Original Fiction The Salvation War - Pantheocide

[LTR]

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."

 

[LTR]

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."

 

[LTR]

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."

 

[LTR]

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."

 

[LTR]

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.

 

[LTR]

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."

 

[LTR]

Michael's Palace, Aukumea, Heaven. Six weeks later.

The problem with staging a coup is what does one do afterwards? After centuries of plotting and planning, not to mention the last three years of frantic activity, the work was over. Yahweh was gone, a new leadership was in power, the war with the humans was over and the Angelic Host had survived. More than survived, if the experience of the last few days was anything to go by, it would prosper under its new rulers The problem was that the situation had left Michael-Lan nothing to do. How much of a problem that was had become obvious when, in the half-aware period between sleep and wakening, he had started to plot against himself.

The humans had made it worse for him. Aukumea might still be described as his palace but the truth was he was imprisoned here. Just as the rest of his inner circle were imprisoned on their estates. Only Leilah had anything like freedom of movement and Michael knew she was being very carefully watched. The truth was, and Michael knew it very well, that the humans hadn't decided what to do with him. His position as a defeated General was well-established and his links to the more atrocious of his acts had all been carefully severed or buried. Mostly both. If the humans ever found the bottom of the lake by Yahweh's Palace, they would discover things down there that Michael wanted kept secret. On the other hand, his credentials as a benefactor were well-established and carefully over-elaborated. He had saved humans from torment, well-regarded ones whose reputation back on Earth had survived and rubbed off on the Archangel who had saved them from the flames of Hell. He had treated all his humans well and they had reciprocated by speaking well of him when they had been interviewed. What would happen next was out of his control and Michael suspected the humans would be driven more by their own internal political dynamics than any wishes he might have.

There was a respectful knock on his door. Renepes-Lan-Sapreheac, the major-domo of Aukumea, entered and coughed politely. "Michael, there are two visitors to see you. Lemuel-Lan-Michael and Maion-Lan-Lemuel-Lan-Michael."

Ah well, here we go. Michael sighed to himself. You knew this was coming. "please ask them to come right in."

Michael sat down at his desk and pretended to be interested in a file that had been delivered to him. It was actually the bar receipts from The Montmartre Club and Michael was genuinely interested in the contents. More specifically, he was interested in how Leilah was skimming the take. He had no doubt she was, in fact he would be deeply disappointed in her if she wasn't. The door opened and he looked up. Lemuel and Maion were entering. Michael dropped the file, reminding himself to go over it again later, and rose to his feet.

"Lemuel, old friend, you look well. You too, Maion, the humans have taken good care of you."

It was true, Maion looked radiantly beautiful even by Angelic standards. She beamed and flared her wings outwards. "My wings are regrowing well, I should be able to fly soon. In a couple of weeks at most." Her voice hardened slightly and she sounded confused. "And being off that terrible stuff has helped me a lot. The doctors on Earth told me all about it."

"There is much we must speak about Michael." Lemuel's voice was also hard and there was no confusion evident in it at all.

"There is indeed. But first, Lemuel, I have news for you. There are vacancies in the ranks of the Chayot Ha Kodesh still unfilled. I am raising you to that status."

"Can you do that?" Lemuel sounded shocked. This wasn't going quite as he had imagined. He'd heard the stories of how Michael and his allies had fought Yahweh and had expected much the same to happen here. "Will the humans let you?"

"This is nothing to do with humans. When Yahweh died, I felt something change within me. As if something had left him and come to me. So, I raised Leilah-Lan to be Chayot Ha Kodesh. I thought it was a nominal move only, that she would remain Erelim. I was wrong, she has grown in size and power and truly is becoming Chayot Ha Kodesh. So the power to raise others has come to me, perhaps from those beyond the gates. Now, I will use it to raise you."

There was a stifled gasp from Maion, one that ended in a barely-suppressed sob. Michale moved towards her and stretched out his hands. "What is the matter little one?"

"I am only Malakhim. I am not a fit mate for a Chayot Ha Kodesh."

