“Second Consul. Went the day well?”
His voice was formal and grave. Her eyes widened slightly, she’d been expecting a more demonstrative welcome home, but she knew he was Roman and stoicism was a cardinal virtue. She drew herself up and tried to match him. Privately she decided she would introduce him to a modern military custom, the post-‘holy crap I can’t believe we’re both alive’ decompression session. But now, they were in public and had an image to uphold.
“Very well, First Consul. Your Third Legion defeated one wing of the enemy assault and drove it from the battlefield. Then, it crushed their center and relieved an allied unit while putting the enemy to flight. Our casualties are not great, we have lost one helicopter disintegrated by a trumpet blast while another had engine failure and has landed with our ground troops. It will be available as soon as it is repaired. I do not know the losses on the ground. Perhaps we should go and see?”
Caesar nodded. “Will you fly me?”
Kim frowned. “That’s not a good idea. There might still be some angels up. We should go by ground or fly in two birds.”
Caesar looked at her solemnly. “Just this once Jade. I’ve never flown with you before and I’ve never seen a battlefield from the air. We’ll do the separate aircraft bit from now on but just this once.”
She bit her lip, it was a bad idea but the desire to show off her flying skills was too much. “Very well. But, I’ll get two other birds to escort us.”
A few minutes later, her Little Bird was skimming over the battlefield again. Caesar spent half his time watching her deft and economical movements as she flew the helicopter, the other time looking at the scene on the ground. He’d never seen anything like it, nor had he realized the appalling carnage modern weapons could wreak on those unwilling to adapt to their presence. In his heart, he wished this was a sight he had never seen.
They skimmed over a ridge and he saw another sight before him, one that told him his presence was expected. His Legion was drawn up in something equivalent to a parade formation although he did note that guards were out and at least some of the units were in combat deployment. The MH-6 reared slightly, and settled down to land on the shattered ground. The clean purity of heaven had gone, perhaps never to return for the air was laden with smoke and dust and it had the sulphurous stink of explosives, liberally mixed with burned metal, fuel and flesh. Today, Hell had come to Heaven.
“Tribune Madeuce.” He saw the commander of Third Legion come to attention. He could barely see the man’s rank markings, a subdued dark brown against red. Human officers didn’t like to be distinctive on a battlefield. That was hardly surprising considering what they did to those who were. “How went the day?”
“Sir, we count an estimated four hundred angels dead and over ten thousand humans. Our losses total eighty one dead and two hundred wounded. We have taken over a thousand prisoners, all humans. Your Legion fought well Sir. Better than the H.E.A. unit that made up our center.” There was a pleased, almost boastful sound to Madeuce’s voice. Or, as Caesar realized, not boastful but proud of how his unit had performed.
“So I see. Only four hundred angels dead? Out of ten thousand?”
“They fled Sir. When the battle turned against them, they abandoned their human troops and fled. The fighters from our allies got many but the rest escaped.”
Caesar nodded. Then he called out, waving the assembled daemons and humans of the Third Legion closer to him. “Soldiers of the Third Legion, your commander tells me that you fought well today. You shall be rewarded for your bravery. Today, your Legion shall be named. Let me explain this. Every Legion gets a number, it arrives with the rations.” A ripple of respectful laughter spread across the ranks. “But a name, now that is something that a Legion must win on the field of battle. From today onwards this unit will be Legio Tertius Laurifer. The Victorious Third Legion. And should anyone ever speak ill of your courage and bravery, there will be no need to take anger. Just tell them that you served with the Laurifer Legion today and they will hang their heads in shame and hold themselves of little account that they were not here beside you.”
Cheering erupted across the ranks. Caesar grinned broadly at Kim and winked at her. “Now, Legio Primus and Legio Secundus will be desperate to win a battle so they will also be awarded names. And the next group of legions we raise will be even more desperate to do so, so they can show the arrogant first three that they are not the only ones who can fight.
Kim grinned back. “I see you’ve read Henry Fifth.”
Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.
“Well, they can fight.” General Petraeus looked at the feedback from the Global Hawk circling high over the battlefield. “And it looks like Gaius Julius can still make inspiring speeches. Do you think we can find out what he said?”
“He’ll probably have put it into a best-selling book by the end of the week.” General Sir Michael Jackson spoke gloomily. He was well aware that Caesar wrote very well and his ‘real histories of Rome’ books had been best sellers. They had better be because the royalties were a significant part of the income of New Rome. HBO had just started their serialization of “The Gallic Wars” made by the same team who had produced ‘Rome’ and the credit at the end ‘Technical and Historical Advisor: Gaius Julius Caesar’ had also been an expensive commodity. “What are we going to do about the main body.”
Petraeus looked at the operational displays, calculating safety margins and degrees of separation. Yes, it would work. “Sodom, for Gomorrah they die.”
501st Tactical Missile Wing. Heaven.
The transporter-erector-launch vehicle groaned as the four-round missile launcher module elevated to the firing position. It paused there for a few seconds, then the whole system rocked as a missile emerged from one of the tubes. Originally a long cylinder with a rounded nose, it changed as soon as it was out of its tube. Wings sprouted from its fuselage, tail surfaces deployed and an air intake dropped out from under the belly. What had once looked like a torpedo now was an unmanned aircraft. With the Ground-Launched Cruise Missile on its way, the TEL lowered its launch module. The deed was done.
The missile, known officially as the Gryphon but actually called the Glickem by everybody, had its course carefully laid out. It climbed to 100 feet and then set off along the planned route, the radar set in its nose measuring the height of the ground ahead of it and ensuring that the clearance of 100 feet was carefully maintained. By its standards, the missile didn’t have far to go and the task it had been given was insultingly easy. Just fly to the specific point it had been aimed at and then do its thing. A few miles short of that point, another program cut in and the missile began to climb. It was of no interest whatsoever to the missile that the final point on its pre-planned course was directly over the center of a mass of 50,000 angels and more than 450,000 of their human levies.
It was at this point that warhead signals from both radar and air pressure sensors prompted an electronics package to begin the initiation process. That package sent an electrical impulse down 72 different wires to various points on an explosive shell at the very heart of the W83 warhead at the center of the missile. After 0.003 microseconds those impulses set off a pair of detonators at each of those 72 points, causing the mixture of explosives to converge into a perfectly spherical explosive wave travelling inward. After 10 microseconds the explosive wave had already started to compress successive hollow spheres of various metals. In 3 more microseconds the compression wave had crossed an empty layer to reach the heart of the warhead-a sphere of uranium 5 inches in diameter. The blast from the explosives crushed that sphere into a fluid mass 2 inches in diameter.