begun to reward humans. Three centuries ago seemed like last week, when humans were nothing but cattle, to be tortured for benefit and eaten as delicacies. Yet it seemed that no matter what question they asked, the answers that they found were immediately turned into weapons of destruction.
Abigor considered the benefits they had reaped. The ability to throw projectiles further, faster, more frequently, and more accurately seemed to be the chief benefit; it had reshaped the battlefield. Humans could now throw projectiles over the horizon, on long arching curves that impacted precisely where the humans wanted them. It seemed that their entire ground combat doctrine, Abigor now saw, was shaped around using these 'guns' – what he had called fire-spears – as effectively as possible. The accuracy with which humans could throw projectiles explained why they fought like cowards. Their goal was to win the battles; so instead of presenting themselves entirely and honorably, they presented as small a target as possible while still permitting themselves to throw back.
And then there was the question of flying chariots, which were known to humans as 'aircraft'. They flew higher and faster than flies and their firepower was far beyond the flies. The same magic – Abigor caught himself; there was no magic here. There were only skills he did not understand. The same ability that let humans throw projectiles such long distances and with such accuracy also permitted them to create 'bombs', which could be dropped with great accuracy. The seeker lances – 'missiles' humans called them though why was an odd thing that Abigor had yet to fathom out since they never missed – were another manifestation of the same abilities: projectiles that flew like aircraft and sought out their target.
Before the destruction of his Army, he had seen how the human aircraft had decimated his flies and he had thought that was the end of it. Now, he knew differently, human aircraft could do many things, they could wipe out flies with contemptuous ease but they could also raid death and destruction on the ground forces. He had seen a little of that but only a thin shadow of what human aircraft could do when unleashed to use their full power. He had seen how the humans themselves had been forced to invest huge sums in the development of anti-aircraft weapons to defend themselves against aircraft. That was something Satan didn’t have to worry about deploying, there wasn’t an anti-aircraft gun in all of Hell.
And then there were the human boats. They were larger than any boat he'd ever seen; anywhere you needed to go in Hell, there were roads, or Belial's wyverns if the place was inaccessible. The human boats had guns on them, and could also throw missiles. Some even had aircraft on them, and some could actually swim under the water to throw missiles or hunt other boats. Abigor thought of the seas that surrounded Hell’s one great continent and imagined the human boats loose in them. All of Hell would be at their mercy with only Dagon’s few legions of Kraken to defend it.
So much to absorb. Abigor shook his head. Most bombs, missiles, and artillery shells exploded like injured flies, while other projectiles were solid iron. Some were thrown from guns, and others were dropped or thrown from aircraft. These new things were all so confusing in the details, but in general he was starting to absorb the picture of how humans did things. They fought to win – that much he'd already seen. But they didn't fight to win by outmaneuvering… Abigor stopped himself, that wasn’t true, human armies could maneuver in ways a demonic army couldn’t even dream of. To humans though, maneuver was a way to bring overwhelming firepower to bear on their enemy with the aim of annihilating either his desire or his ability to fight – or, in some cases, both.
The DVDs he'd seen had been particularly illuminating. He'd had no idea how ferocious humans were to each other, and the scale of the battles that had raged across the human world even in the last century – the last few days, to him – stunned him. How had they come so far in so little time? He'd seen lines of chariots – trucks – stretching for miles, throwing their projectiles into the air all at once. The sound was familiar to him, the thumping of artillery and the scream of inbound shells and rockets. They still took him back to the battlefield in the human world, where he'd watched his army disintegrate around him; he still had nightmares about that.
He'd seen lines of trenches, with humans running about in them – and in between them, a charred, muddy, churned-up wasteland that was as bad as anything in the Pit. Coils of razor wire criss-crossed that little hell, and guns crashed and chattered across while artillery lobbed back and forth. Once, he saw a flood of humans boil up out of one trench and charge into the hell, only to be scythed down. One had made it back to the trench.
