The Salvation War 2: Pantheocide

by Slade, Stuart

  With Sangkhlaburi apparently cold, the next wave of helicopters, UH-60 Blackhawks were already landing in the town streets, disgorging the better part of an infantry battalion. The troops were actually part of Third Army's rapid reaction force and had been flown up direct from Kanchanaburi. As they spread out and secured the town, a third group of helicopters landed just north of the built-up area. One of them was a big Russian Mi-17I and it started unloading the equipment and personnel necessary to open a portal to Hell.

  This was the third time the team had gone through this performance in the field and by now their routine was smoother and slicker. The equipment was laid out, the portable diesel generators on their skids positioned and the portal-generators assembled. Within 45 minutes, less than half the time taken during their first effort at Kanchanaburi three days earlier, the black ellipse opened up and a long column of military vehicles started to move through. The mechanized infantry was first through the portal, the platoons emerging, assembling and then setting off to take up pre-determined positions in defense of the town and the pass above it. They were followed by the armored cars of the light armor battalions that started to assemble west of the town for their lunge along the main road that would, eventually, take them to Moulmein. Finally, the artillery battalion, towed 105mm howitzers, emerged and started to position themselves to support the rest of the regiment.

  “Well done!” Colonel Thanas reached down to shake the hand of the young man relaxing on the couch.

  “No problem Sir, its easy when the punch comes through from the other side. Have you got all your vehicles through?”

  “Not quite. Supply trucks and rear echelon still to come through. As soon as they're through, we'll need to move to the next location to open a gate for the next regiment. Then, its off to the top of the pass for the third.”

  DIMO(N) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.

  “You're drunk.”

  Dr Surlethe's comment was half serious, half joking. Nevertheless, Dr. Kuroneko looked blearily up at him before taking another gulp out of a tumbler full of whisky. “So would you be if you'd been thinking what I've been thinking.”

  “And what part of trans-dimensional mathematics with special relevance to Netherworlds had brought on this display of inebriation.” On reflection, Surlethe decided that inebriation was not a bad idea. It seemed as if it had been a long time since he'd been able to relax. More than 18 months in fact, ever since The Message had arrived and the Salvation War had started. He went over to the bar and got himself a drink, noticing with distaste that Red Label was the only Johnnie Walker it had in stock. By the time he'd got back, the level in Kuroneko's glass had dropped notably.

  “The bit that says we're all doomed.”

  “You think we're going to lose this war? Surlethe was slightly shocked.

  “No, course not. We'll find a way into Heaven soon enough, and when we do we'll blow the place apart. They've had it up there and we've had it down here, just going to take a bit more time for us that's all.”

  “How much more?”

  “A few billion years give or take a decade or so.” Kuroneko made a visible effort to pull himself together. “You know we live in an expanding universe right? Well, one of the theories of cosmology is that our universe will keep on expanding until it's in a state of heart death, when all the stars and planets are dead and there's just an even distribution of energy everywhere.”

  “So I've heard. Do you believe that?”

  “Probably not. But doesn’t matter. When we're in that state, then the universe starts contracting again and it keeps on contracting until it forms a singoor... strinlari... a point. Then it all blows up in another big bang. But now we've found the Hell dimensions and guess what, its contracting. And our early figures suggest that the whole Hell domemshun is contracting at the same rate as ours is expanding. Don't you see?”

  Surlethe leaned back in his seat and shook his head.

  “It's obvious. If all this is true, then our dimension and the hell dimension are opposed pairs. We expand until we reach heat-death and then start to collapse. At that exact moment, the hell dimension finishes its contraction and has the big bang, starting its expansion. That's when we're like Hell, all living in bubbleworlds, they're like us, living on planets. And so it goes on forever and ever. Just going backwards and forwards, pointless, planless, without purpose. And if that thought doesn’t make you want to get drunk, I don’t know what will.”

