Original Fiction The Salvation War - Pantheocide

[LTR]

Border Post 1147E, North of Maesot, Thailand

Being part of the Tahan Phran militia had its advantages. Having the opportunity to operate this border post was one of them. Technically intended to provide border surveillance and cut down on cross-border infiltration, it was also a nice little money-earner for the local militia. It was a secure, well-run stopping point for travellers and tourists who could leave their cars and trucks and walk around in perfect safety. The women from the nearby village came up and cooked food for the visitors. When a bus load of tourists arrived, it was a great day for everybody involved. The tourists would take delight in eating real Thai food, not the bland approximation that most restaurants catering to tourists served. They would buy the jewelry and souvenirs that the local people had made, take advantage of the clean latrines and wash basins, paying a purely nominal charge of course and quite forgetting that what would have been a nominal charge in Bangkok was truly exorbitant out here. Especially since all the necessary supplies were issued cost-free by the Army.

There were even a few guest huts where people could stay overnight if they wished and that was both another source of income and the supply of some more basic entertainment. The Tahan Phran contingent was mostly comprised of young men in their early twenties, fit and well turned-out. The younger European women in the tourist busses seemed to find them quite irresistible and the arrival of a tourist bus for the night usually meant that at least one of the young militiamen would get lucky. The girls in the Tahan Phran outfit might have been expected to object but they had their own suitors. It seemed that the male tourists found girls who handled guns with nonchalant competence equally irresistible.

Captain Momrajong "Lon" Thongtaem smiled happily at the stray thoughts, then continued his inspection of the border post perimeter. Despite the various distractions of the day, the post had continued to function as a military base, sending out patrols to check the border and establishing road blocks so that trucks could be inspected for contraband. Sometimes drugs, sometimes people, sometimes just the small luxuries of life that were commonplace here in Thailand but unknown over the border in Myanmar. Smuggling was a well-established local tradition here. Now dusk had fallen, the need for an alert status had increased. Lon knew that the serious smugglers only moved at night and keeping them under control meant night patrol work. Fortunately, no tourist busses were staying overnight in 1147E today and the local villagers had all gone home. That meant the base was a purely military facility once more.

"Any sign of movement out there Kip?" Like most Tahan Phran outfits, the members of this unit had grown up together and knew each other far too well for military formality to take hold.

Sergeant Charnvit "Kip" Chachavalpongpun frowned. "I don’t think so Lon." He hesitated. "Nothing I can put my finger on but…"

"I know. Something's out there. I can sense it too." Lon joined his sergeant in frowning. One of the advantages the Tahan Phran had over the regular army was that they were locals who knew the area intimately. They knew the jungle, understood its moods, could listen to it when it tried to speak to them. The regulars couldn’t have that level of local knowledge. Now, the jungle was telling them that there were strangers around.

"You think there's Baldricks coming?" The sergeant spoke quietly but the concern in his voice was obvious. The Tahan Phran still had 5.56mm M16A1s, weapons that were virtually useless against the Baldricks. Units in the cities had the heavy-caliber weapons that were more suitable for that kind of enemy.

"Not Baldricks, no." Lon peered out into the darkness. "Those attacks are over. Might be angels, but I haven't heard of them launching marauder raids."

"Thai Rath had news today, said the Myanmar mob were moving troops around." The sergeant read the Thai Rath newspaper daily, not least because his wife had been killed in a car crash about 18 months earlier and he was watching the daily list of Thai people freed from the Hellpit. Once day, her name would be there and he could go to welcome her back.

"So I saw. I'd be happier if we had a back-up force to help us." That had always been the case in the past, usually a cavalry outfit with light armored cars that could move to help the militia out if an action turned out too big for them. But both cavalry divisions, along with Thailand's only armored division, were in Hell, part of the Human Expeditionary Army. "But the nearest reserve is in Kanchanaburi and they'd take hours to get here. Get some of the boys together, send them out to do a sweep along the river. Might be a big drug convoy is coming over and we're in the way."

The Sergeant nodded and turned away to organize a squad-sized patrol. It was possible a big drug shipment was being smuggled over and that meant the post would come under attack to stop them interfering. The only problem was that there had been no such shipments for two years or more. It was whispered that the Myanmar Junta had a huge new customer who was taking all the street corner pharmaceuticals they could produce. As he turned, over in the tree-line beyond the post perimeter, a flock of birds took to the skies, screaming in protest at the interruption of their nightly rest. Sergeant and Captain looked at each other with their eyes widened in recognition of what the disturbance signified, the Lon's hand smacked the alert button. The wail of the 'to arms' siren almost drowned out the whistle of the descending mortar rounds.

Whoever the mortar crews were, they were good. The first salvo of rounds crashed into the barracks area, shattering the timber buildings and setting the ruins ablaze. By the light of the fires, Lon saw the men and women of his unit scattering to their pre-set defense positions on the perimeter. The warning had been adequate, just, to get most of them out of the barracks but he could see from the numbers that some hadn't made it and that his little force had already been depleted. Then the ground shook under his feet as further salvos of mortar rounds struck home. His command post had been one of the targets of the latest barrage and he saw it crumpling under the impacts. Even worse, the radio shack was also a burning ruin. Border Post 1147E was isolated from help.

Lon knew something else, the mortar fire was too precise, too accurate for this to be a normal border incident. The troops out there were Myanmar Army regulars. Not just regulars but troops from one of the few really competent units in the Myanmar Army. Most Myanmarese units were a joke, a 'battalion' might be as few as twenty men, armed with light infantry weapons, and with a few porters to carry their supplies. This unit was different, they knew what they were doing, were here in strength and had a full complement of weaponry. As if to confirm his impression, the whole post area was suddenly bathed in brilliant light. The mortars had switched to firing flares, illuminating their targets while the surrounding jungle remained in darkness. The crackle of machine gun fire from his defenses just confirmed what he already knew, the main attack was just starting.

The damage to his command post was as bad as he had feared. He had taken a few seconds to run over to it but the building was gone. His radio operator was dead, stretched out over her equipment, her body torn by the fragments from the mortar round. The professional part of his mind told Lon that there was hope here, she had been killed while on the air, it was possible that a warning of the assault and a plea for help had gone out in time. The personal part of his mind was shut down, only later would he mourn the death of a girl he had known since her earliest schooldays.

Out on the perimeter, the Tahan Phran militia were blinded by the flare illumination of their border post. The white light had destroyed their night vision and the surrounding jungle was an impenetrable black shadow lit only by the muzzle flashes of the Myanmarese troops as they started their assault. There was a solution to this problem though, a well-established ones. The Thai militia had pre-set firing lines worked out for their machine guns, ones that didn’t need individual targets to be sighted but simply covered the approaches to the camp in a web of gunfire. The machine gunners swept their guns along the preset marks, spraying the advancing Myanmar infantry with fire and forcing them to ground.

Lon guessed that the commander of the Myanmar force had expected the initial mortar barrage to catch the defenses unprepared so that a hasty attack could be into the defense perimeter before the Tahan Phran unit could react. It had almost worked but not quite and the difference was great. With the Myanmar infantry pinned down in the ground between the jungle edge and the border post perimeter, he would have to do things the slow way. The Thai gunners had revealed their positions in beating off that first wave, now the Myanmar troops retaliated by firing rocket launchers at those positions. Of course, that had been expected, and the gunners had shifted to alternate positions but the slow process of dismantling the border post defense had started.

In the end, it took almost four hours and by the end of the fighting, eleven of the twenty five Tahan Phran militia were dead and most of the survivors were wounded. A crippling loss for a unit that was taken from a small village and one that left that village with all too high a proportion of its children lost. Lon regrouped the survivors outside the ruins of Border Post 1147E and led them as they slipped away into the jungle. His unit had done what was expected of it, they had held an enemy assault for a few precious hours and that was enough, for now.

Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army. Hell

"Good evening General. You got the warning then?"

"Yes Sir, we did. May I ask how you knew? The warning from here actually beat the messages from our front-line units."

"One of the early casualties was a militia radio operator. She demanded we get a warning out as soon as she arrived here. Fortunately, the receiving staff at the Phelan Plain were on the ball and they got the message to us and we got the message to you. Now, can the HEA offer your country assistance at this point?"

"General Petraeus, it is with deep regret that I must ask for the five Thai divisions here to be released back to Thai command. They are our strategic reserve and we need them badly to defeat this invasion."

Petraeus walked over to the massive display screen that dominated one wall of his office. A few seconds playing with the controls threw up a map of the Thai border with Myanmar, a few seconds more highlighted the area of the fighting. It extended along almost a hundred kilometers of the border. Petraeus stared at it for a few seconds, absorbing the tactical reality of the situation on the ground.

"General Asanee, your forces are part of the Human Expeditionary Army. That means your fight is our fight. Just how deep a penetration has been achieved by this attack?"

General Asanee shuffled her feet in slight embarrassment. "At this time, I don’t know Sir. The reports we are getting from the area are pretty confused." She paused slightly and drew her breath. "To be honest Sir, the command staff at Kanchanaburi are not the best we have. Most of our best people are here in Hell, the rest are in the south where we had that separatist problem. The border with Cambodia had the next call and Kanchanaburi got what was left."

"You need to straighten that out." Petraeus's voice was mild but the rebuke was obvious. "You have the authority to make decisions? What does the civilian government have to say?"

"The Prime Minister is my cousin Sir. It's more a question of family relationships than military-civil authority and my cousin and I get on very well. But, Sir, I must insist we have our five divisions back."

"You have a nice, well-balanced corps there. One heavy armored division, two light armored divisions and two mechanized infantry divisions. You believe this is adequate to repel this invasion?"

"I do sir. Obviously, the command staff at Kanchanaburi will need replacing."

"Of course." Petraeus zoomed the map in. "Kanchanaburi is the key, it’s a major road and rail junction and gives direct, well-built roads right into the heart of the country."

"I agree Sir, it’s a standard teaching problem at Chulachomklao. Kanchanaburi is the key to the defense of the Myanmar frontier. We've got to hold it. The problem is, all we have there is light infantry, we need the armor and even now it’s a question of whether we can get it there fast enough. We have to assemble the units, get them out of the Hellgate and then ship them back. It'll take a week, ten days more likely. The Myanmar Army is on foot and our people will be fighting all the way but the timing is still off. We may end up having to counter-attack to retake Kanchanaburi before we can do anything else. That will be bloody."

"General, why should it take that long? We're in Hell, remember? We can punch a portal through from here to anywhere we want. All we need is a sensitive on the other end. That's why we've got the Human Expeditionary Army here in Hell, we've got interior lines to any point on Earth. When this army is complete, we can open a gate to wherever Yahweh, or whoever else we end up fighting, wants to take us and hit him with every mechanized unit most of the world can put together. When this Army is finished, we'll have 625 divisions, living humans, deceased humans, daemons ready to defend Earth and Hell against anything that can be thrown at us.

"So, your divisions can be wherever you want them, as soon as you want them there. You have sensitives still in Thailand, even after the First Bowl. Get them where you need the troops. At this end, you've got lucky, kitten's here and she's the best sensitive around. She's visiting some friends of hers in the deceased special forces so we can get her here within an hour or two." Petraeus winced slightly, personally he liked kitten but military customs and formalities hadn't caught up with one of his key staff members being led around on a leash by her boyfriend. It caused protocol problems.

General Asanee was staring at the map. "You knew this was going to happen didn't you?"

"This particular attack? Not quite, no. But it was obvious that something of the sort would happen all too soon. The Curb Stomp War proved that nothing in Hell, well, almost nothing, can stand against us in a head-on fight. Since Heaven and Hell were deadlocked in their Great Celestial War, the heavenly military arts can't be much better than anything down here. So they must know they can't fight us head on. Everything they've done points to them having taken that fact on board. So, it made sense they would try and find a surrogate-ally on Earth so they can pitch human against human.

"I can only think of three candidates who are outcasts, who are not part of the Human Alliance and who have access to substantial military power. Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, Chavez in Venezuela and Than Shwe in Myanmar. Our satellite recon tells us Kim Jong-Il is moving his units around and we expect trouble there soon. We didn’t pick up this Myanmar move, infantry movements in heavy jungle are hard to spot but it was a fair bet Than Shwe would be looking this way, the only other option would be to strike at India and even he isn't that mad. So, when I said, the Human Expeditionary Army stood with you, I wasn't being melodramatic, although judicious use of melodrama is no bed thing in a General. You must know that. This invasion is part of the war with Yahweh, defeat it and we defeat his purpose."

"I'll tell my Prime Minister we'll have all five divisions assembled at Kanchanaburi within 24 hours. That will please him greatly. We can seal this incursion off and drive it back." General Asanee thought for a second. "Then what? The Myanmar regime is a pretty nasty one and they just let their people starve after Cyclone Nargis. That was a Yahweh hit and they are still siding with him. This invasion is a betrayal of us humans, they should be punished for that."

"And it’s a chance to pay off a few old scores right?"

General Asanee kicked herself, she forgotten this General was a military history scholar of notable repute. "Of course, but even so, it's still the right thing to do. And it'll give Kim Jong-Il something to think about as well."

"I agree, in many ways we’re using this fight as a test-bed. To see how commanding Hell affects strategy here on Earth."

"So we invade then." The satisfaction in the General's voice was obvious.

"Why? We don’t have to invade, not any more. We can open a portal and just position troops close to Naypyidaw and by close to I mean on top of the place. We don’t have to fight our way up to a capital any more, we just arrive there. That makes Hell the most commanding piece of territory there has ever been. But, before any of that, you need to get your command problems in Kanchanaburi straightened out. An entire mechanized corps arriving in one place needs a lot of good staff-work."

"I'll be on it Sir." General Asanee thought for a second. "You've been thinking a lot about the use of portals in warfare haven't you?"

"General, since taking this job, I've thought about very little else."

 

[LTR]

Michael-Lan's Private Estate, Heaven.

"You got chopped up a bit didn’t you?" The level of concern in Michael-Lan's voice was inversely proportional to the concern he actually felt for Uriel.

"I am lucky to be alive at all Michael-Lan. The humans fought back over El Paso and attacked me with their aircraft and missiles. I managed to duck through a portal in time to dodge their missiles but the portal was small and my wing caught one edge. It is badly broken and is slow to heal. Then there were fragments from the human missiles. A few got through the portal just as it closed and their wounds also are slow to heal."

I could offer you a stiff drink to take your mind off your wounds but I doubt if you'd understand the gesture. "Uriel-Lan, I have to tell you, the All-Seeing Father is not well-pleased with the attack on El Paso. Only a tiny proportion of the humans who live there died. This was far from the erasure of the whole city that he wished."

