Armageddon

Chapter Eighty Four

Hartlepool, Lancashire.

“BBC Radio 2, online, on digital and on 88 to 91 FM.” The voice of veteran DJ Terry Wogan said over the car radio.

“It is eight o’clock, here is the news read by John Marsh.” The news reader said once the time signal had finished. “Allied Forces in Hell continued their advance today against negligible resistance and have reportedly entered the city of Dis, Hell’s capital, without a shot fired. BBC reporters embedded with the 4th Mechanized Brigade, the first British formation to enter Dis, report that Allied troops have freed large numbers of human slaves apparently used as domestic servants from demonic captivity. Human forces are already beginning to move into…”

Inspector Kate Langley turned off the car radio as she parked outside Hartlepool Police Station. It was a small town police station, originally built in the late Victorian period and was now more than a little crowded as the builders had not envisioned all of the electronic communications equipment that the modern police force required to function; indeed Lancashire Constabulary was currently seeking new accommodation in Hartlepool to replace the station. The overcrowding was even worse now that the station had to accommodate the Special Constables on permanent duty, new recruits and retired officers returned to duty.

“Good morning, Joe.” She said to the desk sergeant. “Any messages for me?”

“Morning, Ma’am, nothing bar the usual.” Sergeant Joseph Beck replied. “Oh, there was a call from Mrs. Durbleigh, she said she would call you later on this morning, I believe it was with regards to the firearms registration business.”

“I see, I’m sure that’s going to keep us busy.” Langley replied, not relishing speaking to her now promoted predecessor, she was after all busy enough as it was.

“Where’s Sergeant Parrish?”

“I believe he’s off cleaning his rifle, Ma’am. I’ll let him know you’re here.

“Shall I send in some tea, Ma’am?”

Langley thought for a second, she did not often drink tea, though her sergeants always asked just in case she changed her mind.

“Yes thank you, Joe, I’d like that.”

The Inspector hung up her coat and hat after entering her office and took off her holster. She hated having to carry a revolver, she had not joined the police to carry a gun, this was Lancashire, not Texas after all, and knew that the majority of the officers under her command hated it as well. Langley hoped that once this war was over, whenever that was, the officers not assigned to Force Firearms Units would be able to hand their weapons back into the various armories, she would hate it if the war changed the character of the British police. It was a matter of pride to her that British Police officers, unlike those in America and Europe, had remained without firearms as part of tehri standard equipment for so long.

Langley placed her revolver, an old, but sound, Webley Mk. VI. 455, in her desk drawer and locked it. It, five other revolvers, four No. 1 Mk. III Lee-Enfield rifles and four Mk. V Sten submachine-guns had been found in the basement of Hartlepool Police Station; evidently from the dust that had gathered on the box the revolvers were stored in they had been down there since around 1945.

After some testing the revolvers had been issued, as had the rifles, but the Sten guns were worn from use in the Second World War and had been condemned. Amazingly the police had managed to get their hands on useable stocks of. 455 Webley Mk. III ‘Manstopper’ bullets, which were felt to be more effective against Baldricks than the later rounds, which had been designed to comply with the Hague Convention. Less surprisingly, they had also managed to get a supply of. 303in rounds from South Africa. The South Africans were doing well with their. 303 production, as were all the other producers who had retained production lines for full-powered rifle ammunition. The remaining officers had been issued with a variety of firearms from police and others armories.

Langley sat down and reviewed the paper work waiting for her, as expected most of it related to the issue of firearms registration. In the panic after the first Baldrick attacks the government had suspended the majority of the country’s firearms legislation, meaning that anyone could effectively own almost any weapon they chose. The Home Office had now decided that when it came to firearms legislative anarchy was not a good idea, instead they had decided that anyone who wished to own a firearm should register it and that the local police should decide if the person was suitable to hold a firearm; they did not want a repeat of Hungerford, or Dunblane.

Of course the job of interviewing those who wished to legally own a firearm fell to the local police, not that they did not have enough to do as it was.

