Armageddon?? (50 page)

That
was why she was up here on the roof. She’d accepted that mind-masking didn’t
work on humans any more and that they were aware of her miasma and on their
guard against its effects. Her ability to communicate with home had also gone.
But she had to try, she had to warn her liege-lord Deumos of the danger she
faced. For Lugasharmanaska understood humans and how they regarded their
enemies. As long as the enemy fought, the humans would kill without mercy. If
Deumos was to survive the oncoming destruction, she would have to find a way of
not being an enemy of the humans without being slaughtered by Satan as a
traitor. Somehow, Lugasharmanaska had to get a warning through. So she lay on the
plastic chair, apparently relaxed and resting but in reality, screwing every
ounce of mage-power she could muster in an attempt to contact Deumos. In the
middle of the fierce concentration, she found herself wondering what her
mage-power really was.

(Note
- compliments to Starglider who did the middle section)

Chapter
Thirty Six

Section
Twelve, DIMO(N), Fort Bragg, North Carolina

“Let’s
start with weapons. Jerry?”

“In
Helljar-One, that’s the one simulating the normal Hell-place environment, it’s
the older stuff that does best. Shouldn’t surprise us really, tolerances are
greater so they can take the sand and grit better. The pumice in the air is the
real problem. It mixes with moisture and oil to form a cement that really
blocks the weapons up. Regular cleaning is essential and using Militec rather
than lube oil is a good start. Good news is that grenades and fused weapons
like rockets and shells work just fine. Bad news is that the M16 and M4 have
very serious problems. The gas tube and bolt carriers jam up so fast it isn’t
funny. We got the first of the new rifles, the M114 and M115, they both work
better. All weapons have to be carefully cleaned and often though.

“Helljar-Two,
ironically, is a lot easier on weapons that One. The mud and filth is bad of
course but its something the troops know how to deal with. We’ve had the
reports back from Tango-Bravo, and the first A-Team we sent in to help them
out, and we’ve correlated them with the results from Helljar-Two. Very high
degree of congruence I’m glad to say, that gives us a degree of confidence in
our results. Based on our studies, we’ve pulled the M4A5s from Tango-Bravo and
given them pre-production M114s instead. They’re happier now. The Special
Forces group in with Tango-Bravo now also has M114s.”

“Excuse
the interruption Jerry, but while we’re on the subject of the Special Forces
people we’re sending in, any word on the medical side of this.” General
Schatten looked at the woman who was supervising the medical side of the
studies.

Doctor
Sangina thumbed quickly through her notes. “The first group under Lieutenant
Madeuce have suffered quite badly. They have pumice deposits in their lungs and
those will have a severe impact on their future health unless we can find a way
of treating them. This isn’t a new problem, its been known in the mining
industry for centuries. It’s usually called silicosis although the specific
form here is known as Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. There are
some treatments under evaluation for the condition, including whole-lung lavage
but, unless we get a breakthrough, I’m afraid the first group of patients are
going to have to accept some severe health consequences 15 – 20 years down the
line. The second group we sent in, and all after that, have breathing masks
that filter out the dust. That should solve the problem.”

“Apparently,
people in the Hell-Place heal a lot faster than they do here, any word on
that?”

“It
is true, that’s why the victims in Hell survive the way they do. It’s not a
function of place though, it’s a function of being a creature of that place.
Souls who have transitioned to hell via death or creatures that are native to
hell have much-enhanced healing power and wound resistance compared to us. They
retain those advantages when they come to our dimension. The catch is that
humans from hell can’t survive here for long, they leak, ohh, I don’t know how
to describe it, life energy I suppose. Baldricks can survive here as long as we
don’t kill them, we think because they use their bio-electrical generating
capability to replace the leaking energy, to trickle-charge themselves so to
speak. Reborn Humans don’t have that capability so they die in our dimension.
Now, if we go to the Hell dimension, we don’t get a boost in healing or damage resistance,
we’re just the same there as we are here.”

