Pantheocide

Chapter Twenty Two

Camp Martinsyde, Phelan Plain, Hell

Times had certainly changed. The couch even had cupholders built into its arms and controls built into the rests allowed the occupants to tailor it to their own satisfaction. It even had a massage system built into the seat padding. Quite a change from the first couch she had used, one that had been hastily kludged together and surrounded by extemporized equipment. Looking fondly at her new work station, kitten settled herself down and started putting on her headset. Beside her, the operators started to warm up the equipment.

“You know the drill, kitten? We have to open a portal large enough to allow the transit of a V-150 armored car and a YWH-531 personnel carrier but no larger. We want to be able to shut this one down after we’ve finished with it.”

The fact that kitten knew what a V-150 and a YWH-531looked like was another change. There had been a time when she’d known none of this. Now, she savored her new knowledge. “How large is the unit going through?”

“A full regiment with a battalion of artillery attached. The first of three groups, the other two will be moving later as the occupation takes hold. We’ve only got one sensitive to lock in on down there so there’ll be a gap while he relocates. Ready to get started, kitten?”

“Any time you’re ready.” kitten relaxed and tried to make her mind go blank. In the background, she could feel the electronics warming up and emitting the carrier wave signal, the dummy load as the operators called it. When given the word, she would start searching for the sensitive in the region designated. As soon as she found him, the equipment would measure and digitize the characteristics of the signal she was sending and receiving, then duplicate it. Once that was done, it would transmit that signal, with enormously boosted power so that a portal would open up. No human, not even a Nephilim, could produce the power necessary to open a portal but the computerized equipment could. All she would have to do was to hold the contact so that the situation remained stable. Even that was becoming unnecessary now, the most advanced systems could maintain a portal without the services of a sensitive. Provided it was driven through from Hellside of course. Driving one through from Earthside was different.

That was something kitten remembered, the tearing pain that had gone with punching portals through from Earthside. It had felt as if somebody had had a giant rake inside her head and had been scrambling her brains with it. The weeks when she had been the only sensitive capable of opening and maintaining an Earthside portal had been terrible and it had only been the thought of the people the other side depending on her that had kept her going. To show for it, she had a small cabinet in the apartment she and Dani shared. One that had an international collection of medals in it, topped by a simple strip of pale blue silk with five stars. Dani had told her that getting The Medal implied she was in the armed services, but she didn’t know if that was true or not. Anyway, those days were gone. Punching a portal through from hellside was almost a pleasant experience, like standing in a fast-flowing stream of water. An Earthside punch was still uncomfortable, reminiscent of standing too close to an open fire, but it was no longer agonizing.

“As soon as we get the word that the sensitive and equipment is in place, we’ll be moving. Can we get you and Dani anything?”

“Some ginseng tea would be nice.” As usual, Dani spoke for her.

“Coming right up. The Chinese sent some over for you, absolutely the best. Apparently it’s the same one that the Politbureau drinks.”

Sangkhlaburi, Nong-Lu province, Thai-Myanmar Border

For the last five days, Sangkhlaburi had had the communal feeling that it was sitting on top of a smoking volcano, waiting for the inevitable explosion. When the Burmese troops had crossed the border and headed for Kanchanaburi, all the wise heads in the village had nodded and assumed that Sangkhlaburi would be next, opening up a second front, one that led to Ayuthya and then to Bangkok. Some of the more nervous citizens had started to leave, heading north or east, away from the invading Burmese. Others had started to take whatever arms they could find and had dug crude fortifications around the town. As it became obvious that Third Army wasn’t moving to intercept the invaders, heads had begun to nod knowingly. This had happened before when the Burmese invaded. Everybody knew the story of Ban Rachan, the village that had held out against the invaders even though they had been deserted by the Army and the Government. Ban Rachan had held for months, buying time for the defense, even though it had done little good in the end.

Then the situation had changed. Matichon, the national tabloid newspaper, had run a cartoon of a dragon bursting into Third Army Headquarters, breathing fire and sending the indolent occupants of the headquarters running for their lives. Third Army had suddenly started moving, sending two of its regiments to stop the Burmese advance, then a newly-arrived cavalry division to help drive it back. Sitting up here in the north, Sangkhlaburi had watched the battle unfold. The wise heads in the town had said that this would bring no good, with the invasion stopped at one point, the Myanmar Army would try somewhere else. And where else than Three Pagodas Pass, the opening in the hills that was the traditional invasion route?

But, the invasion hadn’t happened. Which only meant that it hadn’t happened yet. The townspeople had kept building their improvised defenses and searched the town for more ammunition for their shotguns and rifles. And they had waited. Today, it seemed like the time they had expected and dreaded was coming for they could hear the traditional whup-whup-whup noise of a helicopter’s rotors.

