Armageddon

Chapter Nine

Wadi Al Jaram, Western Iraq

“Now hollow fires burn out to black, and lights are guttering low. Square your shoulders, lift your pack, and leave your friends and go. Oh, never fear, man, nought's to dread, look not to left nor right: In all the endless road you tread, there's nothing but the night.”

“Sorry Sir?”

“Houseman, poem called ‘A Shropshire Lad’ about the kids who died fighting for Queen Victoria in far-off parts of the Empire. How they left home and died for thirteen pence a day. His theme was that they couldn’t see what they were dying for or the point of it all. We’re spared that, we know what we’re fighting for here.” Brigadier John Carlson glanced down at his watch. “Today. When dawn comes, we will be fighting for everything there is to fight for. There’s literally nothing we won’t be fighting for.”

“That’s not true Sir.” Simon deVere Cole, Carlson’s ADC was speaking equally softly. “We’re not fighting for God. Queen and Country, yes. Our people, yes. The whole of humanity, yes. But not God. Never again. We stand for ourselves this day, on our own two feet. The men are saying its about time too.”

“That’s good. I wish there were just a few more of them.” That was the truth. Carlson had the British Brigade here, The Royal Dragoon Guards, a regiment of Challenger II tanks, were dug in along the ridgeline, with the 1st Duke of Lancaster and 1st Mercian, two battalions of mechanized infantry with their Warrior armored carriers, beside them. From the front, all that could be seen of them was the tops of their turrets peeking over the ridge. From behind, the tanks were sitting in open-backed revetments so they could fall back from this position to the next. Carlson looked up at the stars overhead. It was a trite cliche that looking up at them made man and his works seem insignificant and now it was a false cliche as well. For today, man’s works made the heavens themselves insignificant. And Carlson had just a regiment of tanks and two battalions of mechanized infantry. Plus his artillery batteries of course and a lot of engineers. One advantage of a “peace-keeping” mission was that there were a lot of civilian development projects involved and they had needed engineers. Those engineers had been hard at work for the last few days.

Out in front, he could see the result of their labors. A shimmering river that stretched north and south as far as he could see, glistening gently in the moonlight. It was a beautiful sight if one didn’t know what the silver river was, to those who had seen what razor-wire could do, it glimmered with evil promise. Yet even worse was what nobody could see until it was too late, the thousands of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines sewn across the front. Carlson’s plan was quite simple, all good military plans were. He would break the enemy attack on the minefields and wire while his artillery poured fire into the mass of enemy hung up in front of him. As they broke through the mines and wire, as they surely would, his tanks would slaughter them while the infantry protected the tanks. The wire and the mines were his force multiplier, the thing that would allow him to stand against the force threatening him.

He ran those figures through his mind as well, 93,300 infantry, 6,666 cavalry, 2,187 harpies. Less those killed by attrition in the long march to contact. Against them, he had just over 8,000 men. The government in the UK had promised him more, but they were a long time coming, years of British under-spending on defense had seen to that. Those years were gone but even with the Government printing all the money it needed for the war effort, it would take time for the added production to reach the front. The RAF had only four C-17 transports and their first priority had been to fly aluminum foil out to the theater. Every man in his force now had his helmet lined with aluminum foil and the people in the rear were handing rolls of the stuff out to the civilians. In a strange way, this was already shaping up to be one of the great logistics achievements of the war. A concerted effort to give every human on earth his own aluminum foil hat. Carlson chuckled, he suddenly had a picture of aluminum haberdashery becoming a study topic at Sandhurst.

“Sir. General Fereidoon Zolfaghari to see you.” deVere Cole interrupted the train of thought.

“General, Sir.” Carlson snapped out the salute. The Iranian General returned it punctiliously.

“I think you will be pleased to see me Brigadier.” The English was excellent. “I have brought with me the Shamshar Armored Division. Three of my regiments of T-72s, 324 tanks, are moving into position along your left while we speak, supported by a regiment of armored infantry, 108 BMP-1s. We have not the excellent position you have here but the Global Hawks tell us the enemy will strike your position first. When they die on your wire, we think they will try and flank you. They cannot go to your right, the Hawr al Hammar prevents that. They must go to the left, right into the guns of my tanks and artillery.”

