Armageddon??

by Stuart Slade

  And now under a short crew with most of her civilian workers onboard, monitoring the ship’s machinery and running final tests, she was making ten knots through the shipping channel of Rich Passage out to Puget Sound for the speed trials which would put her boilers to the test.

  “Sophia!?” Dr. Brown stepped down into the engine room, as unflappably calm about the situation as might be expected, even when he had to shout to be heard. “Can you check some the connections on the foremast!? We’re having some problems in CIC with the radar feed from the SPS-64!”

  “And I’m the only one who won’t fall off the mast, right, because everyone else is a fat nerd.”

  “Hey! I resemble that remark!” Mark, it turned out, still had enough of his hearing left that he could hear her from his position next to her.

  “Yes! Yes you do! Watch to pressure for me?”

  “No problem!”

  She left the engine room in some relief and climbed up to where the usual Washington rain met her. That, and the other ship that the Engineering students had been tapped into working with, to her surprise at delight—the ferry Kalakala, miraculously restored from a rusting hulk—well, she was still a rusting hulk, but one that worked, hauling a load of shipyard workers in from Seattle on the cross-sound run, her direct drive diesel sounding like it would destroy the army of Hell by sound alone. Along with the four Steel Electrics and the Olympic, they filled out the ferry service while the Super’s had been pulled from the regular routes to do commuter service between Seattle and Boeing Everett via Mukilteo, and Todd in Tacoma on the other side of things, also replacing a large number of rationed cars. In some respects, it was a return to the 1880s for the region—every single boat which could carry large numbers of passengers was pressed into service as a new Mosquito fleet now gas rationing was taking effect and they could supplement buses on land. Even the rusted and battered old Kalakala would have to last just long enough for new vessels to be built.

  Just like the Turner Joy would. Sophia reached the foretop with some pride in the fast of even a light breeze, the Kalakala hammering her way to Bremerton in their wake, Rich Passage churned with the speed of her effort, all concerns over shore erosion gone, and the destroyer, for her part, was now at last rounding Bainbridge island with the open waters of the Sound ready for their speed run north through Admiralty Inlet to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the national flag crisp in the wind, though for the moment there was no jack. Sophia got to work with her diagnostic equipment—it turned out to be just another artifact of the rush job, and five minutes of twisting and adjustment solved the problem. The climb back down came just in time, too, as Commander Reynolds brought them around to port and rang up revolutions for twenty-five knots. The brave old lady dug in her heels and surged forward. Everything worked perfectly as billows of oil smoke trailed behind her.

  They brought their course a bit to starboard to avoid the huge M/V Spokane as she made the Bainbridge Island run, and then leveled off north by northwest while Sophia stepped in to make her report to Doctor Brown—and then to Commander Reynolds, who, effective tomorrow, would be kicking them all off and turning the Turner Joy back into a warship. So life went in the age of gasoline rationing and electronics doubling in price as the industry retooled for War, of vehicles emptying from the dealerships back near home on Auto Center Way, and not being replaced. Of a country, after more than sixty years, united in will and purpose to fight a war for the liberation of their forefathers.

  Sophia stepped back out on deck to clamber below to return to the engine room. Commander Reynolds ordered revolutions for thirty-two knots rung up. Now the old lady bit her heels in as far as she could and surged north, under the black trail only an oil-fired steam man’o’war could make, and aimed her bow for Admiralty Inlet, the deep dark waters of the sound combing off and around her and lashing Sophia with spray. She lingered for a moment, looking fore to aft: Three 5in/54cal rapid-fire guns and three twin Type B 40mm DARDO mounts. The Italians had come up trumps there. The OTO Melara facility in Turin was working triple shifts to turn the mounts out and had donated the three mounts ‘for the common good’. Two of the twin-forties replaced her long-gone 3in/50’s, the third was amidships. Elsewhere six single unstabilized 25mm mounts were cramming the decks in every place they could be laid, triple torpedo tubes again ready to be fired, and depth charge racks aft.

