“Your Majesty, I have to report that the city is completely isolated from the rest of hell. The humans control all the access points and their troops increase in number every day. Their artillery has already started firing on the walls of Dis.”
Satan listened to the report quietly. Those in the chamber noted this, Satan had changed, dramatically so. The destruction of his palace, his near-death at the hands of human aircraft, his life on the run from the humans who made no secret of their intense desire to kill him. “The walls are standing?”
“Yes Your Majesty. Even the human artillery cannot penetrate them.” That was hardly surprising, the walls were 200 feet high and more than 100 thick, made of the hardest volcanic rock that could be found in Hell. In truth, the walls of Dis were an architectural marvel than made the Great Wall of China seem inconsequential. “But they are battering them with their guns. And slowly the walls crumble at the points they have chosen. One day, the walls will fall. And then we will see them attack. When we do we cannot stop them, our best troops lie dead at the Phlegethon River. My own troops, the last of our trained professionals, hold the city walls but they do so as lightly as dust falling on a glass sheet. Every day their number gets fewer as the humans pick them off, one by one.”
“Sire, there is another problem. The humans have seized the Plateau of Minos. Minos is dead, the work force exterminated. The humans redirect their dead to their own camps in Hell. Since the assault, not one dead human has been received by the Lords of Hell.”
“Then kill the humans and take the Plateau back.” Satan’s scream was an echo of the Lordly Demon he had once been.
“We have tried Your Majesty.” Dagon spoke quietly, soothingly. The time was not quite right yet. The hopelessness of the situation had to be made clear to all so that when he made his move, he would have the support of all here. Quietly he wondered how many of the surviving Greater Demons, the Dukes of Hell, Deumos had recruited to their cause. And what she had promised them. “We launched an assault with harpies and the few Wyverns we have left. The attack failed, the human aircraft wiped out the formations and the few that got through were destroyed by the garrison the humans left on the Plateau. We lost much and gained nothing.” And that, Dagon thought, is the story of this war.
“The supplies of new human life-energy have also stopped; all we have are the supplies from those already in the pit. Those grow fewer every day, the loss is slow but it never stops. Humans now dominate large areas of the pit and as they take over each new area they remove their dead from it and send them out. Our troops in the pit are defecting to the humans in ever-greater numbers and they help the humans recover their dead. Already, armies that are part-human, part-demon are forming. Demons armed with human weapons and taught to fight in the human manner. The forces that remain loyal to you cannot stand against that combination.”
A shudder ran around the room. Humans and human weapons were bad enough but demons with human weapons and human war-fighting methods? It was worse than a nightmare.
“Even Dis itself is not secure. The orcs are rising. Many areas of the city are such that a single demon cannot walk alone. Those that try are found beaten to death in the alleys. Even broad daylight is no defense, many of those who died, did so in the full light of day. Your Majesty, we have lost the war. It is time we sued for peace.”
“This will not be!” Satan’s demented scream rang around the chamber, echoing off the roof so that it seemed like a great choir was raging at the security report. “Belial burned their cities, we will burn more. It is your cowardice Dagon that is costing us this war.” Satan summoned himself to swat Dagon, to reduce him to pulp on the floor. Before he could do so, Deumos’s voice cut across his scream.
“Dagon speaks the truth. We must sue for peace. Terms have been discussed with the humans, we demanded a third of their dead for our energy. They said they would make their response clear to us and they have. By seizing the Plateau of Minos, they have shown us they will comply with our demand. They have taken all their dead so they can give us the third they demand.”
Deumos looked around, in this confined space, her miasma was effective and people were listening to her. She had spent her time well, bringing Duke after Duke into her web, each with the promise that, once Satan was deposed, they would be the one she supported for his successor. They would fight over the succession and she could step forward as the compromise candidate that nobody really liked but one that was better than interminable fighting. And a Succubus could reign in Hell at last. She glanced around, looking at the painfully-thinned ranks of Dukes. What was left of Hell, anyway. Then she became aware of a tickling sensation in her mind. She sensed it, it was Lugasharmansaka trying to make contact. Not now child, affairs of state are in progress.
Dagon still stood, defying Satan’s wrath. “Sire, if you cannot make peace with the humans to save what is left, then you must stand aside and let those of us who can rule!”
There was a gasp, of shock, horror and fear. The idea of a direct challenge to Satan was unimaginable to those not already in the plot. Even Satan was momentarily taken aback by the challenge.
Watching in the audience, Deumos felt the tickle in her mind again. I said, not now she thought irritably. Then the tickle changed to cold, lifeless, impersonal fingers that sank deep into her mind and took hold, twisting her brain around as they established a grip that even her powers were helpless to break. There was a shadow of Lugasharmanaska in the fingers but only that. As if she was steering the power that held Deumos’s brain captive. She howled with the pain, saw her vision blurring and saw the black ellipse of a portal forming.
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.
“We’re through.” General Schatten’s cry of triumph overwhelmed the rumble of the diesels in the four large trucks far behind him. They looked like fuel bowsers with the great cylinders on their backs but they weren’t. Anyway, all the real fuel bowsers were in Iraq, supplying the armored forces in Hell. In front of him, a black ellipse was forming, poised between the antennas that directed their effort. Off to one side, Lugasharmanaska was writhing on a couch, whimpering, mucus pouring from her nose and mixing with drool from her mouth.
“Hang on, we’re getting there.” James Randi looked at the succubus on the couch, she was certainly proving her new loyalty the hard way. She was in agony and would stay that way until the other side of the portal was secure enough to get a sensitive through and punch a gate from that side back to here. He shook his head quietly to himself, when he had been asked to use his foundations expertise in exposing fraudulent psychics, he’d had no idea it would lead to this.
Behind him the trucks gunned their engines and the great cylinders on their backs started to rise, elevating until they were at a 35 degree angle. Their crews were already lifting metal screens over the glass in the truck cabs. Behind them. In the control cabin, the launch crews were already waiting for the final order.
“Fire Missile One.” The button was pressed, the booster rockets fired and the missile left its launch tube, slowly at first but with increasing speed. Then the turbojet on the Progress anti-ship missile cut in and the missile arched upwards towards the gate that was almost five miles away. In the control cabin, the operator acquired it with his command guidance system and steered it for the very center of the black ellipse. He had little time but he managed it and the missile flew straight through the gate, parallel to the ground.
The Amphitheater of Tranios, Underneath the City of Dis, Hell
The great green monster flew through the gate, its roaring flames filling the chamber with smoke and heat. A few feet from the gate, Deumos felt the blast from the engines shriveling her skin, burning her with an agony that made the pain in her head seem inconsequential. She was blinded by the blast so she didn’t see what the missile did next nor did she see the fine fiber-optic wires it was trailing behind it.