Original Fiction The Salvation War - Pantheocide

The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 63
    • Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    "I'm sorry ma'am, but I'm afraid the helicopter operations are a military necessity." Chief Petty Officer Michaela Harris silently raised her eyebrows and shook her head in exasperation. "Yes, I do know that the big helicopter is likely to make your house shake when it takes off. Unfortunately, we need its lifting capacity. . . . . . No, ma'am, any casualties can't wait until morning . . . . . . Well, it is your privilege to call your Congressman but I should advise you that he is one of the volunteers out here helping us with our work. . . . . . Now, there is no need to use language like that." She hung the phone up, paused a second and pushed the button for the next line. "Bethesda Naval Hospital, CPO Harris speaking. . . . . . Why, thank you Sir, we are always in need of blood donations here. Sir, if you would like to come along tomorrow morning, the U.S. Volunteers on guard will direct you to the correct area. Thank you for your patriotic offer, Sir, and have a good day."

    "Rough time Chief?" Colonel Paschal was sympathetic.

    "Calls backed up to the Potomac and beyond. People are guessing something is going on from all the air movements and that Russian Mi-26 is attracting a lot of attention. Mostly, people seem to think there's been a big skirmish in Hell and there are a lot of casualties coming in."

    "Wait until tomorrow morning when the real news breaks." He was interrupted by the noise of yet another UH-60 coming in to land. He glanced across at the bird, it was an old one, probably a boneyard recovery, and didn’t have hellfilters. "Carry on with the good work Chief. My package has just arrived."

    Paschal ran over to where the helicopter was spooling down. Five figures were getting out, four prison guards and a single female figure in orange coveralls. "Why, Miss Branch. I hope you enjoyed your flight here."

    She looked at him dully. At least, her appearance was better now she'd been taken out of General Population and housed in a Supermax. For many prisoners, Supermax was a haven rather than a restriction. Branch was one, Paschal seriously believed that if she had been left in General Population, she'd be dead by now. As it was, she just stared at him, saying nothing.

    "We've got a special privilege for you Miss Branch. A pair of Angels have just defected to us and we thought you might like to meet them. One of them is a close associate of your old friend Michael. The other is his mate. You''ll be really interested in meeting her although she isn’t really up to speaking yet. We'll start with Lemuel-Lan-Michael. By the way, any word of your family yet? No? Ah well, they must still be in the Hellpit somewhere. Don't worry, we'll get to them sooner or later."

    "They're in Heaven. Yahweh promised." The words came out in a dogmatic pout that reminded Paschal of a child stamping his foot and swearing 'it ain't so.'

    "Miss Branch, as far as we can make out, no modern residents of Earth went to Heaven. None at all."

    "That's not true Colonel." Lemuel had heard the remark as they approached him. "There are some modern humans in Heaven. Michael rescued them. He has them hidden in his organization. At first I did not know it was he who had saved them from Hell, it was only when we rescued Maion than I realized it. But, they are the ones he was able to rescue and those that he could find hiding places for. There is only so much he could do."

    Oh great, that's all we needed,     Pashal thought. Finding out that the Great General Michael-Lan has actually been emulating Oskar Schindler.

    "Lemuel-Lan, would you tell this young lady what happened to you and Maion please?"

    For Lemuel, it was something in the way of a cathartic release. The story poured out, how he had started investigating one small conspiracy, how the investigation had mushroomed as more and more leads had led to the discovery of additional conspiracies. It ended with him finding Maion in Yahweh's concentration camp and escaping to Earth so she could be saved by human medicine. By the time it ended, Branch was weeping, at least partly in response to Maion's fate but mostly at her own disintegrating beliefs.

    "You're lying. None of it is true." It was the same, child-stamping-its-foot tone again.

    "Come with me." Paschal led her into the tent that housed Maion. Even surrounded by medical equipment, most of her face covered by an extemporized breathing mask and her wings surrounded by a maze of timber splits, she was still stunningly beautiful. That only seemed to highlight the injuries she had received. "You see Miss Branch? Yahweh did this, or to be more accurate, he ordered it done. Angels can't lie, that's what your belief says isn't it? If your beliefs are true and Angels can't lie, then what Lemuel-Lan told you is true. Yahweh did this because another female angel was jealous of Maion. If angels can lie, then that proves that your beliefs are wrong anyway."

    It was the final blow to the core of Kathryn Branch's beliefs. The simple presence of Lemuel on Earth, the battered figure in front of her and the story that linked them together was the end. The faith that had kept her going through months of imprisonment crumbled as inexorably as a sand castle facing the incoming tide. "What do you want to know?"

    "Everything, but we'll start with one key question. The attack on DIMO(N) at Fort Bragg. You told Michael-Lan about DIMO(N)?"

    "Yes." The words came out between sobs. "It was to protect Heaven. He said that humans couldn't attack Heaven if DIMO(N) was destroyed."

    Paschal sat back slightly. "Right Miss Branch. Now, we'll start from the beginning and you can tell us everything that happened since the day of The Message." And after we've finished with you, we'll get to work on that worm Yitzhak.

    War Room, The White House, Washington D.C.

    "Welcome back Mister President." General Schatten seemed inordinately pleased with himself. "Did you enjoy the brief excursion to Andrews?"

    "When I used 'yes we can' as our election slogan, I didn’t expect it to be used in the context of 'yes we can pick you up, throw you in a helicopter and fly you out of the city at a moment's notice'. The Secret Service can be very insistent sometimes." The President's voice was a curious mixture of amusement, anger and resentment, liberally mixed with admiration for the efficiency of the system that had got him out of the danger zone so quickly.

    "Back in the day, Mister President, we had minutes, perhaps seconds, to try and get the command authority secured. The one thing we disliked intensely was the idea of a decapitation strike. We'd thought that one through ourselves and gave it up as counter-productive but we were never quite sure the opposition had come to the same conclusion. So, the whole scheme was set up to preserve the national command authority. Still is come to that. The Secret Service have an absolute duty to protect you. If you think this was bad, ask about the rows that took place when your predecessor wanted one of the museum recovery F-102s as the 'Presidential Interceptor'. The Secret Service almost went into orbit at that idea. "

    "I did not like the idea of leaving Michelle and the children behind." The President had been distinctly unhappy about that part of the emergency evacuation and had made his opinions very clear.

    "Believe it or not, Sir, nor did we. There are various plans that apply to different levels of warning. This one was probably the most time-critical. If the rocks were about to start coming down, we had to get you clear at any cost. Under those circumstances, if the First Family aren't immediately available, they have to follow later."

    "I don’t like that. I want those plans revised; get the contractors we employ to work on it."

    "Yes Sir. The good news is, Sir, there is lots of good news. It wasn't a rock attack, it was two angels escaping from Heaven. We have two high-class defectors and one of them has already stated he will open a portal to heaven for us. The long stalemate is over Sir. Assuming that our defector is operating in good faith, and we already have every reason to believe that he is, then we have our way into Heaven."

    "Does General Petraeus know? And how about the rest of the Yamantau Council?"

    "General Petraeus, yes. He was told while you were on board your helicopter coming back here. He's getting the plans ready for the assault now. Yamantau? Not officially although the Russians know unofficially. So do the Irish. Official word hasn't gone out yet though."

    "The Irish? How did that happen?"

    "One of the Angels coming through has had her wing joints crushed. Deliberately, on Yahweh's orders. Anyway, the doctor on the scene contacted the Royal Hospital in Belfast for help. They treated a lot of crushed joints from IRA kneecappings and he needed expert advice. It leaked out from there. One thing Sir, and this is something Yamantau certainly do not know yet. It's beginning to look as if Michael-Lan may be an ally, not an enemy. Or, at least, he may be an enemy we can work with."

    "I find that hard to believe. Remember Tel Aviv?"

    "That wasn't Michael-Lan's work Sir. We believe that was carried out by another angel, Azrael. And Azrael is very strongly linked with Yahweh. We've been looking at Michael-Lan's work and he does seem to have concentrated his attacks on military targets. Pretty much so anyway. Our initial assessment is that he was a Yahweh loyalist until something went badly wrong and caused a split between the two. By the way, we also have strong evidence he's been rescuing humans from Hell and hiding them away in Heaven. We might have found our heavenly Abigor Sir. That's something for you to take to Yamantau. There's a meeting there scheduled for morning."

    "I can't get there by then."

    "Portals Sir, you must learn to think in portals. We'll set one up from here to Hell and one from Hell to Yamantau. You can be there in minutes. Don't forget to take your breathing filter."

    Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US

    "What we want you to do, Lemuel, is to open up a small portal to Heaven. One that's a long way away from habitation or anything that will draw attention to us. Or warn people that we have a way into Heaven." Colonel Paschal had flown in a V-22 to get to Dover AFB, Lemuel had flown under his own power. He'd spent the rest of the night at Bethesda giving the humans as much information as he could about the geography of Heaven.

    "I do not understand." Lemuel was bewildered. "The angels suffering in Yahweh's prison, they need help right away."

    "We've got a saying down here. Hasten slowly." Colonel Warhol had arrived from Hell by through the permanent Hellgate a few miles west of the air base and his uniform was still coated with helldust. "There's another. Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. We want to know what we're getting into."

    "Speaking of reconnaissance, the Predator should be up by now. Lemuel, the gate if you please."

    "We using an Air Force bird?" Paschal was curious. This whole situation had come apart so fast, everybody was playing patch, grabbing whatever assets could be used.

    "No. CIA. In fact the guy flying it is the same man who flew one through Abigor's Hellgate a couple of years back. I guess the CIA do have a sense of humor."

    Paschal and Warhol looked at each other. "Naaah."

    "Lemuel, we want to send a recon bird in to tell us what Heaven is like. We lost people, quite a lot of people, because we weren't properly prepared when we went into Hell. So, we're going to send a Predator in. That's an unmanned aircraft and it'll be carrying a reconnaissance pack that will take air samples and other environmental data. Provided that shows us everything is OK, we will have a battle group on the ground in hours. Now, if you could please open up the portal. Big enough to take one of those." Warhol pointed at a Predator on the ground a few yards away.

    Lemuel concentrated and the familiar black ellipse opened up close to the ground. The Predator assigned to the mission dived down and flew through the portal. Ten minutes later, it reappeared, its shining gray and white paintwork still pristine.

    The Yamantau Council, Yamantau National Redoubt, Russia

    "Gentlemen, Ladies, I have news of the utmost importance. A few minutes ago, we flew a Predator reconnaissance drone into Heaven. Doctor Surlethe has just arrived with the results." President Obama sat down, noting the rapt interest that the 15 members of the council were devoting to Doctor Surlethe.

    Surlethe cleared his throat. "Members of the council, we can confirm that we are have broken through the walls that prevented us from entering Heaven. Early this morning, a Predator unmanned reconnaissance aircraft flew through a portal opened by one of the two angels who defected last night and spent ten minutes flying in Heaven airspace. We gathered air samples, radiation readings and visual imagery. Also, of course, we recorded the process by which Lemuel opened the gateway to Heaven. With some work and careful digitalization of that signal we should be able to modify our standard GSY-1 portal opening system to work with Heaven as well as Hell.

    "Conditions in heaven are, as far as we can determine, near-perfect for us. The air is clean, identical to Earth in its make-up and contains no toxic elements. The light is brilliant white, we are recommending that First-Life humans going into Heaven wear sunglasses but there is no need for any other precautions. Unless something goes wrong or we find something totally unexpected, we are ready to invade."

    "What is the terrain like?" The Singaporean Prime Minister asked the question.

    "Rolling hills, covered with green grass. Perfect tank country so I am told. Lots of hull-down positions to fight from, long open ranges. The geometry of Heaven is off by the way, just as it is in Hell. In fact, according to our initial measurements, the spatial distortion in Heaven is exactly the same as it is in Hell. We believe that this is strong confirmation that both Heaven and Hell are separate planet-equivalents in Universe-Two. This, of course, also suggests that any other bubble-planets we find in Universe-Two will obey the same physical laws."

    Putin nodded happily. "Thank you Doctor. Do you have word on the other Angel, the one who was badly injured."

    "She is still unconscious Sir. Deliberately so. The medical team do not wish to operate again on her quite yet, she is too weak for a further spell on the table. They hope they'll be able to start reconstructing her wing joints in a day or so. Whether they will be successful or not, nobody knows."

    "Very good. I now call for a vote of the Council. The motion is that General Petraeus be instructed to execute the invasion of Heaven."

    The screen that dominated the conference chamber flicked over to show a line of 15 boxes. Each box was randomly assigned to a member of the council so that votes were secret. The code was simple, green for yes, red for no. There was a flickering and the majority of the boxes turned green. As the seconds ticked by, the remaining boxes filled with green as well. Eventually, the 15th and last blocked in with the same color.

    "Very well, the vote is unanimous. General Petraeus?" Another display screen came to life, showing the General sitting behind his desk. "The Council has voted unanimously to authorize the invasion of Heaven. How soon will you be able to execute the assault."

    "We will have a bridgehead in 48 hours. Thereafter, we will be moving First, Second and Third Army Groups into their assault positions in Heaven. I've got the geographical information from our Angelic friend and used it to select the appropriate plans from the options we have prepared. We'll be hitting the Eternal City from three sides. All we need to do is to get the beacons set up."

    "Thank you General."

    Putin turned around and looked at the members of the council, a broad grin on his face. The Americans may have got the credit for the assault on Hell, but he would go down in history as the man in charge when Heaven fell. "That leaves us with just one thing to decide. Shall we have milk or plain chocolate biscuits with our tea?"

    Headquarters, First Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, California.

    "How deep is this water?" General Mills tapped the rough sketch map of The Eternal City. A river ran from the Ultimate Temple to a vast lake in the city center.

    "Hundreds of feet according to our source." The operations officer blinked at the sudden thought. "Sir, you're not thinking of a direct assault are you?"

    "Of course not. Not unless we already have a surrender in our pocket. But it's an option we should have." He paused and grinned. "And it is in accordance with the prophecies."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 64
    • Headquarters, 118th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Virginia National Guard, Phelan Plain, Hell

    The screen blacked out suddenly and the General sitting behind it looked as if he was about to explode. He managed to contain himself and when he spoke, his voice was courteous and calm. "Could you tell me what happened please?"

    "I'm afraid you just got killed." Captain Ledasha Oates took a quick look at the Umpire's situation log. "As I thought, General, you haven't moved your command location for more than 30 minutes. The Opposing Force, the Opfor, picked up your radio transmissions and got your location by a combination of direction finding and deduction accurately enough to drop a rocket launcher salvo on you."

    "But I only used the burst transmission facility sparingly. Is their, our, direction finding capability that good?"

    "They probably only got a loose fix but I would guess they looked at a map. They saw the crossroads in the suspect area and made a calculated guess you would set up either on it or very close to it. So they took the crossroads out."

    The General gave a gusty sigh that set his beard shivering. "But a crossroads gave me good communications and allowed us to move quickly in multiple directions."

    "And that's what made it a good target General. You must learn to look at a map and see what the enemy will see. If it looks good to you for a reason, it will make a good target for the enemy by that same logic. Information isn't quite a weapon in its own right but it's an invaluable force multiplier. That applies both ways, you have to think of what the enemy knows and make allowances for it."

    "So a good defensive position is a bad defensive position because it is obviously a good position."

    "Exactly. That's exactly right. And don't worry too much about roads, our cross-country mobility is good enough so we can do without them."

    General Robert E Lee sighed again, gently this time. "Did I do anything right in this exercise?"

    Oates looked at the print out again. "To be honest Sir, no. Your frontal attack was walking right into a fire trap and your flanking move was far too close to the main body. It was going to swing across the Opfor front, not into their flank. You were thinking in horse cavalry terms and didn’t allow for how much more ground a modern cavalry unit covers or the ranges its weaponry can cover. For us, four hundred yards is close range. And, Sir, you must remember artillery fire. As long as a forward observer has a line of sight, they can bring intense fire on your positions. That observer can be an unmanned aircraft just as easily as a traditional observer. Frankly Sir." Oates bit her lip, wondered whether to sugarcoat the judgement and decided not to. "You'd have got the entire regiment wiped out. Again."

    Another gentle sigh. "For the fifth time I believe. Please do not take my mistakes personally Captain, you are an excellent teacher."

    Lee reached out and put his hand on Oates's arm. She pulled it away quickly, flushing slightly as she did so. She dropped her voice so they would not be overheard. "General, a quiet word on etiquette. If you are going to touch a woman like that, reach out and put your hand over her arm without touching. She will see and if your touch is welcome, she'll leave her arm where it is. If she doesn’t want to be touched, and there could be any number of reasons why, she'll move it. Just a word to the wise."

    "In my day, an inappropriate gesture towards a young woman would have been the responsibility of her father, brother or husband to answer. I suppose it was only to be expected that an Army that has women soldiers would expect them to guard their own honor."

    "Your gesture was neither inappropriate nor unwelcome Sir. Just unexpected." And in your day, I would be up against a whipping post having my back flayed raw for speaking to you like that. Oates shook herself slightly, it was difficult for her to keep remembering the cause for which this kind and gentlemanly officer had fought so hard. She couldn't help herself, the question just burst out. "Meaning no disrespect Sir, but how could you? How could you have fought so well for a cause like that?"

    Lee looked at her, startled. "Captain, we are all products of our time. What seemed to be normal and reasonable back then is only now obvious for the foul thing that it was. I regarded Virginia as my home and I fought for my home." Lee held his hand up to forestall any immediate answer. "I am not saying that the states rights argument is anything other than a feeble excuse. If the truth is of any meaning at all, the only states right that was in dispute was that of owning slaves. But Virginia with all its faults was my home. I just did not recognize, then, the gaping ugliness that laid at its heart. Today, looking at fine citizens and soldiers such as yourself and your fellow neg . . . African-Americans, I can see just how wrong I was. But, before Hell was overrun, I was trapped in the opinions and beliefs of my time. For that, for allowing my sense of duty to overcome my sense of what was right, I spent a century and a half rolling a massive boulder around in Hell. Now, all I can do is to ask your forgiveness."

    Oates smiled, silently accepting the apology. "We can run another exercise this afternoon if you wish. An advance-to-contact perhaps?"

    "Like Gettysburg?" Lee halted for a second. "I suppose there is no word of my old warhorse Longstreet?"

    "No Sir. I am afraid not."

    Lee sighed yet again. The truth was he felt lonely in this clean, aseptic and oh-so-deadly army. He had a hunch he would have preferred to start his military career again as an enlisted man than as a General. He doubted if life for a rifleman had changed that much. "I would enjoy that Captain, but I fear it is impossible. I have an appointment with General Petraeus this afternoon at two."

    "Very good sir. Tomorrow morning then. If you would excuse me?"

    Oates left and Lee leaned back in his seat, looking at the master display and trying to imagine what his battles would have been like if he'd had this equipment then. Oddly, he thought, at least half of them would never have been fought at all. Then he heard voices raised in the next room, seeping through the partition.

    "Oatsy, you can’t talk to Massa Robert like that."

    "Somebody's got to Jimbo." It was clearly his tutor speaking. "If he gets command of this regiment now, we'll all be dead thirty minutes into the action. You've seen those exercise playbacks. He hasn't got a clue how modern units communicate or move let alone fight. He's a real nice man, but everything we take for granted, senses of space, time, distance and what they imply, they just aren't there. To us, in our heads, twenty miles is a trip to the store. To him, in his head, it's a long, hard day's journey."

    The voices faded away and Lee was left staring at the master display. The silver disks that held the records of his previous exercises were in a storage rack and he put the oldest one on, just as Oates had showed him. What he had done looked reasonable to him but it ended the same way as it always did, his regiment dying in a chaos of blood and fire. Oates was right, he just didn't understand. By the time he had finished running through his records, it was time for his meeting and his mind was made up.

    General Petraeus's Office, HEA Headquarters, Hell

    "General Robert E Lee, to see General Petraeus."

    "Yes Sir. Please step right in." The sergeant opened the door for him.

    Lee stepped inside and came to attention. "General Petraeus, Sir, I would like to withdraw my request for a combat command. I would still wish to serve my country and my flag in any other way you might find appropriate."

    Petraeus looked up. "Sit down Robert. What made you come to this conclusion?"

    "Sir, for a week, I have been attempting to understand how your army works. With the aid of a very skilled and patient tutor. Sir, I regret to say I have failed completely. I am not fit to command and I must recognize that as a fact. One day, perhaps, but not now."

    "Captain Oates taught you properly?" Petraeus was inwardly relieved. The thought of Robert E Lee commanding a modern unit was a political nightmare.

    "She did sir and her patience with me was apparently inexhaustible. She is a fine officer Sir, and deserves your interest. The fault is mine. I do not know what I need to know, nor do I know yet what I need to learn."

    Petraeus nodded. "Robert, I do have another command for you if you want it, one for which you may be very well qualified. All the histories speak of your concern for your men, the lengths you went to for them and the loyalty you inspired in them. Every day now we are pulling victims out of the Hell Pit. Some of them are ex-American soldiers from various eras. Whatever the time they came from, and whatever side they fought on in the previous unpleasantness, they are now our responsibility. Many are deeply traumatized by their fate, others feel alone and unwanted in an era that is vastly different from any they knew. Yet, they are still our people. We are setting up a convalescent home for them, a refuge if you like. It needs a man like you, Robert, to run it. A man who can inspire loyalty and affection while still maintaining a strict discipline. That posting is yours if you wish it."

    "To care for our veterans, soldiers from every era in our history." Lee was entranced by the idea. "Sir, I do not just wish it, I desire it with all my heart."

    "Then the position is yours. You may start tomorrow."

    Lee saluted and left. Behind him, Petraeus smiled down at the paper in front of him. It was a politely-worded but firm report from Captain Ledasha Oates that stated in her opinion Robert E Lee was unfit to hold a combat command at his existing level of knowledge and some other posting should be found for him. It wasn't often that political and operational needs converged, but it was nice when they did. Then he transferred his attention back to his large-screen monitors and asked himself the questions that had been on his mind ever since the invasion coordinates had come in. This is my plan, this is how we will carry out the invasion. Now, what can go wrong and if it does, how do we cope with it? What is out there that we don't know about? Who will I be fighting when we arrive and how does he think? How can I win this war at minimum cost to the men and woman I command. Soon, he would know the answers because it was now time to move. In the final analysis, the decision and the responsibility was his, just as General Lee had recognized his responsibility and acted accordingly. Now, it was time for him to step up and shoulder his burden. He reached out and picked up the telephone on his desk.

    Fort Knox, Kentucky.

    "Are we ready to go?" Colonel Warhol looked around at the set-up to make sure everything was in place. A dozen or more V-22 Ospreys were standing by, their engines idling as they waited for the long-sought after Heavengate to form. All the equipment was set up, Lemuel-Lan was ready to open his portal from Earth to Heaven. The moment he did so, his signal would be monitored, recorded, digitized and fed into the waiting computers. That was all humanity had been waiting for, that one signal that would open up the gates of Heaven. They already had one from the first brief recon contact, now this data would confirm it. Across the open space of the testing ground, he could see another team getting ready to set up the link from Hell. Experiments had proved that having portals too close together would result in unfortunate effects, not the least being the merging of the two into a larger portal of uncertain destination. Portal science was beginning to be established as a real branch of scientific inquiry now, one day soon the links between it and the main body of scientific knowledge would be found and the glaring anomalies that currently existed would be explained. That applied to all the areas of study that had opened up since Hell had been discovered and not one of them was of any great interest to Colonel Warhol.

    "kitten, you and Dani had better mount up. You'll be going through as soon as the portal is open. You know how to find here, no matter what's on the other side, punch through a portal of your own if this one closes behind you. We want to depend on him as little as possible."

    "We got the briefing." Dani sounded slightly surly. He didn't like the implication that he had to be told things more than once. He tugged on kitten's leash and the two of them boarded the closest of the Ospreys.

    "Hellgate is open now." The message came over the radio but Warhol could see the black ellipse that had suddenly formed. It was strange how the sight of a portal had ceased to be awe-inspiring or threatening. Now they were no more significant than the 'welcome to' signs that graced American highways when somebody crossed a state line. To a military man, they were also far from threatening. Once, an opening Hellgate meant that a daemonic attack was imminent, now it showed that one of the armored units of the Human Expeditionary Army was within a few minutes drive. That simple fact had changed military planning out of all recognition. It had also created an entirely new branch of alternate history. Warhol was reading one such novel now, by some author called Turtleshell. It asked a simple question, what would have happened if Abigor had brought his Nagas along instead of leaving them behind? If he'd accepted the limitation they imposed on his mobility in favor of the ability to generate large, tactically significant portals? Still, such questions were for authors; Warhol was a soldier and soldiers deal with what is, not what might have been.

    "Lemuel-Lan-Michael?" Warhol looked at the message in his hand. "I've just had a message from Johns Hopkins. Maion is out of surgery, they've repaired the damage to her wings. She's resting now, under sedation, but the operation was a success. Whether that will mean she can fly again, we just don’t know. We've never treated angels before, especially one with such major injuries."

    "Thank you Colonel." Lemuel's eyes were sunk deep into their sockets and his face was drawn and tired. He hadn't slept since he and Maion had made their desperate escape to Earth. "Do you want me to open the portal to Heaven now?"

    "If you would please. Make one large enough to take that." He gestured at the V-22 that was assigned to carry kitten and her equipment through the Heavengate. Lemuel's eyes widened at the size of the portal he was being asked to create but nodded. He could do it, for Maion, for all the angels suffering in Heaven, and for his friend Michael who was trying to save them, he had to.

    "Transit-prime, this is Sirius-Prime actual here. We're coming through the Hellgate and forming up now. Hokay guys, we'll be ready to move in five minutes."

    Sirius-Prime, the armored battalion that was the spearhead of the Third Herd. And if Warhol recognized his accents, with Colonel Keisha Stevenson in command. That wasn't a surprise, ever since the initial fighting with Abigor, she had been Petraeus's go-to officer every time he wanted something unusual or dangerous done. She was (so far living) proof that gaining a senior General's attention was all too often the key to a short but exciting life.

    Lemuel-Lan closed his eyes and concentrated. He found the location in Heaven he wanted, Belial's concentration camp, easily enough. The sights, sounds and smell of the place were scarred deeply into his mind after all. All he needed was to energize the contact and the job would be done. Lemuel very much doubted whether the humans realized what they were asking him to do. The simple act of opening the portal was betraying the teachings of countless millennia. He summoned his strength, linked to the point he wanted and poured energy into the connection. Opening a portal from Earth to Heaven was difficult at the best of times and his still-present doubts made it all the more so. Still, he thought of Maion as he and Michael had found her, crawling in the mud and whimpering as she dragged her shattered wings behind her. That alone was enough. It was not he who had betrayed his faith, it was Yahweh who had betrayed him and every other Angel in the Host..

    Suddenly, in a blinding flash of understanding, Lemuel-Lan understood why the humans had taken this war so seriously. Why, in their rage they had sworn to destroy the power that had so contemptuously betrayed them. Michael-Lan had been right all along, the humans had fought Satan the way they fought all their enemies, no more and no less. Satan had been a self-declared enemy of humanity and they could understand and even forgive that. They had dealt with such enemies before and doubtless would do so again. And, when they had dealt with them, they had made peace. But, humans did not tolerate betrayal. They had destroyed Satan and ground down his kingdom but they loathed Yahweh beyond any measure he could imagine. If they invaded Heaven, and if they didn’t do it today, they would at some time in the future, they wouldn’t stop fighting until Yahweh and the Angelic Host were crushed so thoroughly they would never recover. Michael-Lan was right, this had been the only way. In front of him, the great black ellipse formed and stabilized.

    Cockpit, V-22C "Dragon-One-Zero", Fort Knox, Kentucky.

    "Hold tight, here we go." Captain Mark Sheppard's hands moved on the controls and the Osprey lifted off, then transitioned from vertical to horizontal flight. Then, he accelerated his aircraft and headed straight through the portal that had formed in front of him. As he went through, he couldn't resist giving out the traditional battle-cry "Geronimo!"

    The Heavengate transition was no more spectacular or marked than the familiar one through a Hellgate. The blue sky of Earth was quietly and unassumingly replaced by the clear white sky and light of Heaven. The one thing that marked the different destination of the Heavengate was the ground. Instead of the red-dominated, dusty landscape of Hell, the skies of Heaven were clear and bright. The ground was green pasture, spread across rolling hills and valleys, interspaced with clumps of earth-like trees. It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful and for one brief moment Sheppard actually regretted that these lovely hills would soon be the scene of fire and destruction, the inevitable trademark of a human army at war.

    Then, his Osprey crested a hill and any pretension of beauty was left behind. Stretched out underneath him was a scene that was indeed straight out of Hell. Not just out of Hell but from the Hellpit itself. A great enclosure with walls and guard towers. Inside it, thousand of angels, dragging themselves along, their shattered wings trailing in the mud behind them. Sheppard thumbed his microphone, he still had a direct line of sight to the portal so his radio worked. "Transit-Prime, this is Dragon-One-Zero. Concentration camp sighted as described. Much worse than described. Looks like our friend was telling the truth. Swinging past now. There's what looks like a good base location about ten miles out from here. If you forget the concentration camp, this place is beautiful."

    The Osprey skimmed another ridge, dropped out of sight below the ridgeline and then headed for a low plateau that marked a suitable site for a base area. It transitioned from horizontal to vertical flight and then settled down on the lush green grass that covered the site. By now, the drill was well-established and the equipment had all the benefit of nearly eighteen months of technical development behind it. As a result, it took barely ten minutes to set up the AN/GSY-1(V)4 Mod 6 portal generator and another five for kitten to use it to create another portal back to Fort Knox.

    Fort Knox, Kentucky.

    "Shut yours down. And thank you, Lemuel, head on back to Washington Maion needs you." The black ellipse that had marked the original portal vanished without a sign that it had even existed. A few hundred yards away, beside the beacon set up for the purpose, a new portal had opened. Warhol watched as the Spearhead Battalion of the Third Armored moved through it and vanished. A few seconds later, a message came over the radio that caused an eruption of cheering all over the base. It said, quite simply, "Base Heavengate-Alpha established."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 65
    • Base Heavengate-Alpha, Heaven

    "Hokay, so we do a Thunder Run Sir. Anywhere in particular or do we get to choose?"

    "Not quite a Thunder Run this time Colonel. You will push in the direction of the concentration camp established ten miles from your present position. A medical unit is following you, your orders are, and your primary responsibility is, to get them to that camp alive and unharmed. You will then force an entry to that camp, secure it and maintain security while the medics work on the inmates. After they have finished, you will cover their extraction."

    "Very good Sir."

    "And Colonel. Last time an American division liberated a concentration camp, they lined the guards up and shot them. That was then, this is now, don’t use that as a precedent. We want the guards alive and most especially we want the daemon running that camp alive. Belial has a lot to answer for."

    "We'll do our best Sir. I won’t make promises I can't keep though. If those guards fight, we'll have to take them down."

    "That's one thing. Having them all mysteriously 'shot while trying to escape' or 'resisting arrest' would be something different."

    "Understood Sir." Colonel Keisha Stevenson shut down the communications terminal and stepped outside the tent. Communications wouldn't be a tent for very long, the pre-fabricated building that would be the permanent communications section in Heaven was already being erected. The concrete base was already drying and the walls were ranged out beside it, ready to be hoisted into place. The same scene could be spotted all over the base area. Buildings were going up fast as Base Heavengate Alpha-One was turned into a full divisional encampment. Just one of many that were being set up fast as the Ospreys could transport portal teams to suitable areas. First Army Group was pouring into Heaven literally as fast as vehicles could be driven through the portals. Overhead, the V-22s were already flying out to new locations north and west of the Eternal City so that bridgeheads could be established for the Second and Third Army Groups. This onslaught was a far different scene from the early days in Hell when Stevenson had been convinced the brass were making up the plans as they went along.

    "Thoughtful Boss?"

    "Yeah Biker. We got the orders to move out. Take that concentration camp west of here and watch over the medics as they do their thing." Stevenson looked around. "Kind of miss the old days in Hell."

    "Like the day we got a disabled driver sticker, put it on the tank and parked it in the Colonel's space?"

    "Just like that. Although we should have asked him to remove his Humvee first. I don’t know, look at this place. Pretty rolling green hills, nice little forests, air so clean it tastes like wine. Well, it does until we start the tanks up. It's too pretty, it lacks character. Hell had character."

    "Mostly bad."

    "Yeah, but at least it had some. This place looks like its somebody tried too hard to make the perfect world. It's the Stepford Wives version of an environment. Hokay, we're going to blow it up anyway, it's time to roll. Biker, get the troops together and we'll try and liven this place up a bit.

    Farming Community, Five Miles West of Base Heavengate-Alpha-One, Heaven

    Nobody had removed the body of their angel. He was still sprawled out on the ground on the outskirts of the village where the soldiers had shot him down. Haropamiel-Lan-Mihmakeal had seen the column of vehicles approaching and stepped out into the road in front of them, holding up his hand, palm facing the newcomers. The Ishim had held his ground, even when the newcomers had driven right up to him and fired their guns at his feet. Then, three of their vehicles had opened fire on him and Haropamiel had fallen. Now, half the village was wailing in grief at the death of their lord while the rest were stunned by the sight of an Angel being casually killed.

    "Hokay, we hold here until the medical convoy joins us, then we push the rest of the way." The commander of the newcomers was speaking to another officer.

    Benedict almost fainted with terror at the thought of what he was about to do but his duties left him no choice. In point of fact, he had no official duties, Haropamiel had been the only authority in the hamlet but Benedict had been his right hand in dealing with the humans and the habit still held good. Anyway, with Haropamiel laying dead in the dirt, surrounded by a pool of his peerless white blood, somebody had to take charge. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and addressed the officer of soldiers. "Sir, it is time for us to make our daily reverences to the Lord of All."

    The officer turned around and, to his shock, Benedict saw that the officer was a woman. Not only that but a Nubian. "And you are?" Her voice was cold and not very sympathetic. The accent was one that Benedict had never heard before. Nor, come to think of it had he seen clothes like the ones she was wearing. Tunic and trousers all covered in an eye-deceiving pattern of red and gray squares, a thick and heavy-looking jacket colored the same way. There was much equipment carried by this officer, more than that carried by the Roman officers Benedict had seen during his life on Earth. Most frightening of all though were the things that covered her eyes. They were mirrors, ones that reflected the image of Benedict standing before her yet concealed her own expression completely. Combined with the impassive expression, Benedict had no idea of how or what she was feeling. One thing Benedict did understand, this human wasn't dead. Heaven was being invaded, the war machines parked in his village and those flying overhead proved that. Heaven had seen nothing like them before.

    "My name is Benedict. Since you have killed our Angel, I am in charge here."

    "Hokay, then stop that damned wailing."

    "I am sorry Sir, but our angel is dead. Without his protection and guidance, what shall we do?"

    "Try standing on your own feet."

    Benedict almost wept with despair. He had hoped for sympathy, or at least that his need to carry on with the duties of reverence for The Almighty Lord would win some favor. But there was none to be found here. He looked closely at the officer and saw the signs of authority that had marked the Roman officers he had known long ago. "May we perform our rituals?"

    "Sure, this is your village, such as it is. You can do what you wish." The voice changed slightly and some warmth crept into it. "You'd better get used to that. It's called being free. The days when Angels ruled this place are ending pretty damned soon. And you don’t have to do that reverencing stuff any more. Unless you really want to of course. Can't see what you would want to give thanks for though."

