by Stuart Slade
“Alright, that’s good enough for me,” Walsch muttered. He lined up the shot and fired. The round took the baldrick in the throat, blowing out just about everything between his massive deltoids. Pouring blood out all over the packed, burnt earth, he stumbled, staggered, then crashed right at the feet of its target, who watched in befuddlement.
“Chump,” Walsch grinned. DeVanzo clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey Ori, why don’t you go finish it off, and bring the new recruit back up here, OK?”
Ori frowned, but drew his katana nonetheless and began crossing the open ground to reach his feebly-moving target. It was only seventy-five meters, but he covered it quickly and hacked the demon’s head off without delay. As he did this, DeVanzo and Walsch took up a new position, fifteen meters to the north.
“Shit,” DeVanzo said suddenly. “Shit shit shit, another baldrick!”
Walsch swung his rifle around. A baldrick within miles of another sentry was unheard of. The patrols were frequent enough to catch the escapees, and that was all that mattered. That’s why they were able to pull this off with a single rifle and a spotter or two. They must be pairing the patrols. They’re reacting to what we’re doing. This baldrick was not like his now-dead partner. He did not bellow or scream. He stalked forward at an inhuman rate, raising his trident high. Ori didn’t see it coming, and the rescued human was still half blind. So Tom Walsch chambered a round, took aim, and fired. The shot was hurried, but it was lucky. It winged off the baldrick’s elbow, no doubt shattering bone and shredding muscle. He dropped his trident with a roar of anger and pain and stopped, looking for the source of this new attack.
“OK, Ori, time to go,” DeVanzo hissed quietly. Walsch took aim and shot at the baldrick, who was now scanning the treeline. He must’ve spotted them, because he was in motion just before the shot rang out. Instead of catching him in the chest, he moved just enough to one side that he took the round in the upper arm—the one that had already been shot. He hit the ground hard but got back up quickly.
But Walsch was quicker. He chambered a round, aimed, fired—and nothing happened.
“Shit, misfire.” Walsch groaned and worked the action of the rifle. It refused to budge. “Jammed up.”
Now the baldrick had definitely spotted them, and he roared a monstrous battle cry. But before he could take a step, Ori was there, blade at the ready, bellowing his own challenge to the massive beast.
“What is he doing?” Walsch cried out, while working to clear his weapon.
“He’s starting to believe,” DeVanzo stated with awe. “He’s The One.”
“Now is not the time for Matrix jokes!” Walsch said.
The baldrick only had one good arm, but that meant he retained eighty percent of his deadly ends. He swiped at Ori, but he dodged with blinding quickness and countered with a slice. The baldrick had the sense to offer his mangled flesh, but he hadn’t counted on the blade being of iron. The wound seared as the blade bit deep, and the baldrick reared back in shock, kicking at the offending creature with one foot.
Ori was already in position to meet the incoming appendage, and he held his blade firm. It passed between two toes, cutting the webbing there and carving deep into his foot. When Ori twisted the blade and wrenched it free, the baldrick couldn’t help but scream. Now limping, he swiped again with his hand, catching nothing and receiving a flurry of slashes from that wretched iron blade. Ori was without pity or quarter, nor was he stylish. He opened up as many wounds as he could, as quickly as he could, until the demon was attempting to hobble away in retreat.
But there would be no retreat. Ori feigned a lateral slash, and when the baldrick made to block it, he swooped in slow and stabbed up between the plates of his armor, entering at the armpit and piercing to the heart. Ori received three horrendous lacerations across his back for it, but it didn’t matter anymore. The baldrick fell to his knees, limp and defenseless. Screaming with the strength of a half a millennium of remembered agony, Ori cleaved the baldrick’s head from his shoulders in two savage blows. The entire fight had taken less than twenty seconds.
DeVanzo and Walsch looked at each other. “Mission accomplished,” Walsch whispered. “Now let’s get outta Dodge.” The leaped from the forest, DeVanzo running to gather up the wounded Ori, and Walsch to fetch the latest rescuee. Overhead, there was a berserk scream, one that neither Ori nor Aeneas could recognize. The Americans did and they looked up with elation at the F-111s making their slow, lazy turn overhead.
