Armageddon?? (15 page)

It
really didn’t register in time, the screams from overhead that drowned out even
the shrieks and howls of the shattered cavalry charge. The explosions did catch
his attention, they were large enough to attract anybody’s. they rippled across
the killing field, tearing apart the force pinned down there and finally
bringing peace to the crippled beasts as they were blown apart.

Just
over 12 kilometers away, the 18 M109A6 Paladins had dropped into the steady
firing rate of four rounds per minute, the rate that conserved ammunition and
broke armies. Their shells arched over the Abrams tanks and Bradley armored
vehicles of the First Brigade and slammed into the mass of struggling baldricks
below. On the ridgeline above the tankers and mechanized infantry watched in
slightly bored interest as the baldrick cavalry died. There was nothing to be
really interesting here, they’d seen MLRS and artillery at work before. The
artillery observers actually had something to do, they watched the patterns of
shells landing and datalinked a stream of information back to the guns,
directing fire onto any pockets of survivors.

In
the middle of the mass of artillery fire, Zorankalirtagap was learning new
lessons and learning them very fast indeed. He was learning that he was helpless,
that there was no defense against the shells that were moving backwards and
forwards across the killing ground. He was learning that artillery and the
controllers who directed in had no mercy, no compassion for the creatures they
were slaughtering. They were just targets, to be erased as quickly and
conveniently as possible.

Zorankalirtagap
had learned one other thing. He was a creature of hell but these seemingly puny
humans could create hell any time they wanted to. For the first time in his long
life, Zorankalirtagap knew what sheer, unadulterated, panic-stricken terror
felt like.

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

“Now
that is a sight.” Guardsman Bass swung the turret of his tank so he could watch
the scene in the minefields. The meter long bar mines had been designed to
knock out tanks but they worked against the baldrick’s rhinolobsters very
effectively. The first wave had been blown apart by the mines, Bass had seen
one rhinolobster have both its left legs torn off by the mines, as it had
collapsed to one side it had landed on another and been killed by it. But the
problem with minefields were that they were declining assets, every mine that
claimed a victim thinned out the field. The second wave had done much better
than the first, for a time at least. Quite a few of the rhinolobsters had made
it though the minefield and then they’d hit the razor wire.

Razor
wire was nasty stuff, lift a piece carelessly and it could remove a man’s
fingers. There were dozens of interlocked coils down there and even as Bass
watched he saw the rhinolobsters tear into it and become entangled in the mass
of razor-sharp edges. They screamed and threshed as the wire sliced ever-deeper
into them and their efforts only got them more entangled and inflicted yet more
damage. Some of the riders tried to help their mounts, grabbed the wire to lift
in clear and these ones learned the terrible truth and the wire sliced their
fingers to the bone.

Behind
that second wave came the third and these had learned. Most of them followed
the paths of the rhinolobsters that had made it to the wire. They climbed over
the creatures from the second wave, escaping the first entangling coils of wire
but got bogged down in the rest. Others followed them and by simple weight and
mass they crushed down the wire with the bodies of those in front of them. By
sheer weight of numbers, the enemy cavalry had breached the wire and were
through.

“Get
ready Boys.” Lieutenant McLeoud’s voice came over the radio. “The artillery
lads are opening fire. Get ready to pick off any of them monsters that get
through the barrage.”

Bass
settled down into his tank commander's seat, then took a look through the
scope. The blood in the minefield and on the wire was green.

Chapter
Eleven

Su-30MKI
Tiger Group Leader over the Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq

The
world rotated around Wing Commander Gurka as his Su-30 hit the top of its climb
and he rolled smoothly over. The survivors of the massacre were far below him,
their bodies barely visible. His radar could see them though, he’d lost them as
he’d climbed out but now he’d re-acquired. The devastating missile salvoes had
destroyed hundreds of the harpies, their bodies dissolving in fire as the
missiles ripped into them. Once there had been so many that they’d swamped the
memory on the radars but now, the situation was clearly defined. There were
barely two targets left for each of the allied fighters and Gurka had already
killed one of his. He’d picked his target for the next pass already, one harpy
flying west, its nerve broken, running for its life.

It
didn’t stand a chance. Gurka pushed his throttles over and went after it in a
long, smooth dive. His gun-sight carat showed the predicted impact point of his
cannon burst, it was sliding towards the harpy, the diamond embracing its back.
Then, it turned red and Gurka squeezed the trigger, blasting burst of 30mm
armor-piercing incendiary ammunition into the harpy’s body. For a second or so,
nothing happened although Gurka could swear that he saw lumps of black flesh
flying off the body. Then it flared into orange fire, burning and spinning for
the desert floor.

“Tiger
Group, time to go home. Call your boys off Tiger Leader, the squids want to
play.”

Gurka
looked around. Already the American F-15s were heading south, their missile
racks empty. “Acknowledged.”

“Head
for Dingbat Tiger Group,” Gurka mentally translated that. Dezful. “Some Russian
transports have landed with missile reloads for you. Good luck and don’t mix
with any naughty ladies.”

“All
Tiger aircraft, break off, head for dingbat.” Gurka looked hard to the west.
There was a black cloud approaching. “Eagle Eye, contacts to the west.”

“We
have the Tiger Group Leader. More harpies, covering the ground force main body.
Sea Eagle Group will be handling them. Out.”

The
out had a definitive note to it. The Su-30s were out of missiles and very low
on cannon ammunition. Eagle Eye up there in his AWACS wasn’t interested in them
any more. His attention was steering the group of F/A-18s from the three
carriers offshore into the new harpy cloud.

Headquarters
of Merafawlazes, Commander, Northern Flank, Abigor’s Army

“The
cavalry have gone!”

