Dead London
Thoughts seemed to take too long when seconds counted. Bellatrix was standing there in uniform, one hand resting close to her wand holster, staring at the map of London. The radios were crackling, messages in the sharp, clipped sounds of military speech, Russian or English it didn't matter, they both had a style, euphemisms and code words meant to speed up speech, to accelerate it, to convey meaning in a tight, precise slang impenetrable to the civilian.
She understood it all now. Better that way, easier. It was her profession. Her fate. Her life had been decided in advance for her, she'd never had the chance to want a career. Being a magical DJ probably wouldn't have been allowed by the Ministry, especially in those times. Soldier. Lieutenant. General. That was a progression, all right. It was her life and probably how she was going to die.
She was comfortable with it.
"I need visibility." Her voice was speaking and she barely even noticed.
"We're connecting a television feed through to a drone over the city now, General."
"Do we go or stay, General?" A Colonel came up urgently, after saluting; it was her call, even though she wasn't in the actual chain of command for this men, not part of their Order of Battle for the London Garrison, she was the ranking officer. Had that crossed sword with baton on her shoulders, the pip, the Crown.
"We hold," she answered, automatically. The image of the boiling mass of Inferi advancing through the streets which appeared from the static-lined feed being broadcast from the drone didn't change things a single wit. She expected that. Static. Hmm. Static.
Broad-based magical working across the entire city. Powerful enough to interfere with broadcast transmissions. I don't know how he did it, but yes, that's needed for him to initiate this kind of horror, she decided. "We hold," she repeated, to reassure them. "You've got a QRF for the talks?" They needed the Quick Reaction Force, or else the Canary Wharf districts would be quickly overrun. And the feed showed plenty of civilians fleeing in their direction, which made perfect sense. Water and Inferi didn't mix. Did even muggles know that? She wondered.
"A battalion of one of the Russian air mobile units, General."
"Activate it, now. I want it here immediately. And get me their commander on the line."
"Major Bliznyuk on your line, General."
"Major," Bellatrix spoke, seamlessly switching to Russian. "Do you have any spare helicopters?" She was looking tautly at the map.
"Yes, General. Two Mi-8s and a single Galina are ready, but in excess of capacity for the battalion. We'll be underway in five minutes."
"Good. But I need you to send those helicopters to Greenwich Park. The 216th Military Engineering Company is there and I need them with all of their charges. And by the way, make sure you have all of your incendiary and tracer ammunition. You'll need it."
"General! We are getting underway at once. Understood."
"See you soon, Major." She lowered the handset and looked to the doors. The tapping of soles on the fine granite had warned her. "Cissy?" Andromeda was right behind her.
Narcissa was terrifically composed. She admitted no fear or concern. Nor did she complain about the public informality. "Bellatrix, He's raised the dead across the city?"
"He has."
"Are you taking measures?"
"I ordered everyone to seek shelter, barricade themselves in place, for all the troops and police to form into battalion strength groups, with wizards for cover," she answered with a shrug. "A lot of them are coming here, Cissy. It's not a bad thing; the QRF was already laid in, and I've sent for sappers, we can take out the bridges and slow them down, Inferi can't swim."
"What about London, Bellatrix?"
"We need to get everyone we can onto the south bank of the Thames, I'm about to issue orders for a general mobilisation of sappers, we'll rig every single bridge."
"Just how I needed to start my premiership," Narcissa muttered under her breath, having stepped up to Bella's side.
"Better than dead people," Bella said, all sotto-voice, under her own breath in response. "I want a detail of police out," she pitched her voice to carry. "There's lots of people fleeing this way, and the Jubilee line runs to the south bank in both directions." It had barely managed to be opened under Voldemort's regime, the eastern extension being a pressing topic of conversation in the days before the nuclear exchange, in the Death Eater Councils she remembered. "Get them down onto trains which are to go one stop, let them off, and return as fast as they can. Same thing for the Docklands branch to Greenwich. Don't hesitate, we don't have the time."
Did her sisters' faces glimmer with pride? Perhaps, just perhaps.
But Andy was thinking, Andy was always thinking. "What about the City itself?"
"Well, they didn't bury people in it, so there's none there yet," Bellatrix answered, looking as now little black flags started to pop up on the map in front of her representing the positions of the advancing horde. "Cissy, can you talk to the Goblins?"
