“We’re putting out radio messages, ordering Tekuma to report in.”
“And?”
“And what Sir?”
“And suppose she can’t report in, or doesn’t want to? We’ve no idea what is happening out there. She could have been sunk by collision with a merchant ship, simply had a radio failure or hit an uncharted rock. Remember that Chinese boat a few years back? Snort valve jammed while charging batteries, she got back to the surface but the pressure differential prevented her from opening her hatches and her entire crew suffocated. Happened so fast nobody got a distress call out. She was drifting for ten days before the Chinese Navy found her. Now, are you sure Tekuma isn’t out there, drifting around with a dead crew? Think, man. Get some recon birds out there and call Dolphin and Leviathan. They’re the only capable ASW assets your Navy has. Find that submarine.”
Marosy slumped into a seat, trying to think of a reason why he could be transferred to another posting in the Human Expeditionary Army. This one was just too much.
Jerusalem, Israel
The Scarlet Beast paused for a second to scratch his back on the Crown Plaza Hotel, then headed for the Bridge of Chords. Seated on his neck, Dumah screamed in triumph as the Hotel crumbled with the impact of Fluffy’s body. She ignored the steady crackle of gunfire, most of the shots were aimed at the Scarlet Beast and she seriously doubted whether they were penetrating his thick skin. She was bleeding where some of the heavier-caliber bullets had hit her, the silver of her blood disfiguring her red-and-purple robes. None of the wounds were severe enough to worry her though, not while the sheer exhilaration of destroying the city pulsed through her veins.
Underneath her, the Scarlet Beast reared on his back legs and took two swings at the Bridge of Chords with his front paws. The first ripped the column from its foundation and hurled it backwards, the second caught it as it fell and batted it backwards, causing the iconic structure to shatter in mid-air. The wreckage sprayed across the nearby buildings with the same effect as a shotgun blast. The sight drew another scream of triumph from Dumah, this time one of professional fulfillment. When not riding the Scarlet Beast, she was one of the Eternal City’s better architects and destroying that eyesore of a bridge had been a real pleasure. Meanswhile, Fluffy had spotted a group of three tower blocks close together and he galloped over to them. One massive swing of his paws topped the end one down and it took the other two with it.
“Stee-RIKE.” Dumah cheered and slapped Fluffy on the neck at the sight of the three blocks collapsing into dust and gravel. The sight of the tower blocks going down was an entirely new sensation to her. The last time she had destroyed Jerusalem, it had been a miserable collection of hovels that the Scarlet Beast had trampled without a second thought. This was much more professionally satisfying.
Thoughts of her previous rampage through this area so many millennia ago distracted Dumah for a second. It had always upset her slightly that the scribes who had told of Fluffy’s exploits hadn’t been able to accept that their beloved Yahweh could pull such a rampage of wanton destruction. In the end, they had assigned the blame to Satan and assumed that she and her Beast were his creations. As a result, poor Fluffy had been written down as a Hell- spawn and she as a demon. That really offended Dumah. Perhaps it was because of that moment of reflection that Dumah didn’t see the four shapes hurtling through the night towards her. She heard nothing because the F-111Cs were coming in at Mach 1.1and their sound wave followed far behind the bombers.
F-111C, Koala Flight, Approaching Jerusalem
Each aircraft was carrying four two thousand pound retarded bombs and the great beast trampling the ruins of Jerusalem was hardly a target they could miss. The great red monster seemed to glow amidst the clouds of dust and smoke, illuminated by the starlight and what was left of the city lights. Squadron Leader Mackay had already obtained clearance for this raid, it was a matter of how desperate the situation was that the Israelis had authorized the use of these heavy bombs on the city. But then, if these failed, the next option was the use of a nuclear weapon and he guessed they would do most things rather than authorize that.
“Target in sight Charlie, get the nav-attack system locked. All Koala aircraft, we’ll try and get that wee beastie trapped in a four-by-four box of bombs. Set intervalometer for a one hundred-foot spacing around him. One pass and we’re out of here.”