“Thank
you. Sorry, Jerry, I was very concerned about the people we’re sending in. Can
you continue please?”

“No
problem. Helljar-Three is the one with the burning desert. That’s the one we
know least about, we’ve only got limited intelligence there. In some ways its
much more hostile than Helljar Two, when the reports said burning desert and
flaming rain, they weren’t joking. In other ways, its more benign. The air is
much drier and the dust content is a lot, lot lower. As far as we can make out,
our equipment functions much better there, its just that we don’t.

“Thank
you Jerry. Greg, vehicles?”

“Main
problem is dust and the pumice cement. We have heavy-duty air filters that can
cope with it and we’re designing better ones. Like the weapons side of things,
the secret is to clean and keep cleaning. A couple of things, diesels are less
susceptible to choking on dust that gas turbines. We might want to think about
a diesel-powered M1 for operations in Hell itself. That always has been an
option but the gas turbine’s advantages have meant we haven’t gone there
before. Now, we might want to rethink that. But, as long as we use the right
filters and keep cleaning things, we can take our ground vehicles in right now.
Oh yes, current NBC protection systems for the crews of the Abrams and Bradleys
are quite adequate for the conditions. Strykers as well. The logistics vehicles
may need an upgrade.”

“Which
brings us to aircraft. Bill?”

“Bad
news all around I’m afraid Sir. Same problems Jerry and Greg have been talking
about. Dust chokes the engines quickly and cakes the airframes. Being sucked
through a jet engine causes hellish erosion problems, mostly on the blades but
its pretty gruesome in the rest of the engine as well. You can take a zero off
the number of hours between overhauls at least, probably two. That’s not the
worst of it, the dust scours the aircraft itself, abrading the wing and
fuselage surfaces. Faster aircraft go, the worse that gets. We need new
coatings for the aircraft that’ll help cut that down.

“We
tried the prop-planes as well. Mixed news there, the erosion problem on the
airframes isn’t so bad since the aircraft are much slower but the damage to the
propellers is wicked. You should see an old P-47 we stuck in a wind-tunnel and
blasted with a simulated hell atmosphere while we ran its engine. After an
hour, the prop was ground to nothing. Aircraft with liquid-cooled engines were
a problem, the cooling system got jammed up so the engines over-heated and
seized up. Radial engines were bad as well at first but we’ve managed some
work-arounds for them. Oil coolers are still a problem though.

"Sum
of it all, we’ve got a lot of work to do before we can deploy air power into
Hell. Priority problem should be airframe erosion, once we can lick that, the
others will follow.”

Schatten
looked around. “Good work guys. I’ll transmit the data through to the Army in
Iraq.”

Combat
Team Alpha. By the Hellmouth, Western Iraq

“Hokay,
lot of men told me to go to hell in the past. The Big Cheese is the first one
who really meant it.”

“We
really going into Hell, Hooters?”

“Sure
are Biker. It’s a thunder-run. Hold one.” Stevenson flipped her radio system so
she was addressing all 14 vehicles in her command. “Right, this is what’s
happening. We’re going in through the hellmouth, according to our source, the
area inside is called the Martial Plain of Dysprosium. It’s a prairie-like area
the baldricks use for parades and so on. We can swing in, cross it and hit two
encampments that are about twenty miles inside. We’ll take them down and shoot
up any resistance. Anybody who shoots at us gets greased. Try not to hit
non-combatants but if they’re being used as shields or getting in the way,
that’s too bad. Word from the top is, we don’t deliberately target any non-coms
but they’d better learn to keep out of our way. No vehicles to be left behind,
there’s an engineer unit out here, if one of us gets immobilized, we send for
them and they tow us out. All clear? Good. Formation, my four tanks lead, line
abreast, Bradleys behind, four more M1s at the rear. Right hand tanks watch
right, left hand watch left, forward center pair ahead, aft center pair behind.
Bradleys, watch the sky, the Harpies are our worst threat. See one, kill it.
I’ll command from Alpha-One-One.”