  “Why? We'll all be dead by... Oh, I see what you mean. We have no idea how long creatures in the hell dimension live do we? We could be alive up there, for an eternity. We're not doomed at all though. Now we know we can make portals, we could skip from one to the other and become eternal. Just like the gods we once believed in.”

  “Excuse me, might I join in?” Norman Baines was standing behind them.

  “Sure, pull up a pew. We're just screwing the inscrutable.” Surlethe finished off his glass and got a replacement.

  “So I heard. You've seen this of course.” Baines produced a black-and-white disk from his pocket, the circle divided by an S-shaped line that saw one half starting off at nothing and swelling out while the other collapsed the opposite way. One half was black, the other white and at the fullest point of each half was a small circle of the opposite color.

  “Sure, its the Ying-Yang symbol. Hippies loved it.” And that comment ages me he thought.

  “Well, I was listening to Dr. Kuroneko and what he was saying made me think of this. Look, if we hold it so the dividing line is vertical, then turn it through 180 degrees, it shows exactly what he's been saying. One half forming and growing, then collapsing while the other does the same but in reverse phase. And the dots are the portals joining the two.” He put the disk on the table and started turn it backwards and forwards.

  “He's right you know. It does illustrate what you've been saying.”

  Kuroneko finished his drink. “Makes you wonder of the old Chinese philosophers had this whole thing worked out, doesn’t it.”

  “Taoist, but here's a funny thing. The same symbol, its called a Tajitsu by the way, crops up a lot of places. For example, one of the Roman Legions used the same symbol and it predates the Taoist version by a couple of centuries or more. It's believed some of Alexander's units used it as well. So did the Thebans. And there's stories that it turned up in ancient Egypt. Suppose the Tajitsu isn’t just a mystical symbol but is a descendent of something that was handed down from ancient civilizations to tell us what the universe is really like?”

  Surlethe thought about that for a long, long time. Finally he looked at Baines. “I really wish you hadn’t said that. Now I want to get drunk.”

  Council Chamber, Yamantau, Russia

  “There is a major problem coming up, one that I believe this Council must address.”

  The speaker looked around at the fifteen council members. Not all were physically present, but those that weren't were on great viewscreens that lined the walls. Whether present as flesh-and-blood or electronic imagery, they all nodded. “Proceed.”

  Doctor Samuel drew breath to deliver the bad news. “We have an impending energy crunch. The fact is that with what amounts to every army in the world fully mobilized and conducting military operations, they're burning a mass of diesel fuel. It doesn’t matter whether its peace-keeping operations in Hell or the fighting going on in Thailand or the war that's about to start in Korea, they all cost fuel. It doesn’t end there. Every factory on Earth is running flat out on triple-shifts, those that can are producing munitions ad those that can't are making up for the facilities that have been converted to war production.

  “We can't change that. We're still replacing the munitions we expended in the Curb Stomp War.”

  “I know, but it takes energy and that means fuel. We're shifting to nuclear power as fast as we can, but rebuilding the infrastructure takes time and building the plans takes more energy. We're behind the curve and that situation is becoming terminal
. Put simply, we've been pumping and refining oil so fast, we're damaging the fields and the refineries are in desperate need of repair and renovation. That could get worse, we're entering hurricane season and that means the weather attacks could start again. Refinery capacity was critical before the war started, now its far beyond that. We need more refineries and more oil resources. The former we can build if we're given the go-ahead, but actually finding more oil reserves. Well, to give you an idea, the current levels of unexploited oil reserves are higher than at any time in recorded history, the figures are in Platt's Oilgram, but they’re still not enough.”

  “There may be a solution to this.” The spotlights switched to another figure standing in front of the great horseshoe of desks. “I'm Coogler, one of the geologists working in Hell. Do you all recognize this?”

  He held up a bottle containing a black solid. The Council looked at it, shaking their heads.