"I did what I could, the humans have changed Michael-Lan. Once my touch dropped them by the hundreds and the hundreds of hundreds but now it is hard to touch them at all and even when they feel it, they resist me. It takes time to bring my peace to them and their missiles and aircraft do not give me enough. I must take those I can and be satisfied."

Oh boy, that's going to sound good when I repeat it to Yah-yah. Michael-Lan thought with great satisfaction. 'Uriel-Lan says he'll do what he wants and you will have to be satisfied with it.' That should get him going nicely.

"We are at war, Uriel-Lan, The One Above All understands that." Michael-Lan managed to get the words out without choking on them. Yahweh had as little idea of what war against the humans meant as Satan had, less in fact despite the fact that Heaven had kept up to date with human progress and Hell hadn't. It was an old problem, one that went back uncounted millennia, there were people who just refused to hear anything that didn’t suit their pre-existing beliefs. Yahweh still had a mental picture of humans as trusting, thoughtless sheep and he allowed nothing to interfere with it. The idea that the sheep had turned into ruthless killers simply did not register with him. Michael-Lan took the train of thought further. Even if Yahweh woke up and smelled the coffee, it wouldn’t help him. It was one thing to read about what human weapons could do, quite another to see the reality and the meaning it imposed. The way humans filled a battlefield with fire and steel had no equivalent in Angelic memory.

"Michael-Lan, you know humans. Where should I strike next?" Uriel asked the advice, half-hoping he would be told to drop the whole idea.

Michael-Lan thought it over carefully. Texas? Where people were trigger-happy and armed to the teeth? Uriel wouldn’t fall for that again. He thought briefly about sending Uriel within striking distance of Nellis Air Force Base and the Tonopah test range where the humans had killing machines advanced even beyond their standards. The problem there was that the only viable target in Nevada was his beloved Las Vegas and no way was he going to let Uriel loose on that city. California? Now there was a thought. Suddenly inspiration hit him. A city full of Marines, surrounded by fighter bases and missile batteries and home to a large proportion of the U.S. Navy. Perfect.

"Uriel-Lan, rest here for a while. When you are fit again, I recommend you strike at San Diego."

Michael-Lan took a courteous leave of his convalescent guest, inflated his flying sacs and took off, heading for The Eternal City and his working offices. He had to make another visit first of course, one that Michael was looking forward to. On the way, his mind returned to the problem that was nagging at him, the second conspiracy that Lemuel-Lan-Michael had discovered. It was fortunate that Lemuel didn’t know humans nearly as well as he thought he did, for if he had, he would have recognized the pattern that his charts had revealed. A pattern that Michael-Lan had recognized instantly.

This second conspiracy was very different from his own. Michael-Lan's objective was simple, he was creating a situation where the ruling elite of Heaven was so rotten with corruption that one good kick would bring it down. His club and the activities that were centered on it had that as its primary aim. By addicting its members to the pleasures he offered, pleasures that were strictly and absolutely prohibited by Yahweh, he was creating a group that was united by its enjoyment of those pleasures and isolated from the rest of Heaven by that fact. When Michael struck, he would decapitate the leadership of Heaven and take over. It was a classic top-down takeover.

This new conspiracy didn’t work that way at all. While Michael-Lan was creating a new society, one that was slowly spreading out across the top tiers of Heaven, his unknown rival was building an underground army. La Resistance thought Michael. It was divided into watertight cells, with only those in the cells knowing who else was involved. In theory anyway, in reality things were never that close and the cells always had a degree of leakage between them. The point was, the intent of such an organization was to challenge the leadership tiers, to face them with a mass insurrection. This new plan was a bottom-up replacement of the whole system. It would mean a civil war in Heaven, the one thing that Michael was trying to avoid. Other than seeing human tanks in the streets of the Eternal City of course. Avoiding that took priority over everything else. He had to keep the humans tied up, chasing their own tails down on Earth for if they turned their full attention to gaining access to Heaven, it would only be a matter of time before the tanks arrived.

Beneath him, Michael-Lan saw a bronze-covered lodge, one of his smaller resorts that he had modified specifically for its one occupant. He back-winged, settled neatly on the landing porch and allowed his sacs to deflate. Then, he went inside.

"Belial. How do things go with you?"

The great demon, once a Grand Duke of Hell and the only one of Satan's crew to strike a solid blow at the humans, looked up at his visitor with petulance.

"How long must I stay cooped up in this bronze box? There is work for me to do."

"As long as I wish." Michael-Lan's voice was sharp. He didn’t know if the humans could lock in on Belial's mind but he wasn't taking any risks. "Unless you wish to take your chances with the humans?"

Belial shook his head. "I wish to strike at them, amongst others. I waste time here."

"Time is something we have plenty of, Belial-Lan-Michael. You will be pleased to know that your ex-mate Euryale is using her time very well indeed. She has made an alliance with an important human, one Gaius Julius Caesar and turning that to great profit. She has even made her peace with the humans and managed to throw all the blame for Sheffield and Detroit on you. She is rich, well, and prospers along with all her kind. Of course, the humans make them keep their head-snakes covered."

Belial was almost shaking with rage. "She will die in millennia of screaming for her betrayal. And the human she allies herself with."

"Not a chance Belial, Euryale is your problem, that I agree. But Gaius Julius Caesar is off-limits. He is under the protection of the others and they will not tolerate harm coming to him." Michael-Lan returned his voice to its friendliest tone. "Anyway, you will also be pleased that the Baroness Yulupki is also prospering and is now Queen of the Naga. They have set up a delivery service and put FedEx out of business. Not before time, they lost one of my packages once."

Belial clenched his fists and stormed backwards and forwards at the idea of his erstwhile underlings prospering under the rule of humans in Hell. Michael-Lan smiled gently at his rage, daemons really ought to learn to control their emotions, their inability to do so had been their downfall.

"Now, Belial, we come to business. How do we drop fire on human cities?"
"That isn't a problem, open a portal, one end in the lava pit of a volcano, the other over the target."

"That is a problem. As you should be able to tell from the air quality here, there are no volcanoes in Heaven. Somehow, I have to fulfill the prophecy of the Fourth Bowl of Wrath and drop fire on their cities."

"Why didn't you make a prophecy you could fulfill?" Belial couldn't believe that the coldly calculating Michael-Lan, Yahweh's Great General, could blunder like that.

"I didn’t make them. You know how these prophecies got to happen? I'd been on a visit to South America and I'd stocked up with some of the local products. A leaf extract the humans call cocaine. Anyway, on the way back, I stopped in what is now Mexico and picked up a load of some really great mushrooms. They're good Belial, you ought to try them. Give you really wild visions. Anyway, I got to wondering what would happen if somebody mixed up those mushrooms with cocaine. I didn’t want to try it on anybody important so I went to a place called Patmos, an Island that was the back end of nowhere. I found this tramp sitting by the roadside, begging for food, so I gave him a dosed-up mushroom salad, sat back and watched the fireworks.

"And, Belial my friend, what fireworks they were. Eyes flashing, jumping around, shouting and raving, Belial, it was a sight to behold I can tell you. How was I to know that some scribe would take all his ravings down and preserve them? I thought he'd just be dismissed as another lunatic and banged on the head with a rock or something. Instead he becomes Saint John The Divine and the product of my mushroom salad becomes the Book of Revelation. I tried to get it suppressed, really I did. But the Nicaeans just wouldn’t listen. Thomas Jefferson deleted it as well but his opinion didn't take, more's the pity. Still, no use crying over what's done. The prophecies exist and we've got to fulfill them. Now, no volcanoes in Hell, any better ideas?"

Belial shook his head. "We can't drop lava without a source. We'd have to go back to Hell and open up a volcano there."

"Tartarus is occupied by humans, its their main base in the North. They keep a very close watch on all the volcanoes. By the way, they gave Palelabor to your human slaves, they're running a profitable mineral extraction business there now. Iron, copper, titanium, you name it.

Belial slumped, his face in his hands. His beloved Palelabor in the hands of the humans who had once slaved in its depths. Michael-Lan reached down and patted him on the shoulder. "Don’t worry about it, Belial, you just work out a way we can drop fire on a few human cities."

The meeting with Belial had taken less time than he had thought so Michael-Lan decided that a brief visit to the Montmartre Club would be in order. He flew idly towards the Eternal City, enjoying the sight of the lush green farmland beneath him, the workers tending the fields that kept the Eternal City supplied with its food. That, of course, raised an interesting possibility. Michael wondered if it would be possible to grow some of his more hallucinogenic crops up here in Heaven and, if so, would they have the same remarkable effects as they did when grown down on Earth?

Once again, he back-winged neatly and landed on the ledge, this one of a temple devoted to Yahweh. Who else Michael-Lan thought with a certain level of scorn. Yah-yah never grew tired of people worshiping him. Still, he'd found a whole new planet full of primitive sentients he could convert into a new cult. Had things gone the way they had, the discarded humans would have been condemned to Hell, there to disappear slowly, just as they themselves had replaced the ones who had gone before them. Michael-Lan wondered if, somewhere tucked deep in the bowels of Hell, there were still survivors of those earlier races.

He walked down through the confusing maze of passages that led to the heart of the temple. There was a trick to this, all the mazes in heaven worked on the same principle, if one put one's left hand on the left wall and never took it off, one would eventually reach the center. This one was the exception, at one specific point, if one changed to right hand on right wall, one would find the Montmartre Club.

Inside, Michael was delighted to note that his business was doing well. The music was up to standard and he got a respectful salute from Benny Goodman as he passed. He halted for a few minutes, listened to the number and gave an approving nod as it wound up. A quick look at the schedule showed the band had a good few numbers to work through before their shift was up. Then the center-stage would be taken by some angels pole-dancing.

Once in his office, far to the rear of the concealed structure, Michael sat down with the stock inventories. He'd replenished his supplies nicely, the Myanmar Junta had really come through for him. Such a nice group of people he thought genially, always willing to please and so reasonable and rational compared with Yahweh. He was working on his next liquor procurement scheme, getting good Scotch and Bourbon was turning into a real pain, when there was a knock on his door.

"Michael-Lan, I need help."

It was Maion, the young angel-addict he'd been supplying with heroin. Michael frowned slightly. "You know Maion, you're using more of this stuff now."

"I know, Michael-Lan but, I," she hesitated, tears in her eyes. "I need it."

"So do a lot of people Maion, and they all support their habit. They don’t come running to me asking for free supplies now do they?" Actually, a lot of them did and if they were valuable to him they got what they needed. Maion wasn't that valuable, not yet anyway.

"I know but…"

"It's not fair to them is it? They work to support their habits and pay their way. Why should you be any different?"

"I'll do things, for you, I promise."

Right on. Of course you will, you just don’t know what yet. "Would you like to work here?"

"Oh yes." The happiness in Maion's voice was obvious. "What will I have to do? Serve the drinks?"

"Oh no, I've got a much better job in mind for you than that. You'd make a good dancer I think."

Maion seemed slightly taken aback. "Well, I did learn the reverential dances for the temples."

"They'll do, for a start. The others will show you how to blend them into a pole-dance routine. And work out how you can lose your robes in the process."

"Oh." Now Maion really was taken aback.

"Come along, I'll take you to see Charmeine-Lan. She's in charge of the dancers."

Charmeine-Lan was in the costume room, making sure the next set of dancers were properly costumed. Michael introduced Maion to her and left them to get on with business. As soon as he'd gone, Charmeine-Lan put her wing comfortingly around Maion. "It's no big thing, really. All you have to do is do your dance when scheduled. Just remember, don’t let go of the pole when you're dancing, its there for your safety. Hang on to it in case somebody tries to pull you off the stage. It’s never happened and if somebody tries, security will deal with them. Apart from that, remember to keep to schedule, be down to skin and feathers by the end of the allocated time. Don't over-run and never under-run. Keep an eye on the stage manager, that's me, and if I tell you to slow down or speed up, then do so. Sometimes we have problems and I'll need you to cover a gap or something. Do that well and you'll get a lot of extra credit. After the show, you'll meet up with the customers on the floor. Socialize with them, if they want you to, you can do a little private dance for them, up close, its called a lap dance. All the girls earn a lot of money that way, more than enough to pay for your habit. Finally, some of the customers will want to take you to the rooms upstairs."

"No!" Maion was horrified.

"Yes, Maion. You'll do it and like it." Charmeine-Lan's voice was harsh and relentless. "You've got a habit, you'll support it and that means doing what the customers want. Otherwise you'll do without. You know what that feels like?"

Maion nodded her head, partly in acknowledgement, partly to hide the fact she was crying.

"All right then." Charmeine-Lan switched her voice back to the soft-friendly tone she'd used earlier. "It really isn't bad, Michael-Lan doesn’t allow anybody bad in here so they'll all be nice to you. If you're good and work hard at pleasing the customers, one will take a liking to you and reserve you. That way you won’t have to go with anybody else. Now, when a customer asks you to go upstairs, you tell me so I can get another girl to take your place on the schedule right?"

Another tear-stained nod from Maion.

"Very good, so let's get you a nice costume for your first appearance."

 

[LTR]

Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Making an arrival is a well-versed art for those following the profession of arms. The sudden discovery that Heaven and Hell actually existed, followed by the rapid conquest of the latter had provided so many new opportunities for a dramatic arrival that most officers are hard put to chose which to employ. This arrival was no different, an hour or so earlier a Short 330 transport aircraft had arrived and disgorged a mass of equipment and a team of electronic specialists. Any observers with a basic knowledge of the new generation of electronic systems brought about by the discovery that portals could be opened between Earth and Hell would recognize the system they were setting up as an AN/GSY-1(V)4 Mod 5 Portal Generator.

If they hadn't, their sad lack of current affairs knowledge would have been remedied when, after two hours hard work setting up the system a black ellipse appeared in the middle of the airfield and a column of five M1114 Humvees roared through and set off down the long, straight road that led to Kanchanaburi. Following them with only a slight delay was another convoy, a mix of more Humvees and six-by-six trucks. This one had troops on display, grim-faced men and women wearing white helmets, white gloves and white scarves. The Air Force personnel watching the cavalcade nodded significantly to each other, these were the Thai Army's military police, the notorious White Mice. That was, in itself, a strong clue as to who had been in the first unit through, although that small convoy that was already disappearing into the distance.

The local population were used to military convoys making their way through the streets and got out of the way. They saw the red plate with two gold stars mounted on the front fender of each vehicles and noted the array of weapons mounted on the Humvees. They also noted that the vehicles were camouflaged red-gray rather than the usual dark green. The more astute realized that these vehicles had come straight from Hell and the really astute guessed that the Army headquarters in Kanchanaburi was about to get a visit from Hell in more ways than the obvious one. Astute or not, they got out of the way and watched the vehicles pass with resigned patience. It wasn't as if these were politicians after all, these were generals and generals actually worked for a living.