  She was ready to fight; but Sophia didn’t want the ship fighting for her family, in a perverse way she still felt guilty about. Her parents and grandparents had died with The Message, religious to a fault and obedient to an end. They had laid down and refused to move or indeed do anything at all, and within a couple days, simply died where they had been, as they had been ordered to do, of natural causes—while she cried and screamed and tore herself to pieces trying to save them, even ripping the earrings out of her mother’s ears in a last desperate hope that pain might bring her back where love had failed, and where the emergency services were far to overwhelmed by the scale of the task involved in simply removing the bodies to offer any aide.

  The ship thrummed comfortingly below her, and Sophia climbed back inside and below decks. She had helped bring the Turner Joy back to life, but she hoped the ship wouldn’t bring her parents back to live. The months of scar tissue, and the searing memory of their brutal abandonment of her and her fourteen year old sister, had turned into a bitter hate that left her to whisper, lost over the engines, “I hope they find you last, right goddamned next to Josephus Daniels.” Back to work. They were making 32kts, after all, and engines didn’t do that without help.

  Belial’s Palace, Tartarus, Hell

  Euryale had been in the wyvern caves when the lookouts spotted the Belial’s meager formation, and by the time she’d glided down to the courtyard he’d already gone inside. The gorgon caught up with the count in the throne room, where he was already issuing orders.

  “…full mobilization immediately, you will lead them down into to Asphodel Plains tomorrow. Satan has granted me the whole province, but there may be some foolhardy barons who… Euryale!”

  As she made eye contact with her lord, she saw something she’d never seen before. Euryale had seen Belial frightened before, many times when he had pushed one of the dukes too far and Tartarus had come close to being invaded, but there was none of the bluster this time. His gaze was flat and hard, weary yet manically determined. She couldn’t put her talon on what this meant and that worried her, though he did seem genuinely pleased to see her.

  “I’ll need you too, await me in my study.” Belial jerked his head in the appropriate direction and then turned back to his officers.

  Euryale arrived to find Baron Trajakrithoth already there. The huge brown demon was wearing his greasy bronze armour as usual – Euryale couldn’t remember ever seeing him without it – and cradling the ‘gun’ he’d spent so much time working on. From what she’d overhead in the throne room it seemed that Belial would want to talk about occupying territory, so she made herself useful by retrieving the largest map of hell from its bronze storage tube and spreading it on the table. The ornate map was covered in tiny images of monstrous creatures and blocky keeps.

  The Count arrived at last, accompanied by Castellean Zatheoplekkar, the most trusted of his officers. He was the only one of Belial’s original legion commanders to stay with his lord through disgrace, exile and all the millenia of obscurity and ridicule since. Perhaps now that loyalty would pay off, if the Count had really been awarded the former holdings of Asmodeus. At a gesture from his lord, Zatheoplekkar slammed and barred the heavy doors. Belial sat down in his throne and stared off into space for a moment, before fixing each of them with his gaze.

  “Our lord Satan has decreed that knowing what I am about to tell you is grounds for immediate execution. I will not hesitate to enforce this order if I discover that you have revealed the situation to any others without my express permission.” Belial paused for a second to allow this to sink in.

  “Three days a
go, the humans used their ‘aircraft’ to smash the tip of Lucifer’s Finger. Satan’s place was completely destroyed, rendered into rubble along with everything nearby. I commanded near a hundred orcs to dig through the ruins for half a day, but we found no survivors. Our lord survived only because he was away, sightseeing over the pit on that monstrosity Euryale made for him.”

  “You understand what this means? The humans can destroy any strongpoint, anywhere. Their sky chariots fly too fast, too high to be stopped. With what we’ve done, and with that traitor Abigor…” Belial’s tone dripped with contempt for the turncoat general “…must be telling them, it’s only a matter of time before they come here.”

  The room fell silent. The destruction of Satan’s palace was nearly unthinkable, no one knew how to respond to it. Yet Belial still had more bad news to deliver.

  “As I returned from Dis I overflew Beezelbub’s army, or rather the tattered remnants of it. The humans had destroyed it almost completely. Our wyvern riders – the few who survived – speak of poison fog that strikes down all who enter and rolling thunder that obliterates everything in its path. In short the human used their magery to destroy our grand army, while suffering trivial casualties in return.”

