Armageddon?? (20 page)

There
were other dirty little secrets as well of course. One of them, she had found,
was that her physique wasn’t perfectly suited to the inside of a cramped
armored vehicle. Put quite bluntly her breasts got in the way. Back in her first
unit, their impressive size had got her the nickname of ‘hooters’. Woman in the
Army reacted to things like that one of two ways, they either got offended,
kicked up a fuss and were eased out or they sucked it up, gave back as good as
they got and were accepted. Stevenson had been one of the second group but that
didn’t help her now. After being thrown around inside a fast-moving tank all
night, she was sore, tired, bruised and battered. And she had seen so much
killing over the last twenty hours that she was a veteran with a veterans lack
of patience for stupidity.

Still
the dawn chill felt good after being sealed down for so long. She looked around
the village, saw people slowly coming out of the buildings to look at the great
American tanks. She checked them over carefully, noting the glitter of silver
from their covered heads. The word was spreading fast, cover your head with
foil if you don’t want a baldrick stealing your mind. Even out here in the back
of beyond. The breeze sure did feel good though, even though it gave her a
shrewd idea of just how bad she must smell. She slipped the shoulder straps of
her top off to get full benefit from the cool air. That caused a stir of
disapproval from some of the men in the village, although she did note they kept
staring at her to remind themselves how offended they felt.

In
his doorway, Appoloin saw the gesture and felt perturbed. She might be comely
but such brazen behavior was immodest. He stepped away from his doorway into
the street, projecting an image of love and friendliness with all his might.
“Cover yourself woman,” and his kindly voice echoed across the street.

“Screw
you!” Stevenson’s voice was harsh for she was a veteran and didn’t suffer fools
gladly. “And the horse you ….. SHIT! Baldrick 20 degrees left! Canister!” She
dropped back into the turret of her tank, by long practice ending the fall in
her commander’s position. The turret was already swinging to bear on her mark.

“Up.”

“Shoot.”

The
gunner saw the cross-hairs merge with the figure standing silhouetted against
the rising sun. “On the way.”  The blast of canister took Appoloin full in the
chest, hurling him backwards and tearing at his body. Incredibly, it didn’t
kill him although there was no way he would have survived wounds that terrible.
It was the bursts from the 25mm Bushmaster chain guns on the Bradleys that
finished him off. Confused by the sudden, vicious attack and in agony from the
wounds, Appoloin died in a spreading pool of white blood.

A
few minutes later, Stevenson and her crew were looking down at the body, now
revealed in its true form, a white humanoid with wings. “Not the same as the
ones we’ve killed so far ell-tee.” Stevenson’s crew were punctilious about
addressing her correctly when others were around. Inside their tank she was
‘hooters’ just as the gunner was ‘baldy’, the loader ‘crab’ and the driver
‘biker’ but, for them, using her nickname where outsiders could hear would be
disrespectful.

“Not
the same at all. I guess this is one of them angels. Doesn’t matter, we
declared war on them as well.” She raised her voice slightly. “Did anybody see
where this one came from?”

One
of the village women pointed at a barn-like building. Crab went over and looked
inside, then came back, his face grim and as white as the body stretched out on
the ground. “You’d better take a look at this ell-tee.”

Stevenson
went into the hut and looked for what seemed a long, long time. When she came
back, her eyes were blank. “Well, that puts paid to any idea about them being
good guys doesn’t it? We need a camera crew up here to film that.” Suddenly,
she shook with rage. “Damn him. He sat there drinking tea surrounded by that
horror show. Slaughtered an entire family and then drank a cup of tea.”

“Don’t
sweat it ell-tee. We done good here. Nobody believed they were on the side of
righteousness any more. Not after The Message.” Baldy was speaking from the
barrel of the 120mm gun where he had just finished painting a white ring to
match all the black ones.

Far
away, in the rocky wasteland, Memnon heard the crash of the gun and crackle of
gunfire and decided he’d better vacate the area. Very quickly.

Headquarters,
Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

“Next.”