"This looks bad." Major General Asanee looked at the crowds of people at the sides of the road. They were refugees, all heading west, away from the advancing Myanmarese Army that was slowly inching its way down towards the transport nexus of Kanchanaburi.

"Backwash of a war always looks like this Ma'am." Senior Colonel Prachep was looking out the other window. "But this is worse than most."

"We're lucky this is a divided highway. We're going in, most people are coming out."

"That's encouraging of course, if the situation was really bad, they'd be using both lanes."

"That is true." Major General Asanee looked at the people on the other lane and guessed there would be more than a few deserters mixed in with them That would be for her White Mice to handle, they would already be setting up road-blocks and vetting the refugees. Genuine civilians would be allowed to continue on their way, life would be easier without them in the way. Any deserters would be detained, she had seriously thought of having them hanged at the roadside but had dismissed the idea. Executing people was a bit pointless these days, they'd just end up in Hell. Instead, they would be put into units tasked with the most dangerous of operations.

The Humvee column turned sharp right, past a complex of red-roofed buildings. She gestured abruptly. "The Tantipkan Hotel. Commandeer it, we'll use it as accommodation for the sensitives. They'll work better if they have somewhere comfortable to live."

Prachep picked up the radio and contacted the White Mice unit back at the airfield. They'd detach a squad to tell the Hotel owner he now had a new set of residents. He understood exactly what his General had in mind, they'd been working together for years and, like any good aide, he could almost think with her mind. This whole operation depended on portals being opened to and from Hell, they would take care of moving reinforcements into the region and keeping them supplied. They had another purpose as well, Myanmarese aircraft hadn't been reported this far west, not yet, and if they came, they would be in for a very unpleasant surprise. General Petraeus had made two squadrons of F-22s available to provide the Thai Army with air cover.

"This road seems clear." Off the radio after the brief message, Prachep looked around again. The Humvee column was holding a steady 50 miles per hour, an impressive sight since only a couple of feet separated each of the vehicles. The drivers were blasting their horns at anybody who got in the way but the warnings were very few.

"It's the back way in. Most people will be on the main street, about two hundred meters on our left. The Allied War Cemetery is just ahead of us on the left." The convoy swung right, passing across a trio of reservoirs. "Sports ground up ahead. Remember it, we can use it as a portal point. They've been doing some building around here, those places with the blue roofs weren't there when I was here last."

The column swung left, then right again, once more parallel to the main road. Ahead of them was a crossroads, blocked with vehicles. The drivers didn’t slow down, they just held their hands on the vehicle horns and watched the civilians panicking as they tried to get out of the way. Two pick-up trucks collided as one backed up too hastily and a third went into a ditch.

"Purple roofs?" Prachep waved at some houses on the right.

"No accounting for taste. Barracks of the 9th Infantry coming up on the left. That should be their armored battalion." She paused for a second. "Vehicles still in laager." Her contralto voice was grim.

The road started to curve to the left. Ahead of them was a junction with the main road. The convoy still didn’t hesitate or reduce speed, it swung right on to the highway and kept on its way, leaving more stalled civilian vehicles behind them. Up ahead of the, a large dragon's head had been built by the roadside. It and the steel gates beside it marked the headquarters of Third Army. Seeing her convoy approach, the guards threw the gates open.

General Asanee looked at them as they saluted her vehicle. "Find out who those guards are and break the entire guard detail to privates. Then assign them to mine clearance. We're at war, nobody should be getting into this base without being challenged. Make that clear to their replacements."

The Humvees swung into a car park in front of the headquarters building, a parking lot that was marked with the circular lines of a helipad. The five vehicles stopped in a neat line in front of the main entrance, the occupants debussing with the skill of long practice. It wasn't the first time that they'd taken over a command post this way.

"Sergeant Tram? Go to the Sergeant's Mess, talk to the President, find out what is really going on here. Corporal Vung? Do the same for the Corporal's Mess, find out what troop morale and standards are. Rest of you come with me."

The party burst through the doors of the headquarters, sending them slamming back against their stops. A receptionist was sitting behind a desk, she waved her hands ineffectually but did nothing to stop them. "One civilian. No armed guards." Prachep's voice was contemptuous.

"Fire her. She should have got on the telephone to warn people at least." The General led the way down the corridor that ran through the center of the building, the slam of boots on marble floor echoing off the walls. She gave no sign of noticing but the members of her party were keeping in perfect step with her. General Asanee knew how to make an entrance. She reached the double doors leading to the command center and two of her men threw them open while she stalked into the room.

"We really must decide what is best to be done. " Major General Thamassaret looked around in shock at the sudden interruption. "Who the hell are you?"

"General Thamassaret. You are relieved as commander of Third Army and Third Army Region. Effective immediately. Report to Supreme Command Headquarters for reassignment."

Thamassaret looked outraged at the terse order and stormed out of the room. The General looked around the room then studied the situation map. Almost immediately she missed the American-supplied electronic displays and maps that equipped the Human Expeditionary Army. This map was paper even though it was covered with a perspex screen.

"Intelligence Officer?"

"Yes Ma'am?" An unidentified Colonel spoke up from a table near the map.

"Enemy forces, positions, axis of advance?"

"On the map ma'am."

The General took a laser pointer from her pocket and shone it on a red marker sausage with the number '100,000?' scrawled in it. "This?" Her voice was disbelieving. "This is the best you can do?"

"Myanmar MiG-29s stopped us getting recon flights over the area and…"

"You're relieved of your post, report to Supreme Command Headquarters for reassignment. Colonel Prachep, take over his position. Logistics?" She pointed to the number on the map. "Try and explain that."

The logistics officer gulped. "Well, Ma'am, its our best-guess estimate of….."

"How will the Myanmar Army supply 100,000 men over a stretch of country that has only a handful of roads when they have no air transport, no available railway and shift supplies using manpacks? If you can't see the blatant impossibility of that number, you've no right to wear this uniform. You're relieved of your post, report to Supreme Command Headquarters for reassignment. General Senawith?"

"Ma'am?"

"Why are there no patrols out? What about contact with the Tahan Phran? There should be several companies of them in the area." Her voice was challenging, Senawith was a Thaksin appointee, he'd got this position due to his loyalty to the ex-Prime Minister, not any command ability.

"We took a decision to concentrate all our forces around this city. And you know what the civilians are like, every man they see is an army."

"You're relieved of command. Report to Supreme Command Headquarters for reassignment." She pointed at his deputy. "Supadom, take over command of the division. Get it into contact with the enemy and keep it that way."

"You wouldn't throw your weight around like this if Thaksin was still in charge." Senawith was stuffing papers from his desk into a briefcase.

"As it happens I did, but anyway, he isn’t, he pissed on the Army's turf and he's gone. My cousin is now the Prime Minister. And leave the papers where they are, we need to go through them. Chun, check him before he leaves." Asanee paused for a slight second, then cut across him just as he started to speak. "Yes, I am a serious bitch. Now get out and let us get on with our job.

"First Regiment. How quickly can we get it on the road east? I want it up in Chong Sadao by dusk."

"We can't do it, we've only just moved into…."

"You're relieved of command. Report to Supreme Command Headquarters for reassignment." She looked around at her team. "Colonel Thawat, take over command of First of Ninth and get it on the road to Chong Sadao by noon. I want information on enemy dispositions and operations, not an inflated condom drawn on a map "

There was silence for a few seconds. "We need to get moving on this. How much gasoline and diesel fuel is in the city."

The local mayor was in the back of the room, trying not to get seen. "I don’t know, give me an hour and I'll have the information for you."

"Good answer. We've got five divisions arriving over the next few days. First and Second Cavalry will be in the city by evening, First Armored by tomorrow, Second and Eleventh Infantry by the day after. They're all mechanized, they'll need fuel and supplies. Also the troops will need bivouac areas. See to it. I want to speak with the local head of civil defense. Get him here."

She looked around at the room, there was an electric spark in the atmosphere that hadn't been there before. She knew what it was, she'd seen it before. All it needed was somebody to take charge and set standards and people rose to the challenge. Once they'd done so once, they'd find it easier to do it again.

Outside the main center, Corporal Kasit was sitting in front of the radio communications bank, his feet on the desk, dozing gently. It wasn't as if he wanted to spend the day that way but the inactivity while the brass in the operations room argued over what to be do had left him little choice. The crash as the door to his section was thrown open woke him and he found himself staring into a pair of black, expressionless eyes. Female eyes but still very professional

"And just what do you think you are up to?"

Kasit had been married for years and knew that when caught cold under these circumstances the best thing to do was to admit everything and throw himself on the mercy of the court.

"I was goofing off Ma'am."

Major General Asanee looked at him carefully. "I'm promoting you to Sergeant. You’re the only person I've met in this building so far who knows what he's been doing."

Mess, Camp Hell-Alpha

"So you can't get drunk?" kitten sounded very sympathetic.

"So it appears. We've tried hard a couple of times but it just doesn't happen. The egg-heads say its because us dead'uns don't actually absorb things from what we eat. Apparently we absorb energy from our surroundings just like plants. They say eating is just a left-over thing, we don’t have to if we don’t want to. Don’t ask me how that all works, I always was just a poor dumb grunt, now I'm just a poor dead grunt and I might have got it all wrong. Anyway, if we don’t absorb the alcohol, we don’t get drunk." Sergeant (deceased) Tucker McElroy looked positively distraught at the prospect of spending eternity sober.

"Look on the bright side. You can spend all of eternity sampling different brews and never get a hangover." kitten's partner quaffed down the remains of a can of beer. "Speaking of which, can I get you guys another round?"

There was a slight stir of discontent at the words and he looked nervous, wondering if he'd said something wrong. McElroy grinned at him reassuringly. "Sorry kid, its just that kitten's – and your – money isn’t good at any military base in Hell. Nobody's ever going to forget what she did to keep us all going in the early days. So you two sit tight and the bar will bring another round over."

kitten flushed with embarrassment and looked downwards. She was about to say something when the light over the airlock door went red, showing that somebody was coming in from outside. She could hear the machinery cycling, pumping out the dust-contaminated air and replacing it with clean. Tucker had told her that even the dead, who could breath the dirt-laden air of Hell without ill-effects, preferred to live in clean-air surroundings. For the living, of course, there was no real choice.

"kitten, I'm sorry to have to break up your party, but we need your help over at headquarters." The aide quietly waved to stop McElroy and the rest of his unit getting to their feet. "We need a lot of gates pushed through fast and General Petraeus wants you to look after this end of it."

"Sir, with respect sir, hasn't kitten done enough? She needs a long rest."

"It's all right Tucker, it doesn’t hurt to push a gate through from this side." She smiled shyly, "and its what I'm paid for after all. Look on it this way, it gives us an excuse for another meet later. We'd better go Dani."

Her boyfriend picked up the end of her leash and tugged it. Obediently she stood and he led her out to where a V-22 was waiting. McElroy drained his can and shook his head slowly. "Well, people, it looks like our break is over. Cassidy, get everybody else rousted out, we've got to get set up for our next job."

 

[LTR]

Section 18, DIMO(N) Field Research Facility, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell

"Are you quite comfortable, kitten?" Doctor Ilya Muromets asked the question almost on autopilot. He was too concerned with getting his equipment set up and stabilized to be really interested in the answer.

"Yes, thank you Doctor. But shouldn’t we be over at the operational base, I thought there were troop movements to get started?"

"There are, but the units aren’t ready to move yet. It'll be a few hours before the military portals will be needed so we're going to run a few experiments into portal opening. Portal science is a big thing now, several of the big universities have opened up departments to study all the new physics we're running into out here."

"Hurry up and wait." Dani repeated the time-honored phrase with gloomy relish. "What are we doing here anyway?"

"That's right, but these experiments have a long term significance. We're looking into how the other end of the portal gets established, or more specifically, what part the contact at the other end plays. Then, we're hoping we can automate it so we don’t need a sensitive at both ends to push a portal through."

"That's easy, I just relax and let my mind search. When I get an echo, I hold it and the equipment pumps energy into the link. That's the bit that hurts, when the power goes right up, it feels like my brain is being torn apart. Like the worst migraine you ever had. It's not nearly so bad here in Hell though."

Muromets nodded in acknowledgement. "Most of the work being done right now is insulating the sensitive from that power transmission, to reduce exactly what your describing. But, I'm more interested in the echo you mentioned. You see, if I'm right, there isn’t a transmission of any sort from the sensitive back to you. What you're feeling is a sort of resonance of your own transmission. The better the sensitive the other end, the stronger the resonance. My belief is that the resonance strength is determined by the degree of Nephilim ancestry the sensitive has. You're the best because you have a high level of such ancestry."

"That would make sense." kitten giggled. "Where I come from, family trees don’t have many branches."

"My equipment has settled down now." Muromets sighed. "The trouble is that the signals we are getting are so weak that they're lost in the electronic noise unless we're really careful. That's why they escaped detection for so long, nobody ever believed something that slight could be so important. People saw the signals but dismissed them as artifacts of the equipment. Just random noise caused by statistic uncertainty. The evidence was there, right in front of us the whole time and nobody looked at it."

"Just like tinfoil hats." Dani tossed the remark in with quiet satisfaction. The critical, proven, importance of wearing a tinfoil hat was a serious embarrassment to the entire psychiatric profession who had once used wearing one as a trademark of insanity.

"Just like tinfoil hats. Now, kitten, I want you just to scan with your mind, relax and try to find a contact. There's no need to communicate with them, what we're interested in is the signal you send out and the one you get back. If my theory is right, we should be able to compare them and determine that the return is a resonance from your transmission. If that isn't the case, we'll have to dump my hypothesis and start again."

"How many times have you done that Doctor?"

Muromets paused and counted on his fingers. "We're run through eleven hypotheses so far and every one of them failed to pan out. Each time we got off to a good start but we ran into things the hypothesis couldn’t explain and we had to start over. My hypothesis is number twelve. I'm hoping that if this one works out, we'll be able to build transponders that each resonate on a slightly different set of transmission characteristics. Then, we can build those transponders into things like cell-phone towers and install them all over Earth and Hell. That'll mean we'll be just like the naga, we can open a portal more or less anywhere we want to. Only, unlike the naga, we will be able to do it with pinpoint accuracy."
"Why don’t we study naga then, rather than kitten?"

"Because we don’t want the Baldricks believing they are actually useful to us. We've got our foot firmly on their necks right now and that's how we want it to stay."

