In 1987 America began its counterstrike. For unknown reasons, and despite the huge populations under the control of Britain and Australia, there had never once been an incursion into Northeast Siberia. It was inconceivable that neither global juggernaut at least guessed there might be a base there. After all, the tanks destroyed at Khantayskoye Lake didn't just teleport there. But it is possible that they didn't guess the extent of the force growing there. So, in 1987, a massive force of heavy tanks, foot soldiers, and artillery staged a two pronged attack south. First, 30,000 infantry headed southwest and attacked Mirny and Lensk, while a main force of about 20,000 infantry and around 6,000 tanks and artillery went due south and took Aldan. The offensive was quick, as there were few regular enemy troops in the area, and it was obvious that the attack was unexpected. Japan's government had collapsed in 1978, right as Diablo was moving through Columbia to Panama, and while Australia controlled all of mainland east Asia, it had never bothered to invade the home islands of Japan, as even without large-scale coordination the island would be heavily defended and difficult to invade. US forces ignored Vladivostok on the way down, and made a beeline for China. There, they encountered a large force of Fanatics, which were easily killed. Next, from India came a long procession of Imps. They were easily killed as well, but it was obvious that Australia as well as Britain had some way to not only summon the denizens of Hell, but communicate and control them as well. The Imps that attacked the force were obviously guided, and didn't exhibit the kind of prehistoric mindset of the bands of invaders in South America. They were organized and bunched together in a large mass. However, in this case such organization was a detriment to them, as artillery easily killed large numbers of them, and the invading force wasn't seriously damaged.
West of Baotou the force met its first Angel face to face. Their blasts proved very effective against tanks, and the first Angel attacked an independent force of 200 heavy tanks sent to reinforce the main force, destroying about 50 of them. However, when the main force rallied, it attacked the first Angel, which was attacking without any support at all. Bullets pinged against the holy aura as tank shells and artillery hit the Angel over and over, and it was over relatively quickly. Against such a large, regular force using modern arms and armor, the Angel was overwhelmed and destroyed. South of Hami, the force encountered a second Angel, and while taking some casualties, killed it as well. Next, further west it encountered two Angels, which proved to be more of a challenge to kill, but in due time both were killed as well. US forces continued their invasion unmolested. They took Hami without much resistance, and the main infantry force attacked Ulaanbaatar. Here, Australia again used a nuclear ICBM, and this time the force was caught unaware. It hit just east of the city soon after it surrendered and the infantry was preparing to move out, killing 25,000 American infantry. A second bomb hit south of the city, but it must have been a miss, because there were no Americans in the area nor major cities, and in fact that area was mostly desert so there were only around 1000 civilian casualties.
Next, the force moved east, and met a force of four Angels southwest of Tselinograd. This was a more even match. The first Angel was killed without much trouble, but the other three were a match for the diminished force of Americans. Reinforcements streamed in as fast as they could to assist, and while the Angels proved to be immune to nerve agents, the artillery crews found that tear gas, once the heavenly aura was sufficiently weakened, affected the Angels just as they did any other living creature, and they were not able to attack as quickly and effectively as before once they were hit by tear gas. So, with forces rallied, and American luck getting better as the skies were not darkened with any more Australian nuclear bombs, which could have destroyed the entire force with one hit had they actually been launched, all four Angels were killed and Tselinograd surrendered without a fight. A few weeks later, a Greater Demon attacked, but was easily killed by the large force. A second attacked, and was severely injured and weakened, and retreated towards the Caspian Sea. The force followed, and north of Shevchenko had a second major battle. The injured demon turned and fought, and was easily killed, and the force began fighting three other Angels. They killed two before another two Angels arrived. The force killed one of the Angels, but another Angel joined, finally finishing off the large force. So, north of the Caspian Sea was now a graveyard of thousands of soldiers, three Angels, and one demon.
The Angel that had first been killed west of Baotou had been killed relatively cleanly, and its large corpse was taken to a top secret research facility south of Dmitry Laptev Strait. There, the body was studied. It was definitely humanoid, and had the same organs as a human, though obviously enlarged by its great size. Its skin in particular was studied closely, and notes compared with notes about the Greater Demon killed years ago near Cordoba. There was some sort of physics breakthrough that Chuck didn't understand that allowed scientists to finally understand the scientific forces behind the invisible shield protecting Angels and Greater Demons, and how, like physical matter, it did have a limit after which it could be broken, but how adding more energy to it as it weakened would allow it to strengthen again. Scientists got to work attempting to create a practical application for that knowledge.
