Armageddon?? (111 page)

A
mix of BLU-116 Advanced Unitary Penetrator bombs and Mark 83 conventional bombs
were stowed within the cavernous forward bomb bay of the B-1s. Trafford had
wondered why the BLU-116s were being used rather than the Massive Ordnance
Penetrators that had made such a spectacular ruin of Satan’s palace but it had
been explained that there were mines underneath the Adamantine Fortress and
there were human slaves in those mines. It was, therefore, desirable to destroy
the fortress without too high a probability of caving in the mines underneath.
The BLU-116 fulfilled that role perfectly. The Mark 83s had been substituted
for anti-personnel cluster bombs at the last minute, supplies of the cluster
bombs were running very low and they were being saved for even more pressing
targets. With the assault on Dis just days away, Trafford could see why.

He
felt the snap as the bomb bay doors opened and the vibration as the aircraft’s
bomb load started to pour out of its forward bay. That would give the aircraft
a C-of-G problem until the fuel in the tank occupying the aft bomb bay had been
consumed. But, that extra fuel tank gave them a margin of safety in the event
of problems with the intricate chain of tankers that were supposed to get the
bombers home. Beneath him, Trafford saw the target area disappearing under a
rolling cloud of explosions. Mission accomplished.

South
of the Adamantine Fortress, Hell

“Will
you look at that!” Tucker McElroy whooped and smacked the nearest member of his
team soundly on the back as the fortress they were observing disintegrated into
a rolling cloud of brilliant orange and black explosions, punctuated by the
roar of the blasts and brilliant flashes of light as the structure of the
building shattered under the hammering of the bombs. The whole of his team were
dancing with delight as the ground shook under their feet and the air around
them roiled from the devastating destruction that was being meted out. Through
the blasts, McElroy could see the whole structure collapsing into a pile of
formless wreckage. Revenge was definitely an under-rated pastime he reflected.

Beside
him Memnon watched the bombing with awe, he’d heard claims that Satan’s palace
had been destroyed but he had dismissed them as exaggerations and propaganda.
Now, with Belial’s palace crumbling before his eyes he forced himself to
remember that where destruction was concerned, nothing was beyond the abilities
of the humans. Nothing in hell anyway.

“That’s
show the bastard to pour lava on our cities.” McElroy was still whooping with
delight. “And once we’ve finished with this place, we’ve got a few other scores
to settle as well.”

“With
Yahweh?” Memnon was curious. “You humans plan to deal with him as well.”

“Of
course.” McElroy paused. “We’ve already got one of his minions. Some bastard
called Appollyon or something. One of our tank-heads blew him away in Iraq. The
shit-head had slaughtered an entire family and sat there drinking tea
surrounded by the bodies. Until an Abrams turned up and blasted him. He died,
just like the ones down here.”

Memnon
remembered the incident and thought about correcting McElroy’s version of
events but decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Anyway, if the mistake
meant the humans were going after Yahweh as well, who was he to argue? Yahweh
had always been a great one for saying nothing happened without a reason, so he
couldn’t complain about this could he? Besides, only two beings, Apollyon and
Memnon, knew what had really happened that night and Apollyon wasn’t talking.
That made Memnon think back on the creature he had been then and compared it
with his present status. The thought made him uneasy, these people had taken
him in, cared for him, cured his wounds, respected him for his abilities and
applauded his efforts. Compared with the savagery of the demons and the
arrogant, supercilious cruelty of the angels, weren’t they the examples to be
upheld and emulated?

“Beware,
for the angels have powers and abilities all of their own.” Memnon spoke
slowly. “We beat them in the Great Celestial War only by great efforts and much
sacrifice. You will not find them as easy to beat as the enemy here. I know
some, Abigor knows more. What we know we will tell you but I warn you there are
many more weapons that the angels can deploy against us than we know.” Memnon
looked again at the crumbing ruin of Belial’s fortress then frowned. He focused
his vision to great distances and saw the columns heading north. “And I fear
Belial anticipated your raid. He had evacuated the Adamantine Fortress and
headed north. Why I cannot tell you.”