"Maion, did I not tell you that you are part of my clan now? And because of that, I would always look after you? Did you think I would cause you to be taken from your soul-mate after you have endured so much to be with him? Did I not tell you that a leader serves those he leads as much as they serve him? So to solve that insignificant little detail, I will raise you to the rank of Erelim. Your services to the Angelic Host deserve no less. He reached out his hands and placed them on Maion's head. Once again, he felt power running through him and he saw Maion standing tall. Then, he turned and did the same for Lemuel. "Maion, why don’t you run down and show Doctor Gunn your new wings. He'll be fascinated with them. Tell him everything. He's still a doctor, he'll want to know it all."

Maion beamed and ran out of the door, eager to show off her new wings and status. Michael smiled fondly at her, then turned his attention back to Lemuel. "Feel different yet?"

"I don't know . . . . I . . . ." Lemuel hesitated again. Now, he really was bewildered. "Why."

"Why did I raise you up? Because I promised to, because you deserve it and because if we are going to end up having a fight, I wanted to give you a fair chance." Michael didn't even wince at the barefaced lie. He never had any intentions of fighting fairly.

"Fairly? You? You shit-steamed pile of vomit. How could you do it to me Michael? Get me hooked on drugs, make me betray everything I held holy. You were my friend."

"I still am, the fact you are still alive proves that. It would have been much easier for me to have you killed. You and your little playmate."

"Maion too. You hooked her on drugs, made her prostitute herself. She almost died because of you."

"Nobody forced Maion to start using. She did that all by herself. Like most of the Angelic Host, she was bored and looking for new experiences to liven up her life. She was Malakhim, what did she have to look forward to? Her rank meant that, at best, she would be mate to a lowly angel and spend eternity washing his dishes. At worst she would end up in a temple making the same reverential dance every day. For all eternity Lemuel. Like those poor bastards in Yahweh's choir. What has happened to them by the way?"

"Humans took them away. They were talking about something called PTSD."

"Well, there you are then. Maion just wanted some thrills before the humdrum eternity set in. She got herself hooked. If you want to blame anybody, blame Yahweh. He was the one who set the system up here. Her getting hooked was a convenience for me. One of the purposes of the Club was to find you a mate who would be more to you than just a mate. You deserved better than that ball-busting bitch Onniel and Maion filled the bill perfectly. Working the club taught her a few tricks to hook you, that was all. There's never been prostitution in The Eternal City so the idea has no stigma attached to it. With Yahweh gone and his maniacal obsessions about sex removed, I think this will be a much healthier city to live in but that's my opinion only of course. It was Belial, working under Yahweh's orders who crippled and nearly killed her. You can't blame me for that." Invisible, Michael tensed. Believe that and we're half way out of this.

Lemuel sat still, churning the information over in his mind. "Onniel is dead."

"Very." And if I want it, there's a pile of evidence pointing straight at you as her killer my old friend. "She was the one responsible for the fate that befell Maion. Yahweh smiled upon her so when she went to him, demanding revenge, he obliged." Michael sighed theatrically. "I suppose in a way, I am to blame for what happened to Maion. I should have anticipated Onniel's actions. I knew of her character and the fact that Yahweh liked her. I should have anticipated her actions. For that lapse, I can only apologize and try to make amends. But never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate the nightmare that Yahweh had created."

The combination of sudden, unexpected promotion and Michael's calm, matter-of-fact discussion of Maion's fate took the wind out of Lemuel's sails. He had been working up a fine head of steam over what had happened to his beloved Maion; now it seemed as if all the major points had been out of Michael's control. Selfishness also tore at him; if Maion hadn't been experimenting with drugs and got out of her depth, he would never have met her or become her patron. She would never have become his mate. He would have been stuck with Onniel and her carping, shrewish ways. The truth was that his home was happy now, so much so it underlined how miserable a place it had been before Maion had become its Lady. His staff liked her and they had spoken well of them both when the humans had come to ask questions. The story of how Lemuel himself had come to the defense of a maltreated human and thrown his own mate out of the house when she was revealed as the culprit had struck a note in his favor.

