Armageddon?? (81 page)

Without
being aware of it, Hertonymarkess had entered the Phlegethon River and it was
with utter astonishment he realized he was in water up to his waist. The wading
was slowing him down but he realized it mattered little. The human mage-fire was
concentrated on the banks of the river behind him, some of the bolts were
landing in the water but they were few in number. Most of the bursts were
behind them and he got the feeling the ones in the river were mistakes, bolts
that were landing short. Ahead, he could see a target, the first of the little
forts that the humans had set up. Now that was odd. Why had the humans set up
lots of little forts rather than one big one? Everybody knew that the bigger
the fortress, the harder it would be to take?

There
were Iron Chariots in the fortress, Hertonymarkess felt his stomach cringe at
the thought of iron, then he set his grip firmly on his trident and closed the
grip, discharging a bolt at the defenses ahead. It was immensely satisfying to
strike back at last, after the helpless terror of the mage-bolts, now there was
some way he could fight. Overhead, the vast cloud of harpies was closing in,
with luck they would suppress the defenses long enough for his group to get
close to that little fort.

Harpy
Group, Northern Front, Phlegethon River Bulge, Hell

Uxaligantivaris
screamed out her battle cry and tried to launch a jet of flame at the Sky
Chariot but it was too fast for her and it rolled away and zoomed upwards. The
humans were cowards, they refused to fight, they just stood off and let fly
with their fire-lances and seeker-lances, cutting her comrades out of the sky.
She knew the losses already suffered by the harpies were almost beyond
comprehension, the first strike by the Sky Chariots had killed hundreds before
they had even taken off. Then, there were the great seeker lances that had torn
into the formation from afar, their explosions killing hundreds more. Then,
after that, the Sky Chariots had returned and were slashing at the harpy cloud.

Her
skin was on fire, a mass of mad itching that threatened to drive her mad. If
the voices in her head didn’t do that first. There were so many of them, some
were human speech that made little sense, others were a weird, intense beating
noise, as if somebody was pounding her with a giant hammer. Yet others were a
gentle hiss that simply filled every corner of her mind and drowned out all
that went on inside. The mass of electronic noise was hardly surprising,
Uxaligantivaris had no means of knowing it and would not have understood the
implications even if she had, but she was being painted by more than 2,000
radar sets. Those alone were doing damage to her, quite distinct from the
missiles and guns that they targeted. Uxaligantivaris knew that something was
wrong but she couldn’t know how wrong for the truth was she was being slowly
microwaved to death in mid-air. Already her body temperature was slowly rising
as the radar energy was exciting the molecules that formed the liquids in her
body.

Below
her, she could see the human forts that formed their defensive position. It
made little sense to her, but her job wasn’t to understand, just to do as she
was told. Even though that meant something she had never done before. Harpies
were scouts and raiders, intended to observe enemy formations and report on
their movement. Sometimes they would attack undefended positions by night to
spread fear and terror. Never before had the harpies been told to attack
defensive positions that were fully-equipped and putting up resistance. Harpies
traded protection and firepower for speed and flight. Not enough of either of
course, not compared with the human Sky Chariots, but a good trade for their
proper role. Now, they were being pitched against a serious defense.

There
was one advantage in doing that. Uxaligantivaris had noted that the human Sky
Chariots were staying high, not dropping close to the ground. Perhaps they
couldn’t, she’d noticed that their wings didn’t flap like any proper flying
creature. Oh, a couple had had wings that seemed to flap forward and backwards
but none flapped properly. Still, the message was clear, close to the ground
and the Sky Chariots would leave them alone. Cheered at the thought, she folded
her wings, expelled gas, and dropped like a stone on the defense position
beneath.

Command
HQ, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell

“The
battle is joined Tovarish General.” General Ivan Semenovich Dorokhov was
standing in front of his screen, the facilities here in hell were nowhere near
as good as those General Petraeus had left behind in Baghdad but they would
serve.

“Very
good, Ivan Semenovich. How goes the day?”

“Well,
David Howellovich.” Both men grinned at the mangled Russification of Petraeus’s
middle name. “Our artillery and air strikes are hurting the baldricks badly. We
estimate their casualties already must be approaching ten percent of their
total.”