The four AH-1 Cobras burst over Sangkhlaburi, swerving around the end of the ridgeline they had used to mask their approach and flying over the center of the town, as if daring any enemies to open fire. At first the people below stayed silent but that only lasted until they saw the red-white-blue markings on the fuselage of the helicopters. They were Thai, and they meant the Army had arrived. The gunships prowled over the town, swinging their noses backwards and forwards as they hunted for their prey. Two started up the road that led over the Three Pagoda Pass where they were finally challenged by bursts of automatic rifle fire from the Myanmarese border post. One helicopter went to hover, its nose seeking backwards and forwards for a second, before its stub-wings erupted into flame as the Cobra discharged a salvo of unguided rockets. The gunfire from the ground stopped abruptly as the border post was obliterated (due to the inaccuracy of unguided rockets, the helicopter took the Thai border post out as well, but fortunately the two Border Police officers there guessed was about to happen and had abandoned their post in a great hurry when their Myanmar counterparts opened fire).

With Sangkhlaburi apparently cold, the next wave of helicopters, UH-60 Blackhawks were already landing in the town streets, disgorging the better part of an infantry battalion. The troops were actually part of Third Army’s rapid reaction force and had been flown up direct from Kanchanaburi. As they spread out and secured the town, a third group of helicopters landed just north of the built-up area. One of them was a big Russian Mi-17I and it started unloading the equipment and personnel necessary to open a portal to Hell.

This was the third time the team had gone through this performance in the field and by now their routine was smoother and slicker. The equipment was laid out, the portable diesel generators on their skids positioned and the portal-generators assembled. Within 45 minutes, less than half the time taken during their first effort at Kanchanaburi three days earlier, the black ellipse opened up and a long column of military vehicles started to move through. The mechanized infantry was first through the portal, the platoons emerging, assembling and then setting off to take up pre-determined positions in defense of the town and the pass above it. They were followed by the armored cars of the light armor battalions that started to assemble west of the town for their lunge along the main road that would, eventually, take them to Moulmein. Finally, the artillery battalion, towed 105mm howitzers, emerged and started to position themselves to support the rest of the regiment.

“Well done!” Colonel Thanas reached down to shake the hand of the young man relaxing on the couch.

“No problem Sir, its easy when the punch comes through from the other side. Have you got all your vehicles through?”

“Not quite. Supply trucks and rear echelon still to come through. As soon as they’re through, we’ll need to move to the next location to open a gate for the next regiment. Then, its off to the top of the pass for the third.”

DIMO(N) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.

“You’re drunk.”

Dr Surlethe’s comment was half serious, half joking. Nevertheless, Dr. Kuroneko looked blearily up at him before taking another gulp out of a tumbler full of whisky. “So would you be if you’d been thinking what I’ve been thinking.”

“And what part of trans-dimensional mathematics with special relevance to Netherworlds had brought on this display of inebriation.” On reflection, Surlethe decided that inebriation was not a bad idea. It seemed as if it had been a long time since he’d been able to relax. More than 18 months in fact, ever since The Message had arrived and the Salvation War had started. He went over to the bar and got himself a drink, noticing with distaste that Red Label was the only Johnnie Walker it had in stock. By the time he’d got back, the level in Kuroneko’s glass had dropped notably.

“The bit that says we’re all doomed.”

“You think we’re going to lose this war? Surlethe was slightly shocked.

“No, course not. We’ll find a way into Heaven soon enough, and when we do we’ll blow the place apart. They’ve had it up there and we’ve had it down here, just going to take a bit more time for us that’s all.”

“How much more?”

“A few billion years give or take a decade or so.” Kuroneko made a visible effort to pull himself together. “You know we live in an expanding universe right? Well, one of the theories of cosmology is that our universe will keep on expanding until it’s in a state of heart death, when all the stars and planets are dead and there’s just an even distribution of energy everywhere.”

“So I’ve heard. Do you believe that?”

“Probably not. But doesn’t matter. When we’re in that state, then the universe starts contracting again and it keeps on contracting until it forms a singoor… strinlari… a point. Then it all blows up in another big bang. But now we’ve found the Hell dimensions and guess what, its contracting. And our early figures suggest that the whole Hell domemshun is contracting at the same rate as ours is expanding. Don’t you see?”

Surlethe leaned back in his seat and shook his head.

“It’s obvious. If all this is true, then our dimension and the hell dimension are opposed pairs. We expand until we reach heat-death and then start to collapse. At that exact moment, the hell dimension finishes its contraction and has the big bang, starting its expansion. That’s when we’re like Hell, all living in bubbleworlds, they’re like us, living on planets. And so it goes on forever and ever. Just going backwards and forwards, pointless, planless, without purpose. And if that thought doesn’t make you want to get drunk, I don’t know what will.”

“Why? We’ll all be dead by… Oh, I see what you mean. We have no idea how long creatures in the hell dimension live do we? We could be alive up there, for an eternity. We’re not doomed at all though. Now we know we can make portals, we could skip from one to the other and become eternal. Just like the gods we once believed in.”

“Excuse me, might I join in?” Norman Baines was standing behind them.

“Sure, pull up a pew. We’re just screwing the inscrutable.” Surlethe finished off his glass and got a replacement.

