Hellmouth enveloped him
“Alpha-Actual. Sorry Sir, he got past us. No excuses Sir, he was so close to the hellmouth we only had one shot and we blew it. Want us to go in after him?”
There was a pause and Stevenson knew the message was going up the line and the response was coming down. “Alpha-Actual, Command Prime was watching on Eye-Five. Word is don’t blame yourself, that big baldrick would make a great football player. Stay out of hell for now. Drop back one klick and go hull down with a line of fire to the Hellmouth. The Generals are thinking.”
And we all know that makes their heads hurt. Stevenson thought, and settled back as much as was possible in the turret of an Abrams. “Biker, take us back one click to the ridgeline we crossed. Time to have a rest.”
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
“… and remember that problems one, three, and four of section 37 in the Munkres text are due next Tuesday. You may assume the Tychonoff Theorem; we will finish proving it next class. Problem five is extra credit. Class dismissed.” As the students in his Topology I class finished packing up their papers, Dr Kuroneko turned to the board and began erasing the proof of a lemma for the Tychonoff Theorem.
A polite knocking at the door caught his attention, and he turned around, adjusting his glasses and absentmindedly smearing chalk dust across his cheek and nose. “Yes?”
To his surprise, it was not a student wanting help with the homework questions; it was three men dressed in military uniforms. “Dr Kuroneko?”
“That's me, yes. How may I help you?”
“I'm General Schatten, of the US Army's D.I.M.O.(N) section. I understand you are the foremost mathematical expert in…” He wrinkled his nose, fished in his pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper. “… in 'higher dimensional topology.'”
Dr Kuroneko shrugged. “Some people say that I am, yes.”
“Well, we have a team of physicists working on a project for us, and they recommended you as the mathematical expert we need. We've already talked to the math department here; they're more than willing to help with the war effort, so they've granted you indefinite paid sabbatical. We will, of course, be more than willing to provide you with additional compensation for your services. As well, your landlord has agreed to let us pay your rent while you live in Arlington and work for us, again indefinitely.”
The mathematician blinked. “So, I'm working for you? On what sort of project?”
“Dr Kuroneko, we have a problem. We’ve managed to open a portal to hell and we can communicate with those inside on an individual basis. We need to communicate with everybody in there, baldricks, humans everybody. We know it can be done because they did it to us, there was The Message and then that bombastic nonsense from Satan. We need you to work out the mathematics that underlies the situation, we need you to analyze the basis of how this communications phenomena works. The only way to understand something is to understand the maths behind it. At the moment we’re doing it on a purely empirical basis, we need you to make sense of it. Once you’ve done that we can start to use it properly.”
Kuroneko’s eyes lit up. Secretly, although he was too polite to say so, he was amazed that an Army General would understand the importance of basic theory. It never occurred to him that Generals dealt with basic theory and applied mathematics as a routine part of their job. “That sounds fascinating! When do I start?”
General Schatten smiled. “Yesterday if possible. Today at the latest. We're already loading your possessions into the moving van for you.” He stepped forward and shook Dr Kuroneko's hand. “Welcome to D.I.M.O.(N), Doctor.”
Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina
“Man, what do we want with a piston-engined bird that’s fifty years old.” The F-16 pilot leaned back on the O- club bar, not noticing the slight air of reproof that went around the room. The two old B-29s sitting on the flight line might be relics of a bygone age but their crews were guests of the mess and the comment was out of place.
“We don’t know that jets can fly in hell yet, in fact we know nothing about the place at all other than its pretty unpleasant. We know that there’s a high content of particulates in the atmosphere, sulfur and pumice. The Predator that went in came back pretty messed up. So, prop birds give us another option. Also, we need every modern bird we can get up in the air, every second or third-line job that gets done by a museum piece is one more modern bird freed up for combat. That’s why we’ve got C-47s back in the inventory as well.” The scientist drank his beer reflectively. The tour around the museums hadn’t picked up that many usable aircraft, there was a big difference between a plane that looked good on display and one that was able to be returned to flying status, but they had a few. By a quirk of history, the B-29s had done better than most and even then only a handful were available for service. The non-flying birds and the aircraft too old to be of even fourth or fifth line use had their own role to play though. They were in the Hell Jars, being experimented on.
“Yeah but prop-engined bombers.” The F-16 pilot spoke with scorn and didn’t notice the frown of displeasure from his commander.
“I know, I know.” Colonel Tibbets put down his beer. He’d kept quiet to date, partly because he didn’t want to rise to the bait and partly because he had his own position in mind. He suspected somebody in Air Force Personnel had a sense of humor and had searched through the Air Force list to find a Colonel Tibbets to command the newly- reformed 40th Bombardment Wing. “We’re really going to need you guys in the fighters to protect us. Like we always have I guess. Why don’t we buy you a drink or three, show our appreciation?”
Next morning Lieutenant Barham woke up in his quarters with a head that felt ready to explode. The party that had started in the O-club had then moved to the strip outside the base and turned into a real bar crawl. He didn’t remember too much after the fourth or fifth bar but his head was dreadful. Those bomber boys certainly knew how to party. He glanced at the flight-line, both the B-29s had gone, probably on their way to whatever experimental station they would be assigned to.
At that point, Barham realized that it wasn’t just his head that was hurting. His rear end was also feeling -- inflamed. With a dawning sense of horror he went to the washroom and looked in the mirror and what he saw their confirmed his worst fears. On one buttock was tattooed the unit crest of the 40th Bombardment Wing and the motto “Old Age and Treachery Beats Youth and Skill”. The other buttock had a plan view of a B-29 and the motto “Four Screws Beats A Blow Job” tattooed on it.
Barham was still dumbly contemplating the sight when the phone rang. “The Squadron Commander wishes to speak with you. Now,” was the message.
Chapter Thirty
The Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell
Another demon had died, his head grotesquely shattered by the human weapons. Rahab recognized the signs by this time, the physical destruction that had been wrought from a distance that gave the victim no chance of surviving, not even warning that it was under attack. She wasn’t quite certain how many had died to date, might have been twelve or more. She did know the number included some of the demons that had once ridden so imperiously on their Beasts. The humans had proved her wrong, they could be killed. In fact the humans had killed them quite easily. There was much to think on there. There was something else to consider as well. In her travels, trying to find the six new arrivals who were causing this mayhem, she had watched the demons and learned something else. They were scared, too many of their number had gone out on patrol and never returned. Now, they were beginning to skimp those patrols, to head through the area as fast as they could, not stopping for anything until they got back to the safety of the walls.
Rahab found herself asking, just how safe were those walls? She had seen what was left of the mighty bridge over the Styx, a mass of destroyed masonry flung around the way an angry child might scatter play bricks. A bridge that had stood for untold millennia had been wantonly destroyed, with, it was rumored, the best part of a whole legion that had been unfortunate enough to be standing on it. There were work gangs trying to repair it, some of them humans driven by demon overseers but the destruction had been so great it was defeating their efforts. She had watched while some of the repairs collapsed again, the foundations undermined by the power of the destruction. There had been other attacks as well, on the great road that led from the depths of Hell up to the city of Dis and from there out to the field of Dysprosium. Rahab had never been outside the great pit of hell but she had
