There was one advantage in doing that. Uxaligantivaris had noted that the human Sky Chariots were staying high, not dropping close to the ground. Perhaps they couldn’t, she’d noticed that their wings didn’t flap like any proper flying creature. Oh, a couple had had wings that seemed to flap forward and backwards but none flapped properly. Still, the message was clear, close to the ground and the Sky Chariots would leave them alone. Cheered at the thought, she folded her wings, expelled gas, and dropped like a stone on the defense position beneath.
Command HQ, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell
“The battle is joined Tovarish General.” General Ivan Semenovich Dorokhov was standing in front of his screen, the facilities here in hell were nowhere near as good as those General Petraeus had left behind in Baghdad but they would serve.
“Very good, Ivan Semenovich. How goes the day?”
“Well, David Howellovich.” Both men grinned at the mangled Russification of Petraeus’s middle name. “Our artillery and air strikes are hurting the baldricks badly. We estimate their casualties already must be approaching ten percent of their total.”
“A word of advice Grazhdanin Ivan, divide your estimates by three. We learned this the hard way in Iraq and before that in Vietnam and the Balkans.”
“And we learned that same lesson in Afghanistan and fighting the Hitlerites. But Gospodin David, we have hit Beelzebub’s army hard. His casualties on the northern flank are mounting and they are only now moving into our main zone of resistance. The southern flank is moving more slowly, the situation had not developed there yet. There appears to be no movement at all in the center.”
“Hmm. The baldricks are learning. Not slowly either. Whatever you need, just call. We’re lining up the support for you here.” As far as Petraeus was concerned, that was his role in this battle. Let the Russian Army do its thing and just make sure they have every tool they needed, and some that they didn’t know they needed, not yet anyway. “For your information, the BUFFS have arrived. They flew through the hellmouth a few minutes ago and are circling to gain height. They’ll be ready when you need them.”
Dorokhov laughed. “The sight of those flying through the Hellgate must have been impressive. Is there an intact eardrum left back there?”
“Not a one. Not a one. But tell your men, the Gray Lady is coming.”
Chapter Fifty Seven
DIMO(N) Headquarters, Crystal City, Virginia
For the fourth time in the last half-hour, a gentle beeping filled the monitoring room. With some irritation, Technical Sergeant James Nevaquaya put aside the draft response procedure he’d been reading and glanced up at the grid of monitors. Code: ! 2-network Anomaly Detected! ! VERIZON node 21633: 28% dropped frames: Detroit, MI! VERIZON node 21638: 12% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)! SPRINT node 45-3C: 15% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (2.5 km)?? Detailed capture triggered on 36 nodes.
One monitor was showing a map of the anomaly site – freeways snaking through a dense grid of streets, north of Detroit. Nevaquaya’s hand went to the mouse as he tried to bring up the spectrum display. The prototype was barely functional, a cobbled together mess of mostly civilian technology, but for now that novelty and importance of the task was keeping frustration at bay. The spectrum analyzer was still hobbled by the cell site’s receiver limitations, but it was clearly showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz.
The gentle beeping was abruptly replaced by an insistent two-tone warble. The text scrolling onto the status display snapped Nevaquaya’s mind to intense alertness. Code: ! Multi-network Anomaly Confirmed!
! VERIZON node 21633: 34% dropped frames: Detroit, MI! VERIZON node 21638: 25% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)! VERIZON node 21629: 17% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (6.5 km)! VERIZON node 21635: 14% dropped frames: Warren, MI (9.3 km)! SPRINT node 45-3C: 31% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (2.5 km)! CDMA2000 down! SPRINT node 45-3A: 20% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (3.9 km)! SPRINT node 44-8D: 16% dropped frames: Warren, MI (8.7 km)! CINGULAR node MA335: 26% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (3.9 km)
W-CDMA down! CINGULAR node MA334: 22% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (5.2 km)! ALLTEL node 4775: software failure: Southfield, MI (11.2 km)! T-MOBILE node MA5XA: W-CDMA resetting: Detroit, MI (6.3 km)?? Composite spectrum display enabled.? Detailed capture triggered on 92 nodes.!!*** POSSIBLE PORTAL OPENING – heuristic match 0.82****!
Within seconds an office chair rolled through the door from the adjoining office, carrying Graeme Wilson with it. The civilian contractor took in the situation on the monitors almost instantly.
“0.82? That’s the highest yet. What do you make of the spectrum?”
“The general spike structure sure looks like the recordings. I’ll call NORAD – can you get any more resolution out of those sites?”
Wilson had already begun typing, his fingers a chattering blur. Console windows popped up and streams of incomprehensible commands flashed past. Meanwhile Nevaquaya had gone straight for the first entry in the speed dial.
“…big one, at four two degrees twenty three minutes north, eighty three degrees four minutes west. Confidence is moderate.”
Nevaquaya watched the civilian work while the duty officer at NORAD checked the radar picture. The contrast between the usual procurement process, even the usual R amp;D process and what was going on here was incredible, things were happening in days that had taken years just a few months earlier. The monitoring system was crude and buggy as yet, but getting even that operational in under four days was amazing. America had apparently rediscovered engineers who thrived on doing the impossible. Then Nevaquaya thought again, no not rediscovered, just set free from the demands of reaching some unattainable ideal of perfection.
The spectrum display flicked and restructured itself, crisper and with fewer gaps. Secondary windows began to fill up with phase analysis of signal components. “There, how about that?”
Nevaquaya stared at the screen for three seconds before speaking directly into the phone.
“Confirmed, we’ve got more data here too, confidence is now high, repeat, confidence high for portal opening over northern Detroit.”
He pressed mute, then another button that began sounding the incident alarm in the other offices. Finally he turned to Graeme. “The spikes match. NOARD is seeing radar interference at that location. Looks like the demons are going for Detroit, with a big one too by the look of it. Fighters are on the way, they’ll be contacting national guard units next.” Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside as more DIMO(N) staff converged on the monitoring room. Both men stared at the screens, where the error rates and signal strengths were climbing inexorably. Both knew that their warning was better than nothing, but also that it left precious few minutes to intercept the demon targeteer. If friendly forces couldn’t stop it in time, the heart of a great American city would die in ash and fire.
Over Interstate 75, Detroit, Michigan
Megaaeraholrakni’s arm and wing muscles already ached from the exertion – she had done very little flying these last few centuries – but the demon was so enraged that she barely noticed. How could Euryale have been so incompetent? It could not have been her own fault, she had concentrated firmly on the great glass towers that stood haughtily above the human sprawl. Yet the portal had opened half a league to the north, instead of half a league to the south, almost completely the wrong direction. ‘More likely that half-witted naga.’ she thought, as she painfully climbed through 500 feet. ‘though surely Yulupki isn’t stupid enough to try sabotaging the Count’s scheme?’