“Roger.” The affirmatives came over the radio swiftly as the target swelled in size before them. Neither the beast nor its rider were aware of the threat that was racing through the sky towards them. Making attack runs over Mach one had that effect. Mackay tapped his controls slightly, lining his aircraft up to pass directly over the beast below. Then, he felt his Pig lurch as eight thousand pounds of steel and explosive, the finest two thousand pound bombs that Norinco in China could make, dropped clear. Their tale find split open and spread out, stopping the bomb’s forward movement and slowing their descent so the four F-111s could get clear. The Scarlet Beast and his rider barely had time to notice their arrival before they exploded all around them.
Jerusalem, Israel
Dumah had heard about human weapons and their terror but she hadn’t imagined anything like the waves of blast, sound and fragments that enveloped her. The stories, those she had heard, and she had thought she understood them but they hadn’t even begun to convey the nightmare of being caught in one. She heard Fluffy screaming as the fragments slashed into his body and the blast from the bombs pummelled him. Somebody else was screaming in fear and agony as well and to her horror Dumah realized she was hearing her own voice. She looked down, through the billowing smoke and stink of human explosives Why human weapons even smelled of the hell they created she thought, and saw the streams of silver blood pouring down the sides of her Beast and splattering on the ground far below. Only then did she realize how badly the bombs had hurt her.
Even breathing was painful. She could feel the bones grating in her chest when she tried to take a deep breath, heard the bubbling in her lungs. Her mind didn’t seem to be working properly, it was as if it had been filled with a strange jelly that wrapped around her brain and stifled her thoughts. There was something she had to do but she couldn’t quite get a handle on it, the memory of what she had to do and where she had to go seemed to be stuck somewhere and she couldn’t quite get it loose. Underneath her, Fluffy was weaving around, his own scarlet blood pouring from the gaping wounds in his chest and belly. Slowly the thought came to her mind. I have to get the hell out of here.
That’s when the second part of her instructions came clearly into her mind. She had to open an escape portal to a specific point, one Michael-Lan had been very insistent on. That one point, nowhere else. No matter how bad things were, she had to go to that point first. She joined her mind to that of the Scarlet Beast and together they opened the great black ellipse that was her road to safety. Stunned with shock and pain, she and Fluffy leaped through it and into the refuge that lay beyond.
Radio Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean
The radio message chattered its way through the decrypting system and spewed out as words printed on a white tape. The message was clear and formed into two parts. One was an urgent message to Tekuma to re- establish contact with operations center immediately. The other was a flash message that said an Australian air strike had forced the Scarlet Beast to break off its attack and retreat to Heaven. That emergency at least was over.
Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak read the latter and sighed to himself. The time had come, all the planning that had gone into this operation would be rewarded. It had taken years to get this operation set up, people had had to be moved into the right places, and they had had to move others into the places they were needed. But, with Divine inspiration, provided by the peerless Archangel who had appeared to them all in their visions, it had been done. They had been promised no reward. They were doing the Lord’s will and that was enough. He took the message that had arrived and carefully destroyed it, feeding it through the shredder that was specifically designed to reduce paper to an irrevocable mass of tiny shards. Then he took another message out of his pocket, one that was carefully packed so that it looked freshly arrived. Its contents were not those that had just been delivered.
Yitzchak’s next stop was the weapons control room. There was a terminal there, one that connected to the five Popeye missiles stored in the torpedo tubes forward. They had been loaded into the tubes earlier, all they needed was their target coordinates. The weapons control officer took the orders and typed the numbers given there into the missile control panel. There, they would be fed through an algorithm that converted them into the actual targets. The Weapons Control officer had no idea where those targets were and that was the plan. He was better off not knowing.
“The targets are entered into the system.” The voice was solemn as befitted the occasion. Nobody on the submarine had ever really believed this moment would come. In fact, it still might not for there was an outside chance the submarine’s Captain would refuse to fire. But that was a remote chance indeed. Yitzchak saluted and