    Benedict took offense at that and at the casual invocation of damnation. "We have much to be thankful for. We live in comfortable homes that are ours to keep. No soldiers come to burn them down in the night. We have our fields to tend and our crops to grow and they do not get trampled down or stolen. We have clothes to wear, all we need to eat and much more besides. We live our days in peace. Truly, is this not the Paradise we were promised?"

    Benedict waited to be struck down in the way that any who spoke to an officer of soldiers would have been struck down. Instead, she burst out laughing and started shaking her head.

    Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven

    "Hokey, so this one has got guts. Some anyway." Stephenson looked around at the cluster of hovels that surrounded her unit. She guessed that some hillbillies living in the back end of nowhere probably had worse living conditions but she couldn’t be sure of that. What she did know was that in any American town, these shanty homes would be condemned as a health and safety hazard. Nobody, but nobody, she knew had to live in conditions like this.

    "He's probably right Colonel. I'd guess this place does stack up pretty well against the conditions people had to live in two thousand years ago. Ever heard of the Lekker Lewe?" Stephenson shook her head. "Read about it in a book about the Zulu wars. The old Boer settlers had a lifestyle they called the Lekker Lewe, the sweet life. For them, the sweet life meant doing the minimum of work needed to provide them with a minimally comfortable lifestyle. Put a lot of emphasis on living in balance with the land. Bit like environmentalists I guess although most of the enviro's I know would go apeshit at the idea their ideas were upheld by a bunch of South African Boers. It was the sort of ideal the Boers clung to even when times changed and they lived a lot better than they ever could hen living the Lekker Lewe. I guess the same applies here; in comparison with living on the brink of starvation and always in danger of being looted or killed or both, this place doesn’t seem so bad. It's just that we are seeing it through different eyes. It's not just our weaponry that's changed, its our expectations of what constitutes a Heaven."

    "Ain't that the truth Biker. Looks like our medic friends are about to catch up with us. Yo, Benedict. Any more angels around this way?"

    "No Sir. Our Haropamiel was all."

    "Watch it Colonel, I doubt if these people have been outside their fields in millennia. They've got no idea what's out there."

    "Sure. Tell everybody to mount up. And to take things real careful."

    Belial's Camp, Heaven.

    "Most Blessed Lord, the human army is approaching. Already their war machines are near our walls." Ohiel-Lan-Epidan wasn't quite sure how to address Belial. A Grand Duke in Hell was, or had been, the equivalent of a Chayot Ha Kodesh but to give one of the Fallen the same titles seemed wrong on too many levels. Yet Belial was doubtless in charge here and was favored by The Almighty Father Of All. Had not He Who Is Above All himself placed this Grand Duke in charge of this place of punishment? And had not Belial chosen him, a lowly Cherubim as one of the guards here. Ohiel-Lan-Epidan had taken to his work very quickly, with the authority granted to him he had been able to take down the arrogant Seraphim and Hashmallim who had once lorded their superiority over the lower ranks of Angels. Now they whimpered in the mud while he, Ohiel, a mere Ishim, had his foot on their necks.

    "They are called tanks." Belial spoke without too much concern. He had already decided that, while carrying out this task, that it was not worthy of him. It was all very well to torment a few hundred angels but he was used to better things than this. Once he held sway over tens of thousands of daemons and billions of human souls. He had been a favorite of Satan himself. All of which he had lost due to the betrayal of that bitch Euryale. Her words "kill him" still echoed through his mind. He needed vengeance upon her; he needed her to die a hideously lingering and agonizing death for what she had done.

    Coming to Heaven had been a mistake. With a flash of intuitive insight, Belial realized that he had been so demoralized by Euryale's betrayal, so crushed by the contemptuous ease with which the humans had overwhelmed everybody before them, that he had fled the battle before it was truly lost. He could have done so much more, all he had needed was the spirit, the internal resources to do it. Certainly the humans had destroyed the center of power Satan had built around Dis but the daemons had only ever occupied a small portion of the vast land mass of Hell. There were vast lands outside the daemonic domain where the humans were unlikely to go. There must be tens of thousands of daemons who would not accept the cowardly surrender of Abigor and who wished to continue the fight. All they needed was leadership, the sort of leadership that only a Grand Duke could provide.

    By running for Heaven, he had so nearly missed his chance. He had taken himself out of the competition for leadership of the resistance to human rule of Hell, the resistance that he knew had to be building somewhere in the hinterland of Hell. This also was Euryale's fault, if she hadn't betrayed him so brutally, so finally, he would never have fled to this pale, insipid Heaven. Instead, he would have been the leader of the daemonic resistance and, once the humans had been driven out, the ruler of a new kingdom. For a moment he allowed himself to slip into a daydream, one in which he devised new and ever more excruciating torments to be inflicted on Euryale as soon as the opportunity arose.

    "My Lord?" Ohiel-Lan-Epidan spoke carefully. More than one Angel had been transferred from guard on the outside to prisoner on the inside for offending Belial. "Your orders?"

    Belial snapped himself out of his reverie, one in which Euryale had been begging him for her death. "All Angels will form up on the walls and fight off the humans. Go now and spread the word."

    He watched the angel head off to the walls, carrying the word that would start the fight against the humans. Then, he turned away and started the mental disciplines necessary to open a portal to Earth.

    Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven

    "York crews, get ready to deal with any Airborne angel attacks." The six M1314A1 anti-harpy guns were spread out in a long line to cover her tanks and MICVs. "Alpha and Bravo companies, concentrate fire on the gatehouse in front. Five rounds rapid, Alpha Company advance to the gully after three. Use up the sabot ammunition, keep the HEAD and beehive rounds for when we have to deal with the Angels. Charlie and Delta companies, use your chain guns to hose down the top of the wall. Bravo will advance with me as soon as Alpha is in position. On my mark .. . . . Fire."

    Thirty 120mm sabot rounds streaked across the gap separating the tanks from the walls of Belial's concentration camp. The crystal-clear picture of the gatehouse vanished under roiling clouds of dust as the rods slammed into the stone, powdering it and sending fragments spinning into the sky. Looking at the scene, Stevenson realized that it had a distinct resemblance to the dust-laden atmosphere of Hell. So, we've brought Hell to Heaven. Angels, meet depleted uranium. And the more you fight, the worse it is going to get. Her tank lurched again as her gunner slammed out a second. She could see the dust cloud covering the gate roil as the sabot bolts tore through it. The third salvo ripped out, then the fourteen tanks of Alpha Company accelerated out of their positions and started to move to a deep gully that would provide them with hull-down positions for further shots at the already-battered gatehouse. Her own tank lurched twice more as two additional shots were squeezed off, then her two command tanks led Bravo company in a leap-frogging movement to their next designated fire positions.

    Half way through the move, she was checking on Alpha Company to make sure they were sustaining fire on the gate and wall around it. Back in the old days, she wouldn't have had to do that but the massive expansion of the Army had meant quality had dropped. A lot. Still, the company were firing slowly and deliberately at the gatehouse structure. One of the towers was already down, the other looking decidedly battered from the sabot rounds that were splitting the marble apart. As she watched, a great sheet of shining white stone detached from the face of the tower and crashed to the ground. Then, there was a sound that reminded her of a bell chiming and her tank lurched.

    "What the hell was that?" Her loader's voice came over the intra-vehicle comms system.

    Stevenson thought for a split second. "Trumpet blast. Our insulation took most of it and the active noise cancellation system a lot more so what we heard was what leaked through." Enough to make a 70-ton tank rock she thought. Angels were a lot more dangerous than daemons.

    She switched over to the battalion command frequency. "Charlie and Delta, we're taking trumpet blasts here. Maintain fire on the wall. York, any angels trying to fly yet?"

    York Battery's commander was probably listening on the radio, waiting for the chance to blow something up. "No sign of any flight activity ma'am. All trying to stay under cover I guess."

    "Hokay, use the radar for surveillance and pick off any that do appear. In the meantime, switch your gun to electro-optical and hose down that wall."

    I guess his finger must have been on the fire button all the time. The brilliant red streaks from the 57mm tracer rounds were slashing at the wall-top before she had time to formulate the thought. By the time her attention had returned to the gatehouse, her tanks had opened fire and the different angles of impact had brought the second tower down. "Shift fire to the gate itself. One round HEAD."

    With the protecting bulk of the towers down and the gate supports severely compromised, the single barrage of HEAD rounds were enough to leave gates themselves a mass of burning splinters. "Bravo Company, follow me. Alpha, pick up behind. Everybody else , keep hammering the wall top either side of the gates."

    The temptation to open the tank up and watch what was happening through the open commander's cupola was great but Stevenson crushed it down hard. The lesson of Hell was quite clear, humans were more or less safe inside their armored vehicles. It was when they left the protection of rolled homogenous armor that things went wrong. Her tank started to rise as it crossed the burning rubble of the gate, then its nose dipped and Stevebson saw what lay inside the compound. For a brief moment sheer blind fury grabbed hold of her and she wanted to swing her coaxial machine gun across the camp guards who were already throwing down their swords. She managed to master the impulse, just, by the barest of margins. For a second the lights inside the tank flickered and the computers blipped, then there was a rattle that she recognized as machinegun fire hitting her tank.

    "What happened?" Her voice was terse and strained.

    "One of the guards, took a swing at your tank with what looks like an electrically charged sword. Bravo-three, four, five and six took him down with coax."

    "Roger that. Thank's for the service guys. Tanks, spread out, keep the rest of the guards covered. For pity's sake be careful how you maneuver, we don’t want to crush the poor bastards in the mud." She took another look at the center of the compound where the prisoners held there were staring at the human tanks that had just blasted their way into their own private Hell. "Charlie and Delta, move on up. York, follow them. Which one of you has that TV crew on board?"

    "That's us Colonel. Charlie-Seven."

    "Hokay, get up here fast. The world has got to see this."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 66
    • Sampson Household, Sapulpa, Oklahoma, USA

    "The following news items contains images and stories that some viewers may find distressing. Viewer discretion is therefore advised. Nikole, are you there?" The news broadcast cut away from the studio into a scene that, from its clear white light, should have been Heaven. Only, the sight of the walled enclosure and the vile, filth-drenched mud of the ground seemed more like Hell than Heaven. The wailing from the crippled inhabitants of the camp made the situation even more confused. John Sampson had spent most of his life as a fairly observant Episcopalian but he was sure that he had never heard of anything like this in Heaven. In the background, a large group of humans were trying to lift an angel out of the mud and load the victim on to a tank transporter so it could be moved away from the scene. For a brief second, the sounds of the camp were drowned out by a Mi-26 helicopter flying overhead, carrying another angel as a slung load. Then the pitiful sounds of the camp returned, the contrast with the roar of the helicopter engines making them even more plaintive.

    "Hello, Anita? Good to hear from you." She turned slightly and faced the camera rather than the monitor off to her left. "This is Nikole Killion reporting from Heaven. Earlier today, the Spearhead Battalion of the Third Armored Division overran this concentration camp, here, in Heaven. Ladies and gentlemen, I spent six months in Hell as your assigned correspondent there. I saw many things in Hell, some too dreadful ever to put on television. I saw our tortured dead being retrieved from the Hellpit. I saw battlefields where the mangled corpses of the daemons who died trying to fight our tanks with bronze tridents covered mile after mile. I saw more than I ever wanted to of horror in Hell but I saw other things as well. I saw our humanity as we succored those in need, I saw the tenderness and compassion of our troops as they treated the crippled and wounded. And I saw the guilt of the daemons themselves as the evil influence of Satan faded and they realized the error of their ways. I saw their joy when the realized the weight of oppression was lifted from them. But never did I see in Hell anything like the scenes I have witnessed here today."

    Behind the camera Killion saw the producer made the traditional 'you're laying it on too thick' sign. Before she could resume though, there was a dreadful scream from behind her. The angel had been lifted on to a cargo palette so that it could be moved more easily but one of its broken wings had caught the edge and been twisted around. Undoubtedly the bones had grated against each other to produce that scream of pain. Killion glanced again at the producer and got a 'forget it, you were right' sign.

    "This concentration camp is something beyond our understanding. The Armenian Massacres, Auschwitz and the rest of the Holocaust, the Rwanda Massacres, the Hellpit, all of those were executed by one group oppressing another. That isn't an excuse for them of course but it highlights the fact that this place is different. The only thing that separates the angels in this camp from the rest is that these ones didn’t quite agree with everything Yahweh said. For that one crime, they ended up here, their wings, and in many cases their legs, broken beyond repair. The doctors here have told me they will do what they can but these are the worst bone injuries they have ever seen. Colonel Keisha Stevenson, commander of the Spearhead Battalion, has spared a few minutes of her time to speak with us. Colonel, what is happening right now."

    "Hokay, Nikole. Our first priority is to get the victims in this place out. I'll be honest with you, some of these angels are not going to make it. The least we can do is get them out of here so they can die in more comfortable circumstances. We've got a hospice area set up a mile or so away, we're moving the beyond-hope ones there and doping them up with morphine so their final hours will be as pain-free and pleasant as possible. The rest, we're trying to get to hospitals on Earth. It's triage I'm afraid, separating those who can be saved from those who cannot. The worst duty of any doctor tasked with handling a major disaster has to face."

    Across the bottom of the television screen, a message bar started to roll. It was an appeal for assistance in handling the unfolding disaster. One of many such appeals that had been launched ever since the Salvation War had started. John Sampson looked at his wife, Ellen, and exchanged nods. They didn’t have much left but they'd send a little money to help.

    "Colonel, have we any idea who was responsible for this horror?" Killion was having trouble keeping her voice level.

    "We do. The orders came from Yahweh himself. We have them exactly. ' For defying My Eternal Will they should suffer the agonies of Hell for all eternity. I decree eternal damnation for them with all the suffering that their vile treachery deserves.' And those orders were issued to the commandant of this camp, the daemon Grand Duke Belial."

    "Belial?" Killion could barely believe it and her voice rose uncontrolled. "Belial ran this camp? The one who was responsible for Coventry and Detroit? What connection does he have with Yahweh?"

    "Appears to work for him. And be Satan's replacement. Of course, since he seems to have been appointed Satan's replacement by Yahweh, well, it makes us think right? The guards here are nobodies, lowest rank angels. Hierarchy is pretty strong here in Heaven and the lowest ranks of angels are pretty much servants of the higher ranks. That's what the lan in their names means. 'Servant of'. From what we can see, the prisoners here are all middle rank angels so the guards took their millennia of servitude out on them."

    "What happened to Belial? Is he in custody?"

    "No such luck Nikole. He portalled out as soon as we appeared. Probably went to Earth and then back to either here or somewhere in Hell. We'll get him in the end."

    "So Yahweh is directly responsible for all of this." Killion shook her head. "Where do we go from here?"

    "Hokay, here, we need help, need it bad. A single combined arms battalion and a med unit aren't nearly enough. We're not trained for it, we're not equipped for it. We need disaster relief specialists right away. For the Spearhead battalion? We gotta job to do over in the Eternal City. There's folks that need rescuing over there."

    "Humans or angels?" Killion couldn’t help asking.

    Stevenson looked around at the scene surrounding them. "Both, I guess."

    Welfare and Assistance Group, Phelan Plain, Hell.

    The queue at the camp was endless, as quickly as those at the head could be processed, others arrived and joined the tail. Once people had been reborn as second lifers or rescued from the Hellpit they had been taken through the identification and induction formalities at the initial reception center. Some who came through the gate had already restructured their finances to allow themselves to continue with their existing assets in the second life. They could leave right away, either to the areas run by their own country or to one of the new mini-states that were proliferating across human-occupied Hell. Others had not had that chance and many, many more, especially the refugees from the hellpit had nothing to start with. And so they came here, reborn or recovered, to get some help easing into what was rapidly becoming the most aggressive free market economy in history. Making sure that they had a fair deal and the best start possible was the duty of the Welfare and Assistance Section.

    For a peculiar complex of reasons, Australia had been uniquely placed to fill a gap. Its primary industries were now in overdrive to provide raw materials and refining for the growth of the world's armies and that had caused its unemployment rate had dropped to levels unseen since World War Two. This slump in demand for welfare and assistance had combined with their existing agency's experience in operating a large and complex welfare system to give them the experience they needed. Add in disaster and crisis response and the fact that Australia had not yet been and was not likely to be a target for a major attack had made them the ideal choice to lead the new multinational welfare organization.

    The past year had been a hectic one for Donald Weems. He'd been heading up what he now knew to be a Yah-Yah enhanced cyclone response task force in Queensland, arranging emergency finance, fast-tracking new identification and legal documents for those who had lost them, managing emergency housing as well as dealing with all of the standard welfare agency issues that the affected population had when the call had come through. Five hours later he'd been a QANTAS 747-400 Longreach to Leeds with two hundred staff, spending most of the flight on a conference call with the British welfare agencies, lawmakers and a gaggle of IT groups trying to figure out how to integrate everyone. They'd barely gotten the mess of bureaucracy and technology sorted out when Detroit had been hit and that had been even more of a mess due to the strange idiosyncrasies of the US social security system.

    Then the Plateau of Minos reception point had been taken by the H.E.A., where it quickly became clear that the military was not capable, nor motivated to run that service into the future. The announcement had been made that a new second life welfare agency was being created to supplement and eventually replace the military-run holding and recovery facilities. Funding was a nightmare, not least because of certain elements had started raging about "welfare succubae". Eventually, it had become clear that there were significant savings being made from retirement and old age pensions funds. People were beginning to realize that there was no real point in suffering through a painfully terminal illness when a new life and body were waiting for them 'the other side'. Earthside medical costs were already falling as terminal care was made obsolete by the escalating suicide rate. Several countries were already discussing the legalization of euthanasia. The savings that would bring would allow the Welfare and Assistance Group to function in the interim from existing budgets. At least until a revenue stream from Hell could be established.

    It had been eighteen months or more since he had taken over the operations at the camp, and progress was being made rapidly. The tent city that had been the symbol of the reception camps was being slowly replaced by Dongas, pre-fabricated dwellings designed for use at mining sites in the Australian desert, perfectly suited for use in hell. Schools, trade colleges and universities were opening to provide modern education and training. A massive hall had been constructed with the assistance of the New Roman Republic to act as a site for a career and job expo, where people could come and look at their options and be wooed by the ever increasing number of nations and corporations that required workers or citizens. Even sports and recreation facilities were now being built, the YMCA (the C now stood for Charitable) had twenty buildings either completed or nearing completion, the IOC had pitched in for the construction of an athletics ground and swimming facilities. Every attempt was being made to make the transition easier, lives better and help people become self sufficient in Hell.

    For all the improvements and rose-tinted publicity though, the bread and butter of the job was still dealing with trauma, grief, shock and pain. For every former pensioner who had chosen to end their painful cancer-ridden life in favor of a healthy second life start or rich, dumb kid who'd wrapped their car around a tree and was now suing for early release of their trust fund as they'd never reach 21 years of age, he had a thousand who's deaths from famine, disease and violence who required far more resources to support. The worst were the long-time Hell victims who needed constant support for weeks and even months on end from the team of psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, social workers and counsellors just to bring them to a level where they could begin the most basic human processes once more. Recently, the armies had started to establish their own facilities to care for their veterans but that left all too many others without a solid foundation for what promised to be a very long life.

    The initial contact point was still manned around the clock, with each new arrival to the facility being processed and added to what was inevitably going to be the largest database of personal information in existence. If possible a brief interview would identify their needs, then they'd be assigned to housing. It never ceased to amaze him when he came into his office which overlooked the main waiting area at the contact point, the variety of humanity that was there. Queues of men and women of every race and age. Special areas where children from newborns to teenagers sat with nurses, social workers and other specialists as they waited to see if any family could be found to assist them. The processes that followed this initial contact were becoming increasingly complex as more and more options became available. He'd decided to make his task for the day to try and build a new streamlined framework to take into account all of the new resources. The phone on the desk rings, pulling his attention away from the mountains of briefing papers, tenders, proposals and financial data that awaited him. "Hi, Weems here. How can I-"

    "How soon can you have a crisis response group ready to go?" The voice at the other end of the line was urgent and spoke with the tone that he'd learnt was unique to Colonel's and above who needed to be heard *right now*.

    "That's a very open question. What kind of crisis? How many affected? First or second lifers? Where is it and . . . . . sorry, who is this?"

    "This is Colonel Paschal, Director of Operations for DIMO(N). We're looking at way over fifteen thousand victims in a concentration camp environment. Hand your work over to your deputy, thin out your staff to the minimum needed and get the rest assembled for a quick move. We have a major disaster on hand and it's a complicated scenario."

    "Complicated how?" Weems didn’t like being ordered around so abruptly but he'd learned that, here in Hell, the military forces had the upper hand and their brusque, terse approach to problems actually worked.

    "Most of the victims are angels."

    Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    "What is happening? Are we on Earth?" Maion spoke weakly. She was confused and bewildered by everything that had happened. The last thing she could clearly remember was the pain and filth of the prison she had been sent to. Then, the rest was a mixture of half-remembered scenes, flashing lights and humans everywhere. Humans who seemed to be in charge.

    "We are. You are in a thing called a hospital, it's where humans treat their sick and wounded. They call such people 'patients' and have people called 'doctors' and 'nurses' who look after them." Lemuel paused and look rueful. "Don't argue with them Maion, just do as they say. They get very angry if others try and interfere with them looking after their patients."

    Maion very carefully lifted her head and looked around. The movement attracted the attention of a human woman dressed in white with a name-tag reading "Grace" on it. She took a clipboard from somewhere and started writing down numbers from the equipment that surrounded Maion's bed. "Well, Maion, how are we feeling today?"

    "I can't feel much at all." Maion was slightly confused and also resentful. Humans were menial servants, that was how it had been all her life. The idea that one could address her, not just as an equal but as her superior, drove through the strange fog that filled Maion's mind.

    "I'm not surprised. We had to pump you full of morphine so you could recover. When did you become an addict by the way?"

    "What?" Lemuel was shocked by the casual question.

    "Don't interrupt." Grace snapped the response at him. "Maion, we ran an analysis panel on your blood, once you had enough to analyze that is, and that told us you were a heroin addict. A couple of cops we have helping out here told us where to look and we found the injection marks between your toes. That's not a good idea by the way, you can get gangrene and lose your feet doing that."

    Maion was bewildered, she couldn't understand a lot of what the nurse was saying and the fact that the humans had discovered her secret so easily shocked her.

    "About two years, two and a half. At first it was just a bit of fun, it made parties so much better. Then, I found how bad it was if I didn’t get it. In the end, I had to work at the club to earn enough." Maion cudgelled her brain, trying to remember what it was that she could say and what she had to keep secret. "Michael-Lan's nightclub that is. I had to dance there and do other things, just to get my stuff. I'm sorry Lemuel, I wanted to tell you but I was ashamed."

    Lemuel moved closer to her and took her hand. Grace caught the action and smiled to herself, at least these two would help each other out. She'd seen enough addiction treatments to know that recovering from addiction was much easier if it was a joint affair. "Don't be hard on her Lemuel, you’re an addict too."

    "What?" Lemuel was genuinely stunned by the offhand comment.

    "We ran a panel on you too. You've been using opiates in small quantities for quite some time. You're not hooked the way Maion is, but you're an addict just the same. Kiddies, don't mess with this stuff, it will really screw you up."

    "What?" Lemuel simply didn’t understand what was happening around him. He was out of his depth, flailing around in an effort to get his mind around the things he was learning.

    "Say that once more and I'll have you assigned to washing out bedpans." Grace smiled to take the sting out of her words. "Look, we can handle this. It's no big thing really. Anyway, Maion, don’t worry about this great lummox, we'll take care of him as well. When we get time that is, we're getting overworked with all the concentration camp victims coming back from Heaven. You're not alone here any more, there are more than a dozen patients just like you here. Some of them worse. If it's any consolation to you, everything we learned treating you is helping us look after them better."

    Maion lifted her head again and looked carefully around, feeling the strain on her neck and shoulders as she did so. There were three other angels in her ward, all surrounded by the same equipment as hers, all with human staff looking after them. She also saw her own wings stretched out within a wooden frame.

    Grace caught her glance. "The surgeons operated on your wings. They managed to repair the damage to the bones between the joints. You've got titanium screws in there to hold the bones together. The joints? Well, they've done the best they can but the damage was very severe. We had experts come in from Ireland, that's a place thousands of miles away, to help fix the damage but whether they did any good, we just don’t know."

    "Will I fly again?" Maion was almost desperate, trying to imagine a world when she couldn’t fly any time she wanted.

    Grace hesitated. There were times to lie and times to tell the truth and it was hard to know which applied here. In the end she settled for the truth. "I don't know, but the doctors think the chances are not good. We're not quite sure how you fly, but the surgeons think those wing joints will be very stiff and hard to move, even when they're healed. If they heal. That's all for the future though, we can cross that bridge when we come to it." She switched her attention to Lemuel. "As for you, you look pretty sick too. Lack of sleep, no food and withdrawal symptoms. Get some rest. That's an order."

    There was a racking groan from the other end of the ward. One of the other angels was coming around. Grace reinserted the clipboard into its holder at the end of the bed and took off in the direction of the sound. Overhead, the roof of the tent shook as Bethesda's Mi-26 brought another angel in for treatment.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 67
    • Headquarters, Incomparable Legion Of Light, Heaven.

    "Oh man, can't we all just get along?"

    Raphael-Lan covertly raised his eyebrows in despair. "I really wish we could, especially after all the work you put in with the humans a couple of millennia ago. Michael-Lan really admires that, you know. The sheer patience and concentration needed to control that carpenter for so many years, well, it was an achievement he really respects. A pity it all turned out so badly. Anyway, we, or rather you, have a job to do. He Who Must Not Be Named wants you to lead the Incomparable Legion and its human levies against the army invading Heaven."

    "Oh crap. Why don't we just sit down and talk this out with them? Anyway, which one, man? There are human armies all over the place."

    "The nearest one will do." Which, just by great good fortune happens to be the one best fitted to kill you and wipe out Yahweh's personal bodyguard. "In any case, The One Above Us All has a personal interest in them. The prison used to hold those who betrayed His Holy Will has been overrun by humans and it must be recaptured. Immediately. Such are the unquestionable commands of The Most High."

    Raphael-Lan watched the figure the other side of the table shake his head. "He really needs to mellow out and smell the roses. My Unspeakable Father has palaces all over Heaven, what's one more or less to Him?"

    "I think it's the angels within His Omnipotence is worried about. They defied His Holy Will after all."

    "Ominpotence? That's a joke. What things I could tell you. Still, if the Old Man wants it, I guess it must be done. Keep Him chilled out. Where?" There was something subtly different about the last word, one that made Raphael-Lan look sharply across the table.

    "Here. I suggest you take the entire Legion and hit this point just opposite the camp. There's only a thin skin of human forces there, most of the rest are spreading out to secure their base area. When the Incomparable Legion breaks through here, you can spread out inside and collapse the whole area. You will earn yourself much glory in the eyes of He Who Is Above Us All."

    The snort of laughter surprised Rafael-Lan. "Like sure, man. Like My Eternal Father is going to be cool with anything I do. Thank you, Rafael-Lan, for your wisdom and insight. Pass word to He Who Must Be Obeyed that his Dutiful Son will lead the Incomparable Legion to victory."

    Raphael-Lan made his obeisance and left the tent to fly back to the Eternal City. That was getting more dangerous now there were human aircraft in the skies over Heaven. Their fastest and most powerful could sweep down and take out their target before there was any sign of their presence. Things in Heaven were already changing fast. Less than a week since Lemuel and Maion had opened the doors and already Angelic control of Heaven was slipping.

    Back in the headquarters, Enatenael-Lan-Elhmas was staring at the map spread out on the table. "Eternal Lord, do we do as Raphael suggests?"

    "Like hell man. Raphael and Michael are good people but they just don’t know humans the way I do. We throw in an assault at the point he suggested sure, but it'll be a feint. The humans will have to respond to it, they have hordes of human civilians helping out at the hell-hole My Auspicious Father created. They'll want to protect them, so they'll pull in units from all around to stop us. Enatenael-Lan, take one cohort of the Incomparable Legion and its human levies. That'll give you 10,000 angels and five times that number of levies. Keep pushing at the forces the humans throw at you. Once they've stripped the rest of their perimeter to stop you, I'll lead the other nine Cohorts and their levies in. They'll punch right through the thinned-out human lines. It'll be rough on you and your Cohort but it'll cost us less overall."

    "Very good Eternal Lord." Enatenael-Lan crossed his wings in front of his face and swept out to gather his forces.

    Far, far overhead, beyond the ability of Angelic eyes to see or ears to hear, the RQ-4 Global Hawk turned at the end of its reconnaissance run and relayed its pictures of the ground below back to the surveillance center.

    Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    As a command center, Heaven beat Hell any day. It was, well, heavenly just to be able to open a window and let fresh air enter the building. After almost two years spending most of his time in Hell, General of the Armies David Petraeus appreciated the simple virtues of being able to breath fresh air, unprocessed by filters and electrostatic precipitators.

    "Well, they're on the move at last." It surprised Petraeus that it had taken the Angelic Host so long to react to his invasion. He didn’t regret it, the most crucial hours of any invasion were those as the first units started to arrive. At first they had been too few and too spread-out to offer a solid defense but the delay in Angelic response had made them miss the opportunity. He had an entire Army in Heaven now with additional portals opening up daily. The Russians and Chinese were pouring in as well, doing the same as he was, establishing a perimeter and making sure it was secure. Back in Hell, Fourth Army Group was ready to move as soon as any news of an Angelic incursion on to Earth was reported. The possibility that the Angelic Host might try an end-run and suck him out of Heaven by threatening Earth had occurred to Petraeus and he had made preparations to allow for it. With Fourth Army Group ready to portal to any point on Earth and human leg infantry and militia there already, Earth was as secure as he could make it.

    "Splitting their force too." General Sir Michael Jackson looked at the displays that dominated the wall of the command center.

    "That's a feint." Major-General Asanee tapped the smaller of the two forces. "It's heading for Belial's concentration camp. I guess the enemy commander knows us well enough to realize we have to protect the civilians there."

    "And he thinks we'll strip the forces we have on the rest of the perimeter to do so. He doesn’t know us as well as he thinks." Petraeus thought for a second. "We do need to move up some reserves there though. Michael, where are our First Demonic and Caesar's Third Legion?"

    Jackson flicked through the sheets on his clipboard. "Well-placed David. We can have them up there quickly enough to set up a good defense." He hesitated briefly, "are you sure you want them to take this on. Neither unit is seasoned and we don't know if either can actually fight."

    "Then we had better find out hadn't we?" Asanee was staring at the map, her mind working out distances and times. "This is a golden opportunity to do so. It is a feint so if they crumple, we won’t lose too much and we can restore the situation using my corps and Third US Armored. I wonder if the guy on the other side knows Third has moved south?"

    "Probably." Petraeus was also calculating time and distance. "My guess is that the humans here are funnelling information to him. They're pretty loyal to their angels. So, we can assume that the opposition have a lot of tactical intelligence on us but very little strategic level stuff. They're not fighting completely blind the way Satan and his commanders did. We can expect a lot more skill tactically but they still haven't grasped how fast we can move or how much firepower we can switch around. I must admit, I find the loyalty of the humans here disappointing."

    "I don't find that at all surprising." Jackson was interrupted by a snort from Asanee. "Remember we haven't found any humans here from later than the latter part of the dark ages. We might regard the status of humans here as seriously dire but compared with what they are used to, this place really is paradise. We might even hypothesize that the Gates of Heaven were closed once our expectations exceeded the reality of this place."

    "I'm sure the historians will love discussing that." As a scholar himself, Pestraeus could understand the fascination of solving such puzzles. But, that was for later. "So, we let the two integrated demon and second life human units take the brunt of this feint." Petraeus thumbed a button on the intercom system and rapped out a string of orders. The aide on the other end would be taking them down and turning his General's wishes into military movement orders. "We'll give them a helping hand of course, there's a reason why we've given priority to moving artillery units into the bridgeheads. Now, that brings us to the main force. Any ideas?"

    "Assuming it moves on a direct path to its target, that means it will hit around here." Jackson tapped the display with a wooden pointer. "The Global Hawk is telling us this push is a really big one, some 90,000 angels and more than 450,000 humans."

    "About the same size as Abigor's push in Iraq. I wonder how well those humans will fight. If they're so downtrodden as to think this place is Paradise, do they have the spirit to fight at all?" Asanee was thoughtful. She produced a laser pointer from a pocket and shone the red spot on the display. "They'll be hitting all along this area. They're lagging behind the feint though; I'd guess the idea is to draw us off."

    "That'll play against them. We won’t just be learning how well our own demon units fight, we'll be learning how the Angelic Host fights. That's going to be important, according to DIMO(N) the combat strength of the Angelic Host is in excess of 60 million angels and up to 300 million humans." Petraeus noted the sharp intakes of breath from Jackson and Asanee. "Food for thought isn’t it."

    "Mostly, how come the daemons fought them to a standstill in the Great Celestial War." Asanee was trying to envisage commanding an Army that big. "They've got a weakness, a bad one somewhere."

    "DIMO(N) has an answer for that as well. According to their research, daemons are pretty fertile and their birth-rate replaced their casualties. Angels, not so much. Their fertility and birth rate are low so they are short in replacements. That probably translates into a very casualty-adverse mindset. I think if we study that Great Celestial War we will find that it was mostly skirmishing with the Angels refusing to get too heavily committed for fear of the casualties they'd take while the demons tried to avoid major battles because they knew they'd be heavily outnumbered."

    "So, we hit this army hard. Give them a butcher's bill that'll make their eyes water."

    "Exactly right, and when we hit that main force, we have just the tools we need to do it." Petraeus sighed. "Here we go again. I suppose I'm going to have to write another inspiring order-of-the-day."

    "You are lucky David, you can email it out. If Caesar was sitting there, he would have to give it personally. With the size of our Army, that could take years."

    Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    The results looked as if they were just about as bad as he had feared. Doctor Daniel Zinder held the x-rays up to the light and peered at the reforming bones. It turned out angels did have the same remarkable healing powers as daemons but in this case it wasn't helping his patients at all. Maion was the most advanced of them and the bones in her wing joints were indeed recovering. The only problem was, they were fusing into an immobile mass of bone. Flying was out of the question, it would be a miracle of she could fold her wings at all.

    "Doctor, there is a fiend from Hell waiting to see you."

    Zinder looked around sharply, Grace was standing in the doorway, smiling broadly. "Nurse, the word is daemon. We don’t want to be charged with racial discrimination or harassment. Anyway, ask him to wait five minutes then trot him in."

    Zinder put the X-rays away and settled down at his desk. Grace returned, bringing the daemon in with her.

    "I am Doctor Zinder, how may I help you." He reflected that was a bit curt but formality was still catching up with the rapid changes in relationships. 'Half-believed mythological legend' to 'hideous reality' to 'mortal enemy' to 'defeated foe' to 'de-facto ally' in two years took some getting used to.

    "My name is Memnon, I am currently Minister of Communications in the Government of President Abigor. I understand that you have large numbers of angels here to be treated?"

    "We do." A horrible thought crossed Zinder's mind. "You don’t want to eat them do you?"

    Memnon laughed, uneasily aware that not so long ago that was exactly what he would have wanted. "No, but I may have some information that may help you. Our information is that the wings on these angels have been broken, crippled. Is this true?"

    "It is, some have had their legs broken the same way. We're doing our best but even with the best reconstructive surgery, we're not doing so well."