"I was already thinking of that," she answered as she started to turn away. "They're the one force which may be quickly efficacious in dealing with this threat." Obviously any fire would do, but it wasn't normal for every single bullet in a modern military to be incendiary or a tracer.
"Thank you!" Bella called after her. Then, got a little grin on her face. "Well, maybe another." An idea lights her mind. Once, she wouldn't touch this. Voldemort didn't want it, and it seemed vaguely sacrilegious. The only thing left that was her's. Now she used it freely, because family was worth saving.
"Bella?"
"I'll save Cissy's bridges," she muttered. "Has anyone got some tea?"
The declaration, the request, with all its casual confidence, helped the command post to relax, helped morale pick up just a bit. Someone pressed a cuppa to her. "Here you go, General."
"Chiswell street first, we've got the least time there…" She cleared her throat. "What kind of air have we got up?"
"I've got you a squadron of Rooks, General. That's it. The rest are still scrambling."
She looked to the Colonel whose command she had cheerfully usurped and turned into her headquarters for coordinating the entire defence. "No, that's not a problem. We're going to do this right. I want every available ground attack aeroplane in southern Britain. And I want them bombed up with fuel-air, incendiaries, do you understand? Every one we've got. Now as for those Rooks, I'll take care of the arrangements there. Get me the squadron commander. And," she looked back toward the television monitor for a moment, "get that drone over Chiswell street."
The image on the camera shifted. A voice spoke to her, in Russian. A woman's voice. "This is 3 Squadron Commander, 899." 899th Guards Attack Aviation Regiment.
"I want you to attack Chiswell Street. East-West aligned, grid square 1044. 1044, do you read, over?"
"1044, General. Confirmed."
Bellatrix drew her wand. The carrier wave spell, it was the most fundamental to her radio magic, it was the most important in this moment. She felt, from the radio broadcast tower out to the squadron of Rooks which was now approaching the northern part of the City of London and searching through the ground below based on the grid squares into which the city was divided, looking for a target they had nothing in particular to recognise, except for a disembodied voice on the radio, Bellatrix.
But she looked at the monitor, the television, a muggle far-seeing eye, held by a robotic plane above the ground. She could see where the strike needed to be, and so she guided it in herself, quickly referencing coordinates on the grid against the cardinal directions, eyes sharply monitoring the indicator on the screen of the compass points relative to the image. And working her spell as she did.
Then she snapped her wand down, felt the magic course through and sparkling, crackling in her blood, travel out through a connection on the air, through wire leads and into metal antennae and out to the attack aeroplane that was flying over London at that moment, the Su-25 "Rook" that was 'Rolling Hot', approaching the target. The horde from that particular cemetery was descending down toward the City, filled with the tens and tens of thousands who came to work there each day, including the Ministry and Diagon, since all the Wizarding areas of London dated to the era when London was the City.
And she subtly altered that muggle alchemical mixture, the plasticised explosives in the bomb, the mixture of dozens of harmful chemicals, the very things that she had hated about the muggles, awful but necessary to fight a war, and making war all the more awful for it. No nukes here, but 'Energetics'-things with acronyms like RDX, HMX, NG, TNT, and designations like 2,4-DNT. Make the bomb better, make it more efficient, make it safer to handle, make it so it only goes off when you want it to, not even when it's soaked in a pool of burning fuel from the wreckage of the aeroplane it was carried on, make it so that it's safe even when the woman you're talking to, the pilot, is very dead.
But it still kills on demand, and better than ever before.
Witches did the same thing, they experimented, they made their potions better, stronger. Spells, curses, hexes more sophisticated. Musicians in the glorious, wild days she grew up in did the same thing too, racing to outdo each other with the skill and cleverness of their guitars and mixes.
She couldn't help it, as the last part of the spell snapped down the carrier waves and very subtly changed part of the TNT. It was an explosive, after all, it didn't require much effort. The simplest, the easiest one for her magic to influence, not like the tangles of synthetic chemical chains that made up RDX or HMX – "Her Majesty's eXplosive". The Russians called it by its chemical name: Oktogen.
Bella couldn't resist. She had to quote the song. "I am the God of Hellfire, and I bring you Fire!"
The squadron was lined up over Chiswell Street—they pickled their bombs, they fired their rockets. "Three squadron commander, be warned that your weapons are now incendiaries."
