In front of him, a group of armored personnel carriers moved on to the exercise ground, dodging from cover to cover. Madeuce recognize them instantly, a Polish derivative of the BMP-2 built especially for the daemons. Three extra suspension wheels to allow for the extra weight, a higher and longer body shell to provide protection for the crew and an open passenger compartment. Armament was three 23mm cannon, one at the front of the passenger compartment, the other two on its sides. All three guns could fire forward, alternatively they provided a 360 degree field of fire around each vehicle. Derivatives of the same vehicle had 120mm automatic mortars in the back. Unlike the infantry vehicles, the mortar carriers and the other specialist support equipment was crewed by second-life humans.
Overhead, Madeuce heard the howl of inbound artillery. Explosions hammered at the “angelic defensive position” droning it in fire and steel “Sir, we're rationing fire, one gun is representing each battery of four. Cuts down expense.”
“Very good Tribune. The gunners?”
“A mixture of Second-Life humans, mostly artillerymen we have recruited, and daemons. The daemons do the heavy lifting, feeding the guns. Their strength means we can hold a slightly higher instantaneous rate of fire and a much higher sustained rate of fire than a human artillery battery. I wouldn't care to pitch us against an MLRS battery though.”
The armored personnel carriers were raking the “enemy” position with bursts of cannon fire, the tracer rounds lacing it with fire. Then the artillery fire ceased and there was a sudden blast of fire from the mortars. Simultaneously, the daemons in the infantry units rose to their feet and charged across the ground, their chromed bayonets flashing in the dim red light, for all the world looking as if they were already stained with the blood of their enemies. That was a human perception though, the wild primary colors of daemonic blood were still baffling scientists. The charge went home, supported by the fire from the mortars, machine guns and auto-cannon of the support units. The daemons cheered, the “battle” was won.
A few minutes later, the display force was drawn up for inspection. Gaius Julius walked down the lines of infantry, giving the impression to each human and daemon that he had, just for a second, stopped and noted each one individually. Caesar stopped in front of one daemon rifleman and looked carefully at his turn-out. “Well presented, excellent turn-out. Your name is?”
The daemon smacked his chest with his fist then stretched out his arm in an almost-perfect Roman salute. “I am Tesserarius Dripankeothorofenex, of the Third Legion, First Consul.”
Caesar gravely returned the salute. “And why do you fight in the Third Legion Dripankeothorofenex?”
“For the Senate and the People of Rome, First Consul.”
Caesar grinned at the reply the daemon had obviously been carefully taught. Then, he dropped his voice to make the conversation private. “And why do you really fight?”
Dripankeothorofenex grinned in return. “Because it's fun, First Consul. The human way of fighting is much more enjoyable than just lining up with tridents.”
“Good for you.” Caesar raised his voice again so that it would carry around the parade. “An excellent turn-out and an enthusiastic soldier of good morale. Tribune Madeuce, promote this daemon to Duplicarius. Soldiers of the Third Legion, I am pleased to tell you that you will soon be assigned to join the Human Expeditionary Army for its assault on Heaven. Let the arrogant Angelic Host know what befalls those who stand against the Legions of the New Roman Republic!”
Chapter Fifty Seven
Conference Room, The Senate, New Rome, New Roman Republic, Hell
“Every time we tried to change the design, they beat us with canes.” The head of the sales delegation from Bombardier Aviation spoke with emphasized ruefulness.
“I did not think your companies treated people like that.” Gaius Julius Caesar was confused by the statement which didn’t seem to match anything he'd learned recently.
“Gaius, every so often an expression enters the language and becomes widely used for a while until everybody gets bored with it. This was one, I believe it started in the Air Force and has spread everywhere. It means that a certain course of action or idea is strongly discouraged by those in authority. They don’t really get beaten with canes.” Jade Kim turned her attention to the man from Bombardier. “What changes did you want to make?”
