“You have an idea?”
“Not us, specifically, but something we’ve heard on the wind. Caesar has cracked this problem with his legions.”
“He would.” Schatten sounded bitter.
Ori ignored the interjection. “As the stories go, he’s mixed humans and daemons in the same units. Daemons are the main body of troops, Second-Life humans run the support forces. Mortars, machine guns, artillery, armor and so on. In defense, the daemons lay down and fire their rifles along with everybody else. That much we’ve got them to do ourselves. When it comes to attacks, the daemons do the movement bit while the humans provide covering fire and artillery support. A daemonic charge supported by machine gun and artillery fire to pin down the opposition. In daemonic eyes, they’re getting all the glory, in human eyes, the daemons are taking the brunt of the casualties. Suits both.”
“And you want to try the same thing?” Schatten asked.
“We do. We can’t fail any more badly than we’re doing at the moment.” Anderson and Aeneas sighed in obvious agreement.
Schatten nodded. In any effective army, a wise general listened to his senior NCOs. “I expect you’ll be receiving orders to that effect shortly. Thank you for your time gentlemen.”
Conference Room, Yamantau Mountain, Russia
“The latest word on the dust storms?” Prime Minister and Council Chairman Putin put the question tersely.
“Still occurring around the world although they’ve slowed down after the initial spate.” Doctor Surlethe consulted the file. “It’s the same pattern as all the others, we get an initial surge of attacks and then they peter off to a nominal level. We’ve actually had the quietest storm season in the Atlantic for a long, long time. The dust storms are a real problem though, they’ve hit some of the most productive farmland we have. For the first time on a worldwide basis, we face a real possibility of running low on food.”
“Can we use sea-based resources to make up the difference? How about seaweed; we can help with providing advice there.” The Japanese Prime Minister looked around at the other fourteen members of the council who weren’t too enthused by the idea of a seaweed diet.
“Can we import food from Hell to make up the difference? I understand that farming is already becoming established there.” Gordon Brown seemed much more at home with the idea of munching wheat grown in Hell than seaweed from Earth.
“That would seem a worthwhile subject for investigation. Doctor Surlethe, perhaps you could form a team to investigate alternative food sources. I must point out though that the ultimate answer to all of these food problems is to invade and conquer Heaven. Thus putting an end to this war.” Putin paused for a second. “Has the dissection of Uriel’s body given us any more data we can use?”
Surlethe paused for a second to change flash drives on his computer. As he did so, he glanced quickly upwards, thinking of the incredible weight of rock that was between him and fresh air. He shuddered slightly and opened up the appropriate files.
“We have dissected Uriel and provided tissue samples to all interested laboratories. He was one big mother so there was enough to go around.” He paused to allow a chuckle at his phrasing to pass around the room. One of the primary reasons why Council of Fifteen meetings worked so much more smoothly than the old United Nations had done was that they were secret and the participants could allow themselves to be more human. “Anyway, we’re all agreed, examination of the DNA does confirm that humans, daemons and angels all had a common ancestor a long, long time back. As far as we can determine, the angelic/daemon line split away from ours in the far distant pass while the daemons and angels split more recently. The extreme variation in physical form exhibited by daemons is comparatively recent and is not exhibited by angels. In fact, if the dating shown by our studies and the stories told to us by daemon informants are correct, the physical variation of daemons post-dates the move of the daemon population from Heaven to Hell.
“Although they differ in size, with Uriel being by far the largest angel we have killed to date, angels are all fundamentally the same. A white, feathered, six-limbed humanoid. One important thing, we examined Uriel’s genitalia and those of other angels we have killed. If our analysis is correct, by our standards, angels are sterile. Daemons, of course, are not. Now, I must be clear about this, ‘by our standards, sterile’ does not mean impotent. It does appear angelic males at least have very low fertility. We haven’t killed any females yet so we don’t know about them.”
“What about the Whore of Babylon?” The Singaporean Prime Minister was mentally assessing the implications of what Surlethe had just said.
“She survived, as far as we know, at least her body wasn’t found. Nor was that of the Scarlet Beast.”
“That brings us to an important point.” Putin interrupted the presentation. “Have we killed the treacherous swine in the Tekuma yet?”
“We have every ship in the Mediterranean hunting for them. It’s only a question of time. She’ll have to snort soon and when she does, we’ll have her. Present orders are ‘all weapons are free’. We can’t take a chance of her having any more missiles on board.” President Obama was glad to be able to get a word in at last.
“Does he?” Putin’s question was short, sharp and vicious.
“We don’t know.” The Israeli delegate’s answer was shame-faced. “We have lost our naval headquarters, and with that our records of what was where. If we can believe them that is. The official load-out for a Dolphin is five missiles, but she could, theoretically have up to twenty.”
“Why stop at twenty?” Putin’s question had a derisive edge to it.
“Because that’s all we had. Fifteen left now of course. We think the other two boats have five each but that would still mean Tekuma might have five more. Dolphin and Leviathan are due back in port soon. We can check their missiles then.”
“A question.” Gordon Brown spoke up again. “Do we want the crew alive? We need to question them, find out what happened.”
“We can do that anyway.” Prime Minisyer Abhisit Vejjajjiva sounded amused. The implications of the human occupation of Hell still hadn’t quite sunk in to most people. “They don’t have to be alive to answer questions and we can ask them in Hell just as well as we can here. Better in fact, one of my cousins has a detachment of military police waiting for them at the Phelan Plain reception center. By the way, I have some cheerful news. The body of Philip Phelan, the security guard at the New Market Mall has been found in the Fourth Circle of Hell and he is currently in the reception center names after him, recovering from his ordeal.”
A burst of applause ran around the room. Putin smiled happily, a slightly unnerving sight. “We must find suitable honors for him. Now, next subject on the agenda. How are we going to invade Heaven.”
Chapter Fifty
Control Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean
“Battery charge state?” Ben-Shoshan was a very worried man. He’d been snorting for over an hour and that was a very indiscrete thing to do. Even though he couldn’t understand why, he was in no doubt that Tekuma was the subject of a concentrated hunt. Perhaps they just wanted to find him after he had killed the Scarlet Beast? That was plausible, he had carried out the necessary evasive actions after his missile launch. But, he was an experienced submariner and he could sense when the hunt was hostile and this one was. For some reason, everybody wanted him dead. Why, that was another matter entirely. Unless, of course, things were not as they had seemed.
“Sixty percent and rising Sir.” The Engineering Officer sounded a little less stressed out than he had an hour earlier. That didn’t change the fact that even a sixty percent charge was normally regarded as being a matter of serious concern.
“Very good. Continue the charge. Communications, any messages from Tel Aviv? Or anybody else for that matter.”
“No Sir, communications circuits are silent. Nothing by way of our mast and the bell-ringer system is quiet also.”
Ben-Shoshan tapped his fingers, that was very odd indeed. The bell-ringer circuit, a very low frequency communications array, could get a message through to him almost anywhere. The penalty for that capability was a
