by Stuart Slade
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.”
“Speak.” Chiknathragothem didn’t have time to worry about the u
sual genuflections.
“My Lord, the humans have unleashed magery of unimaginable power. Beelzebub’s Army is stalled, its casualties are beyond counting. He has forced a crossing of the Phlegethon but is unable to make headway into the human defenses. The human mages breathed death over his forces, their spells robbing his harpies of the breath from their bodies, of the very air from their lungs. His harpies died as one, nothing like it has every been seen before.”
“That could well describe our whole war with these humans.” Chiknathragothem was impatient, he had better things to do than listen to a litany of disaster, even if opportunities lay in them. “Tell me something I have not heard before.”
The harpy gulped but he had been tasked to deliver a message and deliver it he would. “The humans also delivered a huge number of mage-bolts, so many that they blended together into one huge cloud of death that drank Beelzebub’s army. Together, barely one demon in four survives of his force. He has abandoned his attack and is pulling back in defense to block the road to Dis. He charges you with penetrating the human defenses and crushing them against that defense.”
“Is that all.” Chiknathragothem’s voice clearly indicated that he was contemplating a quick meal.
“No Sire, the worst is still to come. The humans hit the city of Dis itself. They have destroyed His Infernal Majesty’s palace, crumbled in and the rock it stood on so that only a pile of sand and ruins remains.”
“His Majesty…” Chiknathragothem had gone gray with shock. “Did he survive?”
“Nobody knows Sire. If he was in his palace then he did not. More than forty Grand Dukes and Dukes are known to be dead, and the palace staff are all gone. The dead number in their thousands. And, My Lord Beelzebub says, if Yahweh gets to hear of this catastrophe, and he will, then there will be nothing to keep him out of Hell itself.”
Shocked to his core, Chiknathragothem stared into the distance, trying to imagine the full consequences of what had just happened. If Satan was dead, then the great bulwark against Yahweh absorbing Hell into his own domain had gone. There was more to it than that, the human life-energy that all demons gathered and paid as tribute to Satan was suddenly without purpose. Satan had used it to boost his faithful servants over the barrier that existed between this level and the next. That was, after all, what the great pit of Hell was all about. The demons served Satan and in exchange he used the life-energy he had gathered to save them for eternity in the next dimension. All of this would be lost if Yahweh was allowed to make his way in and seize Hell for his own. The celestial abode that had been split apart so many, many millennia ago, would be reunited once more.
Unless, Chiknathragothem suddenly realized, another took over the role of leader, seized power and used the system Satan had devised to guarantee his own survival. In a flash of inspiration, he suddenly realized why Beelzebub was abandoning this fight, he wasn’t blocking the humans from Dis, he was advancing along that road himself, to seize power and take Satan’s throne. He, Chiknathragothem, was being left as the rear-guard to distract the humans from pursuing Beelzebub. He was a sacrifice to Beelzebub’s ambition.
For a wild moment, Chiknathragothem thought of pulling back himself, of setting out for Dis in an attempt to beat Beelzebub to the punch. Reality quickly intruded itself and squashed that idea. Beelzebub’s Army blocked the direct road and was much closer to Dis than Chiknathragothem’s. Beelzebub had the direct route, Chiknathragothem would have to go around him. There was no way, no way at all, that Beelzebub could be beaten to Dis. Then, another thought entered Chiknathragothem’s mind. He had battered his way through most of the human defenses, the end of the great zone of little fortresses that could do so much damage was in sight. One more push, one more effort and he would be through. Then, the human army would collapse. Beelzebub might enter Dis first, but it would be at the head of a defeated army, a thin shadow of the great force that he had once commanded. On the other hand, once this battle was one, he, Chiknathragothem, could also enter Dis but at the head of a victorious army, one that had defeated the humans who had destroyed Abigor and so badly crippled Beelzebub. The inhabitants of Hell were practical, they would back a winner over a loser any time.
So, he had to win and had to win fast. That made his decision obvious. He would have to group his remaining forces here, at the point where victory was on the point of being won. The remaining naga, the remnants of Belial’s wyverns, all in a concentrated blow. Overhead, Chiknathragothem heard the wailing sound of the human sky-chariots as they tore into his dwindling flock of harpies. His army was mauled, badly mauled, but nothing like the scale of destruction that had been visited on Beelzebub. The white mage-fire had been a shock, more for the horror of its effects than its real damage, but that was all. And there were fewer sky-chariots than there had been. His advancing foot-soldiers had found the wreckage of two, brought down by the wyverns with their great spiked tails, but it seemed as if the humans were running out of them. Everything suggested that this battle was at the point of balance. His one more push would win it, and with it a far greater prize than was being contested here on the plains of the Phlegethon.