    "This does not surprise me. Breaking the wings of angels was a favorite sport of ours when we held them prisoner during The Great Celestial War. But, I should tell you something. During the invasion by Abigor's Army, I was attacked by some of your fighters. My colleagues were killed and my wings were badly burned and mutilated by a missile. They grew back, malformed and distorted so that I could not fly. The doctors said that it was because metal fragments from the missile warheads were interfering with the nerves and blood vessels but I think it was because the fragments were iron and iron is poison to us."

    Memnon paused and flared his wings outwards. Zinder was struck by how similar the basic structure was to the angelic wings. They were black and scaled like lizard skin of course, not white and feathered, but even without X-rays, Zinder could see the bone structure was the same. He could also see that Memnon's wings were fully functional and un-mutilated. "So what happened Memnon?"

    "My wings were so bad that the Doctors decided the only thing to do was to amputate them. They did so, and my wings grew back again. With the iron fragments removed from my body, they grew back perfectly. They may also do so on Angels."

    "Do all your limbs grow back if amputated?" Zinder was fascinated. He was also furious that a piece of vital information like this had been concealed or lost. He knew the reason of course; Memnon must have been treated in an Army hospital, this was a Navy facility. Inter-service cooperation would be a wonderful thing if it ever happened.

    "They do, although removing a crippled limb to allow a new one to grow in its place had never occurred to us before."

    Kinder thought carefully. He could see several problems with this, not least of which was obvious from Memnon's wings. Despite the similar structure, Angelic wings were bird-like, Daemonic wings were more akin to those of lizards. And many earth lizards could regrow lost limbs. That didn’t mean that humans could. "Memnon, why are you telling us this? Angels are your enemies, just as they are ours."

    "Why do you treat them in your hospital?" Memnon paused. "For millennia, uncounted millennia, so far back that time itself became misty, we did things that were brutal and cruel beyond limits. We gloried in that cruelty and measured ourselves by it. Then you humans came and you slaughtered us. It was so easy for you that you defeated us and cast us down in a few weeks. By our standards we would have been your slaves and treated as cruelly as we treated our victims. But you didn't. You healed our wounds, you repaired what had been destroyed. In doing so you showed us the deadliest of all your weapons, compassion. You changed us and gave us a different way of looking at the world. Now, those of us who saw the destruction you can wreak on those you fight, we want to be like you. By changing the environment in which we lived, you changed us. To help the crippled Angels is our first step back from the pit."

    Zinder nodded slowly. It had long been argued whether a foul environment bred crime and cruelty or not, and if it did, whether improving that environment would reduce them. It looked as if he had a substantial part of the answer to that question sitting in front of him.

    "Thank you for coming here today, Memnon, we must investigate this carefully. There may be problems and we must be sure that, first of all, we do not harm." He paused slightly. "Here on Earth, Doctors take an oath before we are allowed to treat patients. One part of that oath, in my opinion the most important, is 'first of all, do no harm.' But I think you give me hope for this case that I never had before."

    Bivouac Area, Third Legion. Heaven

    Tucker McElroy looked at his command paraded before him. This wouldn't take long. It had better not because there was a lot of digging to do before the enemy arrived. "Soldiers of the Third Legion. Our Commander, General of the Armies David Petraeus, has issued the following order of the day.

    "Our battle against Yahweh now reaches its climax. Never forget that we have turned him away by the force of our arms before. Dare we forget the valor of our ancestors? When the Heroes at Troy wounded the Gods and drove them from the field? When the mortal hand of Rama struck down the demon Ravana after invading Sri Lanka on his bridge of hurled stone? Remember that Yahweh himself quailed and fled before the Iron Chariots of Sisera. Satan might have been the Prince of Hell but it was Yahweh who put him there and it was Yahweh who controlled who was to be tortured and who wasn't. Daemon and human alike, he oppressed us. Now, this is our moment to break free from the cycle-curse. If we can turn away the strength of Yahweh with Iron, then that is reason enough for us to make common cause and turn on the ruler of Heaven with full fury. The angels choose to make war on us. More fool them; we'll kill them, and we'll drive Yahweh from his throne at gunpoint. Then we will exhort the moral in spirit who reside in Heaven to rise against the injustice of a God turned against his own word."

    McElroy looked up. "I've just got one more thing to say. First-life humans, they look on us second-lifers as helpless victims who had to be rescued and you daemons as little more than massed targets. It's time to show them that we can fight as well as they can. So start digging, the spade is brother to the sword. So it's time we started digging in."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 68
    • Helicopter Base, Third Legion. Heaven

    "What you're going to be doing is very dangerous isn't it." First Consul Gaius Julius Caesar looked along the line of MH-6T helicopters. Their pilots were mostly inside or around them, doing the final checks necessary before take-off but the pilot of Diana-One was sitting on a Hellfire missile, speaking to her husband. Second Consul Jade Kim was going to back to war, this time in a way she was trained to do. At the head of a helicopter attack squadron.

    "Very. Last time I tried this, I got killed. Things are different now, we have fighters up to cover us if we run into flying angels and the ground here is nearly perfect for what we will be doing. Lots of cover we can duck behind." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Don't try and stop me doing this Gaius or we will have a falling–out."

    "Stop you? I'm applauding you. A Consul leading from the front is in the best possible Roman tradition. I just wish I could come with you. Just waiting here doesn't sit well with me."

    "Both Consuls in the same helicopter is a bad idea Gaius. We're getting our new state working properly at last, we don't want it decapitated. In fact, you and I should never be on the same aircraft together. Can't you oversee the ground troops or something?"

    "I'm not wanted there. Oh, nobody has said anything, but it's obvious I'm just in the way. I can't understand what they are doing or why. The strategic stuff, that I already have in hand but I've given the orders and other people are executing them."

    "Welcome to being a modern general Gaius."

    "It doesn't please me. What's worse, on the ground, what's happening makes no sense to me. So I have to sit here, out of the way, while I watch and learn." He poked his breastplate ruefully. "They tell me my armor just makes me a better target."

    "And they're right. I can see that gold shining on my optronic display from miles away. I hope the angelic commanders have the same shiny breastplates, I've got four Hellfires loaded up ready for them." She grinned very nastily. "So you can say bye-bye to at least thirty of their top commanders by the time we've finished. Then we'll be back here to re-arm and refuel."

    She stood up, hugged Caesar and rested her head quickly on his chest, her flight helmet making a dull thud as it hit his breastplate. "Now, wish me good hunting and a full bag of kills."

    Caesar gave her a Roman salute which she gravely returned, then she slid away and climbed into her MH-6. Her hands moved over the engine controls, starting the ignition sequence. While the rotor was spooling up, she glanced quickly at her co-pilot. A newbie, a police pilot who'd crashed his helicopter trying to pick up survivors after a hurricane had devastated a South Carolina town. Before that, he'd flown UH-1s for the Army. She'd have preferred it if she could have had her original copilot on board but all her veterans were spread out across the other helicopters.

    "Ready for lift-off?" He grinned at her and gave a thumbs-up. "All Diana Birds, lift off."

    Her hands moved on the controls again and the helicopter lifted, its nose dipping as she gained forward momentum. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the figure of Caesar shrinking and she watched him give another salute. Then, he was gone and she concentrated on the flight plan. The Global Hawk overhead was tracking a large formation approaching the hill held by Third Legion. The position was being relayed directly to her, showing up on her navigation screen. The same screen gave her details of the terrain between that position and her flight of nine helicopters. It was time to do something about that.

    "All Diana Birds. Separate into three-ship formations and spread out to attack positions. It's time to party."

    She led her element of three helicopters down into a valley, the young trees underneath bending and swaying as the MH-6s passed. The map showed it leading to a low ridge with the center of the Angelic column just over the other side. In other words, a perfect set-up for the kind of ambush the MH-6 was designed to execute. Overhead, Kim saw a flash of light, surprisingly yellowish in the brilliant white light of Heaven. Reflection from the cockpit of a fighter, probably a Lawn Dart she thought. The filthy atmosphere in Hell had been rough on single-engined aircraft. After the initial panic had subsided, they'd been pulled out and flying missions in Hell had been assigned to twin-engined birds. Here in Heaven it was different and the single-engined fighters had come back into their own. The yellow reflection was almost certainly from the gold-inlaid cockpit canopy of an F-16.

    Kim brought her helicopter into a hover behind the comforting screen of the ridge, then allowed it to rise slowly. As soon as the mast-mounted sight was exposed, she got a good view of the army that was advancing on the positions held by Third Legion. It didn't actually look that much different from the last force she had ambushed this way and her skin crawled slightly when she remembered how that had turned out. The dominant color here was white, not black, but there were still the columns of troops marching on the ground while overhead flew their cover. This time they were angels, not harpies.

    Then her face broke out into a broad grin as black clouds of smoke erupted in the center of the flying groups. The Lawn Darts had launched a salvo of missiles at them and were now racing in to the attack. The Angelic ability to hit aircraft with trumpet blasts had been a nasty surprise but countermeasures were available. Primarily, to move fast. If the aircraft came in beyond the speed of sound, the angels would be most unlikely to see them before they were hit by rocket and cannon fire. Once the jets were past, by definition the trumpet blast couldn't catch them. A dozen or more angels were already dying in the missile blasts as a quartet of F-16s streaked through them. Then, the fighters were up and away, climbing for altitude and distance, leaving chaos behind them.

    Kim let her helicopter rise until it was just over the ridge and rippled off her four Hellfire missiles. She'd already designated one angel whose size marked him out and the gleam of his armor made him vulnerable. He was still looking up, searching for the fighters that had slashed through his formation so quickly when the Hellfire struck him. He vanished in the rolling black and red cloud that marked a missile hit while Kim shifted her designator to another likely-looking angel. A few seconds later, her last missile had struck home and her MH-6 dropped below the ridge. She spun the Little Bird around and poured on the throttle. Bitter experience at work here, she would not hang around.

    "We got problems Boss." Her copilot gave the warning she dreaded. Behind them, at least two dozen angels had crossed the ridge in pursuit. I've been here before. The thought running through her mind was treacherous because it made her hands shake.

    "Falcon Flight, Diana-One-actual. We need help down here."

    "On our way Diana-One."

    The voice on the radio was heavily-accented and she couldn't place it. There was no doubt about the pilots skill though, they slashed down in a power dive, breaking up the angelic formation with a dozen AIM-120 missiles then hammering the survivors with AIM-9s and cannon fire. One of the F-16s was caught by a trumpet blast and lost a wing, the crippled bird nosing over before plowing into the ground. The group pursuing Kim's formation broke up and fled under the impact. Angels don't match daemons for sheer bloody-minded guts, she thought. "Well done Falcon Flight. We're clear now."

    "Compliments of the Polish Air Force Diana-One. We've got reserves up here if you need more cover."

    "Thank you, we're on our way back to reload now. New Roman Republic owes you one. Call me in New Rome sometime. Good hunting."

    "No debts owed Diana-One, just had a message from Diana-Five. Our pilot punched out and one of your people picked him up as soon as his feet touched. So, all square. And good hunting for you also."

    Her helicopters were skimming back through the valleys, returning to her forward base. Well, that went better than last time. Kim found herself humming cheerfully as she started to plan the next strike.

    Forward Edge of the Battle Area, Hill 117, Third Legion, Heaven.

    It wasn't just the weapons humans had that made the difference, it was the fact that they thought about everything they did. The foxhole he was in proved that. Dripankeothorofenex had assumed that digging a hole and sitting in it was easy, a simple task fit only for a kidling. Not the way the humans did it. They had looked at his scrape in the ground and laughed at him. "Now that is one pathetic effort Drippy," their human commander had said, mixing disapproval with dismay. Then, he had gathered all the daemons into a group and shown them how to dig a proper foxhole. An officer digging, that was something Dripankeothorofenex had never seen before. The hole had been deep and narrow to offer as much protection as possible from overhead blasts. Then the back wall had been hollowed out so the daemons inside could crouch under some cover when artillery was pounding them.

    The dirt had been piled in front of the pit so the two occupants could fire out to the sides on a diagonal but not directly forwards. "What do we do when the enemy is in front?" Dripankeothorofenex had asked. "Don't sweat it Drippy, your buddies on either side will deal with them. You protect them, they protect you. The mound in front will protect you from incoming fire."

    And there it was, a simple hole in the ground turned into a warrior's work of art. Beside him, his buddy Maskelodoroarnathsan was watching his assigned zone. Neither tried to lift their heads over the mound to their front. As their officer had explained, the armored carriers were behind them and they would be hosing down the area in front of the infantry positions. That meant their streams of shells would be only a few inches above their heads. "Do you see anything?"

    Maskelodoroarnathsan shook his head. "Nothing yet. Wait, listen."

    Dripankeothorofenex swivelled his ears forward and listened hard. Faintly, in the distance, he heard a chanting, one that had been all too familiar to his clan during The Great Celestial War. It was nearly drowned out by the rumble of diesel engines idling behind him but the words were clear, carried by the perfection of the tones. More clearly than anything else, it told him who the enemies were for neitheir daemons nor humans gave out war cries like this. Daemons were taught to believe that a silent enemy was more fearsome than a noisy one while humans never believed in telling their enemies anything about anything. But still, he heard the words echoing across the peaceful hills of Heaven.

    “Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla."

    Then peace was gone forever from those hills for overhead the sky itself started to scream. Dripankeothorofenex crouched down in his foxhole for he knew what that terrible screaming sound was. Across Third Legion there were other daemons who knew it as well, the survivors of Hit, of the Phlegethon River, of all the battles where human artillery had left the ground mounded high with the bodies of those who dared to challenge them. Beneath his feet, the ground shook as the first salvoes pounded into the Heavenly formation that was approaching. Dripankeothorofenex could see nothing of them for his unit was dug into position on a reverse slope and the Angelic Host was still advancing up their side of the ridge. The spotting for the artillery fire was being done by one of the small remote-controlled aircraft the humans liked so much. That gave him great comfort for how he had heard many tales of how the humans also liked to hide behind ridgelines when they brought their deadly arts to bear on their enemies. Now he too, a daemon, was armed with human weapons and was soon to be fighting like a human.

    "Kyrie Eleison!! Kyrie Eleison!!" The rhythmic chanting had turned into the screaming battle-cry of the Angelic Host. Dripankeothorofenex took a chance and lifted his head so that he could see out of his firing position towards the direction of the attack. For a brief moment, he thought he was back in Hell and he felt a quiet moment of peaceful tranquility as he looked at the roiling red and black clouds thrown up by the human artillery barrage. The dust and smoke was forming clouds that drifted upwards, changing the clear white light of heaven into a filthy red glare that made him quite homesick. Then the noise crashed in on him and he realized that it was time to go to work.

    "Fix bayonets!" The human battlecry at last. Dripankeothorofenex took the two foot long triangular steel out of its sheath and clipped it to the end of his rifle. For a moment he missed the trident he had been brought up to use but this was a human weapon so it had to be better. The human levies came over the ridgeline in small groups, their formations shattered by the pounding of the long-range guns far behind the human lines. What had once been the traditional concentrated charge of the Angelic host had already been broken up and that left it weak and vulnerable. Dripankeothorofenex shouldered his Martini-Henry, pushed down the lever underneath and inserted a 20mm round into the chamber. Idly, he wondered what an MG151 was for that was the gun this round had been originally been used in. Lever up to close the action and he was ready. The first of the Host to enter his arc of fire was a human, dressed in the white robes and glowing golden breastplate of the Angelic Host. Only now, the robes were stained and black and the breastplate had been dented. A careful aim, and his instructor's voice echoed in his ears. "Pick your man, mark your target as he comes. Lead him by just a fraction." And the recoil of the Martini-Henry jarred his shoulder.

    His target spun and went down. He might have risen, he might not. Dripankeothorofenex had lost interest in him as he worked the action on his rifle, picked another target and repeated the drill that had been hammered into him and sent another member of the Angelic Host tumbling. Now, he could see why the foxholes were designed the way they were. The angels were charging straight at them and their arrows and trumpet blasts hit nothing but the piles of dirt. Concrete or stone would have shattered under the blasts but soft earth just absorbed the energy. But, as the enemy advanced, they were moving into the deadly crossfire from the daemonic riflemen.

    Out, across the battlefield, he saw an angel, a large one, possibly even an Ophanim, rising over the ridgeline, his wings carrying him up as he fired arrows from the bow in his hands. Suddenly, the angel was in chains of red fire, the brilliant links securing him to the ground. Cannon fire, Dripankeothorofenex thought, the three 23mm cannon on the armored personnel carriers. Several of the tracked vehicles were concentrating their guns on the angel, tearing it apart in mid-air. The Ophanim was lurching, trying to recover from the impact of the long bursts of gunfire but it never had a chance. It burst into blue flame as its flight sacs ignited and crashed to earth.

    To his amazement, he realized he was still loading and firing, even while his mind had been absorbed by the spectacular death of the angel, his hands and eyes had been firing shot after shot at the host members in his arc of fire. Overhead, the red streaks of tracer were screaming past. His section's own armored carrier was using its guns to rake the Host that still pressed in on the defense line. He was tempted, so tempted to lift his head and look over the parapet so he could see what lay in front of him but he forced the temptation from his mind and concentrated on the mantra. "Pick your man, mark your target as he comes." And another member of the host crumpled to the ground from the bullet strike. Only this one got up and turned to stare at him. It was an angel, a lowly Ishim, no bigger than a daemon but stronger and faster than the humans. It didn’t matter. Dripankeothorofenex didn't hurry and as the angel opened his mouth to trumpet, he carefully shot the white figure between the eyes. The angel dropped and stayed down Was it dead? He didn’t care.

    "They're coming over!" The warning echoed in the radio earpieces along the line. The armored personnel carrier cannon were scything down the angels but there were too many of them to be killed and too few guns to do all the killing. A human had run up the mound in front of his foxhole and was trying to slash down with his sword. Dripankeothorofenex intercepted the blow using his rifle, knocking it to one side, then thrusting forward as the human tried to jump down. The long spike bayonet went right through him and Dripankeothorofenex used his strength to hurl the body on his rifle over his head so that it landed behind him.

    As he turned back, he saw Maskelodoroarnathsan sprawled out on the back wall of the foxhole, his body terribly ripped by a swordblow. He was shaking, twitching uncontrollably, the effect of the energy charge that the angel's sword had dumped into his body, Angel? Dripankeothorofenex looked at his enemy, the angel who had killed his buddy. A Bene Elohim at least, possibly even a full Elohim. The daemon could even see himself reflected in the golden armor, a black figure in the red-and-gray uniform, helmet and body armor of the human infantry. He and the Angel locked eyes, each measuring up the other. The Angel's sword was dead, lacking the dancing lights that revealed its lethal charge. It would be live again soon enough. He tried a tentative thrust but this angel was experienced and didn't fall for the feint while all the time his sword started to regain its charge. Dripankeothorofenex thrust again and this time the angel reacted, slashing down at the bayonet-tipped rifle. He turned his rifle on its side, intercepting the slash on the wood so the charge wouldn't arc through the metal of his rifle. The sword and rifle met and it was the sword that gave way, thrown to one side.

    It was the opening and Dripankeothorofenex used it to the max. He thrust hard and strong, no mere feint this, and the long blade struck home, piercing the angel's side and sending him staggering back. A savage yank and the bayonet came out of the wound, dripping with white blood. Then Dripankeothorofenex thrust again and again, into the stomach, the groin, the heart, the throat all the points his instructors had told him to go for. The angel went down, sprawling next to Maskelodoroarnathsan and the sight of his buddy gave Dripankeothorofenex new heart. There was vengeance to be won and he thrust again at the dying angel, his bayonet slicing through the angel's eye into its brain. A pig-sticker, that was what the instructors called the vicious triangular bayonet and they had explained that the wounds it inflicted never quite healed right. Then he heard a sound before him and spun to confront an Ishim who had jumped into the trench behind him. Confused for a split second, he had thought the battle with the Elohim had taken hours but it could only have lasted a few seconds, he nearly let the sword hit him but he parried the swing at the last second. Then he thrust and saw his bayonet sink deep into the Ishim's stomach. Suddenly, Dripankeothorofenex knew the fierce joy of fighting with the bayonet, how the long steel spike on the end of his rifle could gain him mastery of the battlefield. It could defeat sword, it could beat spear, it could beat trident. Here, at close quarters, the bayonet ruled. The Ishim was screaming as Dripankeothorofenex's thrust carried him backwards to slam his body against the wall of the foxhole and he was screaming as he pulled the trigger, using the recoil to pull the blade clear. The Ishim slumped to the floor, his screams turning to weeping as the bayonet slashed down once again.

    The foxhole was empty, the angels who had made it through the barrage were dead. Dripankeothorofenex understood what had happened, the occupants of the foxholes on either side of him had seen the angels break into his position so they had concentrated their fire to prevent any more gaining ground on him. They had saved him, and just possibly Maskelodoroarnathsan as well. Overhead, the frightful noise of the battle was joined by a curious reverberating roar, one that Dripankeothorofenex would never have recognized a few years earlier. Overhead, a helicopter emerged from the smoke and clouds of dust, a dull red helicopter with a purple circle bearing a golden eagle and the number three painted on its fuselage. A stream of orange fire was pouring from its nose, hammering the ground somewhere in front of his position. Then it was gone again.

    Suddenly, Dripankeothorofenex realized he didn’t have a target. With Maskelodoroarnathsan dying, he had to cover both firing loops but there was nothing to shoot at in either. Another roar gained his attention, the APC was pulling up and his officer jumped out of the back. "Get on board Drippy, this isn't over yet."

    The daemon was suddenly tired but he waved at the scene in the foxhole. "Maskelodoroarnathsan is hurt Sir."

    The officer jumped down and quickly looked at the casualty. "We'll get help here for him. Into the APC, now."

    Dripankeothorofenex joined the scramble into the back of the APC. The human gunners on the side guns grinned at them and waved quickly at the scene in front. The ground was carpeted with bodies, some the small shapes of the humans, others the larger winged bodies of the angels. "You guys done good. Drippy, we watched you work with the bayonet. That was fine work man."

    They had called him a man! Dripankeothorofenex couldn’t believe that he, a lowly daemon had been accepted by these humans as one of them. He clapped one of them on the back, being careful to make it just a friendly tap. The APC lurched forward, leaving behind another with red crosses painted on its side. The medics had arrived for Maskelodoroarnathsan. "Where are we going Sir?"

    "We fought off the attack. Cost us but we did it. First Daemonic down the line is in trouble, so we're hitting the force attacking them from the side. Like a door swinging open. We'll show them what Romans are made of."

    "I'd rather show them what Angels are made of." Dripankeothorofenex thought again of how he had killed the Elohim with his bayonet. Around him the surviving members of the squad laughed and cheered at his joke. Third Legion was advancing into its counter-attack and a legend was being born,
     
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    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 69
    • Lead Elements, Third Legion, Heaven.

    It didn't look good. That much was obvious to Dripankeothorofenex as he looked over the metal wall of his armored personnel carrier at the battlefield opening up in front of Third Legion. Below them, 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic) was obviously in trouble. Their front line was being enveloped by the leading edge of the Angelic Host advance. Some of their infantry positions were being overwhelmed while others were being outflanked and engaged from the sides and rear. Most disturbing of all were the black columns of smoke that marked the spots where the battalions armored personnel carriers were being knocked out. He could see where most of the problem lay; the angels had got in close enough to severely limit how much the battalion could use its artillery support.

    "Right lads." Their officer had turned to face the crew and passengers of his APC. "Time to pull First Demonic's nuts out of the fire. We're to advance down the slope and hit the angels in the flanks and rear. Then, we'll roll their entire formation up. The APC gunners will do most of the work, the rest of you get ready to debus and take out any survivors. Those of you who haven't used your bayonets yet, watch Drippy at work. He's got it down to a fine art."

    Dripankeothorofenex saw the other daemons in the back of the APC look at him with a mixture of respect and envy. They all knew that to catch the eye of an officer was the key to a successful career while to win praise from a human was reward indeed. He guessed what some of them were thinking, why should he have had the luck to be attacked by three angels while they had not. They didn’t know how close that little battle had been to killing him. Then, he felt the APC lurch and its engine start to race as the wave of armored carriers started to accelerate down the slope.

    Ahead of him, the Angleic Host was pushing in against the crumbling resistance offered by the First Demonic. They could see nothing else, they were so focussed on turning the impending defeat of the battalion into a complete rout that they simply didn't see Third Legion cresting the ridge to their left. Nor did their commander who was in the forefront of their lines. Dripankeothorofenex could see him clearly, his armor gleaming in the brilliant light, his mighty sword flashing as he drove through the defensive positions, his trumpet blasts scouring the ground before him. Dumbass, he thought. To make a target of himself like that. Then, with what amounted to extreme shock, he realized that he was thinking like a human.

    How much so quickly became apparent. He heard the rhythmic beating sound again and looked behind him. Three helicopters of the Third had lifted up from behind a forested hill and their missiles streaked overhead. The great angel leading the charge was surrounded by their blasts and went down, his body torn in ways that were all too visible even from this distance. He tried to raise himself but another quartet of Hellfire missiles finished him off completely. Without its leader and greatest champion, the Angelic Host was decapitated.

    That wasn't altogether a good thing though, Dripankeothorofenex could see that. The missile salvoes had attracted the other angel's attentions and revealed the threat that was descending on their left flank. They reacted by starting to shift backwards and to their right, away from the charge of Third Legion while ordering their human levies to about-face and move against the new enemy. They were slow though, they didn’t have the speed or coordination that the human units took for granted. They were still only partially through the process of refacing when Third Legion's APCs opened fire, their 23mm cannon lashing out with streams of tracer at the combined force of angels and humans before them. For a few seconds, the Angelic Host was frozen by shock, the ferocity of the attack and the sheer massed firepower being thrown at them caused them to just stand and die. Then, when feelings returned to them, when they realized that the armored carriers were not going to stop, they broke. Angel and human alike they broke and ran, their formation crumbling and their ranks scattered.

    By the time the massacre was over, the ground was carpeted with bodies. Dripankeothorofenex saw human warfare from a new perspective now. Before now the daemons had only been the victims of massed firepower, they had been the ones cut down in swathes by the relentless armored vehicles and their fast-firing guns. Now he, and the other daemons in Third Legion had seen that firepower from the other side, how it had enabled them to fight a force many times their own number and reduce that force to bloody, slaughtered chaos. He understood well at last, the humans were not gods possessed of unfathomable power, they were simply very good at what they did. And others could be just like them. In Dripankeothorofenex's mind, hero-worship was suddenly replaced by ambition. If he wanted to, he could be just like them. All he had to do was learn how.

    His reverie was interrupted by the tail ramp of his armored carrier dropping. "Hey Drippy, come with me, there's some people I want you to meet." His officer was calling him and like any good legionary, he obeyed the call.

    1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic) was a mess. Its ranks were collecting their casualties, pulling them out of the foxholes and wrecked vehicles where they had fought and sorting the dead from the wounded. Another change, Dripankeothorofenex noted, the care for the wounded. Something almost unknown to daemonic armies. Scattered amongst the groups were figures in white, their hands held above their heads. He could here their words, 'kyrie eleison', no longer an arrogant battle-cry screamed out in the frenzy of attack but a plea for mercy, chanted amidst weeping in the hope of survival. Once, Dripankeothorofenex, would have seen them as an opportunity for an afternoon's entertainment as they were tortured but he knew that was not what humans would do and he had to learn from them. Humans were merciful to those they defeated. So would he be. He made the decision out of a simple desire to copy humans but then the realization hit him. Treat prisoners well and others will be more likely to surrender.

    His officer was searching through the scene, looking through the dead and hunting through the groups of living. Eventually, Dripankeothorofenex saw his face brighten and he called out in a voice that rang across the battlefield. "Yo! Aeneas! Ori! Over here."

    Two humans turned around and saw the figure running towards them. The three met in an exchange of hugs and back-slaps. "Tucker, I heard you had joined the Eagles. How goes it old friend?"

    "Well, Caesar's a good boss and we're getting our legions put together. Hey, have I got somebody you two want to meet. Drippy, over here." His officer called him and he doubled over to where he stood with his friends. "Drippy, this is Aeneas, a Spartan, and Ori a Samurai. Old friends of mine from the pit. Aeneas, Ori, I'd like you to meet one of my Legionnaires. His name's quite unpronounceable so we all call him Drippy. Don't be fooled by his gentle demeanor, I saw this guy take down three angels in thirty seconds with the bayonet. He's getting to be one of us."

    Dripankeothorofenex saw the other two humans staring at him with an expression he knew well. The way most humans rescued from the pit looked at the daemons. A mixture of anger and desire for revenge, in this case overlaid by the fact he was one of their friend's soldiers and he had spoken highly of him. His mind was in turmoil, he knew that the correct daemonic response would involve genuflection and prostration but he had quickly learned that such displays did not go down well with humans. He would try and be a human instead. "Sirs, I am pleased to meet you. Do not let my officer mislead you, they were very small angels. But, you have wounded here, how can I help you with them?"

    He held his breath and looked at the two humans. Their expressions softened slightly, the anger fading quickly. One of them, the one who carried a sword as well as his rifle nodded. "You are right Tucker. He is indeed one of us."

    Helicopter Base, Third Legion. Heaven

    Gaius Julius Caesar sat on an empty fuel drum and watched his helicopter attack unit landing. Five birds were already down, their ground crews closing in on them as the crews dismounted. His heart was dropping slightly because the figure he was searching for hadn't yet appeared. Two more MH-6s were landing and he scanned them with urgency. Then, he almost sagged with relief. She was there, she was getting out of the cockpit. She had made it.

    "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 will 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 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.

    At that time, 19 microseconds after detonation, a small particle accelerator in the front of the warhead fired neutrons into the uranium sphere. These neutrons were absorbed by uranium atoms and caused them to decay. In the highly compressed mass, there was nowhere for the decay particles to go; they hit other uranium atoms and caused them to decay as well. This chain reaction cycled 60 times in the next microsecond before a small amount of compressed deuterium-tritium gas was injected into a hollow in the center of the uranium core, increasing the cycling rate to 80 times in the next 0.1 microseconds. By then, the uranium core had reached a temperature of 40 million degrees fahrenheit. That didn’t matter too much, what was important was that the gamma rays given off by the nuclear reactions radiated through the exploding mass and were absorbed by the weapon casing, 0.003 microseconds later. The casing was heated and reradiated the energy as x-rays. It was those X-rays that set the next part of the chain into action.

    At the rear of the core of the W83 was a cylinder of lithium-deuteride, 10 inches in diameter and 30 inches long, with a radiation shield protecting it from direct radiation from the primary. It was surrounded by an inch-thick layer of depleted uranium; it also had a rod of uranium in the center. The x-rays reradiated from the warhead casing heated and compressed the outer wrapping of depleted uranium. In 0.1 microseconds this crushed the lithium-deuteride to a cylinder only 2 inches in diameter. At this point, neutrons from the primary arrive at that inner rod of uranium, coming through a hole in the radiation shield. These caused a nuclear chain reaction to occur in the rod, super-heating the lithium-deuteride from within. Neutrons from the chain reaction split the lithium atoms into helium and tritium atoms. The colliding tritium and deuterium atoms fused into helium for another microsecond. Then, the force of the fusion reaction crushed the original core of the device so thoroughly that the dying fission reaction was revived and what was left of the original fission fuel was consumed in the inferno.

    At that point, 20 microseconds after initiation, the temperature was 600 million degrees Fahrenheit and yet the outside of the warhead was only just beginning to disintegrate. Gamma radiation from the nuclear reactions had already radiated up to 1,300 feet in every direction. A region of space about the size of a small angel over the main body of the Incomparable Legion Of Light now held the equivalent explosive energy of 1.2 megatons. This enormous release of gamma radiation had been absorbed by the surrounding air, heating it to a point where it released radiation itself. This formed a glowing ball of gas that was already 400 feet across and yet was continuing to expand at many times the speed of sound. Oddly, the center remained extremely hot while the temperature of the outer part fell as it pushed the surrounding air away. The heat radiated by the outer layer had produced an initial flash of light as bright as the Sun to the observers at the Third Armored Division 25 miles away, now it generated a blast wave that separated from the fireball surface. This travelled at ten times the speed of sound and pushed the air away before creating a partial vacuum behind it. The blast wave reflected off the ground and the surrounding hills, reinforcing itself in some areas, cancelling itself in others to produce a crazy-quilt pattern of blast effects on the hapless Incomparable Legion Of Light below.

    A mere 0.08 seconds after initiation the fireball was no longer pushing the blast wave before it and so it began to release the large amount of thermal energy it contained. At 1.07 seconds after initiation it started to rise rapidly as its surface temperature and brightness began to decline. However, it continued to expand until at 8 seconds after detonation it finally reached its maximum size. With a surface temperature of 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit, the fireball was glowing a dull evil red as it topped the traditional mushroom cloud..

    And so it was that the prophecies were fulfilled. The Sun Of Man was indeed rising over Heaven.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 70
    • Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven.

    For a brief second, it just didn’t make sense. Keisha Stevenson knew what the wailing sirens and ear-splitting rattle meant but the knowledge didn't make the needed connection to her brain. Then, the connection was made and the knowledge sent her running for her tank. All around her, the initial shock had worn off the men and women of the Spearhead Battalion and they were heading for the comforting bulk of their armored vehicles. Stevenson reached hers, scrambled up the side on one continuous motion and pushed herself through the cupola on the turret. In doing so, she banged her face on the breech of her .50 machine gun and managed to mash her breasts on the cupola ring. That hurt.

    That didn’t stop her movement, she resisted the temptation to hold herself, instead reaching up to the hatch and pulling it shut. Then she span the locks that held it in place and spun them again to make sure the hatch was tight.

    "This is an exercise, Ma'am, right?" Her gunner was looking at her with eyes wide open. "A dummy drill?"

    She shook her head. "We don’t play games like this in operational zones. This is the real thing. Somebody is about to pop a nuke."

    "That's us right?" The voice was trembling.

    "I sure do hope so. Hokay, brace for nuclear initiation procedures." She leaned forward and cushioned her head on her forearms. Surreptitiously, she rubbed her breasts, quietly wishing she was back with her old tank crew. They'd been a small, self-contained little community, one where the Army had got mixing compatible people up right for once. And hitting herself on the cupola ring had really hurt.

    What happened next was eerie. There was no sound, no warning, no movement, but from every crack and crevice in the tank, a pure, blinding white light poured in beams that had an almost tangible quality to them. Dust mites hanging in the air were brilliantly spotlighted, swirling in patterns that defied any easy analysis. The tank was supposed to be airtight and leakproof but the light was strong enough to show how wrong that belief was, The holes were no greater than pinpoints in size yet there was enough light coming through them to illuminate the whole of the inside of the tank. It caught in people's hair, making them seem as if they were crowned with halos of pure light. Braced in her Commander's seat, Stevenson was counting seconds in an effort to work out how far away the initiation had been.

    She'd reached one minute and thirteen seconds when the tank was hit by what felt like an underground sledgehammer. The ground wave, she thought. The egg-heads will learn all sorts of stuff from that. The irrelevance of the thought surprised her. The front of the tank was lifting with the ground shock, then her head slammed forward as it dropped. She hadn't felt anything like this since she'd been taken to an amusement park for her birthday and had insisted on trying the roller-coaster ride. This had all the characteristics of that ride, only the tank was shaking violently as well. The three-dimensional movement made her feel violently ill, another phenomenon reminiscent of the ride she had taken so many years ago. The only difference was that this time she wasn't filled up with cotton-candy to make sickness a reality. All around her the air was filling with dust, the red dust from Hell, the yellow sand from Iraq, the brown grit from wherever it was in the States that this tank had come from. Instinctively, with the conditioned reflex of a First-Life human who had spent a lot of time in Hell, she clapped her bandanna over her nose and mouth. Anything to avoid breathing in the pumice. Unfortunately, her gunner misunderstood the movement, decided that if his Colonel could be sick, so could he and vomited all over the main gun.