Confusion eddied and boiled in his mind. He had been so certain in his rage and offense, in his belief that Michael had been behind all his troubles. Forced to look on things from a different perspective, reality seemed a far thing from the simplistic picture he had once had. Michael had exploited Maion, that was certain but had he, Lemuel, done any less? He also had taken advantage of her addiction and bought her services. Was he not as much to blame as Michael?

"You drugged me as well. You tricked me into addiction." Lemuel was uneasily aware that the complaint had come out as petulant whine rather than a soul-searing indictment.

"I did, and if you wish to confront me on that, I will concede it. You have every right to be upset. But, look at the situation Lemuel. Yahweh was going mad, you know that now but back then his madness was obvious to only a tiny few. How mad was something that even we did not guess. Yet you were the chief investigator of the League of Holy Court, the de-facto head of Yahweh's secret police. You had to be separated from Yahweh, you had to see him for what he really was. Much of the blame here lies with you Lemuel, how often did you close your eyes to what the League was actually doing? As you had the victims of your investigations tortured into confessions that might, or might not, be true, did you ever doubt what you were doing?"

Lemuel flushed red and looked at the floor. "No." His voice was small and weak.

"There was that human you picked up. The one you identified as a heretic because she had a small bottle of human garlic seasoning in her possession. You had her tortured, Lemuel. She was three-quarters drowned, raped and murdered while your prisoner and yet your faith was still not shaken. You Lemuel, you were Yahweh's right hand when that and much more happened. It was a small step, Lemuel from the dungeons of the League of Holy Court to Yahweh's concentration camp. So small a step from vigorous enforcement of the law to oppression and mass murder. A step so tiny and easy to make that its implications frighten even the humans.

"You are my friend, Lemuel, we had to save you yet you were so firmly under Yahweh's spell that regular argument would have been futile. So we hooked you. We got you just addicted enough that being with us was pleasant while being away from us was the reverse. Then, we slowly showed you that heresy had its values, that a degree of dissent was essential for a culture to move onwards. That the people who held different ideas from you were not necessarily bad persons because of their beliefs. Nor were people whose beliefs were conventional necessarily good or of pure heart. We showed you that people had to be judged for who they were, not for what they believed."

"So you did it all for my own good?" Lemuel spoke with tones laden with disbelief.

"Of course not." Michael was derisive. "We did it so I would not have to kill my friend. We would have done, Lemuel, we would have had to. But, above that, we needed you as a messenger to the humans. We had to send them the keys to Heaven by a messenger they would believe. Anybody else, one of us, they would have treated our information as a trap. At most they would have used the information to come in their own way at their own time. But when the head of Yahweh's police came over, having given up power and prestige to save his brutally-injured mate, they believed him. Your participation was needed Lemuel, so that also fitted into the schemes." Michael held his breath, almost noticeably. Will Lemuel notice the great flaw that lay in the center of that carefully-spun account? I've massaged the truth so carefully that I really ought to buy a human newspaper. He held that thought in his mind, buying a human newspaper and running it had an almost hypnotic attraction. It could be almost as much fun as running his nightclub.

"But all the plots, the schemes. . . . "

"Some were other archangels who had seen Yahweh's mind going and were moving to take over. Others, most of them, were Yahweh himself. He set them up so he would have an excuse to bring down his tyranny on The Eternal City. Either way led to disaster. Only one led to the salvation of the Angelic Host and that meant engineering an end to the war that left humans in undisputed charge. And got there without them using their military power to overwhelm us. And yet those same schemes Lemuel were as dangerous to you as they were to us all. You stumbled upon them while investigating something quite routine." Even if I did have to hold your hand and lead you to them. "What would you have done if you had found them at some other time. Gone to Yahweh?"

"I suppose but . . . ."

"And he would have killed you. On the spot. Luring you away from Yahweh was more than avoiding the necessity of me killing you or providing a messenger to the humans. We had to do it to save you from Yahweh. You were in deadly danger Lemuel, more so than you realize even now."