That
would upset the two Bradley crews that technically formed the HQ section but
Stevenson felt much more at home in her Abrams.

Stevenson
flipped her radio back to the in-vehicle circuit, “Biker, take us through.”

“Coming
inside Captain?” The driver didn’t know whether the radio was still set to
company-wide so he was careful.

“Sure.
Orders are to seal down. Gonna limit our vision though, everybody watch out, if
something blows as we go through, we’ll need to react fast.” Stevenson relaxed,
leaning up against the cupola ring as she heard the gas turbine behind her
spool up The back of her tank looked different after the week waiting outside
the hellmouth. It had what looked like a low tent over it, one made of metal
filter foil. It would allow air in, some, but it would also keep dust out and
stop harpy-fire basting the engine. The top edge of the Abram’s performance had
gone, reduced airflow to the turbine had seen to that, but the big tank was
still fast and agile enough. She took a last look around at the blue sky and
yellow sun of Earth, then dropped inside her tank and dogged the hatch down. As
the Abrams lurched forward, she could feel the air pressure increase slightly
as the tank’s NBC system established a positive pressure gradient.

Outside
the black wall of the ellipse was approaching as the tank accelerated towards
it. There’d been a lot of debate about whether to crash through at high speed
or to ease through. Eventually, the decision had been left to her and she’d
decided the high speed approach was best. Get through and in before anybody
waiting in ambush could react. Besides, nobody had even a slight understanding
of what the inside of the portal was like and being half-in, half-out could be
a very bad place.

It
didn’t seem to matter; the wall approached them but Stevenson wasn’t aware of
actually going through it. One moment she was on Earth, almost instantly and
without any other sign, everything had changed to the thick red light of hell.
No shock, no jolt, nothing. Just the sudden switch in lighting conditions.
Stevenson looked through her optronic system and saw the terrain ahead
brightening as the system compensated for the light. A check on the navigation
system was more worrying, the compass needle was spinning around uselessly
while the GPN navigation system had gone dead. According to the inertial
navigation system, she was still on Earth, about a klick from where she had
started. She wished that were true.

“All
Alpha vehicles. I’m defining the hellmouth as position zero, its direction is
East. Adjust all inertial systems accordingly.” She punched the data in herself
and watched the electronic compass settle down. Her tank’s nose was pointing
dead ahead, bearing two-seven-oh so to get back to earth she would have to
drive on oh-nine-oh. She looked behind on oh-nine-oh by the compass and to her
relief, the hellmouth was still there.

She
had the hand-drawn map in her hands and carefully orientated it with the hellmouth.
Whoever had drawn it had nice handwriting she thought. It showed the plain she
could see now and the two installations way over on what would be her
arbitrarily-defined south. She looked again through the optronic surveillance
system, she couldn’t see much ahead, there was a pile of burned out timber over
one side, she guessed that would be the reviewing stand the Predator had blown
up in the first days of the war. Or what was left of it. Another glance at the
compass showed that the computer had settled it down to correspond with her
arbitrary alignment.

“Hokay,
Biker, take off, head course one-eight-oh. Try and hold 20 mph.” She flipped
the radio back to company net. “All vehicles, one eight oh. Expect target in 20
miles. Contact time one hour.”

The
ground was a lot smoother than she’d expected; compared with the rough jolting
she got every time her tank crossed the Iraqi desert, it was a positive luxury.
She looked behind her, the Bradleys were following in her wake with the second
group of M1s behind them. A cloud of red dust was rising behind the vehicles, a
V-shaped cloud from each that merged behind them to give a fair equivalent of a
smoke screen. If it had been white and at sea, it would have reminded her of
water skiers at a beach resort. Only, it wasn’t white it was red and this
wasn’t a beach resort, it was Hell although compared with the beaches in her
home of Bayonne, it would be hard to tell the difference. And they weren’t
water skiers, they were the point of a very, very pissed-off human army.