Armageddon?? (66 page)

“How
do you know this?” Petraeus was genuinely curious, for the first time he was
getting a real insight into the mind of Humanity’s greatest enemy.

“Because
Satan told us so. Yahweh harvests energy as well for the same reason only he
gathers his by making his subjects worship him. He gets the power from
devotion.”

“Like
the Ori.” The Intelligence officer was an avid Stargate fan.

Petraeus
wasn’t but he still got the reference. “And that makes the baldricks like the
Goa’uld I suppose. Abigor, you didn’t answer my question. How do you know
this?”

“Because
it is so. It has always been so. We must harvest energy to cross the barrier to
the afterlife. Satan has us do so by the torments of the pit, Yahweh by
demanding unending worship.”

“But
that doesn’t make any kind of sense. How can two such totally different
approaches yield the results you demand? It just doesn’t make sense.” The
frustration was creeping through into Petraeus’s voice.

“As
I said, it is what Yahweh and Satan both said. Why should they lie? They are
Gods, they demand faith,”

“And
I’m a General, I demand firepower. And we’ve seen what happens when your faith
meets my firepower. The truth is Abigor, you don’t know any of this. You’ve got
no proof for any of it. You’ve been sold a bill of goods, just like we were for
so many thousands of years. You’ve been fooled, just like we were.”

Abigor
stared at the pictures taken by the RF-111C, thoughts churning in his mind.
He’d never thought this through before, those to whom he owed allegiance had
demanded he accept their words and he had. But now he owed allegiance to humans
and humans demanded proof. Those were their eternal replies when somebody
claimed something. ‘Prove it.’ “How do you know?’ ‘What’s your proof?’ “If you
can’t prove it, then it isn’t so.’ And the answer he could give to all those
was ‘I can’t.’ For everything he believed was unproven. And that meant so many
things.

Abigor
spoke very slowly as the words formed in his mind, breaking the mental blocks
of millennia. “No, I don’t know any of this. I just believed it. And if my
belief was false.” His great clawed hand waved over the pictures. “Then all of
this, all of it, was for nothing.

Chapter
Forty Seven

Sheffield
Cathedral, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Lakheenahuknaasi
flapped clumsily over the vast human metropolis, making her way to the place
where she could sense the half-open portal pushing gently against the fabric of
this plane. She was freezing, aching and frustrated. The city was supposed to
be a great engine of industry, but she could see no great fires or forges, nor
could she hear the ringing of hammers on anvils. Instead there was an endless
jumble of tightly packed stone buildings, tiny ones with peaked roofs and much
larger boxy ones. Ahead, surrounding the place where the portal was lodged
great towers thrust into the sky. Impossibly, many of them seemed to be made
out of glass. No; as she got closer, Lakheenahuknaasi sensed that they had
skeletons of iron. She shuddered. Humans were far too fond of iron.

The
gorgon sited the spot where the embryonic portal was floating and smiled
faintly at the irony. Invisible to the naked eye in its current state, the
inter-dimensional nexus was hovering perhaps a hundred yards above a large
temple to Yahweh, the walls of which were awash with the light of human magic.
Lakeenah blinked. What she had taken to be an outbuilding next to the temple
revealed itself to be a giant metal snake. As she watched it whined loudly and
began to hauled its segmented bulk away into the city. At this point she had
ceased even trying to comprehend the purpose behind the bizarre human
constructs.

In
truth she was not sure where else to put the portal. The horrid snow had
stopped, but the low clouds and mist had kept visibility down to a couple of
miles. She had risked one quick, wide circle around the temple and spied a few
structures that appeared to be large chimneys, but no smoke issued from them.
Lakeenah settled on destroying as many of the huge towers as possible. They
seemed more like palaces than castles; undoubtedly they were occupied by the
city's elite, the overseers and the most skilled artisans. Even this was not
straightforward. The terrain was quite hilly and if she placed the portal in
the wrong spot the lava might flow around the towers without destroying them.
She settled on a monolithic black tower that stood proudly above and a little
apart from the rest. It was sited on a low hill and at the top of a slight
groove, which she hoped would act as a channel leading straight to the rest of
the towers.