“The ones we had to make were mostly in the air intake system. The original Hawker Hunter had narrow wing-root intakes. By the time we had installed the air filters, the air flow to the engine was so reduced that it caused the Avon to be running on the verge of stalling. So we had to enlarge the air intakes to compensate. It helped that the original intakes were very inefficient by modern standards and our computer design facilities were able to clean them up a lot. All in all, even with the filters in place, we are getting good air flow to the engine and the performance penalty is much less than aircraft that had the filters added on afterwards. So, we thought by going to a thinner wing, we would get better performance. That's when they beat us.
“Once we lost that battle, we changed the underwing hard points as well. We were lucky, there were 48 Hunters in flying condition and the RAF stood up an entire wing equipped with them. So, we have plenty of flying specimens to work with and a lot of the tooling was available. Here in Canada, Bombardier got the job of setting up a production line for them. The Avon was available, Rolls-Royce was selling them for power generation until 2006 so all the equipment for the engines was available. We took the Swiss-modified Hunter FGA.9 as a baseline. That gave us two fuselage hard points, we recommend they be used for drop tanks, and six wing hardpoints. The inner pair are stressed for 2,000 pounds, the outer four are rigged for 1,000 pounds each. Total warload, 8,000 pounds plus the four 30mm cannon in the nose.”
“Boeing want us to buy the A-45. What do you say about that?” Caesar was watching carefully and learning.
“The A-45 is a very good aircraft. Of course, it costs three times as much as the Bombardier Hunter, has a long waiting list of clients and doesn’t carry the warload our aircraft does. It has five hardpoints, we have eight and it has only a single 20mm gun. It's 70 miles per hour slower and only has half the rate of climb of the Hunter. What is more, as a non-American company, we can offer incentives that Boeing cannot equal. For example, we can take payment in kind. Oil for example, or minerals. Our bid includes a number of counter-trade scenarios that may interest you. Finally, Hunter spares are made in a lot of countries, you won't be tied to us as suppliers. I believe you are having trouble getting spare parts from the Americans already?”
“Spares and personnel. It's becoming much harder to recruit skilled second-life people for our armed forces.” Kim paused for a second. “What's the order backlog on the Bombardier Hunter like? You're not one of the big aircraft companies.”
“We're building for the Canadian Air Force only at the moment. If you sign up now, a letter of intent will do, we'll allocate you places on the production line, alternating with RCAF aircraft. First aircraft to be delivered six months after we receive the order. That's assuming you want the same avionics fit of course. A letter of intent commits you to nothing until the terms and conditions of the contract are finalized.”
Caesar looked at Kim who nodded almost imperceptibly. “Very well Mr Clarkson. The New Roman Republic will issue you with a letter of intent for 42 Bombardier Hunters, 36 single-seaters and 6 twin-seat aircraft. Payment via negotiated counter-trade. Also, of course, retirement here when you die if that is your wish.”
A very happy Bombardier sales team left the conference room. After they had left, there was silence for a couple of minutes before Kim broke it. “Well Gaius, which one of us is going to tell Boeing they can take their A-45 and stuff it?”
Training Camp, 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic), Dis, Hell
“Now that is more like it.” Sergeant Anderson watched the daemonic infantry raking the “enemy position” with rifle fire while the human-cr
ewed support weapons hammered it with their mortars and cannon. Although he didn’t realize it, he was watching almost exactly the same display as had been given to Caesar a day earlier. Beside him, Aeneas and Ori watched the attack going home. The daemon infantry rose from their positions and charged while the humans continued to support them. They overran the target position and the exercise ended.
“It works.” Ori seemed slightly surprised at the demonstration. “I was expecting the daemons to run into our supporting fire.”
“They will.” Anderson was uncompromising. “We'll get them to work on a rolling barrage next. That's when we drop a line of artillery rounds across the target area and advance it towards the enemy in small increments. The infantry go in directly behind that barrage. We'll know if they're following the shells closely enough when we start to take casualties from our own artillery fire.”
