the other side of the gate, the seas were ferocious and the wind still howled from the energy passing through the gate but here at least he had sea-room and not the ever-present danger of being trapped on a lee shore. He had turned his bows to the wind and seas and as he did so, he saw that he was not alone. Somehow, somebody had radioed a warning that a civilian cruise ship was coming through and would be in desperate need. Had it been one of the two wrecked warships? Their radio operators, knowing their own day was done, attempting at least to give a more fortunate mariner a better chance of survival? Olsen didn’t know. What he did know was that there were two warships there, one of the massive Russian nuclear-powered cruisers and a French amphibious warfare ship, and they had said they would stand by Carnival Triumph until the storm was done. He had watched while the Russian cruiser took green water over her bows, flooding all the way to her bridge, and then had fought herself free.
And so it had gone on for sixteen long hours, until the fury of the storm had faded and the seas returned to tranquility. Eventually he had bidden his protectors farewell and limped back through the Hellgate, his ship battered and torn by the violence of the storm but afloat with all her passengers, crew and refugees still alive. Seasick, mostly, but still alive. They’d even tried to restore the routine of a cruise ship, Olsen knew for a fact that the glamorous singer in the Rome Lounge had still been heaving the contents of her stomach into a bucket ten minutes before her act, but had managed to clean herself up, change into her stage gown and give the best performance she could, before running back and continuing to try and purge the effects of a ride the cruise liner’s designers had never anticipated.
“Madame, Hamilton is off the port bow.”
The Right Honorable Jennifer Smith shook herself and tried to summon up the courage to look at the devastation that had once been Bermuda’s capital. When she finally managed it, devastation didn’t even begin to cover it. There was not a building or a tree standing, even the massive walls of Fort Saint Catherine were tumbled. The island, once lush and green, studded with white houses, was now bare, brown and desolate. Smith picked up the bridge binoculars, swinging them on their stabilized mounting and pointed them at the center of Hamilton. It was not hard to see where the Parliament building and Cabinet Office had been, although the buildings themselves were gone and even their sites were hidden by a massive Japanese car-carrier that had been driven ashore. With her single screw and huge, flat sides, she had stood no chance, no chance at all. Then she gave a shocked gasp.
“Captain, there are Baldricks in the ruins!”
Olsen took the binoculars and surveyed the scene. The hulking black figures of the Baldricks were crowded in the shattered town. Even as he watched, they swung the main walls of a refugee hut into place while another group lifted up the roof to slide it into place. He looked a little more closely, there were television crews filming them at work. “It’s all right Madame. They’re helping with the disaster relief.”
“Over here Madame. You’ll see what they’re doing on CNN.” Most non-mariners didn’t realize that ships had commercial television receivers on their bridges. There were things on television that sailors needed to know and often couldn’t get from anywhere else with anything like the speed and efficiency. The news was one of them.
“for the survivors. The scale of the disaster in Bermuda is only now beginning to sink in. It is believed that as many as 40,000 of the island’s population have died in the disaster inflicted by Hurricane Paloma. The death toll might well have been higher had it not been for an emergency disaster team who portalled in directly from Hell under the command of Arch-Duke Dagon. The daemons started to clear the wreckage while the storm was still blowing and have shown an uncanny ability to find humans trapped in the wreckage. Of course their added strength and endurance has made their efforts on behalf of the victims more effective. Asked about the prompt response to the disaster, President Abigor said ‘To provide aid is the least we can do for the humans who have rescued us from millennia of slavery.’
“And now, for a report of the Bermudan disaster from one of the victims, we now go to our correspondent in Hell who has been allowed to interview some of those killed in the catastrophe. David, are you there?”
First Officer Carsten leaned quietly towards Olsen. “I don’t feel easy in my mind about this Sir.”
“About the Baldricks helping out? Like they did after the tornados in Missouri last month? Or after Ike hit Houston?”