“A
word of advice Grazhdanin Ivan, divide your estimates by three. We learned this
the hard way in Iraq and before that in Vietnam and the Balkans.”

“And
we learned that same lesson in Afghanistan and fighting the Hitlerites. But
Gospodin David, we have hit Beelzebub’s army hard. His casualties on the
northern flank are mounting and they are only now moving into our main zone of
resistance. The southern flank is moving more slowly, the situation had not
developed there yet. There appears to be no movement at all in the center.”

“Hmm.
The baldricks are learning. Not slowly either. Whatever you need, just call.
We’re lining up the support for you here.” As far as Petraeus was concerned,
that was his role in this battle. Let the Russian Army do its thing and just
make sure they have every tool they needed, and some that they didn’t know they
needed, not yet anyway. “For your information, the BUFFS have arrived. They
flew through the hellmouth a few minutes ago and are circling to gain height.
They’ll be ready when you need them.”

Dorokhov
laughed. “The sight of those flying through the Hellgate must have been
impressive. Is there an intact eardrum left back there?”

“Not
a one. Not a one. But tell your men, the Gray Lady is coming.”

Chapter
Fifty Seven

DIMO(N)
Headquarters, Crystal City, Virginia

For
the fourth time in the last half-hour, a gentle beeping filled the monitoring
room. With some irritation, Technical Sergeant James Nevaquaya put aside the
draft response procedure he’d been reading and glanced up at the grid of
monitors. Code:

!
2-network Anomaly Detected  ! --------------------------  ! VERIZON node 21633
: 28% dropped frames : Detroit, MI  ! VERIZON node 21638 : 12% dropped frames :
Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)  ! SPRINT  node 45-3C : 15% dropped frames :
Detroit, MI (2.5 km)  ?  ? Detailed capture triggered on 36 nodes.

One
monitor was showing a map of the anomaly site – freeways snaking through a
dense grid of streets, north of Detroit. Nevaquaya’s hand went to the mouse as
he tried to bring up the spectrum display. The prototype was barely functional,
a cobbled together mess of mostly civilian technology, but for now that novelty
and importance of the task was keeping frustration at bay. The spectrum
analyzer was still hobbled by the cell site’s receiver limitations, but it was
clearly showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz.

The
gentle beeping was abruptly replaced by an insistent two-tone warble. The text
scrolling onto the status display snapped Nevaquaya’s mind to intense
alertness. Code:

!
Multi-network Anomaly Confirmed  ! -------------------------------  !
VERIZON  node 21633 : 34% dropped frames : Detroit, MI  ! VERIZON 
node 21638 : 25% dropped frames : Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)  ! VERIZON 
node 21629 : 17% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (6.5 km)  ! VERIZON  node
21635 : 14% dropped frames : Warren, MI (9.3 km)  ! SPRINT   node
45-3C : 31% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (2.5 km)  !       
               CDMA2000 down  !
SPRINT   node 45-3A : 20% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (3.9 km)  !
SPRINT   node 44-8D : 16% dropped frames : Warren, MI (8.7 km)  !
CINGULAR node MA335 : 26% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (3.9 km)

 
                     
W-CDMA down  ! CINGULAR node MA334 : 22% dropped frames : Detroit Metro, MI
(5.2 km)  ! ALLTEL   node  4775 : software failure   :
Southfield, MI (11.2 km)  ! T-MOBILE node MA5XA : W-CDMA resetting 
 : Detroit, MI (6.3 km)  ?  ? Composite spectrum display enabled.  ?
Detailed capture triggered on 92 nodes.  !  ! *** POSSIBLE PORTAL OPENING -
heuristic match 0.82 ****  !

Within
seconds an office chair rolled through the door from the adjoining office,
carrying Graeme Wilson with it. The civilian contractor took in the situation
on the monitors almost instantly.

“0.82?
That’s the highest yet. What do you make of the spectrum?”

“The
general spike structure sure looks like the recordings. I’ll call NORAD – can
you get any more resolution out of those sites?”

Wilson
had already begun typing, his fingers a chattering blur. Console windows popped
up and streams of incomprehensible commands flashed past. Meanwhile Nevaquaya
had gone straight for the first entry in the speed dial.