Secure Facility, Camp Hell-Alpha, Martial Plain of Dysprosium.
“Got them.” The intelligence officer had the 10x12 inch prints in his hand. More were still coming over but these were the critical ones, the pictures of the Hellpit itself. The F-111s had landed a few minutes before and the digitally-recorded pictures had been sent over by fiber-optic cable. Another sign of just how much things were changing; Hell now had computer access, or rather the human army fighting there did.
General Petraeus looked at the prints. “It’s a caldera, no doubt about it. A supervolcano caldera. Like the one that’s supposed to be under Yellowstone. Must be bigger though.”
“Yeah, size ain’t a problem for this thing. Explains the foul atmosphere of this place. That thing must be pumping the contaminants upwards. Take a look at these enlargements Sir. Shows what’s going on down there.”
Petraeus looked at the enlargements and then sharply at the third person in the room, the hulking figure of Abigor. “We knew it was bad in there, not this bad. Looks like Dante was spot-on in his description of the place though. More or less.” He paused for a second trying to regain his balance. Then, he addressed Abigor. “How could you, how could anybody do this?”
“We must.” Abigor’s voice was unapologetic. “Our survival depends on it. You kill lower animals to eat, to provide yourselves with food. This is no different, to us you are, were, lower animals to be exploited. So we exploited you to fill our needs.”
Petraeus reflected that Abigor was going to have to be very careful how he spoke in future. Otherwise he wasn’t going to survive much longer. There was an old Western custom involving a tree and a rope that was likely to be reborn. “This isn’t farming for food. This is just inflicting suffering for the sheer joy of it.”
“We do not eat your kind just for food although your kidlings are great delicacies.”
Yup thought Petraeus, he was going to have to be much more careful. “Then why?”
“Because we need the energy. When you humans live, you build up energy in your bodies. When you die, that energy boosts you up from your level to ours. But the energy barrier that separates us from the next level up is much stronger than the one that separates your level from ours. We need much more energy to cross it, energy we generate by prolonging the second deaths of your kind.”
“How do you know this?” Petraeus was genuinely curious, for the first time he was getting a real insight into the mind of Humanity’s greatest enemy.
“Because Satan told us so. Yahweh harvests energy as well for the same reason only he gathers his by making his subjects worship him. He gets the power from devotion.”
“Like the Ori.” The Intelligence officer was an avid Stargate fan.
Petraeus wasn’t but he still got the reference. “And that makes the baldricks like the Goa’uld I suppose. Abigor, you didn’t answer my question. How do you know this?”
“Because it is so. It has always been so. We must harvest energy to cross the barrier to the afterlife. Satan has us do so by the torments of the pit, Yahweh by demanding unending worship.”
“But that doesn’t make any kind of sense. How can two such totally different approaches yield the results you demand? It just doesn’t make sense.” The frustration was creeping through into Petraeus’s voice.
“As I said, it is what Yahweh and Satan both said. Why should they lie? They are Gods, they demand faith,”
“And I’m a General, I demand firepower. And we’ve seen what happens when your faith meet
s my firepower. The truth is Abigor, you don’t know any of this. You’ve got no proof for any of it. You’ve been sold a bill of goods, just like we were for so many thousands of years. You’ve been fooled, just like we were.”
Abigor stared at the pictures taken by the RF-111C, thoughts churning in his mind. He’d never thought this through before, those to whom he owed allegiance had demanded he accept their words and he had. But now he owed allegiance to humans and humans demanded proof. Those were their eternal replies when somebody claimed something. ‘Prove it.’ “How do you know?’ ‘What’s your proof?’ “If you can’t prove it, then it isn’t so.’ And the answer he could give to all those was ‘I can’t.’ For everything he believed was unproven. And that meant so many things.
Abigor spoke very slowly as the words formed in his mind, breaking the mental blocks of millennia. “No, I don’t know any of this. I just believed it. And if my belief was false.” His great clawed hand waved over the pictures. “Then all of this, all of it, was for nothing.
