Armageddon?? (6 page)

“Which
brings us back to where we started. We’ve been pulling in every psychic, every
medium, every fortune teller we can find. When we’ve exhausted this country’s
supply, we’ll start abroad. Yet, for all our efforts we have not come up with
one single person who can actually speak to the dead. What if there are none?
What if the dead are indeed beyond contact?”

The
General finished her whisky and refilled her glass. “Perhaps we are looking in
the wrong place. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that so-called
mediums cannot speak to the dead but that those who can speak to the dead are
not mediums. After all, let us suppose that one can communicate with the dead.
What will we learn? That the dead are subject to an eternity of hideous
torture, without hope of end or reprieve. That the same fate awaits us all.
Now, the grieving family of a dead person turns up on our doorstep. They want
reassurance, they want to know that their beloved husband, or wife, parents or
children have gone to the better place promised, that they are happy in their
afterlife. Would you tell them the truth? That a terrible fate has fallen on
them and that the same awaits their relatives?”

Randi
shook his head. Such cruelty would be inconceivable. Thinking about it, The
Message itself was an act of diabolical cruelty, one that only a truly foul
mind could conceive. When Satan had proclaimed his dominion over the Earth and
proclaimed that all its souls belonged to him, regardless of virtue or cause,
he had fully lived up to his reputation. “So where do we look?”

The
General sipped her whisky, savoring its smoky taste. “Imagine yourself as
someone who can speak to the damned dead, know their pain and anguish, feel
their agony, know that the same fate awaits you and that there is no hope, that
the fate ahead is what inevitably awaits you. What would you do?”

Randi
thought for a second. “I think I would go mad.”

The
General looked over the rim of her glass. “Quite. So shouldn’t we start looking
amongst the mad? Looking at those who hear voices, voices whose messages are so
dreadful that they have driven the listener insane? All through history there
have been those who have claimed they have heard voices that drove them to acts
of rage or despair. They’ve always been treated as though they were insane but
suppose they were not? Suppose they really did hear voices, either accidentally
or deliberately. In ancient times, such people were described as possessed but
in our arrogance we assumed otherwise. We assumed that they were sick, that
they had a mental defect that we could treat. Perhaps they were not, perhaps
they really were possessed by the demons who now assail us. That they were
victims of the hideous game we are now playing to its final act.”

“So
we should start looking amongst the mentally ill. That will be a long job.”

“It
will indeed, James, but it is one we can move fast on. We are looking for
specific kinds of people, those who hear voices that drive them insane. I think
computers can help with this, we need to have the records searched so that we
can find the most promising cases. Then we can bring them here.”

Office
of the National Science Advisor, Washington D.C.

“Call
for you, Doctor Surlethe. From Florida.”

“Thank
you, put it through.” Surlethe waited for a moment. “Surlethe here.”

“Doctor,
this is the James Randi Educational Foundation.” Surlethe recognized the
contralto voice, one that had a threatening growl underneath it. The sound of a
well-fed tiger that was eying a small animal with the thought that it had just
a little room left in its stomach.

“Ah
yes General. How is the research going down there?”

“We’ve
hit a dead end, our initial concept was wrong so we’re changing tack. We’re
writing off the known mediums etc as source material, its pretty obvious
they’re all frauds and confidence tricksters. Instead, we’re going to start
looking at people who claim to hear voices in their heads and are under
treatment for such ‘delusions’.”

“So
you and The Amazing Randi think that some of them really do hear voices.”
Surlethe’s voice was bitter. Scientists had never forgiven Randi for exposing
tricksters whose acts had fooled ‘scientific’ testing. Randi had pointed out
that the skills needed to expose a fraud were different from those needed to
conduct an experiment. It hadn’t helped, if anything it had made things worse.

“We
do. What we need you to do is to get as much information on such cases to us as
possible so we can start working through them. Also, I read the note about the
search for energy fields? Can you get some instrumentation down here pretty
quick, if we do start finding what we’re looking for, we should be able to
measure what it is they’re hearing.”

“I’ll
get the equipment sent down, along with some experts to install it. Thank you
General, and good luck.”

Surlethe
leaned back in his seat. A new front had been opened against the forces that
were threatening humanity. While the armed forces were picking off the
baldricks who appeared in earth, science and reason were striking at the very
heart of their power. For the first time since The Message, Surlethe felt good.

Chapter
Five

Martial
Field of Dysprosium, Hell.

His
troops were formed up on the field, awaiting his inspection. 60 legions, each
with 6,666 demons, a total force of over 400,000 demons if Abigor’s own command
staff were included. By far the largest force that Hell had ever sent to
another world yet it was only a tiny fraction of the army that Hell could
deploy if it wished. There were 6,666 legions in hell, a total of 44,500,000
demons under arms, a mighty host that had never in its history been deployed
against a single foe. There had never been a single foe whose ability had
demanded that level of force. Always, those lower down the scale of existence
had cowered in fear when the demons had arrived, genuflecting at the appearance
of the creatures from a greater dimension. Mostly, the armies of Hell had never
been needed, the Heralds had been terrifying enough to put their victims into a
state of catatonic terror.

Only,
not this time. This time the creatures from the lower dimensions had the
temerity to fight back, even more than that, they had killed the Heralds. That
had disturbed Abigor more than he let on. If the Heralds could be killed, what
did that mean for the demons in his ranks? The Heralds were deliberately
created to be awe-inspiring, terrifying by virtue of their size and apparent
invulnerability, yet the humans below had fought back and killed them.
Individually, the demons in the ranks of his legions were much less formidable
than the great Heralds. They were formidable enough, that was true, their tough
hides were impervious to arrows and the blows of swords yet would that be
enough? What did the humans have that could kill so effectively?