“That's harsh.” Aeneas didn’t like what he was hearing very much.
“Do it right and we take fewer casualties from our own fire than we would have done if there's a greater distance between the artillery and the infantry. The one thing we don’t want is the enemy recovering from the barrage before the infantry are on top of them. That happened at the Somme and it cost us 60,000 casualties.
Aeneas whistled softly. “Sixty thousand casualties in a single battle. We never had anything like that.”
“No, sixty thousand on the first day of the battle. It went on for months.”
There was a grim silence at that number, highlighted by the roar of diesels in the background as the armored personnel carriers picked up their infantry. Eventually, Anderson picked up the conversation. “We're running out of time as well. The Army will be moving soon and I hear we'll be attached to the Commonwealth Army as a reserve unit. Along with Caesar's Third Legion.”
“We know a way into Heaven?” Ori was surprised.
“Not yet, but we've been hit by the Seven Bowls of Wrath. The next step is the invasion. As soon as they open a portal from Heaven to Earth, we'll have our way in.”
The Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven.
“Is everybody clear on what they have to do?” Michael-Lan looked around the room where the ringleaders in his conspiracy had assembled. They were nodding cautiously, all too aware of the dreadful chance they were taking.
Leilah-Lan raised one hand. “Is there any particular music the bands need to play?”
“Something bouncing and martial. Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries will be good, or Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War. But, let Glenn, Benny and the rest make their pick. They're the experts. We need to get every one of us thinking in harmony, completely synchronized so I can pull in the power. You know that Yah-yah outclasses all of us individually. We have to stand together in harmony and isolate him from any support if we are going to pull this off.”
“When do we go? Will they get time to practice?” Leilah was worried, badly so.
“I honestly don’t know. This is the frightening bit, the timing is out of our control. We can set the ball rolling as soon as the pieces are in place but the timing from that point onwards? I have no idea how fast the humans will react, how quickly they can get here or how they will arrive. Yet it's those factors that determine when the coup will take place. Get the bands started now on their rehearsals, tell them it's for a battle of the bands. Say the last one was so popular we're going to make it a regular feature.”
“Should we tell them what is really up when we start the coup?”
Michael thought carefully. “Yes. They have a right to know. They don’t have much of a choice in going along but Yah-yah won’t see it that way. If this all goes wrong, they'll be torn apart with the rest of us. So, yeah, tell them what we're doing and why. But only when we're starting, no need to give them time to think.”
The group looked nervously at each other. This coup had been in the planning and preparation stage for centuries but now, what had once seemed an abstract and distant possibility, stared them in the face.
“Once the humans arrive, Jesus takes Yah-yah's personal guard into the attack right? What about the human levies.” Rafael-Lan was trying to match Michael in running through the available permutations of events.
Michael smiled wryly. “I slipped up there, thankfully Yah-yah didn’t notice. I ordered the preparation of the human levies almost by instinct. I forgot that doing so was telling Yah-yah that the fighting would take place here in Heaven. The human levies can't fight on Earth. That was a bad mistake, but he missed it, I think. Jesus will take the Guard and the levies in. This attack has got to look good. I just hope the humans bring their artillery and aircraft in with them. We need one of their clean sweeps badly. Jesus has to die and I want that guard torn apart. The defeat of the Guard and its levies has got to be stunning and we need the humans to fatten our casualty list.”
“What if the humans lose?” Rafael-Lan was right, Michael reflected, this was one of the key turning points in the plan. So much depended on the humans winning this battle, winning it decisively and in the right place.
“Then we're all dead. All of us, the whole Angelic Host. The humans will pull out all the stops and use every weapon they have. Believe me on this, they have some doozies they've only just started to deploy. But, it's unlikely they will lose, very unlikely indeed. Raffie, part of your job is to make sure Jesus is really beautifully misinformed. He's got to go in dumb. Don't let him be clever.”
Rafael-Lan nodded. Michael looked around the room again. “Anything else?”