Lemuel stared out of the windows at the rolling hills and green forests of Heaven. He felt deflated, without purpose or aim. Once his life had been filled with his loyal service to Yahweh and that had gone. Then it had been filled with his hatred for what Michael had done to him and Maion and a burning desire for revenge. Now that, too, was gone. He had nothing left and that left him with an intense desire to weep.

"I'll say it again, Michael, you are a double-dyed bastard. I'll accept that you were doing what you thought right and it all worked out the way you wanted. And that all Heaven benefitted from what you did. But I can't forget Maion's shattered wings or her selling herself in your club. You'll have to live with that as well. Those memories and all the other things you did will torment you from now on. Every time you look in a mirror you'll remember them. They'll tear you apart and you'll understand how I feel now."

Michael nodded solemnly. Lemuel, you poor innocent sap. You've been watching too many human television soap operas. I did what I had to do and that ends the matter for me. I've been running this scam for centuries and, believe me, anything regrets I had are long gone. And if I had any left, there's a valley of black glass that will act as a reminder of what would have happened had Yahweh had his way.

The door banged open and Maion bounced in. "Lemuel, I've got news. Doctor Gunn gave me an examination just to check on how I was recovering. He says I'm pregnant."

Michael snapped forward in his seat. "Say again?"

"I'm pregnant. About four or five weeks he thinks."

Lemuel reached out and hugged her while Michael watched complacently. Well, that was unexpected, but at least it will give Lemuel something to do. At least until the humans give him the police force back. And they will, he's a good cop. But, an angelic baby? That's a once-in-a-millenium event. Then Michael thought carefully. What if angelic infertility was a by-product of Yahweh's obsession with people's private habits. What if now he was gone, there would be more angels born? Interesting.

"Congratulations, both of you. Would you like to stay here and rest? You're both welcome."

Michael saw them both shake their heads, realizing they both wanted to be certain what was in any food they ate. "Sorry Michael, we have to get back to The Eternal City. We'll be back though."

After they'd left, Michael went for a walk through his grounds. He needed to relax, to run over the events in his mind. Almost without thinking, he made his way to the great greenhouses that housed his marijuana plant collection. Letting himself in, he took some of the prepared product and took a deep breath. It was a blend Elhmas had spoken highly of and Michael could see why. He felt his mind relax and drift away on a sweet and gently-scented cloud.

"Well done Ehlmas. You surpassed yourself with this blend. You know, I really hated having to kill you but you and Yahweh were too powerful a combination for me to beat. You had to go just as Uriel and all the others did. It was the only way. But, I really am sorry."

For a moment, Michael thought the slow handclap coming from the plants was his imagination. He dragged his mind back to reality but the sound continued. Then, a familiar figure stepped out from the serried rows of greenery. "Hello, Michael. I see you took my recommendation."

For once in his life, Michael was almost speechless. "Elhmas, you're dead." Even as he said it, he realized how stupid it sounded and cursed the chemically-induced fog in his mind.

"You wish. You know, Michael, you really ought not to get stoned with people you intend to kill. Especially if they have a higher tolerance of that stuff than you do. I knew what you were up to the moment your messenger suggested I move the Incomparable Legion Of Light as a single body. That's a move nobody who's familiar with human war-making will make. I wasn't expecting that nuke though, were you?"

Michael shook his head. "Air strikes, a lot of them. Not the nuke. How did you survive it? The people we interviewed said you were directly under the blast."

Elhmas laughed, a little sadly. "I wasn't. The commander of the Incomparable Legion was. I left Enatenael-Lan-Elhmas in charge while I performed a reconnaissance. By which I mean I was watching from a safe distance Luckily for me, it really was a safe distance. You know, right up to the flash-bang I didn't know if you would really do it. I kept expecting you to suddenly open a way out. Then – flash-bang, all gone. So I made myself scarce and went into hiding. Oh, I knew what you were planning all right and had a shrewd idea how you would pull it off. So, when I felt my benighted and ineffable stupid father feeling out for my mind, I portalled away. To the Sahara Desert as it happened. When the humans went berserk after Heaven caved in, I came back. Now, it's time to kill you I guess."