Just after Constable Sparks had brought in the tea the phone on Langley’s desk rang.

“Chief Inspector Durbleigh on the phone for you, Ma’m.” The voice of Sergeant Beck said.

“Put her through, Joe.”

“Good morning, Kate, how are you?” The voice of Chief Inspector Jean Durbleigh said. Before her promotion to fill a vacancy at the constabulary’s headquarters, Durbleigh had been the uniformed Inspector at Hartlepool and occasionally still took a special interest in the place.

“Good morning, Ma’am, I’m fine thank you. How can I help you today?”

“It’s about this firearms registration business, I know you are busy enough as it is, but we’ve had another message from the Home Office this morning. They’d like us to ‘encourage’ applicants who are fit enough to join the Home Guard if they have not done so already, should they be reluctant we are to take it into account when considering their application.”

“I see, and I take it we are to confiscate any weapons from those we refuse a certificate to, Ma’am?” Langley asked.

“I’m afraid so, and I know all too well how limited your manpower is. Of course should you confiscate anything useful then I’m sure nobody would object to you keeping hold of it. Well I won’t keep you any longer, Kate, I’ll speak to you later, good bye.”

“Good bye, Ma’am.”

Once Chief Inspector Durbleigh had hung up, Langley called Sergeant Beck.

“Joe, I need to speak to both you and Sergeant Parrish, I’m afraid we have a busy day ahead of us.”

“No change there then, Ma’m.” Beck replied.

H. Q UK Special Forces Support Group, Camp Brimstone, Hell. Colonel (D) David Stirling watched the comings and goings around him with interest; he had taken in the various cap badges associated with the SFSG, the majority of the group wore the maroon beret of the Parachute Regiment, the next biggest group wore the green beret of the Royal Marines, while he had also noticed the blue beret of the RAF Regiment and a number of other cap badges, including the Royal Engineers, Royal Signals and Royal Logistics Corps. Men from his own regiment, the SBS and this new regiment, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment could occasionally be seen visiting the headquarters on a variety of errands.

While it was clear that the modern soldier was not a whole lot different from those of the past what had amazed Colonel Stirling was how much communications technology had improved in the eighteen years since he had died. The ability to send text and pictures as well as voice communications in a few seconds was incredible as was the development in computer technology in what was, after all a very short time. The H. Q was full of small thin portable computers known as ‘lap-tops’, many of which showed information being sent back from radio controlled drones, which those controlling them insisted on calling Unmanned Air Vehicles, evidently the military habit of giving something simple a long complicated name had not disappeared since he had left the army.

As well as being home to the H. Q UK Special Forces Support Group Camp Brimstone was also the rear logistics base for all British units assigned to the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and it was also the base from which the British had launched their power-play into Julius Caesar’s growing territory and to where 2 PARA battle group had been recovered to once the fighting was over.

Stirling had also observed that logisticians had not changed a great deal either. He was also interested to see that while the technology inside was radically different the latest Main Battle Tank, the Challenger 2, was not radically different in configuration from the Chieftains he remembered in the last decade of his life on Earth. Actually the British Army had managed to get enough old Chieftains running to form an RAC training regiment and had managed to get hold of quite a number of old Challenger 1s from a decimated Jordanian Army.

“Good day, Colonel Stirling, I hope you are being well looked after?” Colonel Dempsey asked cheerfully.

“I’ve few complaints, Colonel Dempsey, apart from the fact that I feel my talents are being a little underused.” Stirling replied. “The improvements in technology in the last few years have been pretty impressive; perhaps I’m hopelessly out of date.”

“If I can learn to use a computer, Colonel, then anyone can, besides computers of today are somewhat easier to use than the computers of the late ‘80s.

“Anyway the reason I came was to give you this.” Dempsey said with a smile holding up a bottle of single malt whisky and two glasses.

“Ah, now that is a sight for sore eyes.” Stirling replied. “I wonder if it’s still possible for a dead person to get drunk?”