James
Randi sighed. It sounded so good using the enormous expertise his Educational
Foundation had built up in detecting fraudulent psychics and mediums to try and
find the real thing. It was hard to believe that the JREF was now the front
line in humanity’s fight against its enemies. Neither consideration changed the
fact that the day-to-day reality of the task was boring. He had another
candidate for testing, a young woman who called herself kitten. No capital he
noted, important thing that. It was essential to make the interviewees
comfortable. He heard the door open and glanced up. Years of expertise in self
control kept his face expressionless but he knew this day at least would not be
considered boring.

Two
people had entered the room, one a young man dressed all in black with a
vaguely military style coat that reached down below his knees. A goth, although
that wasn’t what had added interest to Randi’s otherwise routine day. With him
was a young woman, another goth dressed in black with her hair down around her
shoulders, her long dress low cut and held by thin shoulder straps. The young
man was leading her around by a dog-leash attached to a collar around her neck.

“You
must be kitten?” Randi’s voice was even. “Would you like to take a seat?”

The
girl paused for a second until the man with her gave a quick nod, then she sat
down. “I’m kitten, yes.”

“You
too Sir, please sit down.” The young man did so. “kitten, why are you here
today?”

“I
read your advertisement asking for people who can contact the dead to call you.
I can do that, sometimes. I can also see into hell.”

“I
see, what’s hell like?”

“Some
parts of it aren’t too bad. Imagine a really destroyed city, one where all the
buildings are smashed, the streets ruined. Like those pictures of those World
War Two German cities after the Allied bombing. Freezing cold, raining all the
time, people gathered around burning garbage to keep warm, the only food
available, trash from skips. And no hope, everybody knowing that it’ll never be
any different, never going to get any better. That’s where I’m going when I
die. I’m lucky, some parts of hell are much, much worse.”

“How
long have you known this kitten? Been able to see these things.”

“As
long as I can remember. I’m not quite normal you see. In fact, I’m very far
from normal.”

Randi’s
secretary came in with a file and handed it over, being very careful to keep
her face straight. Randi looked at the psychiatrist’s report. It described
kitten as a paranoid schizophrenic with apocalyptic delusions but added that
she was perfectly well compensated and, despite her condition, was able to
function in society without medication. In fact, the shrink had concluded,
functionally she was the most well-adjusted person he dealt with and that
included his own staff. Randi allowed himself to smile at that. Then he flipped
over to her birth certificate and he couldn’t stop the look of surprise.

“Um,
your birth certificate has you listed as male?”

“I
was born in the wrong body. I’m having it put right surgically. I’ve had
these,” she waved at her chest,” done already. We’re saving up for the big
operation now.”

“Well,
if you do well here, my government will pay for that operation for you.” Behind
them, General Asanee had entered the room, as silently as always. Randi found
it perturbing how she could move with so little disturbance. “We have the best
surgeons in the world for that type of operation and my Army will see you get
the best of the best.”

“Quite.
Obviously if your claims are proved, you will be very important to us.” Randi
hesitated, not quite certain how to address kitten.

“Please
use either ‘she’ or ‘it’ when referring to me. I don’t want to be called ‘he’
ever.” Kitten spoke firmly and decisively on that point. Randi nodded, he could
respect somebody who stuck to their guns regardless of public opinion.

“That’s
fine with us kitten. Now, did you sell your vision services to people, to
contact their relatives, that sort of thing?”

Kitten
shook her head. “How could I tell people what had happened to their friends,
their family? It would be cruel. I’ve told close friends that I could see into
hell but that’s all.”

“That’s
very good. Right, kitten, we are going to carry out some tests on you. We think
we’ve detected how people can communicate across the dimensional barrier and we
can measure it. So we’re going to see what happens when you try and look into
hell. Sir.” Randi switched to kitten’s friend. “We have a very comfortable
waiting room or, if you like, one of the guides can give you the Pentagon
tour.”

“Sir,”
kitten spoke deferentially. “I do this much better if I’m comfortable and I’ll
be much more at ease if Dani is with me and holding my leash. So can he come in
please?”