"And the Generals realize what a weapons system that will make." Dani was impressed.

"That's right, one we want to keep very much to ourselves. But, there's another point to this. At the moment we have only got one reference point for these signals, transmissions from Earth to Hell and back. That tells us something but not much. If we can really analyze these signals and understand them, as soon as we get the Earth to Heaven and back signals, we can really get to work and start to develop a proper theory of why portals go where they do. And what portals are of course, we don’t really understand that yet either.

"I've got a contact Doctor."

"Well done, kitten. Hold it, just don’t do anything with it. The equipment is making records of everything."

Section 12, DIMO(N) Field Research Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"Now this is very interesting indeed." Doctor Crosby tapped the charts in front of him.

"What's up doc?" Colonel Warhol couldn’t resist the line.

"We've got power readings from vehicles and aircraft that passed through the portals. Remember that U-2 that crashed a few weeks back? Well, we all thought it lost power as it was transiting the Hell-Alpha portal and went in. U-2s are prone to that sort of thing after all. But, the accident investigation board found that its engine was actually running when it crashed. Choked up with dust, certainly, its filters had failed. Still getting power though. It was right on the borderline of flying and crashing when something pushed it over the edge. So, amongst other things, we started measuring engine power outputs as the platforms they power pass through the portals."

"And?" Warhol had never managed to quite understand why civilians took so long to get to the point.

"All the data is consistent, they show a slight increase in power output as the vehicle passes through. That means when something goes through a portal, there's a slight energy barrier and the engine has to increase output slightly to compensate for it. There is actually an energy cost in going through a portal and that is of immense significance."

"Well that's just great for you people."

"It's quite significant for you too." Crosby spoke with acerbity. Why couldn't military people have any patience? When they wanted information, they wanted it now and in words of one syllable. "Look at the figures for the ships going through the Hell-Bravo portal. The power output increase is tiny, so slight we can hardly measure it. But using Hell-Alpha, the power output on vehicles is significantly greater. I bet the crews noticed an engine surge as they went through but thought nothing of it. That's what killed that U-2, going through the portal needed a tiny bit more power and the engine just couldn’t give it."

"So?"

"Think about it. Hell-Bravo is at sea level both sides. Very little altitude differential, tiny barrier energy. Hell-Alpha has an altitude differential, there's a slightly greater energy barrier. I bet if we had an enormous altitude difference, the barrier would be so great we couldn’t cross it. And that would mean we couldn't use it to supply, for example, the International Space Station. Of course, I doubt if altitude is actually the constraint, there must be something else and altitude is just the physical manifestation……"

Crosby was interrupted by a wailing cacophony as the base sirens suddenly burst into life. Warhol looked around for a few seconds, then the realization dawned on him. "Crosby, move! The base is under attack."

The scientist stood in the center of the room, looking around him, uncertain what to do. Warhol dived past him, towards one of the emergency cabinets that studded the walls around the conference room. It was the work of a second to punch in the four-number code and grab the M4A5 inside. His hands moved with the unerring precision of much training as he inserted the 20-round magazine and racked the mechanism. Then he opened a second cabinet and tossed the weapon inside to Crosby. "Get to the redoubt in the center of the base. We'll deal with this. Whatever it is."

Running down the corridor leading to the command center, Warhol noted that most of the other emergency cabinets had been opened and the contents taken. Installing them had seemed like a joke eighteen months earlier when this facility had been built, but now they seemed to be important enough. Just what was happening that could cause this level of alert?

"Warhol. Get some men together, make up a team and head for the perimeter." The duty officer snapped the order out without looking around, his eyes glued on the screen in front of him.

Warhol saw the screen also and the sight made him stop dead. The display showed a monster, a huge one, that looked like a giant leopard. What was appalling was its head, or rather heads. The creature had seven of them, and ten horns. They weren't quite heads though, it was more as if there were seven faces on the same giant, hideously distorted skull with the horns sticking out between them. Warhol couldn’t estimate the thing's size, the display didn’t have a reference in shot that he could use to get an idea of scale but he guessed it was huge. It had to be to cause this level of chaos.

"What are you still doing here? Get down to the motor pool, there'll be troops down there for you. Move."

It took Warhol a few minutes to get to the motor pool and pick up the men there. Once again, the non-commissioned officers had saved the situation, they had already organized the motor pool staff into an emergency platoon and set it up in a defensive position. All he had to do was to take over and move them out towards the base perimeter. They even had the motor transport to hand, a selection of Humvees, trucks and a single experimental armored car equipped with a 57mm gun. He had no doubt that they would be needed, the barrage of gunfire from the south was a sure sign that this was no walk-over fight. Warhol did what every infantry officer had been expected to do since the invention of gunpowder, he drove to the sound of the guns.

Defense Perimeter, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"It's taken out Domino's Pizza!" The cry was almost drowned out by the roar of gunfire while the streams of tracer formed an almost-prefect cone centered on the great beast that towered over the trees.

"Who the hell cares. I preferred Cicis anyway." It was, perhaps, a sign of the times that the Coca-Cola delivery truck was camouflaged and had a .50 machine gun mounted above its cab. The delivery team had been caught up in the attack and were now doing their level best to make a worthwhile contribution to the volume of fire that was engulfing the Leopard Beast. The problem was, they hadn't had much ammunition to start with and they were now running desperately low. So was everybody else.

They'd achieved their first objective though, the hastily-mounted defense had drawn the Leopard Beast away from the family accommodation to the south of the base and given the dependents there a chance to escape into Fayetteville. Stung by the hail of gunfire, the Leopard Beast had made its way around to the south-eastern flank of the base and tried to break through. Once again, it had been met by a barrage of gunfire and driven back. Despite the tens of thousands of rounds that had been fired in its direction, it was still alive and showed no signs of being any less lethal than when it had first appeared.
Still, the gunfire was achieving something else. The streams of tracer were serving as perfect target markers for the aircraft that were heading in. The Leopard Beast had been driven into an area that was largely unoccupied and that had opened up a whole new range of possibilities. One of them was already being brought into play, the thump of heavy mortars was quickly followed by the eruption of feathered white clouds around the Beast. It screamed as the white phosphorus burned its way into its skin.

"Keep marking that target!" One of the junior officers had the presence of mind to scream out the order in case any journalists were around. After all everybody knew the U.S. Army only used white phosphorus to lay smoke screens and mark targets, that was their story and they were sticking to it.

The Leopard Beast screamed again and leapt forward, crashing into a small fuel dump on the outskirts of the mobility testing area. The HEMTT trucks lines up outside crumpled under the bear paws that served it as feet. The trucks exploded in balls of fire as they were crushed and, once again, the Leopard Beast was driven back, away from the base. This time, as it fled east, away from the flames, it ran into streams of fire from Bradley armored vehicles that had been moved up to flank its position. The 25mm sabot rounds did more damage than the rifle-caliber rounds fired so far and, for the first time, the Leopard Beast was badly enough hurt to dilute it's single-minded urge for destruction. Then, the Beast heard and saw a new threat.

The four A-45s had taken off a few minutes earlier, loaded with whatever the ground crews could find immediately available. There were more aircraft being bombed up back at the base and they would be carrying loads better suited to the battle being fought at Fort Bragg but time had been of the essence and it was better to get something over the battlefield now rather than wait for a perfect solution that might be too late. In any case, AH-64s were on their way in and the Beast would have to be distracted while the helicopters made their runs. Everybody remembered what had happened when unsupported helicopters had tried to fight harpies in the skies over Iraq. The Leopard Beast didn't appear capable of flying but, when faced with a seven-faced beast more than 200 feet tall, nobody was going to take the chance. So, the A-45s started their bomb runs, aiming to distract the beast. Of course, if they hurt it in the process, the pilots wouldn't mind in the slightest.

"We could sure use one of them Mujs and a vee-bed right now." The speaker was a veteran of the Battle of Hit and well remembered the effects of explosive-packed pick-up trucks driven into the center of a mass of Baldricks. The U.S. Army didn’t like to admit it but the suicide bomb-trucks might well have been the factor that had turned the tide in that particular battle. The way the Leopard Beast kept shrugging off the storm of fire being aimed at it suggested they would be needed to turn the tide again. Then, the soldier got his wish for the ground around the beats erupted into a rolling thunder of explosions. The four A-45s had streaked overhead, each releasing four fin-retarded Mark 82 bombs. Sixteen five hundred pounders, even when delivered with less-than-optimal accuracy, were something that the Leopard Beast found distinctly terrifying.

To the watching troops, the fact that the beast was seriously hurt at last was thankfully apparent. Great areas of its flanks were now torn open, dripping silver blood as it staggered from the blast of the bombs. They saw it stagger again as red lines flashed across the battlefield, an Abrams tank had appeared and was firing sabot rounds at the Beast. That was all the tank crew had, high explosive, HEAT and HEAD rounds were completely unavailable, their supplies limited and the forces in Hell having top priority for any that were around. The crew were firing what they had, carefully, precisely, deadly accurately. They'd picked one of the faces of the Beast and were pumping round after round into it. The repeated impacts were having their effect, the chosen face was quickly losing its identity as the long bolts of depleted uranium crushed its features.

The Leopard Beast was being hurt and it know it. It slumped back on its hindquarters, waving its paws in front of its grotesquely misshapen head, trying to fend off the bolts that kept slamming into it. The posture was achingly reminiscent of a kitten playing with a ball of wool but the sight didn’t decrease the volume of fire that was still being poured into it. The tank ceased fire, its partly-loaded magazine empty but its place was taken by the first of the AH-64s. This one had been loaded with some time-expired Hellfire missiles that had been found at the back of a supply dump. Two of the eight failed to fire completely, one exploded shortly after launch, lashing the front of the helicopter with fragments while two more failed to guide and went off into the darkness to land somewhere kilometers away. The three remaining missiles scored direct hits on the Beast and it went down.

Even so, the battered and bullet-peppered Leopard Beast was still alive. It had no taste to continue this fight anymore, all it wanted was out, an end, away from the humans who wished its death so devoutly. Racked with pain from its injuries, it dragged itself along the ground, its mind forming the image of the portal that would take it to the sanctuary it needed so desperately. The problem was that generating the portal needed its concentration and the beast's limited intellect wasn't capable of both forming its portal and absorbing the shattering pain of its injuries. Dimly, its mind registered more crashes and the searing pain of shaped charges burning their way into its body. Slowly, reluctantly, the Leopard Beast gave up the battle to survive.

Scrubland, Outside The Defense Perimeter, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Warhol rubbed his eyes. They were gritty, he could feel the residues of burned powder under the lids and he wondered just how many rounds he'd fired into the Beast the night before. Ahead of him, the troops were lining up to be pictured beside the massive body that was stretched out on the ground. Just how much did that damned thing weigh he thought as the crew of a Bradley were pictured with their vehicle beside one of its paws. Could a thing like that actually exist? And if it did, what else was there in Heaven waiting to descend on Earth. The Leopard Beast had taken most of the resources of Fort Bragg to kill and it had come precious close to breaking in and destroying the scientific resources of the DIMO(N) center here.

"Impressive isn't it." Beside him, Doctor Crosby was also looking at the corpse of the Beast.

"It's just big, that's all. We can kill them, just a matter of learning how." Warhol's mind had trouble forming the words.

"I hope so. I think we'll see more of them in due course."

 

[LTR]

Chong Sadao, Thailand

"Where the hell have you been? My people have been cut to pieces up here because you broke your word." Captain Momrajong was almost spitting with sheer rage. The fact he was speaking to a Senior Colonel, a rank equivalent to a one-star General in most other armies didn't really register. "We were promised, promised, that if there was an invasion we'd be relieved by regular troops within 12 hours. That was two days ago."

Senior Colonel Thawat bit back the response that would have left nothing of the captain but a pair of smoking boots and nodded apologetically instead. At one level, a rebuke would have been pointless, the Tahan Phran belonged to a different chain of command than the regular Army. They weren't even funded by the Ministry of Defense, the Home Affairs Ministry carried the cost of the militia units. At another level, Thawat knew the captain was right. The lightly-armed militia weren't intended to confront regular armies, they were supposed to protect their villages against minor incursions and guarantee security along roads. In most areas of the country that meant looking after tourists. The Tahan Phran had no heavy weapons, no night vision equipment and their body armor was locally-made Level Two. That wouldn't stop a reasonably powerful pistol round.

"I understand your anger Captain, but we're here now. In regimental strength. My men are relieving yours all along this area of front. The people responsible for this screw-up have been relieved. We can't change what went wrong, we can only make sure it doesn’t happen again and go on from here."

"That's fine for you to say. I had some of my wounded die because they didn’t get the casualty evacuation we were promised. Are you going to tell their families why they died?"

"No, my commander will and she will do so personally." Thawat's voice was drowned out by a red-and-gray camouflaged V-22 sweeping in and hovering overhead. He watched while the aircraft changed, its engine nacelles swinging up so that its appearance changed from a transport aircraft to a helicopter. Then it dropped in to land, the downbeat from its rotors causing the men to bend down. "As to casualty evacuation, get your wounded and the Osprey will take them straight to the hospitals in Kanchanaburi. How many men have you fit for duty? Out of how many?"

"I have twenty rangers left. My original platoon was twenty-five but I've absorbed two other units that were too badly chewed up to stay independent. We've taken forty dead and fifteen wounded, at least five of my dead would have made it if you'd kept your word."

All right, you've made your point, now drop it. We can't bring them back. Despite his irritation, Thawat kept the thought to himself, then corrected himself. Well, actually we can, for a short while anyway. Hell and the Second Life had changed a lot of ways of thinking and human speech habits were slow to catch up.

"Now, Captain, I want you to show me where the Myanmarese troops are and in what strength. Then we can go about making them pay for the lives of your people."

Momrajong exhaled, his breath shaking slightly as the pent-up anger slowly faded. "The Myanmar troops are moving along here." He got out his map and his finger started to trace out the Myanmarese positions. "They came south of the Si Nakharin Lake. Most of their forces are here, our estimate is divisional strength. Say 20,000 men at most. They are light infantry, they have mortars and machine guns but not much else. This," his finger traced eastwards, "is their primary axis of advance."

Thawat nodded. The dispositions made sense, Chong Sadao was the start of a funnel that led to Kanchanaburi, a natural route in towards the rich farming land of the Chaophrya river. It had been used by the Burmese many times over the turbulent history of the two countries. There was a reason why Chong Sadao was served by good, all-weather roads while further east, they deteriorated to single-lane blacktop and then to laterite, unpaved tracks. To the north, the way through was blocked by the lake and mountains, to the south by more mountains and dense jungle. Chong Sadao was the natural blocking point for any invasion and the long established defense plans for the area had tasked 9th Infantry with holding it. The militia captain was right, this area should have been occupied two days ago and the defenses here should have been built and ready. Soldiers would die because they were fighting from a hasty defense instead of a prepared one. Thawat promised himself that, at least, the militia units would suffer no more casualties.