    "You'll clean that up." Stevenson was in no mood for the smell in her tank while the violent shaking continued. Then, to her immense relief, the vicious movement subsided. Her mind was still ticking away the seconds. One minute and forty three seconds since the flash of light, roughly 23 miles from Ground Zero. General Dynamics Land Systems, just how big was the nuke to give a ground wave like that this far out? Then, the air-wave and sound of the blast hit. The 70 ton tank was lifted slightly, the howling blast-wave catching the barrel and causing the turret to turn against the gears that rotated it. Stevenson could feel the heat rising in the tank, and the air conditioning laboring to keep conditions under control. Even with that aid, she could feel herself sweating and that was when she realized what she could hear wasn't air conditioning, it was the tanks positive pressure system trying to ensure that the air pressure in the tank was higher than that outside. Only, the air pressure sensor was trying to cope with conditions that the tank designers had considered only in their worst nightmares and the positive pressure system was working overtime to match. Stevenson felt her ears pop as the pressure climbed.

    Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shockwave was past. The tank radio crackled into life, ordering everybody to remain under cover while the surrounding area was checked for radioactive contamination. Stevenson sat back in her seat, then opened up the tank's electro-optical system to see what was going on. What she saw made her catch her breath. On the horizon was the familiar mushroom cloud. It was no longer glowing, she'd missed that part of the display but it was still a dull reddish color in hue. Just like Hell, she thought. She couldn't see the top of the cloud, from her knowledge of nuclear weapons she guessed it was at least 12 miles high, extending well into the stratosphere and far beyond the elevation limit of her equipment. As she watched, she saw the great mushroom cloud slowly turning white as it cooled and started to absorb moisture from the air around it. The thermal currents and winds were already interacting to wrap the mushroom cloud in a strange, impressive and incredibly beautiful system of cloud layers.

    It had all the fascination of a train wreck. Stevenson wanted to look away from the great cloud but couldn't. For a brief second she thought there had been another initiation and started to duck away to save her sight but then she realized it was just lightning. The massive electrical charges in the atmosphere from the initiation plus all that condensing water vapor was a perfect breeding ground for thunderstorms. There would be tornados as well, all around the blast area. Idly, she wondered if Heaven had ever seen tornados before.

    "Attention. For your information, there has just been a 1.2 megaton nuclear initiation over the main body of an Angelic Host twenty four miles due west of our position. The initiation was a high air burst using a nuclear device optimized for clean performance. We do not expect excessive radioactive contamination. Specialized reconnaissance elements are in action now, checking for fallout and other effects. All personnel may now leave cover but be prepared to find shelter at short notice. Message ends."

    Stevenson sighed, she guessed that her battalion would be getting orders soon, ones that would direct her to advance on Ground Zero.

    Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    "We're getting the data in now. The initiation was complete and on target. The preliminary estimate is between 150,000 and 250,000 dead. I'm sorry, General, but military targets are obdurately linear and nuclear blast effects are obdurately circular. We planned this one so the Host was caught between two hills and that squeezed the circle into an ellipse. Still, the nose and tail of the column were out of the immediately-lethal area."

    "You're sorry." Petraeus couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "We kill a quarter of a million people in a split second and you're sorry because you didn't get more of them. Just who are you anyway?"

    The Targeteer smiled sadly. "Brennan, Don Brennan. By the time this thing has run its course, there'll be a lot more than a quarter of a million dead. Even allowing for the way angels and Second Life humans recuperate, we'll be way over four hundred thousand. Look on it this way Sir, if we'd done this to a city, we'd be looking at half a million dead right now and more than a million by the time the week is out. If the powers that be in the Eternal City get the message, we'll all be spared that."

    Brennan was interrupted by a messenger from the National Reconnaissance Office. "Global Hawk pictures Sirs. Obliques of course.

    "Which RQ-4 took them?" Brennan sounded interested. "Did she survive?"

    "Donde Esta, Sir. She's fine, circling out of harm's way."

    Brennan nodded. "That's good, I like that one. She always comes through with the goodies." He flipped through the photographs and nodded with satisfaction. "Most of the Angels were within the total kill zone. Including the big one who was leading the Host. No sign of who he was I suppose?"

    "No Sir. Without radios to intercept, we're a bit stuck there."

    "No problem, we'll find out eventually. Thank you." The messenger left, privately glad to be away from that flat, uninflected, monotone voice.

    "We used to get lectures on this but even the films didn't convey the reality of it." Petraeus was speaking very quietly.

    "They never do sir. You have to be there when one goes off to really understand it."

    "You have of course."

    "Of course. Not an American test, but I was invited there as a guest. It's something everybody who wants to run a country should see."

    "I'm inclined to agree with you." Petraeus pushed a button on his desk intercom. "Sir Michael? I'll be resting for a couple of hours. If anything comes up, handle it. There shouldn't be, everybody has their mission objectives and we've got good people in command slots."

    He paused and got up from his desk. "Brennan, if there are any developments at Ground Zero or if we get warning of fallout, call me immediately." There was a long pause. "You know, I could almost wish that the things didn't work up here. Almost, but not quite."

    10 miles from Ground Zero. Heaven

    The great ball of glowing light in the sky had been more than 700 times brighter than the normal light of Heaven. Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael had been blinded by the flash even though, by pure chance, he had been looking the other way. His partner in the scouting team, Amanael-Lan-Asohar had not been so lucky. He had been looking west at the time and he had been blinded as well. Only, for him there would be no recovery. His eyes had melted.

    Uxhalar wasn't well, but at least he was alive. The great thunder and the howling wind that had followed the flash of light had thrown him from the sky and damaged his ears. There had been an eerie silence between the flash and the crash of thunder. That's what had amazed him so much. In a way, it had shocked him even more than the thunder, though the display was far greater than anything he had seen before. When he had risen, bruised and shaken, he had looked out from the crest of his hill across a sight he had never expected to see. The whole area was blackened, the grass seared away to bare soil, the trees burning. Everything that could burn was burning and the pyre of black smoke stretched high into the sky. Not high enough though for he could still see the great mushroom-shaped cloud that glowed red as it slowly changed color. Red was the color of Hell, and, impossible as it might seem, the humans had brought Hell to Heaven.

    He stretched his wings and started to fly towards the cloud. The small forests that had once been scattered so artfully over the landscape were gone. Some were still burning but others were just scattered around, all over the track that the Host had been following on its way to do battle with the humans. On an instinct, he flew down to look at one closely, landing on the track in the midst of a cluster of burned tree logs. As he walked towards one, he heard a long, rasping groan of agony. It seemed to have come from one of the logs. He looked more closely and saw just a burned, charred log. Then, it opened its mouth and groaned again. To his horror Uxhalar realized that the 'logs' were all that was left of the human levies that had formed part of the column. He hurried away, taking off as quickly as he could, anything to be away from the sight he had just seen.

    To his relief, the 'logs' vanished after a while. He realized they had to be the ones who had been on the outer edge of the strange weapon that had wiped out The Eternal Father Of All's personal guard. Rigt on the edge, to close in to escape, to far out to die quickly. Further in, all that was left was the blackened stains on the ground where the people had exploded into flames and burned to ashes. And yet still further in there wasn't even that trace of the survivors. Just the shadows of the dead, burned into the bleached ground. Human, Angel, it didn’t matter. They had died as if they had never existed, leaving only a shadow behind them

    That was when Uxhalar stopped in his tracks, backwinging so he could absorb the immensity of what he saw. For, in front of him, the landscape had changed and become something he couldn't have imagined. For at least three miles in front of him, the ground had been completely flattened and turned into glass. Soil, trees, grass, animals, people, Angels, all had gone leaving nothing behind but the sheet of glass. He tried to imagine what could have done this, what great power could fuse soil unto glass. He flew over it, looking down, realizing that this glass plain was the only memorial to the Army that had been once marching through the valley. Through the valley, that was not true any more for even the valley itself had been changed. The hills had been distorted, their pleasing symmetry destroyed, looking as if a giant hand had pushed them away.

    Another strange sight caught his eye. Right in the middle of the great glass plain was a lake where no lake had been before. An odd, perfectly circular lake that was slowly expanding as it filled with cobalt-blue water. Uxhalar could sense evil from that lake and he stayed well away from it. The sight distracted him though and he was shaken by a flash and another thunderous roar. For a hideous moment he thought it was another one of the great explosions but he quickly realized it was just a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. Not that thunderstorms were common in Heaven unless He Who Is Above All Others willed it. And yet, it was a storm unlike any other he had experienced. The rain that began falling from the sky over was jet black, a mixture of water that was condensing on the plentiful dust and smoke particles. The black rain soaked into his wing feathers and along his back, causing an intense burning sensation on the patches of skin they touched. He tried to brush them off, but they stuck to him and all the efforts he made just spread the burning sensation further. He gave up, he would just have to tolerate them.

    Eventually, the plain of glass with its strange, evil lake was behind him. He pointedly did not look at the track below until he was clear of any hint of the 'logs'. It was then that the one thing he had not seen struck him. On all his flight over the site where the terrible thing had happened, he had not seen a living creature. Had the entire army been destroyed in that one great blast?

    He flew a little higher and started a methodical hunt for any survivors of the Host. It took time and he was rained on again in the process, but he found them. A ragged column of survivors headed west, away from the death of their army. Had he not known better, he would have assumed they were Fallen Ones, for they were black overall. Even from above, it was obvious that few could see, most staggered along, their hand on the shoulder of the one in front of them. As he winged down, Uxhalar tried not to look at their faces, he knew what he would see there and he had already seen too much this day.

    On the ground, he tried to find an angel he could speak to. Surrounded by the moaning of the survivors, he searched for anyone who could tell him what had happened. He saw hands with the fingers so burned that the knuckles stuck through the flesh and the skin peeled off in cylinders that retained the shape of the fingers within. He saw muscles that had once been red turned black with deep splits that ran to the white bone beneath. He pushed through the crowds, trying to hide his eyes and feeling only shame that these were suffering so much while he was unharmed. Then, at last, he found an angel, one badly injured where debris from the blast had carved deep into his body but an angel nonetheless.

    "I am Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael. What happened? Where is our leader."

    The angel looked at him. One eye was clouded and blind, the other reddened and inflamed. "The mighty Elhmas, son of He Who Is Above All and leader of our host? He is back there, I think. He was over the column when the thing happened. He is part of the glass and the black rain. Our Eternal Father has no son any more." Then he pushed past Uxhalar and was lost in the shuffling column that wound past him.

    Uxhalar tried to take off but the effort suddenly seemed too great for him. He inflated his flight sacs to the maximum but it was no use, he was just too heavy to fly. So, he turned around and started to walk west with the rest of the survivors. As he did so, he noted that his wing feathers, once a pristine white but now stained with the black rain, were beginning, one by one, to fall out.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 71
    • Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    "How are you feeling Maion?" Lieutenant Grace Zachariah looked at her patient with professional concern. A concern that felt slightly ridiculous given that the size differential between them was so marked. According to the medical records, Maion-Lan-Lemuel was about 15 feet tall standing up. Fortunately, she wasn't doing that right now. She was laying while Lemuel was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside her. The other thing that made concern seem unnecessary was Maion's beauty. Now the bruising had faded from her face and body, she was radiant.

    "I am much better thank you. But I feel sick and my skin crawls. As if there were insects underneath it."

    "That's you getting free of your drug addiction. Didn't anybody in Heaven tell you to just say no to drugs? I'll get you some methadone, you're about due for a new shot anyway." Lemuel's expression was one of resentment at the prolonged treatment and Grace didn’t like that. "Not a word from you Lemuel. We're detoxing you as well, remember?"

    "How long is this going to last?" There was a hint of petulance in Maion's voice, one that reminded Grace of car trips and her little sister asking 'are we there yet?'

    She hesitated before answering, partly because of a nurse's instinctive caution in telling patients anything and partly because any answer she gave would be a guess. When the Salvation War had started, the last thing anybody had expected was the problems inherent in treating drug-addicted angels. "If you were human, it would take between three and six months to get you cleaned up. Angels, we just don’t know. We're only just beginning to get a handle on how daemonic and angelic body chemistry differs from ours and without knowing that, our best predictions are guesswork."

    "How is our patient Nurse?" Doctor Zinder had arrived and was reading the patient's clipboard.

    "Suffering from mild drug withdrawal problems. I'm getting her daily methadone dose to deal with that. Otherwise, much recovered."

    "Very good. Memnon is waiting outside, would you ask him to step in please?" Zinder turned to Maion. "You are looking much better. But, you must have realized by now that something is seriously wrong with your wings."

    "They won't move." Zinder also noted the petulant intonation.

    "Let me show you why. These are called X-rays, they're a sort of photograph that shows the inside of your body. These white things are the bones of your wings, these very bright white bits are the screws we put in to hold the long bones together while they healed. Now, these are pictures of a healthy wing, they're of Lemuel's actually. Compare them with yours, you can see the difference in the wing joint here. Lemuel's is a marvel, five bones coming together in a joint that has three axes of movement. Your joint, on the other hand, is just a fused mass of bone. Left to itself, it will never heal to anything more than that."

    Maion started to cry, causing Lemuel to grip her hand and wrap his wing over her head. Zinder paused for a second, then carried on. "There is another option. There's somebody I would like you to meet."

    Lemuel looked around, then his eyes opened with shock. "A Fallen One. What is he doing here?" The question was directed at Zinder and had a degree of anger in it.

    "This is Memnon, a senior member in the government of President Abigor. Memnon lost his wings in a battle with our forces. As you can see, he got them back. I'll let him tell you the story."

    Zinder sat back while Memnon told the story of his adventures in Iraq and Hell to the two Angels. While he did so, Zinder watched him carefully, trying to learn as much as he could from what, he had no doubt, was the most unusual meeting ever held in Earth Hospital. When Memnon finished, Zinder took over the conversation. "We can't be sure that angels regenerate the same way daemons do. So you have a choice Maion. You can stay with wings that are present, but paralysed and useless or we can amputate them and hope that they regrow. If they do, you should have fully functional wings again, if they do not, you'll be wingless. Up to you. Something I have to add, you're the most advanced patient we have here. What happens with you will determine how the other Angels are treated. Some of them are in much worse condition than you are. Their wings were broken and re-broken while some have had their legs injured the same way as well. If this amputation and regrowth doesn’t work, they won’t be able to walk, let alone fly."

    Maion started crying again. "That's horrible."

    "How do we know he's telling the truth?" Lemuel spoke belligerently. "The Fallen Ones are our enemies, they always have been. They have plotted against us for millennia."

    "As you have against us never-born. Your arrogance wearies me as it has done for centuries." Memnon was equally belligerent and Zinder got the same sort of feeling he did when dealing with his children squabbling over who had the largest apple.

    "Shut up both of you." Zinder looked at them both with exasperation. "Lemuel, I got the medical records from the hospital that treated Memnon. It took a little time because it is an Army facility and this is a Navy installation but I've got them. I've even got the X-rays of his wings before and after the amputation and regrowth treatment. They confirm everything he has just told you. I wouldn't have let him even mention this without checking out his story. Listen, both of you, it's time to let old hatreds die. Isn't it obvious by now that both Yahweh and Satan played you all for suckers? Us too, only now we're doing something about it. Memnon, coming here to help was a generous and kindly gesture and you should appreciate it Lemuel. But this is a hospital and I'll have no squabbling here. Either of you causes trouble and out you both go. The only person who really matters here is Maion and all that matters is what's best for her. Get it?"

    Memnon and Lemuel looked at each other, their mouths hanging open with shock.

    "Err, yes." Lemuel was speaking for them both. "My apologies, you too Memnon. We'd better forget what happened in the past or the humans might get angry with us."

    "Doctor, the wings I have will never work again. I do not need your pictures to know that." She paused took her breath. "Lemuel, with your permission, please let them cut off these wings. They just get in the way now. I do not want to spend the rest of my life walking through doors sideways. Even if they don’t grow back properly, I'll be better off."

    Lemuel nodded while Zinder made a cellphone call organizing an operating theater, as much white angelic blood as they had in stock and a couple of lumberjack-grade chainsaws. Then, he left the ward to get his surgical team ready. Memnon fell in beside him. Walking beside the daemon, Zinder couldn't help but ask a question that had been bothering him.

    "Memnon, all we have learned about the Great Celestial War says that you daemons rebelled against Yahweh. Before that you were all part of the same host. Now, your superficial appearance is utterly different. What happened?"

    Memnon thought carefully for a few seconds. "We were all similar once. But then, soon after we took over Hell and made our home there, the great volcano that is now the Hellpit erupted. The old stories say it was terrible with a poisoned gas that smelled of bad eggs spewing over the land. Slowly, we became changed, loosing our white coats and feathers and becoming as you see us now. Our offspring also changed, a little bit at first, then more and more until we had split into all the groups you see today. It was always said that Yahweh caused the great eruption to try and destroy us but he only partly succeeded. Satan himself made things worse by experimenting with breeding one group with another. And there was . . . . ."

    Suddenly the voice he had first heard in the deserts of Iraq whispered in his ear. That is enough. They need know no more. The end of your story is still far away. With those words in his mind, Memnon fell silent.

    Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    "Are the latest damage assessment pictures in?"

    The officer from the National Reconnaissance Office nodded. "They are, although I suggest we do not release them for publication. Or put them on the military intranet, we've got a problem with leakage there. Somebody doesn’t know where their final loyalties lay. We've had videos of some actions leaking out already."

    "I know." Petraeus was annoyed by the development. "We've got the Criminal Investigative Services looking into it. What's the situation?"

    "Pretty grim. What's left of the Army on which we dropped the hammer is wandering away from Ground Zero. I wouldn't call it a retreat or a rout, it's more like they're stunned and just getting away from the scene. They're dying like flies as they go. We can track the various groups of survivors by the trail of bodies they're leaving behind them. Our estimate of the force subject to the laydown was around 450,000 human levies and around 50,000 angels. By counting up survivors and the dead outside the blast zone, we think the number of dead has reached 349,000 humans and 45,000 angels. It's still climbing."

    "Not for much longer." The Targeteer spoke from one corner of the room. "It should level off at roughly that level now as the last of the critically-exposed die off. We'll see another surge in six to eight weeks when the longer-term exposure cases begin to expire. From what I've seen of the pictures, radiation poisoning is pretty much endemic to the survivors. Some of the close-ups already show humans loosing their hair while the surviving angels are shedding feathers. None of them seem able to fly any more by the way. They're all walking."

    "The Trail of Tears." Petraeus was thoughtful. "What's the radiation count like?"

    "Declining quickly. We have a small plume trailing south but it's way sub-critical. We were lucky." The NRO Officer had pictures showing the intensity of the contamination from the initiation. A great circle around Ground Zero with what looked like the tail on a comma pointing south.

    "Luck had nothing to do with it. " The Targeteer's voice never deviated from its flat monotone. "We waited for still air and initiated high enough to reduce contamination to a minimum. What we can see now is what there's going to be. We've sent out a warning to the troops to watch out for any snow-like particles and to get under cover immediately if any are reported. What we don’t know is how the spatial geography of Heaven is going to change things. We've never performed an initiation in a self-contained space before. At least we know that nuclear physics is more or less the same thing as on Earth. All the parameters we measured track with our Earthside results. One thing we should worry about, a lot of the potential fall-out got blasted high. On Earth, it wouldn't come down for months and by the time it did, it would have decayed into insignificance. Here, who knows when it will come down."

    "Safe for troop movements?"

    The Targeteer thought for a second. "If we have to. Armored forces anyway. However, I would urge that we keep out troops away from the area around Ground Zero and that fallout plume. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should."

    Petraeus nodded vigorously "I agree. There's no reason to take chances with the long term health of our troops. There's enough good ground up here to give us plenty of other options. In fact, we've got nothing but options. There's no real bottlenecks we have to go through that I can see. Thank you gentlemen, I'll study your reports in detail later. Please be available if I have any questions to ask."

    Survivors, 23 miles West of Ground Zero. Heaven

    Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael stopped to vomit but his stomach was already empty and ached from the constant retching. He had suffered from diarrhea as well but now his intestines were cramping as they tried to drive non-existent waste from his body. Walking was becoming more and more tiring and he wasn't sure how much longer he could carry on. Members of the group he had joined were dropping out all the time, collapsing by the side of the path they had been following. One of them had been the angel he had first spoken with, Ursais-Lan-Anadiel. He had seemed to have survived except for his burns and the deep lacerations from his wounds, but the white blood from his veins had continued to flow despite all efforts to stop it. The wounds had been joined by bleeding from inside when Ursais had started to vomit blood and it had seeped from his ears, nose, eyes and back passage. The constant bleeding had weakened him fast and he had collapsed by the roadside. Uxhalar had wanted to stay with him but he had died almost immediately.

    Overhead, a sharp, rolling clap of thunder caused the column of survivors to look up in fear. That fear faded when they saw it was not another flash-bang weapon but simply a pair of human aircraft flying overhead. The scream of their jets followed the boom of their passage and Uxhalar saw them disappear into the distance with dull disinterest. It was a measure of the times that the human aircraft were now less of a threat than the misery they now faced. As his stomach cramped again, he seriously started to regret that the passing aircraft hadn't turned around to bomb and strafe them. That would have been a quick release from this slow, lingering death.

    "Exalted One, please do not give up. Come, we will help you." Uxhalar felt himself being lifted up. He didn’t remember having fallen or laying in the grass but he had. A group of four humans were struggling to get him to his feet again. They lacked the strength to really help, but their devotion and the effort they were making inspired him and he staggered to his feet again. It was unbecoming for a member of the Angelic Host to thank a mere human for efforts performed on his behalf so he left them behind and once again began the laborious effort of raising his feet and taking steps further away from the horror that had destroyed this army.

    He didn't get that much further. A few hundred paces more and a fit of coughing racked his body. He made a great effort and raised his hand to his mouth, seeing on it the traces of white blood that he had coughed up. There was more splattered on the path beneath him and his mind flickered back to Ursais-Lan-Anadiel. He felt dizzy, the coughing fit had disturbed something in his mind and he tried to walk further. It was too late, his legs were no longer strong enough to support him and he collapsed again. By the time some humans tried to help him, he was dead.

    Presidential Palace, City of Dis, Hell

    The problem with being a Lordly Daemon was that computer keyboards were simply not large enough or strong enough to survive his use. Abigor had destroyed six keyboards before he had learned to restrain his strength sufficiently to protect them. Then, he had managed to have some keyboards made that were actually large enough so that he didn’t press all the keys down at once with a single talon-stroke. Now, with a large monitor, his own keyboard and a small but growing knowledge of what computers could do, he was beginning to learn his way around cyber-space. He even had his own webpage, created for him by a friendly human, where he could post news about the daemonic community in Hell. He particularly enjoyed reading a page called "Ask Abigor" where humans could post questions to him about Hell and its inhabitants. He had a staff to find the answers of course but it was all part of his long-term plan to rebuild the image of daemons in human minds.

    In his wanderings around the internet, Abigor had also discovered the vast variety of web communities where humans met with others of their kind. They had been confusing at first for what one group took as the undiluted and indisputable truth was viciously derided as imbecilic nonsense by the rest. Then, he had realized that disagreements were actually part of human strength for in the battle to prove "their" side right and "the other" side wrong their search to find the unanswerable argument had led to ever-deeper understanding of the world that surrounded them. On the other hands, some of the people on such sites were obviously completely nuts. Abigor had just finished reading a long dispute with somebody claiming that shooting people in the head wasn't an efficient way of killing him. Abigor would have liked to introduce the writer to Asmodeus who had been killed very effectively by repeated rifle shots to the head. Unfortunately, nobody knew where daemons, angels or second-life humans went when they died. If, indeed, they went anywhere when they died.

    His break over, it was time to get back to work. Abigor closed the discussion site down, wondering briefly if humans really thought they could destroy stars, and went back to the news pages. Yahoo now had a separate section for news from Hell and from Heaven. He opened up the Hell section, wondering briefly why it was that he got all the best information on what was happening in his own country from a computer website based on Earth. There was nothing really spectacular happening, the Orcs were rioting again, demanding to be restored to their ancestral lands and possessions. Abigor sighed at that, it meant another morning negotiating with them, the humans and the other surviving Lordly Daemons in an effort to find a solution to the Orc problem. In a way, things had been much simpler in Satan's day.

    Out of curiosity, he opened up the heaven page to see what was happening in the human invasion of Heaven. Was Yahweh having as bad a time of it as Satan had? The first headline gave him all the information he needed on that. Yahweh had sent a force to attack the humans as they invaded Heaven. The humans had destroyed it, totally. That was no surprise, Abigor would have been more surprised if they hadn't. What did shock him, on reading the story, was that they had done it with a single weapon. His mind flashed back to an afternoon two years earlier where he had watched the human film on the making of the atomic bomb and had met with one of the humans who planned its use. He had gained the distinct impression that humans were very reluctant to use those weapons but they had dropped one on Yahweh's force with almost no hesitation.

    Idly, Abigor wondered which of the Angelic forces had been destroyed. He was prepared to bet that it had been Yahweh's personal guard, the Incomparable Legion of Light. Abigor had fought them once, when they had been commanded by Michael-Lan in the great charge that had swept the daemonic armies out of Heaven. Now, they were gone, swept away by humans. Did that mean that Michael-Lan himself was dead? Every so often, Abigor had been kept awake at nights, wondering if his decision to surrender to the humans had been correct. Looking at the story on his screen and the pictures of the place where the humans had struck, Abigor knew he would never have to ask himself that question again.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 72
    • Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven.

    The Incomparable Legion of Light was gone. The unit that had been his personal command during The Great Celestial War had been wiped out, literally within the blink of an eye. Michael-Lan knew the destructive power that humans had at their command but this stunned even him. The Incomparable Legion of Light had fought throughout the Great Celestial War right from the first days when Satan had broken into the Eternal City itself. Michael remembered the vicious streetfighting that had taken place, how he had thrown civilians into the battle against the daemonic army in an effort to prevent them taking over the city. Then, The Incomparable Legion of Light had been the only trained body of troops he had. He had used them as a fire brigade, throwing them in piecemeal wherever the daemons had appeared to be breaking through. When the tide of the battle had turned, they had been the spearhead of his attacks that had finally driven The Eternal Enemy out of the city.

    Right up to the present, The Incomparable Legion of Light had contained veterans of that desperate battle, ones whom Michael knew by name and recognized of old. Valued old friends whose family Michael knew and loved. Angels who Michael-Lan had knowingly and deliberately sent to their deaths. I am sorry old friends, more sorry than you or anybody else can ever know. Wherever you are, know that you have served Heaven better in your deaths than you did in the battles of The Great Celestial War. Then, you saved The Eternal City, now you have saved the whole of the Angelic Host. It was true, at least Michael knew he was telling himself that. The dreadful blast that had destroyed The Incomparable Legion of Light could just as easily taken place right here. And still might.

    "Michael-Lan, the people are frightened." Gabriel-Lan spoke from the room behind Michael's balcony. His own voice was loaded with fear and foreboding. Outside the city was in shadow for the first time in countless millennia. A huge plume of smoke from the fires had darkened the whole city. In its penumbra, the Angelic Host shivered in the streets. The same cloud had cut the temperature quite drastically. Normally, Heaven was a temperate place, the climate warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to be invigorating. Now, the sky was overcast and the cold was enough to hurt a people unused to it.

    Michael-Lan glanced at the thermometer he had mounted on the wall of his balcony. He had bought it on a whim, from one of the open-air markets the humans loved so much. In all the years he had consulted it, the temperature had never changed. Now, it was showing The Eternal City to be almost twenty five degrees cooler than normal. "We have sent people out with Geiger Counters?"

    Gabriel-Lan nodded. He didn’t understand what the human boxes that clicked were supposed to do but he had guessed it was important. Michael-Lan had been very insistent that people go around the city and take readings from the boxes, then compare them with charts he had supplied. "Yes Michael. The readings are higher than before but still within the safety zone on the charts. The highest readings were where the frozen water fell. They pushed the upper limit of your charts."

    Michael-Lan nodded, almost distantly for his mind was still occupied by the faces and named of The Incomparable Legion of Light. The 'frozen water' Gabriel had referred to was hail. The language of the Angelic Host didn’t really have a wealth of words to describe bad weather since there wasn't any in Heaven. Only, this hail wasn't a natural phenomena, humans had created it just as they had created the great cloud that hung over the city. An area more than 20 miles across was burning where The Incomparable Legion of Light had died and that was the source of the smoke. The fire was still spreading although it was also thinning and dying as it spread. The filthy black-stained pellets of ice that had fallen were a product of that fire.

    "Just frightened Gabby?" Michael forced his mind back to business.

    "No, Michael, more than that. They are bewildered, apprehensive, confused. Rumors that The Incomparable Legion of Light has been destroyed by the humans are spreading throughout the City. The Host cannot understand what to make of this, they hear the rumors and see the great cloud over our heads but they do not know what they portend. Already rumors spread that the end-days are upon us."

    "They are, Gabby. They are. The reign of the Angelic Host is ending." Michael-Lan snorted with laughter. "The prophecies always were that we would bring the end-days to the humans just as we brought them to those who went before. Yet, it is the humans who bring them to us. In the great game of existence, it is the humans who have reached the end row and become crowned."

    Michael-Lan looked over the Eternal City in its uncharacteristic dim light. Without the steady glare of Heaven's white light, the myriad precious and semi-precious stones that lined the walls of the innumerable temples and palaces had lost their iridescent glow. Without that, the Eternal City had lost the one feature that made it unique above all others. More than that, without the constant refracted light from the walls, Michael could see the chipped plaster and peeling paint that underlay the superficial gloss. The Eternal City pretended to be Las Vegas but underneath it all, it was more like Atlantic City. The comparison made Michael snort again. I am probably the only person in Heaven who can understand that simile.

    "The humans have stepped up their timetable Gabby. I wasn't expecting them to use a nuke this early, or even at all come to that. I knew we would lose The Incomparable Legion of Light but I thought it would be a ground battle, the way they destroyed Abigor's Army. A long battle, lasting several days and one I could exploit to bring about the downfall of Yahweh when all our preparations were in place. Only they tossed that nuke instead and in doing so they told us what they have planned. Where are their armies?"

    "Reports from the countryside say that three great armies are assembling around us. One to the north, one to the southwest, and the Americans to the southeast. All advance very slowly while more troops pour in behind their leading edge. The watchers say that their numbers are so great they cannot be counted and that they advance with great numbers of monstrous machines.

    "Armored units." Michael spoke almost absently. "They're hitting us with everything they've got. They were taken by surprise when they fought Hell, they went to war with what they had available. This time, they've cast their plans carefully. We're running out of time Gabby. Our hands are being forced, we are going to have to move now. Before those armies are complete and they blast their way into The Eternal City."

    Michael stopped took a deep breath and committed himself in a way he had never done before. "Assemble the inner circle in my office for a final briefing. We are go for the coup."

    Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    Maion-Lan-Lemuel woke up with her head aching and her mouth utterly dried out. Beside her, Lemuel noted that she was finally out of the anaesthetic and pressed the button that called the nurse over. In doing so, he was very careful not to push his finger through the wall. Grace Zachariah hurried over and started taking down Maion's medical readings. "How do you feel Maion."

    "Thirsty." Maion sounded confused.

    "I'm not surprised. We had to pump a lot of medication into you before you went under. We've got some iced water for you, that's all you can have at the moment." She finished taking down the readings and hoped somebody, somewhere could make sense of them. "Your operation went fine, you're wingless now, just like us. There's two small stumps where your wings were. Now, if the records from Memnon are correct, they should be even if they are from an Army hospital, those stumps will heal first. Then, they'll start to grow back into a new set of wings. If this works with you, we'll apply the same treatment to any of our other patients who elect to go through the procedure."

    Grace drummed her pencil on the chart, then obviously elected to make a hard decision. "Maion, your drug addiction, it's taking longer to clear out than we thought. Just how many angels up in Heaven use drugs?"

    Maion reached into her mind, a mind that was still clouded by the residual anaesthetic from her surgery. "Not many. They are very expensive. To work in Michael's club was the only way I could afford them. He gave them to me as long as I worked for him."
    "As a whore." Grace couldn't keep the condemnation out of her voice, try as she did. She had once been an observant Catholic and the early indoctrination was still there. Maion started to cry and that made Grace feel even worse about her outburst. She put that feeling to one side and turned to Lemuel. "And now we come to you. How did you get hooked?"

    "I don't know. I didn't know until I came here."

    "You never injected anything? Smoked anything?"

    Lemuel shook his head. "I took Excedrin or Tylenol sometimes. And drank Gatorade. Reverencing Yahweh made my head hurt and my throat dry. The pills eased my head and the gatorade quenched my thirst."

    Grace nodded. There was a reason why nurses asked these questions, patients opened up to them in ways they wouldn't to a doctor or a policeman. It sometimes amused her that patients thought they were just chatting to a nurse without realizing that there was no such thing as something unplanned happening in a hospital. "Did you feel bad at other times?"

    Lemuel thought for a moment. "If I stayed away from the temple for too long, I would feel tired and irritable. But as soon as I went back, all would be well again."

    "A feeling of peace, tranquility and a sort of glow?"

    "Exactly. How did you know?"

    "You were mellow, stoned out of your mind my boy. And when you were away, you started suffering mild withdrawal symptoms. Was this any temple? "

    "No, just the Temple of Everlasting Acquiescence. After a few visits, I enjoyed the tranquility so much I only went there."

    "Did you eat while you were there?"

    "Not at first. But, later I started to eat hamburgers made there."

    "Well, that's it. I would guess the drugs were in those burgers. It's a common trick, usually used on women though. Put drugs into their food, get them hooked and put them out to work to pay for their habit."

    "Who could do such a thing to me?" Lemuel was appalled and outraged.

    "Who did it to her?" Grace pointed at Maion and then departed with her records. Lemuel was left with a very thoughtful expression on his face.

    Board Room, Montmartre Club, The Eternal City, Heaven

    "Is everybody clear on where we go from here? Any questions at all, speak up now. The way the humans are moving has caught us before everything was ready so we have to move."

    "How will we know the coup has taken place?" Charmeine-Lan's nervousness was apparent in her voice.

    "You can count on thunder, lightning and sound effects. Multi-colored lightning for a certainty and really impressive thunder, probably covering most of the city. You people here, just ignore that and keep the bands playing. That'll keep everybody's mind in synch so I can draw on your power. Think of this place as a hose and me as the nozzle. When everything stops, it'll all be over. Then, once Yahweh has lost that battle, I'll put out a call and we'll get the new government set up. Once it's in place and running, there'll be very little opposition. The Host is conditioned to accept absolute leadership from the Ultimate Temple. As long as Yahweh is dead, there will be no trouble, the Host will accept new leadership as an alternative to no leadership. We'll have our people out there of course, making sure that line gets pushed hard. Then, once our power is solid, Gabby, you and Raffie get through to the humans and tell them we want to surrender."

    "Suppose . . . . you lose?" Leilah-Lan was uncertain and frightened at the prospect.

