“OK, OK, I surrender, I’ll take the job. Anything but a B-17.”
“Welcome on board. And by the way, be careful what you say about the B-17s. Curt LeMay might hear you – remember we know now he’s out there somewhere. He was mighty fond of the B-17.”
(APpreciation to Surlethe who wrote the first half of the first part)
Chapter Thirty Four
Private Quarters, Palace of Satan, Dis, Hell
Satan contemplated the goblet of wine in front of him and sighed moodily. Then he grabbed the orc servitor that had brought him the cup and wrung him out over the still, red liquid. When the luckless orc was quit dead, he threw its mutilated corpse into a corner. Behind him the majordomo also sighed. Good staff was getting so hard to keep these days.
Satan didn’t worry himself with such mundane concerns. He had much more important things on his mind than his domestic staff. He stirred the wine with a talon, watching the contents of the goblet dissolve the organs squeezed out of the luckless orc, and then drank it down. Especially domestic staff that didn’t taste good. Had Yahweh planned this whole mess?
The fact was that the unexpected resistance of the humans had thrown all his plans into total chaos. It was just not supposed to happen this way. Ostensibly because the growing lack of respect (by which Yahweh meant blind, unquestioning worship) from the humans had soured him of Earth, Yahweh had washed his hands of them and signed them over to Satan. In reality, Satan knew what really lay behind that, Heaven’s gates had been closed for millennia now, closed and locked. Giving Earth to Satan had just confirmed a situation that had actually existed for a very long time. Without even a nominal interest in Earth, Yahweh could retreat to Heaven and concentrate on more enticing projects.
It should have been easy, invade Earth, crush the remaining humans and bring their souls here to Hell. Leave the Earth almost depopulated, erase humans and all trace of their works, let it – and them – redevelop and see what happened next. Only it hadn’t worked that way. The Humans had massacred the Army sent against them. The news of Abigor’s crushing defeat had ricocheted around Hell, creating alarm and uncertainty unknown for thousands of years. Satan had had to move fast there, if Abigor had been left alive to spread his tales, that alarm and uncertainty would have turned up panic and demoralization. Exterminating Abigor and all his line had crushed that and shown everybody that Satan still had the situation in hand.
And that, Satan thought, was a very good question. One he would annihilate anybody who dared ask it. Did he have the situation in hand? The demons around him had no idea how critical the situation had become. If the situation on Earth had been the only one he faced, then there would have been no problem but that wasn’t the case and there was the whole problem laid out simply and neatly. Satan knew that he had been neatly impaled on the points of a trident and any attempt to free himself from one prong only resulted in him becoming more firmly transfixed by the others. Oh, he had made a great show of ordering the assembled legions to go forth and invade Earth, this time in overwhelming numbers but he knew all too well that those orders were just for effect. To make the armies fit for war, they had to have their numbers made up with reservists, civilians who hadn’t handled a trident in anger for centuries. They just weren’t fit to go right now and if he sent them, he would leave Hell open, bereft of trained troops.
That was where the second problem came in, the second trident fork, the rebellion that had started in Hell itself. Oh, Asmodeus had hidden the extent of it, or rather he thought he had, but words was spreading anyway. Asmodeus himself was losing power because of the inability of his minions to put down the revolt, it was even being whispered that it was humans themselves who had risen against Satan’s power. And had done so with more of the devastating magic they’d used on Earth. Just how had they found such mages? Humans had never been seen to have magical powers before? Who had given them such powers?
There was only once plausible answer to that. Yahweh. And that brought his mind back to the original question, had Yahweh planned the whole thing? There was no doubt Yahweh was on the move, an Angelic delegation had been sent to Dis, but it had never got to the city walls. The rebels had killed it, wiped it out with that confounded magic of theirs. That left Satan with a very real problem, he was already getting some polite inquiries about that delegation. If he denied all knowledge of it, that would be instantly disbelieved and that disbelief would be expressed as an assumption Satan was admitting guilt for its disappearance. That could lead to war. On the other hand, if he admitted it had been destroyed by rebels, that would be an admission of weakness so profound it could lead to war.
No, if he invaded Earth, he would be leaving his realm open to invasion from Heaven. If he kept his Army here, he would be leaving Earth to build up its forces for an even deadlier defense. If he split his forces between the two, he might not have the strength to do either. And if he ignored this rebellion, it would grow and become a third, equally powerful demand on his strength.
All of which pointed to the third spike in Satan’s gut. Yahweh had never forgotten Satan’s rebellion that had established Hell as an independent entity. Oh, Yahweh was happy enough claiming victory and boasting of how Satan had been ‘cast down’ but the truth was simple. Before Satan’s rebellion, Heaven and Hell had been one entity, ruled by Yahweh. Now they were two independent entities and Yahweh ruled only one of them. And he had never forgotten it. Had he planned this whole mess? Once again the question echoed through Satan’s mind. Then another displaced it. Had the humans planned this whole situation. Had they, enraged by Yahweh’s betrayal of them, decided to take a deadly revenge on both? If that was true, where would they stop? Would they stop?
“Your Majesty, Asmodeus awaits.” The Majordomo measured the distance to the nearest cover, a familiar precaution these days, one which his predecessor had inexplicably neglected.
“Send him in.” Satan stared morosely as Asmodeus crawled in on his belly.
“Your Majesty, I abase myself before you.”
“Not enough. And your cringing is inadequate also.”
Asmodeus shriveled slightly on the floor. “Your Majesty, I bring bad news.”
“Let me guess, the rebellion you are tolerating in your domain is getting worse.”
On the floor, Asmodeus shuddered. “Majesty, one of my underlings has been killed, his castle stormed and its garrison wiped out. The attackers left this message. They oppressed the people. They faced the people’s justice. Fear Us. Popular Front For The Liberation of Hell
To Asmodeus’s amazement, Satan actually smiled. “The Liberation of Hell. I fought for that once. And won. And now the humans fight me for the same thing.”
“Majesty, they..”
“And you let them.” Satan’s voice had its oily, deadly quality back.
“No Majesty. This stupid rebellion can be crushed, easily. All I need to do is take five legions down there and hunt the rebels down. We can be training the rest of the armies while I do that. This must be done Majesty.”
“Then do it. And take ten legions, not five.” That was a solution Satan thought, he could tell Yahweh that the delegation had been destroyed by rebels who had been wiped out for their impudence.
“One other thing Majesty.” Asmodeus felt himself beginning to lose control of his bowels.
“Speak.”
“Majesty, Abigor is not dead. Our watchers saw him surrender his forces to the humans. He has defected to them.”
Satan’s scream of rage could be heard across four rings of hell.
Celestial Mechanics laboratory, DIMO(N), Yale, New Haven, Connecticut
“Why don’t we just nuke the wretched thing?” General Teed Michael Moseley glanced at the nondescript civilian sitting beside him. The man quietly reached out his hand, flat, palm down, and moved it slightly backwards and forwards in negation. Moseley’s mouth twisted slightly, a targeteer had spoken and the answer given, ‘not enough data’.
Dr Kuroneko frowned, then gestured at the projection screen. His first assignment had been to find a way of closing the Hellmouth in the Iraqi desert down if that became necessary. The obvious answer, the one the Air Force loved, had been his first guess as well. A bad guess as it happened.
“It won’t work General. Let me show you.” The EM field graphs disappeared and were replaced by an intricate