"What!?" There was a curse, even to a General—but the warning repeated, staccato, to the other pilots. But, in fact, none of them went more cautiously because of the risk. They were Rook drivers. This was part of the job.
They flew their machines straight through the rising balls of flame. Paint singed, turbofans surging, cooling oil throwing alarms, Bellatrix knew enough about muggle technology, she could see the pass on the video screen from the UAV, she could imagine all of what was going on for them.
They flew on, the street erupted behind and in front and around them in flame. Turned into a wall, a column of flame to drive the inferi back, to destroy all of them that were close enough to face it. The shock of the explosives, shattering the glass on buildings, tearing up the street, but more importantly, detonation turned to deflagration.
"I never thought I'd actually hear someone quote the 'Crazy World of Arthur Brown' while calling in an airstrike," someone muttered. Bella ignored him, laughing softly to herself. She hadn't been there, it was too dangerous, anyway, but she hadn't needed to be present with her wand to block the move of her former Master. She had blended magic and technology together, and done it remotely.
Bellatrix holstered her wand and picked up her cup of tea. "Dispatch fire brigades from the city centre toward Chiswell street. They are not to fight the fire—it's keeping people safe—they are to pull down buildings to make sure the fire spreads north toward Bunhill fields and away from the city, am I clear?"
Narcissa stepped back into the post, briskly, confident. Bellatrix could immediately tell from her stride and countenance that her sister was feeling better about the situation. "The Goblins are mobilising. They're adjusting their weapons to deal with the Inferi."
"They can be adjusted?"
"Apparently changing the strength of the spring on the hammer of a Goblin musket will change the spell it produces," Narcissa explained. "The QRF is landing now, by the way, and the better for it, because they're approaching us now and there are a lot of them. These horrors always move faster than people expect."
"They do."
"We've probably saved the City, and the Ministry and Diagon, but we need to disrupt this spell, Bella. It's all well and good to fight them block for block with fire, but Voldemort will have still won if we destroy London for him to save it."
"Agreed." Andy nodded once. "Though that was very impressive and doubtless saved thousands of lives, Bella. Always better, right?"
"Oh, always." Bellatrix was tempted to say that it was just buildings, that actually, she could upset Voldemort perfectly well by using fire to guarantee that the vast majority of the population of London was safely evacuated, an evacuation she had just initiated and that was being executed with alacrity by countless thousands of brave law enforcement, military and transportation personnel around the city. Voldemort didn't just want to blow up buildings, he wanted muggles to die, especially if it was in a way that discredited and hurt his real enemies—which were now clearly the House of Black, thank you very much.
Goblins could rebuild buildings just as well as they could fix railway track, couldn't they?
"Bella, any ideas?" Andy prompted again. "We need to disrupt what He's doing to the city."
She closed her eyes and gave it a moment's thought. "He's not projecting his magic on carrier waves like I did. He never bothered to learn anything to do with the muggle world like that—as if radio wasn't natural! Produced by the Cosmos! But, anyway." A gleam on her face. "Come on, let's get Hermione, she'll be get at this, she teased out the location of so many of his stupid horcruxes. He's got something enchanted, somewhere in the city, that he's using to project his magic. That's the only way, Andy."
Hermione's first warning had been when one of the Elves requested she come quickly to the Gate House. She had tossed on her uniform jacket and cap, tossed a utility belt on and fastened it, shoved her feet into her combat boots, and sprinted over within a minute, her wand ready and accepting she'd look slightly ridiculous with all of that on over the relaxed summer dress she'd been wearing while watching Delphini.
It was Ginny, herding a dozen children, with a terrified, pale expression on her face. Hermione stopped short. "Ginny? Kids? Here?"
"Well, Ancient House is so warded, it's so big, there's elves to take care of them, it'll be safe, there's more coming, but I've got to go back, there's more coming…"
"Ginny, what's happening?"
"Inferi," she stopped, looked sharply at Hermione, her eyes almost shockingly dead, a hollow reminder of when she had been possessed by Tom Riddle's diary, almost. "Inferi. Hundreds of thousands of them. It's Voldemort. He did something to raise the dead in London. He's sabotaged the city. Bellatrix, she was on the radio, magical and normal. Telling everyone to evacuate children, then find a unit and attach ourselves… Ordering people to firmly barricade themselves in their homes, to buy time for the security forces."