Michael tried to summon up power to provide even a minimal defensive screen but the residual effects of the marijuana in his mind snarled up his concentration. He cudgelled his brain with the effort but it was no use. He was as useless and defenseless as an Ishim.

Elhmas looked at him sympathetically. "It's not really fair is it? You're stoned and I'm not. You've got no allies around and I don’t need them. It's almost as unfair as sticking Enatenael under that nuke. You know the only reason why I'm not going to kill you Michael?"

Michael-Lan shook his head, frantically thinking for a way out of this situation.

Elhamas smiled gently. " You see Michael, I recognized how dangerous humans were long before you did. So, I thought I would try and steer them into nice, peaceful ways. There was once this Jewish carpenter, Jeshua was his name. I possessed him and filled him up with nice-sounding ideas and had him go around preaching them. It worked quite well too, only the occupying powers got upset and they crucified him. I had to leave him there. I can still hear his screams while he was begging to know why I had abandoned him. Then some nut called Paul took everything I had had him teach, turned it on its head and inside out. What I had designed came out all wrong and caused even more trouble. A few hundred years later, I tried again and that was even worse. Centuries of slaughter and destruction and they weren't over when this blew up. I had one last shot a few hundred years after that and it got even worse. Everything I has taught turned into an excuse for wars upon wars with more wars to argue the results of the first set.

"My way failed, Michael. Humans really don't respond well to being taught things. They'll ask awkward questions and find their own way. Your idea is to keep us out of their way and not fool around with them. I will say this for you, it does seem to work. That's all that is saving your life Michael. Your way seems to work and it might be our salvation. It's just lucky for you that I have no desire to take revenge for my father. In fact, the old fool got what was coming to him. I was cheering you on then you know.

"Anyway, just remember I'm still around and I can make life very awkward for you. So, don't go mad with power the way my father did and you won't be joining him." Elhmas settled down on a chair and picked out a reasonable-looking joint. "Now, let's get stoned and talk about something pleasant. I hear female angels are starting to get pregnant. That's going to mess your nightclub up isn't it?"

 

[LTR]

The Oval Office, The White House, Washington D.C.

"There is no hope of reducing the defense budget?" The President sounded stricken at the news.

"No hope at all, Sir. We're stuck at one-point-six trillion for years to come. The FY11 budget is set in stone and nothing can cut from that. As for FY12, simply controlling the areas we now hold are going to take most of our forces. Look at it this way, Sir, the combined land area of Heaven and Hell are three times the size of Earth. The HEA is the only force keeping both places reasonably stable at this time. How long that will be for is anybody's guess. Secretary Warner shook his head. As usual, the politicians had thought the Army would crash in, defeat the enemy and the problems would all be over. Why would they never understand that defeating an enemy was just that start of a long and complicated situation? He knew all too well what the basic problems were. The armed forces had made defeating the enemy look so easy that the politicians assumed that all the other problems would be equally easy to resolve.

"But we have social programs, essential reforms that have been delayed by the war . . . ." The President was genuinely dismayed at the apparently inevitable prospect of virtually his entire domestic program being flushed.

"Sir, when we got into the Salvation War, we assumed that it was going to last for decades and we geared up for that prospect. We've mobilized our economy and we're on a war footing. Our industry is structured around supplying the armed forces, not just ours but other people's as well, with what they need. We start slashing orders now, we'll bring about an economic depression that's unparalleled in our history. Forget about breadlines and soup kitchens, they'll be for the better off. The ones who keep their jobs. The rest won't even have those provisions to fall back on. We have to ease back, slowly and carefully. That's assuming the situation in Heaven and Hell lets us do even that."

A depressed sigh ran around the room. "You expect more trouble then?"

