speed, do the same.”
The formation split into three, the Bradleys forming a defensive laager while the two platoons of Abrams tanks set off in opposite directions. Stevenson’s luck was still holding, ten minutes after the split, she spotted the encampment that was her primary target. A small group of buildings surrounded by a stone wall. “All Alpha elements, target located. Home in on my radio.” She waited until she got the acknowledgements and then started to edge her tanks forward.
Fublaronishel’s Encampment, Martial Plain of Dysprosium, Hell
It wasn’t a great command but for an ambitious young demon, an independent command like this was good. If he did well, his overlord would see and reward him. If he did not, the command was small enough so that any errors would be easily concealed. Fublaronishel had high hoped of this command, hopes that it would lead to better things and perhaps the award of a mate. Then his eyes narrowed, a cloud of dust? It couldn’t be the patrol he had sent out, they weren’t due back for two days. Then he saw what was approaching and his heart went cold.
“Iron Chariots! Iron Chariots are coming.” It was impossible, the Humans couldn’t have brought their Iron Chariots here. They had been terribly hurt by the nameless one whose disgrace was such that even thinking his previous name was punishable by death. They couldn’t be coming. Fublaronishel knew that they were, because he could see them. They still couldn’t be. “Turn out the guard. Every demon to the walls.”
His men were well-trained, they ran out of the barracks and scaled the walls, facing the dreaded Iron Chariots. The humans had stopped, many spear-throws from the walls, perhaps they were afraid to attack a fortification. Then the desert erupted into smoke and dust as the fire lances screamed out from the long tube that topped the Chariots. The walls shook with the impact, the stones shattering, fragments thrown across the encampment ground. It dawned on the stunned Fublaronishel that they had struck his wall before he had heard the sound of their launch. He staggered, looking at the walls, still standing although shaken to their core. Too many of his men were down, he was understrength to start with, he had only six of his nine nine-demon sections and one of those was out on patrol, a second was at an outpost less than a couple of miles away. That had left him with 36 and already a quarter of them were on the ground, dead or wounded it was hard to say. Then, another scream and the explosions struck his wall, tumbling it down into a pile of pulverized rubble. That was when he heard another sound, a whistling roar, something he had never heard before.
It was one of the great Iron Chariots, it reached the ruined wall and started to cross it, something no chariot Fublaronishel had ever seen could do. The roar increased and the Chariot pulled up over the rubble, its front pointing at the sky, then its nose suddenly crashed down and the chariot accelerated down the other side of the rubble pile. The strange box and tube seemed to rotate, the tube swinging around to point at him but he didn’t see the great blast as it launched a fire-lance. Instead, there was a dancing point of light and Fublaronishel felt the impacts knock him off his feet. He was weak, unable to rise, and helpless when the chariot crushed the life out of him with its treads.
Combat Team Alpha. Fublaronishel’s Encampment, Martial Plain of Dysprosium, Hell
“And the walls came tumbling down.” Stevenson’s voice was smugly self-satisfied. “Baldricks, meet depleted uranium.” Her platoon’s first salvo had been sabot, bolts of depleted uranium alloy that had smashed into the wall, the shock waves from the impacts leaving the stones riddled with stress fractures. The second salvo had been HEAT rounds, their explosions blasting the riven wall down, leaving it a gentle pile of rubble, the wall’s defenders mixed in with it. “Biker, take us through.”
She flipped her radio back to company net again. “All Alpha-Alpha vehicles, over the wall, destroy the encampment. One and three take the buildings on the left, two and four the right. One HEAT round into each.”
“Wait for us, we’re three minutes out.” She recognized the voice, the commander of Alpha-Bravo, pleading to be allowed to join the assault.
“Can’t let them regroup. Its pedal to the metal time boys.” Her tank was accelerating towards the ruins of the wall and the baldricks staggering round behind it, She lost sight of them as the bow rose, the gas turbine screaming out power as it pushed the tank over the rubble. Then the bows dropped again and she saw the pitiful little encampment in front of her. A baldrick was trying to aim his trident at her tank but Baldy cut him down with the co-axial machine gun before he had the chance. Several more baldricks were over on the right, she ignored them, they were Alpha-Alpha-Two’s responsibility. A charge well and truly kept for even as her first HEAT round flattened the nearest left-hand hut, a canister round from Two turned the baldricks in the group into chopped fragments.
The encampment was burning, the building set a fire from the copper plasma jets formed by the HEAT rounds. Some of the baldricks had been taking cover inside, their screams as they burned could be heard even inside the tanks as they waddled down the single street between the buildings, their guns crashing as they demolished what was left of the encampment. They were wreathed in the smoke, only vaguely semi-visible, the screaming roar of their engines the only thing that the baldricks could hear before they emerged from the cloud that hid the monsters. It was the roar of the engines that broke the baldricks more than the gunfire or the screams of the victims as the tanks cut them down or ground them into slush with their tracks. The baldricks that were left ran from the burning encampment into the open ground where they hoped to make their escape. These baldricks knew nothing of how tanks fought infantry.
Behind her, Stevenson could hear the crackle of 25mm gunfire as the Bradleys caught up with her platoon and added their own quantum of destruction to the holocaust that was engulfing the outpost. Her tank had reached the end of the street and it crashed through the wooden gate that gave access to the highway in front of her. A dozen, perhaps a dozen and a half baldricks were running away, trying to escape across the open ground. It was pitiful, Stevenson felt slightly sorry for them as her four tanks formed into their line and the canister shells scythed them down. Baldricks could run faster than humans, a lot faster, but that didn’t save them. The ones who survived the canister were cut down by the machine guns and then crushed under the tracks. If any had survived, they would have learned an important lesson that day. Mechanized warfare is a bitch.
Over to her left, another black pyre of smoke was staining the red sky. “Charlie, is that you?”
“Sure is Captain. We cut the corner and hit the secondary. Its ashes, there were eighteen, perhaps twenty Baldricks here, all dead. No casualties.”
“Bravo, any casualties back there?”
“Not a one Cap. We’re fine and we got some of the baldricks you missed on the way through.”
“Hokay, guys, form on me. We’re heading home.”
An hour later, Stevenson was staring at her map again. “It’s got to be here. We came back on an exact reciprocal of the way we came in. It’s got to be here.”
“Could they have closed it Hooters?” Crab’s voice was worried.
“I’ll tell you something else, we didn’t see that guard house we flattened on the way in. We weren’t that long, we should have seen the wreckage at least.”
Stevenson pressed her lips together. “Right.” Radio to company command channel. “All right guys, same drill as before. We go two ways, Bravo stays here and keeps in contact. We’ll find that hellmouth.”
This time it was Charlie that lucked out, at the end of their cast. They spotted the burned-out display stand and that gave Alpha Team the reference it needed. Twenty minutes later her command reassembled and drove triumphantly out through the Hellgate
As they crossed the ridge, Colonel Macfarland was waiting for them, impatience conflicting with congratulation on his face.
“Sir, both targets wiped out, no casualties, more than 100 baldricks dead. And Sir, something’s really screwy with directions in there.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
Tartarus, outer borders of Hell
Count Belial had long since stopped watching the bleak landscape roll past below. He had been flying for two days straight and even his inhuman endurance could not prevent the ride becoming extremely uncomfortable. The wyverns flew faster than any demon, while his own prized flock flew faster than anything the demons had ever encountered, thanks to Euryale's breeding program. Unfortunately it was also fast enough to transform the normally soft and welcoming clouds of ash into a blast that stung Belial's eyes and scoured his skin. The remoteness of his