Hermione closed her eyes, but only for a single moment. "Mardy," she said to the House Elf. "Get these children into Ancient House, tell them they are guests of young Lady Delphini, and treat them like it."
Bellatrix had instructed the elves to take orders from her like a member of the family, even though they weren't married yet. It was a little uncomfortable for Hermione, but now they came in handy. "Get them comfortable, and keep taking more until ancient house is full, up to the limits of those you think you can care for, understood?"
"Mardy is understanding, Mistress Hermione." The elf was calm, and even subdued. Everyone realised how black a day this had to be.
"Thank you. Ginny, I'll be following you in a minute. Go for more."
"Alright," Ginny nodded breathlessly and turned. Hermione at once apparated to her room—seconds, it was a time when seconds counted. She secured everything that mattered. Rifle, pistol, belt of grenades, vest, harness, combat fatigues, even a backup wand that after some prodding she had selected from the wand store-room in Ancient House. It had once been wielded by some ancient witch of the House of Black, and Bellatrix had just let her have it. In a battle like this, a blood day, a day of horrors, even a wand uneasy in one's hand was better than being unarmed entirely.
Sixty seconds on the mark to finish dressing. One sickening lurch of apparation later and she was at the Gatehouse, and charged through the Floo with only a moment's pause to make sure it was clear. She nearly collided with two children being herded forward, another dozen behind, by Ginny and another woman she didn't recognise. "Aie!"
"Hermione!" Ginny called. "They're almost to the entrance to Diagon Alley. Is it possible to ward it?"
The muggleborn witch angrily pulled back at some defiant hairs which refused to stay under her cap. It was not the time to have her vision blocked with her own air—she'd let it grow out too long during her vacation at Ancient House, clearly. "Not enough time, but the normal enchantments for Inferi discourage them from advancing toward fire so I'll make a perpetual flame at the entrance, since that's the only way in to Diagon Alley from the muggle world, it should hold them off."
"Good thinking! I'll be there to cover you in just a minute!"
Hermione gave a single nod and dashed for the pub. The view of Diagon Alley, after years under Voldemort's reign and a few months of clean-up, seemed like a funhouse mirror. It had been a place of joy and wonder, where she had come to get her first magical books at the age of 11 with her parents, allowed in only because their daughter was magical. It had been a place of terror, too. He remembered seeing it from above, on the lurching back of a Ukrainian Ironbelly. Now, it looked somewhat like it had been halfway converted into some Dark Sorcerer's fantasy village; but, the places for Voldemort's slogans and statues had been replaced by new slogans in support of Narcissa's government and the Russo-British Alliance.
It might all be gone in seconds if she didn't act. Without another uncomfortable look, she dashed through into broader London, gripped in death and violence and dark magic.
Death and violence and dark magic, but not fear. In all the zombie movies she'd ever watched, people ran in terror. The police and security forces were terrified, too. It was chaos, utter ruin, the collapse of civilisation.
Instead, Hermione saw a few police, armed only with batons, herding people into the pub toward the entrance to Diagon alley. "Another one of the Witches said it was safe there, is it, Comrade Colonel?" The leader of the detail asked quickly.
"Yes," she acknowledged, for a moment too bemused by the naive English assumption of a hokey Soviet-ism. "Get them in now, but I'll have to seal it soon."
"They're about two blocks down," he said matter of factly, and then hastened on with the group of civilians, while Hermione ran in the other direction, toward danger.
She charged out into the street. She could see the Inferi swarming toward her. People in the street running as hard as they could. A line of armed police who probably didn't know their guns would be useless. But few screams. Little panic. Determined barring of doors, determined motion toward Tube stations, toward places of shelter. Magic had been open in the world for six years now. There was not the kind of shock of the zombie apocalypse. Fear, horror, anger at the desecration.
But also people looking to her in confidence and relief when she stepped out into the street, pulling out her wand. There in the uniform of their ally—Russia. Of a Witch of MinKol. A wizard, who could turn back the evil, and hold the line.
The Inferi came closer and closer in a boiling, horrid, putrid surging mass. She could feel the power in the air, the power of Voldemort's curse. But she remembered back to the last time she had stood in a street like this, facing overwhelming odds.
The night before had been the first night she'd fucked Bellatrix.
The situation was very different, but the solution was the same. No holding the door here, no just closing off and saving Diagon Alley. It was time to take back the streets.
"What are you waiting for, Hermione?!"