“We’re more than pleased to see you General, you’re a sight for sore eyes. We’re expecting to get hit after dawn. That glow on the horizon? It’s the Baldrick’s campfires.” A thought occurred to Carlson. “Have all your men aluminum foil for their helmets? We have plenty if you are in need.”

“The Americans gave us enough, thank you, but I will spread word. If any of my units are short, we will come to you. If I may offer you some help in return? You are very light on anti-aircraft here. I have an extra anti-aircraft regiment, the Shamshar is a composite division, made up from what is left of all four of our southern armored divisions. So many of our men went when The Message was sent, we could not support all the units we had. At least it means we are not short of front-line equipment for those we have left. I would be honored if you would accept the attachment of the regiment to your force. It has SA-8 missiles and ZSU-23/4 guns.”

“Thank you, I am honored to accept. General, I was about to have some tea, a little fruit. It is poor refreshment to offer a comrade in arms, but perhaps you would deign to join us?”

“I would prefer a glass of the whisky for which your Scots are so famous.” Carlson lifted an eyebrow and Zolfaghari smiled gently. “The pact is broken, the commandments do not apply. Now we have faith only in our tanks and guns.”

Like any good ADC deVere Cole had anticipated his Brigadier’s needs and a bottle of 18 year old Laphroig had appeared. He measured out glasses for the two officers.

“Oh come on Simon, pour one for yourself as well.”

“Thank you Sir.”

“To the morrow and may the day be ours.” Carlson’s voice rang across the moonlit desert.

“And to our arms. May we bring honor to our countries and those we fight beside.” Zolfaghari’s response echoed across the dunes. Below them, the razor wire seemed to sway in response but it was just the wind rippling across the sand.

Headquarters, Multi-National Force Iraq, Green Zone, Baghdad.

General Petraeus stood in front of the great screen that showed the disposition of forces in Iraq. Viewed one way, what he was about to do was committing an act of mass murder. The thought made him chuckle quietly to himself, a long time ago he’d held a press conference and the subject of night vision equipment had come up. The American officer behind the podium had explained how the U.S. Army had night vision equipment that enabled them to fight a 24-hour battle while their enemy didn’t have anything approaching that capability. One journalist had been greatly angered by that and had launched a tirade about how the one-sided night-fighting capability “wasn’t fair.”

Well, what was happening now wasn’t fair either. The screen showed the disposition and order of battle of the Hellish forces in great detail. The Predators and Global Hawks were doing sterling work, tracking every move the baldricks made. Zoom down far enough and the display could show how and where individual baldricks were deploying and spending their time. It was painfully obvious that the baldricks had no such capability. They were charging head-first into a trap, unwavering, unconcerned with what the humans were doing. Petraeus was doing his best to help them, his aircraft had been carefully hitting the command structure of the enemy forces, slowly but surely breaking up their ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

It was far worse even than that. The baldricks were moving slowly, as a professional, Petraeus recognized them for what they were, an infantry army that moved like one. Slowly, ponderously. They had their cavalry out as screens of course but it was a myth that cavalry forces could move much faster than leg infantry, they could in a tactical sense but the difference strategically was marginal at best. The harpies had been more of a worry, there had been an effort to use them as an advance guard but they’d been shot out of the sky by the F-16s based at Kirkuk and Incirlik. The small detachments, usually three at a time hadn’t stood a chance against the fast jets and after a while, their commander had stopped sending them out.

In contrast, the Allied forces were mobile almost to the point of insanity. They could slash at an enemy formation, disengage, regroup and slash again while their enemy was still wondering what to do about the first attack. Petraeus had moved the whole of his First Armored Division against the northern flanking force. Petraeus grimaced, the northern force was identical to that bearing down on the British Brigade but the British formation was the weakest of all of his combat groups. It was a calculated risk, nobody could be strong everywhere and the British position was the easiest to defend in depth. If the baldricks broke through there, Petraeus had two brigades of the Fourth Infantry Division north of the battle area and the 82nd Airborne in Kuwait ready to pinch off the breakthrough.

