Armageddon?? (65 page)

But
everything about these soldiers was different. Much of what they said was
barely comprehensible, anyway. Whatever magic allowed him to understand their
speech was somehow flawed, and much of their slang was indecipherable for him.
But perhaps most oddly, these alleged soldiers didn't know how to fight with a
sword or spear! Well, most of them didn't. Ori was a warrior to Aeanas' liking;
he was skilled in many forms of unarmed and armed combat. He had received one
of his native blades from the living world, and he practiced frequently. But
more than that, he was an outsider, too. He trained for war and only war, so he
did not care for art, or music. Like Aeanas, he couldn't even read. Ori stepped
closer to Aeanas and held out his hand. Aeanas passed him the weapon. Ori tried
a few maneuvers with it, then passed it back to Aeanas with a grunt.

"Graceless,"
he muttered. "The weapon should bend around your body."

"Why?"
Aeanas asked. "A bent spear is useless to the phalanx."

"What
is that?"

"It
is how we fight...how we fought," he corrected, casting a glance of
disdain at the modern humans nearby. "Heavy armor, large shields. Shoulder
to shoulder, four ranks deep." He mimicked the pose of a man in the first
row. "Make a wall of shields and spearpoints, and break your enemy upon
them. Never let a gap open up in your line."

"A
phalanx," Ori said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "How many men
wide?"

"As
wide as possible. Prevents flanking." They were silent for a moment.
"And how did you fight?"

"Many
ways. Sometimes I would ride and shoot my bow, or charge with a spear. Others I
would simply fight with my katana."

Aeanas
held his hand out, and Ori stiffened for a moment. Then, silently, he passed
him the weapon. Drawing it out from its sheath, Aeanas commented, "A
longer sword. And single edged. Must be made of iron, yes?" Ori grunted in
the affirmative.

"So
the balance would favor..." he sliced through the air, "...a
two-handed grasp. You do not use a shield?"

"Not
with the katana. I can parry and counterstrike to great effect with it."

Aeanas
nodded, passing back the katana. "I hope to see you slay a demon with it
soon."

They
were silent for a moment. "And you are proficient in unarmed combat?"
Ori asked.

Aeanas
shrugged. "For my part, yes. I wrestle. I wrestled."

"I
too, grappled. We must spar some time. To test our styles against the
other."

Aeanas
smiled at this. "It would be a privilege. I am sure you will be more
engaging than the others. I threw McElroy as through he were a woman!"

Ori
suppressed a laugh. "Yes, they are soft creatures, made so by their
infernal weapons. Why need they fight honorably when they can strike you down
from a great distance? They're so weak that they may count women as
soldiers!"

"Hey,
baby dick!" snapped Private Cassidy, skin newly grown, stepping in close
to them. "You got a problem with me?"

Ori
frowned. Aeanas thought that, wherever this Japan was, their men did not suffer
the barbed tongues of their women. But they were a long way from Japan, so...

Ori
grunted, "I was discussing with Aeanas the weaknesses of modern men, and
how they compensate for this weakness through weapons requiring such little
strength and courage that even women can wield them."

"Man,
shut the hell up," Cassidy snarled, crossing her arms over her ample
breasts. Aeanas thought them unappealing things, the breasts of a peasant woman
with a litter of babes to feed. "If it weren't for those weapons, you'd
still be cooking in that river!" For a moment, Aeanas thought that Ori
would strike her, but the moment passed quickly.

"Alright,
can it, you guys," McElroy said, stepping in. "Ori, take your sword
and go with DeVanzo and Walsch down to the river. Walsch, you got the
rifle." He turned to Aeanas. "Come on, hoss. You, Cassidy, and I are
gonna go check out that cluster of villages on the other side of the northern
ridge. You can bring your new spear if you want, but I dunno if these things
are worth a damn against baldricks." He hefted his own trident, adding,
"Better than nothing, though."