Charmeine-Lan hesitantly put her hand up. “Maion, she told me that she will be going out to Lemuel's tomorrow night.”
“Then we have our starting point. I'll make sure I'm over at Lemuel's palace tomorrow. I can find some League of Holy Court business that will keep me there.”
“You will move quickly for her?” Charmeine-Lan was upset at her part in this, She knew it was necessary but she didn't like it at all. “She's a nice girl underneath it all. Don’t leave her longer than you have to.”
Michael-Lan nodded. “I'll get it sorted as fast as possible. Until then...”
DIMO(N) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.
“The invasion is coming?” The question from Defense Secretary Gates was dead neutral, without inflexion. The long-awaited invasion from Heaven had to be due soon and when it came it would be a perfect example of the cliched mixture of problems and opportunities. It would mean a major battle on Earth but would also be the way the route into Heaven could be opened.
“Oh yes, its coming.” Norman Baines was firm on that point. In some ways, this would be the culmination of his life's work. The end of days, the final battle. The millennium. It had lots of names and he'd studied all of them for years. Now, he was going to see them. A truly unexpected privilege. “We've had all seven bowls, we've seen off the Leopard Beast and the Scarlet Beast. Now, it’s the Lamb Beast, the Dragon and the invasion. Not necessarily in that order.”
“I don't suppose the ancient mythologies say where?” Gates thought that was probably too much to hope for.
“Well, Sir, yes they do. The plains of Megiddo, Armageddon. But, Abigor's host tried that and they walked into the best army we had fielded. they may try somehwere else as a result. But, all these prophecies are centered around the Middle East. If it isn’t one part, it'll be another.”
“Doesn't matter anyway. Dave Petraeus has the HEA waiting in Hell. As soon as the Heavenly Host portals in, he's going to portal three army groups in all around it. It's going to be a slaughterhouse.” General Bannistre was as non-committal as everybody else.
“General, Sir, I must warn you. The Heavenly Host is a lot more powerful than Abigor's Army was.” Baines cranked some numbers quickly in his head. It's likely to have more than twenty million angels in its combat formations.”
General Bannistre grinned sympathetically. “Don’t sweat it son. Dave blasted his way into Hell and stormed it with 30 divisions. We're landing three hundred and eighty divisions aroun
d the Angelic Host. We'll only be outnumbered four to one. And there'll be no holding back this time, we'll be hitting them with nukes, gas, whatever floats our boat. We weren't ready for Abigor, but we've had a year, 18 months nearly, to get ready for the Host.”
“And they'll pay for lying to us, deceiving us, betraying us.” President Obama's voice from the end of the briefing table was calm and measured. “Our ammunition stocks are adequate?”
“They are indeed Mister President. We're back to where we were in 2007 at last. Adequate, not over-generous but the production lines are rolling fast. We won’t need so long to replace this lot after we've fired it all off.”
The laughter than ran around the room had a vicious edge to it. “And so we should, with a 1.6 trillion dollar defense budget.” That put a sad note into Obama's voice, There was so much he had wanted to do, so many changes he wanted to make. Instead, he was presiding over the biggest defense budget in American history, one that was likely to cripple the economy for decades to come. All his plans had come to nothing and he was all too sure he would go down in American history as a wartime leader only.
“Why haven't we seen the Lamb Beast or the Dragon yet Baines?” General Bannistre was worried about that.
“I don’t know Sir. But I have an odd theory. We've been assuming that they were giant monsters like the Scarlet Beast and the Leopard Beast. But suppose they're not. Suppose, just for one, Revelation is allegorical on this one point. The Lamb Beast speaks like a lamb but breathes fire when it has to. Doesn't that sound like Jesus? The lamb of God and all that. And the Dragon Beast, of omnipotent power, could well be Yahweh himself. It's only a theory of course but it would explain why they haven't turned up yet.”
The Salvation War 2: Pantheocide Page 55