories, ‘every woman’s husband and every husband’s wife’ had been one of the
ancient barbs thrown in his general direction.