  Belial looked upon the faces of his servants and saw shock, horror and poorly concealed disbelief. “There can be no denying this. We thought we were going to earth to exterminate the humans, but in truth exactly the opposite is happening. They have come here to destroy us utterly, to slaughter every demon in hell, and so far our armies have been as helpless against theirs as theirs once were against us.”

  Euryale spoke at last. “Count Belial, you make our doom sound almost inevitable. Yet you do not despair. So you must have a plan to stop the humans?”

  “Actually it’s Grand Duke Belial now, for what that’s worth. I am Satan’s favored servant, at least for as long as our Lord can evade the hunting aircraft.”

  “I am certain that the humans will strike Tartarus the way they struck Lucifer’s Finger. It is only a matter of time. I intend to preserve my own forces at all costs and rally what I can of the Asmodeus’s reserves. We will move into Asphodel immediately. Zatheoplekkar, you will devise marching orders that avoid concentrating our troops in obvious strongpoints or large formations. The humans are moving on Dis and despite their magery it will take them time to reduce a city of that size. We have some time to prepare defenses.”

  Zatheoplekkar was staring at the map, a charcoal stick clutched in one hand. “My lord, we can occupy the territory, but if what you say is true what good will it do us? If the Lord of the Flies could not stop them…”

  Belial cut him off. “Your goal is to buy time. Perhaps you can draw inspiration from the defensive tactics the human use - I will have you question the wyvern riders about what they saw of the battle later. For any hope of success, we rely on the efforts of Trajakrithoth and Euryale.” He turned to the hulking forge master. “What progress have you to report?”

  The baron had been eager to demonstrate his new weapon, but now the obvious inadequacy of it in the face of the situation made him almost ashamed. He had no choice but to proceed though.

  “The humans call this a ‘shotgun’. The escort we sent with that first gorgon, they brought it back from earth. We can’t make an exact duplicate, but we can make something that works well enough. I’ll show you.”

  Trajakrithoth raised the black double-tube, gripping the bulging end with a single massive hand. The weapon now possessed a pair of tiny holes in the top of the chamber, each with a ring of bronze soldered clumsily around it. The demon pulled out a phial of powder and tipped a tiny amount into one of the bronze rings, then drew out a taper and lit it from one of the candles. He pointed the weapon at a wall and touched the burning taper to the improvised flash pan.

  Flame spewed from the barrel, accompanied by a retort that was deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. The thick cloud of acrid smoke made the demon’s eyes water as it dispersed into the room. The stones in the far wall had cracked and now had several lumps of jagged iron embedded in them.

  “The weapons we are making now will be easier to fire of course, though harder to reload, as we have not found a way to make the barrel break open” ‘At least not without exploding’ Trajakrithoth thought, but no need for his lord to know that.

  “Euryale’s handmaiden described something called ‘flintlocks’, which would be even better, but for now we are making what she called ‘matchlocks’…”

  Trajakrithoth’s voice trailed off. Belial had leapt to his feet and his expression has furious.

  “Toys! Worthless toys!” The horned demon lord grabbed the improvised arquebus from his servant’s hands. “You expect this to stop an iron chariot? How am I to defeat the humans with such pitiful weapons?”

  Despite his bulk Trajakrithoth was cowering and for a moment Euryale expected Belial to kill him right there, but amazingly Belial managed to reign in his rage. His expression softened and he handed the gun back to the other demon, then grabbed his shoulders.

  “Trajakrithoth, I am certain this would have been a useful terror weapon if we were fighting demon armies. But the situation has changed. You must give me a way to stop the aircraft and the iron chariots. You must find it soon or we are all food for the humans. Do you understand me?”

  “My lord, I… what you ask… I don’t know it is even possible…”

  “Euryale, you still those human traitors who claimed to know how to build their weapons, yes?”

  “Yes, my lord. They are here in the palace. I assigned some of my gorgons to continue manipulating them, cementing their loyalties.”