Concurrent with the showdown at the Caspian Sea, Mexican commandos took out the Australian governor in Nain, and the city rebelled, becoming independent of any nation. Also, Australian planes flew to western Canada and dropped more Fanatics in the fifth and final invasion. Chuck Horner was 13 years old at the time, and his parents made preparations to evacuate, but that turned out to be unnecessary. A small contingent of foot soldiers stopped the force from attacking Fort Good Hope, but when the mob turned west to destroy production in Alaska, which had become the economic center of Mexico after Mexico proper was destroyed, they were powerless to help without leaving Fort Good Hope undefended, and the Fanatics attacked unhindered. Civilian defense forces did their best to stop the attack, and indeed were quite effective individually against the Fanatics, but the fanatic numbers easily absorbed such losses, and slowly destroyed all industry in Alaska.
Though the offensive at the Caspian Sea had been stopped, a tank incursion to invade south China and Vietnam was going smoothly. Heavy tanks took Hong Kong, Hanoi, and Mandalay before turning to the religious heartland of India. In India, they found huge numbers of churches near Bhopal, and large air bases near Hyderabad. When they came to the churches, at least one mystery was revealed. Inside the churches, when troops forced their way in and had a chance to get a good look at the training centers, it became possible to understand what would motivate a man armed with nothing but a club to attempt to attack something like an IBIS walker or Diablo himself. Inside were Bibles, modified and rewritten, with new chapters dedicated to the coming of Saint Justin, with descriptions obviously matching King Justin Gatewood, the King of Australia. The Bibles canonized him as the prophet of a New Earthly Trinity that included Saint John and Saint Maksimillian, obviously references to King John Redmond of Britain and the late King Maksimillian Balabanov of Russia. It said of how they would cooperate and compete for dominance of the world, and eventually win, such that one day every person in the world would have total and complete belief in God and the Devil and swear allegiance to one of the three saints. Tucked away in the basement of one of the great churches a soldier found an old version of the story, saying that all three saints were immortal and perfect, such that their decisions were wise beyond measure, and came from God himself. Newer versions of the bibles retroactively canonized the death of Saint Maksimillian and said that all three Saints, though touched by God, were still mortal and of the flesh, such as they had to eat and breathe and would eventually one day die and join their heavenly father. Once they did, they would form the New Earthly Trinity, and kingship would be passed to God himself, and God would descend from heaven, clean the Earth to make it into a paradise, and death would no longer be necessary as all devout would become immortal and filled with everlasting joy.
It was a nice story, but in another room the same soldiers found the darker side of it. The room was full of mind-altering drugs in atomizers. When samples were shipped to northeast Siberia, along with a few of the bibles and other curious items the invading soldiers had found, it was found to be a new kind of drug, one that charged up a person and made them restless and energetic, like Amphetamine, but also very susceptible to suggestion, like Sodium thiopental. Indeed, the metabolized byproducts of the drugs were found in the corpses of Fanatics that attacked the IBIS walker in Alabama in 1976, but this was the first time the pure drug had been captured and analyzed.
There were few anti-air systems with the invading tank force, and commanders feared that the airports would launch helicopters to attack, which would be very difficult to defend against. Instead, what happened next made no sense at the time, but at least made some sense in retrospect. A missile launch from Australia was detected and course calculation found it was headed for Bhopal. Tanks retreated to the minimum safe distance of most tactical nuclear weapons, and then kept driving, as there was no indication of what yield the missile was carrying and radar indicated it was slightly larger than usual. It detonated high above Bhopal, not with the 60 kiloton detonation that the infantry at Ulaanbaatar had to endure, but detonated with a force of approximately 300 megatons. The entire tank force was destroyed, as was Bhopal. For 100 kilometers in all directions destruction was complete, and there was barely a tree stump left. Beyond that, heat and wind caused terrible damage, and windows were shattered and fires started all the way in Surat. Billows of radioactive fallout rained down on the rest of India, such that though the initial destruction was more horrible than any other bomb in the history of the world, the fallout bathed about 50% of India in dangerous amounts of radiation, effectively destroying the entire country with a single bomb. And it was not a large enough bomb for such power to come from nuclear fission or fusion. Scientists at first guessed antimatter, but the size and effects were not consistent with a hypothetical antimatter explosion, and while positrons had been long since known about, a single full molecule of antimatter had never been made by US scientists, and they doubted that the Australians, even with their great resources, had found some way to create and store the volatile, largely hypothetical substance. Instead, as research continued into study of the Angel corpse, scientists realized that the energy was the result of a new interatomic force they never even theorized before. The same force that let Angels deflect matter away with no matter of their own could allow huge amounts of previously untapped energy to be converted to photons, in effect not converting matter to energy, like fission, fusion, and antimatter did, but more accurately, converting nothing, or more accurately still, space itself into energy. Mere weeks after the detonation, scientists finally unraveled the mysteries of a stable energy matrix.