“So I heard. You’ve seen this of course.” Baines produced a black-and-white disk from his pocket, the circle divided by an S-shaped line that saw one half starting off at nothing and swelling out while the other collapsed the opposite way. One half was black, the other white and at the fullest point of each half was a small circle of the opposite color.

“Sure, its the Ying-Yang symbol. Hippies loved it.” And that comment ages me he thought.

“Well, I was listening to Dr. Kuroneko and what he was saying made me think of this. Look, if we hold it so the dividing line is vertical, then turn it through 180 degrees, it shows exactly what he’s been saying. One half forming and growing, then collapsing while the other does the same but in reverse phase. And the dots are the portals joining the two.” He put the disk on the table and started turn it backwards and forwards.

“He’s right you know. It does illustrate what you’ve been saying.”

Kuroneko finished his drink. “Makes you wonder of the old Chinese philosophers had this whole thing worked out, doesn’t it.”

“Taoist, but here’s a funny thing. The same symbol, its called a Tajitsu by the way, crops up a lot of places. For example, one of the Roman Legions used the same symbol and it predates the Taoist version by a couple of centuries or more. It’s believed some of Alexander’s units used it as well. So did the Thebans. And there’s stories that it turned up in ancient Egypt. Suppose the Tajitsu isn’t just a mystical symbol but is a descendent of something that was handed down from ancient civilizations to tell us what the universe is really like?”

Surlethe thought about that for a long, long time. Finally he looked at Baines. “I really wish you hadn’t said that. Now I want to get drunk.”

Council Chamber, Yamantau, Russia

“There is a major problem coming up, one that I believe this Council must address.”

The speaker looked around at the fifteen council members. Not all were physically present, but those that weren’t were on great viewscreens that lined the walls. Whether present as flesh-and-blood or electronic imagery, they all nodded. “Proceed.”

Doctor Samuel drew breath to deliver the bad news. “We have an impending energy crunch. The fact is that with what amounts to every army in the world fully mobilized and conducting military operations, they’re burning a mass of diesel fuel. It doesn’t matter whether its peace-keeping operations in Hell or the fighting going on in Thailand or the war that’s about to start in Korea, they all cost fuel. It doesn’t end there. Every factory on Earth is running flat out on triple-shifts, those that can are producing munitions ad those that can’t are making up for the facilities that have been converted to war production.

“We can’t change that. We’re still replacing the munitions we expended in the Curb Stomp War.”

“I know, but it takes energy and that means fuel. We’re shifting to nuclear power as fast as we can, but rebuilding the infrastructure takes time and building the plans takes more energy. We’re behind the curve and that situation is becoming terminal. Put simply, we’ve been pumping and refining oil so fast, we’re damaging the fields and the refineries are in desperate need of repair and renovation. That could get worse, we’re entering hurricane season and that means the weather attacks could start again. Refinery capacity was critical before the war started, now its far beyond that. We need more refineries and more oil resources. The former we can build if we’re given the go-ahead, but actually finding more oil reserves. Well, to give you an idea, the current levels of unexploited oil reserves are higher than at any time in recorded history, the figures are in Platt’s Oilgram, but they’re still not enough.”

“There may be a solution to this.” The spotlights switched to another figure standing in front of the great horseshoe of desks. “I’m Coogler, one of the geologists working in Hell. Do you all recognize this?”

He held up a bottle containing a black solid. The Council looked at it, shaking their heads.

“Well, you’ve all heard of the Lava River in Hell. The one we’re pulling our dead out of. Well, that was always a bit odd because if it was real lava, there wouldn’t be any bodies. They’d be flash-vaporized. So, we had a closer look at that river and it turns out, it wasn’t lava at all. It’s a mix of what amounts to a very heavy crude oil with extremely light fractions. It’s really strange from a geological point of view, in some ways, it’s a bit like shale oil but don’t push that comparison too far. Human crude is a mixture of fractions as well, some heavy, some light, some in between. Hell crude has nothing in between, its all either very light or very heavy. When it comes out of the ground, the light factions vaporize and burn, giving the appearance of a river of fire.

“So, the injuries our dead received are a mix of the burns from the hot, plasticized crude, that runs at around sixty to seventy degrees Celsius by the way, and the burning gases above it. Now, if we can trap and channel that stream at source, we can recover the light fractions for use as natural gas while we can build refineries in Hell to crack the super-heavy fraction and give us everything else we need. Or we can build the refineries here on Earth. But, given the volume coming out in the Lava River, there must be a lot of this stuff in Hell, the whole place is probably oil-rich.”

Putin nodded and there was a whispered exchange between the members of the council, those present on the screens giving their contribution by means of earpieces worn by the members. Eventually, Putin banged his gavel on the table. “Engineer Coogler, get together with Doctor Samuel and thrash out a scheme to exploit these new resources. Take whatever technical staff you need. Now, to the next item on today’s agenda. What progress has been made with hunting down and killing Yahweh?”