"Nothing!" Ginny was absolutely right. Time to act.
"Fiendfyre!"
"Fiendfyre!"
It didn't matter which of the two of them said it first. The intersecting, living columns of fire tore down the street, ripping through the horde before them and turning it at once into a vast funeral pyre.
"Fuck you, Voldemort."
Outside of One Canada Square, the helicopters were landing one after another. They barely even touched down, with police and soldiers directing them in. The men in British Army and Police uniforms, signals in hand, marked the spots. The moment the Russian helicopters touched down, their blades still screaming in the air above, the airborne assault troops inside swung out, hopping down from the skids, swinging broken down heavy machine-guns and mortars like they were children's toys.
They dashed clear of the blades, and outside, a VDV Major was standing, cigarette dangled between his lips, barrel-chested, aquamarine beret defiantly worn at a jaunty tilt instead of a helmet, dark sunglasses against the summer sun. Waving his hand furiously, he barked orders, personally directing traffic as it were, sending units out to positions along the wharves, pointing, ordering with a voice that somehow carried perfectly through the continuous howl of the engines.
The moment they were clear, groups of Metropolitan Police hastened forward, escorting civilians, especially the elderly and infirm, to the helicopters. The scream of the Russian turbofans roaring continuously over them, the wind pounding into them, they helped load civilian after civilian into the now empty helicopters, until full up, the pilot made a chopping motion across his neck, and they hastily retreated from the danger zone of the blades, the pilot at once thrusting the throttles forward, the turbofans reaching a screaming fever's pitch, the machine pulling into the thick June air of London once more. There was not a second wasted.
Bellatrix jogged out with her sisters to get a better vantage point. They did not after to go far, to see the massive horde of Inferi coming for them. The Russians were setting up at the natural choke points in the wharves between the interlocking old docks, left in place as water features for what was to be London's new grand commercial development. The bridges and the connections between dry land and buildings—these were the targets of the Engineering Companies, the sappers who were already rushing forward to set charges on the bridges, even as a surging sea of thousands of civilians crossed them.
"This way now, stay on this side, mind those Russian soldiers, they need to get where they're going, lass!" One officer was calling out, moving at a walking pace toward safety, while the civilians ran, using his baton gently more as a pointer than anything else, to keep the flow moving in the right direction and a path clear for the Russian sappers to go forward and continue setting their charges.
While they did, the troops of the QRF got into position, they threw down their machine-guns on the tripods, assembling them within seconds, and linking in the heavy long belts of tracer and incendiary ammunition—the only things which would let them stand a chance against the horde of Inferi. The mortar-teams set up within a minute, behind them, finding cover in the plazas of concrete and stone as best as they could, and selecting their ammunition in the same way. Several daring scouts and officers were dashing ahead with the sappers, beyond the bridges, to set range sticks, and then retreating as the Inferi, moving with that surprising speed, quickly came near.
"Your Grace, you should retreat…" One of the officers in the Protection Detail came out, clearly concerned at how close they were to this horrible horde. Now, now, some men were sick, for they could make out what was happening to those unfortunates who had been unable to run fast enough. "You can apparate clear, to safety. Go to Chequers and assume control of the government there. We need leadership to defeat this, Your Grace."
"I am, until a replacement is elected or His Majesty returns, also the Regent, and commander, and I must fight," Narcissa answered. "I'm a perfectly skilled witch." In these tight quarters, in a situation that was not quite desperate, she was thinking of something less than the absolute desperation of unleashing Fiendfyre on them. "So, thank you, but no. I'm going to stay and fight." She glanced to Bellatrix, then back to the Colonel. "We're going to halt them, and once we halt them, we will go to the Ministry of Magic, which will be warded against this. We have to halt Voldemort's control over the dead in the city, immediately, or London will be ruined in the fighting. I want all of us to try and bring together intersecting Maxima Bombarda Incendiarius," she instructed to Bellatrix and Andromeda alike. "We're the Black sisters, we should be able to weave those spells together."
Bellatrix got a wicked grin on her face. "Right as you say, guv'nur."
"Don't you ever even dare to fake a lower-class accent again, Bella, you're pathetic at it," Andy shook her head, her own wand ready. "Ready, Cissy."
"Then as one…" Three sisters turned toward their foe…
And unleashed an explosive hellfire, on an enemy worse than Hell.