“…big
one, at four two degrees twenty three minutes north, eighty three degrees four
minutes west. Confidence is moderate.”

Nevaquaya
watched the civilian work while the duty officer at NORAD checked the radar
picture. The contrast between the usual procurement process, even the usual
R&D process and what was going on here was incredible, things were
happening in days that had taken years just a few months earlier. The
monitoring system was crude and buggy as yet, but getting even that operational
in under four days was amazing. America had apparently rediscovered engineers
who thrived on doing the impossible. Then Nevaquaya thought again, no not
rediscovered, just set free from the demands of reaching some unattainable
ideal of perfection.

The
spectrum display flicked and restructured itself, crisper and with fewer gaps.
Secondary windows began to fill up with phase analysis of signal components.
“There, how about that?”

Nevaquaya
stared at the screen for three seconds before speaking directly into the phone.

“Confirmed,
we’ve got more data here too, confidence is now high, repeat, confidence high
for portal opening over northern Detroit.”

He
pressed mute, then another button that began sounding the incident alarm in the
other offices. Finally he turned to Graeme. “The spikes match. NOARD is seeing
radar interference at that location. Looks like the demons are going for
Detroit, with a big one too by the look of it. Fighters are on the way, they’ll
be contacting national guard units next.” Footsteps sounded in the corridor
outside as more DIMO(N) staff converged on the monitoring room. Both men stared
at the screens, where the error rates and signal strengths were climbing
inexorably. Both knew that their warning was better than nothing, but also that
it left precious few minutes to intercept the demon targeteer. If friendly
forces couldn’t stop it in time, the heart of a great American city would die
in ash and fire.

Over
Interstate 75, Detroit, Michigan

Megaaeraholrakni’s
arm and wing muscles already ached from the exertion – she had done very little
flying these last few centuries – but the demon was so enraged that she barely
noticed. How could Euryale have been so incompetent? It could not have been her
own fault, she had concentrated firmly on the great glass towers that stood haughtily
above the human sprawl. Yet the portal had opened half a league to the north,
instead of half a league to the south, almost completely the wrong direction.
‘More likely that half-witted naga.’ she thought, as she painfully climbed
through 500 feet. ‘though surely Yulupki isn’t stupid enough to try sabotaging
the Count’s scheme?’

Below
her streams of tiny iron boxes raced back and forth, traveling along two wide
black strips set in a shallow trench. The trench cut through the human city,
snaking gently and occasionally joining up with other trenches in curious
curling structures reminiscent of spilled entrails. Many more of the iron boxes
stood motionless on parade grounds dotted between the buildings. ‘Perhaps they
worship them’ Megaaeraholrakni thought; she could think of no other reason to
go to such extreme efforts for the chariot’s sake.

The
gorgon could sense the nascent portal ahead; indeed it would be hard for her to
miss it, given how much psychic energy it was leaking. Belial had exhorted the
naga to put every effort into this attack and they were obviously giving it
everything they had. It could be that this focus on power accounted for their
lousy aim. She was drawing near now and the air itself seemed to crackle with
power. The portal mouth was bobbing high in the air over a dark L-shaped
castle, or more precisely over the bone white chariot-filled parade ground
behind it.

Megaaeraholrakni
began a slow sweeping turn, oblivious to the attention she was beginning to
draw on the ground below. She reached out with her mind, the psychic force
radiating down from her wings to caress the extra-dimensional nexus at the
heart of the portal. Crude ‘dragging’ was for novices, one merely had to induce
a desire to move in a particular direction and the portal would do the work (or
rather, the teams of naga powering it would be forced to do the work, but it
was all the same to the gorgon). But mere seconds after the portal had begun to
move it began to oscillate wildly, shedding energy that arced to the ground as
lighting. Megaaeraholrakni had no choice to use every ounce of strength she
possessed to wrestle the portal back into submission. Flying directly above it,
buffeted by the thermals created by the arcing, it seemed to her that she was
riding an untamed beast, ready to throw lighting back at her at any moment. The
gorgon’s confidence in her own ability was supreme however, and perhaps not
unwarranted, as she soon had the unborn portal simmering in a semblance of
submission. Grimly she set off towards the great gleaming towers, a corner of
her mind already devising a way to gain revenge on whoever was responsible for
this mess.