From
the cover of the forest's edge, they watched the sloping grade down to the
river. And waited. For Tom Walsch, it was still strange to think that millions
of people were writhing in agony beneath that river at this very moment. And
why were they pulling out only military? Odds were extremely low that they'd
get no civilians at all. Perhaps there were only military in this molten river,
civilians went to other torments. Then again, the civilian mindset was
different. Persons of weak will might simply resign themselves to their torment
and sink to the bottom after a few years of failed escapes. In utter misery,
they would only move as reflex to the burning, sightless, deaf, pain the only
sensation they knew. Military people of all types would fight, though. Futility
didn't matter; that's why military history was littered with otherwise
pointless last stands. It might take longer for a soldier to break the way
civilians did. After all, Walsch had only been in the river for a scant few
weeks before he was pulled out, and he had the benefit of hoping that his
persistence would pay off. And it did.

"There's
one," DeVanzo whispered. Walsch scanned the shoreline before spotting the
creature. It was an act he'd seen a dozen times. It flopped like a fish for a
while, and then, as it became able to breathe and see, it started crawling
further up the bank. They would continue until a baldrick sentry happened
along, which could mean they'd be anywhere from ten to fifty meters from the
river.

This
particular one made it about twenty-five before Ori grunted, "Demon.
Left."

Walsch
chambered a round and waited. He loved this rifle; it was simple, deadly, and
accurate. Though he'd always been an excellent marksman, this thing made it
almost too easy. And he had a whole box of ammo to hold them over until the
next official resupply.

The
baldrick was a typical sentry, sporting a trident and simple bronze armor. He
bellowed, as was the wont of these sentries, and charged. The crawling
creature, now looking a bit more like a human, stood up and began hobbling
away.

"Alright,
that's good enough for me," Walsch muttered. He lined up the shot and
fired. The round took the baldrick in the throat, blowing out just about
everything between his massive deltoids. Pouring blood out all over the packed,
burnt earth, he stumbled, staggered, then crashed right at the feet of its
target, who watched in befuddlement.

"Chump,"
Walsch grinned. DeVanzo clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey Ori, why don't
you go finish it off, and bring the new recruit back up here, OK?"

Ori
frowned, but drew his katana nonetheless and began crossing the open ground to
reach his feebly-moving target. It was only seventy-five meters, but he covered
it quickly and hacked the demon's head off without delay. As he did this,
DeVanzo and Walsch took up a new position, fifteen meters to the north.

"Shit,"
DeVanzo said suddenly. "Shit shit shit, another baldrick!"

Walsch
swung his rifle around. A baldrick within miles of another sentry was unheard
of. The patrols were frequent enough to catch the escapees, and that was all
that mattered. That's why they were able to pull this off with a single rifle
and a spotter or two. They must be pairing the patrols. They're reacting to
what we're doing. This baldrick was not like his now-dead partner. He did not
bellow or scream. He stalked forward at an inhuman rate, raising his trident
high. Ori didn't see it coming, and the rescued human was still half blind. So
Tom Walsch chambered a round, took aim, and fired. The shot was hurried, but it
was lucky. It winged off the baldrick's elbow, no doubt shattering bone and
shredding muscle. He dropped his trident with a roar of anger and pain and
stopped, looking for the source of this new attack.

"OK,
Ori, time to go," DeVanzo hissed quietly. Walsch took aim and shot at the
baldrick, who was now scanning the treeline. He must've spotted them, because
he was in motion just before the shot rang out. Instead of catching him in the
chest, he moved just enough to one side that he took the round in the upper
arm--the one that had already been shot. He hit the ground hard but got back up
quickly.

But
Walsch was quicker. He chambered a round, aimed, fired--and nothing happened.

"Shit,
misfire." Walsch groaned and worked the action of the rifle. It refused to
budge. "Jammed up."

Now
the baldrick had definitely spotted them, and he roared a monstrous battle cry.
But before he could take a step, Ori was there, blade at the ready, bellowing
his own challenge to the massive beast.

"What
is he doing?" Walsch cried out, while working to clear his weapon.