There
was another point that worried Abigor. The Heralds had been killed, what had
happened to them. The rulers of Hell knew what happened to those on the lower
dimensions, their creation and life built up a form of energy that, when they
died, boosted them over the threshold and translated them to the next level of
dimension. Unfortunately for them, the energy needed to surge the occupants of
this reality level was much greater. That’s why Hell existed, the second deaths
of the unfortunates from realities below were prolonged as much as possible, by
millennia or longer, nobody knew the limit yet, so that the energy released by
their suffering would boost the rulers of Hell up to their afterlife. The
creatures from below suffered in their afterlife to provide the creatures of
this level with theirs. But suppose the beings who lived in the reality above
this one adopted the same philosophy. Was there a super-Hell that awaited
Abigor and his kind?

The
infantry in his legions were crashing the butts of their tridents against the
ground as Abigor rode past on his beast. 56 of his 60 legions were his
infantry, Abigor’s host was one of the less mobile of its kind, he had only
three mounted legions and one flying legion. The information he had was that
the humans lived mostly in cities, that meant the war would be one of sieges,
the cities fighting from behind their defensive walls in a series of last
stands. That would put a premium on his infantry, his mounted and flying
legions would only be of use in isolating each city before the infantry
besieged and destroyed it. It had been done before, Abigor knew that human
myths were full of stories of cities that had been besieged by hordes of
monstrous, inhuman foes. Now they would find out where those myths had come
from.

The
horns sounded, their wailing drowning out the crashing cadence of the trident
staffs. The legions did a right-face, towards a black dot that had suddenly
appeared against the roiling red smoke of the sky. The dot expanded, opening a
gate into the lower dimension that had dared to defy the will of higher beings.
This was the critical stage, the energy gradient ran steeply from the lower
dimensions to the higher, it was relatively easy for the higher dimension
beings to gain access to the lower, much harder for the lower dimensions to
ascend. Only opening a portal could ensure easy access between the dimensions.
Yet that same energy gradient meant that once a portal between the levels was
opened, it would be very hard to close. Size also was a factor and this was the
largest portal that had ever been created. Just how hard would it be to close
again? Abigor had an uneasy feeling that nobody had thought to ask that
question.

The
portal reached its full extent and the horns wailed again. Abigor lead his host
forward, into the black circle of the portal and from it into the brilliant
yellow light and the clear blue skies of Earth.

Headquarters,
1st Armored Division, Task Force Iron, Multi-National Force Iraq

“Have
we got the Global Hawk Feed set up?” Major General Wilkens snapped the order
out. The situation was breaking loose at last and he didn’t want to fall behind
the loop.

“Sir,
yes Sir. Direct feed to us, to Washington and to Moscow.” The latter part was
new, one of the hurried preparations that had been made over the last two
weeks. There had been a frantic effort to link up the world’s military
headquarters so that the fight, if it started, when it started, would be
properly coordinated. Task Force Iron also had a direct download from Russian
satellites and other recon capabilities but it was the RQ-4B Global Hawks that
were the key asset. Nobody knew where the attack would come, on paper it could
be anywhere but Iraq had been a leading bet. The association of old legends and
the fertile triangle of the Tigris-Euphrates was too powerful to ignore.

High
above the desert, the Global Hawk turned lazily, its long wings biting at the
thin air. Its stabilized cameras focused on a strange sight in the desert of
Western Iraq, a black oval that had suddenly appeared in the stony wastes, one
that spread even though it had no apparent substance. It wasn’t even a shadow,
it was more of an absence of anything. The cameras zoomed in on the strange
spreading stain that still grew beneath it.

“Well,
that looks like it.” Brigadier General Boothe looked at the image with
horrified fascination. If the guesses were right he was looking at something
humanity had discussed, described and occasionally cursed but never actually
seen, the mouth of Hell itself. The black shadow had stopped spreading and
seemed to be holding its breath. “Is that thing flat on the ground or
perpendicular to it?”

“Can’t
tell.” Wilkens spoke quietly, the tension in the room seeming to dull voices.
“I think it’s a different dimension entirely, we’re not seeing it, we’re seeing
its shadow. I don’t think it has dimensions or proportions as we understand
them.”

Something
stirred in the shadow and a line of figures started to appear. “Zoom in on
that.” The order came from the commander of the UAV detachment that was
operating the Global Hawk. The image enlarged in a series of jerks as the
operator clicked up through the zoom scales. The group of figures resolved, one
huge figure surrounded by a group of others. Then, another smaller group
appeared out of the shadow, followed by lines of others.

“What
do you make of that?” Wilkens wanted other opinions, other eyes looking at
this.

“First
group, the command group. Now. We’ve got combat troops appearing.” The analyst
looked quickly at the emerging lines. “They’re coming out in a parade
formation. If we only had the assets within range.”

“The
alerts gone off to the fly-boys and the squids. We’ll have jets here soon
enough. And we’ve got the friends with their toy on scene.”

On
the screen the figures had continued to pour out of the portal, forming up into
a huge square on the desert. The UAV operator dialed his cameras in again. “OK,
that formation seems to be complete. I make it 81 ranks, each of 81 baldricks.
They’re subdivided into 9 groups of 9 ranks with a command section between
each. I guess that gives us 6,666 down there.”

“Appropriate
number. About a brigade-sized formation then? And that would make the smaller
sub-divisions battalions.” There were nods around the room, it seemed fair
enough, 9 ranks of 81 meant 729 demons in a battalion. This was translating raw
numbers into a structure that could easily be understood – and to the people in
this room, what could be understood could be destroyed. Once structure, form and
numbers were evaluated and put into context, destruction was a matter of
planning. “Each line is a company with nine nine-baldrick platoons?” More nods
of agreement