“Understood.” There was a pause. “Deny contact, ring them off, don’t let them go anywhere but hold your fire until ordered otherwise. Give them at least 1500 meters clearance”
“Very good Sir.” Stevenson broke contact and changed to her command frequency. “Third platoon fall back, let them have the ridgeline, we don’t need it. First and second, move up to flanking positions. Hold fire.”
There was a cloud of dust and black smoke as the Bradleys backed off their ridgeline and headed for the one about 2,000 meters to the rear. They were already in position when the baldricks ran up on to the ridge and started to deploy into a defensive perimeter. A tight one, Stevenson thought, perfect for artillery. Didn’t baldricks ever learn?
“Report.” The single word came over her radio.
Stevenson looked carefully. “We’re in position. Sir the enemy force is at least 50 percent civilian. There are small ones running around, I think they’re playing, it looks like their children of some kind. And others are behaving like their mothers.” She flipped her optics up to full power. “Well what do you know, our big friend the football player is up there.”
“Very good. Hold positions, do not open fire. This is going right up the chain.”
Stevenson relaxed in her seat, watching the baldricks. There were some real soldiers across there, they were watchful, their tridents at the ready. But the rest? No way were they soldiers. Women and children was Stevenson’s guess. Hokay, I guess now is when we find out what sort of people we really are she thought to herself. The minutes ticked by until almost an hour had passed.
“Alpha-Actual. This is Command-One.”
Whoa, that meant General Petraeus himself. “Alpha Actual Sir.”
“Get ready, there’s artillery fire coming in. IP between you and the baldricks. Safe distance from both but its tight. FYI, we’re going to try and get this lot to surrender. As soon as the shells have landed, expose your vehicles but do not, I repeat do not, open fire. One shot from you without orders, Captain, and you’ll be burning shit for the rest of your career.”
“Understood Sir. Expose but do not fire.”
Overhead there was a howl of descending 155mm shells from a Paladin battery. The salvo was beautifully placed, one shot to each side of the baldrick group, two in front of it, two behind. A perfect hexagon that was just, only just, far enough out to be safe. “All Alpha Vehicles, move up onto the ridge crest. Do not under any circumstances fire. Repeat, do not under any circumstances open fire. Require verbal repeat and acknowledgement of that order from each vehicle.” She listened as the acknowledgements came in. Then, her Abrams lurched as she moved up to the crest of the ridge.
On The Ridgeline, Hellmouth, Western Iraq
Abigor’s skin crawled as he expected the lash of mage-fire and iron fragments but the desert erupted in a neat hexagon around his unit, the bursts harmless. Oh, they buffeted and shook the ground but there were no screaming, disembowelled demons on the ground to show they had landed. Then, all around him, Iron Chariots appeared. In front, to either side, behind him. The humans really did love surrounding their enemies so that none could escape when the killing started. But the Chariots remained silent. No fire lances, no seeker lances, the chariots just sat there and watched him. The silence was eerie after the crash of the mage-bursts. The kidlings had stopped their games, the mates their weeping, everybody was just waiting. It dawned on Abigor they were waiting for him. Everybody, demon and human were waiting for him.
If they were waiting for him to start fighting, what happened if he did not? Why had the humans given him a chance denied to him by Satan? What would happen if he took that chance? It couldn’t be any worse than what would happen if he didn’t. Abigor made his decision and stood up, throwing his trident away. Then, he raised his hands to show he was unarmed. “All of you, throw down your arms. Stand up and raise your hands like mine. So that the humans can see we are unarmed.”
Across the desert, the Iron Chariots kicked up a cloud of dust and started to move in.
Combat Team Alpha. By the Hellmouth, Western Iraq
“Sir, they’re surrendering. They’ve thrown down their arms and are standing up. They’ve raised their hands, all of them.”
“Captain Stevenson, move in, carefully. This may be a trick but if it isn’t we have a priceless opportunity here. Do not fire, even if fired upon.”
That means I’m the sacrificial goat. Stevenson thought. She gave the order and her command started rolling closer to the group on the hill crest. They were motionless as her tanks and armored infantry vehicles closed in. When they were less than fifty meters away, the big one, the one Stevenson thought of as the football player, dropped to the ground and sprawled out on the sand. She checked her intercom, making sure it was set so only her crew could hear her. “Reminds me of one of my ex-boyfriends guys. I wonder if he wants me to trample him too?”
There was a suppressed series of snorts from her crew. She stopped the vehicle and got out, climbing down the outside of the turret and on to the ground.
“I am Captain Keisha Stevenson, United States Army. I am authorized to accept your surrender.”
“I am Great Duke Abigor. I am, or was, commander of sixty legions. I offer you my surrender and fealty.”
White House Communications Center, Washington DC.
“Vladimir, this is Dubya. I have urgent news. General Abigor has just surrendered and defected.”
“That filthy Vlasovite bastard.”
“Sorry, Vladimir, you misunderstand, he’s a baldrick, he’s defecting to us.”
Without missing a beat, Putin carried on, “What I meant to say of course was that he is a heroic champion of freedom and liberty who has overcome his corrupt upbringing so that he can rally to the side of truth honor and justice.”
“That’s right Vladimir, he’s a filthy Vlasovite bastard, but he’s our filthy Vlasovite bastard.”
Chapter Thirty Two
Headquarters, Multi-National Force, Baghdad, Iraq
“Well, they’re human.”
“You have got to be kidding us. There’s no way those things are human.”
Dr Surlethe settled back in the conference room chair with every sign of comfort. That was one thing the higher ranks of the Army had down to a fine art, their conference rooms were well-furnished, air conditioned and had all the luxuries one might wish combined with hi-tech presentation equipment. It would be years before civilian releases caught up with the Army version of Microsoft Powerpoint. The Marines, now they were different, their “conference room” was usually a tent somewhere with a bare wood trestle table and a few camp chairs. One Marine General had remarked on the Army’s “excessive facility” only to be rather coldly told that ‘any damned fool can be uncomfortable’.
“Nevertheless, they are human. Sort of.” There was a stir of relaxation at the qualification.
“What do you mean Doctor?” General Petraeus needed to know a lot about these creatures, not least because he had almost a thousand of them in a Prisoner of War camp.
“General, we’ve looked at the DNA of the baldricks and its human.” Surlethe thought for a second. “Look at it this way, the difference in DNA between a chimpanzee and a human is around two percent. The difference between baldrick and human DNA is about one half of one percent. So baldricks are much more closely related to us than we are to chimpanzees.”
“They don’t look it.”
“No, they don’t General.” Again Surlethe thought for a moment. “Actually they do. If we ignore the way-out bits, the strange contortions and so on, they do look like us. We started off by thinking that they were a next-level up version of us that simply evolved differently but when the DNA comparisons came through we had to abandon that. There’s no doubt about it in our minds, we and the baldricks had a common ancestor somewhere way back when. The really big question is did that common ancestor evolve here on earth, on the hell-place or somewhere else?”