“Very good. Helm take us up to periscope deck, sensors prepare to extend radio mast. We’d better call this in.” Phillips disappeared into the radio room for several minutes. When he came back, his face was a mixture of grimness and elation.
“Word direct from DOps.” A stir went around the control room, when Directorate of Operations gave the orders, things were happening. “The situation is breaking loose. The Spams shot down four Baldricks a few hours ago. Been a few other similar incidents around the world. The old stories be damned, the Baldricks are not invulnerable and we aren’t going down without a fight. There’s nothing friendly out here so we can presume that any unidentifiable target we’re tracking is hostile. Torpedo room, load two Spearfish, tubes one and two. Load sub-Harpoon into three and four. Helm, take her down to two hundred feet, make speed 34 knots, course one-six-three.”
Helm punched the figure into the computers. The tactical display flickered again, the green track turning to red and a blue line superimposed on it. That gave the relative position of Astute and the target. Phillips looked at the position. “Make that 35 knots and one-six-one.” A tiny refinement that would put Astute into a perfect position for a torpedo attack.
Phillips watched the display as the carat marking Astute’s position moved along the blue projected course line. Mentally, he was calculating angles and ranges, the computer could actually do that for him but he preferred to do his own check. “Drop speed to four knots, say again, to four knots. Bring bows to oh-one-oh. Open bow doors, tubes one and two. Sonar, hit that thing with a low-frequency pulse to check range. One pulse.” Phillips took his authorization card from around his neck and inserted it into a slot in the sonar control console. By using active sonar, Astute was announcing her presence and position to the world at large, That was why using active sonar required the Captain’s explicit authorization. One the card was in place, the BA-WHOOM from the sonar array in the submarine’s bows could be heard throughout the boat.
Ralaraspanathsis was swimming quietly through the ocean of this strange planet, his great tail swinging from side to side as it drove . As one of the Corps of Diabolical Heralds, his job was quite simple, he had to go to the designated place where the humans gathered and give them the message that informed them of their fate. Not that their fate was ever in any doubt but it seemed as if the powers higher up had got bored with playing their little games with this dimension and decided to wrap things up. Ralaraspanathsis actually slightly regretted that, this wasn’t the first time he’d been on this planet and he’d rather enjoyed the way the humans had cowered before him on his first visit. Still, perhaps his master would allow him to play with some once they were all in his domain.
It was half way through that pleasurable thought that the pain hit Ralaraspanathsis. His head seemed to explode, his ears crushed by a terrible pressure that shattered the bones in his inner ears. His forearms moved, almost of their own accord, covering his eardrums, trying to shut out the dreadful crushing noise. Then, almost before he could think again, the terrible noise was gone.
“Wow, will you look at that.” Atkin’s voice was awed. The contact was spinning in circles, threshing in the water creating a maelstrom of flow noise emissions. “It didn’t like that at all.”
“Hit it again. Full power to the forward sonar transducers.” The contact had been settling down when the second pulse hit it. If anything the threshing was even worse than with the first pulse. “That’s a Baldrick, no doubt. Weapons, fire tubes one and two. Target that thing.”
Taking four tons off the extreme end of the moment arm caused Astute’s bow to dip. It didn’t matter to the torpedoes, they were already out and climbing to the shallower water near the surface. Once there, they kicked up to 81 knots and ran out to the estimated position of the target. At that point they dropped their guidance wires and dived vertically on the contact below them.
A shaped charge can penetrate six times its diameter; that gave the pair of Spearfish torpedoes a theoretical penetration of 126 inches. In fact, they did a bit better than that, blasting deep cavities in Ralaraspanathsis’s back, severing his spinal column and burning deep into his vital organs. His body tissues, vaporized by the blast, sprayed out and down, searing and cooking his internal organs and bursting open the swim bladder that kept him afloat. Crippled and dying, he felt himself floating upwards towards the surface. Confusion filled his mind, he was a herald. How could they have done this?
“Well, there’s no doubt about, we just scored a Baldrick.” A cheer went up around the control room. Ever since Prime Minister Gordon Brown had quoted ‘Blackadder’ in his initial announcement, the British had taken to calling the denizens of hell, ‘Baldricks’. It had a nice, contemptuous air about it, one that was beginning to catch on. “Number One, take the boat to the surface, we need to collect samples.”
Phillips looked through the periscope again. “In fact, if we can tow that wreck in, so much the better. Environmental, keep a check on water conditions, the Spams said the ones they shot down had acid blood. We don’t want our hull plating corroded, the taxpayers would get perturbed.”
Tamanskoya Motor Rifle Division, Outskirts of Moscow
“Remember Bratishka. Rodina, chest, slava! Let the name of the Chertkovsky Tank Regiment chill the very fires of hell!”
The Americans had killed four of the demons, others had killed one each. Now it was time for the Rodina to strike its blow against these arrogant beasts who had dared to declare their dominion over humanity. The demon had appeared an hour or so earlier and was walking across the countryside towards the Kremlin. If the pattern from earlier encounters was holding true, it was making for Russia’s capital. Well, it wouldn’t get there, not if the Chertkovsky Tank Regiment had its way. Colonel Mikhail Suranov had worked on the presumption that the beast was heading for the city and set up a neat L-shaped ambush. The kill zone was covered by the 125mm guns on his tanks and, just to make sure, he had his Smerch multiple rocket artillery systems dialed in.
Berwaniklasnin had his message to deliver, as a herald that was his infernal duty and he was going to do it. The problem was, word had started to spread that the humans weren’t cowering in fear the way they were supposed to, before it had only taken a single appearance to throw them into panic. Now, there was a whisper they were fighting back. Not just fighting back but showing uncanny skill in doing so. That was a troubling concept. Berwaniklasnin felt a sudden itch on his skin, there were ten or more brilliant green dots on his hide, points where his flesh was beginning to swell. One of his arms moved to cover them, as he did so, the dot vanished from his hide but appeared on the back of his hand. A beam of some sort? He never had a chance to work it out because a massive blow struck his chest and sent him staggering backwards.
The first shot had sent the HVDUAPCFSDS bolt screaming into the beast’s chest, sending it reeling backwards. An instant later the nine other T-90S tanks of the first company fired in salvo, their shots striking home as almost a single blow. The Russian tank gunners had been told that the Thais had killed one of these beasts with their pathetic little M-41s, the Russian T-90S could do better than that surely? There was an unspoken message, it had better. And it could. The beast was down, battered off its feet by the depleted uranium bolts that had smashed into it. Even as the gunners watched, the beats tried to get back to its feet but Second Company were waiting. A brief interval as their laser rangefinders locked in, then another salvo of shots. These ones struck low, sheering the beast’s legs from its body. It rolled to the ground, trying to pull itself upright.