“They’re
through then. Order the flies to pursue the humans and cut them up on the way.
The infantry will follow through. Advance on this place the humans call Kirkuk.
Ravage it, Abigor will be pleased.”

“No,
Noble master.” The messenger dropped to his knees and crawled across the floor
to Merafawlazes hooves. “I must tell you, the cavalry have not broken the
humans. The cavalry are dead. All of them. The humans killed them all with
their magic.”

“What
is this insanity? Humans do not have magic.” Merafawlazes’s voice dropped to a
menacing growl. “This is not a good time to jest.”

It
never was thought Falabrednowsa. Being a messenger was a very chancy and
dangerous profession, especially where the recipient of the message was a Duke.
They’d been known to eat messengers who brought bad news. “Sire, I fear to
contradict you.”

“Good.”
Merafawlazes interjected the comment with silky menace.

“But
the humans do have magic. They have used it against the cavalry. They can call
down thunder from the sky and drown their enemies in fire. They have destroyed
our cavalry. It is a horrible sight, our cavalrymen dead on the ground torn to
pieces by the fire, the surviving beasts on the ground screaming with pain as
they die.” Merafawlazes attention was drawn by a thunder in the skies overhead,
a roll of thunder followed by a deafening, hideous scream. “Sire, that is the
war-cry of the humans in their sky chariots. A great battle is raging while we
speak, the flies fight for their lives against the sky chariots. There is magic
there too, the humans throw burning spears that never miss.”

“Our
flies do well against them?”

The
answer had better be yes was the reply running through Falabrednowsa’s mind.
But he was a messenger and it was his duty to speak the truth. “No Sire, they
die as the cavalry died. The human sky chariots are so much faster than they
are. Our enemies cannot hear them come for the cowards give their battle cry
only after they have launched an attack. They travel faster than the wind, they
climb faster than any of us have ever seen before. They afraid to fight us in
honorable combat so they kill by the hundred with their fire spears without
ever coming close. Then, they sit above our fliers and dive on them like hawks.
Our flies are worse than helpless against them.”

Merafawlazes
grunted and turned his attention to the parchment map on the table before him.
It wasn’t much help, it just showed the positions of the cities and his best
guess at the locations of his troops. Why had the humans chosen to fight here?
There was nothing important to fight for here, the nearest great cities were
far away. All there was here were these rolling hills with the strange black
strips the humans built across them. As he stared at the map, Merafawlazes got
the feeling he was missing something very important.

Twenty
minutes later, Merafawlazes strode out of his tent, towards the commanders of
his remaining legions. Overhead, the sky was covered with strange,
crisscrossing white clouds, although he didn’t know it, the contrails from the
F-16C Vipers of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Group. The Lawn Dart pilots had, to
put it mildly, been having a field day. Merafawlazes didn’t know and didn’t
care, he had more important things to think about. “Get the Legions moving
forward, all of them. Two waves, seven and seven. Tell all the infantry, the
suffering of those who hang back will be legendary even for hell.” Merafawlazes
picked a piece of Falabrednowsa’s flesh from his teeth. He’d finally worked out
what he had been missing. Breakfast.

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

“Isn’t
this what they call a target-rich environment?” And that, Guardsman Bass
thought, was the understatement of the century. The first wave of the enemy
attack had been smashed, it had died on the mines and razor wire, the few
survivors had been torn apart by the artillery. That had seemed like a victory
until the whole horizon had turned black with enemy infantry. The enemy line
was almost 10 kilometers long, the rising sun glittering gold off their bronze
tridents. It was a terrifying sight, one that told Bass just as surely as if he
could look into the mind of the enemy commander himself that the baldricks had
never seen wire and minefields before.

‘Look
into the mind of the commander’. Bass rolled the words over in his mind. It
would come, it would come. The ability of the baldricks to enter people’s minds
and create illusions had been a nasty surprise but it had been discovered. Once
something was discovered, it could be investigated and measured. That meant it
could be understood and one the scientists understood something they could
duplicate it. Once the scientists had duplicated it, the engineers would take
that work and turn it into practical tools. Once the engineers had created the
practical tools, the armorers would turn those tools into weapons. And once the
weapons were available, the soldiers would use them. That was the way it had
always been, that was the way it would be now.

Bass
lased the enemy line, waited a carefully measured ten seconds then lased it
again. The computer in the tank thought for a microscopic second, then
translated the two readings into a speed readout, one that made Bass raise his
eyebrows a second. “Right lads, they’re advancing at 15 kay-pee-aitch. The
brass better know about that.” Another guiding human principle, Bass had no
doubt the same piece of data was being transmitted in by dozens of other tank
commanders but it was better for an important piece of data to be transmitted a
thousand times than never transmitted at all because everybody thought
everybody else had done so. The fact that baldricks on foot could move three
times faster than a human was very important.

Third
Legion, Southern Flank, Abigor’s Army

Krykojanklawas
jogged forward, most of his attention devoted to the enemy in front, the rest
to the leader of his contubernium. Like most of his fellow demons in the ranks,
he was holding his tripod underarm, the points angled upwards so he didn’t stab
the demon in front. There might be time for that later. He and his fellows were
lucky, the ground in front of them was clear, they wouldn’t have to pass
through the hideous scene where the human magic had destroyed the cavalry
legion. Word that the humans had magic had spread through the ranks like
wildfire, the stories growing with each retelling. They could make the ground
rise up and swallow their enemies, the stones come alive and crush their
victims. They could conjure up snakes from the ground that would wrap
themselves around their prey and slice them apart. That story was true,
Krykojanklawas decided, he could see the great circular holes in the ground
where the snakes had come from.