Armageddon?? (96 page)

Because
granite is far denser than air, the speed of sound in the rock is much higher
than the speed of sound in air. In fact, the speed of sound in granite is
approximately 19,500 feet per second. As the bombs detonated, a shockwave
formed in the explosive material and hit the surrounding rock at more than
20,000 miles per hour, driven by the gas products of the reaction. Impact from
the shockwave vaporized the granite surrounding the bombs, creating a core of
superheated rock vapor which followed the pressure wall as it continued at half
again the speed of sound through the granite, vaporizing rock which it
encountered.

The
four roughly spherical shockwaves met each other in less than four thousandths
of a second. If an observer could have seen the meeting in a cross-section of
the granite foundation to Satan's castle, he would have seen the four spheres
of superheated gas seem to merge as they encompassed each other, merging into
what would appear to be a flattened pancake, centered at the center of mass of
the four bombs and traveling outward at mach 1.5. Looking up, he would see
Satan's castle -- and he would focus on the single wavefront traveling upward,
about to reach the surface.

The
rock holding back the volume of gas melted under the onslaught of the
shockwave, draining energy from it and slowing it until it slipped under the
shockwave threshold and became a particularly large and destructive pressure
pulse, traveling at just under the speed of sound. Just under six thousandths
of a second after the bombs first initiated, the pulse from the blast reached
the surface. When it did, several things happened at once. Where it touched the
foundation rocks, the stone out of which Satan had built his palace transmitted
the pulse upward, buckling and crushing the huge building blocks where they
stood. Where it touched nothing but air, the spalling effect threw huge chunks
of rock into the air, jarring from the spur and turning them into missiles that
arced upward and outward to descend in a ghoulish hail onto Dis.

As
the pressure pulse reached the edge of the spur, the energy had nowhere to go.
If the spur had been made of some extremely ductile metal, it would have sprung
out and then back, reflecting the pressure wave back into the interior and
causing it to ring like some gigantic, unimaginably deep bass gong. As it
stands, granite is nowhere near as flexible; therefore, the pressure wave
fragmented the surface of the spur into house-sized boulders and threw them out
into the surrounding caldera like pebbles.

Meanwhile,
at the top of the spur, the pressure pulse traveled up through Satan's palace
until it reached the roof, which popped off like an immense champagne cork,
jumping several feet before it started to fall back down into the interior as
the support columns buckled. Seven thousandths of a second after the detonation
of the four MOPs, Satan's sprawling, magnificent fortress, built over a period
of scores of millennia, began to crumble, its hard granite rock left with no
more structural integrity than a sand castle facing an incoming tide.

Out
on the long causeway that lead along the spur from the main circle of Dis to
the promontory of Satan’s palace, Belial lay stunned by the bombs that had
demolished the work of millennia. The rolling, heaving shockwaves had thrown
him off his feet and tossed him around on the ground as if he was of no more
account than a kidling. Once, in the great feasts at Tartarus, one of his
minions had said that nobody could call themselves drunk unless they couldn’t
lie on the floor without holding on. Now, Belial knew what that meant, he’d
tried to hold on to the ground under him but he had failed and it had evaded
his grasp at every turn. He was dazed, half-blinded by the great cloud of dust
that was enveloping the whole area. Beneath his taloned feet, the ground was
still shaking as the after-shocks reverberated in the structure or the rocks
thrown high in the sky made their way back down. He tried to stand but the
ground was too unstable, too riven by the blasts to allow him to do that.
Instead he crawled, trying to find some cover from the rain of fragments that
descended around him. In one corner of his mind, he realized that this was the
human response to his attacks on Sheffield and Dee-Troyt. Abigor had said that
when the humans fought, they went for the top first, decapitated their enemy
and cut away his ability command. The humans had done as Abigor had warned,
they had gone straight for the top. Then, another part of his brain told him
that this was an insight he had better keep to himself. Speaking of it would
mean a hideous death.

