Stuart Slade - Armageddon

While it was clear that the modern soldier was not a whole lot different from those of the past what had amazed Colonel Stirling was how much communications technology had improved in the eighteen years since he had died. The ability to send text and pictures as well as voice communications in a few seconds was incredible as was the development in computer technology in what was, after all a very short time. The H. Q was full of small thin portable computers known as ‘lap-tops’, many of which showed information being sent back from radio controlled drones, which those controlling them insisted on calling Unmanned Air Vehicles, evidently the military habit of giving something simple a long complicated name had not disappeared since he had left the army.

As well as being home to the H. Q UK Special Forces Support Group Camp Brimstone was also the rear logistics base for all British units assigned to the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and it was also the base from which the British had launched their power-play into Julius Caesar’s growing territory and to where 2 PARA battle group had been recovered to once the fighting was over.

Stirling had also observed that logisticians had not changed a great deal either. He was also interested to see that while the technology inside was radically different the latest Main Battle Tank, the Challenger 2, was not radically different in configuration from the Chieftains he remembered in the last decade of his life on Earth. Actually the British Army had managed to get enough old Chieftains running to form an RAC training regiment and had managed to get hold of quite a number of old Challenger 1s from a decimated Jordanian Army.

“Good day, Colonel Stirling, I hope you are being well looked after?” Colonel Dempsey asked cheerfully.

“I’ve few complaints, Colonel Dempsey, apart from the fact that I feel my talents are being a little underused.” Stirling replied. “The improvements in technology in the last few years have been pretty impressive; perhaps I’m hopelessly out of date.”

“If I can learn to use a computer, Colonel, then anyone can, besides computers of today are somewhat easier to use than the computers of the late ‘80s.

“Anyway the reason I came was to give you this.” Dempsey said with a smile holding up a bottle of single malt whisky and two glasses.

“Ah, now that is a sight for sore eyes.” Stirling replied. “I wonder if it’s still possible for a dead person to get drunk?”

“I can’t think of a better opportunity to find out.” The present Commanding Officer of 22 SAS told the regiment’s first Commanding Officer. “I’d be honored to research that problem with you.”

Stirling smiled. “I’d be more than happy to drink with any commander of the regiment, Colonel Dempsey.”

“And I with its founder. But, I’m afraid we have business to discuss as well. The war in Hell is over, the major combat operations part of it anyway. What’s left is peace keeping, not that such operations can’t be trouble enough.”

“I know, I’ve whiled away the hours reading the files on Iraq. Idiots.”

“Can’t blame the Spams, not really. They were hit by a manpower shortage and they needed to know if there was a way of doing things that economized on manpower. There wasn’t, they just took time to realize it.”

“Not just the Yanks, everybody. Including us. So, if the war here is over, what’s next?”

Colonel Dempsey leaned back and sipped his whisky. “Have you any ideas about raising Hell in Heaven if I may put it that way?”

Randi Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

James Randi looked around the empty office and sighed. It had been fun while it lasted but his part in The Salvation War was over. His brief had been to filter the world’s population of mediums, psychics and other ‘supernaturalists’ to see if any of them really had useful talents. He’d tried to do that once with his Million Dollar Prize and failed, the big names had refused to come anywhere near him and the small fry had been winnowed out early. Then The Salvation War had started and he’d had the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI and eventually Interpol and every intelligence organization in the world working to find likely suspects. Those that had been reluctant to submit to rigorous scientific testing had been dragged in by whatever force was needed.

None of them had qualified, not one. Of all the ‘names’ that had dominated the ‘psychic’ industry before the War had started, not a single one had shown any genuine ability to contact the Hell dimension, or anywhere else for that matter. Randi grinned to himself, the courts were blocked with law suits, some individual, some class actions, brought against the fake psychics for fraud and extortion by their victims. They were all using his Institute’s test results and the damages being awarded to their victims was mounting satisfactorily. The work he had started with the James Randi Educational Foundation had born fruit at last.

With it, the need for his Institute had gone. The existence of a ‘world after death’ had been proven but it wasn’t a matter of faith or religion. It was just another plane of existence, one that had been predicted by scientific theory but never proven. Well, now it had been proven scientifically and science was showing the way to understanding what was going on there. Humans understood the Hell dimension a bit, there were human tanks and artillery sitting in the central plaza of Dis to prove that. The Hell dimension was a strange place, its basic laws of physics differed a little, not much but a little, from Earth. Just enough to make it interesting, Massachusetts Institute of Technology was already offering a Master’s course in “Hell Studies” and were promising a PhD course as soon as they knew enough to decide what it should contain. Humans were at work on what made Hell tick and would worry away at the mysteries until they weren’t mysteries any longer.

What was it General Petraeus had said to Congress? “Their faith met our firepower. Firepower won.”

Randi nodded and closed the door behind him. His work was done all right, the protocols, the strict testing, the constant guard against fraud, all the techniques he had pioneered at JREF were now a standard part of the investigative techniques at DIMO(N). It was strange though, all the ‘professional’ psychics and mediums had turned out the be tricksters but ever-increasing numbers of people with real abilities were being located. Some had been aware of their abilities and in most cases their knowledge of what awaited them the other side had driven them mad. Others had been unaware of their gift and had been as surprised as anybody else when their abilities had been revealed.

Science again, Randi noted, there was even a DNA scanning test to pick out likely candidates. There were hundreds of people who could open portals and the number was growing steadily. Randi thought back to the early days when kitten had been the only reliable link between the dimensions and she had worked herself into exhaustion to keep the war effort going. She was a civilian, she wasn’t eligible for the Congressional Medal of Honor, but there were equivalent medals and she was getting most of them. It seemed that nations around the world were in a race to give her the highest award they could find.

But, all that was past. Randi adjusted his tinfoil had and set off down the corridor to where his car was waiting. The inside of the Pentagon was being refurbished, again, this time to install metal linings in the walls. That was a part of the Federal Building Code now, all new buildings had to have metal linings in their walls. That left only one question, just what was he going to do next?

First Circle Of Hell, Hell-Pit, Hell