    "Me? I'll be dead. Very did and probably crushed out of this and any other existence. You lot, you'll be safe here for a little bit. Yah-yah has no idea this places exists or that he has any reason to find it. You'll have a few minutes before that idea sinks in. That's why I don't want you in the temple with me. Use that few minutes to run like hell. To Hell, or better still to Earth. Try and get the staff here out as well. It'll be a real panic so do the best you can. Then get out. Trust me you don't want to be in this city when Yah-yah goes berserk and especially not when the humans blast their way in."

    The other members of Michael's inner circle exchanged glances. Nothing that had been said before drove the dangers of what they were about to try home so clearly. Michael looked around the room and nodded. "If there is nothing else, I'm off to the Ultimate Temple. If you do nothing else, keep the music playing right?"

    Michael-Lan left the room and started wandering through his club. He had conceived it the day he had realized that human development would eventually lead into direct conflict with Yahweh and that the rapid escalation of human abilities meant that conflict would be immensely destructive. The Montmartre club had been modelled first on a Paris night club but had grown to include features from American speakeasies and Las Vegas casinos. At some point during its growth, the club had ceased to be a tool that Michael intended to use and had become something he loved. Now, he was very well aware that he might well be seeing it for the last time.

    He left through the front entrance, winding his way out of the maze into the open air. Then, he inflated his flight sacs to the full and took off, climbing high above the city. Stay clear of the cloud he reminded himself. It might be hotter than you like. Underneath him, the shadowed Eternal City lay in its splendor. Splendor? Michael looked down again and once more saw the shabbiness and ill-repair that lay underneath the superficial gloss. Poor city, your problem is that nobody really loves you. We'll have to fix that. If I survive of course...

    Ahead of him was the great Lake of Placid Contemplation that formed the centerpiece of the city. Fed from a river that started in The Ultimate Temple itself, the vast expanse of water was Yahweh's own private park, one where others were only allowed as an extreme sign of favor. Michael had plans for that lake, ones in which the words "Yachting Marina" figured prominently. Of course, he would still have to win the impending battle first.

    He circled above the great square of the city. 1,500 kilometers on each side, the walls pierced by 12 gates. Michael knew well that some humans believed that the gates were named after the tribes of Israel but that was just a human legend. Their names were older than that. In fact they pre-dated humanity completely. They pre-dated humans but they would not post-date them, not unless Michael's plans worked. He had a brief vivid mental picture of the city below screaming as the great mushroom-shaped clouds rose over it. The humans would not even try to take the Eternal City by storm, they would destroy it utterly. Michael knew that as surely as he knew his own name.

    He paused for a second. Did he know his own name? Was he still Michael-Lan-Yahweh or had he in truth become Michael-Lan-Michael? He mused over the point for a few seconds while his eyes took in the sights that he may never get the chance to see again.

    Michael sighed and backwinged, dropping through the air towards the forecourt of The Ultimate Temple. There had been a time when this place had filled him with superstitious awe. Now, he viewed it with little more than contempt. Yet, it was still an impressive enough building, one that would make an excellent tourist attraction. Briefly, Michael contemplated installing a 'What the angel saw' machine in the forecourt and the idea made him chuckle. That, at least, broke the mood of apprehension that had been gathering within him.

    "Welcome Mighty General." The gatekeeper genuflected in front of him. Michael acknowledged the obeisance with a curt nod and entered the forecourt itself. Once again, he looked around, gathering in the sights that might soon be eternally denied to him. Then, he squared his shoulders, tucked his wings into place and started the climb up the alabaster steps towards the throne room where Yahweh awaited him.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 73
    • The Ultimate Temple, Heaven

    Michael-Lan strode forward into the Temple. All about him, the people sang; he could feel the artificial ecstasy of the choirs of angels, of those few, fortunate saved humans. As he entered the Holiest of Holies, the thick marble of the temple walls drowned out the beautiful music outside; reduced to a dim glow, he focused his attention on the sight before him.

    He knew the sight was supposed to awe him, every time without fail: the great white throne, with its flashing lightning and pealing thunder surrounding the giant figure who sat on it, the One Above All Others. Before the throne were the seven great, gold lamps, burning their ceaseless incense so that the clouds of scented smoke hung thick and hazy, the smell clinging to everything. Once, Michael loved it, for it appealed to his sense of the ridiculous. Now he’d just about had enough of it and of the pretensions of that throne’s occupant. There was one consolation to his chosen course, one way or another he would not have to visit this place after today.

    At the four corners of the room stood the four living creatures, chanting their ceaseless cry: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come;” and the twenty-four members of the Private Choir. They were ancient even by the angels' standards, and were constantly on their faces before the throne, murmuring, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being." Time was, their voices had outstripped even the living creatures in volume, but even here they were not free from time's ravages. An astute observer might look closely into their eyes and see the misery and despair there. Singing the same praises for untold millennia was not as heavenly as it sounded. Soon, their misery would be ended, one way or another.

    In the back of the hall, Archangels were gathered around the Master Mason but watching Michael. They gauged his mood, was it good? Or bad? Was there going to be a thunderstorm and flying rock chips or a quiet and peaceful meeting. Did they need to buy tickets for the mason's bunker? Or could they save the gold? With more and more humans pouring into Heaven and occupying the land around the City, the prices of food and other supplies were already beginning to rise. Rise enough to make even angels careful with their money. They held their breaths as Michael-Lan made his entrance. What to do?

    All right, here we go. The only thing left is to hope he gives me the one opening I need. Michael stopped in the middle of the lamps and knelt down on both knees, prostrating himself. He pressed his lips, still scarred from the times he had been exposed to human weaponry, against the cold, dark jade floor. As though sensing intentions, the four living creatures quieted, and the twenty-four elders' murmurs died to whispers. From the white throne, the voice of Yahweh thundered: “Michael, my good general, what news do you bring me?”

    "Oh nameless one, Lord and God of all, I prostrate myself to your presence. I have to tell you that The Incomparable Legion Of Light has been utterly destroyed. It was wiped out within the blink of an eye. Your son is dead with hundreds of thousand of human levies and tens of thousands of angels beside him. Few survive the human firepower that destroyed them. Those that did are maimed and sick. A circle twenty miles across burns with the fires the humans created and the clouds of smoke darken the city and chills its air. All this they did with one weapon, with one blow of their fist. The warmaking ability of the humans has proved far beyond the capability of the fallen ones and beyond ours.

    Yahweh was silent for a moment, then spoke. "They failed me. It was my irresistible will that they defeat the humans. How dare they not do so.”

    You bastard. They died for you and that is all you can say about them? Not one word of regret for their deaths or gratitude for their service? Through his outrage at the casual dismissal of the Incomparable Legion's destruction, Michael-Lan felt his heart skip a beat. Yahweh hadn't failed him, he had the opening he was hoping for. All the maneuvering, all the scheming, all the corruption was about to pay off. That knowledge filled him with a strange, wild joy. It was all over, there was no more waiting, no more doubts. The final showdown was on its way. For good or for bad, it would end the way it would end. One way or another, the End Days had started. Michael looked up at the figure towering over him with nothing but contempt, then climbed to his feet.

    "Oh, shut up."

    There was a complete, awed silence from the crowd of spectators. Nothing moved, there was not the slightest whisper of sound. For the first time in countless millennia, the constant chanting from the Private Choir of 24 Elders was stilled. Their copper-colored skins, green eyes and silver hair were completely motionless as the unimaginable silence continued. The silence, so intense that it seemed to have a gentle hiss all of its own expanded and enveloped the hall. It wasn't just the three words that had stilled the echoes of millennia, it was the withering loathing and contempt with which they had been spoken. Nothing, not even the legendary final confrontation between The One Above All and the Morningstar, had ever come close to the undiluted malignancy of Michael-Lan's words.

    The silence was broken by the panic-stricken whimpering of terror from the Archangels at the back of the hall. A whimpering of mind-numbed fear that swelled into a wave of utter, uncontrollable hysteria. The Archangels were screaming in horror as they tried to crowd into the bunker, pausing only to thrust all the gold they had into the hands of the Master Mason. Inside the walls, those who had decided discretion was the better part of valor complimented themselves on their foresight. They didn't really care what was happening as long as they weren't part of it. They were content to learn the truth as soon as the survivors decided what it was.

    Michael-Lan watched Yahweh staring down at him. The great face was motionless, the eyes without expression or feeling. Suddenly, a flash of insight told him the truth. He can't believe it. He's had nothing but fawning adulation for so long, he literally doesn't know how to handle opposition. Or even to recognize it for what it is. He's completely lost.

    "Michael, my Great General. . . . ."

    "I'm not your anything. What I am is sick of your posturing and your self-importance. I'm sick of clearing up the messes you make and covering up for your blunders. You're a brainless, arrogant dolt who is drunk with unwarranted power and stoned on unearned adulation. You've caused millennia of grief and misery with your insatiable demands for worship. Now, you've pushed too far and the creatures you play your little games with have decided to hit back. Their worship of you is over, Yahweh. They've got a saying down there now, worship is not owed, it is earned. You've done nothing to earn their worship and you've done nothing to earn mine. So shut up and let me try and fix this mess as well."

    "Michael, you go too far. . . . ."

    "Oh no, no I don't. If I wanted to go too far I would call you a apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning zoophyte." Thank you humans, I've been wanting to use that for years. That would be going too far. But I'm not going to call you that Yah-yah. I'm just going to point out that even Fluffy and Wuffles couldn’t stand the sight of you." Oh, that felt good. Millenia of repressed frustration bursting out at last. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he was enjoying this confrontation far too much.

    It was the mention of Fluffy and Wuffles that did it. The suggestion that his beloved pets might have actually hated him combined with the uneasy recognition that the suggestion might be true caused Yahweh to snap out of his stupor. The rolling thunderclouds swirled the thick smoke that filled the Holiest of Holies and caused strange, exotic patterns to appear within them. Sheet lightning flickered across them as Yahweh started to lose his temper. In the earpiece that Michael was wearing, he could hear the bands in the Montmartre Club playing. He couldn't place the tune for a second then it clicked into place. The theme from the film "Dambusters". The bouncing march was just what Michael needed. Clever little humans. A good choice to start the game. Good film too, even if they didn’t get the name of the dog right in the History Channel version.

    "Michael, you forget yourself. Your impertinence is intolerable. I strip you of your rank, authority and titles and order you to your estate, never again to enter the Eternal City."

    "Drop dead." Michael-Lan's voice slashed across the Holiest of Holies, ricocheting off the walls and ringing in the ears of all present. "I have to put this mess right and I can't do it with you around. So get out of my way. But first, take your decree and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine." Will he even understand that? It just sounded so good, I couldn't resist using it.

    There was an appalled silence. The Archangels watching finally understood that this was more, much more, than just a dispute between The Most High and the Great General. This was confrontation. A battle for supremacy, just as the one between The Morningstar and The Most High had been. The last time this had happened, the result had been The Great Celestial War and the great schism between Heaven and Hell. It slowly dawned on them that they were watching the most significant historical event imaginable. The Eternal Enemy had died under the lash of human weapons. Now, Michael-Lan was moving to take his place.

    "You defy me?" It was less a question than a scream of rage and disbelief. Then Yahweh's voice dropped into a bewildered, near-whisper. "Why, Michael, my old friend?"

    "Why? Because what you have done has put the whole Angelic Host at risk. Because your actions are no longer possible or acceptable in the world that is evolving around us. Because if we do not change, we will all be destroyed. Because we cannot change while you occupy that throne. So, yes. I defy you and will do so until you are removed from that throne, never again to have power on Earth, in Heaven, in Hell or anywhere else for that matter. Your day is done, Yahweh. Leave now before I force you to do so!"

    "You force me?" The scream of rage was back, this time pitched high and loud. The gathering thunderclouds roiled and the sheet lightning gathered in intensity. Suddenly, it erupted in a white blanket of light, directed in a torrent against the figure of Michael-Lan.

    He was waiting for it, this was what he had been expecting, how he had always known this confrontation would end. He summoned his own resources, carefully not drawing on those of his allies. Not yet anyway, although that would come. This battle would have to be carefully managed, he would have to expend his power grudgingly, using just enough at any one time. No more and very definitely no less. Michael-Lan was under no illusions about the situation, he knew that Yahweh had not gained his throne by being the creature he was now. He was an immensely powerful being, certainly far more powerful than Michael himself. Michael's edge was that he knew what that power was, where it came from and how it could best be harnessed.

    Satan and Yahweh hadn't. They had a glimmering of an understanding but one that was so mixed up with their own pre-formed characters that the understanding had been corrupted beyond recognition. A psychotic sadist, The Morningstar had believed it came from the suffering of the creatures around him. The whole of Hell had been built around that belief with humans tortured in the pit so Satan could draw on their power. Not to boost daemons over the energy barrier to the next life as he had led his followers to believe but to energize his own control over Hell. Was there even a next life? Michael thought as he braced himself to resist the blast. He looked at the figure on the throne, a figure that was now seething with rage. Yahweh was a self-obsessed egomaniac. He had believed that constant singing of praise was the source of the power he could draw on. Oddly, he was closer, much closer, to the truth that the Morningstar had been. That was probably why he had done so much better and why Heaven wasn't as dysfunctional as Hell. It was music that was the key. It allowed different beings to synchronize their minds and that meant their mental power could be synchronized as well. Michael's great breakthough had been to realize that it didn’t matter what sort of music. Anything would do and if people enjoyed listening to it, then its effects were so much greater. That one realization had been the reason behind his nightclub and the gathering of the bands within it.

    The blast came, enveloping Michael-Lan in a hurricane of white light. Even as it struck, Michael-Lan knew that it hadn't been intended to kill, merely to hurl him backwards against the walls behind him. Bad move, old fellow. When you decide to strike, don’t hold back. Go for the quick kill. Although I'm rather glad you didn't this time Michael had already concentrated his mind on resistance and his own clouds had gathered around him, the sheet lightning rippling in their shapes. The blast from Yahweh met those energy-charged clouds and the two merged, crackling and flashing, the stink of ozone saturating the atmosphere. Michael concentrated hard, feeling the pressure bearing in on him and carefully measuring out his own power in response. He didn’t need to stop the attack completely, he just needed to slow down its advance. Neither he nor Yahweh could maintain an assault indefinitely; as long as he held out long enough, Yahweh would have to rest. All he had to do was to stop the flood of lightning from reaching him.

    He managed it although the effort left his head beaded with sweat. He had just worked harder than he had done for millennia and the sheer effort involved astonished him. Now, as never before, he realized how futile The Morningstar's rebellion had been. He had stood up to The One Above All on his own and fought him alone. He had never realized how important it was to have allied and that mistake had first doomed him then destroyed him. Did Yahweh realize how important his allies had been? That was one of the critical questions that ran through Michael's mind for all these years. It had only been when he had started to kill Yahweh's allies off and watched how little Yahweh really cared about them that he had had his answer.

    Michael-Lan watched the flickering displays of sheet lightning change from purest white to vivid multi-colors as Yahweh's fury built up. Michael-Lan knew he had already won a victory simply by surviving that first blast of power. He had shown that Yahweh could be fought, that he could be resisted. That knowledge could never be undone and, if the Angelic Host survived when Michael did not, somebody else could build on his example and challenge Yahweh again. Whatever else happened today, Yahweh's era of unchallengeable rule had just ended.

    "You shall not defy me!" Yahweh's scream echoed around the room, mixing with the constant roll of thunder that dominated everything else. Those astute enough to listen and knowledgeable enough to know what to listen for would sense that there were two storms filling the room, each with its own timbre and resonance. Then, the steady roll of thunder changed to a flat, vicious crack as a multicolored lightning sheet burst out from one storm and again tried to envelop Michael.

    That blow was meant to kill. No doubt about it. The preliminaries are over, the real fight has just begun. The realization formed in Michael's brain as he poured power into the storm around him, watching his own lightning display shift from white to multicolored as it merged and blended with the bolts from Yahweh. He felt the immense pressure, saw the sheet of energy pressing in on him and realized just how outclassed he was by the figure on the throne above him. He could resist this blow, he could see his own lightning balls were holding fast, but for how long he could maintain this effort was another matter. For the first time, his mind reached out and locked into the network he has so painstakingly created. Across the city, Angels were listening to the massed bands playing in the Montmartre Club, their minds locked into synchronization with his own by the rhythm of the music. Many didn’t even know that they were part of that network, all they knew was that the entertainment supplied by Michael's club had added variety and joy to a heavenly eternity grown stale. But the network was there and Michael made his first tentative withdrawals from it.

    Not to defend against the assault that pressed in on him for Michael's own resources had that under control no matter by how small a margin. Instead he used the energy margin he had just gained to hurl an energy blast at Yahweh himself. It was a weak and feeble blast compared with the storm that was engulfing him but nobody before had ever directly attacked Yahweh. Not even The Morningstar had done so, not even at the height of their battle. Enraged by resistance, Yahweh was hurling his power into the attack on Michael and had left himself without a defense in place. Despite its weakness, Michael's pure white blast struck Yahweh and pushed him backwards into his throne. The success was momentary only, black clouds of thunder gathered around The One Above All and his sheet lightning brushed aside Michael's feeble attack. And yet Michael counted it as his second victory and this one was a victory on two counts. The attack had forced Yahweh to divert energy from the attack on him to Yahweh's own defense and the pressure on him had slackened. Michael had learned something else, Yahweh's energy management skills were not that great. He had used far greater force against Michael's weak attack than he had needed to. While Michael was measuring his energy expenditure with an eye-dropper, grudging each tiny packet of use, Yahweh was being profligate. There was no reason why he shouldn't be, he had always had such a massive supremacy over his opposition that there had been no need for learning the virtues of economy of force. Michael, on the other hand, had read books by humans on strategy.

    The second reason why Michael counted the exchange a victory was that he had actually struck at Yahweh. Just the way his survival of the first exchange had shown Yahweh could be defied, now the second had shown Yahweh could be attacked. A blow struck at him could succeed. In the part of his mind that was concentrating on the battle now being waged, he felt the pressure subside. The second great surge had ended. Michael-Lan was under no illusions, these two battles had been skirmishing only. He and Yahweh had tested their powers and now they both new exactly the magnitude of the task that they faced. The only questions that remained were, had Michael killed enough of Yahweh's key supporters to reduce his power to manageable levels? And did Michael have enough support to compensate for his own inferiority to Yahweh? The vicious battles to come would answer that.

    Michael took the opportunity to glance around the room. It was still, appearing empty with the Archangels taking cover behind anything solid. The walls were chipped and blasted, the damage far worse than anything he had seen in Yahweh's tantrums. He simply had not been aware of how much damage the combined lightning storms were doing. Then, his eyes caught the 24 Elders in Yahweh's private choir. They were silent also, just standing and watching Yahweh. Their leader turned and his oval green eyes met with Michael's clear blue. The Elder smiled sadly then he reached up with his two-thumbed hand and drew it over his mouth in the traditional "zipped shut" gesture. Whatever else happened, the Chorus was silenced and with it Yahweh had suffered his first major loss.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 74
    • One mile from Ground Zero, Heaven.

    The small group of armored vehicles cautiously approached the cobalt-blue crater lake at Ground Zero. The troop of Challenger 2s and accompanying platoon of Warriors spread out to cover the two Fuchs NBC Reconnaissance Vehicles. Very pointedly, the infantry on board the Warriors did not dismount while the Fuchs started taking readings and soil samples.

    “It’s still pretty hot around here, Sergeant.” Corporal Peter Matheson, one of the vehicle’s operators, reported.

    “To be expected I suppose.” Sergeant James Franks, the vehicle commander, replied. “Nobody is going to coming through here anytime soon. The Big Boss is routing the entire army group around this place, not through it. It’s the Boffins who will find our readings and samples interesting. I hope they appreciate them.”

    Franks had been a member of the CBRN Reconnaissance Regiment for ten years, having served in 1 Royal Tank Regiment for ten years beforehand. However as soon as The Salvation War had begun he had tried, unsuccessfully, to transfer to a tank regiment so that he could see some proper action. Unfortunately for him, CBRN specialists were too thin on the ground to make the transfer possible. After all, at the start of the war, nobody had known how quickly it would go nuclear. Now he was finally getting the chance to put his training into action for the first time.

    Several other NBC reconnaissance teams were exploring the area around the initiation, most equipped with the Fuchs, or M39 Fox, as American units knew it, but none had gotten as close to GZ itself as the two vehicles commanded by Sergeant Franks. However Franks did not want to hang around too long, not even with the NBC protection system carried by the British vehicles.

    “Should we risk taking a sample from the lake?” He wondered out loud and tried to ignore the frantic shaking of heads from his crewmates.

    A mile or so away, Lieutenant Tom Potter, the OC of 2 Troop, A Squadron, The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, was a nervous man. Like a lot of people, he had a morbid fear of radiation and he hated to be this close to the site of a nuclear initiation. Even if it had been a low fallout air-burst. That actually made him a very good CBRN recon team escort commander. Now, he traversed his commander’s independent sight to watch the progress of the nearest Fuchs as it continued to move slowly around the lake taking soil samples. “I wish those prats would get a move on. I’ve no desire to glow in the dark, or grow an extra head.”

    Back by the lake, Sergeant Franks had successfully managed to get a sample of the highly irradiated and very poisonous water from the lake. Now he was keen to withdraw from the area as soon as he could. "Okay, back us up.” Sergeant Franks told the driver who obeyed with unseemly alacrity. The two Fuchs withdrew first, the Challengers and Warriors following a moment later.

    “What was it like, Sergeant?” Franks’ troop commander asked an hour after he had returned to base.

    “Pretty eerie, Boss.” The sergeant replied. “It looked like everything that could have burned had done so and we were driving on a sheet of glass for last couple of miles. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. We went though all the training into dealing with this sort of thing, yet nothing really prepared us for seeing it close up.”

    "It's worse further away. You were at Ground Zero, you didn’t see what the outlier margins are like. Fires are still burning out there. Being dead is one thing, the angels and humans out there didn’t die at once. Some of the angels are in a pitiful state. They're encased in massive, fast-growing cancers. Like that Indonesian tree-man. Nobody here knows what to do about them. They've never seen anything like them. As far as we can make out, cancer was unknown until the Big Boss popped that nuke."

    Franks shook his head. “I know, I know. Still, after having seen Ground Zero, all I can say is I’m pretty glad I wasn’t under it when it went off.”

    "Tell the angels that. If they don’t jack it in soon and the rumor mill is right, there'll be a lot more coming."

    Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    "By the holy half-chewed cigar of Saint Curtis, will you look at the size of that place?" General Norton A. Schwartz looked down at the pictures of The Eternal City with something approaching awe. Large areas were obscured, partially at least, by the smoke clouds from the fires at Ground Zero. Yet the rest was stunning in its sheer size. The Eternal City was a lot bigger than Dis.

    "At least 1,500 kilometers per side. Those walls are thick, fifty meters at least, and a hundred meters high. Major redoubt at each corner with even thicker and higher walls. Three gates along each wall. Each gate flanked with guard towers." The photographic analyst looked up ar his audience. "The slums where the humans live are outside the walls of course. They add another band around the city. Those slums look pretty much like Dis as far as density and configuration are concerned. People packed together, narrow twisting streets."

    "Meaning we'll be in for a hell of a street fight before we even get to the city walls." Petraeus sounded gloomy. He could see himself being forced into a decision that he really did not want to take.

    "At least." Marshal Dorokov sounded even gloomier. The days when the Russian Steamroller had infinite amounts of men at its disposal were long gone. All the trouble that had cropped up in the Russian Zone of Occupation in Hell had stretched his manpower resources even thinner. "And punching holes in those walls will not be easy."

    "It will." Petraeus disagreed politely. "We can nuke our way in. But, anything short of that and we'll be in a world of hurt."

    There was a saddened sigh around the briefing room. "Once we're through, Sirs, things might be easier. The city itself is thinly populated. Most of the buildings are these big palaces and the streets are very wide, very straight. We could just roll down them and shoot the buildings on either side to crap. With all these trees, the place is more like a park than a city."

    "The distance is the real problem." Sir Michael Jackson sounded seriously depressed. "We can't get to the center from outside, not without stopping and refuelling. This place has the same ground area as Algeria. It isn't a city, it's an urbanized country."

    "Perhaps we ought to rename it Coruscant." The photo interpreter grinned at his own joke.

    The grin slowly faded as Petraeus just stared at him. When the interpreter was feeling thoroughly miserable, Petraeus spoke carefully. "That might not be a bad idea. Its present name is certainly inappropriate. We'll make that suggestion to our political masters."

    "Sir, if I might make a suggestion, Sir." General James Conway covered the awkward gap caused by the interpreter's faux pas. "My staff has been looking at this problem and we think we have a solution. Or part of one anyway. If you can detach the Marine Corps from First Army Group, we can portal an amphibious task group and carrier battle group to that lake in the center of the city. Lemuel-Lan-Michael says it's so deep nobody knows where the bottom is and its almost a hundred kilometers across by fifty wide. We can land the landing force right in the middle of the city, barely ten kilometers from Yahweh's palace."

    "Don't we need a beacon or something?" Jackson was intrigued by the idea.

    "We thought we would borrow one of those big Japanese flying boats. The Shin Meiwas. Fly it in through a portal, land on the lake with a sensitive on board. That can act as a beacon. Enterprise is fitted to generate her own portals. She can open the way up and take her battle group in to the city. Then the amphibs can follow through."

    Petraeus shook his head. "That's an occupation plan, not an invasion. If Heaven folds, we can consider it." He looked more closely at the photographs that showed the area of Yahweh's palace. "What's going on here?"

    "The Ultimate Temple Sir?" The photo interpreter spoke a lot more carefully than he had done before. "That foxes us completely. We took these shots from a Global Hawk a few minutes ago. She's still over the scene sir, and the anomaly is still there. It looks like there are two thunderstorms directly over Yahweh's palace. Take a look at this."

    He slid another photograph over. It was a close-up shot of an Angel's face. Taken from more than 50,000 feet over the city and crystal clear in detail it showed one thing that was indisputable. The angel was terrified.

    Petraeus reached out and tapped the anomaly. "Just what is going on down there."

    The Ultimate Temple, Heaven

    Yahweh had gone beyond raving anger. He was now possessed by a cold, deadly determination to destroy the opposition to him that had so suddenly and unexpectedly erupted. Opposition from a quarter he had never even begun to suspect. He was summoning his strength to wipe that opposition out. In the meantime, another part of his mind was trying to understand how his most trusted servant could have turned against him.

    "Michael-Lan-Yahweh, it is still not too late. Submit to my justice, cleanse yourself of the sin of pride and I may yet spare you from the full force of my wrath. Do not force this to its inevitable conclusion."

    "It's Michael-Lan-Michael now. I am your servant no longer. And it is already far too late. It was too late the day you betrayed the humans and closed the gates of Heaven in their face. It was too late the day you had the incredible stupidity to tell them that was what you had done. It was too late the day you condemned those who had made it here to being menial servants instead of living in the paradise you promised them. I will not submit to your justice for you have shown you do not understand the meaning of the word. How could you condemn humanity to everlasting torment and still speak of justice? You say you may spare me the full measure of your wrath? Be careful Yah-yah. The humans are coming and they will not spare you the full measure of theirs. Already their armies are encircling the Eternal City and starting to choke off its life-blood. Perhaps if you were to throw yourself on their mercy, they might hold their hands. Humans are oddly merciful to those they defeat. Usually. In your case though. . . ." Michael-Lan-Michael shook his head.

    The music in his earpiece had changed to Mars, The Bringer of War. Whoever put this program together had done well. Michael thought. Let's hope it's enough.

    The sheet of multi-colored lightning that enveloped him came with almost no warning. The only slight hint Michael had was that Yahweh had reserved some of the power for his own defense and the sparkling globe that protected him had become visible a tiny fraction of a second before the onslaught started. Grimly, Michael realized that Yahweh's appeal had simply been intended to lure him off guard. Had he fallen for it, he would have been caught completely unawares. As it was, his own protection, his own blast of lightning, was only just barely adequate to prevent him being crushed out of existence. He could feel it crushing under the strain, buckling under the relentless pressure of Yahweh's power. Michael reached out, sensing the mental energy of those minds that were in step with his own, incorporating it with his own. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the situation stabilized with Michael in the middle of the storm yet untouched by it.

    Yahweh's scream of frustration shook the whole Temple and echoed around the Eternal City. Word was already spreading of the cataclysmic events taking place within the Ultimate Temple and, all over the city, angels of every rank stood and watched as the cloud of storms engulfed the Temple. Inside, Yahweh was reaching out for his allies, to add their power to his. By instinct, his first instinct was to call on Uriel.

    Michael-Lan-Michael felt the call go out and relaxed ever so slightly. Had the call been received, this confrontation would have been over. Uriel had been Yahweh's sword and shield. His massive power had been beyond that even of Michael and his ability to bring death wholesale had made him an enemy of unshakeable power. Together, Yahweh and Uriel were utterly unbeatable. Only, Uriel was dead. Methodically blasted apart by humans. Michael remembered the days and weeks he had spent maneuvering Uriel into attacking one human fortress after another. Always trying to throw him into the teeth of the human defenses and staying awake nights when time after time, Uriel had escaped. Michael's coup would have remained forever an abstract concept if Uriel had not died at the hands of humans for killing him had been far beyond Michael's power.

    He felt Yahweh reaching for his sword and shield, his mind seeking to lock with that of Uriel. But, all it reached was a blank emptiness. Uriel was dead and the reality of that suddenly sank in on Yahweh's rage-engulfed mind. He reached out further for his less-powerful allies, seeking for the tiny margin of power that would allow him to overwhelm the rebel who stood before him. He ran through the list, trying to bring in each of his allies. Each to be met by the grim silence of death,

    Colepatiron, killed by humans.
    Nesupeh, killed by humans
    Sacereor, killed in a terrorist bombing
    Neripon, killed by humans
    Erikehan, killed by humans
    Irnasodeor, accused of treason and died under interrogation
    Esetatuteh, killed in a terrorist bombing
    Tonolpalon, killed by humans
    Lesoteminiel, killed by humans
    Hisralraman, killed in a terrorist bombing
    Ritosehon, accused of treason and died under interrogation
    Zaslohael, killed in a terrorist bombing
    Umadipsah, killed by humans
    Pinaliel, killed by humans

    Michael-Lan-Michael sensed the lack of response from Yahweh's greatest and most powerful supporters. He also felt the rejection of Yahweh's touch by those who had forsaken him. All of the Chayot ha Kodesh that had survived refused to aid Yahweh and by implication threw their support to Michael. He sensed Yahweh's growing desperation as the truth was slowly forced on him. Every one of his allies had been killed. Either thrown against the humans and died under their guns and missiles or blown up when the terrorist bombings in the Eternal City had struck their temples. It dawned on Yahweh at last that those terrorist bombings had been nothing of the sort. They had been carefully planned assassinations and Yahweh finally understood who had been behind them.

    Tahenael, killed by humans
    Arsasaum, assassinated by Michael
    Tcuadahiel, assassinated by Michael
    Zunael, killed by humans

    In desperation, Yahweh turned to the one ally he was sore he had left. Michael-Lan-Michael felt Yahweh reach out to his son, Elhmas, for the support he needed. For a tiny fragment of a second, Michael thought that Elhmas had answered the call and the chill of defeat started to sweep though him. But, Michael crushed it down even as the grim silence made the answer obvious. Elhmas was dead, destroyed so thoroughly by humans that not even a shadow of him was left.

    Michael felt the assault on his existence beginning to ease very slightly. He had survived another round but he knew that he was dangerously close to using all the power that he had available to him. He had called on his allies, he had taken every effort they had offered to him. He had destroyed Yahweh's allies and forced him to fight this fight alone, unaided. For all that, he was barely a match for the immense power of Yahweh. In fact, it was an open question whether he was a match at all.

    As the pressure on him slackened, Michael allowed his own energy output to decline. He needed to conserve strength and economize on that he was drawing from his allies. Slowly, his consciousness expanded away from the duel to take in his surroundings. The throne room, once resplendent in its brilliance was blackened and charred. The floor was covered with the precious stones from the walls, many cracked, blackened and charred from the energy discharges that had flooded the chamber. Poor stones. Michael thought. Looted from worlds beyond number and brought here to be baked. Too bad.

    He took a deep breath and looked through the shimmering arrays of lightning that still crackled and swirled around him. Then, he spoke once more, his voice loaded with scorn. "Is that the best you've got?"
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 75
    • Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    "What do either of you know about cancer?" Doctor Zinder asked the two angels in the ward.

    Lemuel and Maion exchanged bewildered glances. "What's cancer?" Lemuel answered for them both.

    Zinder frowned, it was a strange reminder of the fact that the two angels were from a different universe. "Strange growths on or in the body. They grow out of control and will kill the victim unless treated. And treatment can be very difficult indeed. You've never heard of things like that?"

    Both angels shook their heads. Again, it was Lemuel who answered. "Never. In all the millennia I have been in the Eternal City, I cannot recall anything like that. We are as we have always been, perfection."

    "I doubt that very much." Zinder tried to hide his annoyance at the unwitting arrogance of Lemuel's reply. "The absence of cancers is remarkable. Your healing capability should make you more vulnerable to them. Obviously there is something about your physiology we don’t understand yet. No matter. We'll sort it out. We're not perfection, just smart." Zinder took an unprofessional delight in the jab but to his disappointment it didn’t seem to register with either angel.

    "Why do you ask about this thing." Maion was confused and slightly disappointed. Behind her, the stumps of her amputated wings were changing, slowly morphing into a new set, wings that were but miniature reproductions of her original pair but ones that enlarged every day. She had been hoping to show them off.

    "We took out one of your formations, some 50,000 angels and five times that many humans. The weapon we used killed most of them but many of the survivors have developed skin cancers. The victims are being covered in them. We've tried cutting them out, but they grow back even faster. We've tried every thing in our arsenal, chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, to beat the cancers and we've failed. Frankly, you two were our last hope. We thought you might know something that might help. Without a few new leads, we're out of ideas and that means our patients won’t make it."

    "The Incomparable Legion of Light? Gone?" Lemuel could hardly believe what he had just heard. He knew that was the unit ordered to attack the human invasion but that was all. Yahweh's own personal guard gone? By a single weapon?

    "Was that what it was called? No matter. It's gone." Zinder was slightly irritated again. He wasn't really interested in what had happened except in as much as it affected his patients. "I believe the Army nuked it. We think the sleet of radiation from the blast is the cause of the skin cancers. The oncologists believe it mutated the DNA in the victims so your rebuilding mechanisms have gone out of control."

    Lemuel and Maion looked at each other again in confusion. That almost caused Zinder to grin openly. These angels might think they are perfection but they know less science than a human seven year old. Then he decided to try something. "Perhaps Michael-Lan might know more?"

    Lemuel answered very carefully. "Ah yes, Michael-Lan. There is much I wish to discuss with my old friend Michael."

    Hill 331, Overlooking the Western Wall of the Eternal City. Heaven

    The ZBD-97 platoon was parked in the trees that covered the crest of the hill. The scouts had left them and moved forward so that they could overlook the massive city that lay below them. Captain Tao Gan had very specific orders from his command, orders that did not eventually trace back to H.E.A. supreme command. He had followed those orders exactly. His reconnaissance platoon had slipped through the countryside with all the stealth that four armored personnel carriers could muster. He had avoided contact with enemy forces, steered clear of population centers and done everything else to make sure that his presence on this hill was undetected. From this hill he could see as far into the Eternal City as was possible. The Chinese People's Liberation Army didn’t have the wealth of equipment than the Americans did but they now had an asset in place that could substitute human eyes for remote-controlled aircraft.