Lakheenahuknaasi
finished her approach and began a slow descending glide over the temple.
Bracing herself for the pain, she prepared to reach out with her psychic power
to grasp the nexus. The familiar stinging sensation washed over her wings and
suddenly she had it. Pumping her wings with grim determination, she strained to
drag the nexus away from the temple. Immediately she could feel her queen's
powerful presence.

“I
have it. I am moving the nexus... into position.” Lakheenahuknaasi exclaimed,
with the mental equivalent of a gasp.

Euryale
replied with a curt “Good. Do not fail me now.”

Lakheenahuknaasi
sensed the portal swelling as the naga back in Hell poured energy into it. She
had the target in sight, but it seemed agonizingly far away. The pent up
psychic force was building to monstrous proportions and she had to switch from
'pulling' the nexus to 'pushing' against it to prevent it opening prematurely.
At last she was almost over the tower.

“Ready!”
she shouted into the ether, hoping Euryale sensed her over the human din and
howling energy of the portal itself. She released the nexus, half-folded her
wings and dropped away from the tower, racing to escape the literal piece of
hell that was about to be unleashed.

MD-902
G-SYPS (South Yorkshire Police Air Support Unit)

Peter
Taranaski swung the helicopter around in a lazy semi-circle, ready for another
slow pass over Hillsborough. Police work didn't pay well, but it was a lot more
interesting than playing air taxi to overpaid executives or spending all day
creeping along power lines. Better yet, there was the regular thrill of
accomplishing the mission, protecting the public and nabbing the bad guys. Back
in the army air corps, it had mostly been an endless series of make-believe
exercises. Even in weather like this, he was usually eager to take to the
Explorer up, but when the scramble order came through he was expecting yet
another false alarm. Now that command had confirmed baldrick activity in the
peaks the tension in the cabin was palpable.

In
the left seat Sergeant Oliver Webster was staring intently at his main monitor,
which was showing a thermal image of the streets below. The younger man had
quickly gained a reputation for competence and calmly directing ground units
through crisis situations. In Pete's opinion though, the sergeant took life a
bit too seriously; in particular, his jokes were usually met with a
disapproving silence. That was one good thing about the war; the second
observer position had been replaced by a couple of heavily armed squaddies, who
did seem to appreciated his one-liners.

The
RT crackled. “Sierra Yankee Nine Nine, new baldrick sighting reported, single
flyer low over the town hall, over.”

Webster
was quick to respond. “Acknowledged. We'll head over there now. We've covered
Hillsborough twice now, nothing to report.” His voice continued over the
intercom “Peter, I'd like an orbit of the ring road.”

“Confirmed.”
Pete eased the cyclic forward and the aircraft began to pick up speed until it
was holding 60 knots. ”I'll take it easy. No sense wasting fuel.”

He
looked over at Sergeant Webster, who nodded. Other units were scouring the
Peaks for baldrick invaders, they were tasked with rapid response should the
demons slip through the net to populated area. That meant maximizing endurance,
as they'd do no good if they were down for refueling when the baldricks went on
a rampage.

“Sierra
Yankee Nine Nine, make that multiple sightings, at least one baldrick over
Pond's Forge, priority one, over.”

“Roger
control, on our way.” Webster replied. Pete had already dipped the nose and the
MD 902 leapt forward, speeding towards the city centre. He cut in on the RT
“Have ATC got a blip this time? Over.”

There
was a long silence. “Ah, negative Sierra Yankee. They've got some kind of
interference though. Radar cover is compromised.”

Sergeant
Webster had zoomed the IR camera and had a pulsating speck centered on his
monitor. As the helicopter drew closer it took a form reminiscent of a giant
long-legged bat. “Baldrick sighted! Single flyer at 600 feet AGL, heading west
from cathedral, over.”