"Captain, this is a straightforward infantry blocking action. My regiment can handle it. Please give the rest of your information to my staff, then I suggest, recommend, you use some of our transport to get your people to the rear where they can rest and eat. You've done enough, done more than enough and your work has been splendid."

"Work we shouldn’t have had to do." Momrajong was still bitter over how his militia had been hung out to dry. He knew the Colonel in front of him didn't really understand how deeply the sense of betrayal ran. Army units were just that, army units, assembled out of the mix of volunteers and conscripts that the Army used as its primary resource. The militia was drawn from villages and every member of each unit had known the others from earliest childhood. His losses had taken almost a generation of youngsters from the villages already depleted by those who had left to earn money in the big cities.

"I know, but now we must do the work we should have done all along."

The Ultimate Temple, The Eternal City, Heaven.

"They killed Wuffles!" Yahweh's voice was a mixture of rage and anguish. The thunder rolled around the throne room, drowning out the eternally-chanting choir. Michael-Lan watched them carefully, was there a hint of malicious satisfaction in their eyes at the sight of Yahweh's grief over the death of his favorite pet.

Personally, Michael-Lan had never liked the beast. Foul-tempered, cantankerous and ill-disciplined to the point of being antisocial. It was lucky they had humans here to clear up the mess the incontinent beast tended to leave behind him. That was the trouble with a beast that size, its droppings were in proportion and took a long time to shovel away. Still, the Leopard-Beast had served its purpose.

"All-Knowing Father, One Above All, I share your grief at the loss of your beloved Wuffles. But know that he fought bravely and inflicted great damage on the humans before they treacherously brought him down with their bombs and gunfire."

Yahweh did indeed look proud of his pet for a moment, but then grief and anger swept away the momentary lapse. The thunder cracked viciously and a sheet of lightning lit up the dim room. Still white Michael-Lan noted, Well, we have plenty of time. Let's get back to milking this situation for all it is worth.

"One Above All, Lord of Heaven." And not including Earth there is a nice little goad, all of its own. "I regret to report that Wuffles may have died because his mission was betrayed. The humans were waiting for him with all their weapons loaded and ready." Yeah, right.

"Betrayal?" Yahweh's voice thundered and the clouds in the room darkened notably. "There is betrayal in Heaven?"

"I fear this is so. Our most skilled and dedicated inquisitors in the League of the Holy Court have detected a conspiracy of threatening dimensions."

"Threatening? You say this conspiracy threatens me?" The lightning flashed in sheets across the throne room and a bolt spalled fragments of marble from the walls. In the background, the chief mason sighed and shot an accusing glance at Michael.

"Threatens you? Impossible, Lord-of-All." Michael-Lan mangled the phrasing just enough so it was slightly unclear whether the concept of a threat or Yahweh himself was impossible. Michael had his own opinions on that subject. "But those who are involved may believe that their feeble activities are indeed a threat to Your Omnipotence. Perhaps this snare was prepared for you long ago by the not-so-Eternal Enemy. Perhaps, in his defeat, he arranged for those of his servants who had not declared for him to carry on with his great design."

Michael-Lan was slightly surprised, he'd expected a cataclysmic burst of thunder and lightning at that idea but instead Yahweh sat silent and thoughtful on his throne. Could Wuffles getting killed have knocked some sense into him. If it had, perhaps it was time to arrange for some more of his pets to be blown away by the humans. The silence stretched on.

"Perhaps this might well be true. How high does this conspiracy go?"

"The League of the Holy Court does not know, Eternal Father of All. So far, they have identified only the lower ranks of the conspiracy but they are concerned at what they see. It is arranged in cells, each independent of the others and those in one know but few of those in others. They work diligently in uncovering the threat but they must take care for who knows who else is involved? It may even be that the League of the Holy Court itself is not unstained by this treason."

"Arranged in cells. This does seem like the work of the Morningstar. The late Morningstar."

And that, boys and girls, is why subversion is so much more productive than insurgency. Michael's thought had a distinctly gleeful note to it. "Indeed so, Eternal Father."

"Pursue this, Michael, greatest of my generals, pursue this with care. What other news is there? Do the Americans wail under the lash of Uriel?" There was more than a question built in there.

"Well, they would, if they had reason to. Of course, his first attack was a bit disappointing. A city of nearly two million and he only took thirty thousand souls."

That did it. At last Michael got his display of multi-colored lightning. A barrage of chips flew off the walls and the various strange creatures that danced attendance on Yahweh dived for cover. "Just thirty thousand? Is Uriel playing with them?"

"Well, One-Above-All, the humans took a pot-shot at him and he left rather hastily. I really don’t think is heart is quite in this you know. Perhaps he has spent too long on Earth and has become fond of the humans." Michael managed to get the words out without choking with laughter on them.

"I will tear out his heart and eat it!" For a second, Yahweh sounded just like Satan. Then, he got control of himself and the family relationship wasn't so obvious. "Perhaps he should be brought here to explain himself."

Not a chance. "Your slightest wish is our most urgent command, One Above All. But Uriel is preparing another attack, this one on the city of San Diego. It also is a city of millions and perhaps he will summon enough courage to make a better job of it this time." Michael-Lan sighed theatrically. "If only Uriel showed the loyalty and dedication of Wuffles. Still, I would counsel that we allow Uriel to make this new attack and judge him on his success there."

"Perhaps it is Uriel himself who is at the head of this conspiracy?" Yahweh's voice was thoughtful.

"Surely not, One Above All, Highest of the High, Ruler of All. Uriel's loyalty had never been questioned until now. I would swear that his fealty remains untarnished."

"Nevertheless, instruct the League of the Holy Court to investigate him thoroughly." Yahweh's voice dropped and he sounded tired. "These are strange days, Michael, greatest of my generals. The Eternal Enemy, killed by humans. Those same humans defy my commands and reject the answers I give them. They kill my servants and destroy my pets. Are the Bowls of Wrath poured on them?"

"They are, O Highest of the High. The first three have already been poured and caused much grief and lamentation. Soon, the fourth shall be poured," as soon as I think of a way to do it "And then their anguish shall be multiplied many times over."

"Is it time for our Legions to overwhelm them?"

Are you out of your tiny little mind? Michael-Lan almost blurted the question out allowed before he managed to stop himself. In any case, he reminded himself that's a foolish question to which the only reasonable answer is 'of course'. "Lord of All, the time will surely come and when it does, perhaps your own son should lead them in the victorious march against the humans. The power and the glory shall forever more add lustre to your Holy Name."

Yahweh settled back and contemplated the prospect of final victory and a triumphant procession through the conquered cities of Earth. Then, he remembered that his beloved Wuffles would not be there to share it with him and grief once more clouded his mind.

Michael looked at him and quietly slipped away. As he left the Throne Room, the Head Mason spoke quietly to him. "Michael-Lan, you're slipping. We won’t have to replace all the wall surfaces this time. What was that you said about job security?"

"You just wait, the best is yet to come. Once the League of the Holy Court find out who is behind this stupid plot, He'll go ballistic. Until then, drop down to the club for a drinkie, we've got a new angel working there. Name's Maion, give her a try."

"Maion eh? I'll do that." The mason looked grateful. "What would we do without you Michael-Lan? You've made Heaven worth living in."

DIMO(N) Conference Room, The Pentagon

"So what part did the Succubae play in the Great Celestial War?"

Colonel John Baylor forked up some mushrooms from his plate and savored them. Good portobellos, sauteed with garlic, an excellent accompaniment to lunch. The trouble with being at war was that rationing was slowly creeping across the whole spread of the U.S. economy. First fuel, then vehicles, then anything that needed steel or aluminum. Then food had started to be affected, fish stocks were low and the ration of eight ounces per serving was onerous. It was lucky Indonesia and Vietnam had donated some of the product of their fish farms to the United States or shrimp would be in even shorter supply. Of course, post-war, they'd be using their generosity to lever better trade terms for themselves.

Lugasharmanaska's teeth ripped at the raw horse's leg with relish. As an obligate carnivore, she would have been hard-hit by meat rationing so it was fortunate that Succubus taste ran to the toughest, stringiest meat that was available. 'Unfit for human consumption' had acquired a whole new meaning, 'preferred diet for Succubae'. It was an odd thing, as she'd started eating other meat, her craving for human flesh had faded. Now, it was mostly just a memory, except for the odd treat of course.

"Us? We had to find the portals. Remember, most of the fighting that took place in the Great Celestial War was here on Earth. It's carried in your folk-memories and earliest myths. How many of your stories have scenes of towns besieged by armies of monsters? They're us."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand." Baylor looked at Luga ripping her meal apart, droplets of blood staining some of the papers in front of her. The stenographer in the corner of the room looked positively ill at the display. Then again, it was lucky that the floor ventilation ducts were working at full blast or one of the humans in the room would have offered Luga a bite out of their arms if she'd asked for one. It was rumored that more than one of Luga's lovers had left with bite-sized pieces removed from their anatomy. Hence one of the new proverbs that were spreading through the human race. 'Never have oral sex with a Succubus.'

"It's near impossible to create a portal from Heaven to Hell. But, it's easy to create portals from Heaven to Earth and Hell to Earth. So, to get from Hell to Heaven, we have to go by Earth. Or its equivalent. But, it's quite hard to create a useful portal from Earth to Hell or Earth to Heaven. So, say, Michaellan would create a Heaven-Earth portal for one of his armies and we'd try and capture it. Or we'd create a Hell-Earth portal and he'd try to capture that. Just like you did with the portal in Iraq. That's what all the fighting and campaigning was about.

"Our job was to find where Heaven had its portals, seduce those who were tasked with closing them and persuade them to keep them open. Heaven tended to use humans to find out where our portals were. If you read your folk myths with that in mind, you can see how the stories survived. The Garden of Eden, that was a portal and the snake who seduced its guards was one of us. That's why Yahweh was so annoyed."

"So, did you ever capture a portal and get to heaven?"

"Me? No." Luga thought quickly about suggesting she had but lying to humans was dangerous. She'd learned that lesson to her bitter cost. "But we did capture portals now and then. We'd storm through them and enter Heaven, killing and looting whatever we could find. They would capture ours sometimes and they'd do the same, stealing and robbing us of what was ours, sometimes taking away slaves. That was how armies fought until you changed the rules."

""Wait a minute, you say Heaven took slaves from Hell?" Baylor couldn’t quite get his mind around the concept.

"Of course, they would use them to build things like fortresses and kill them when they were done. Unless they were valuable of course. We would do the same, only we had more fun killing the useless ones. Was your warfare then so different?"

"I guess not. What's Heaven like?"

"Much like Hell except the air is clean there, and the light is white not red. Heaven's a bit bigger than Hell. There are those who think Hell is much older than heaven but why they think that I do not know."

Baylor leaned back in his seat and wondered what the scientists would make of all this. "Right, now about the fighting on earth……"

 

[LTR]

Human Slums, Eternal City, Heaven

Another name crossed off a list, another contact dismissed as a meaningless acquaintance. More time wasted, more effort unproductive. Lemuel-Lan-Michael had heard that on Earth, human police were sometimes called "flat-feet" and now he understood why. His feet ached and his wings were stiff, all for nothing. And it was all the responsibility of the bottle of elixir that he'd found during the arrest of Ishmael. If he hadn’t been so attentive to his duty, he could have avoided all this. Perhaps his instincts had been wrong, perhaps the bottle was associated with the First Conspiracy. That's what he had decided to call the network that was split up into cells.

He shook his head, every instinct he had said that the bottle wasn't part of that group. The first few discrete arrests had confirmed his initial impressions, the First Conspiracy was all about doctrine and beliefs. After adequate 'persuasion', the detainees had confessed to spreading heresy and blasphemy. They had maintained their loyalty to The One Above All though, claiming that He had been led astray by misguided and corrupt advisors and if those advisors could be swept away, The Eternal Father would see how he had been mislead and everything would be made right. Lemuel was prepared to bet that the leaders intentions were quite different but that's what the lower ranks thought and a bottle of elixir just didn't fit with that pattern. There had to be a Second Conspiracy.

He flung the door of the slum open. Like the one he and his agents had raided earlier, this one was of better quality, made of wood rather than straw-reinforced mud. He looked down at the human female who was cowering against the wall at the opposite end of the entrance. By Inviolable Rule, all structures had to be large enough to allow the entry of Angels and that requirement diminished her apparent size still more.

"You are Almedha?" Lemuel read the name from his list. "Daughter of Brychan?"

"I am, Noble One." Her voice was quivering, whatever the humans had expected when they were granted access to Heaven, it wasn't what they had found. 'Salvation' consisted of eternal menial servitude to the Angels, a group who regarded the humans as being of little account and even less value. "How may I be of service to you?"

"I wish to discuss with you, some matters of importance. In particular, your relationship with a human called Ishmael."

That comment struck home. The woman was still frightened of him but now there was something else in her attitude, a guardedness, a determination not to reveal anything. "I know of nobody by that name."

"Do not lie to me, Almedha, daughter of Brychan. Lying is a sin and one that brings down punishment upon you. Do you want to experience the punishment that the League of the Holy Court deems appropriate for those who lie to it?"

"No peerless one. But I know not of any called Ishmael."

Lemuel-Lan shook his head sadly. "Your deceit means I must caution you again and in doing so my patience with you grows thin. I must tell you, Ishmael was arrested not so long ago by agents of the League of the Holy Court and he has made a full confession. He has admitted to apostasy, blasphemy, to heresy and sacrilege and to crimes so black that they have no name."

"No! He . . . " Almedha tried to stop herself but it was too late.

"And how would you know if you had never met him?" Lemuel landed the verbal blow quietly and deftly but its effect was still shattering. Almedha slumped back against the wall, her face white. Even so, her jaw was thrust out with her determination not to say anything. Lemuel sighed quietly to himself,why were humans so obstinate? He needed to look around this house but it was obvious he couldn’t leave Almedha free to leave. There really was no choice. He took a golden set of shackles from his belt, fastened a cuff around one of her wrists and another around a convenient post. As he left her to search the house, it never even occurred to him that he'd left her with her feet barely touching the floor.