He
tried to get to his feet again, this time making it as the rolling aftershocks
faded away. The causeway in front of him was crumbling, even as he watched,
another section broke away and fell into.. what? He needed to see, to assess
what damage had been done. It had to be huge, incomprehensible. Belial was
beginning to know his enemy and when humans wrought destruction on their
enemies, they tended to go for the huge and incomprehensible.

Slowly,
carefully he made his way along the causeway, to where the crumbling lip marked
the edge of the crater where the bombs, oh Belial knew the right words now, a
bomb dropped by aircraft, not a magebolt from a sky-chariot, had landed. Back
in Tartarus, a few humans had turned their coats and told what they knew of
human destructive powers. In some cases, they knew just the names, in others a
bit about how the weapons worked. But this? None of them had mentioned this.

Nearer
to the rim, the sentries that had guarded the entrance to Satan’s palace were
dead, blood trickling from their noses and mouths. Other than that there was no
reason why they should be dead, there were no obvious wounds on their bodies.
Had the bomb been poison? And if it was, why had Belial himself survived. There
was much here to think upon and for a brief moment Belial wished that Euryale
was with him. The gorgon would see a pattern in this, somehow.

Then,
Belial looked down and realized the full scale of the shattering blow the human
aircraft had delivered. The whole of the promontory that had served as a base
for Satan’s palace was crumbling, subsiding into the caldera below. He watched
it falling, the ground slowly shifting downwards as it settled, spreading
sideways as the weight of rocks above compressed those underneath. Somehow,
without thinking it through, Belial knew that the settling would continue for
days. There was no hope for those under the ruins, they were either being
choked by the dust or crushed by the constantly-settling rock. With another
flash of insight, Belial realized that the demon’s superb resistance to wounds
and infection was going to be a terrible curse here, death was inevitable but
the process of having life crushed out of them was going to take much longer.

Of
Satan’s palace there was no sign. Then he looked closer, and realized he was
wrong. There were signs of it in the settling debris below. Sheets of bronze
from the roof, shattered pieces of statuary, blocks of dressed and polished
stone. That was all. Satan’s palace had taken millennia to build and work on it
had never really finished. Always there had been extra stones to add, extra
rooms, crueler and deeper dungeons. Well, it was all over now, the palace had
been destroyed and its monstrous occupant with it. Belial felt like screaming
with despair, all that work, all that planning and scheming, the stunning
success of Sheffield, the lesser success of Dee-Troyt, all had been aimed at
restoring him to Satan’s favor. Now, Satan was dead, or dying of slow
suffocation in the ruins below. It had all been for nothing. Standing on the
crater rim, looking down at the devastation, Belial wept with despair.

Free
Hell, Banks of the Styx, Fifth Circle of Hell

The
explosions had echoed and re-echoed around the great caldera of hell, stunning
the demons and suffering humans alike. Lieutenant (deceased) Jade Kim saw the
shining bronze palace on its rock high above and far away, start to crumble. In
painfully slow motion, the whole great structure collapsed, the very rock it
was based on falling into the caldera underneath. Kim realized that at least
some of the debris was landing on humans, killing them (again) before they
could be liberated. A sacrifice, but one merited by the majesty of the sight
that was unfolding above her. ‘Shock and Awe’ she thought to herself, an
overused and much-discredited phrase but one that was curiously appropriate to
the sight.

“Way
to go fly-boys.” Her voice seemed to blend in with the rumble of the collapsing
rock. “That’s the Air Farce, go straight for the top with the biggest bombs
they can carry. B-2s I guess, or B-1s.”

“You’re
saying things we don’t understand again.” Titus Pullo couldn’t restrain himself
from the half-joke, even in the face of the incredible sight before them.

“Sorry,
Titus. We have big aircraft, bombers, to carry very large bombs. I guess the
B-52s are being used elsewhere and the other types we have are B-1s and B-2s.
They must have used bombs that penetrate deep into rock and ruptured the very
foundations of that place. There’s nobody left alive in there, that’s for
certain.”