Chapter Forty Seven
Sheffield Cathedral, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Lakheenahuknaasi flapped clumsily over the vast human metropolis, making her way to the place where she could sense the half-open portal pushing gently against the fabric of this plane. She was freezing, aching and frustrated. The city was supposed to be a great engine of industry, but she could see no great fires or forges, nor could she hear the ringing of hammers on anvils. Instead there was an endless jumble of tightly packed stone buildings, tiny ones with peaked roofs and much larger boxy ones. Ahead, surrounding the place where the portal was lodged great towers thrust into the sky. Impossibly, many of them seemed to be made out of glass. No; as she got closer, Lakheenahuknaasi sensed that they had skeletons of iron. She shuddered. Humans were far too fond of iron.
The gorgon sited the spot where the embryonic portal was floating and smiled faintly at the irony. Invisible to the naked eye in its current state, the inter-dimensional nexus was hovering perhaps a hundred yards above a large temple to Yahweh, the walls of which were awash with the light of human magic. Lakeenah blinked. What she had taken to be an outbuilding next to the temple revealed itself to be a giant metal snake. As she watched it whined loudly and began to hauled its segmented bulk away into the city. At this point she had ceased even trying to comprehend the purpose behind the bizarre human constructs.
In truth she was not sure where else to put the portal. The horrid snow had stopped, but the low clouds and mist had kept visibility down to a couple of miles. She had risked one quick, wide circle around the temple and spied a few structures that appeared to be large chimneys, but no smoke issued from them. Lakeenah settled on destroying as many of the huge towers as possible. They seemed more like palaces than castles; undoubtedly they were occupied by the city’s elite, the overseers and the most skilled artisans. Even this was not straightforward. The terrain was quite hilly and if she placed the portal in the wrong spot the lava might flow around the towers without destroying them. She settled on a monolithic black tower that stood proudly above and a little apart from the rest. It was sited on a low hill and at the top of a slight groove, which she hoped would act as a channel leading straight to the rest of the towers.
Lakheenahuknaasi finished her approach and began a slow descending glide over the temple. Bracing herself for the pain, she prepared to reach out with her psychic power to grasp the nexus. The familiar stinging sensation washed over her wings and suddenly she had it. Pumping her wings with grim determination, she strained to drag the nexus away from the temple. Immediately she could feel her queen’s powerful presence.
“I have it. I am moving the nexus… into position.” Lakheenahuknaasi exclaimed, with the mental equivalent of a gasp.
Euryale replied with a curt “Good. Do not fail me now.”
Lakheenahuknaasi sensed the portal swelling as the naga back in Hell poured energy into it. She had the target in sight, but it seemed agonizingly far away. The pent up psychic force was building to monstrous proportions and she had to switch from ‘pulling’ the nexus to ‘pushing’ against it to prevent it opening prematurely. At last she was almost over the tower.
“Ready!” she shouted into the ether, hoping Euryale sensed her over the human din and howling energy of the portal itself. She released the nexus, half-folded her wings and dropped away from the tower, racing to escape the literal piece of hell that was about to be unleashed.
MD-902 G-SYPS (South Yorkshire Police Air Support Unit)
Peter Taranaski swung the helicopter around in a lazy semi-circle, ready for another slow pass over Hillsborough. Police work didn’t pay well, but it was a lot more interesting than playing air taxi to overpaid executives or spending all day creeping along power lines. Better yet, there was the regular thrill of accomplishing the mission, protecting the public and nabbing the bad guys. Back in the army air corps, it had mostly been an endless series of make-believe exercises. Even in weather like this, he was usually eager to take to the Explorer up, but when the scramble order came through he was expecting yet another false alarm. Now that command had confirmed baldrick activity in the peaks the tension in the cabin was palpable.
In the left seat Sergeant Oliver Webster was staring intently at his main monitor, which was showing a thermal image of the streets below. The younger man had quickly gained a reputation for competence and calmly directing ground units through crisis situations. In Pete’s opinion though, the sergeant took life a bit too seriously; in particular, his jokes were usually met with a disapproving silence. That was one good thing about the war; the second observer position had been replaced by a couple of heavily armed squaddies, who did seem to appreciated his one-liners.