The house itself was remarkably devoid of interest. Before their deaths, 'saved' humans had made much of the alleged virtues of simplicity and abstinence. On reaching Heaven they found out that those 'virtues' were greatly overrated, especially when they lasted for eternity. The fact that the Angels didn't share their opinions hadn’t helped much either. The fact was, that while the angels lived in unparalleled luxury, the fate of the 'saved' was one of eternal grinding poverty. Again, the irony there never entered Lemuel's consciousness, nor did any thought that the situation could, in any way, be considered unjust. Lemuel methodically searched the rooms, turning up nothing other than the few paltry possessions he'd expected. Finally he checked out the kitchen and there he found what he had been looking for. A small jar, one labelled 'McCormick Granulated Garlic'. Another Earth elixir.

"And how do you explain this?"

Almedha shook her head, she couldn't have answered even if she'd wanted to. Her mind was concentrated on ways of taking the strain off her wrist. Lemuel shook his head sadly and released the cuff from the sconce it had been attached to and dragged her towards him. "It pains me that you should be so obstinate. You leave me no choice but to take you to the League of Holy Court."

Interrogation Chambers, League of the Holy Court, Eternal City

Lemuel-Lan-Michael pushed Almedha into the room. The two interrogation specialists jumped to their feet as he entered. " At ease," he said. "We need some information from this one."

It took slightly longer than he expected. By the time Almedha broke, the interrogators had run through three buckets of water, her face and hair were saturated and she was choking amid a barrage of deep, racking coughs. It took her some minutes to get the story out, but when she did, it would have been mundane were it not for its significance. Ishmael had brought her the garlic as a gift. She had found the plain, bland food available to humans in Heaven dull to the point of being unpalatable and the garlic had seasoned it to provide a touch of interest. Lemuel shook his head, humans didn't even have to eat, let alone want anything more than plain gruel. Why would seasoning be so important to them?

"Are you finished with her?" One of the interrogators nodded towards the sobbing woman secured to the table.

"For the moment, yes. We'll keep her detained for a while." The interrogators nodded at each other and Lemuel caught a glimpse of their eyes. There was something there, something that reminded him of a sight long, long ago. It took him time to place it but when he did, the memory shook him. The look in the interrogators' eyes had been the same as that in the eyes of daemons taken prisoner in the war so many millennia before. That caused him to think a single, unmentionable question. Were there daemons in Heaven, even though they looked like Angels?. And then that led to another question. And was he one of them?

Lemuel-Lan-Michael left the interrogation chamber and went off down the long corridor that would, eventually, take him back to the surface, his mind troubled by the questions inside it. Halfway towards the first junction he thought he heard a human woman screaming from the interrogation chamber he had just left but he dismissed it. Just the strange sounds that filled this place sometimes, a product of wind and tunnels through stone.

Conference Room, DIMO(N) Headquarters, The Pentagon, Washington

"And now we have a problem with dates."

"How do you mean?"

"From what we have been able to learn, the Great Celestial War took place some four and a half to five million years ago. But, the information we have from Luga speaks of fighting on Earth and the legends of that remaining in human memory as folk tales. That means they must be much more recent than that.

"Simple explanation. Luga's lying. It's not as if that's an entirely unfamiliar concept to her. She tries to play us all the time. To be honest, its so much part of her nature than I doubt if she's even aware that she's doing it. Playing to the audience to get her way and turn things to her advantage is what she does. That's why she's such a hit on network television."

"Just like a few other so-called stars I can think of." Colonel Paschal spoke reflectively. "It might he worth checking through some of their antecedents and see if we come up with any demonic connections."

"Would you like the job? Or are you still in thrall to our Luga?" Doctor Surlethe put the question with a bouncing lack of tact.

"I told you, I didn't. . . . " The denial was interrupted by a barrage of coughing around the room. Paschal sighed to himself, he was never going to live this down. "Oh, never mind."

A satisfied and slightly triumphant chuckle replaced the coughing. "I don’t think the history of the performing arts is useful at this time, anyway, the fact that the daemons knew virtually nothing about us suggests that any contact they had with us in the last three or four centuries must have been cursory in the extreme."

"I agree." General Schatten nodded as he spoke. "Anyway, Colonel Baylor picked up on the time discrepancy. He tasked Luga with it and she confirmed that the Great Celestial War took place from about five million years ago, when Satan tried his coup-de-main assault on Heaven. An assault that came very close to succeeding by the way, he actually broke into the Eternal City but his Army was pushed out by Michael-Lan-Yahweh. It ended, sort of, about half a million years later with both sides too exhausted to fight on. In our terms, it's pretty obvious Satan actually won that war, he got his independent kingdom which was his objective all along. However, fighting went on for a long, long time after that. Not the live-or-die, win-or-lose fighting there had been in the Great Celestial War but more like border skirmishing. That ended abruptly, about 60,000 years ago and its from then that our folk-memories of the war originated."

"Why did it end so abruptly?" Colonel Paschal was curious. "To fight for more than five million years and then just stop dead?"

"He asked Luga why, didn't get an answer. There was something she didn’t want to speak about and didn’t. But, Baylor says, she was frightened. Even talking about why scared her. Just the way daemons are scared of us."

"I think I can offer an opinion there." Hillary Clinton spoke up for the first time at one of those meetings. "I was speaking with President Sarkozy during the recent summit, when he wasn't preoccupied with checking out some Brazilian girl of course, and he told me something curious. Apparently some of the French and German troops in Hell, either referred to Satan as "the Devil" or called daemons, devils. The result was strange. The baldricks made themselves absent, very quickly. Strong negative reaction."

"Could it have been an abusive nickname, you know like Hun or Frog?"

"That would imply anger or offense and we know Baldricks react strongly to that. This was something else, it was fear, as if even mentioning the word could bring about a disaster." Clinton drew breath. "I don’t think daemons and devils are the same."

"All the books say they are."

"And all our books are wrong, we know that. How much mythology is standing up to the discoveries we're making every day? I think that Daemons and Devils are separate things and whatever the Devils are, the Daemons are afraid of them."

"A threat to us?"

General Schatten thought for a second. "I doubt it, if they were then they'd have taken down the Baldricks as quickly as we did."

"Can we rely on that?"

Schatten thought again. "No, but it’s the best way to bet given what we know. Look, in intelligence and knowledge terms, we're way out of our depth here. We're crossing a river blindfold, feeling a way with our feet and hoping we don’t step into a pothole or a nest of cottonmouths. All we can do is play the odds."

"So there might be a third force out there we'll have to deal with in due course?"

"Third? There may be dozens. The cosmology Doctor Kuroneko is developing suggests that there might be millions of bubble-worlds like Hell out there. All of different ages, just like the stars in our Universe are all of different ages. By the way, he's come up with a fascinating theory that might explain a lot. Our Universe is expanding, everybody knows that. But he thinks that the dimension, the next stage of existence, whatever we want to call it, that contains Heaven, Hell and all those bubble worlds is shrinking. He thinks that explains where the light in Hell and the energy that keeps the human souls alive there comes from. That's why they don’t have to eat."

"But Daemons eat." A slight shudder swept around the room at the thought of Luga's table manners. A few of the participants grinned sympathetically at Paschal. The Colonel thought about the rumors of Luga's combined eating and mating habits. The recollection made his testicles scream in terror and try to climb inside his body for protection.

"And that means that. . . . "

"Baldricks – and presumably Angels – aren’t native to the bubble-worlds either. They come from somewhere else as well."

"That might change a lot of things." Schatten thought carefully. "Could they come from other bubble worlds?"

"We can't tell." Surlethe thought carefully, the whole situation had aspects buried within aspects. "It may be that the no-eating rule only applies within their native bubble. Or it may be they come from outside the bubble-level completely. But all that's getting away from the point. We have some evidence that there's a third group of beings out there and we may run into them at any time."

"Third?" Hillary Clinton's voice was derisive. "There could be hundreds of them, thousands even. Have you any idea how many religions there have been? Or are now? Suppose they are all correct, suppose at one time or another, beings found their way here from other bubbleverses and got worshipped as Gods. And Yahweh and Satan were the two that eventually won out down here? They got the upper hand over the rest, perhaps by means of the portal warfare that Lugasharmanaska talked about, and drove them out. The 'devils' that we've been talking about may just have been one of those other groups, probably the one that was the most difficult to defeat. If we consider continuing to explore the bubbleverses, we're going to run into them."

"And that raises another question, an important one. When we do, how do we react?"

"That's for the council of 15 to say. They'll make up their mind."

"Not the United Nations?" The question came from a corner of the table, the speaker unidentified. The response was a contemptuous guffaw from the main participants.

"No, not the United Nations. They're irrelevant, been ever since Wong shot down the first Daemon Herald. They're still there but they're just the talking shop for people who can't contribute to the HEA. The real decisions are taken at Yamantau." Clinton thought carefully. "My guess will be, and this will be the position of the United States at Yamantau, we'll work on a do-as-they-do basis. If they approach us with friendship and respect, we'll do the same to them. If they make war on us, we'll do it to them. With every weapon we have."

"General Petraeus, do you have any comment on that?"

General Petraeus, present only on the view-screen at the end of the room looked up from the display he was consulting. It was showing the developing situation on the Thai-Myanmar border and he found it professionally fascinating. The Thai Army simply didn't fight the way the U.S. Army did. What they were doing was, to his eyes, downright weird. "We'd be advised to keep as many options open as possible but in essence, I agree with the Secretary of State. If we run into any such bubbleverse groups that are friendly, we get friendly. If not, then we defend ourselves. And that means eliminating our opponents as a military threat."

"That's genocide." It was the same unidentified voice that had spoken about the United Nations.

Hillary Clinton looked back contemptuously. "No. That's pantheocide."

 

[LTR]

DIMO(N) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Norman stammered, nervously. “I was trying to get all the data together since the attack on Fort Bragg.” The past twenty-four hours had been a blur for him. After the creature had been dead, before the body was even cool, DIMO(N) science teams had started going over the body and sending all the information they could back to the Pentagon. All of that information had been crunched and processed by Norman and his team, and fitted in to a briefing that the military brass was very interested in hearing. It hadn't helped that the garrison of Fort Bragg were demanding that the corpse of the Leopard Beast be stuffed and mounted outside their front gate. It was rumored that at least two taxidermists had taken a horrified look at the size of the Beast and turned the job down. That was a pity, because it would, as the Base Commander had said, make a nice entrance arch.

General Schatten waved Norman on. “It’s quite alright, Baines. Just give us what you have.”

“Yes, well, ok.” Norman turned to the screen as his power point started up. “Prior to the attack on Fort Bragg, we had put together a lot of data about the various beasts, angels, captains, and armies discussed in John’s Revelation. The problem is, based on what we’ve learned from hell, some of it didn’t fit and we were hoping that the beasts were in fact Satan’s constructs, similar to his golden hydra.”

The screen displayed the hulking corpse of the thing that attacked Bragg. “This is the first beast. Notice the coloration, and spotting. We believe it to be the ‘Leopard-Beast’ mentioned in Revelations 13. The good news is, the creature was just as vulnerable to conventional weaponry as anything else, in sufficiently large doses. The bad news, is that this was the first of four beasts. The even worse news…” He paused as he clicked over to a fresh dispatch from Crystal City “… is that shortly before the creature died, the cell-phone tower detection system recorded a minor aberration that looked a lot like a portal formation, just underpowered.” He looked at the people in the room. “Allowing for the fact that that the portal did not form, but also noting that no ‘animal handler’ was found nearby, the implication is that these things are capable of opening their own portals, which is an ability we have not observed in any non-sentient infernal life-forms.”

“So you’re telling us there’s three more of these leopard-beasts in heaven waiting for the go-ahead to attack, and they can get in and out at will?” A general from the domestic defense forces was looking noticeably agitated. Film of the fighting at Fort Bragg had been broadcast on network television and the sheer volume of firepower that had been necessary to put the Leopard Beast down had made a marked impression.

“No sir, no.” Norman went back to his presentation. “The other beasts won’t look anything like the one at Bragg. We feel it is likely they will all be of similar size and raw power, but the appearance varies widely. Revelations 13 also mentions a great beast appearing like a lamb, with two horns. Now lamb can more likely be interpreted as ram, which means it’ll probably be big and have hooves. It doesn’t sound very scary, but there’s this little tidbit:” He brought up a text on the screen. Rev 13:13- And he performs great signs and wonders, such that he even calls down the fire of heaven in the presence of men.

"Now this beast is really odd, the texts say it looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. That implies its appearance is seriously deceptive. There's a strange side to this, theologians have always assumed that the descriptions of the Beasts were allegorical, that they weren't really Beasts at all but metaphors for social and political developments. Well, as the troops at Fort Bragg can tell us, that isn’t so. The Leopard Beast was just as described, the seven heads didn’t represent seven kings or empires. Or seven hills come to that. So, we can anticipate that the rest of the descriptions are also literally correct. The Lamb Beast was assumed to be representative of a government that spoke softly but was actually viciously repressive. We can now assume that isn’t the case. We’re going to get what the old texts described. How that applies to the Lamb-Beast is something we’ll undoubtedly find out in due course. That brings us to its prediction that it will call down fire from Heaven.”

“That could be nothing, lots of mythic beasts are associated with fire, but only two of the Armageddon beasts you’ve mentioned are.”

“The other one being?” Colonel Taylor was paying close attention.

“This fella.” Norman brought up a rather nightmarish image. “The Scarlet Beast. Similar in power and ability to the leopard and lamb, it should have multiple faces and horns, like the leopard. However,” on top of the creature in the picture appeared a small figure. “The Scarlet Beast has a keeper, guardian, assistant something along those lines. The texts call her the Whore of Babylon.” The picture zoomed in on her.

“Dressed in a purple robe, she rides the head of the scarlet beast and carries a golden goblet full of ‘abominations of obscenity’. The allegorical explanation of the Whore was that she represented an Empire far advanced in decadence. The prime candidate was usually Rome but some suggested Jerusalem. Modern apocalyptic cults claimed the Whore was Hollywood. San Francisco got a look-in as well.

“Now, we see no reason why we shouldn’t take the texts literally. The Scarlet Beast has a rider. The Whore and the beast together are supposed to bring the kingdoms of men down, so she’s probably a very powerful angel and can bring all sorts of surprises. The Golden Goblet, if it exists, probably contains some more plague material similar to what has already been thrown at us.