“I can’t think of a better opportunity to find out.” The present Commanding Officer of 22 SAS told the regiment’s first Commanding Officer. “I’d be honored to research that problem with you.”

Stirling smiled. “I’d be more than happy to drink with any commander of the regiment, Colonel Dempsey.”

“And I with its founder. But, I’m afraid we have business to discuss as well. The war in Hell is over, the major combat operations part of it anyway. What’s left is peace keeping, not that such operations can’t be trouble enough.”

“I know, I’ve whiled away the hours reading the files on Iraq. Idiots.”

“Can’t blame the Spams, not really. They were hit by a manpower shortage and they needed to know if there was a way of doing things that economized on manpower. There wasn’t, they just took time to realize it.”

“Not just the Yanks, everybody. Including us. So, if the war here is over, what’s next?”

Colonel Dempsey leaned back and sipped his whisky. “Have you any ideas about raising Hell in Heaven if I may put it that way?”

Randi Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

James Randi looked around the empty office and sighed. It had been fun while it lasted but his part in The Salvation War was over. His brief had been to filter the world’s population of mediums, psychics and other ‘supernaturalists’ to see if any of them really had useful talents. He’d tried to do that once with his Million Dollar Prize and failed, the big names had refused to come anywhere near him and the small fry had been winnowed out early. Then The Salvation War had started and he’d had the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI and eventually Interpol and every intelligence organization in the world working to find likely suspects. Those that had been reluctant to submit to rigorous scientific testing had been dragged in by whatever force was needed.

None of them had qualified, not one. Of all the ‘names’ that had dominated the ‘psychic’ industry before the War had started, not a single one had shown any genuine ability to contact the Hell dimension, or anywhere else for that matter. Randi grinned to himself, the courts were blocked with law suits, some individual, some class actions, brought against the fake psychics for fraud and extortion by their victims. They were all using his Institute’s test results and the damages being awarded to their victims was mounting satisfactorily. The work he had started with the James Randi Educational Foundation had born fruit at last.

With it, the need for his Institute had gone. The existence of a ‘world after death’ had been proven but it wasn’t a matter of faith or religion. It was just another plane of existence, one that had been predicted by scientific theory but never proven. Well, now it had been proven scientifically and science was showing the way to understanding what was going on there. Humans understood the Hell dimension a bit, there were human tanks and artillery sitting in the central plaza of Dis to prove that. The Hell dimension was a strange place, its basic laws of physics differed a little, not much but a little, from Earth. Just enough to make it interesting, Massachusetts Institute of Technology was already offering a Master’s course in “Hell Studies” and were promising a PhD course as soon as they knew enough to decide what it should contain. Humans were at work on what made Hell tick and would worry away at the mysteries until they weren’t mysteries any longer.

What was it General Petraeus had said to Congress? “Their faith met our firepower. Firepower won.”

Randi nodded and closed the door behind him. His work was done all right, the protocols, the strict testing, the constant guard against fraud, all the techniques he had pioneered at JREF were now a standard part of the investigative techniques at DIMO(N). It was strange though, all the ‘professional’ psychics and mediums had turned out the be tricksters but ever-increasing numbers of people with real abilities were being located. Some had been aware of their abilities and in most cases their knowledge of what awaited them the other side had driven them mad. Others had been unaware of their gift and had been as surprised as anybody else when their abilities had been revealed.

Science again, Randi noted, there was even a DNA scanning test to pick out likely candidates. There were hundreds of people who could open portals and the number was growing steadily. Randi thought back to the early days when kitten had been the only reliable link between the dimensions and she had worked herself into exhaustion to keep the war effort going. She was a civilian, she wasn’t eligible for the Congressional Medal of Honor, but there were equivalent medals and she was getting most of them. It seemed that nations around the world were in a race to give her the highest award they could find.

But, all that was past. Randi adjusted his tinfoil had and set off down the corridor to where his car was waiting. The inside of the Pentagon was being refurbished, again, this time to install metal linings in the walls. That was a part of the Federal Building Code now, all new buildings had to have metal linings in their walls. That left only one question, just what was he going to do next?