“Sort of Sir, the way Abigor is sending them to Earth and refusing to accept payment for them. It’s a bit like slavery if you ask me. We took Hell to stop that kind of thing.”
“Abigor is getting paid Knut, not in cash but he’s getting paid. He’s reconstructing the Baldrick image, reconciling humans and daemons to living together. Every time there’s a disaster, the Baldricks are there, helping out. One day, he’s hoping, we’ll be comfortable with each other. That day, there’ll no longer need to be a human army of occupation in Hell. You know as well as I do what the people we’ve rescued from the Hell-Pit think of the Baldricks. If we pulled the Army out today, there’d be a massacre of hideous proportions in there and it wouldn’t be the humans who were doing the dying. The Human Expeditionary Army stand between the surviving Baldricks and the deceased humans they spent millennia tormenting. Sending some baldricks to help is a good way of buying back acceptance. And also making us feel guilty by the way.
Carsten nodded. The people on Earth had been cheering their armies on, and still were in some senses, but the film of the battlefields in Hell had stunned them. Especially the scenes along the Phlegethon River with the piles of mangled Baldrick corpses that went on for square mile after square mile. For perhaps the first time, they realized the incredible disparity of firepower that had existed between the human armies and the Baldricks. The sight of the dead where the Baldricks had tried to fight tanks with bronze tridents had changed opinions in a subtle but very marked way. Humans now pitied the Baldricks who had stood so little chance and had died not even understanding what it was that was killing them. It was rumored that change in attitude was also causing trouble in Hell, with the refugees from the pit unable to understand why the newly-dead from Earth should be sickened by the slaughter they’d inflicted.
“Madame, radio room here. We’re receiving message from Prime Minister Ewart Brown. He says that some of the Cabinet and Parliament are in a deep shelter underneath the Cabinet Office. They can’t get out because, and I quote ‘some damned great ship is sitting on top of us’ but they’re safe and the Baldricks are tunneling down towards them. As apparently you are the only surviving member of the Government in the open, he would like you to assume responsibility for the Government until, and again I quote, ‘the daemons get their fingers out and finish digging us out of here’.”
“Thank you, is he still on the air?”
“He is indeed Madame. I took the liberty of asking him to keep the communication line open.”
“Very well, I had better speak to him.”
“We can patch you in from the bridge, Madame, if you so wish?” Olsen made the offer tentatively, he had a lot to do and a politician on the bridge was the worst form of getting in the way.
Smith grinned, she knew exactly when the cruise liner Captain was thinking. “I’ll go down to the radio room Captain. Once you are docked, we may need this ship for accommodation and as an emergency hospital. Will your company allow that?”
“I see no reason why not Madame. Emergency disaster relief considerations were built into these ships although I do not think they have ever been properly used. I will ask Head Office, but you can assume the answer will be positive.”
Six hours later, Carnival Triumph was as near to being docked as the shattered facilities of Hamilton would allow. In fact, she was anchored fairly close to where the quays had been and an emergency set of brows had been lifted into place by a U.S. Navy helicopter. The refugees were on their way ashore, most of them looking nervously at the Baldricks working in the ruined buildings. With one exception, as one of the men from the town had been standing in the street looking at ruins that were presumably where he had once worked, a Baldrick had carefully lifted a survivor from the wreckage, a woman who must have been in an office corner where she had been sheltered from the destruction. Why hadn’t she been evacuated? Too scared to leave the building perhaps or just never got the word. She’d been put on a stretcher and carried away, the man holding her hand all the way. His wife? Secretary? Mistress? Olsen didn’t know and guessed that he probably never would.
He had more interesting things on his mind, not least of which were the two telegrams he had received from Head Office. One was commending him for the rescue of most of the inhabitants of Hamilton, an action described as being in the finest traditions of the company and of the seafaring community. The other reprimanded him for hazarding his ship and passengers. He was trying to work out which one to take seriously when there was a knock on the door.
“Captain, I am Doctor Surlethe, the National Science Advisor. I was wondering if I could ask you a few