“Good,
very good.” Lucius Vorenus was looking at the subsiding ruins with quiet
satisfaction. “Then he’s dead.”

Kim
was about to respond when she heard another sound, the sky-tearing noise of jet
fighters moving fast. The six aircraft erupted out of the dusty sky, arching
over Free hell and orbiting around. They were loaded for air-to-air, she could
see the batteries of missiles hanging under their wings.

“British,
Typhoons.” Then there was another wound, one that she found achingly familiar,
the rhythmic whoop-whoop noise of helicopter rotors. She’d never realized how
much she had missed that noise before. They were helicopters all right, big
ones. Single rotor amidships, that meant either Marine CH-53s, Russian Mi-171s
or British Merlins. Some were carrying slung loads, others were clean and one
of them was coming straight in. She saw it touch down only a few dozen yards
from her and figures started to pour out. Camouflaged figures wearing red
berets. British paratroopers. One of the figures detached from the rest and
came over to her.

“Lieutenant
Jade Kim?” There was a heavy accent on her rank and she guessed what was coming
next.

“Present
Sir.”

“I’m
Colonel Andy Jackson, commanding officer Two-Para. As senior officer here, I’ll
be taking over command. Could you bring me up to date on your defenses please?
I understand there’s some nausea coming this way.”

“Certainly
Sir, I’ve got our maps at hand I’ll…..”

“Welcome
to Hell Colonel.” Jackson looked surprised, a man had just arrived, one with a
vaguely familiar face. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gaius Julius
Caesar. You say you are a Colonel? That makes you the commander of a cohort?”

“Err,
I think so.” Jackson thought quickly, his 700 men were about a cohort.

“But
not the First Cohort though.” Caesar’s lips twitched slightly. “I am First
Consul and commander of two legions in this area. That makes me a General I
think. And Jade Kim is the Second Consul of the forces in Free Hell, which
includes one of my Legions. So, that makes me at least, the ranking officer
here.”

“But
you have no idea of what modern forces are capable of.” Jackson was caught
completely off guard.

“I
have some idea, Second Consul Kim is a good teacher. But, you are right so I
must ask that you remain in your position, commanding your Para. Perhaps we can
get together and work out how best we can deploy your men.”

“Sir,
with all due respect, I must insist…”

“That’s
very good then, After all, the principles of strategy doesn’t change much
although weapons have obviously done so. Have you read my book on Strategic
Principles.”

“It’s
been lost I’m afraid.” Kim was trying to stop laughing. The sight of the
British officer trying to think of reasons why this shouldn’t be happening was
hilarious.

“Not
any more. With nothing else to do for 2,000 years, I’ve re-written all my books
from memory. By the way Jade, your translation of the Civil War is very incomplete,
allow me to give you a full copy. I’ve signed it for you. Anyway, Colonel
Jackson, what forces did you bring with you.”

“Err,
my battalion, a battery of 105mm field guns, Land-Rovers with machine guns and
grenade launchers. Lot of grenade machine guns. And we have a forward air
observer group. We can pull in a lot of air power if we need it.” Jackson shook
his head, he’d been outmaneuvered and he know it. But then, it was no shame to
be embarrassed by losing to Gaius Julius Caesar. Now he’d lost, the next
priority was to do the best job humanly possible for his new commander. Honor
demanded no less.

Beside
him, Jade Kim felt a mixture of sadness and relief. Her little state had
suddenly become a Roman province but at least she was out of the hot seat at
last. Away from the dreadful nagging fear that her next more would be the
mistake that brought everything crashing down around her ears.

Chapter
Sixty Seven

Chiknathragothem’s
Command Post, Southern Front, Phlegethon River

The
harpy landed, its wings shaking with exhaustion. “Sire, I bring much terrible
news.”