    The Americans had promised that all the information they gathered would be shared out but the CPLA commanders had been suspicious. Perhaps that was the wrong word Tao Gan thought. Cautious might be better. With his unit here on the hill, they had a way of checking whether the information the Americans sent them was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

    "Sir, look at this." The voice from his 3rd-Level NCO was barely a whisper. The staff sergeant had been operating a pair of tripod-mounted surveillance binoculars, a set far too large and heavy to be lifted by hand. Tao Gan slid over to his position and looked through the binoculars. A slight adjustment of the focus was necessary to bring the street scene into sharp relief. Once done, he could see the angels in the street. Most of them were standing still, staring in the direction of the far-off city center. They seemed strangely motionless, as if they were in some form of trance. Or so terrified by what they saw that they were incapable of motion. Tao Gan's thought spurred his next decision. He needed to report back to Corps HQ.

    The Ultimate Temple, Heaven

    Michael-Lan felt the first beginnings of fear darken his mind. Even with the support of his network, he was only just barely surviving the barrage of electric bolts that enveloped him. Yahweh had given up talking to him or trying to persuade him to drop his guard. Now, he was relying on sheer brute force to batter down Michael's defenses and crush him out of existence. The non-stop onslaught was wearing Michael down. He could feel his legs weakening and it was all he could do to stop himself staggering. He was actually using some of the power drawn from his allies to keep standing firm and erect. It was a vicious cycle and he knew it. The more power he used for that purpose, the less he could feed into his defensive shell. That meant more of Yahweh's attacks reached him and weakened him still further. That meant he would have to use still more power to stand tall.

    Michael caught himself, his momentary inattention had caused him to slip slightly, to begin the twisting fall that would end with him helpless on the ground. He chanced a brief glance at Yahweh, seeing with relief that his brief lapse had gone unnoticed. Then, to his intense relief, the grinding assault slackened and faded. He, Michael-Lan, had survived another confrontation with Yahweh's raw power. His senses reached out, feeling for the reserves of power that Yahweh still had in store and noting grimly how far they exceeded his own. He sucked the cold, ozone-tainted air into his starved lungs, feeling it rasp at the raw lining of his throat as he breathed in. His mind reached out, embracing all those of his network, all those whom he had lured into his net. His plan had worked, he had allies when Yahweh had none. He knew how to draw on their power with maximum efficiency while Yahweh did not. He understood economy of force while Yahweh was profligate with his power. And yet, for all that, Michael-Lan knew that he was slowly losing this fight. For a moment despair seized him. He felt it cloud his mind and the treacherous realization of just how easy it would be to give up and let go started to coil into his consciousness.

    Michael looked up and saw the vindictive half-smile on Yahweh's face. That told him where those treacherous thoughts had come from. Yahweh hadn't slackened his assault, he had simply changed one mode for another. For a brief second, Michael wished he had one of the hats that humans had taken to wearing, the ones that protected them against the mind-deceptions of the daemons. It would do him no good of course. The hats only protected humans against daemonic mind-entering powers and incompletely at that. Those tinfoil hats were of no use against a being with Yahweh's power. Now if I had one of their tanks . . . . . The thought of him sitting in a human tank, suitably enlarged of course, made Michael snort with laughter. And that wiped the smile off his face.

    "What's the matter Yah-yah? Getting weaker and feebler? You know, you should be grateful for me taking over. Gives you a chance to take a nice holiday. Why don’t you take a tour? I hear the other side of the Minos Gate is nice this time of year." Michael stepped sideways suddenly. It was nothing to do with Yahweh's response to his gibe, simply a large slab of marble had become detached from the ceiling and its fall was just a touch too close for comfort.

    "I will crush your very soul from existence for this treachery." Yahweh's voice could have been used to grind rocks such was the grating venom loaded into each syllable.

    "Now that's a good question." Michael tried to keep his voice light and goading despite the tiredness that consumed every muscle he had. "Can you actually do that? You couldn't do it to The Morningstar and his resistance didn't last this long. You know, old chap, I really don’t think you have it in you any more."

    Michael actually missed Yahweh's reply to that for the music in his earpiece had changed again. Now, it was Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie. As the massed bands poured the music out, the stirring score caused Michael to wonder if the old Norse gods were actually coming to his aid. Is that the message they are sending me? Reinforcements would be very welcome at this point. But the Aesir had retreated from Earth long ago, back to their own bubble world. Why should they help Michael who had commanded the armies that forced their abandonment of the Earth? Anyway, the human bandleaders didn’t know that little bit of history.

    Still the changed music helped and Michael felt his spirits lift. Just in time for Yahweh chose that moment to launch yet another blast of raw power against him. Michael-Lan's defenses were up but they crumpled under the massive blow, allowing the energy to pour in towards him. He threw every last shred of power he could scrape up into the breach, saw the flood of multicolored light grind to a halt a few bare inches before it had contacted him. He sweated, breathed deeply, summoning the tiny reserve of power he had, feeling the muscles in his legs weaken as he did so. But, Yahweh's fireball was pushed back, the gap around Michael widening slowly, fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch until enough of a safety margin existed to allow him some tiny comfort. For all that, he knew this was the end. He had thrown everything he had unto the battle. He had nothing left. Soon, his power would run out and it would all be over.

    In the background, outside the consciousness of the immediate struggle, Michael-Lan-Michael heard a familiar banging noise. It took a second for it to register then its identity hit him. It was the sound of the doors to the Throne Room opening and then slamming shut. He was also aware of something else. He now had a power reserve, a tiny one for certain but one that was growing. Grimly holding the line against Yahweh's furious assault, Michael sneaked a look through the scintillating globes of power towards the door.

    Leilah-Lan had entered the room. Not just entered it, but made an entrance. She'd dyed her wing feathers black and was wearing her full dominatrix outfit. She strode across the throne room floor, the heels of her boots clicking on the marble as she turned and stood beside Michael, her face screwed up with concentration as she tried to pour power into him. Michael felt Yahweh's assault slacken and fail with the sheer shock of what had just happened. Leilah-Lan in full professional outfit was something this throne room had never seen before.

    "What are you doing here? I told you to get ready to run if this failed."

    "You did. You seem to forget Michael, I don't take orders very well." She chanced a quick grin at him.

    "You're mad. . . . ." Michael's words were cut off by the doors banging again. Charmeine, Raphael and Gabriel walked in, striding across the rubble-covered floor to take up position around Michael. "All of you."

    "Grateful isn't he." Charmeine-Lan spoke lightly in the silence that had followed their entrance. "And us flying all the way here in a thunderstorm just for him."

    "What's happening at the Club?" Michael was actually at a loss for words. He had assumed his inner circle would make a run for it if he lost. Their decision to come here and stand with him, he just hadn’t seen that coming.

    "The humans are running it. We explained what was going on and why. Told them what we wanted to achieve. What you were trying to do and what you were risking to do it. So, they took over there. Glen's officially in charge by the way. That freed us up to come here. They aren't leaving either by the way. They're going to keep playing until we win or Yahweh pulls the roof down on their heads. More of our high-ranking clients are on their way here . . . . ."

    "Get ready." Michael suddenly remembered why he was here and what the battle with Yahweh was like. "Yah-yah's got a habit of throwing attacks without warning."

    "Nasty of him." Leilah-Lan sounded most disapproving. "I'll have to . . . . . . ."

    She was interrupted by a massive blast of power from Yahweh. This time, the response was different. With his most trusted allies around him, Michael didn’t have to worry about drawing power from his network. They were pouring it into him and the difference was more than significant. This time, he stalled the blast half way towards him and held it there. The pressure was immense but for the first time since the battle began, he felt as if he was in control of the situation. He was aware of something else as well. The choir outside the room were no longer singing hymns of praise. They were singing in tune with the broadcast from the Montmartre Club.

    That was when Michael felt his power slacken slightly. Leilah had pulled herself out of the net, stepped slightly to one side and hurled all the energy she could muster at Yahweh. The discharge cracked and was followed by the flat vicious hiss of her whip as it flailed across the room and struck Yahweh full in the chest. The unexpected physical impact pushed him hard back against the throne and sent splinters of marble flying through the air. It was a one-shot trick-pony that relied on surprise rather than force for its effect and Michael knew it but, once again, Yahweh's poor power management had left him open to it. For a few seconds, his assault stopped and the blast of power from Michael flooded across the room and besieged Yahweh in his throne. Leilah had slumped to her knees, exhausted by the effort needed to generate the blast but she had made a historic mark, one that would never be forgotten in Heaven. For she, an Erelim, had managed to attack and hurt Yahweh. From within the shield of energy that surrounded them, Charmeine reached out and pulled her into the protection of the field.

    For a moment, the initiative was in Michael's hands. He poured power at Yahweh, exhausting himself and his allies in the process, but he had Yahweh on the defensive at last. Now it was Yahweh who was struggling to hold back the assault, it was Yahweh who was fighting to prevent the energy breaking through and crushing him. Concentrating on managing the assault, Michael was only dimly aware of other angels from his club entering the room and joining the group around him. He just felt their energy joining his and supporting the streams of power that mixed and blasted inside the shattered throne room.

    Never in the memories of anybody present had there been anything like the displays that now saturated the throne room. The scintillating, interacting arcs of light had gone far beyond white and multicolor. Now they shimmered with iridescent hues beyond the imagination of those watching in awe. The confrontation left that between Yahweh and the Morningstar pallid by comparison, pallid and lackluster for the brilliance of the light battle was enough to blind those unprepared for it. Just as Michael had clawed his way back from the brink of defeat just a few minutes earlier, now Yahweh tried to do the same. He also poured power into his defense and saw the assault on him slowly forced back. Watching him, Michael realized that, for the first time in uncountable millennia, Yahweh was actually running out of energy.

    The battle was deadlocked. The two great shimmering walls of light energy were stationary in the middle of the room, their interface twisting with wild, unknowable colors and were beyond any mind to describe. Neither side could disengage now, both were locked in a death-grapple that could only end with the defeat and utter destruction of one. Or both thought Michael. That's an outcome I hadn't considered before. He looked behind him and saw another thing he had not expected. There was a disturbance around the entrance to the mason's bunker, now stained, blackened and scarred by the battle. The mason himself pulled free of the crowd inside and walked across the room to stand with Michael and his allies. The added energy pushed the wall a little bit further back towards Yahweh

    Michael-Lan-Michael looked around, quickly assessing the situation. Leilah-Lan was back on her feet, tapping the palm of her left hand with her riding crop as she poured her recovering energy reserves into the battle. He had more than a dozen allies around him now, including at least five Chayot Ha Kodesh of the first and second degrees. For all that, he still hadn't quite got the edge to finish off Yahweh. They were evenly balanced, Yahweh on one side, Michael and his allies on the other and that was it.

    There was one question Michael needed to know the answer to. That one question would be decisive in the titanic struggle that was now reaching its conclusion. Michael asked it of himself time and time again, his mind searching desperately for the answer. How would the humans handle this situation?
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 76
    • Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    "Two kilometers?" General Asanee spoke carefully. She'd measured the pictures taken by the Global Hawks for herself and come to the same conclusion as the analysts. The main streets carving The Eternal City into sections were that wide.

    "Two kilometers wide and dead straight. Three run north and south, three run east and west. They join the gates, or rather the flanking ones do. The one down the middle is blocked by Yahweh's palace here in the middle. They cut the city into sixteen blocks with the palace area forming the seventeenth." The analyst sounded displeased; he didn’t like having his work checked so carefully. The great model of The Eternal City was largely his work. He had a feeling it was the supreme achievement of his lifetime. After all, where could he go from making this?

    "So each block is 375 kilometers on a side? And these are 20 kilometers wide?" General Petraeus tapped the corner redoubts on the outer walls of the city.

    "That's right, Sir. The gatehouses are twenty kilometers wide as well. Each flanking tower is nine kilometers across. How they swing a gate a kilometer wide open and closed is beyond me. No matter how carefully counterbalanced they are, the inertia must be enormous."

    "They probably don’t open the whole gate. I bet you'll find there are small doors set in the face of the giant ones." Asanee smiled. "That's how we did it in our walled cities."

    "Each of the city blocks duplicates the structure of the city as a whole. Cut into 16 sections, each a little under 95 kilometers square, by roads about a kilometer wide. Then each sub-block divided into 16 sub-sub-blocks by roads 500 meters wide. Each sub-sub-block is around 20 kilometers on each side. Populations seem to vary. Some just have four palaces, others have dozens. There are what appear to be temples all over the city. That's hardly surprising of course. We've done a rough estimate of the city population. We think there's around 200 million angels living in the City itself."

    "Two hundred million." Petraeus seemed haunted by the number. "This has all the makings of a nightmare."

    "We can chop the City up into isolated blocks using the roads and then take down each sub-sub block individually. It'll be one hell of a street fight though." Asanee was measuring the likely cost of doing so while she spoke. The answer wasn't one she liked.

    "We're better equipped for fighting Angels and Daemons than we were at Hit. We've got rifles that can actually hurt them now." Jackson looked depressed, he was calculating losses as well. His answer varied from Asanee's, reflecting the difference in their characters. "And Angels don’t have the bloody-minded guts of the daemons."

    "We don't know that Michael." Asanee had a warning note in her voice. "That's true in the fighting so far but it all took place away from their city. This time, it'll be on their home ground, in their sacred city. We can't be sure they'll fold. Where have they got to run to?"

    "That's a good point Asanee." Petraeus looked at the great model again. "They've nowhere left to go. We can't assume they'll fold. Anyway, another point we have to think about. Yahweh's palace, here in the center of the city. Right in the middle. It's in what amounts to a park, 200 kilometers square with that lake beside it. We have to advance through 650 kilometers of urbanized terrain before getting there. That's more than the operating range of our tanks. We'll need every heavy truck we can get to keep the front line forces fighting. We can open portals of course, move the stuff directly in from Earth but it's still going to be a massive effort just to keep the troops supplied.

    "Anyway, there's something else I wanted to discuss with you." Petraeus pressed the keypad on his desk and the electronic displays that dominated the wall behind his desk flickered into life. The map showed the square of The Eternal City with great blue arrows beginning to coil around it. "We've got all three Army Groups moving into place now. Combined with air operations, we're methodically cutting supplies into the City. So far, we haven't actually moved into sight of the city. Not officially anyway. Unofficially, we're picking up communications that suggest a number of countries have moved covert forces into observation points around the city."

    At that point Petraeus became aware that Jackson and Asanee were both looking shifty. In fact, they looked downright evasive. "Let me guess, you two as well?"

    "We have a couple of reconnaissance units near the city walls." Asanee sounded apologetic. "My government insisted we move them up to check on the data we were getting."

    "I can honestly say that Her Majesty's Armed Forces have no covert operations groups stationed outside The Eternal City." Sir Michael Jackson sounded positively righteous. Asanee's head snapped around to look at him and one of her eyebrows was raised.

    Petraeus smiled. "I see the SAS are living up to their reputations then. I suppose it was to be expected. A coalition this big doesn't exist without this kind of thing going on. Just make sure that these groups don’t start stepping on each others' feet. Asanee, Michael, I don’t care how you do it but set up some sort of system so we don’t get mutual interference between these groups. By the way, somebody better talk to our friend Gaius Julius about that as well. He's hired enough deceased special forces people to have something going. And he's not the kind of leader who'll miss a trick."

    The Ultimate Temple, Heaven

    A single phrase hammered through Michael-Lan's mind. The Issue Is In Doubt... Who actually doubted it was a good question. The clouds of static lightning that filled the Throne Room had stabilized, more or less, but there was no clear advantage to either side. Sweat was running down Michael's face, not just from the intense effort that he and his allies were making but from the rising temperature within the room. That was inevitable with the sheer amount of energy that was being discharged. Even with the immensely thick marble walls acting as a heat sink, that energy had to go somewhere. He and his circle were getting nowhere fast and it was questionable how long they could hold out.

    On the other hand, it was also questionable how long Yahweh could hold out. What was happening was unprecedented. Yahweh had been fought to a standstill and his own resources, once capable of overwhelming even the most determined opposition, were now depleted. Michael consoled himself with the thought that his day was done. Even if Yahweh survived this battle, there were those who had watched and learned from Michael's mistakes. Yahweh would go down eventually. The problem was that if Michael won, the same assault could be used against him. Whatever happened, today's battle marked the end of the old ways in Heaven.

    It was getting harder to hear the music being transmitted from the Montmartre Club. The energy battle that was being waged interfered with the broadcast. The constant crackle and hiss of static drowned out parts of the program and that was a problem Michael hadn't anticipated. His whole plan depended on the musical broadcast keeping his allies minds in synchronization with his own. That meant their mental energy was transferred at maximum efficiency. As the music was lost in the interference, that synchronization would be lost and with it much of his edge over Yahweh.

    Through the crackle, Michael heard the music had changed again. It took him a few bars to recognize it but when he did, it was with the pleasure of meeting an old friend. It was the theme tune from the film Zulu. One of his favorites, Zulu was a regular feature in the cinema attached to the Montmartre Club. Michael's mind went to the end of the film, when the British redcoats were making their last stand and pouring fire from their rifles into the mass of maddened Zulu warriors before them. He could hear the Sergeants giving the orders. 'Front rank fire. Middle rank fire. Rear rank fire.'

    That's what humans would do in a situation like this. The realization dawned on Michael-Lan in a flash of understanding. He had the answer he was looking for.

    "People, get ready to push together. Every bit of energy we have. But don’t hold it. We'll just push as hard as we can and then relax a little. Then push again. In time with the music." So far they had been maintaining a long, steady, maintained pressure. But if they started pulsing the pressure, if they used their energy in bursts instead of a continuous effort, it might work. "Get ready and . . . . heave."

    Michael-Lan threw every bit of energy he had into the pulse. He felt his allies doing the same and the sudden effort forced the flickering wall between them and Yahweh back. Not far, a foot or more at most, but a definite push. There was a curious strip on the wall where bleached white stone and blackened jewels met that showed the result. His team relaxed and Yahweh started to regain the strip but the music struck another chord and his team threw another pulse. This one worked as well and the bleached and blackened strip of wall grew wider.

    "Come on friends, it's working." Michael was caught up in the battle, orchestrating the pulses of energy with the rhythm of the music, emitting the massive pulses that were slowly but surely having their effect. Each one gained just a little more ground, each respite between them lost just a little less. "Heave!"

    The strip down the wall was wider by far and Michael's team stepped forward, feeling the heat of the stone under their feet. The jade floor was hot enough to be uncomfortable even through their sandals but that was of little importance. Michael knew, every member of his team knew, that they had Yahweh on the run. The battle was slowly swinging in their favor.

    The change, when it came was sudden. The defensive wall of energy that Yahweh had maintained between him and his enemy collapsed. Where once there had been a solid barrier that kept Michael's allies away from the Peerless Throne, now there was a bubble of energy around it. That was not a final loss. At the start of the fight, it was Michael who had been trapped within an energy bubble but he had fought his way out of it. With the help of his friends, who had cast their lot in with him beyond any means of withdrawal. In a part of his mind that was not involved in this battle, Michael still wondered at that. They could have stayed clear and had a chance of survival if things had gone badly. But they had given it up to stand beside him. That thought gave him much to think about but one thing stirred uneasily in his mind. I don’t deserve friends like these.

    The energy pulses from Michael and his team struck at the sphere of energy protecting Yahweh from all directions. He could see the colors rippling in it, saw the surface of the sphere rippling under the impacts. Above all, the sphere was shrinking. Each successive onslaught left it smaller and weaker, its colors dimmer and more familiar. His team were losing energy also, but slowly, they were gaining dominance over the defense in front of them. Their pulses were still multi-colored even though the spectrum was one familiar to those watching. In contrast, Yahweh's screen showed glowing areas of white.

    Over the crackling roar of the energy discharges, Michael-Lan heard a groan, then an increasing wail of pain. Yahweh was in the center of an energy discharge and that discharge was being crushed inwards. He was being crushed with it. The ball was almost completely white now yet still being assailed by waves of energy in all seven colors of the visible spectrum. The wail turned into an agonized howl as the pressure continued to crush inwards. It grew louder and more unstable, the voice from within the sphere wavering and breaking under the terrible pressure. Despite his size and unimaginable power, Yahweh was dying.

    When it burst, Yahweh's defense bubble just vanished. Swamped and overwhelmed by the energy thrown at it, it was scattered and absorbed. Yahweh was consumed by the sheets of lightning that enveloped him. They crushed him, drowned him, they cast him down. By the time they were finished, the vast figure that had once dominated the Throne Room was crushed to a size no greater than the greatest of his Angels. It was slumped on the throne itself and was still.

    Leilah-Lan left the group standing at the foot of the throne, the heels of her boots clicking on the jade. Her whip lashed out, just as it had once before, but this time the lash curled around Yahweh's foot. She started to pull, intending to drag his body off the throne but she lacked the strength. Others came to help her and between them, they managed to shift the still, gray form off the pedestal and drag it to the floor below.

    Michael-Lan stood, looking down at the dead body with something very close to disbelief in his heart. It seemed impossible that, after all the planning and manipulation, the battle really was over. For a brief second he couldn't help but wonder what he would do next. After centuries spent plotting Yahweh's downfall, the completion of the task was almost an anti-climax. The thought didn’t last long. The humans are still out there and I have to stop them blasting their way into the City. Then he looked around and watched the other Angels slowly gathering around Yahweh's body. They looked down, bewildered and lost.

    "Oh Great And Incomparable Father Of Us All." Michael turned towards the speaker. It was Raguel, an obsequious expression on his face. Typical of him. Trying to curry favor once the fighting was done. Yahweh's most loyal supporter and the first to change sides when he was cast down. Michael crushed the thought down.

    "My name is Michael, remember? We went though all this so that kind of ridiculous posturing would be forgotten." He paused and then put all the emphasis he could into the next four words. "My name is Michael."

    He looked around him, trying to gauge the mood of the crowd. There was something he had to do right now, so that at least one of his team would be properly rewarded. "Leilah-Lan. You are the only Erelim in my inner circle. Yet you came here first and were the first to strike a blow at Yahweh. I raise you to Chayot Ha Kadesh, the highest of all ranks of Archangel." He reached out and laid his hand upon her head. To his surprise he felt power running through his hands and he saw Leilah standing tall. Was she raised in more than just name? Michael honestly did not know.

    "There is much to be done if we are to survive. First, we must clear this place up." He looked down at the body on the floor. "Somebody throw that in the lake. Where's the Master Mason? Zacharael-Lan, take that throne down, break it up, chop it up, whatever. I don't care. Just get rid of it and throw the bits in the lake as well. Use them to weigh Yahweh's body down. Then, up on the dais where it used to be, I want a table and a set of chairs. Normal sized ones for us. Heaven will be ruled in future by discussion and agreement between free people. Not by the whims of a single dictator. We'll hold the meetings up there and they will be free for all to watch."

    Michael paused and looked around again. "Raphael, when you have recovered, I have a special task for you. I want you to fly to the commander of the human army and tell him we surrender. Tell him that I am declaring The Eternal City to be an open city. It will not be defended and we will throw the gates of the city open to his army as soon as we find out how they work. If we can't we will ask his assistance in blowing them open. When you go, make sure you have the biggest white flag you can find and wave it as energetically as you can. Otherwise they are quite likely to blow you out of the sky."

    "We surrender One Ab . . . . . . Michael?" Raguel sounded confused and slightly belligerent.

    "Of course we do. We make peace with the humans as fast as we can, before they start shooting. Remember what they did to the Incomparable Legion Of Light? They blew it up, so decisively that the smoke from its destruction darkens our skies and chills our air. They did that with one of their bombs and that one far from their most powerful. Do you want to see their most powerful ones hitting this city? They will, you know. They will study this city and decide that taking it by storm will be far more trouble than it is worth. So they will blow it up and all of us with it. That's why we have done what we have done. If Yahweh had remained in charge here, he would have killed us all."

    There was a plan to fulfil still and Michael knew it had to go on, even with the lethargy of exhaustion clouding his mind. "Gabriel, spread the word of what has happened here. Tell everybody that Yahweh has gone, there will be no more purges or mass arrests, that the prisoners taken by Yahweh will be released. Tell them of the concentration camp Yahweh had built and what was done there. Also, make sure everybody knows what happened to the Incomparable Legion of Light as a result of Yahweh starting this futile war. Above all, make sure everybody knows that the humans are coming and that Yahweh's elimination means we can save the city from their attack. Rest before you go though."

    Raphael-Lan and Gabriel-Lan waved in acknowledgement to him. Michael-Lan paced across the shattered floor and stared at the choirs and the strange creatures that had once decorated the room. The sight made him realize he had another job for the master mason. "Oh, Zacharael-Lan. We need more light in here. Could you make some holes in the walls please? When you get a chance."

    "What of us?" The soft, sibilant voice from the leader of the choir grabbed at Michael's attention. "What do we do?"

    "Anything you like." He looked at the members of the choir with sympathy. They were the last survivors of their kind, an ancient race that had been first seduced and then enslaved by Yahweh. When he had tired of them and found others to take their place, they had been cast down. Some might survive in the very depths of Hell. If so, the humans would find them and look after them.

    "We know of nothing to do. Except to sing praises."

    Michael-Lan shook his head. "Don't worry. We'll find an honorable place for you." Then, a thought occurred to him. "Charmeine-Lan, go to the Montmartre and tell the guys there that they can stop playing now. Thank them from me for everything they've done. We've won. All of us."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 77
    • The Himilheothon Gate, The Eternal City, Heaven

    Thirty eight thousand tons. The number echoed through Corporal William Bodie's mind as he shuffled up to the smaller doors set in the massive Himilheothon Gate. That estimated weight excluded the pearls that studded the wooden structure. Set in the road surface were dozens of curved strips of bronze that provided a path for the wheels at the foot of the Gate. What the ground pressure under the wheels amounted to, Bodie didn’t know and didn’t care. In any case he seriously doubted whether the main gate could be opened. It looked frozen in place from uncounted millennia of static disuse. Only the smaller doors were regularly opened and closed. Through them, a constant stream of second-life humans were entering the city.

    The great wall of Heaven loomed over him. A hundred meters high and at least fifty thick. There was no way the track-head and the rest of the armies closing in on The Eternal City were going to get through that. It rather amused Bodie that he and the rest of the team had simply walked through the gate and thus became the first living humans inside The Eternal City. It helped matters, of course, that the Angels had such an appalling idea of security. The Ishim guarding the gate simply gave a wooden marker to each human as he went in and it was collected again as the human left. The whole system was designed to ensure that no human had the temerity to stay inside The Eternal City a moment longer than was necessary for them to pursue their duties. Faced with its first serious challenge, it had failed completely. But then, it had failed when faced by people who were unequalled experts at making security systems fail.

    Bodie joined the stream of people passing through the doors, sliding unobtrusively past the Ishim on duty there. This was the point where amateurs always got it wrong. They either overplayed the nonchalant bit or were too obviously trying to avoid detection. The great art was simply to behave the way everybody else did. Anyway, Bodie already had his marker. It was a forgery of course, but that really didn’t matter. Once he was through the gate any challenge would be answered by his forged token and the Ishim would assume that it had been issued normally. All humans looked the same to them anyway.

    Once through the gate, Bodie set off for the street edge on the south. He paused slightly to adjust the robe he was wearing and tighten the rope belt that held it in place. That same belt also held his pistol although what use a 9mm Sig-Sauer would be here was arguable at best. Pistol calibers had been 'redefined' since the Salvation War had started. Still, the P226 had a nice, comforting bulk to it. He glanced up; the sky still had streaks of dark gray across it. The original sight of heavenly blue skies with just enough small fluffy clouds to provide contrast had gone. When the Yanks popped that nuke, they had changed a lot of things.

    The city block he approached was crowded by the standards of The Eternal City. It was mostly the abode of Ishim and they didn't live in the stately palaces occupied by the higher ranks of angels. The homes here reminded Bodie of the council houses he had grown up in. He took a closer look at the buildings in front of him. Studded with semi-precious stones just as those council houses long ago had pebble-dashed walls. The difference was the level of repair, these so-called palaces had plaster that was scabbing away and paint that was faded and peeling. In places, the wooden lathes that reinforced the plaster were visible. The Eternal City was very old, that much was obvious. The trouble was that in this case, old just meant 'so much more second-hand.'

    Old it might be, and more than slightly run-down, but The Eternal City was still huge. It more than a twenty kilometer walk to the side road Bodie was looking for. Even in the temperate climate of Heaven that was still not something to be taken lightly, especially given the load he was carrying. Eventually, he recognized his turning and took it, heading down an alleyway barely fifty meters across. Here, the stones that embellished the walls were less glittering in their profusion and the signs of neglect and decay were stronger. Occasionally, there were even small areas of rubble on the stone of the streets. Bodie had noticed that, all the legends had said that the streets of the Eternal City were paved with gold but instead, they were a garish bronze-colored marble. Once in a while, the great slabs were cracked. Bodie ignored them; he was too busy counting buildings to worry about the state of the paving. At least that was what he thought until he tripped over one of the cracked slabs and nearly fell flat on his face.

    Finally he reached the building the team had chosen. It was a disused temple, one that appeared to have been abandoned after its structural deterioration had reached dangerous proportions. Bodie climbed up the steps, cursing the fact that even the Ishim were a bit larger than humans and that made their steps uncomfortable to climb. Once in the main hall, he caught his breath and made for the rooms at the rear.

    "No problems getting in and out then Bodie?" Sergeant Doyle was lazing between two fallen columns, a position that allowed him to watch the only entrance to the hall from a concealed yet comfortable position.

    "Like babes in the nursery they are." Bodie dropped his load with relief. "They've got no idea."

    "That's not surprising lads. They've never had any real infiltration efforts to worry about. Not as far as we know anyway." Captain Greg Crowleigh was also waiting in a concealed overwatch position. Unlike the guards at the City gates, his team never let their guard down. Although, the SAS team was beginning to wonder if the Angels at the Himilheothon Gate guards had ever had their guard up.

    "They might have a lot more to worry about now." Bodie had picked up all the intelligence from the Outside Team on his visit. "There's Chinese armored recon in the woods outside and a Russian Spetsnaz group. They might be in here as well by now."

    That caused a sudden silence. Crowleigh's team had never been one of the front-rank SAS sections, not until they had killed the gorgon Lakheenahuknaasi. By an odd quirk of fate that had resulted in them being the first living humans to take up residence in The Eternal City. Killing the gorgon hadn't lifted them to the top tier of teams but it had put them at the head of the second rank. Only, all the top-tier teams were tied down in Hell trying to get the problems there sorted. So, when this job had come up, Crowleigh and his men had got it. Sometimes things worked in strange ways.

    "We'd better be damned careful then. We don't want to get our wires crossed. Especially since the HEA don't know we're here." That caused another outbreak of silence. This mission was just about as unofficial as it got. One thing that concerned everybody was whether they would get the word in time if it was decided to nuke the city into oblivion.

    "Any word on how the HEA plans to get into the city?"

    Bodie shook his head. "Rumor mill is working overtime but that wall seems to be chilling everybody. This city is fortified with a capital F. The current story is that the Russians will use gas again." That remark caused a series of whistles. Everybody remembered what the Russian sarin attack had done at the Phlegethon River.

    "Boss, you'd better hear this." Private James Dempsey had a recording disk in his hand.

    Crowleigh turned around, frowning at the interruption. "What is it man?"

    "The temple we bugged? Well, there's just been a meeting in it. The local Ishim were assembled and addressed by an Elohim. The gist of it is that Yahweh is out. Michael-Lan has taken over."

    "What?" Crowleigh was stunned. "A coup?"

    "It hasn't been phrased like that. According to the announcement, Yahweh has been so distressed by the death of his son that he has blamed himself and gone into retreat. Apparently he is meditating on his actions and contemplating the future."

    "Ah, he's dead then." Ray Doyle sounded positively chirpy.

    "Undoubtedly. But Jesus has been killed as well?" Crowleigh thought for a second then realized there was more message to come. "What else?"

    "Anyway, the message is that Yahweh has asked Michael-Lan to take over running Heaven until Yahweh considers himself fit to resume absolute rule. Until then, Michael-Lan has appointed a council of angels to help him rule. The first priority is to bring the war with the humans to an end and restore the 'natural order of things."

    "We need to get word of this out immediately." Crowleigh decided that news of this importance had to go directly to Sir Michael Jackson. His orders were to have no contact with HEA headquarters but those orders had never envisaged a situation like this. He shouldered the responsibility for his decision and started the process of getting through to the HEA. In doing so, he and his team finally made it to the top tier of SAS units.

    Over The Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven

    Raphael-Lan-Michael, now offically in charge of communications as part of the provisional government of Heaven, hoped desperately that he was communicating well enough. While his wings drove him through the air towards the heart of the human army on the ground, his arms were desperately waving the largest white flag he had been able to find. In addition, he was frantically transmitting mental messages of surrender even though he guessed that the metal hats humans now wore would prevent those from being received and understood. Still, better to try it and fail than not try at all. Especially with humans around. Their tendency to shoot first and shoot with lethal effect had been made all too clear.

    Down below, he could see the long snaking columns that were making their way towards The Eternal City. There was no end of them, literally no end as far as he could see. He had adjusted his vision for its longest range but the lines of trucks and armored vehicles seemed to go on forever. The information coming in from the countryside suggested that this was just one of three great armies converging on The Eternal City. The frantic itching in his skin told him that the forces below had seen him and were already locking their weapons on him. Please don’t fire humans, I'm trying to bring peace.

    For a moment he thought his pleas had been ignored. Four great bangs had surrounded him and he cringed expecting to feel the lash of iron fragments from the missiles lacerating his body. But, he had been spared that. It was just the crash the human aircraft made when they flew anywhere fast. This group formed up around him, one on each side, one behind, one in front. Then, with him nice and tightly boxed in, they started to change course. Raphael got the feeling he was being herded as if he was a helpless target. Then, he understood, to the humans that was precisely what he was.

    Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    "Anyway, we had no women in the army until the late 1960s. There had been, right up to the First World War but when the Germans reorganized us in the 1930s, that was a change they made. Then, the Army found they needed us and started recruiting. I was one of the first few intakes. Of course, they had made no preparations for us at all. None of the things we needed were there and the stores were reluctant to issue the things they had. After all, as the quartermaster said, they are called stores, not issues."

    Petraeus, Jackson and Gillespie all laughed while they refreshed their glasses. Asanee eyed Petraeus carefully, he seemed to be recovering from the depression that had affected him after the nuclear destruction of the previous Angelic army. She topped up her own glass of whisky and resumed.

    "They didn’t even have any underwear for us. We had to supply our own and civilian standard stuff didn’t last very long. Eventually, the Army got around to issuing the women soldiers with underwear. Guess what. It was camouflaged, the old tiger stripe pattern. What did they expect us to do? Run around a battlefield in our underwear?" There was another eruption of laughter and she eyed the other generals severely. "First person to say yes will be killed."

    Petraeus wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. "You think you had problems. One of my men actually shot me on a field exercise. Tripped over and his rifle discharged. I always said there were problems with the lethality of the old 5.56mm."

    "I wouldn't recommend trying it again now." Australian General Ken Gillespie sounded concerned. "The .50 Beowulf SLAP is a lot nastier. My boys prefer the Winchester .458 though. The Beowulf is a bit short-ranged for them."

    "My general experience," Petraeus was interrupted by a general groan at the pun. "Is that it is better not to get shot by any kind of bullet."