"Yes, Madam Secretary. The sheer shock of the daemonic defeat in Hell is wearing off down there. In some ways we're to blame for that. The daemons were expecting us to overrun Hell with fire and sword. They thought we would massacre them all. Instead, we were pretty nice to them We fed them, looked after them, protected them. Now, I'm not saying that's wrong and I will say that it has eased a lot of our problems. I'd say about seventy percent of the surviving daemons look on us pretty favorably. Another twenty five percent actively like us and want to learn from us."

"That leaves just five percent." The President pounced on the figure.

"Five percent, Sir. They're swallowed up by hatred for us and a desire to hurt us. They see our treatment of them now that they are in our power as an example of weakness. They think they can exploit that and they're right. To some extent, our hands are tied in dealing with them. If we go after them no-hold's barred, we'll alienate the ones who do support us. We learned a lot of lessons in Iraq along those lines. But Heaven's the real problem. It's strange but it's the humans there that we're worried about. The Jell . . . the angels appear to be pretty quiet. They haven't got the suicidal guts the daemons have that's for sure. But their human servants seem a lot more aggressive. We've had stone throwing incidents already.

"But for all that, it's Hell that we're really worried about. We've had word that there is a resistance movement staring up in Hell, possibly headed by Belial."

"That wretched Baldrick tasks us." The President's voice was tinged with bitterness.

"He's escaped us twice and all the reports we've had, from Heaven and Hell, stress that his hatred for us is surpassed only by that he has for Euryale. I wouldn't like to be in her hooves if he gets hold of her. The point is, Mister President, we have a massive peacekeeping problem that has no easily-visible end to it." Warner paused to take breath, "and to make matters worse, we have no real idea what is out there. We've only explored a tiny proportion of the land surface of Hell and even less of Heaven. There could be entire civilizations out there we haven't even spotted yet.
"And that brings us to another problem. We know that there are other bubble-worlds in the new universe we have stumbled into. Some of their occupants have been on Earth in earlier days and either got run off by Yahweh and Satan or decided that we weren't worth the effort of staying here for. Michael-Lan mentioned the Aesir and the Baals, we also have cause to believe that the Olympian pantheon has some foundation in reality. We know that Heaven and Hell were virtually stagnant but can we be sure that those others are? Might they have developed with the same speed as we have? If so they could be most formidable opponents."

"If they are opponents." Secretary Clinton made the point uncharacteristically tentatively.

"That's right Hillary. They may well be benign; the stories about them certainly suggest they might be but how can we be sure. And if there is a basis of truth behind them, there might also be behind other pantheons. We wouldn't, for example, like to run into the Aztec pantheon unprepared would we?"

There was a general shaking of heads at that. The President sighed. "One point six billion it is then. Hillary, what's the feeling at Yamantau on this."

"Much the same as Defense has outlined Sir. Too many responsibilities, too many potential and actual enemies, too many unknowns. All the other fourteen members are agreed, our present force levels have to be maintained, probably for at least a decade."

The President's air of general depression deepened. "Does the United Nations have much to say about that?"

Clinton smiles sadly at him. "Have you been there recently Sir? I wouldn't be surprised if there are tumbleweeds blowing around the main assembly room. The U.N. just doesn’t count for much any more, not the main body of it anyway. Yamantau has taken its functions over almost completely. That's not surprising though. It's a much better war headquarters after all. Fifteen members can actually get things done. We have less to consider there as well. If a country wants to bring up an issue, it has to get one of the fifteen to present it for them. If they can't convince one country of the virtues of their case, they shouldn't be bothering people with it.

"Having said all that, the U.N. special agencies are healthy. UNESCO, World Bank, World Health Organization are all prospering. So much so that a couple of them are talking of changing their names to make the 'world' bit plural. The UNHCR is coordinating the rescue of people from the Hell Pit. But, for all that, as a policy-deciding organization, the U.N. has been sidelined. After all, in the final analysis, Yamantau has a massive army to back up its decisions. I have no doubt that Yamantau will change in the future but here and now, it's the best approach to a world government we've got."

"Damn." The President's word seemed strangely archaic, as if it belonged to a different era. It did, of course, that was all too true. Whole classes of expletives had become obsolete over the last two years and few had grown up to replace them. Not yet, anyway. "How are we going to pay for all this?"