He'd seen a coastline lined by razor wire and huge guns, and the dawn bring with it a sea of iron – boats as far as the eye could see, all firing at once, as people once more charged bravely into the crossfire from small boats that scuttled like beetles up to the beach.
He'd seen the view from above of a jungle wasteland with craters evenly spaced as far as the eye could see, as a line of explosions marched up the screen. The trees looked like grass, and the people running about looked like ants.
Abigor shook his head again. The myriad, creative ways humans had found to destroy their enemies were mind-boggling. Then a strange thought came to his mind, based around the way the humans had suddenly changed from a primitive mob that was just walking meat to a demonic army to the pitiless killers against whom no demonic army could stand. Oh, Abigor had heard the guns thundering, tens of leagues away as a human army stood against the sledgehammer blows of the combined armies of Asmodeus and Beelzebub, and in his mind’s eye he could see what was already happening, the demonic horde screaming and dying under the pounding of the human guns. One of his books had expressed it so well, ‘Artillery is the King of War, Infantry is the Queen of the Battlefield. And it is well known what the King does to the Queen.’
Abigor shook his head, it had all happened so suddenly. Three centuries from helpless victims to the Lords of War. Unnaturally quickly. Had there been another hand here? The way the humans had fought each other, each set of wars driving their weapons technology further forward and setting the conditions for the next set. As if humans were being trained to fight, bred to destroy both Satan and Yahweh. Abigor could see now why Yahweh had washed his hands of them, the human’s driving need to know had caused them to reject his teachings and ready- made answers in favor of finding their own. They had even laughed at Yahweh’s pronouncements, and dared his prophets to “prove” their doctrine. When the prophets and true believers had repeated Yahweh’s rulings, they’d been faced with the human battle-cry ‘prove it’ and ridiculed the prophets with evidence of the truth. There was even a slogan they used for such contests, one Abigor had spotted somewhere. “Science, and mockery of stupid people.” It was quite clear who they meant by the stupid people bit, Yahweh himself. No wonder he had been annoyed with them
Humans couldn’t have done it by themselves could they? Surely they must have had help. Were there others whose hands were involved here, perhaps the others who had once held sway on Earth but had been driven out by Yahweh and Satan? Their hand was still present, Abigor knew that, there were a small number of humans who were protected by them, who lived in Hell but were free of its torments. Had they trained humanity to become the Lords of War who would drive both Satan and Yahweh away from Earth?
This was worth further thought, but one thing was bothering him. This artistic destruction, he had all experienced. All save the use of aircraft, but that did not create much more destruction than the pounding artillery had. What had the Colonel meant when he'd said that Abigor had not even begun to see what humans could do when they put their minds to it? On his right lay a single DVD case. He picked it up, delicately opening it with his claws, and popped the DVD into the player. The large screen in front of him went from off to blue to black with white letters: THE MANHATTEN PROJECT.
The first part of the video, Abigor didn't understand. It was about things called “Adams” – wasn't Adam the first human to come to hell? He was still in Satan's palace in a little cage, if Abigor remembered correctly.
Then came the first pictures of what humans did with these Adams, and Abigor became very interested. He became very interested indeed.
An hour later, Abigor was sitting on his couch, mouth agape, staring at the screen as the credits rolled by. What sort of gods were the humans, to be able to destroy a city with a single bomb? He closed his mouth, then shook his head. A single bomb, capable of annihilating an entire city. An entire army would be nothing. They had played with him, when they could have destroyed him and everyone with him with ease.
Suddenly, the part of his mind that had been bothering him since his defection, the part that continually accused him of treason, became quieter and smaller. A lot quieter, and a lot smaller. There was no doubt that the humans were going to win this, no doubt at all. He saw it now: the humans were deploying just enough firepower to utterly destroy whatever was sent at them, waiting, keeping their cards in reserve, watching their enemies to see how they reacted. So simple, so logical, so utterly unconventional.
There was a knock at the door, and Abigor looked up. It opened, and a languid man walked in, flanked by two soldiers carrying nasty-looking guns – shotguns, Abigor recognized now. The lights in the ceiling seemed to flicker a