Command Cave, Free Hell, Banks of the Styx, Fifth Circle of Hell
“Estimated force of 35,000 baldricks, at least 30,000 foot, the rest harpies. They’re the dangerous ones, not much firepower but they can get at us and our ability to bring them down in droves is limited.” Colonel Jackson looked around at his companions. He’d had an embarrassing discussion over the radio with his commander when he’d had to admit that he’d been outmaneuvered, politically speaking of course. In retrospect, he couldn’t honestly critique his decisions. He’d had a very questionable maneuver to pull off, one that depended on a junior officer’s instinctive deference to an officer of much higher rank. He’d gone in hard, trying to bulldoze her out of the way and accept his command before she had time to think the situation through. It had worked too, only how could he have known he would run into Gaius Julius Caesar. Some historians had questioned Caesar’s skill as a politician, well, he had been on the receiving end of that expertise and could now testify that the reality of the man lived up to his reputation.
The infuriating thing was that he, Jackson, had been right and what he was seeing proved it. The young American Lieutenant had done well, that was certain enough, but she’d done it through luck, guts, the inability of the baldricks to accept that humans could fight and, most of all, her serene ignorance of the fact that what she was attempting was impossible. Her whole operation was running on borrowed time, if this crisis hadn’t arrived, something else would have done. Time to rub that in a little.
“So, how many troops do you have Lieutenant?”
“Armed with our weapons? Around thirty. Split equally between the two flanks. About sixty more with captured baldrick equipment, some reinforcing the positions on either flank, the rest string out along the river.” Jackson and Caesar exchanged glances, the Lieutenant was a pilot, not a ground-pounder and her dispositions had made that fact clear. They were an invitation to disaster. “I know, I know, but we’ve got some things running for us. The whole area on these flanks is a maze of minefields and demolition charges. Ever since we blew up Asmodeus, we’ve got the baldricks too scared to put their feet on the ground. Just often enough, when one of them does so, it kills them. The river is wide open, I know it, but we can’t be strong everywhere. He who tries to defend everything…”
“Defends nothing. Quite right Jade.” Caesar looked at the map, probably the first accurate one that had ever been drawn in Hell. “Colonel, you’re the expert, I’m just the representative of the free human population down here, what do you recommend?”
Jackson caught the fleeting smirk on Kim’s face and guessed that Caesar had been given a quick introductory lesson on the concept of civilian control of the military. And was now using it to his advantage. Oh, it was to his own advantage, Jackson knew that, Gaius Julius Caesar was up to something. That insight came from the simple
appreciation that Gaius Julius Caesar was always up to something, the only real question was, what? Jackson was highly doubtful that the man’s ambitions were restricted to a few square kilometers of mud on the banks of the Styx. Still, that matter could wait until later. As could the command issues that this whole little skirmish had highlighted. He had no doubt they were being discussed at a much higher level than his.
“We must assume the force moving along the river is our first priority. I’ll string my battalion out along that front, its thin coverage but with down here with modern weapons, we can hold much longer fronts than in normal wars. I’ll have to depend on your people to hold our flanks Kim. But frankly, if the baldricks hit us with a coordinated attack, both flanks and the river, we’re gone. There is no possibility of us stopping an attack like that.”
Caesar got up and stared across at the great cloud of dust that hung over the site of Satan’s palace. “Well, we’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t we?”
Palace of Deumos, City of Dis, Hell
Deumos stood on her balcony, looking at the same great cloud of dust. For weeks she had been struggling with the problem of what to do and where to cast her allegiance. At first, she had been swayed by her vassal Lugasharmanaska’s opinion that humans could not lose. She had seen them invade Hell, seen their columns first make the Martial Plain of Dysprosium untenable to the demons and then bring it under their sway. Then they had started to build up their defense along the Phlegethon and Deumos had been on the verge of casting her lot irrevocably in with them. Then, had come news of Belial’s success at Sheffield and she had hastily reconsidered, to make a firm decision might yet be premature. Dee-Troyt had confirmed that, or so she had thought.