In the center, Petraeus had positioned his 25th Mechanized Infantry Division, the 10th Mountain Division and the 15th Marine Expeditionary Brigade. They were his stop line, intended to hold the main body of the baldrick force. Only, Petraeus didn’t intend to stop them If the baldrick commander had anything like the command capabilities at Petraeus’s disposal he could have seen what the American General actually had in mind. The main body of the baldrick force would indeed be pinned on the American Corps in front of Baghdad but while they threshed there, the allied northern and southern forces would be closing in on their flanks and rear. By the time they realized what was happening, the racing tanks of the First Armored would be between them and the hellmouth. It had all the makings of a military catastrophe.

Petraeus knew that if he pulled this off, it would go down as one of the greatest envelopments of all time, comparable with those the Germans had pulled off at the start of their war with Russia. That was one of the things that made Petraeus uneasy, for all the scale of those early victories, the Germans had lost the war with Russia and most skilled strategists knew that they had never really had a chance of doing otherwise. What was facing the baldricks was an unparalleled military disaster yet Petraeus knew in his heart that this was just the opening move. He had no idea of the military resources hell could throw at Earth and until he had a handle on that data, he was fighting blind. All he could do was make sure the casualty rate was as lopsided as possible.

“Sir. Message just in. The Iranian Shamshar Division is arriving and taking up position to the south of the British. They’ll be in defensive position by dawn. General Zolfaghari has ceded operational command of the defense to Brigadier Carlson as officer-in-position.”

“Thank you Charles. Send my compliments to the General and my appreciation of an advance to contact well-executed.” There was more to that message than met the eye and the recipient would know it. Ceding overall command to an officer of lesser rank had been a magnanimous gesture, one that spoke volumes about the character of the Iranian general. Privately, Petraeus promised himself that he would see Zolfaghari received full credit for his part in this operation. Then his mind went back to the battle that was about to unfold. What could go wrong? What hadn’t he foreseen? What were his options when everything dropped in the pot?

He looked again at the huge display on the wall. Four new symbols had just appeared, the Iranian regiments covering the southern flank of the British brigade. Everything was set up, the pieces were in position. Behind the allied lines, the truck convoys with their supplies of ammunition and fuel were waiting to support the lunge forward. With them were his reserves, Stryker brigades, more mechanized infantry. Again Petraeus reflected on just how unfair this battle was going to be. A human general would have known how and where the great ambush would be mounted, to a human, brought up on armored warfare and battles of maneuver, the Iraqi road network made the positions and deployments entirely predictable. The baldricks painfully obviously had no concept of those matters. Truly, this was a bronze age Army fighting a force from the 21st Century. That didn’t change the fact that this was a – literally – hellishly big bronze age army.

“I’m going outside for a few minutes. Get some fresh air.” Petraeus spoke to his deputy, settled his aluminum-lined baseball cap on his head and left the command center, his bodyguards following. Outside, it was still night, the stars shining brightly down. In front of the command building sat four of the hulking M1A2 Abrams tanks, silent shadows in the darkness. Petraeus walked over to them, absent-mindedly returning the salutes from their crews as he racked his brain trying to think of outcomes and eventualities that might have missed his attention. It was no good, as far as he could see, he’d done all he could, it was time to rest and let the battle unfold.

Then he patted the massive sloping armor of the nearest tank. “Well, honey-bunny. It’s all down to you and yours now.”

Headquarters, Army of Abigor, Western Iraq.

Abigor stood over the wooden table, looking down at the parchment scroll that was pinned to it. It was a map of the area, with thick lines drawn on it, representing his forces as they fanned out across the countryside. His plan was simple, three thrusts, each aimed at a major population center. The city called Kirkuk in the north, Baghdad in the center, Basrah to the south. His mounted troops would brush any enemy opposition out of the way and leave the cities isolated. Then, his infantry would besiege them, cut off their supplies and starve the defenders. When the cities collapsed, they would storm the walls and ravage the inhabitants amid scenes of horror that would panic the remaining humans. They would stream away from his advance amid utter terror and he would slaughter them while they did so. Humanity would die screaming for its defiance. As it should.