“And for surprises, look no further than the Red Dragon. Not to be confused with the scarlet beast.” He cleared his throat. “Now, the fact that this last is named a dragon and not simply a ‘beast’ is very significant, and very distressing.” A list of biblical passages scrolled on the screen. “Dragons are mentioned over twenty times in the old testament, and the most relevant occasion is in Isaiah 27:

"Isaiah 27:1. –In that day the lord will take his terrible, swift sword and punish Leviathan, the piercing serpent, the coiling, unending serpent. He will kill the dragon of the sea. "

Norman paused while that sank in. “Now, I’m sure everyone remembers Leviathan, and what kind of a creature he was. In the Old Testament, whenever someone REALLY wanted to wish ill on a place, they’d call for it to become a den or dwelling place of dragons. The power of the red dragon will be a lot more than these others. In fact, according to texts the other three Armageddon beasts may draw strength or energy from the red dragon, which might explain why the seemingly impossible physiology of the leopard-beast still worked. I want to caution everyone that just because we killed the first attacking beast doesn’t mean we can kill others. The leopard beast was pretty-much the easiest, they will get worse from here.”

For a moment, there was silence in the room and it felt a bit colder than air conditioning alone could manage. Everyone had seen the footage of the large, cancer-like monster’s remains strewn across the northern plains of Hell, and they were imagining it creeping across their homes. “Thank you, Baines.” Colonel Taylor shifted in his seat uncomfortably as he eyed the image on the screen. “Now, ladies and gentleman, apparently we have to figure out the best way to slay a dragon.”

“We’ve got more problems than that.” FBI Director Robert Mueller was quietly astonished that nobody had picked up on what, to him, was glaringly obvious. “Has it occurred to anybody that this Leopard Beast picked one of the main field research bases of DIMO(N) and made a bee-line right for the most sensitive area?”

There was a slow nodding of heads around the room. A few people had noted it but they hadn’t wanted to think about the obvious implications. “We thought it might be coincidence.”

Mueller looked at the speaker with withering contempt. “There’s no such thing as coincidence. Not at this level. That thing, or whoever sent it, knew exactly where it was going and why. You, ladies and gentlemen, have a leak. Possibly here in Washington, more likely in Fort Bragg.”

443rd Infantry Battalion, Myanmar Army, Chong Sadao, Thailand

Battalion Commander Ye Thwat was a puzzled and bewildered man. For the first two days of the war, he’d faced nothing but local militia, Thai Rangers who had fought bravely but who were woefully ill-equipped and under-armed for the task they had in hand. That had changed in the last twelve hours, now he was up against regular troops at last and they were making their presence felt. It wasn’t just the heavy weapons they had, although their rifles left wounds that were gruesome to behold. It was that they had their own style of fighting, a doctrine that was bewildering. For the last twelve hours, Ye Thwat had the feeling he was trying to dig a pit in dry sand. As fast as he shoveled, the sand flowed around his spade and filled in the hole he had just made.

That was what was so hard to understand. His battalion was being nibbled to death in a series of small encounter battles that, individually, were of no significance. There would be an exchange of fire, his unit would deploy to make an assault but by the time he had launched the attack, the target had faded away and his assault would hit air. Worse, they would suddenly be raked by gunfire from a flank or even their rear and by the time they reacted, once again the enemy had faded away.

That wasn’t the worst of it. The Thai artillery had arrived and the 155mm guns were already firing in support of the small units that appeared to be all over him. That also was strange, the guns never seemed to fire in mass or concentrate fire on a critical target. Instead, one of the little encounter battles would open with a pair of guns firing a few rounds on to his positions. No warning, no preparation, just a small handful of artillery rounds arriving on target. In the first few seconds, while his men were caught in the open, they would take casualties but by the time they had got to cover, the artillery fire would have stopped and another unit would be getting the punishment.

The overall effect was that his unit was being ground down and he had absolutely nothing to show for it. He couldn’t point to a single action and say ‘this is it, this is where they are’. Instead, he was being nibbled to death by mice. Well, when infested with mice, one laid traps.

“Get the mortar platoon loaded up. We’ll make a push down A68, towards Tha Sao.” That was an important road junction where the dirt-track A68 turned into an all-weather blacktop road. “When the Labyut move to block us, we’ll pin them down with mortar fire. Then we’ll have them.”

“Very good Sir.” The radio operator got on the network to pass the orders through to the mortar battery. “Sir, battery commander says he’ll register fire on the area you want, but he needs more ammunition. He’s only got the remnants from the unit of fire that he had yesterday, no supplies have come through.”

“Why not?”

“Sir, the supply officer is on another channel.”

“Put him on.” There was a pause and then Ye Thwat barked down the phone. “Why aren’t the supplies getting through?”

“It’s the Labyut Sir. They have infiltrated behind us, they ambushed some of the porters. Wiped out the ones they hit, the rest have dumped their loads and run away. Or, worse, they’ve joined up with the Labyut and handed the supplies they were carrying over.”

Ye Thwat swore picturesquely. That was the trouble with dealing with the Labyut as the Myanmar Army referred to the Thai regulars. They started by bribing people to change sides and things usually got worse from there. The problem was that the Myanmar Army depended on impressed porters to manpack its supplies forward and their efforts to force Thai villagers into that role had been monumentally unsuccessful. Most of the villagers had slipped away and the few that had remained had vanished with their loads soon after. Ye Thwat guessed with grim despair that the stolen supplies would end up in a Thai marketplace within a week. Probably marked as a ‘special offer’.

That was when he heard an eerie howl overhead. Hones by years of fighting the Shan States Army, his ears told him “inbound” and he realized he had been on the radio much too long. That was something he’d never had to worry about fighting the SSA, their radio interception capability was barely measurable. He had only just enough time to wonder how the Thais had done it when the shells crashed down on the area occupied by his headquarters.

What saved him was the long range. The Thai GHN-45s were operating at the limit of even their long range and their dispersion was enough to give the headquarters staff a fighting chance of survival. Five kilometers closer in and they would have been wiped out by the 155mm shells but in that fine margin lay the difference between a headquarters unit crippled and one wiped out. A dozen shells landed, then the Thai gunners shifted to a new target as their Atila fire control systems shifted priorities to the next target set reported by the platoon-sized battlegroups. Looking at the ruin of his headquarters, Ye Twat decided that the war was not going well.

Headquarters, Third Army, Kanchanaburi, Thailand.

“Get me through to General Petraeus, right now.” General Asanee snapped the order out to her communications officer.

“Yes Ma’am. On the way.”

She picked up the telephone and thumbed the button for Line One. “American Express? Good, Commander Third Army here. Our officers are using their cards to buy diesel fuel at commercial gas stations. I’d like you to make sure that all such charges are honored. The Army will, of course, guarantee payment. . . . . Yes, that is most co-operative of you. Thank you. If there are any problems, inform me immediately.”

She put the phone down, waited a second and smiled as it rang almost immediately. Things were beginning to shake down into a reasonably efficient headquarters. “General Petraeus? Good to speak with you Sir.”

“And you General. What’s the situation out there?”

“We’ve blocked the southern Myanmarese advance, we’ve got them chasing their own tails. They’re also being free with their radios, that’s a bad habit to get into. We’re picking them up with ELINT aircraft and taking their headquarters down. Most of the locals are helping out, we’re getting a flood of cellphone messages in with information.”

“Be careful General. The Myanmarese could be feeding false info in.”

“Yes Sir, understood. Now, the next portal set, the one for Second Cavalry. I’d like to change plans. The information we have is that Three Pagodas Pass is clear. I want to move a sensitive in up there and deliver Second Cavalry right to the Pass. From there, it’s a straight run on good roads to Moulmein and, eventually, Yangon. That way we’ll bypass the whole of the Myanmar invasion force and trap it south of the Lake. The ground’s too rough to stop them getting out, but they won’t leave as organized units or ones capable of putting up a fight.”

“Just what sort of strength are you talking about here?”

“Myanmarese, so far we’ve got a force estimate of around thirty thousand. We’ve got good intel flowing in now, our patrols are in contact and holding that contact. Second Cavalry, two light armor regiments, one mechanized regiment. Around fifteen thousand sabers.”

At the other end of the line, Petraeus visualized the situation. He could see what Asanee had in mind, an end run that would cut the Myanmar forces off from their base. This would fit very well with his own plans for a counter-offensive if the brewing situation on the Korean Peninsula went hot. In effect, she was offering him a chance to test out the new doctrine in Myanmar before using it in Korea. The concept of moving troops by opening portals to and from Hell offered strategic options that were only now becoming apparent. “How will you supply the units?”

“Sir, every Thai village has a gas station and all of them have large supplies of diesel. Our unit commanders just buy the stuff whenever they need it. Your people never could adapt to that in Cobra Gold, that’s why your vehicles ran out of gas and ours didn’t. There’s enough fuel up at Three Pagodas to keep the division running for four days. By then, we can either open up a land route or portal fuel in from Hell. Ammunition likewise. Food’s no problem, all our troops can live off the jungle.”

“Or have pizza delivered. Yes, General, I’ve heard all about what your troops get up to during Cobra Gold. This isn’t an exercise.”

“No Sir. But, the lessons about living off the country still apply. Sir, take my word on this, we’re good at it. And we’re in amongst our own people, it’s a point of honor for them to help out. Sir, this way we can pull the sort of flanker that hasn’t been done since Inchon.”

“You admire MacArthur?” Petraeus was genuinely interested and it was a good means of stalling while he weighed up the situation..

“Not so much. Ridgeway, yes , very much so. Patton also. So, are our plans approved?”

Petraeus tapped his pad with a pencil, the sound clearly coming through over the phone link. “Yes. General, your orders are to move Second Cavalry to Three Pagodas Pass and then maneuver to seize the supply line of the Myanmar forces.”

General Asanee nodded, then remembered that she wasn’t on the ubiquitous video links that controlled the Human Expeditionary Army. “Very good sir. And thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet General. We’re doing something that has never been done before, maneuvering units like this. If this comes off, everything we learned about strategy will be outdated.”

 

[LTR]

Camp Martinsyde, Phelan Plain, Hell

Times had certainly changed. The couch even had cupholders built into its arms and controls built into the rests allowed the occupants to tailor it to their own satisfaction. It even had a massage system built into the seat padding. Quite a change from the first couch she had used, one that had been hastily kludged together and surrounded by extemporized equipment. Looking fondly at her new work station, kitten settled herself down and started putting on her headset. Beside her, the operators started to warm up the equipment.

"You know the drill, kitten? We have to open a portal large enough to allow the transit of a V-150 armored car and a YWH-531 personnel carrier but no larger. We want to be able to shut this one down after we've finished with it."

The fact that kitten knew what a V-150 and a YWH-531looked like was another change. There had been a time when she'd known none of this. Now, she savored her new knowledge. "How large is the unit going through?"

"A full regiment with a battalion of artillery attached. The first of three groups, the other two will be moving later as the occupation takes hold. We've only got one sensitive to lock in on down there so there'll be a gap while he relocates. Ready to get started, kitten?"

"Any time you're ready." kitten relaxed and tried to make her mind go blank. In the background, she could feel the electronics warming up and emitting the carrier wave signal, the dummy load as the operators called it. When given the word, she would start searching for the sensitive in the region designated. As soon as she found him, the equipment would measure and digitize the characteristics of the signal she was sending and receiving, then duplicate it. Once that was done, it would transmit that signal, with enormously boosted power so that a portal would open up. No human, not even a Nephilim, could produce the power necessary to open a portal but the computerized equipment could. All she would have to do was to hold the contact so that the situation remained stable. Even that was becoming unnecessary now, the most advanced systems could maintain a portal without the services of a sensitive. Provided it was driven through from Hellside of course. Driving one through from Earthside was different.

That was something kitten remembered, the tearing pain that had gone with punching portals through from Earthside. It had felt as if somebody had had a giant rake inside her head and had been scrambling her brains with it. The weeks when she had been the only sensitive capable of opening and maintaining an Earthside portal had been terrible and it had only been the thought of the people the other side depending on her that had kept her going. To show for it, she had a small cabinet in the apartment she and Dani shared. One that had an international collection of medals in it, topped by a simple strip of pale blue silk with five stars. Dani had told her that getting The Medal implied she was in the armed services, but she didn't know if that was true or not. Anyway, those days were gone. Punching a portal through from hillside was almost a pleasant experience, like standing in a fast-flowing stream of water. An Earthside punch was still uncomfortable, reminiscent of standing to close to a fire, but it was no longer agonizing.

"As soon as we get the word that the sensitive and equipment is in place, we'll be moving. Can we get you and Dani anything?"

"Some ginseng tea would be nice." As usual, Dani spoke for her.

"Coming right up. The Chinese sent some over for you, absolutely the best. Apparently it's the same one that the Politbureau drinks."

Sangkhlaburi, Nong-Lu province, Thai-Myanmar Border

For the last five days, Sangkhlaburi had had the communal feeling that it was sitting on top of a smoking volcano, waiting for the inevitable explosion. When the Burmese troops had crossed the border and headed for Kanchanaburi, all the wise heads in the village had nodded and assumed that Sangkhlaburi would be next, opening up a second front, one that led to Ayuthya and then to Bangkok. Some of the more nervous citizens had started to leave, heading north or east, away from the invading Burmese. Others had started to take whatever arms they could find and had dug crude fortifications around the town. As it became obvious that Third Army wasn't moving to intercept the invaders, heads had begun to nod knowingly. This had happened before when the Burmese invaded. Everybody knew the story of Ban Rachan, the village that had held out against the invaders even though they had been deserted by the Army and the Government. Ban Rachan had held for months, buying time for the defense, even though it had done little good in the end.

Then the situation had changed. Matichon, the national tabloid newspaper, had run a cartoon of a dragon bursting into Third Army Headquarters, breathing fire and sending the indolent occupants of the headquarters running for their lives. Third Army had suddenly started moving, sending two of its regiments to stop the Burmese advance, then a newly-arrived cavalry division to help drive it back. Sitting up here in the north, Sangkhlaburi had watched the battle unfold. The wise heads in the town had said that this would bring no good, with the invasion stopped at one point, the Myanmar Army would try somewhere else. And where else than Three Pagodas Pass, the opening in the hills that was the traditional invasion route?

But, the invasion hadn't happened. Which only meant that it hadn't happened yet. The townspeople had kept building their improvised defenses and searched the town for more ammunition for their shotguns and rifles. And they had waited. Today, it seemed like the time they had expected and dreaded was coming for they could hear the traditional whup-whup-whup noise of a helicopter's rotors.