The RT crackled. “Sierra Yankee Nine Nine, new baldrick sighting reported, single flyer low over the town hall, over.”
Webster was quick to respond. “Acknowledged. We’ll head over there now. We’ve covered Hillsborough twice now, nothing to report.” His voice continued over the intercom “Peter, I’d like an orbit of the ring road.”
“Confirmed.” Pete eased the cyclic forward and the aircraft began to pick up speed until it was holding 60 knots. ”I’ll take it easy. No sense wasting fuel.”
He looked over at Sergeant Webster, who nodded. Other units were scouring the Peaks for baldrick invaders, they were tasked with rapid response should the demons slip through the net to populated area. That meant maximizing endurance, as they’d do no good if they were down for refueling when the baldricks went on a rampage.
“Sierra Yankee Nine Nine, make that multiple sightings, at least one baldrick over Pond’s Forge, priority one, over.”
“Roger control, on our way.” Webster replied. Pete had already dipped the nose and the MD 902 leapt forward, speeding towards the city centre. He cut in on the RT “Have ATC got a blip this time? Over.”
There was a long silence. “Ah, negative Sierra Yankee. They’ve got some kind of interference though. Radar cover is compromised.”
Sergeant Webster had zoomed the IR camera and had a pulsating speck centered on his monitor. As the helicopter drew closer it took a form reminiscent of a giant long-legged bat. “Baldrick sighted! Single flyer at 600 feet AGL, heading west from cathedral, over.”
The reply was immediate and emphatic. “Say again Sierra Yankee, one baldrick flyer over central Sheffield? We’ve lost your telemetry.”
Pete had a visual on the baldrick and was maneuvering the helicopter into its rear quarter, staying well back. The Explorer was quieter than most helicopters, primarily due to its lack of a tail rotor, but he was still under no illusions that the baldrick couldn’t hear them. He just didn’t want to force a confrontation until they were ready.
“Affirmative, baldrick flyer proceeding west towards university at about 50 knots. It’s a small one…” Webster’s voice trailed off. He had switched back to visual and noticed that the demons wings were glowing with a ghostly blue-white light. Worse, the air beneath th
e creature was shimmering, as if by heat haze. What the devil was it up to?
“Ack… ledged… alert… intercept com… def..” The duty officer’s voice distorted and dropped out. Sergeant Webster flipped channels but the error indicator on the radio panel wouldn’t go out. It had to be whatever the demon was doing, if the radar was affected too. Time to make a judgment call.
“Peter, take us up over it for a shot.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Corporal, you’re up. Take it down.”
The two riflemen were ready for the order and sprang immediately into action. Private Hughes slammed back the door, while Corporal Sinker heaved his AS50 anti-material rifle onto the pintle mount. The target was easy to make out despite the fog, with the bright glow emanating from its wings… but then the light suddenly went out and the bat-like shape veered off and dropped away. Sinker put his eye to the scope, hoping to line up a shot before the helo started changing position… and then recoiled from a sudden, overpowering rush of heat and light. An impossibly deep, deafeningly loud roar had a moment to pound his ears before the helicopter was sucked into the maelstrom.
The University of Sheffield, 11:26pm GMT
The Arts Tower was a Sheffield landmark, a striking twenty-one story monolith built in the early sixties and still the tallest university building in the British Isles. The midnight black disc of the portal swelled into existence almost directly above the tower, appearing for all the world like a flying saucer from a low-budget sci-fi movie. In the space of an eye-blink a glowing stream of magma had burst out from the disc’s lower surface and begun to plummet towards the building, while from the upper surface a fountain of liquid rock sprayed into the air. A full four seconds passed as the magma blossomed in mid-air; those few onlookers that survived would later report being transfixed by the deadly beauty of the scene. Then the crushing stream smashed into the tower’s west side, driving it into the ground and exploding the opposite side in a spray of fire and shrapnel.