“If
that’s what you wish, of course.” Randi dug into another file. “We’re going to
ask you to try and contact these people, they are the crews of some helicopters
that were lost in Iraq almost a fortnight ago. If you’d like to study these
pictures, perhaps you can get through to them.” He handed the pictures over.
They were of Lieutenant Jade “Broomstick” Kim and the rest of the crews of
Tango-One-Five.

(Note
of appreciation to Stravo who wrote the first half of the first part and to Her
Grace, the Dutchess of Zeon who kindly told me about kitten)

Chapter
Fifteen

Headquarters,
Multi-National Force Iraq, Green Zone, Baghdad.

Once
again, General Petraeus was standing before the great screen in his command
center, only this time it was linked directly to the Pentagon, the White House
and an increasing number of capitals around the world. The screen showed
President Bush, Defense Secretary Warner and Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice but he knew that many, many more people were watching than that.

“Sir,
we have the initial reports from the battles on the flanks in. We have
successfully routed both flanking forces. In the North, the First Armored is
already outflanking the baldrick main body and moving into positions to its
west. In the South, the Iranian Shamshar Division under General Fereidoon
Zolfaghari is also outflanking the enemy and we expect it will link up with the
First Armored sometime tomorrow. At that point, the enemy main body will be
completely encircled. Our casualties have been remarkably light. A Challenger
main battle tank, a Bradley fighting vehicle, two HEMTT trucks and of all the
soldiers involved in the fighting, only twenty five have lost their lives. As far
as we can tell at this time, all our losses were victims of harpy attacks.”

“Enemy
casualties?” Secretary Warner spoke urgently.

“We’re
not into body counts Sir, not after Vietnam, and the enemy dead are so smashed
up it’s impossible to tell how many there are. Details of the pursuit through
the night are also only just coming in and it appears the enemy believed that
fighting would stop at dusk. We didn’t oblige them of course, we kept going and
made it a twenty-four hour battle. During the process, we overran a lot of
baldricks who had settled down for the night. So I cannot give you a figure I
would be confident with.”

“An
estimate, a guess, anything?”

“At
a conservative estimate, I would say the enemy cannot have lost less than
60,000 dead, probably many more. What’s left of the flanking forces is falling
back on their main body. That main body is still advancing on the center of our
line, we expect them to launch their attacks in a few hours. We’ll be
concentrating all of our airpower to sweep the sky clean of harpies. Once we’ve
done that, the ground forces can repeat the punishment we handed out yesterday.
If anything the balance of forces is more favorable to us in the center than it
was on the flanks. Once the harpies are out of the way, we can start using our
helicopters over the battlefield again.”

“How
are your munitions supplies holding up?” Warner’s voice was concerned.

“Very
well Sir, we are well-supplied here, we built up a good stockpile in case Iran
invaded us and they built up an equal stockpile in case we invaded them. Some,
not much but some, of the stocks are interchangeable and the Russians are
flying in more. There’s a couple of Il-76s here now, unloading rockets for the
Iranian artillery. Secretary Warner Sir, may I ask how the production ramp-up
is proceeding? We’re OK for ground forces ammunition but we’re running through
AIM-120s at a terrifying rate. After tomorrow we’re going to be real short.”

“Not
well General. The problem is that so much of the need is inter-related. The
AIM-120 is a good example, we’re accelerating production of the missile as fast
as we can but we’re short of guidance systems. We’ve got AIM-120 airframes
backing up out of the door waiting for the guidance modules. Raytheon have come
up with a partial fix, they’ve designed a new weapon, the AIR-120. Essentially
its an AIM-120 with a simple inertial stabilization system that keeps it flying
straight and level. They’ve packed it with a warhead that’s three times more
powerful than the AIM-120 and given it a fast-burn motor for high speed. It can
be carried on a standard triple ejector rack in place of a single AIM-120.
Raytheon will build as many AIM-120s as they can get guidance modules for and
the rest will be AIR-120s.