"It's much worse than just the amount by which we are overspending." Timothy Geithner sounded almost amused by the depth of gloom in his own voice. "The ban on deceased First-Life people leaving their assets to themselves to fund their Second Life failed to get past the Senate. In fact, they voted it down 94 – 5 with one abstention. We should have anticipated that Mister President."

This time, Geithner's voice held disapproval and there was no trace of amusement in it. In his opinion, the President had committed the worst political sin of all; he had put both his personal credibility and the stature of his office into fighting a battle he wasn't quite certain he would win. As a result, he had turned what would otherwise been a minor administrative matter, or at least something that could be spun as one, into a major defeat for his presidency. Geithner suspected that the resulting political blow was mortal.

"But it was the right thing to do. And the assets the dead are taking with them are bleeding resources from our economy."
"That doesn't matter Mister President. Really it doesn't. What does matter is that opinions on the legislation were split down the middle by age. The older people were, the more they wanted freedom to take some or all of their First-Life assets with them. The younger people were, the more they saw those assets as their inheritance. Virtually the entire administration are in the former group. They saw this legislation as an attack on them. Frankly, Mister President, the Senate throwing this legislation out was probably a good thing. If they hadn't, I suspect the Supreme Court would have tossed it out. That would have been even more embarrassing.

"That leaves us with the problem of course. My Department is working on a proposal for a death tax, one that should stand up to constitutional scrutiny provided it stops short of total confiscation. Death taxes are an accepted part of the portfolio so applying them should be no problem. If we make the tax applicable only to the monies that a person takes into their Second Life, I think it might be a compromise people will accept. The First Lifers will still get an inheritance and the Second Lifers still get their seed money."

"What about a flow of resources from Heaven and Hell?"

"Heaven is pretty much a bust Sir. Thomas Vilsack sounded regretful. "They really haven't got much that we want other than agricultural produce and most of the production there is used to keep The Eternal City fed. A city that size is a massive liability and resources sink. If we take any significant level of their present production, we'll start a famine."

"I though angels and daemons didn’t need to eat."

"They don’t need to eat for regular sustenance meaning they won’t starve the way we do if deprived of food. As far as we can make out, they do need to eat if their energy consumption goes beyond a specific level. Then, the nourishment they get from food makes up the difference." Doctor Surlethe frowned, "but there's still so much we don’t understand about this."

"As for Hell, we are getting resources from there." Vilsack sounded pleased about that. "Oil particularly; Hell is absurdly oil-rich. The bottleneck is refining the stuff."

"Let me guess." The President lifted a finger in the traditional gesture of sudden enlightenment. "Gaius Julius Caesar is building an oil refinery."

A laugh ran around the room. "Yes Sir, he is. In fact, he was the first person to start building one. He's in partnership with Sunoco on that. If it's any consolation, things aren't going entirely smoothly there. The idea was to build some parts in New Rome and bring others in from Earth. Only, there's problems matching the parts up. Hell-built and Earth-built don’t go well together. Anyway, we are getting crude from there and a lot of valuable minerals as well."

"There's one good thing Sir." Kathleen Sebelius spoke up, grimly determined to be cheerful. "Health care costs are showing a marked decline. It's the big ticket items that are showing the largest fall. Now people know what lies after death, they aren't fighting it so hard. Rather than use massively expensive treatment to delay their death by a few days or weeks, they're now letting go. Why live for a few months hooked up to tubes and meters and suffering every day of that time when one can go to Hell – or even Heaven – and have a healthy reborn body?"

"What about the costs of treating refugees from the Hell-Pit."

"Not high Sir. Most of the work there is done by volunteers and the dead ones don’t need to eat of course. So, its lower than one might think. However, there is a long-term problem here in that some of the refugees are in really bad shape. Hell wasn't a very kind place Sir."

"Do we know why people go to Heaven rather than Hell?" The President was curious.