    "Sirs, Ma'am, apologies for interrupting but we have an urgent message from the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing. Their F-15s just intercepted an angel flying over our front lines. They're escorting it in to a forward air defense field now."

    "Escorting it in?" Jackson sounded surprised. "Didn't shoot it out of the sky?"

    "It was waving a very large white flag, Sir. The pilots thought it was better to try and bring him in. Sir Michael, there's a message for you in the British comms center. They're asking you to go down there to see it."

    Sir Michael Jackson frowned mightily at that. Senior generals did not go running around collecting their own messages. Unless they were very important or very sensitive indeed. "If you'll excuse me David, Ken, Asanee." He left hurriedly.

    "So, another angel is defecting." Asanee looked at her glass. "Is it me or is the situation in The Eternal City falling apart?"

    "It's not looking good for them." Petraeus suddenly looked a lot brighter. The fear of having to blast his way into The Eternal City was beginning to lift.

    "General Gillespie Sir," the communications officer was back. "A message in the Australian section for you. Very sensitive they say."

    "Thank you Captain. If you'll excuse me David?"

    Petraeus nodded. When he had gone, he looked quizzically at the contents of his glass. "Don't you just hate to be the last person to know what's going on in your own army?"

    "Pretty familiar feeling in ours David. We had a coup once, somebody forgot to tell the commander of a tank battalion what was going on. He arrived for work one day just in time to see the last M41 in his battalion leaving their laager. He ended up chasing them through the streets in a taxi. With Army this big from so many nations, things bound to be screwed up."

    "David," Sir Michael Jackson was back. "I've just had word from our team inside the Eternal City. There's been a coup in Heaven or so it seems. The message is a little confused but it seems that Yahweh has been deposed and Michael-Lan has replaced him. According to the message, Yahweh has gone into seclusion for a long period of meditation and contemplation."

    "Ah, so Michael killed him." Asanee nodded wisely. Like all Thai officers, she understood the subtle nuances in the announcements that followed a coup. She'd written more than one of them.

    "That's what our team leader says as well. Anyway, according to the official version, Yahweh asked Michael-Lan to take over in his absence. He's formed a council of state or something to rule Heaven and he wants to end the war."

    "Do we have any confirmation of this?" Petraeus snapped the words out.

    "We do, David." Gillespie had returned, a big grin dominating his face. "Our team has reported the same thing. More or less. Apparently, there was one hell of a fight in the Ultimate Temple, virtually wrecked the place according to my people. One followed by a very big splash in that lake we've all been looking at."

    "Just where are your people?" Jackson sounded envious. The Australian message sounded as if their insert team was close to the city center while his were in the outskirts. "On second thoughts, don't answer that."

    "And we have an Angel surrendering. This isn't a coincidence people." Petraeus turned to his communications panel. "call General Dorokov and General Ti Jen-chieh. Then get through to General James Conway. Tell him to get his Marine Corps task group ready. Major staff meeting coming up as soon as I've heard from that angel."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 78
    • Heaven-17 Forward Airfield. Heaven

    Humans had changed Heaven already, were recasting it in their own image and rebuilding it to their own needs. What had once been a bucolic pastoral scene with winding earthen roads separating lush green fields tended by happy peasants was gone forever. The roads were being converted to blacktop, straightened out and painted with strange hieroglyphic markings. Yet those changes were nothing compared with the human work he was standing on. A great blacktop strip, 4,000 yards long and 50 wide, with arrays of lights at both ends and smaller service strips all around it. Raphael-Lan would have been even less happy about the change if he had known that all the blacktop he was seeing was asphalt brought in from Hell.

    Around him, engineers were still hard at work building the airfield. Several teams were erecting strange buildings to house the human's fighter aircraft that were already operating from here. Inside those shelters, the aircraft would be safe from weather and sonic attacks. Raphael looked at the buildings with interest, noting that they were built on shock-absorbent mountings. The four F-15s that had brought him to this base were parked on the hardtop a few dozen yards away. Raphael noted that nobody really seemed interested in him. He didn’t let that impression delude him, these were humans and he was very sure that something incredibly lethal was trained on him. He was, of course, entirely correct in that assumption.

    The sound of Heaven had changed as well. The wind sighing in the trees, the rustle of grass, the far-off sound of the happy humans singing hymns as they worked in the fields had all disappeared. They had been drowned out by the growl of diesel engines, the roar of earth being scooped up and moved and the crash as anything that got in the way was ruthlessly chopped down. Even those sounds were drowned out now and then as the sky-ripping howl of jet engines briefly dominated the scene. Raphael reflected there were a lot of human aircraft around. The vicious little fighters, the great pot-bellied transports, the ominous shadows of the bombers, the humans surely did love their aircraft and they had some tailored to every need they could think of. Perhaps it was because they had no wings themselves and needed their machines to fly?

    There was a new sound, a curious pulsing noise. Another human aircraft was approaching, this one a helicopter. A large helicopter with a single rotor over its fuselage. It swung in to land a few dozen yards away from him. As soon as it was down, the tail ramp dropped and a group of humans walked out. Raphael reflected that was another change in Heaven. Before, the humans who lived here had been friendly and grateful for the kindness shown to them. These humans were not grateful for anything and certainly not friendly.

    Human Delegation, Heaven-17 Forward Airfield. Heaven

    "Mike is upset he isn’t here for this." Asanee spoke with a certain degree of relish.

    "One of us had to remain at base in case this is some sort of trap." Petraeus stood up and groaned. Unobtrusively he reached into a pocket and took a pair of Motrin tablets. "No disrespect meant Asanee, but I need a General who is also a politician here. We don't want to repeat the mistakes Norm Schwartzkopf made at the end of ODS."

    "No offense taken David. Mixing the two roles is a familiar thing in our Army. Three roles in fact, we also run businesses. Are you sure you do not wish to carry a gun to this meeting?" Asanee's right hip was weighed down by a Desert Eagle pistol, one that she had owned for years before the demands of the Salvation War had made its heavy-caliber bullets vital.

    Petraeus shook his head. "Not necessary. It's a subtle message to this messenger that I can have him killed without worrying about doing it myself." He paused for a second. "Have you ever actually fired that thing?"

    "At people? Twice. They both died. But it was mostly to impress others, to make them remember me. I'd put it away before all this started." Asanee saw they were approaching the angel patiently waiting on the taxiway and dropped back so she was following a respectful distance behind Petraeus.
    "You bring a flag of truce?" Petraeus's voice was clipped and certain. "And you are?"

    "I am Raphael-Lan-Yah . . . Lan-Michael. I come here under a flag of truce to bring you a message from Michael himself. He has seized power in The Eternal City. With the aid of his fellow-insurgents, he has killed Yahweh. He did this for one purpose and for one purpose only and that is to bring this war to and end. I am charged with negotiating an end to hostilities between us. As a first step we are declaring The Eternal City an open city. It will not be defended and it's gates will be thrown open to you."

    Petraeus glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw Asanee shake her head slightly. He agreed, what he had just heard was a skillful mixture of male bovine excrement and truth. The trouble with such mixtures was that even a small amount of male bovine excrement made the whole mix stink. "You expect me to believe that Michael overthrew Yahweh just to end this war?"

    Raphael smiled at the human standing below him. "Of course not. Yahweh had gone completely mad. What was once a peaceful and happy community here in Heaven was being torn apart. Yahweh had already betrayed you humans by slamming the doors of Heaven in your face. He betrayed us by ruling with fear, arresting and tormenting all those who displeased him. You have found the concentration camp he founded for those who dared disagree with him? There may be more, I do not know. If there are, I beg you, in Michael's name, to find them and rescue those within. Ending this war is a part of remedying the harm Yahweh's madness caused." Raphael looked sadly at the blacktop roads and airfield, heard the roar and hammering of machinery and his next words were truer than anything else he had said. "Michael understands that things have changed forever and we can never go back to the past."

    "So what are your terms?" Petraeus was slightly impatient. Apart from anything else, his back was killing him and he urgently wanted to sit down.

    "The simplest possible. Michael-Lan-Michael, Commander of the Angelic Host, ruler of the Eternal City and all that surrounds it, wishes to surrender unconditionally to you. He has ordered all resistance to you to cease with immediate effect. He asks you to understand that communications are slow and uncertain here in Heaven. We do not have much in the way of radio equipment."

    Petraeus heard the tiny cough from behind him. "You have some radio equipment?"

    "We do, we have the ability to make limited broadcasts from our headquarters to a few trusted allies. That was essential for our coup to succeed. But, for the rest, we rely on couriers and message relays. So, spreading the word of surrender will take some time. Also, there may be Yahweh loyalists and other hold-outs who may continue to resist. If so, their fate will be in their own hands. And yours of course."

    "So you expect us to kill off any resistance to your coup? Not going to happen. If they attack us, they die. That's all."

    "Heaven is a well-ordered place and we do not expect resistance. All we say is that if any misguided angels do resist, it will not be our doing. If we can, we will throw the gates of the Eternal City open to you."

    "If you can?"

    "Those gates are vast and have not been opened since they were built. We are not even sure they can still be opened. If they cannot, we must ask you to blow them open."

    Petraeus nodded. "Very well. On behalf of the Yamantau Council and subject to their approval, I will accept your unconditional surrender. General Asanee, call General Sir Michael Jackson and advise him that the Angelic Host has surrendered. He is to spread the word to our Army commanders. Raphael-Lan, return to Michael and tell him we have accepted his unconditional surrender and will be moving to occupy the Eternal City." His voice hardened noticeably. "And make sure he understands that if there is any treachery, there won't be an Eternal City left to occupy."

    Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

    General Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of Staff of the HEA and Commander British Forces, Heaven, sighed. It was over. Today, July 20th, would forever be Salvation Day. He knew this wasn't the end of the fighting, Hell still wasn't pacified completely two years after the collapse of Satan's rule. Then there was the problem of the rest of Heaven and Hell. The areas occupied by the daemons and angels were only a small proportion of the total land area of the worlds. Who knew what else was out there? Hell had already thrown one nasty surprise at them. There would be more.

    "Sir, your 11 o'clock is waiting." Captain Rye was standing at the door, her clipboard in hand.

    "Harriet, get through to all our sub-commanders ASAP. Tell them, Michael-Lan in Heaven has just surrendered unconditionally. Then arrange a portal for General Petraeus to go to Yamantau so he can brief them on what has happened."

    "It's really over, Sir?"

    "If Michael's authority holds, yes." Jackson sighed again. Back to routine. "Now trot that person in."

    It was one of the penalties of being Chief of Staff. If he didn’t have enough to do in effectively running much of the HEA and all British military forces in the Heaven Theatre of Operations he also had to meet with dozens of visitors who arrived every day. Many were essentially official sightseers who had come up with some excuse to come and see Heaven, but others were a mix of boffins and crackpots who were convinced that they held the key to the ultimate victory and wanted Jackson’s backing before their proposals were sent to General Petraeus. It was his responsibility to search through the garbage and come up with the odd nugget of gold that was sometimes hidden within.

    At least he was no longer directly responsible for the command and administration of the 1st Commonwealth Army; General Sir David Richards, who had been pencilled in as the next Chief of the General Staff before the war had extended Sir Richard Dannatt’s tenure, had taken over that command. The army was still expanding, two new British divisions and a third Canadian division had recently arrived in Heaven, but it was probably now very close to its natural maximum size.

    His attention snapped back to his visitor. Fortunately, he didn't seem to have missed anything significant.

    “…And because one of my ancestors was deeply involved with the guns and howitzers I’ve always had a deep interest in them as weapons. Of course when I decided to join the army the Royal Artillery seemed to be the natural choice, even though modern artillery never seemed to quite have the attraction of the really big weapons from the world wars…”

    “So you never got your Jacket then?” Jackson asked the ageing Royal Artillery Colonel for no other reason than to stop his rather meandering explanation of why he was here.

    The Colonel was a retired officer brought back into service, what in World War One would have been called a ‘dug-out’. His job was to run a training depot for National Servicemen assigned to the Royal Artillery.

    “Ah, no, Sir. I’ve never had the pleasure of serving in the Royal Arse Hortillery.” Colonel Jonathon Cleeve replied, laughing at his own joke.

    General Jackson’s stony face, indicating that he did not share the joke brought him up short. He cleared his throat a couple of times, rather nervously.

    “Very funny I’m sure.” Jackson said, his tone of voice indicating very clearly that he thought otherwise. “What exactly was it you came to see me about, Colonel Cleeve, I trust it wasn’t to give me a history of British Army railway artillery in both world wars?”

    “No, Sir, not at all.” Cleeve replied. “I just thought you would want some background. I’m here because I heard you had a potential problem in breaching the walls of the Eternal City and I thought I could offer you a non-nuclear option.

    “One of the 18inch howitzers we built just after the end of the First World War has survived as a proof-firing weapon and is currently at Larkhill.”

    Jackson nodded, he had seen the howitzer a few times, both when it had been at Woolwich and later after it had been moved to Larkhill when Woolwich had closed.

    “Well in 1943 a concrete penetrating shell was developed and test fired; it was planned to use it against German fortifications in France and Italy, but in the event it was not chosen to deploy the howitzer. It was a mistake in my opinion, but…”

    “Get to the point, Colonel.” Jackson interrupted irritably.

    “Well, Sir it struck me that the combination of the 18inch howitzer and the concrete penetrating shell would be a perfect way of blasting a breach in the walls. We’d need a week, or two to knock up a proper mounting because I don’t think the current proof-firing sled would be really suitable. Once the howitzer and ammunition were ready we could open a portal in front of it and fire at the target from this side, so we wouldn’t even have to move it very far. It would cut down a great deal on logistical problems that way.”

    General Jackson hated to burst the bubble of someone so enthusiastic and knowledgeable about his subject. He took no pleasure in it.

    “I am sorry to have to tell you, Colonel, that within the last few minutes, Heaven has surrendered unconditionally? There apparently no longer a need to breach the walls of the Eternal City.”

    Colonel Cleeve looked both downcast and like a man who had just seen the bottom of his world fall out. It looked like it was back to the training depot for him.

    “No, I, ah…hadn’t heard that, Sir.” He said quietly.

    “Cheer up, Colonel.” Jackson said. “I’ll need to speak to Major General Maxwell, but I am sure we can find a place for the howitzer once it is on a proper mounting. We may have to open the Gates on the City ourselves. The Angels are not certain they can throw open the gates themselves. Also, we may well have won the war against Hell and Heaven, but there is a lot of occupation duty in front of us. There is also the matter of what other nasties might lurk out there.”

    Cleeve brightened up considerably at this.

    “Of course we will also need a knowledgeable officer to oversee this particular project. I am sure we can spare you from the training depot to take this on.”

    “Thank you very much, Sir. You will mention this to General Petraeus?”

    “I’ll make sure he hears about it, Colonel.” Jackson told him. “I’m sure he will find this very interesting. I believe the Americans still have some railway guns in preservation, so they may follow your lead if you can pull this off.”

    Underground Command Facility, Yamantau, Russia, July 20, 2010

    "And so, contingent upon Michael-Lan-Michael's surrender being effective, resistance ceasing as per his promise and on this council's agreement with our acceptance of his unconditional surrender, all major combat operations will cease. The occupation of The Eternal City will take place as soon as we can get troops into position. That should be within a few hours." General of the Armies David Petraeus swallowed two more Motrin tablets and sat down.

    All fifteen members of the Yamantau Council were present in person, an achievement that would have been impossible before the spread of portal transportation. Now, Yamantau had its own portal room and its own staff of sensitives. The applause from the assembled Council Members was deafening.

    Chairman of the Yamantau Council Vladimir Putin waited until the noise quieted of its own accord. Then he spoke softly, relying on the sound system to ensure his voice carried to every corner of the room. "I formally propose the motion that the declaration of unconditional surrender proposed by Michael-Lan-Michael be accepted."

    "Seconded!" President Sarkozy of France emphatically agreed. The roar of acclamation was convincing.

    "Comrades, I would like to make a another proposal." President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil spoke as soon as the applause wound down. "That we declare this day to be Salvation Day, a worldwide holiday forever to be celebrated as an affirmation of humanity winning its freedom and liberty from an age-old curse. Never before in the history of humanity has such a victory been won. And let us not forget that in doing so, we have freed the daemons and angels from those who would oppress them also. Today is indeed Salvation Day for us all."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 79
    • SAS Detachment, Eternal City, Heaven

    "We've just got word. The excitement in Dempsey's voice was obvious. "Michael-Lan is surrendering unconditionally. The war is over."

    "Don't jump to that conclusion lad." Crowleigh was very cautious. "The Septics made that mistake back in the old world. What you mean is that major combat operations are over. We and our children will be sorting out the mess up here for generations. And not everybody will be honoring that surrender, you mark my words. There'll be a lot of shooting yet. What are our orders?"

    "We're to get into uniform and make ourselves obvious. Start patrolling around this area, make sure everybody sees armed humans on the streets. And we're to make it obvious we're in charge. The message says, don't throw our weight around but make it clear our word is the one that counts. Got the message flimsy here." Dempsey passed the yellow paper over.

    Crowleigh nodded. Dempsey had summarized the message very well. Time to give orders. "Right lads. Into uniform and pick up our arms. You heard Dempsey, we're to patrol our patch in a military manner and take no shit from anybody." There was a chuckle around the team. Crowleigh's Scottish burr had added a note of class to the orders he had summarized.

    Street of Ceaseless Exaltation, Eternal City, Heaven

    "This can't be happening." Rubibael-Lan-Dasarapael didn't actually know who he was speaking to, if anybody at all. He wasn't even sure if he was speaking to himself. He was simply trying to comprehend the unbelievable sight that was now unfolding before him. It was as if saying the words was enough to bring them into a reality in which he had a place. As a humble Ishim, he had never had any ideas above his station but, lowly as he was, he had always had the humans to look down on. The doors set in the massive gate before him were open and humans were pouring in as if they owned the place. That was when Rubibael-Lan had expressed his disbelief. Only, it wasn't an expression, it was a howl of anguish.

    "Move back. Get away from the gates." The human spoke sharply, without much attempt at friendliness. The steel helmet that covered his head and the nape of his neck gave him a ferocious look that was out of place in the Eternal City.

    "I cannot. It is my place to y . o. . o. .o. .o . . w." Rubibael jumped in the air and howled with pain as a rifle butt slammed down on his foot. He hopped up and down on one leg, trying to nurse his bruised toes with his hands. His wings fluttered as he used them to stay balanced.

    "When I tell you to move, you move. Understand? We're going to blow the gates and you don’t want to be here when they come down."

    Rubibael nodded and hobbled off down the street, abandoning his position as marker distributor for the Mahatalabhuva Gate. He looked behind to see if the human was laughing at him but the man had seemingly forgotten all about him and was doing some of the mysterious things that these humans did. Somehow that made it all the more humiliating.

    USS Turner Joy, DD-951 AUTEC Transition Point, Earth

    "It's really all over?" Sophia Metaxas was hanging on the hatch leading to the comms room, listening to the roar of cheering and singing that was spreading throughout the ship. If the news was false, there would be a very unhappy crew.

    Commander Reynolds was already in the crowded compartment. "Hi Sophia. It's true. It hasn't been announced over the civilian networks yet, not officially anyway, but it is confirmed. We won. Heaven's folded. Yahweh is dead, Michael is in charge. Temporarily at least."

    Sophia gave a piercing scream of delight and her hat hit the overhead. Halfway through the celebration, the comms equipment started to rattle again. The message came in and was spooled out. Reynolds tore it off and read it carefully. "Uh-oh."

    Her stomach clenched as the words came out. Surely it wasn't going to be revealed as a hoax or simply denied was it? "Problems? Please don’t tell me the war is still on."

    "It isn't. It's over all right. But there's a portal being punched through from Heaven to here. We're to be first through."

    "You mean we're going to lead the fleet into Heaven?" Rochelle Emerson had just come up from the engine rooms. "That's wonderful."

    "No, it isn't. Reynolds was profoundly cynical. "They're sending us in because we're an old, steam powered destroyer with a crew of hired misfits that nobody will really miss if everything goes sour. Oh yes, and because we still have our spray equipment on board so if we run into the crap that killed off the seas around here, we can start to get rid of it."

    Sophia looked around at the wreckage that had once been a near idyllic tropical island. The island was a brown wasteland, scoured of life. The beautiful green trees and parks, the white-roofed houses, they had all gone. Swept away or shattered into fragments by the succession of super-hurricanes that had devastated Bermuda. The one-beautiful beaches were scarred by the wrecks of ships that hadn't made it to the Hellgate before being overwhelmed by the storms. Just off Turney Joy's port bow was the wreckage of a Spanish destroyer that hadn't made it through. She was red with rust now and had rolled over, partly crushing a French corvette alongside her. The seas themselves were dead, the Red Poison had killed nearly everything in the area off and the sealife was taking a long time to recolonize the area. In a way, Bermuda was symbolic of Earth after the Salvation War. Battered, bloody and hurt so badly it would take a long time to recover. But, recover it would and it was something else as well. Victorious. Bermudans would come back and rebuild their homes, Sophia knew it and in a way she envied them. This old destroyer was just about the only thing left of her life. When it was gone, she really would have nothing.

    "Where are we going?" Her voice was subdued as the realization of what this victory had cost sank in.

    "A place called Lake of Placid Contemplation. Apparently, it's right in the middle of the Eternal City. If we get there and rule it safe, then all of these will be following us." Reynolds waved at the ships surrounding them. The aircraft carriers George H.W. Bush, Enterprise and Harry S Truman, the cruisers Pyotr Veliky, Sejong Daewang, Cowpens, Port Royal and Almirante Grau. Two dozen destroyers at least, most of them AEGIS ships or their equivalent. Then there were the amphibs. There hadn't been a collection of amphibious warfare ships like this since Inchon more that half a century before. At least six LHDs, a dozen or more LPDs and LSDs, two French LHAs, the Mistral and Tonnerre, a seven-ship British amphibious squadron, some of the big Russian amphibious hovercraft. Those were just the ones she could see. The sea was studded with ships and Sophia realized they were all waiting to go to the Lake of Placid Contemplation. She hoped it was a big lake.

    "We've got a picture of the lake coming through now." Reynolds held it up and Sophia sighed with relief. It looked as if it was indeed a big lake.

    Just Inside The Himilheothon Gate, The Eternal City, Heaven

    "Who the hell are you? We're trying to decide how to blow this thing up." The Officer of Engineers was irate for a number of reasons, one of which was he'd had a conversation with his doctor a few hours before. The lump in his tongue was cancer, a fast-growing, very malignant cancer. It was already spreading and it was far too late to operate. It always had been, this type of cancer was a killer. Lieutenant Chard would be going home soon, to spend the last couple of months with his family before the cancer got so bad there would be no point in going on. He had already decided to sign out when that happened.

    Another thing annoying him was the task he had been set. Blowing this gate open. The problem was, if he just blew the hinges, the gate would fall down all right. Only it weighed somewhere between 38,000 and 88,000 tons and that weight of door hitting the ground in a 100-meter arc would cause a fair earthquake. From what he had seen of the buildings around here, it wouldn’t take much of a shock to bring them down as well. So, he was going to blow the gate in a series of sections using linear shaped charges to carve off large sections of the meter-thick wood. That was another part of his forward planning. He already had a truck waiting and it would rush some of the wood back to Earth where he could spend his retirement carving it into furniture. After all, a man had to leave some heirlooms to his descendants.

    The final straw was this man who had suddenly appeared in front of him, waving documents that gave him permission to film something or other using this gate. Just what he needed when he was running against the clock. Every kind of clock.

    "We've been given permission to film an episode of our show here." The man with the moustache seemed to have enormous patience. "If everything goes the way we plan, we should be finished in a few minutes."

    "And how often does everything go the way you plan?" Chard was not a patient man.

    "This is a quite simple test. Nothing much can go wrong with it. We just need to have some people go backwards and forwards through the gate and that's it. We'll be out of your way in . . . ." The man hesitated slightly. "Thirty minutes?"

    Chard nodded. "Very well. You have thirty minutes. Not a minute more. Then we're going to start demolishing the gate."

    The man with the moustache looked up at the huge gates with interest. "Now that will be a really big boom."

    Shin Meiwa US-2 Flying Boat, Atsugi Air Base, Japan.

    "Welcome to our aircraft, kitten." Captain Oushi Terukata bowed respectfully as the couple stepped on to his aircraft. "We have set your portal generation equipment up in the stern of the aircraft. It will be ready for you to use as soon as we transit to Heaven. Before then, the forward cabin is quite comfortable. Our flight plan is quite simple. We will take off from here and fly through the Heavengate at Yokosuka. This will bring us out over our Third Army Group. There may be some delay there due to portal movements. We have yet to hear from the Chinese air traffic control. After we have transited to Heaven, we will fly to The Eternal City and land on the lake in the middle. Our estimated flight time is two hours."

    "Thank you Captain." As usual Dani spoke for kitten. "You have an interesting aircraft here, I've never seen a flying boat before."

    "There are very few large ones like this left now. We have less than ten and the Chinese have five. They are the last of their kind." Oushi paused for a second. "kitten, we understand you like ginseng tea? His Imperial Majesty has sent some from the Palace's own stocks for you. If you would like a cup now?"

    Dani glanced at kitten then nodded. "That is very kind of you Captain. I know kitten will enjoy that."

    Outside The Himilheothon Gate, The Eternal City, Heaven

    "Of course, what we really need are those two maniacs on television who spend their lives finding different things to blow up." Colonel Paschal looked at the massive structure with something close to trepidation.

    "They're already here. Apparently their viewers asked them about the myth that rich people can't get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So they've got Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Paul Allen and Larry Page plus four street people they found in San Francisco wearing accelerometers and walking backwards and forwards through the doors in that gate. Seeing if there is any difference to the resistance they experience when entering the City."

    "Gonzo science." Doctor Kuroneko spoke dismissively.

    "Better than no science at all." Doctor Surlethe protested. "It may not be science as we know it but they are teaching people to think about problems logically and carry out experiments to test their conclusions. And put proper controls on those experiments. That's a big step forward from making assertions and then repeating them."

    "Apparently Gates asked the one with the moustache whether they were going to blow the gate open and the only reply he got was 'Jamie want big boom.' You'll note they don’t actually handle the explosives themselves on the show." Colonel Warhol shook his head. "Those gates are a real problem though. The demolition teams are having fits all around the city. Their consensus is to bring them down in sections."

    The DIMO(N) team got into their Humvees and set off for the Himilheothon Gate. They were strangely aware that this was likely to be the last time their team would get a chance to come together like this. With the war ending, DIMO(N) would be losing its primary reason for existence and would be wound up. James Randi's team was already being demobilized, its primary function of finding sensitives who could contact the Netherworld was already obsolescent. Warhol sighed gently to himself, remembering the frantic early days of the war. Then, everything had been thrown together, haste being the over-riding driver. It hadn't mattered how much something had cost or how jury-rigged the system had been, if it happened quickly and got results, it had been funded. Then had come the jarring feeling of disbelief as Abigor's army had crumpled under the massive firepower of the human armies in Iraq. Somebody ought to write a history of DIMO(N), Warhol thought. We lost so much of our heritage in this war, we need more to replace it.

    His thought train was interrupted by an excitable red-headed man addressing the television cameras around the gate. "And our data set is quite conclusive. Some of the richest and some of the poorest people in America have been through the gates of Heaven and there was no difference in the resistance they experienced. None at all. I love consistent data. So the myth that rich men can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven?"

    "Busted." The entire TV crew echoed the verdict with relish.

    Shores of the Lake of Placid Contemplation, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    There was much to think about. Ohalam-Lan-Derepael looked out at the great lake and shook his head. The great storms of thunder that had made the whole city shake had dispersed and everything was tranquil again. Except for the great splash that had been seen in the middle of the lake a few hours ago. For the first time in countless millennia, Yahweh was no longer resident in the Eternal City. Ohalam hoped that he would enjoy his vacation, wherever it was. The Great General Michael-Lan was now in charge of Heaven until Yahweh returned. That was what puzzled him. Why had Michael-Lan surrendered so quickly? Could not the Great General think of a way to defeat the humans the way he had defeated the fallen Ones and driven them from Heaven.

    Humans. Ohalam had great difficulty getting his mind around the problems they were causing. They had been menial servants, of little account for so long. How had this happened? How had they become the ruthless killers who had destroyed The Morningstar and cast down The Fallen Ones and then proceeded to do the same here? It made no sense.

    The drone of turboprop engines interrupted Ohalam's train of thought. It was a human aircraft, one of the steadily increasing number that were passing over the City. Ohalam adjusted his eyes for long-distance vision and looked at it. A white aircraft with a blue stripe down its fuselage and its nose and tail painted bright orange. Quite different from the blue or dark red paint scheme the human aircraft usually wore. He watched as the aircraft circled around, obviously inspecting the area. In awe of the glories of the Eternal City, he thought.

    Shin Meiwa US-2 Flying Boat, Circling the Lake of Placid Contemplation, Eternal City, Heaven.

    "It's a bit of a dump isn't it?" Dani was looking out of a porthole, using the powerful binoculars the aircraft carried to search for survivors. That was, after all, the primary role of the US-2.

    "All the reports say that." Oushi had come back into the cabin to make sure than his passengers were comfortable prior to landing. He was well aware that if kitten got as much as a bruise from a rough landing, his life would not be worth living. The old custom of seppuku might well be considered an appropriate form of apology in that event. "When looking the first time, impressive with all the precious stones but beneath that, not so much. Now, we will be landing on the lake very soon. We have check it carefully and it is very smooth so the landing should be just like a land aircraft touching down. If there are ripples on the water, they might cause some jolts, so please, be very careful and make sure you are properly strapped in. After we have landed, kitten, my orders are that you are in charge from that point onwards. Just tell us what you need us to do."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 80
    • Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

    The thunderous roll of explosions shook the roof of the tent. Overhead, the sky was ablaze with colored lights as another salvo of fireworks threw their cargoes high into the air. They had barely begun to fade when they were replaced by an even more profuse display.

    "What is going on?" Maion-Lan-Lemuel was confused by the firework display. "Are you being attacked?"

    "No way, the war is over." Lieutenant Grace Zachariah looked at her patient carefully. "Yahweh is dead. Michael killed him. His first act after taking power was to surrender unconditionally to us. We're occupying The Eternal City now. The fireworks display you can see is the celebration. If you think this is good, try watching the display at Las Vegas on television."

    "Michael loves Las Vegas," Maion spoke reflectively. Her mind was still trying to accept all the things that were happening to her and many of them hadn't properly been absorbed yet. "He loved New Orleans as well. When Yahweh wiped it out with a hurricane, it was one of the few times I have seen Michael really angry. Yahweh is really dead?"

    The message had sunk in at last. The realization that the supreme authority figure in heaven that she had taken for granted all her life was gone left Maion looking lost and bewildered. As she had become accustomed to doing, she turned to Lemuel for support and guidance. "What will we do now?"

    "We will get well, then we will go back to The Eternal City. There is so much that needs to be done, so many things that need to be put right. And there are many questions I wish to ask of Michael-Lan, ones that will take him much time to explain."

    Maion felt the impact of those words and they perturbed her. She stretched her wings out. They were still small but had almost quadrupled in size since they had started to regrow from the stumps left of her old ones. A few more weeks and they would be regrown. Then she would be able to fly again. The price being paid was that she was ravenously hungry most of the time. That was an unfamiliar feeling to her, nobody in the Eternal City ever got really hungry. "Lemuel. Remember Michael saved my life."

    "Having first endangered it. And having addicted us to his drugs." Lemuel's voice had no hint of doubt or any lack of resolve. "There is much he must answer for."

    "Well, you may have to wait." Grace's voice was sharp. She didn’t like things that got in the way of her ward running smoothly. "Michael is in charge of Heaven right now. Whether he stays there is up to General Petraeus. But, at the moment, he's our person and we need him there. To be blunt Lemuel, we need him more than we need you. So don't get in our way."

    Her words were interrupted by another barrage of fireworks explosions. Lemuel looked at them sadly, making Grace remember that, while the entire human race was celebrating the fall of Heaven, to Lemuel, the same celebrations marked the end of their history. Whatever happened next would be a new world for them. Nothing would ever be quite the same for the angels.

    "You celebrate the end of the war?" Lemuel was confused. "I thought you humans loved war?"

    "We're very good at it. That doesn't mean we like it. That may be why we are good at it, we want it ended." Grace wasn't quite certain of what she was saying or what she wanted to say. "For us, real war isn’t a game or a hobby. It's a very real horror. Nobody knows that more than people who work in military medical facilities. You know those angels that came in with radiation injuries and cancers? We weren't able to save any of them. Not one. They all died. I'd say if Michael made it unnecessary for us to do that to your entire race, then you should be damned grateful to him. Even if the personal cost to you two was high."

    She stopped talking, realizing that she had been shaken out of her professional persona. Watching the sick and radiation-poisoned angels dying had been a harrowing experience. It had been made bearable only by the nearby sight of the crippled victims of Yahweh's concentration camp recovering from their injuries. She saw Lemuel staring at her, his eyes confused by conflicting emotions. Welcome to the human race, Lemuel. Moral ambivalence is the name of the game from now on. But, I guess it always was, you just fooled yourselves when you pretended otherwise. She completed Maion's treatment chart and ordered another set of meals to be sent up to her. Her wings might be recovering but she needed a lot of food to provide the raw materials for regeneration.

    USS Turner Joy, DD-951 AUTEC Transition Point, Earth

    The fleet was lit overall, every mast and yardarm twinkling with lights while searchlights swept the sky in complex patterns. Overhead, the beams mixed with the explosions as some of the ships fired off their chaff and flare decoys in an attempt to emulate fireworks. Turner Joy was not taking part in the celebration, not from any desire to remain dark and silent, but because her crew was hard at work getting ready for the transit to Heaven.

    "Are we ballasted properly?" Captain Reynolds was concerned about the transfer from salt water to the fresh water he presumed filled the Lake of Placid Contemplation. It would be acutely embarrassing if his ship was to transit into Heaven and promptly sink because of the lower density of fresh water.

    "Yes Sir. We've made the 2.5 percent correction needed. By the way Enterprise is standing out of the water, so has she."

    Reynolds nodded and reminded himself to check the buoyancy numbers for himself before making the transit. "Any word from Heaven?"

    "Nothing since the last sitrep Sir. The flying boat carrying kitten and her equipment landed safely on the Lake about an hour ago. Wait one Sir."

    There was a long pause from the communications room before the voice at the other end resumed. "New message has just come through, Sir. We'll be seeing the portal forming very shortly and are to transit as soon as it is fully formed . We're reminded it's daylight in Heaven at this time. We're also ordered to be at full action stations when we go through, closed up and ready to engage any hostile forces."

    "In a friendly manner of course." Reynolds laughed, the time-honored U.S. Navy caution was a legend. "I could make myself wish that somebody that side would try something. All I ever wanted was to get Yahweh under my guns for a few minutes. Now he's gone, we'll never get that chance."

    "Sir, portal forming dead ahead."

    "Very good. Here we go people."

    Shores of the Lake of Placid Contemplation, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    The human flying machine didn't seem to be doing very much. Ohalam-Lan-Derepael had been watching it carefully but it seemed reluctant to erupt into action and start destroying everything around it. That was when he stopped in amazement at the realization he was afraid of these humans. That sudden insight mad him feel cold, a chill running down his back, between his wings. Yet the aircraft just sat there, floating quietly in the lake, doing nothing. Or so it seemed.