"He's
starting to believe," DeVanzo stated with awe. "He's The One."

"Now
is not the time for Matrix jokes!" Walsch said.

The
baldrick only had one good arm, but that meant he retained eighty percent of
his deadly ends. He swiped at Ori, but he dodged with blinding quickness and
countered with a slice. The baldrick had the sense to offer his mangled flesh,
but he hadn't counted on the blade being of iron. The wound seared as the blade
bit deep, and the baldrick reared back in shock, kicking at the offending
creature with one foot.

Ori
was already in position to meet the incoming appendage, and he held his blade
firm. It passed between two toes, cutting the webbing there and carving deep
into his foot. When Ori twisted the blade and wrenched it free, the baldrick
couldn't help but scream. Now limping, he swiped again with his hand, catching
nothing and receiving a flurry of slashes from that wretched iron blade. Ori
was without pity or quarter, nor was he stylish. He opened up as many wounds as
he could, as quickly as he could, until the demon was attempting to hobble away
in retreat.

But
there would be no retreat. Ori feigned a lateral slash, and when the baldrick
made to block it, he swooped in slow and stabbed up between the plates of his
armor, entering at the armpit and piercing to the heart. Ori received three
horrendous lacerations across his back for it, but it didn't matter anymore.
The baldrick fell to his knees, limp and defenseless. Screaming with the
strength of a half a millennium of remembered agony, Ori cleaved the baldrick's
head from his shoulders in two savage blows.  The entire fight had taken less
than twenty seconds.

DeVanzo
and Walsch looked at each other. "Mission accomplished," Walsch
whispered. "Now let's get outta Dodge." The leaped from the forest,
DeVanzo running to gather up the wounded Ori, and Walsch to fetch the latest
rescuee. Overhead, there was a berserk scream, one that neither Ori nor Aeneas
could recognize. The Americans did and they looked up with elation at the
F-111s making their slow, lazy turn overhead.

Secure
Facility, Camp Hell-Alpha, Martial Plain of Dysprosium.

“Got
them.” The intelligence officer had the 10x12 inch prints in his hand. More
were still coming over but these were the critical ones, the pictures of the
Hell-pit itself. The F-111s had landed a few minutes before and the digitally-recorded
pictures had been sent over by fiber-optic cable. Another sign of just how much
things were changing; Hell now had computer access, or rather the human army
fighting there did.

General
Petraeus looked at the prints. “It’s a caldera, no doubt about it. A
supervolcano caldera. Like the one that’s supposed to be under Yellowstone.
Must be bigger though.”

“Yeah,
size ain’t a problem for this thing. Explains the foul atmosphere of this
place. That thing must be pumping the contaminants upwards. Take a look at
these enlargements Sir. Shows what’s going on down there.”

Petraeus
looked at the enlargements and then sharply at the third person in the room,
the hulking figure of Abigor. “We knew it was bad in there, not this bad. Looks
like Dante was spot-on in his description of the place though. More or less.”
He paused for a second trying to regain his balance. Then, he addressed Abigor.
“How could you, how could anybody do this?”

“We
must.” Abigor’s voice was unapologetic. “Our survival depends on it. You kill
lower animals to eat, to provide yourselves with food. This is no different, to
us you are, were, lower animals to be exploited. So we exploited you to fill
our needs.”

Petraeus
reflected that Abigor was going to have to be very careful how he spoke in
future. Otherwise he wasn’t going to survive much longer. There was an old
Western custom involving a tree and a rope that was likely to be reborn. “This
isn’t farming for food. This is just inflicting suffering for the sheer joy of
it.”

“We
do not eat your kind just for food although your kidlings are great
delicacies.”

Yup
thought Petraeus, he was going to have to be much more careful. “Then why?”

“Because
we need the energy. When you humans live, you build up energy in your bodies.
When you die, that energy boosts you up from your level to ours. But the energy
barrier that separates us from the next level up is much stronger than the one
that separates your level from ours. We need much more energy to cross it,
energy we generate by prolonging the second deaths of your kind.”