  “Well, you've all heard of the Lava River in Hell. The one we're pulling our dead out of. Well, that was always a bit odd because if it was real lava, there wouldn’t be any bodies. They'd be flash-vaporized. So, we had a closer look at that river and it turns out, it wasn't lava at all. It's a mix of what amounts to a very heavy crude oil with extremely light fractions. It’s really strange from a geological point of view, in some ways, it’s a bit like shale oil but don’t push that comparison too far. Human crude is a mixture of fractions as well, some heavy, some light, some in between. Hell crude has nothing in between, its all either very light or very heavy. When it comes out of the ground, the light factions vaporize and burn, giving the appearance of a river of fire.

  “So, the injuries our dead received are a mix of the burns from the hot, plasticized crude, that runs at around sixty to seventy degrees Celsius by the way, and the burning gases above it. Now, if we can trap and channel that stream at source, we can recover the light fractions for use as natural gas while we can build refineries in Hell to crack the super-heavy fraction and give us everything else we need. Or we can build the refineries here on Earth. But, given the volume coming out in the Lava River, there must be a lot of this stuff in Hell, the whole place is probably oil-rich.”

  Putin nodded and there was a whispered exchange between the members of the council, those present on the screens giving their contribution by means of earpieces worn by the members. Eventually, Putin banged his gavel on the table. “Engineer Coogler, get together with Doctor Samuel and thrash out a scheme to exploit these new resources. Take whatever technical staff you need. Now, to the next item on today's agenda. What progress has been made with hunting down and killing Yahweh?”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

  “Anything on the plot?”

  The Combat Direction Center, known as the CDC to the world in general and “the Pit” to the crew, resembled something inspired by a television movie. The four screens that dominated the compartment showed the coast of California up to a range that would sent the security weenies screaming into a catatonic trance if anybody unauthorized got wind of it. It wasn't just the ship's own sensors that were creating the massive coverage, Normandy was pulling in raw radar data from other ships up and down the coast and integrating it with her own. That sounded simple but it wasn't. It would need only minor differences in calibration for contacts that appeared on both sets of data to be duplicated and reduplicated until the whole system crashed. That had happened often enough while the Cooperative Engagement Capability system had been under development and it had taken years to fix it.

  It wasn't just CEC that gave Normandy her enormous radar range. The cruiser was part of the AEGIS-ABM system. There was an incredible amount of alphabet soup attached to that particular modernization reflected Captain William Pelranius. The AEGIS system itself was Baseline 7.3cV(5) with the SPY-1D(V) radars baseline 5.3.8. What it all amounted to was that the radars on Normandy were an order of magnitude more powerful than those on non-ABM ships and the battle management technology was upgraded to match. That's why she was stationed off San Diego. After the attack on El Paso, all border and coastal towns were considered to be at risk and San Diego was both.

  “We've got nothing Sir.” The radar operator leaned back in her seat and flexed her shoulders. OSCSAW Annette Serafina had been staring at the display screens for more than an hour, watching the movement of aircraft up and down the California coast. The coverage wasn't as dense as it might have been two years or more ago. These days, with the war on, a lot of civilian aircraft had been drafted into military service and fuel shortages had curtailed much of regular airline activities. On the other hand, military flight were way up.

  “Axehorn, this is CAP-Three-Three-One requesting speed and altitude check.” Axehorn was Normandy's call sign.

  “CAP-Three-Three-One, we have you at altitude level six-zero, ground speed one-five-zero knots” Serafina's voice was calm and neutral. The Civilian Air Patrol was doing its job, flying patrol missions and watching for anything unusual. With all the crazy nonsense that Yahweh had been throwing at the world for the last year, there was no telling what would come next.

  “Axehorn, this is Eagle-One-Fiver, requesting speed and altitude check.” The voice had a smug note to it.

  “Eagle-One-Five, we have you at altitude level one-two-zero, ground speed five-six-five knots.” She covered the microphone with her hand. “Navy airdale wanting to impress the Civil Air Patrol guy,” Serafina explained. The captain nodded sympathetically.