  “Send them all down to Palelabor with Trajakrithoth. Secrecy is irrelevant now. Do whatever you have to, tell them whatever you have to, ignore any traditions that get in the way. Just find me a way to destroy those iron chariots.”

  Trajakrithoth still looked dazed by this radical turn of events; meanwhile, Euryale was calculating furiously. Belial frowned. “The humans draw closer every moment. Move!” Shocked out of his stupor, Trajakrithoth bowed clumsily and ran from the room.

  As soon as the doors had slammed shut again, Euryale spoke up. “Are we to continue the lava attacks on the human cities?”

  “Of course. Satan commands it. More importantly, it would be pointless to stop now. The humans will be coming for us either way, so we might as well inflict what wounds we can on them.”

  “But if they do strike, destroy your palace, would it not be best to stop attacking, make them think they killed you? If your goal is to buy time…”

  Belial stared at Euryale. “I will decide policy here. What news from your servant on earth? Has she identified more targets for us?”

  “My lord, not only has she done that, she believes she can attack them even without portals. She has built up quite a cult and her humans have been telling her about ‘karr bombs’ and ‘EyeEeeDees’…”

  Belial waved dismissively. “Fine, tell her to continue. But I have a more urgent task for you. The humans have revealed themselves to be a more formidable enemy than the Enemy himself ever was. It is time to see whether the Enemy of our enemy might be our friend.”

  Deep Beneath the Tartauran Range

  The rough hewn tunnel went on and on, descending deeper than Herwijer had thought possible given the demon’s primitive tools. The huge armored demon seemed to read his mind; “It took hundreds of slaves a score of human lifetimes to reach the veins I scried, and two score more to dig out the complex itself.” The huge platform bumped and swayed as it ran on into the darkness, its bronze wheels screaming in complaint as they rounded the sharper terms. The hot, dead air suddenly became damp, and presently the walls fell away as they passed over a rough stone bridge spanning a vast chasm. The torches on the cart could revealed nothing in that vast space to human eyes, but Herwijer thought he could make out the faint splashing and roaring of running water before they plunged into the opposite wall. They continued on for another ten m
inutes, the monotony now broken by the occasional side tunnel, all of which looked thoroughly abandoned.

  Presently the tracks emerged into another vast cavern, but this time there was no water and the air became suffocatingly close. Instead Herwijer caught a brief glimpse of monstrous shapes, seemingly half-man and half-rat, clinging onto the walls of the cavern. Their eyes flashed red with hatred and fear, before they scurrying away into the darkness. The platform began to slow as it passed over the second bridge, a persistent whining building into an ear-splitting scream as the servitor demon applied the brakes. Huge piles of smashed rock were visible to either side of the track, the spoil of uncounted centuries of mining. A dim glow appeared ahead, resolving into a pair of ornate bronze doors set in a carved stone archway that must be a hundred feet high. Numerous burning torches protruded from niches in the stonework, maintaining the cavern’s smoky atmosphere and giving the whole scene an appropriately hellish glow. For a moment it appeared that they were not slowing fast enough and every human on the platform braced in anticipation of hitting the doors, but with a great crack they split apart, drawing open at the pull of creaking chains.

  The platform screeched to a stop in the entrance hall. Great carved columns supported the roof of a vast space, mostly filled with crates, barrels and neatly stacked metal bars. The humans stared around them, seeing a maze of tunnels leading off in every direction. A steady yellow glow lit many of the lower tunnels, suggesting open lava flows close by. Swarming everywhere were short but stocky demons, with grey skin and hairless but for a mass of bedraggled, matted fur hanging from the bottom of their wizened faces. Most of them were carrying picks, axes and tongs. They seemed to move with furious industry; they barely paused to incline their heads to Trajakrithoth before continuing with whatever tasks they were set. Herwijer blinked and looked closer. The tools they were carrying were made of iron.

  Trajakrithoth spoke at last, he voice filled with pride. “Humans, know that you are uniquely privileged, for of all your kind you are the first to ever enter the Fortress of Palelabor.”