Cabinet
Conference Room, The White House, Washington D.C.

The
conference room was bitterly cold, primarily because the air conditioning had
been turned up to its maximum setting. Demons liked warmth and President George
Bush saw no reason why their visitor should be comfortable. Also, the air
purification system was running full blast and the air current out through the
vents in the floor were enough to rustle papers.

“This
is crunch time Lugasharmanaska.”

“Crunch
time Sir?”

“Time
to make a choice. You’ve been playing both ends against the middle ever since
you surrendered to us. We knew it of course and it suited us to let it
continue. Now, it doesn’t. You’re going to have to pick sides. You’re either
with us or with Deumos. That means with us or against us. Which? Make up your
mind.” Bush sat in his seat with a gentle smile on his face. One he usually
reserved for people he was allowing to hang themselves.

Lugasharmanaska
stared back. She’d long accepted that her miasma no longer worked but the blunt
statement shocked her. Succubae weren’t used to be given ultimatums. She tried
to buy time, to think this through. “My choices Sir?”

“You
can stay here with us, work with us without reservations, or go back with
Deumos. Take your pick.”

The
succubus weighed options briefly. “I will work with you Sir. My place is here
now.” It hadn’t taken much, when Deumos had contacted her, asking to arrange
this meeting Lugasharmanaska had quickly probed her mind, as much as she was
able, and detected a tinge of anticipation that did not bode well for her. She
had a strong suspicion that despite her efforts, Deumos did not look well upon
her and had a gruesome revenge in mind. The humans were a safer bet, much
safer.

“Good.
Welcome to the team. You may leave now.” Lugasharmanaska left with her guards.
She may have joined the team but Bush intended to take no chances. “Show Deumos
in.”

The
Queen of the Succubae or whatever she chose to call herself, was big, Bush
reflected. The creature was walking crouched and bent-over and was still
finding it hard to fit into the confined spaces of the White House. Even when
she sat on the floor by the table, her horns still nearly touched the roof.
Bush had no doubt that the gas chromatographs measuring pheromone levels in the
room were going off the chart.

“You
are Deumos.” That was a nice, stupid way to start the conversation Bush
thought, years in politics and winning elections had proved to him that being
underestimated was a valuable attribute. “To what do we owe the honor of this
visit?”

“There
may soon be some changes in the power structure of Hell. I wish to discuss a
way of ending this war with you.” Deumos’s voice was a deep, grinding rasp that
she probably thought was seductive.

“We
can do that. Your unconditional surrender should do the trick.”

Deumos
barely managed to conceal her shock. Wars always ended in compromise and with
terms. Never a bland demand for a complete surrender. Even the Great Celestial
War had ended with terms demanded and given. Internally, she was worried,
normally when she spoke her miasma made them accept what she said. “I and my
colleagues plan to remove Satan from power. Very soon, at a meeting to discuss
the strategy of the war.” Where Satan thinks he will be giving the orders she
thought. “Once that is done we will take power and we will declare the war
over. For that, we will demand one third of your dead so we may extract energy
from them and the support of your armies against any who stay loyal to Satan.
Is this agreed?”

Bush
grinned to himself, reveling in the degree to which Deumos was talking herself
into a hole. It was true what Ronald Reagan had always said. Just keep smiling
and people always hanged themselves. “A very interesting offer Deumos. I can
safely say that you may have an answer in accordance with our traditions very
shortly and I am certain you will find it assertive. Thank you for attending
this meeting.”

Bush
watched while Deumos shuffled out, barely fitting through the double doors.
Then he thumbed a button on his intercom. “She’s gone. Bring Luga in.”

It
was a relief to be dealing with a normal-sized figure again. “Lugasharmanaska,
you can lock in on Deumos’s mind at any time?”

“Yes
Sir.

“Good.”
Bush pressed another button on his intercom. “Condi, please call Vladimir in
Moscow. There’s some equipment we need to borrow.”