"No." Doctor Surlethe rather wished the subject hadn't come up. "We have only a very thin trickle of new bodies turning up in Heaven, one or two a day at most. We can identify no pattern behind their selection. It seems to be completely random. At the moment, the Army unit we have stationed at the Heavenly Gates is looking after them. Actually, they're shipping them to the reception center at Hell and processing them like all the others when they wake up. We're watching the ones that came back through Heaven of course; but at the moment we're showing nothing of any significance. Which leaves us with the problem of who lives in Heaven and who stays in Hell."

"Sort of related to that, I've placed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty." Eric Holder had a degree of defiance in his voice. "I can't see that it performs any useful function at this time. Life imprisonment without possibility of parole remains a viable punishment. Keeping a person locked up for the rest of their life is a penalty all right. But killing them just gives another escape route. They get away with their offence cold and just get to start their Second Life a little earlier."

"We could always arrange to meet them when they get reborn and whack them again."

Raymond LaHood made that suggestion tentatively yet it caused Holder to bristle and respond aggressively. "That would be an unconstitutional exercise of double jeopardy as well as being morally reprehensible. I will not allow it."

"Moderate your tone Eric." The President spoke calmly. "Raymond has a valid point even if you disagree with it. Do we carry over offenses committed in the First Life to people in their Second Lives? And Eric, the Cabinet has collective responsibility. It allows or disallows things, not you. When we reach a decision on that issue, you can either support that decision or resign. I trust I make myself clear?"

Holder nodded, resentfully and reluctantly. The President looked at his and nodded slightly before continuing. "That issue also gives rise to a related one. What happens when one of the great monsters of history is found? Pol Pot died quite recently I believe; he may well turn up quite soon. And what about Hitler? Or Idi Amin?"

"We're been really lucky." General Schatten, the new Director of Celestial Intelligence spoke firmly. "So far, the issue hasn't come up. Most of the people we've recovered have been common people, very few of any distinction have re-appeared. Partly that may be because the rings we are emptying fastest, the first ring for example where they starved in a desolate wasteland or the second where they were either blown about by great winds or pushed giant rocks around, were the easiest to get people out of. The rings get progressively harder to explore and recover as we go down and I suspect that the more distinguished of our ancestors are down there. We do have evidence that a certain degree of private vengeance is already taking place though. When Belial's fortress fell, one of his human assistants was an SS guard from Majdanak concentration camp. An Israeli officer, most of whose family died in that camp, took him away and is believed to have killed him. Again. Both we and the Israelis are trying to find him but no luck so far."

"A nightmare lies that way." Hillary Clinton spoke reflectively, her voice penetrating the silence that had dominated the room. "We go after people, our enemies come after ours, we could end up fighting a war that will kill us all. Haven't enough people died in this war already?"

That caused the silence to deepen. The death toll from the Salvation War was indeed enough. Millions of humans were dead, almost all civilians. The death toll in the daemons and angels was much, much greater. Most of their dead had been warriors, victims of the massive disparity in sheer, raw firepower that had dominated the war. From a military point of view, it was true that the humans had shattered their enemies without breaking into a sweat over it. Economically and socially, the cost had been so much higher. Even now, with the super-hurricanes and super-tornados a thing of the past, it would take decades for the south east cost to recover. The dust storms and the tornados had made the great plains a liability, one that would be put right eventually of course but the short term consequences were still there. The United States was actually a net food importer this year and would be next as well. Another economic fact to be considered. And that brought the meeting full circle.

The President walked over to the great windows that dominated the room and stared out at the world beyond. There had been so much he had wanted to do, so much that he had felt needed to be done and none of it was going to happen. He was quite sure of that. In his heart, he guessed that he was a one-term President and his time in office was already more than half done. It would be for others to take up the dreams he had nurtured and turn them into reality. It would be years before that could happen, the briefing he had just received made that painfully clear.

Ideals and dreams could be gods as well. They were a part of a pantheon just as much as the more tangible 'gods' had been. This had been a war where the human war machine had ruthlessly killed all the gods that had stood in its path. The Pantheon of ideals and dreams had proved no more resilient than the rest.