Where to go next? Once the fertile crescent of the Tigris-Euphrates had been cleared, what to do? Keep heading east into Persia or head west towards Jerusalem? Ravaging the area the humans called “The Holy Land” would be satisfying and it would give Satan an opportunity to goad Yahweh over the fate of his “Chosen People”. That made Abigor grin, how could the humans have believed Yahweh for so long? Accepting every bit of good fortune that came there way as one of his gifts, dismissing every disaster as a test or trial. Abigor couldn’t help but think that humans must be terminally deluded. Perhaps that was why they were resisting now? They were hoping their Yahweh would change his mind and come to aid them? They were in for a disappointment if they were, it simply wasn’t happening.

Abigor tapped the parchment with a claw, thoughts irritating the outer edges of his mind. Just why did his commanders keep exploding? Obviously the humans had something to do with it, putting things together it had become obvious that the commanders exploded when the human’s flying chariots were around. Yet how? The chariots flew so high up they could hardly be seen. Sometimes the only clue they were there was the great white streak they left across the sky. How could they hit so precisely from so high? It was impossible. Abigor’s customary scowl deepened. Perhaps it wasn’t the humans after all. Promotion by assassinating one’s superiors was a well-known tactic in hell, smiles upon as long as it was successful. A commander who couldn’t even protect himself was unfit to be in a position of authority. And yet, and yet… Some commanders had noted another pattern, it was always the leaders who rode ahead of their command, their banners flying proudly that died. Some had started to hide themselves in their units, keeping their banners furled and marching on foot like the rest. It showed lack of pride and hurt the morale of the units but those commanders lived.

Problems, more problems. The truth was that Abigor wasn’t quite sure where his units were or how much resistance they were facing. The distance he and his kind could read minds was limited to line-of-sight and with so many dead commanders lost from his ranks, communications were spotty at best. He’d tried sending out small groups of the flying demons to get information on the positions of his units but the human flying chariots had killed them. Those flying chariots were a nuisance, they’d made the demonic fliers too vulnerable to use except in large groups. Just how did humans get them to fly so high or move so fast? Some of them were so quick they arrived before their noise could be heard.

Abigor stretched and walked outside his tent, his clawed feet clicking on the stones in the sand. Above him, the stars shone brightly, their light apparently amplified by the clear, dry desert skies. That was a unique thing about this dimension, Abigor’s home had no stars, no planets, not like these. It was a place that existed in and of itself, self-contained and alone. Heaven was the same, another self-contained, isolated entity that was complete within itself. Bubbles in a formless void.

Idly, Abigor wondered what would happen to this planet once the humans on it had been harvested. It would make a nice private retreat for his personal use, would Satan allow him to keep it? He had conquered it after all. In his heart, he knew that would not be the case, Satan wouldn’t allow any of this realm to establish a presence outside it for to do so would be to give them the chance of establishing a power base independent of his reign. This planet would be abandoned, left to develop without humans. Perhaps to see another species of intelligent life develop and in its turn be harvested to serve the beings from the higher dimension. Abigor had heard that there were creatures living in the sea that were almost as intelligent as humans.

Another problem, another worry that flittered on the edge of his mind. He and his kind were used to being able to read human minds and control their thoughts, even across the dimensional rift. Once he and one of Yahweh’s angels had held a competition to see who could cause the most minor fatal accidents in one day; he’d won that, 106 to 102. But now, it was becoming harder and harder to find humans who could be affected by the demons mind control. Something was getting in the way, something was stopping the demons possessing the minds of anybody they chose. Already, nearly all the important people, the leaders, their minds were closed off. Even the lesser people, the peasants, were becoming immune. It was so hard to find one who could be possessed now.

Abigor shook himself. Why was he worrying, a few days and it would all be over. Humanity would be a panicked mass, fleeing for its survival and a few days beyond that it would be gone forever. There wasn't any point in worrying about details.