“Very
good Sir. Oh, Sir, there’s something on television you should watch. The Pope’s
issued a statement.”

“I
thought he was laying low. Oh well. Thank you Condi.” He switched the intercom
off and went into an anteroom where a large flat-screen television was set up.
His aides checked the channel was set to Fox news and turned it on. Fox’s Rome
anchorman was speaking.

“And
we have just received the news of the Papal statement. The full version will be
issued in about three hours time but we have an advanced abstract now. It reads
as follows.

“Current
events have challenged the very core of our beliefs and thrown all that we
believed into doubt. One thing must remain clear, that we follow the teachings
of Jesus Christ that provide a good and just basis for all of human conduct.
But we cannot deny that these have been corrupted and misapplied, that grave
mistakes have been made and that crimes of great magnitude committed. At times
like this we must believe that we have been mislead and deceived by imposters
and deceivers who succeeded in leading us down a false path. We can be sure
that the God who has led us down this false path is not the God of whom our
Lord Jesus Christ Spoke. We can be sure it is those deceivers and imposters and
in particular those who lead them, that are responsible for the grievous errors
that have been committed in our Church’s name. we must cast out such deceivers
and purify ourselves so that we can, once more, follow the teachings of Christ
as they were meant to be followed.

"To
do this I call upon the Holy Catholic Church to excommunicate God.”

Chapter
Seventy Seven

Plateau
of Minos, Hell

By
the standards of Hell, the Plateau of Minos was well-organized. If was
dominated by the great black gate at one end, a gate that had all the
appearances of a transit portal but was set in the rocky face of the Hell-pit,
in the mouth of a cave that defined its shape. Nobody knew what lay beyond that
gate, the Demons who had been brave enough to try crossing it, or had been
unfortunate enough to fall through it, had never returned. One thing that the
demons working on the Plateau did know was that it was through that gate that
the human dead arrived in Hell.

Once
working on the Plateau had been an easy position, only a trickle of dead humans
arrived to be processed, but that had changed. The demons working on the
Plateau of Minos had been the first ones to be aware of the changes on Earth.
For millennia the rate at which the human dead had arrived had been constant
but a mere few centuries that had started to change. The trickle had become a
stream, the stream a river and the river had turned into a flood. Now, three
bodies arrived every second and any break in the routine would cause a
disastrous backlog. The fact that there were worse disasters than a work
backlog never dawned on the demons who worked on the Plateau but it should have
done. If they looked over the chasm that separated the Plateau of Minos from
Lucifer’s Finger, they would have seen the crumbed ruin of the great spur of
rock and the palace that had once stood on it.

But,
bowed down by the routine demanded by the constant stream of bodies emerging
from the gate, they didn’t. Instead, the ancient tradition held sway. Two
demons would pick up each unconscious human dead and carry it over to one of
the line of hydras waiting on the edge of the Plateau. The command would form
in the hydra’s heads, it would wrap its tail a number of times around the human
and then flick it out across the chasm to the Hell-Pit. The number of times the
tail was wrapped around the victim determined which circle it would land in.
Down there, other demons would receive it, make the preparations needed and the
victim would awaked to begin an eternity of torment. On his throne above the
plateau, Minos himself sat, commanding the work of the line of 27 hydra that
worked on the limits of his domain. Minos had by far the smallest holding of
any Lord of Hell but his was also the most important. Without him, no dead
human would reach its proper place in Hell.

This
morning, Minos wasn’t feeling particularly well. He had a headache, one that
had led him to assign the arriving humans to the most agonizing of Hell’s
circles. In the last few minutes, his headache had been joined by a curious
throbbing sensation, one that seemed to vibrate the air around him and make the
dust on his throne bounce. It wasn’t the human aircraft overhead, they were a
familiar sight by this time, streaking through the comforting dust of Hell’s
atmosphere and then swooping down to pound some selected target in Dis. A
palace perhaps? Or a barracks? There were times when Minos was grateful that
his realm was so tiny.