    The portal formation took him by surprise. The great black ellipse started to form beside the flying boat, spreading quickly to reach enormous size. What happened next served only to heighten Ohalam's fears. A ship came through the portal, one larger than anything he had ever seen before. It came through fast, a white wave around its bows, its long-barrelled guns scanning the horizon. Ohalam understood what that meant, the messages from the Ultimate Temple had been quite clear on that. Human guns were deadly. Don't make them use them. Otherwise the whole city will suffer the fate of the Incomparable Legion of Light.

    The gray warship slowed once she was through the gate and clear of the flying boat. She was doing something, Ohalam couldn’t understand what, but he guessed these humans saw it as being important. He contented himself with the knowledge that things would all become clear in due course. After all, hadn't Michael-Lan said all would be well in the end?

    USS Turner Joy, DD-951 Lake of Placid Contemplation, Eternal City, Heaven

    "We're through, Sir."

    "Very good, change course ten degrees, take us clear of kitten's Shin Meiwa. Water conditions?"

    "Fresh water as expected, buoyancy compensation as calculated. We're stable. No sign of organic contamination. The environmental people are taking samples now. Preliminary analysis should be through soon. Sonar room reports . . . . " Sophia's voice hesitated. "Sir, they can't find the bottom. The echo sounder shows no returns. Whatever this lake is, it's deep."

    Reynolds nodded. "One day, we'll probably send a bathysphere down to find out what is down there. Until then, we'll try not to sink here. Finding us again would give even Bob Ballard conniptions. Comms room. Send to USS Enterprise, 'portal exit secure'.

    Shores of the Lake of Placid Contemplation, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    The gray ship had moved well clear of the portal and had come to a near halt. Only her guns and the strange, mesh-like things that rotated on her masts were moving. The threat they purveyed was frighteningly tangible. What came next was downright terrifying.

    A massive structure, the front edge curved, the top flat started to come through the portal. It was huge, far bigger than any structure Ohalam had seen before. Already it dwarfed the first ship that had come through and yet it kept on coming. As more and more of it emerged, he could see human aircraft parked on its deck. There were dozens of them, all painted with the red and gray camouflage that he already knew was the color humans associated with their conquest of Hell. The message they intended to send was, to Ohalam, obvious. They intended to treat Heaven the same way as they had treated Hell. More and more of the ship came through. The superstructure, looking almost ludicrously tiny against the sheer size of the massive hull, appeared next. Its gray shape was marred by the number 65 painted in darker gray. Finally the rear end of the great ship appeared. As soon as it was through, there was an ear-splitting scream from the front of the ship and four of the aircraft on its deck were launched. They dropped slightly as they left the deck, then climbed away to start circling over the Lake. Less than a minute later, they were joined by four more.

    The great ship curved away, the water foaming at its stern as it accelerated away from the portal. As it passed the first ship through, there was a load blast from a siren. Ohalam realized that the great ship was saluting the small one and the aircraft that had opened the portal. Then she was gone, moving quickly away to a distant part of the lake, still launching aircraft as she went.

    Ohalam's jaw was open with sheer shock as one great ship after another followed the first through the portal. They were different, most of them. Two were almost repeats of the first great ship through, others were larger versions of the small ship that had led this massive fleet. His mind was already overwhelmed by the sight that was unfolding in front of him and he was barely aware of the growing crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle.

    The last ships through were smaller versions of the great aircraft-carrying ships that had led the parade. They had a different air about them though, they had aircraft on their decks but different ones. That isn't surprising thought Ohalam, there isn't much room left in the sky for more aircraft. That was when he noticed a tiny detail, one almost missed in the sheer awesome grandeur of the demonstration. The aircraft that had opened the whole show had taken off and left. Probably on its way back to Earth.

    Still, the demonstration continued to unfold. The parade of ships through the portal had finally ended. Some were already on their ways to the far corners of the Lake. Others were almost in front of Ohalam's vantage point and were doing strange things. Their sterns seemed to be dropping and gates opening as if they were sucking water into their hulls. Meanwhile, they too started launching the aircraft on their decks. It was odd, these ones rose straight up with the fans over their bodies rotating so fast they blurred. The helicopters formed up in mid-air and started to disperse, heading in neat groups for key points around the Lake. Ohalam could see where they were going, the Temple of the League of Holy Court, the Temple of Righteousness and, of course, The Ultimate Temple. Every key administrative point in the city. Idly, a curious thought worked its way into Ohalam's mind. Was grouping all the administrative buildings in The Eternal City so closely together a good idea?

    Yet more unexpected things happened before him. Some were great, some were small. The greatest of them was the sudden emergence of human vehicles from the rear ends of the ships that had halted before the city. For a strange moment, Ohalam thought that the ships were giving birth, but then common sense kicked in. These were not great creatures, they were just human machines. He watched the vehicles leave the ships and start circling behind their parent ships, doubtless waiting for the rest of the formation to join them. The small thing was that a group of humans carrying guns and dressed in red-and-gray uniforms were waiting on the shoreline. One had a box with a long wire sticking out the top and he was speaking to somebody. What he was saying, Ohalam could not hear.

    The Ultimate Temple, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    "Well, that was unexpected." Gabriel-Lan-Michael looked down at the fleet assembling in the Lake below the Temple.

    "Humans always did know how to make an entrance. They also know how to do the unexpected. I was expecting them to come in through the gates and filter through the city, consolidating their hold as they went. I wasn't expecting the fleet to arrive in the middle of the city as well. It's a pity Gabby, I was hoping for a little more time to consolidate our position." Michael looked down at the fleet as well, noting how troops from the helicopters were already fanning out to seize every major building of importance in the administrative quarter. Obviously, Lemuel-Lan had been speaking freely about how the city was laid out."

    "Is this very bad for us?" Gabriel wasn't as confident as Michael, that had always been his downfall.

    "No, not really. I've always know the humans would set the agenda and timetable at this point. We have to just go with the flow. Think on our feet, Gabby, we've always had to think on our feet. Now is no different. If we don’t adapt, we end up like Yahweh."

    "He did make a splash didn't he?" Gabriel-Lan-Michael was amused at the memory. "I wonder if he made a dent when he hit the lakebed."

    "If there is a lakebed. We're never found one. Perhaps he will just sink forever." Michael looked at the helicopters. Sure enough, a group of more than two dozen were heading right for the Ultimate Temple. "Here we go Gabby. Keep smiling and whatever you do, don’t do anything threatening."

    The helicopters touched down, disgorging troops that quickly spread out through the buildings that formed The Ultiamte Temple complex. Michael watched them separate out the strange creatures that had amused Yahweh so much and put them to one side. Doubtless for study, he thought. Humans really like to study unusual things.

    More humans were fanning out across the steps that led up to the inner sanctum of the Ultimate Temple. Michael waved to his people and they settled down on the steps that had once led up to Yahweh's throne. "I would strongly advise everybody to keep their hands in sight and make no sudden movements." They were Michael's last words before the Marines broke into the Inner Sanctum.

    "You, who are you." The leader of the Marines snapped out the question.

    "I am Michael-Lan-Michael. Pro-tem leader and head of the council of angels running Heaven following the death of Yahweh."

    "We'll see about that. Consider yourselves under arrest. All of you will remain here until General Petraeus decides what to do with you.

    Shores of the Lake of Placid Contemplation, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    The AAV-7 amphibious armored personnel carriers had finally finished launching from their mother ships. The circles straightened out into long lines and they swam to the white sand of the beach. The noise of the diesels as they pulled the AAV-7s out of the water and on to the sand drowned out pretty much everything and it was a blessed relief when the majority of the vehicles waddled away to establish occupation and a growing web of check points across The Eternal City. One small group of vehicles pulled up on the beach and unloaded there. The headquarters of the Marine Regiment that had just landed.

    One of the small group of soldiers waiting on the beach walked over to the newly established beachfront headquarters. "Sir, I am Captain Tomas Villaflor, 4th Scout Ranger Company, Philippine Army."

    The Marine commander looked at him and grinned. "We were told to expect special forces detachments. Colonel Robert Fortuna, 5th Marine Regiment."

    "Please to meet you, Sir." The Captain also grinned. "But I must regret to advise you that, according to your operations schedule, you are three minutes late."
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 81
    • Just Outside The Himilheothon Gate, The Eternal City, Heaven

    "Stand by. The first section is coming down. Fire in the hole!" Lieutenant Chard gave the warning and carried out a last visual check to make sure the blast area was clear. He noted the TV crew had set their cameras up behind a series of blast screens and were assiduously filming all the work going on. They were well clear though, and they had finished their filming within the 30 minutes promised so Chard wasn't going to make their lives difficult. Then, sure that everything was safe, he pressed the firing button.

    The linear shaped charge went off with a flat, vicious crack. The explosives cut through the meter-thick wood without any discernable trouble but for a brief second nothing seemed to have happened. Just as Chard was beginning to think the demolition charge had failed, a square of wood five meters wide by ten high dropped away and crashed to the ground. He felt the vibration from the impact as the 32.5 ton slab hit the ground and briefly he wondered if there was much damage inside the city. He'd had a brief look at the buildings there and he hadn't been impressed. Still, that was the Jellies problem. They were the ones who had let their city decay.

    "Second section coming down! Fire in the Hole!" He keyed a second code in and pressed the firing button again. A matching slab from the other gate slammed into the ground. Chard looked around as the dust settled. The matching pieces of wood were already being dragged clear of the gates. Soon, a crane would load them into the trucks Chard had waiting. Then, they would be rushed off, through a portal to Earth and his home in Devon. It would take an Earth month to destroy these gates completely but he wouldn't be around to see that. By the end of the week, he would be retiring. Another Officer of Engineers would finish the job.

    There was a strange atmosphere at the demolition site. The humans who lived in the slums that surrounded the gate were watching the explosions silently, their attitude hard to analyze. Chard had been expecting them to be cheering the sight of Heaven's gates falling to humans yet that was hardly the case. They seemed more bewildered than anything yet there was resentment and apprehension in the mix as well. A very different reaction from the adulation that had met the human troops when they liberated the Hellpit.

    Up at the gate, cherry-picker hoist vehicles were already lifting his engineers up so they could blow the next section of wood clear from the gates. The first priority was to open a hole large enough to get the tanks and armored infantry carriers through. Once that was done, they could take their time with the rest.

    Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Eternal City, Heaven.

    "It's good to have you back, Colonel." General William Roland was being mildly sarcastic. Despite this particular battalion being part of his division, he had very rarely seen it. For some reason, General Petraeus had taken an interest in the unit and kept removing it from its parent division in order to undertake a variety of specialized missions. Roland wasn't too perturbed by that, the battalion's performance in those missions had brought credit on him as well. Also, during its unusual career, the battalion had grown from a normal tank battalion to a much larger combined-arms formation that was closer to a full brigade than a regular battalion. It even had its own artillery battery and a reconnaissance element, the latter had three Bradley cavalry vehicles and a CBNR section in Fuchs armored cars.

    "It's good to be back home, Sir." Keisha Stevenson's reply was properly courteous and enthusiastic.

    Roland didn't believe it for a moment. No officer who had made it from Lieutenant to Colonel in less than a year and who had spent most of her career performing special missions for the commanding general would welcome being back within the confines of a regular division. If Roland was right, she would be itching for a message from H.E.A. headquarters, assigning her to another special mission. Her return wasn't an entirely unmixed blessing either. Her so-called battalion was so abnormal in structure that it simply didn’t fit in the command structure any more. "I'll be returning you to Third Brigade. Your unit will lead the way in to The Eternal City as soon as that Brit Engineer down there has finished blowing a large enough hole in the gates."

    Stevenson looked at the gate where another great scab of wood was now being pulled out of the way. "Hokay. Very good Sir." She paused a little. "We could get through now, Sir."

    "Even with your field kitchen in tow?" Roland looked at the trailer with a degree of suspicion. It didn’t look American somehow.

    Stevenson felt that a note of explanation was required. "Yes Sir. We're been operating independently for so long we need to be able to provide the men with hot food even when we're outside normal supply areas." Actually, Stevenson had discovered one of her conscripts was a graduate of Chef Gordon Ramsey's kitchen. A few nights later, following an astoundingly well-planned and completely covert raid, a German infantry company waken up to find that they had mislaid their beloved "gulaschkanone" field kitchen trailer during the night. Her battalion had been eating well ever since. She noted that her General was eyeing the trailer suspiciously and decided it was time to change the subject. "Sir, with respect, may I ask how we got our name? We wanted to be the Wildcat Battalion."

    "Company clerk screwed up. He entered the division name in the space on the form for your battalion name and by the time we had unscrambled everything, another battalion had claimed 'Wildcat'. Fortunes of war, Colonel."

    He was interrupted by another pair of explosions and the bone jarring crash as two more sets of gate segments were blown clear. All around, there was the same eerie silence from the watching humans in the slums. Stevenson waved at them. "They don’t seem to be that pleased to see us. Odd thing, these slums could almost be part of Dis. Same narrow, twisting streets, similar-looking buildings."

    "And no precious stones lining the walls." Roland agreed. "You'll be getting the move order shortly Colonel. Straight through that hole."

    Stevenson saluted and returned to her tank, clambering up the side and sliding into the turret. A few seconds later the order came through from her brigade commander to take her battalion through the shattered hole in the gate and set up a perimeter on the other side. It took a minute for her to contact the engineering officer who was methodically reducing the gates to splinters and get a pause on the demolitions. Then, the gas turbine powering her M1 surged and her tank rolled forwards through the jagged hole blown in the Himilheothon Gate.

    Roland watched the vehicles follow her tank through, noting the precision with which they had been handled. He'd also noted that they'd been parked so that they could either go through the gate or detach and head off back through the slums with equal speed. Unlike the other battalions, Spearhead had made its way through the twisting streets here without damaging the buildings on either side. Together, the two impressions showed him why this particular unit was General Petraeus's favorite for any unusual missions that turned up. Somehow, he didn't think it would be part of his division for very long.

    Street of Ceaseless Exaltation, Eternal City, Heaven

    "The Fallen Ones are coming! The Eternal Enemy has broken into the City!" The voices were screaming with panic, crowds were already fleeing down the Street of Ceaseless Exaltation to get away from the Mahatalabhuva Gate. Or, rather, to get away from the military forces that were now moving through the hole blown in that gate. Rubibael-Lan-Dasarapael didn't believe that The Fallen Ones really had broken into the city. Logically, it was just the women panicking at the sight of heavily-armed human troops. Rubibael adjusted his eyes for long-distance vision and focussed on the vehicles that were moving in. That was when he realized that logic had let him down. The occupants of the tracked vehicles were all too obviously daemons. The Fallen Ones were indeed coming.

    It took a few minutes for the vehicles to reach his position, minutes in which Rubibael spent every second trying to persuade his legs not to run away. He managed it and instead watched the low, rakish-looking vehicles approach. They were painted red and gray with a purple crest bearing a golden eagle and the number 3 on each side. They had the letters SPQR as well, whatever they meant. He looked closely, there were other inscriptions on them as well, all equally meaningless. Just what was the significance of 'No Step' for example? Once more Rubibael had the demoralizing and humiliating feeling that these creatures did not consider him worth their attention. Then the roar of the engine in the vehicle enveloped him as the lead unit of Fallen Ones passed him.

    To his surprise, the four vehicles that formed the van of the advancing column stopped a few yards past him and dropped their tail ramps. The Fallen Ones streamed out of the back, spreading across the roadway and establishing guard posts. One of them walked over to Rubibael. The two were roughly the same size, implying they were the same status but one look at the rifle the Fallen One was carrying and the big guns mounted on the nearest vehicle quickly dissuaded Rubibael of that idea.

    "Out of the way, Never-Born." The daemon's voice was gutteral and curt, filled with menace.

    Rubibael stared at him, more in shock than anything else. The Fallen Ones in the old pictures never wore clothes like these. They were the same as human soldiers wore, just larger and remodelled to fit the different anatomy of the Fallen One's bodies. His mind, unable to absorb the sheer shock of their presence in The Eternal City, wouldn't let him do anything more than stare at the soldier in front of him. Then, for the second time that day, he felt an agonizing pain in his foot as a rifle but slammed down on his toes.

    "I said move." The Fallen One repeated the order with a terrifying display of fangs.

    "Drippy, do not, say again do not, eat that Jelly." The voice came from a human who was sitting on top of the great vehicle and it carried great authority. Suddenly, as if it was some great discovery, Rubibael realized there was a serious difference between those who had earned authority and those who just claimed it.

    "Please Sarge, can I eat him just a little bit?" The Fallen One glared at Rubibael but there was amusement mixed up with the mock-ferocity.

    "I said no, Drippy. Look at him, all fat and quivering like a scared hog. Full of cholesterol." For some reason the remark made all the soldiers around him burst out laughing. "Just shove him outta the way and take up your post."

    Rubibael hobbled backwards, with a couple of pushes from the Fallen One's rifle to help him on the way. Once he was clear, the Fallen One went back to the vehicle. By now a constant stream of vehicles was passing through the position. Once again, he set his eyes for long-distance vision and he looked up the road. Far ahead, another small unit had peeled off and was setting up another checkpoint. There, as here, it was quite clear that the humans commanded and the Fallen Ones served. In a blinding flash of insight, Rubibael realized that he was looking at the future for his people as well.

    1/33 (Spearhead) Battalion, Third Brigade, Third Armored Division, Ninth U.S. Corps. Eternal City

    "Hokay, so according to the sitrep, the Marines are holding the center of the city, we're advancing towards them with the Russians on our left and the Chinese on our right. We're right in the middle of our front so we won't run into either anytime soon. Units on the extreme end of our lines might. Not soon though, damn this city is big. But, latest word from the herd, there are special forces teams all over. Seems like every bunch of snake-eaters decided to slip a team into the city to see what was going on."

    "Just our, Russians and Chinese main force units though?" Biker was concerned about a blue-on-blue shoot out.

    Stevenson shook her head. "Caesar's Third Legion is on our right. That's a long way though. The Big Boss is bringing up representatives from all the other countries in the H.E.A. and they'll be following us in. That way they can claim they took part on the final occupation of The Eternal City. But, lead elements are just the three of us."

    "Any resistance?" Biker looked at the maps spread out in the back of the Bradley command vehicle.

    "Not resistance, no." Stevenson was hesitant. "The Jellies are stunned, they don't know what to do or what is happening. The combination of losing Yahweh and having us waltzing into their city has left them almost catatonic. The Second-Life humans up here, they're different. They're shocked, sure, but there's a strong streak of sullen resentment running through the crowds. If there's resistance, that's where it will come from. Don't be surprised if we get stones thrown at us or something along those lines."

    "That bad Ma'am?" Biker was being careful, there were several other members of the battalion present so he refrained from using the nicknames born in the privacy of their tank. A tank crew was one thing, a command group was quite another and he was meticulous about the difference.

    Stevenson nodded. "It's like the time I took a white boyfriend to a rib joint in the 'hood. Great ribs, best ever tasted. But, the same brooding hostility was there. Nobody spit on his ribs or gave him a hard time but we could both sense it. He had the sense to keep his mouth shut and let me do the talking. Same would do well for us here. The Second-Life humans here don’t look on us as liberators or saviors. Near as I can judge, they see us as, at best, an invading Army that has yet to prove who we are and what we want. No way are we the second coming."

    "Actually, Ma'am, strictly speaking, we are the second coming."

    The lieutenant in charge of the artillery battery was feeling his way in this odd group. This was his first effort at a response that wasn't strictly military. Stevenson reached across and gave him a light slap on the back of the head. "We know that but they don’t. So we better be damned careful here. We don’t want more trouble than we can handle. Supply section, how are we for fuel and ammunition?"

    Most of the veterans of the fighting in Hell worried about that. The memories of their ammunition supplies dwindling while unending streams of daemons pouring into the killing grounds were too fresh, as were the parallel memories of pulling out to resupply and finding that they could pick up only a portion of what had been needed.

    "Ammunition, all the vehicles have full loads and we've got some extra. Fuel, we've enough to maneuver here a little but we've come far enough in to run the M-1s near dry. Fuel convoy is behind us, it'll be with us in an hour or so. Food, we're fine. Marky is already at work." A laugh ran around the command group at that. It was a constant amazement what that man could do with Army field rations.

    "Hokay, we're all set then. We'll stay here, fuel up and then move on. We'll get to the center tomorrow unless we hit trouble."

    V-22 Osprey 'Command-One' Over The Eternal City, Heaven.

    "Units are moving up well. No resistance reported." General Asanee looked down at the scene rolling past underneath. The grid layout of the city made navigation easy. The V-22 was simply following the wide boulevard that ran up the center of the American zone of occupation.. Ahead of them, the green of what had once been Yahweh's palace grounds and the blue of the immense lake in the city center were visible. For all the amount of diesel exhaust pouring into the air, it was still clearer here than in most human cities. Asanee sighed to herself, smog would come to Heaven soon enough. She remembered when she had been a child back on Earth, she could look up and night and see a fabulous array of stars. Then electricity had come, light pollution had been born and the stars had slowly vanished. Now, when she went back to her home, only the brightest were visible amid the glare of neon lighting.

    "No active resistance." General Petraeus corrected her. "There's the seeds of what could be passive resistance already. We could turn that into a fully-fledged human insurrection if we're not careful. Remember what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan."

    Asanee nodded. A few years earlier, before the Salvation War had changed everything, she had been in Iraq. Her General had received a request from the Thai unit assigned to Iraq for heavy weapons and landmines to defend against an insurgent attack. She had been sent to investigate the request and judge whether the fears of attack were grounded. A quick visit had turned into a two-month stay and had coincided with the expected attack. It had been beaten off but she remembered all too well how the situation in the country had gone downhill during her time there. "The Chinese and Russians are joining us Sir?"

    "They'll be there. Dorokov is flying in on a Mi-24. I don't know how Ti plans to arrive."

    The pitch from the V-22's engines changed as the aircraft transitioned from horizontal to vertical flight. The pilot was bringing the aircraft in to land on a large open area at the top of the steps leading up to Yahweh's palace. Those steps were too large for humans to climb comfortably. Anyway, bringing an aircraft in made a very unsubtle point. Asanee looked at the lake, its shimmering royal blue now criss-crossed with wakes from ships, AAV-7s and LCACs. It was an impressive sight. Then, there was a gentle bump as the V-22 landed.

    The tail ramp dropped down and General Petraeus led the way out. As he emerged, a Marine Corps band struck up a long-familiar tune. It was the words that were slightly strange.

    When the Army and the Navy
    Finally gazed on Heaven's scenes
    They found the streets were guarded by
    United States Marines.
     
    • The Salvation War: Pantheocide - 82
    • Throne Room, The Ultimate Temple, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    "This place is a disgrace." General Ivan Semenovich Dorokhov looked around in barely-veiled disgust. The command group from the Human Expeditionary Army had assembled outside what had one been Yahweh's palace and entered the anteroom. The building was in a serious state of decay, one only partially concealed by the glittering arrays of precious stones. General Dorokhov looked at the iridescent displays with curiosity. "Has the matter of reparations been discussed yet?"

    "The Yamantau Council are still evaluating the matter." General Petraeus was also surveying the scene that was unfolding before his party. "I believe they have yet to come to a conclusion. The last thing I heard from them was that reparations were required but how they were to be paid is entirely another matter. Who should pay them is also interesting. Yahweh is undoubtedly the responsible party but he is dead. The rest of the angels seem to be as much of his victims as we were. We all saw that concentration camp."

    General Ti Jen-chieh was also inspecting the walls. "I wonder how many peasants and workers died on how many worlds to fill this room with stones." His words were met with a series of nods. Even a cursory inspection of The Eternal City revealed that far more than a single world had been looted to provide the ever-present displays of gleaming gems.

    "And what happened to them after death?" General Asanee was more interested in the carving of the woodwork. Her family were carpenters and sculptors who worked in wood and the craftsmanship in the carving interested her. Personally, and admitting to herself that she might be biased in the subject, she thought the carvings were inferior to the ones her brothers produced. The rifle she was carrying was an example of their work. Technically it was an M16A6 chambered for .50 Beowulf but the plastic furniture had been replaced by painstakingly-carved and polished mahogany. It was a superbly elegant weapon. It was also characteristic that she carried a combat rifle while the other Generals carried pistols at best. Petraeus himself was unarmed.

    "That, we should find out. If there is still access to such worlds, then we should go there." General Ti's voice rang with conviction. "Surely if such people survive, we must help remedy the terrible wrongs that have been done to them."

    "If such people survive." Asanee noted the qualification. "I suspect we will find that they are extinct and all we can do is honor their memory. As we would have been extinct had our arms not prevailed." She was saddened by that thought. For all humanity's devastating victory in The Salvation War, it had been a closer-run thing than people realized. Had it come just a century earlier, she doubted humanity would have prevailed. Even coming when it did, the balance had been fine indeed. Had the human armies run out of ammunition during the Curbstomp War or if Heaven had followed up with an invasion immediately after the fall of Hell, things might have been different. She shook her head and noted with amusement that the senior generals all around her had fallen into step. Old habits died hard. The sight also amused her on another level; once she had been in command of the guard when a deputation of six senior generals had been visiting the King. Unused to the demands of close order drill, when the order 'face left' had been given, two of the six had faced right. She'd never said anything but simply given every member of the guard an extra 48 hour leave pass for not bursting out laughing.

    The doors were flung open in front of them and the command group stalked through them into the throne room beyond. The ritual was familiar and Asanee decided that General Petraeus had been watching when her people performed similar maneuvers. Ahead of them, in the dim, smoke-tinged room, the shadowed figures of angels were kneeling on the floor, waiting for word from the new masters of the Eternal City.

    Even in the dim light it was easy to see the destruction that the battle in this room had wrought. Piles of rubble were strewn across the floor, each giving birth to small clouds of dust as the synchronized human footsteps echoed around the room. The walls and ceiling were blackened and stained, great scabs of plaster had been detached and the precious stones that had formed the signature décor of the Eternal City were blasted from their places and charred black. Asanee noted the heavy bunker built unobtrusively in one corner of the great room. By its dimensions and general design, she got the feeling somebody had looked at the bunkers that formed part of the Maginot Line.

    "Who are you?" Petraeus's voice pierced the gloom and the pent-up tension in the air. His words were clearly aimed at the five figures sitting on a raised dais at one end of the room. It was a curious structure, truncated somehow as if its top had been cut off.

    "I am Michael-Lan. Ruler of the Eternal City." The largest and most beautiful of the angels on the dais answered. Even in the dim light, the angel's face seemed to glow with beauty.

    "Not any more." Petraeus snapped the words out, determined not to be impressed by the sights around him or the person he was addressing. "And the others?"

    "Gabriel-Lan, Raphael-Lan, Charmeine-Lan and Leilah-Lan. All Chayot Ha Kodesh of the Angelic Host. We, all of us, together with the support of much of the population of the City, deposed Yahweh. With the exception of Yahweh himself, the coup was bloodless."

    Petraeus nodded. "Our ruling council has considered your position carefully. I am under orders to advise you that you are to be removed as ruler of Heaven and replaced by another whom I have been authorized to appoint. I am also required to advise you that you are to be held in custody pending our investigations into the nuclear attack on Tel Aviv and the attempted destruction of other cities on Earth."

    He saw Michael-Lan nod. "As to the nuclear attacks on your cities, that was not my doing. You took down Napyidaw yourselves; I had no idea there was such a weapon hidden on that cart. I just guessed it was something I should be far away from. As for the others, they were the work of Azrael who was trying to curry favor with Yahweh. He was critically injured in the attack on New York and is being treated in my country estate. For removing me from power, I thank you. The burdens of rule are onerous and its costs are great. All I ever wanted was to run my nightclub in peace. Even to achieve that simple goal, Yahweh had to go . . . . "

    He was interrupted by a massive road as a huge section of battered wall detached and crashed down. A choking cloud of dust filled the room, stifling any further attempts at conversation until it settled. As it did so, Petraeus saw an angel shake himself clear of the debris, re-assemble his workers and start to clear the floor again. "And who are you?"

    The dust-ridden figure shook himself to free some of the plaster grit from his wing-feathers. "I am Zacharael-Lan, Master-Mason of the Ultimate Temple."

    "And just what do you think you are doing?"

    "I am trying to get this room repaired from the damage Yahweh caused . . . . " The Master Mason hesitated, uncertain of the form of address to use. In the end he decided to keep going. "He always wrecked the place when he had a temper tantrum but I've never seen it this bad."

    "Why are you fixing this place? Yahweh's dead."

    "Somebody must rule. And it is my duty. Duty done well is it's own reward."

    Petraeus glanced around at the other Generals with him and got tiny nods in response. "More reward than you think. I'm putting you in charge of Heaven for the meantime. How long you stay there depends on you. Just remember, when we say jump, the correct reply is not 'how high?' It's 'may I come down now please?" He looked at the existing occupants of the dais and jerked his thumb at the doors. "You other five, out. Wait for us in the anteroom."

    The five Chayot Ha Kodesh rose and left. Petraeus watched them leave, then returned his attention to Zacharael-Lan. "Pick out some people to help you rule this place. Subject to our approval of course. Asanee, I want you to stay here. You're probably the most familiar with this kind of situation of any of us. I'll assign you some additional staff and you report directly to me. Stay in the background but watch Zacharael-Lan carefully."

    "Yes, Sir." Asanee hesitated for a brief second. "David, you picked him just to annoy the Freemason's Conspiracy nuts didn't you?"

    Petraeus permitted himself a small grin. "Well, that might have had something to do with it. But that crash of masonry was all too convenient from his point of view. I think we ought to keep our Master Mason out where we can watch him very carefully."

    Anteroom, The Ultimate Temple, The Eternal City, Heaven.

    "I'm so sorry Michael." Charmeine was distressed almost to the point where her tears broke through her carefully-cultivated reserve. "I never thought the humans would throw you out after all you did."

    "I did." Michael-Lan spoke cheerfully. "Well, I guessed it was a fifty-fifty chance they would. Them putting Abigor in power down in Hell showed they wanted one of us to rule up here. The question was, who? I hoped it would be me but only a fool substitutes hope for preparation. Remember that people, when planning, don’t forget to allow for a possibility even if it's unpalatable. So if it wasn't going to be me, it would be best, it had to be somebody I approved of. The four of you were out, you're too close to me. Zacharael-Lan was perfect. So, he arranged that collapse and the statement about duty and doing a job well. That human General didn’t know who to choose so it only required that little to push him the right way."

    "Suppose he had picked somebody else?" Leilah was keen to learn.

    "Then we would have made the transition from Yahweh's rule to whatever comes next as hard and as messy as possible. We'd have made sure whoever was in charge got all the blame and in the end one of us would have come in as a savior and put everything right." Michael glanced over his shoulder. "They're coming, everybody look penitent."

    "Michael-Lan. You say you have an estate out in the countryside?" General Petraeus wasn't in any doubt about that.

    "I do."

    "Take me there. I wish to see this Azrael you mentioned."

    "Would you like me to carry you? It would be no burden."

    "You lead the way, We'll follow you in the Osprey. Once there, you stay there until we've finished sorting your case out."

    "My nightclub." There was genuine pain and anguish in Michael's voice. "I have to run my nightclub."

    "Sucks to be you. The same applies to the rest of you. Go to your country estates, stay there. Consider yourselves exiled from The Eternal City until we say otherwise."

    "Sir." Leilah spoke diffidently, something quite at odds with the costume she was wearing. "I don’t have a country estate."

    "Leilah is only recently raised to the status of Chayot Ha Kodesh," Michael explained. "She was Erelim before and only Chayot Ha Kodesh have country estates. Because of how fast things have happened, her estate was never awarded to her."

    Petraeus nodded. "Leilah, you run Michael's nightclub for him. You are allowed to fly to his estate to consult with him on doing that. You may also fly to the others here to meet with them. Understood?"

    "Yes, Sir. And thank you."

    "Is that wise David?" General Ti spoke very quietly.

    "Somebody will be carrying messages, we might as well know who."

    Michael's Palace, Aukumea, Heaven

    The palace reminded Petraeus of a Greek temple. It was large of course, scaled to Michael's size, but it was pristine white. It was unmarred by the displays of precious stones that were already becoming tasteless and jaded to Petraeus's eyes. Just a large, perfectly-proportioned and perfectly-maintained Greek temple. It was, Patraeus reflected, the first really elegant building he had seen in Heaven. As his V-22 came in to land on the green lawns, he saw the staff running out to welcome Michael home. To his surprise, the humans seemed as enthusiastic as the angels.

    "Welcome to Aukumea, General." The accent was distinctively American.

    "And you are?"

    "Doctor David Gunn. Michael's personal physician."

    "That name is familiar."

    "I was killed a few years back. Shot outside a women's health clinic. My nurses here, Lee-Ann Nichols and Shannon Lowney were also killed in health clinic shootings. Michael rescued us from Hell and brought us here. Michael says you want to see Azrael?"

    "Yes, please." Petraeus hesitated, then spoke awkwardly. "Doctor Gunn, it's good to know things worked out all right for you three in the end."

    "Thanks to Michael, yes. And not just for us. In the years before the war started, he spent a lot of his time rescuing humans from Hell. Took a lot of risks doing it as well. Anyway, come with me and I'll show you the patients."

    Damn, that's just what we needed. Petraeus thought. Michael turning out to be some sort of Heavenly Schindler. The silver-blooded Pimpernel already. "Doctor, what's the mount over there?"

    Gunn laughed. "That is, or rather was, Fluffy. Better known to you as the Scarlet Beast. Disgusting creature, never was properly house-trained. His rider is here as well, very sad case I'm afraid."

    "So it is dead. We didn’t know back on Earth. We knew we'd hurt it, that was all. And we were still waiting for the Lamb Beast and the Dragon."

    Gunn's laughter redoubled. "You hadn't worked it out then. The Lamb Beast, speaks with the gentleness of a lamb but fights like a dragon? That's Michael. And the ultra-powerful Dragon is, or was, Yahweh himself."

    "Doctor, honest question from a soldier to a physician. Where do you stand in all this."

    "I'm a doctor, I fix the wounded and sick. If you have any, feel free to bring them to me. Michael saved me from Hell, saved my nurses and every human I know up here. And he's a likeable guy, arrogant as they come of course and conceited like only an angel can be. But he has a lot of charisma and he inspires loyalty in people. Don't know why because the truth is, he doesn’t return it. But, he does inspire it. But for all that, I'm human. A doctor first and then human. That answer your question?"

    Petraeus wasn't sure that he did but he nodded anyway.

    Gunn opened a door and led him into a clean, aseptic wing of the palace. On one bed was a figure, one that had a glorious mane of red hair spread out around her. She would have been as stunningly beautiful as the rest of the angels were it not for the vacant expression on her face and the tongue hanging out of her mouth. "This is Dumah, General. She rode the Scarlet Beast. I don’t know what you did to her down there but she has massive brain damage. Vital functions are stable, but her coma is probably irrecoverable. Michael is having me look after her until she either dies or recovers."

    He led Petraeus to another room. "This is Azrael. Massive fragmentation wounds from missile warheads, recovery very slow. He doesn't know Yahweh is dead yet. Azrael, a human visitor for you."

    "Azrael, the nuclear attacks on our cities."

    The voice from the wounded angel was slow and gasping. "So? We are at war."

    "You organized them? Did Michael know?"

    "Know? Him? Of course not. He is a traitor. He refused to push the war home against you. It was left to me. If my plan had worked, I could have replaced him. My human failed me. But Michael betrayed Yahweh and me." Azrael burst into a fit of coughing. "Leave me human, you tire me."
     
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