First Circle Of Hell, Hell-Pit, Hell

“This isn’t how I saw it,” kitten looked out of her Humvee at the First Circle. It was a desolate scene, that much was right, there were ruined buildings, mud, trash everywhere. But the bitter cold, the biting wind, the night-time darkness and the constant ravenous starvation were gone. “but this is where I’m going.”

“You’re wearing your tinfoil hat, kitten.” Colonel Paschal was slightly amused. “If you had been here when we blew the gates open and hadn’t been, you would have seen what you expected. Starving people gathered around crude campfires in the mud, eating maggot-ridden food from garbage skips. Some of it was real, some illusion and when we took down the mind entanglement, the latter went away. But, kitten, you’re wrong. You’re not coming here.”

“But that’s what the future holds for me. I saw it.”

“Sure you did. But you’re making a mistake, what you foresaw isn’t in your future. It’s your now. This, here, now, is what you foresaw all those years. You came to the first Circle of Hell, sure, but what you didn’t see was you brought the whole United States Army with you. And quite a lot of others as well. You didn’t come to hell as a victim, you’ve come as a conqueror. You fought the demons and you won. Now you can get on with the rest of your life.”

“Hey, kitten!”

The shout came from outside the Humvee. kitten looked around and saw a group of eight soldiers running across to the Humvee. Her mind reached out and she recognized them instantly.

“Tucker!” She jumped out of the vehicle, just in time to be swept up in Tucker McElroy’s arms.

He gave her a resounding kiss and then passed her around the team. “kitten, we’ve never been able to thank you for everything you did for us. Not properly. And I guess we never will be able to do it right. But we’re here to do our best.”

“Tucker, I thought you were up in Tartarus?”

“We were, but the Marines landed an hour ago and the DSEALs took over from us. So we portalled out and then over to here. How are you feeling? Did your op go well?”

“Very well, The General had everything lined up ready for me. Pretty much all the work is done now.” kitten hesitated. “You know what my operation was don’t you?”

“Sure I do. Be honest, it would have got to me once. Not now. Might be being dead and all more likely I just grew some common sense but seems to me you had a problem and the surgeons sorted it out for you so now you’re the way you always should have been. And every one of us here’s going to get drunk to celebrate for you. If we can get drunk of course. We haven’t really tried yet. Want to join us in the experiment” kitten giggled. “Can’t I’m afraid, still on medications that don’t allow alcohol. But when I’m off them, I’ll come and look you all up and we’ll try them OK?”

Executive Office, Pima Air amp; Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona

The sound of R-3350 engines winding down woke Daniel J. Ryan, Executive Director of the Pima Air and Space Museum up from an exhausted sleep. He’d been trying to arrange what was left of his museum so that he would have at least an approximation of a display for his visitors but it had been a hard job. He’d heard it was worse over at Davis-Montham, there every aircraft worth salvaging had been removed and the ones that had been left reduced to piles of junk, stripped to keep the others flying. Then, the significance of the sound sank home. He looked out of the office window and saw that his B-29 had returned. Ten seconds later he was running across the taxiway towards the parked aircraft.

“She’s back.”

Colonel Tibbets turned to look at Ryan. “She surely is. And she fought well for an old Lady. Did three bombing raids on Beelzebub’s army and that’s the least important part of it. She and her sisters did nearly all the experimental work that was essential for the bombing raids to work. They freed up the more modern aircraft for strikes and without them, The Salvation War would have taken a lot longer. Yup, these old ladies more than earned their keep. Cost us too, you know three of the ladies crashed when their structure gave out?

“Now, they’re being retired again. The 40th is to receive B-1Cs and we’re gonna start conversion soon. So, Mister Ryan, the Air Force says you can have her back again. On one condition though. You keep her in her Hell camouflage scheme and with her Hell mission tallies in place.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way Colonel.”