The
reply was immediate and emphatic. “Say again Sierra Yankee, one baldrick flyer
over central Sheffield? We've lost your telemetry.”

Pete
had a visual on the baldrick and was maneuvering the helicopter into its rear
quarter, staying well back. The Explorer was quieter than most helicopters,
primarily due to its lack of a tail rotor, but he was still under no illusions
that the baldrick couldn't hear them. He just didn't want to force a
confrontation until they were ready.

“Affirmative,
baldrick flyer proceeding west towards university at about 50 knots. It's a
small one...” Webster's voice trailed off. He had switched back to visual and
noticed that the demons wings were glowing with a ghostly blue-white light.
Worse, the air beneath the creature was shimmering, as if by heat haze. What
the devil was it up to?

“Ack...
ledged... alert... intercept com... def..” The duty officer's voice distorted
and dropped out. Sergeant Webster flipped channels but the error indicator on
the radio panel wouldn't go out. It had to be whatever the demon was doing, if
the radar was affected too. Time to make a judgment call.

“Peter,
take us up over it for a shot.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Corporal,
you're up. Take it down.”

The
two riflemen were ready for the order and sprang immediately into action.
Private Hughes slammed back the door, while Corporal Sinker heaved his AS50
anti-material rifle onto the pintle mount. The target was easy to make out
despite the fog, with the bright glow emanating from its wings... but then the
light suddenly went out and the bat-like shape veered off and dropped away.
Sinker put his eye to the scope, hoping to line up a shot before the helo started
changing position... and then recoiled from a sudden, overpowering rush of heat
and light. An impossibly deep, deafeningly loud roar had a moment to pound his
ears before the helicopter was sucked into the maelstrom.

The
University of Sheffield, 11:26pm GMT

The
Arts Tower was a Sheffield landmark, a striking twenty-one story monolith built
in the early sixties and still the tallest university building in the British
Isles. The midnight black disc of the portal swelled into existence almost
directly above the tower, appearing for all the world like a flying saucer from
a low-budget sci-fi movie. In the space of an eye-blink a glowing stream of
magma had burst out from the disc’s lower surface and begun to plummet towards
the building, while from the upper surface a fountain of liquid rock sprayed
into the air. A full four seconds passed as the magma blossomed in mid-air;
those few onlookers that survived would later report being transfixed by the
deadly beauty of the scene. Then the crushing stream smashed into the tower’s
west side, driving it into the ground and exploding the opposite side in a
spray of fire and shrapnel.

The
shockwave created by the magma hitting the ground smashed windows and ruptured
eardrums out to over a kilometer. The gas entrained within the rock erupted
from confinement, sending clouds of shoking vapor across the city. Half-powered
by the gas, half powered by the sheer kinetic energy of the fall, liquid rock
splashed out from the impact site, smashing into the lesser tower blocks surrounding
the impact point, which immediately began to collapse. After another four
seconds the canopy of glowing projectiles formed from the upper spray began to
impact on the surrounding area with the force of thousand-pound bombs. The
campus vanished into a huge cloud of dust, lit from within by the hellish light
of the magma stream. Thousands of tonnes of rock continued to slam into the
impact site every second, creating a roar that outclassed even a Saturn rocket
launch. The relatively soft ground shook and slipped under the onslaught,
leading to further collapses as buildings further out were hit by the deadly
combination of tremors and projectiles.

MD
902 G-SYPS

Private
Jamie Hughes was being battered by noise, light and g-forces beyond anything his
worst nightmares had imagined. After the initial lurch the helicopter had
spiralled out of control, shaking as shrapnel hit the fuselage. At first his
only thought was to hang on and prepare for a likely fatal impact. Finally the
aircraft began to stabilize and he could fight through the shock to assess on
the situation in the cabin. Corporal Sinker was down, sprawled on the deck and
unmoving. A massive pillar of fire and smoke filled the port windows. Jamie’s
first thought was ‘nuclear bomb’, but surely they’d been too close to survive a
nuke going off?