“Get your team together. Quickly, the mission is a go. Get your kit as well, we’ll be gating you to Earth and then to your operational location. Be at the portal hut in twenty minutes.”
“Very good Sir.” McElroy saluted, mentally debating whether he could get away with saluting with the wrong hand and explaining it as being one of the curious effects of being dead. Not worth trying, he decided. Not now at any rate. The Lieutenant, now definitely relieved, vanished in the direction of the command hut.
“Cassidy, DeVanzo and Walsch. Get the rest of the team together, we’re ruling out. Mikkelson, get a work detail, draw our gear and get it over to the portal hut. Let’s roll guys, we’re on our way.”
McElroy, turned and headed for the door, almost bumping into a figure as he went. He stopped for a second, hardly recognizing the man in the red-mottled BDUs. “Hey, Aeneas, how goes things?”
“Not fit work for a man. Teaching scholars about what really went on in Sparta and Thermopylae. One of them insulted Queen Gorgo and when I disciplined him, there was much trouble over that.”
McElroy was fascinated. “Disciplined him? How?”
“He wrote lies about our Queen. So I broke every bone in his writing hand. I thought it was only just but the others were most displeased with me. I wish I was going with you and the rest of the gang.”
“I wish you and Ori were coming too but the brass says otherwise. This is a modern-soldier job. Where is Ori by the way?”
“Teaching some Japanese about the way of life in his era.” Aeneas shook his head. “The ideas you people have are so strange, when they speak of us it is like we see ourselves in a mirror coated with mist. The form is there, but the details… Anyway, take care my friend. I will tell Ori that you remembered him. And kill baldricks.”
McElroy left and ran over to his quarters, picking up the bankroll he had won at poker over the last few days. One thing that didn’t change was the laws of chance and the fact that people couldn’t understand the mathematics of odds. He had a nice roll of bills for his family, enough to keep them going anyway.
By the time he got to the portal hut, his team was assembled, eight modern soldiers, all dead, none more than twenty years ago. All loaded down with the electronics gear for the mission.
“Ready to go everybody? You know the drill, spot Belial’s fortress, then set up the navigation beacon and wait for the B-1s. No fighting, no hunting, no shooting except if we get discovered.”
There was a series of nod, then a pasty faced, sulky-looking man settled back on the portal generation couch. There was a quick hum and the familiar black ellipse opened up.
“That’s quick.” McElroy was impressed.
“Our gear’s a lot better than the early versions, and its easy to push a portal through from this side. You wait, tomorrow we’re opening up a portal big enough to bring a carrier through.” The technical sergeant grinned. “I’ve even heard that Enterprise is being fitted to generate her own portals. Through you go Top.”
McElroy stepped through the ellipse and found himself in the hangar. Once again, a few families were there to greet the relatives they’d never thought they would see again. McElroy found his brother and slipped him the roll of cash. A few hugs and back-slaps later, he was on his way back. An Indian woman in a royal blue sari was taking to the technical operators.
“Excuse me, you must be Indira Singh. I’m Tucker McElroy. I’m sorry to trouble you, but do you know how kitten is?”
“It is no trouble Tucker. kitten is doing well, she had her last operation three days ago and is recovering properly in the best hospital money can buy. She has many visitors, she is something of a hero for the way she held the portals open by herself while other sensitives were being located. She is much honored.”
“Operation? Nobody told us she was sick as well as suffering from keeping the portals open. What was the matter with her?”
“Oh she was not ill, but she had to complete her gender reassignment surgery. Because of her efforts, the governments picked up the charges to make sure she had the very best.” Singh looked at the shock on McElroys’s face. “You did not know that kitten was a trans-sexual?”
“No.” McElroy was aghast. In his pocket was a long letter he had written to kitten, expressing his gratitude for all she had gone through on his behalf. Then to find out she was a… McElroy stopped himself, hard. She still had gone through all that hadn’t she, still suffered so the people she was supporting in hell could get the tools they needed to stay free and out of torment. How dare he criticize her when she’d done all that? Inbred prejudice and irrational bigotry warred with McElroy’s reason and sense of justice. Reason and justice won out and he reached into a pocket. “Indira, could you see kitten gets this please. And send her our love, that’s from all of us. Tell her we’ll never forget what she did for us and we hope we’ll see her again but if we don’t, we hope she’ll be very happy. And tell her she won’t have to worry about going to hell any more because she’ll have lots of friends there ready to look after her.”
His team assembled, McElroy looked around. Singh was already on the portal opening couch, searching for Memnon’s mind. She found it and locked on. Then she started to shudder as the electronic equipment opened up the portal. McElroy stepped through and found himself back in Hell, but in a vastly different Hell from his previous experience. The mountains were stark, mostly volcanic, but the valleys between them were covered with vegetation, green and purple. It was warm and relatively pleasant, even the choking dust of Hell was less pronounced here. In front of him, the hulking black shape of Memnon was looking at him curiously.
“Sergeant (deceased) Tucker McElroy. We’ll take over the surveillance from here. You are Memnon aren’t you?”
“I am.” Memnon was amused by the way the question had come last. Humans were so confident their machines would work. “I must brief you on this area and where are the things you seek. Then I must fly back to Dysprosium.”
“Why don’t you portal back? We can open a gate easily enough. Just rest up until the next scheduled contact and then we’ll gate you back. No need to work harder than you have to.”
Memnon thought it over. He’d assumed he would have to fly back but the human was right. There was no need to, not now. The humans had a staging point near Belial’s fortress, why should he have to fly?
The Collegium of Fornessa, City of Dis, Hell
“You have heard the fate of Beelzebub?” Deumos sat elegantly in the luxurious seat she had brought with her.
“That he had been defeated, yes.”
“Not defeated. Killed. In an attack by human aircraft. They shot him with their cannon and blew him up with their missiles. He died like an orc, sniveling and weak.”
Dagon looked around at the decaying building that housed the meeting. He needed time to think over the news that Beelzebub had followed Asmodeus into the void. Followed him and all the others. The ranks of the Hell aristocracy had been thinned in a way none could remember. Not even the Great Celestial War had caused carnage like this. So he decided to stall for that time. “Why do we have to meet here? In this disgusting place overrun with orcs?”
Deumos recognized the stall for what it was and knew she had shocked the Great Duke. Time to answer a question with a question. “And where is Satan?”
“He moves from place to place, hiding from the humans and their aircraft. Never stays in the same place long for fear of them finding him and sending their bombers after him.”
“Satan fears the humans. Yet he asks us to fight them while he runs and hides.”
“Lady, those words are treasonous.”
“Does that make them untrue? How many millions have died already? I you do not know, I will tell you. More than three and a half million. Of Beelzebub’s army, 476 legions, only 39,000 survive of the more than 3 million who set out. The rest are rotting on the banks of the Phlegethon River. And the humans advance on Dis even while we sit here speaking.”