  “Axehorn, Eagle-One-Fiver, please give clearance for flight at altitude level three-fiver-zero.”

  Serafina glanced at the restrictions for the day and raised her eyebrows slightly. “Eagle-One-Fiver, that's a negative. Remain at altitude level one-two-zero.”

  “Come on honey, give me what I want.” The fighter pilot's voice had a cooing overtone.

  “No way Eagle-One-Fiver. Last time I gave an airdale what he wanted, I was on penicillin for three weeks. Remain at one-two-zero.”

  “Axehorn, Habu-Zero-One requesting speed and altitude check.” There was a rich vein of amusement in the voice.

  Serafina took one look at the track readings and saw why. In a slightly strangled voice she replied “Habu Zero-One, I have you at Altitude Level Nine-Nine-Five, Ground speed, Two-Eight-Seven-Zero knots.”

  “Thank you Axehorn, and please thank CAP-Three-Three-One for his assist.”

  “Two thousand, eight hundred and seventy knots, ninety-nine thousand, five hundred feet. What the blazes was that bird.”

  “What bird, Sir? With respect Sir, I don’t know what you are referring to. You might note that call, if it had existed which it didn't, came in on a special circuit, if that existed, which it doesn’t.” Serafina took pity on her Captain, he'd only been on board for three days and had come in from the Atlantic Fleet. It was rumored he'd done a six-month rotation in Hell before getting command of Normandy. “Sir, there are a lot of strange things around here that come out of inland that it’s better not to remember or ask questions about.”

  “Senior Chief, we're getting a warning from the DIMO(N) warning net. Cell Phone towers are dropping signals north west of San Diego. Probable portal opening, if so, it’s a small one.”

  “Nothing on radar.” Serafina was tempted to up the transmission power a little but Normandy was only fifty miles of San Diego. If a normal AEGIS cruiser went to full transmission power this close in, she'd blow every television and radio set in the city, what an AEGIS-BMD would do defied rational imagination. “More precise location?”

  “Around the El Capitan Reservoir. In the mountains. The trace has gone now. DIMO(N) say, probably one entity only passed through.”

  “Uriel.” The hiss went around the CDC.

  Captain Pelranius didn’t hesitate. “Sound battle stations. Assume one very hostile angel inbound. Send out the warning to Army and Air Force units as well. We don’t want the son-of-a-bitch to get away this time.”

  West
of El Capitan Reservoir, California.

  Uriel popped out of the portal over the oddly-shaped lake that he'd selected as his entry point. In the past, he would have set off to the community he had selected for annihilation, confident in the knowledge of his unchallenged supremacy but those days were gone. His wing was still stiff from the injuries he'd suffered at El Paso and his skin itched with the memory of that battle. So, he stayed down amongst the mountains and made sure that his position was secure before he started his sacred mission of bringing final peace to the humans who lived below.

  Safe in the darkness, his senses stretched out, he could feel the existence of life here, some of it animal and of no great importance but more was human. Once, this whole area had been uninhabitable desert but humans in their arrogance had challenged that divine judgment and brought water to the sand. Great cities had grown up on the coast, cities that could not exist without the constant exercise of human ingenuity and there obstinate refusal to accept that things that were should not be challenged. The thought of human challenge was enough to make his skin itch more

  Then it occurred to him that his skin wasn't itching as a result of his memories of the battle over El Paso, it really was burning. Only very slightly but it was there and it told Uriel much. He’d noted that it always preceded an attack and that made him guess that the humans knew he was coming. That would make things much, much harder. He decided that discretion was the better part of valor and he would approach his target from behind the ridgelines that were a little to the north of his present position. The humans wouldn’t see him until he was on top of them and then it would be too late. His new plan would take him over the small town of Eucalyptus Hills. Uriel didn't know the name, and didn’t care about it but he decided that the community would make a useful practice target for his powers.