The four AH-1 Cobras burst over Sangkhlaburi, swerving around the end of the ridgeline they had used to mask their approach and flying over the center of the town, as if daring any enemies to open fire. At first the people below stayed silent but that only lasted until they saw the red-white-blue markings on the fuselage of the helicopters. They were Thai, and they meant the Army had arrived. The gunships prowled over the town, swinging their noses backwards and forwards as they hunted for their prey. Two started up the road that led over the Three Pagoda Pass where they were finally challenged by bursts of automatic rifle fire from the Myanmarese border post. One helicopter went to hover, its nose seeking backwards and forwards for a second, before its stub-wings erupted into flame as the Cobra discharged a salvo of unguided rockets. The gunfire from the ground stopped abruptly as the border post was obliterated (due to the inaccuracy of unguided rockets, the helicopter took the Thai border post out as well, but fortunately the two Border Police officers there guessed was about to happen and had abandoned their post in a great hurry when their Myanmar counterparts opened fire).

With Sangkhlaburi apparently cold, the next wave of helicopters, UH-60 Blackhawks were already landing in the town streets, disgorging the better part of an infantry battalion. The troops were actually part of Third Army's rapid reaction force and had been flown up direct from Kanchanaburi. As they spread out and secured the town, a third group of helicopters landed just north of the built-up area. One of them was a big Russian Mi-17I and it started unloading the equipment and personnel necessary to open a portal to Hell.

This was the third time the team had gone through this performance in the field and by now their routine was smoother and slicker. The equipment was laid out, the portable diesel generators on their skids positioned and the portal-generators assembled. Within 45 minutes, less than half the time taken during their first effort at Kanchanaburi three days earlier, the black ellipse opened up and a long column of military vehicles started to move through. The mechanized infantry was first through the portal, the platoons emerging, assembling and then setting off to take up pre-determined positions in defense of the town and the pass above it. They were followed by the armored cars of the light armor battalions that started to assemble west of the town for their lunge along the main road that would, eventually, take them to Moulmein. Finally, the artillery battalion, towed 105mm howitzers, emerged and started to position themselves to support the rest of the regiment.

"Well done!" Colonel Thanas reached down to shake the hand of the young man relaxing on the couch.

"No problem Sir, its easy when the punch comes through from the other side. Have you got all your vehicles through?"

"Not quite. Supply trucks and rear echelon still to come through. As soon as they're through, we'll need to move to the next location to open a gate for the next regiment. Then, its off to the top of the pass for the third."

DIMO(N) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.

"You're drunk."

Dr Surlethe's comment was half serious, half joking. Nevertheless, Dr. Kuroneko looked blearily up at him before taking another gulp out of a tumbler full of whisky. "So would you be if you'd been thinking what I've been thinking."

"And what part of trans-dimensional mathematics with special relevance to Netherworlds had brought on this display of inebriation." On reflection, Surlethe decided that inebriation was not a bad idea. It seemed as if it had been a long time since he'd been able to relax. More than 18 months in fact, ever since The Message had arrived and the Salvation War had started. He went over to the bar and got himself a drink, noticing with distaste that Red Label was the only Johnnie Walker it had in stock. By the time he'd got back, the level in Kuroneko's glass had dropped notably.

"The bit that says we're all doomed."

"You think we're going to lose this war? Surlethe was slightly shocked.

"No, course not. We'll find a way into Heaven soon enough, and when we do we'll blow the place apart. They've had it up there and we've had it down here, just going to take a bit more time for us that's all."

"How much more?"

"A few billion years give or take a decade or so." Kuroneko made a visible effort to pull himself together. "You know we live in an expanding universe right? Well, one of the theories of cosmology is that our universe will keep on expanding until it's in a state of heart death, when all the stars and planets are dead and there's just an even distribution of energy everywhere."

"So I've heard. Do you believe that?"

"Probably not. But doesn’t matter. When we're in that state, then the universe starts contracting again and it keeps on contracting until it forms a singoor. . . . strinlari . . . . a point. Then it all blows up in another big bang. But now we've found the Hell dimensions and guess what, its contracting. And our early figures suggest that the whole Hell domemshun is contracting at the same rate as ours is expanding. Don't you see?"

Surlethe leaned back in his seat and shook his head.

"It's obvious. If all this is true, then our dimension and the hell dimension are opposed pairs. We expand until we reach heat-death and then start to collapse. At that exact moment, the hell dimension finishes its contraction and has the big bang, starting its expansion. That's when we're like Hell, all living in bubbleworlds, they're like us, living on planets. And so it goes on forever and ever. Just going backwards and forwards, pointless, planless, without purpose. And if that thought doesn’t make you want to get drunk, I don’t know what will."

"Why? We'll all be dead by . . . . Oh, I see what you mean. We have no idea how long creatures in the hell dimension live do we? We could be alive up there, for an eternity. We're not doomed at all though. Now we know we can make portals, we could skip from one to the other and become eternal. Just like the gods we once believed in."

"Excuse me, might I join in?" Norman Baines was standing behind them.

"Sure, pull up a pew. We're just screwing the inscrutable." Surlethe finished off his glass and got a replacement.

"So I heard. You've seen this of course." Baines produced a black-and-white disk from his pocket, the circle divided by an S-shaped line that saw one half starting off at nothing and swelling out while the other collapsed the opposite way. One half was black, the other white and at the fullest point of each half was a small circle of the opposite color.

"Sure, its the Ying-Yang symbol. Hippies loved it." And that comment ages me he thought.

"Well, I was listening to Dr. Kuroneko and what he was saying made me think of this. Look, if we hold it so the dividing line is vertical, then turn it through 180 degrees, it shows exactly what he's been saying. One half forming and growing, then collapsing while the other does the same but in reverse phase. And the dots are the portals joining the two." He put the disk on the table and started turn it backwards and forwards.

"He's right you know. It does illustrate what you've been saying."

Kuroneko finished his drink. "Makes you wonder of the old Chinese philosophers had this whole thing worked out, doesn’t it."

"Taoist, but here's a funny thing. The same symbol, its called a Tajitsu by the way, crops up a lot of places. For example, one of the Roman Legions used the same symbol and it predates the Taoist version by a couple of centuries or more. It's believed some of Alexander's units used it as well. So did the Thebans. And there's stories that it turned up in ancient Egypt. Suppose the Tajitsu isn’t just a mystical symbol but is a descendent of something that was handed down from ancient civilizations to tell us what the universe is really like?"

Surlethe thought about that for a long, long time. Finally he looked at Baines. "I really wish you hadn’t said that. Now I want to get drunk."

Council Chamber, Yamantau, Russia

"There is a major problem coming up, one that I believe this Council must address."

The speaker looked around at the fifteen council members. Not all were physically present, but those that weren't were on great viewscreens that lined the walls. Whether present as flesh-and-blood or electronic imagery, they all nodded. "Proceed."

Doctor Samuel drew breath to deliver the bad news. "We have an impending energy crunch. The fact is that with what amounts to every army in the world fully mobilized and conducting military operations, they're burning a mass of diesel fuel. It doesn’t matter whether its peace-keeping operations in Hell or the fighting going on in Thailand or the war that's about to start in Korea, they all cost fuel. It doesn’t end there. Every factory on Earth is running flat out on triple-shifts, those that can are producing munitions ad those that can't are making up for the facilities that have been converted to war production.

"We can't change that. We're still replacing the munitions we expended in the Curb Stomp War."

"I know, but it takes energy and that means fuel. We're shifting to nuclear power as fast as we can, but rebuilding the infrastructure takes time and building the plans takes more energy. We're behind the curve and that situation is becoming terminal. Put simply, we've been pumping and refining oil so fast, we're damaging the fields and the refineries are in desperate need of repair and renovation. That could get worse, we're entering hurricane season and that means the weather attacks could start again. Refinery capacity was critical before the war started, now its far beyond that. We need more refineries and more oil resources. The former we can build if we're given the go-ahead, but actually finding more oil reserves. Well, to give you an idea, the current levels of unexploited oil reserves are higher than at any time in recorded history, the figures are in Platt's Oilgram, but they’re still not enough."

"There may be a solution to this." The spotlights switched to another figure standing in front of the great horseshoe of desks. "I'm Coogler, one of the geologists working in Hell. Do you all recognize this?"

He held up a bottle containing a black solid. The Council looked at it, shaking their heads.

"Well, you've all heard of the Lava River in Hell. The one we're pulling our dead out of. Well, that was always a bit odd because if it was real lava, there wouldn’t be any bodies. They'd be flash-vaporized. So, we had a closer look at that river and it turns out, it wasn't lava at all. It's a mix of what amounts to a very heavy crude oil with extremely light fractions. It’s really strange from a geological point of view, in some ways, it’s a bit like shale oil but don’t push that comparison too far. Human crude is a mixture of fractions as well, some heavy, some light, some in between. Hell crude has nothing in between, its all either very light or very heavy. When it comes out of the ground, the light factions vaporize and burn, giving the appearance of a river of fire.

"So, the injuries our dead received are a mix of the burns from the hot, plasticized crude, that runs at around sixty to seventy degrees Celsius by the way, and the burning gases above it. Now, if we can trap and channel that stream at source, we can recover the light fractions for use as natural gas while we can build refineries in Hell to crack the super-heavy fraction and give us everything else we need. Or we can build the refineries here on Earth. But, given the volume coming out in the Lava River, there must be a lot of this stuff in Hell, the whole place is probably oil-rich."

Putin nodded and there was a whispered exchange between the members of the council, those present on the screens giving their contribution by means of earpieces worn by the members. Eventually, Putin banged his gavel on the table. "Engineer Coogler, get together with Doctor Samuel and thrash out a scheme to exploit these new resources. Take whatever technical staff you need. Now, to the next item on today's agenda. What progress has been made in hunting down and killing Yahweh?"

 

[LTR]

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

"Anything on the plot?"

The Combat Direction Center, known as the CDC to the world in general and "the Pit" to the crew, resembled something inspired by a television movie. The four screens that dominated the compartment showed the coast of California up to a range that would sent the security weenies screaming into a catatonic trance if anybody unauthorized got wind of it. It wasn't just the ship's own sensors that were creating the massive coverage, Normandy was pulling in raw radar data from other ships up and down the coast and integrating it with her own. That sounded simple but it wasn't. It would need only minor differences in calibration for contacts that appeared on both sets of data to be duplicated and reduplicated until the whole system crashed. That had happened often enough while the Cooperative Engagement Capability system had been under development and it had taken years to fix it.

It wasn't just CEC that gave Normandy her enormous radar range. The cruiser was part of the AEGIS-ABM system. There was an incredible amount of alphabet soup attached to that particular modernization reflected Captain William Pelranius. The AEGIS system itself was Baseline 7.3cV(5) with the SPY-1D(V) radars baseline 5.3.8. What it all amounted to was that the radars on Normandy were an order of magnitude more powerful than those on non-ABM ships and the battle management technology was upgraded to match. That's why she was stationed off San Diego. After the attack on El Paso, all border and coastal towns were considered to be at risk and San Diego was both.

"We've got nothing Sir." The radar operator leaned back in her seat and flexed her shoulders. OSCSAW Annette Serafina had been staring at the display screens for more than an hour, watching the movement of aircraft up and down the California coast. The coverage wasn't as dense as it might have been two years or more ago. These days, with the war on, a lot of civilian aircraft had been drafted into military service and fuel shortages had curtailed much of regular airline activities. On the other hand, military flight were way up.

"Axehorn, this is CAP-Three-Three-One requesting speed and altitude check." Axehorn was Normandy's call sign.

"CAP-Three-Three-One, we have you at altitude level six-zero, ground speed one-five-zero knots" Serafina's voice was calm and neutral. The Civilian Air Patrol was doing its job, flying patrol missions and watching for anything unusual. With all the crazy nonsense that Yahweh had been throwing at the world for the last year, there was no telling what would come next.

"Axehorn, this is Eagle-One-Fiver, requesting speed and altitude check." The voice had a smug note to it.

"Eagle-One-Five, we have you at altitude level one-two-zero, ground speed five-six-five knots." She covered the microphone with her hand. "Navy airdale wanting to impress the Civil Air Patrol guy," Serafina explained. The captain nodded sympathetically.

"Axehorn, Eagle-One-Fiver, please give clearance for flight at altitude level three-fiver-zero."

Serafina glanced at the restrictions for the day and raised her eyebrows slightly. "Eagle-One-Fiver, that's a negative. Remain at altitude level one-two-zero."

"Come on honey, give me what I want." The fighter pilot's voice had a cooing overtone.

"No way Eagle-One-Fiver. Last time I gave an airdale what he wanted, I was on penicillin for three weeks. Remain at one-two-zero."

"Axehorn, Habu-Zero-One requesting speed and altitude check." There was a rich vein of amusement in the voice.

Serafina took one look at the track readings and saw why. In a slightly strangled voice she replied "Habu Zero-One, I have you at Altitude Level Nine-Nine-Five, Ground speed, Two-Eight-Seven-Zero knots."

"Thank you Axehorn, and please thank CAP-Three-Three-One for his assist."

"Two thousand, eight hundred and seventy knots, ninety-nine thousand, five hundred feet. What the blazes was that bird."

"What bird, Sir? With respect Sir, I don’t know what you are referring to. You might note that call, if it had existed which it didn't, came in on a special circuit, if that existed, which it doesn’t." Serafina took pity on her Captain, he'd only been on board for three days and had come in from the Atlantic Fleet. It was rumored he'd done a six-month rotation in Hell before getting command of Normandy. "Sir, there are a lot of strange things around here that come out of inland that it’s better not to remember or ask questions about."

"Senior Chief, we're getting a warning from the DIMO(N) warning net. Cell Phone towers are dropping signals north west of San Diego. Probable portal opening, if so, it’s a small one."

"Nothing on radar." Serafina was tempted to up the transmission power a little but Normandy was only fifty miles of San Diego. If a normal AEGIS cruiser went to full transmission power this close in, she'd blow every television and radio set in the city, what an AEGIS-BMD would do defied rational imagination. "More precise location?"

"Around the El Capitan Reservoir. In the mountains. The trace has gone now. DIMO(N) say, probably one entity only passed through."

"Uriel." The hiss went around the CDC.

Captain Pelranius didn’t hesitate. "Sound battle stations. Assume one very hostile angel inbound. Send out the warning to Army and Air Force units as well. We don’t want the son-of-a-bitch to get away this time."

West of El Capitan Reservoir, California.

Uriel popped out of the portal over the oddly-shaped lake that he'd selected as his entry point. In the past, he would have set off to the community he had selected for annihilation, confident in the knowledge of his unchallenged supremacy but those days were gone. His wing was still stiff from the injuries he'd suffered at El Paso and his skin itched with the memory of that battle. So, he stayed down amongst the mountains and made sure that his position was secure before he started his sacred mission of bringing final peace to the humans who lived below.

Safe in the darkness, his senses stretched out, he could feel the existence of life here, some of it animal and of no great importance but more was human. Once, this whole area had been uninhabitable desert but humans in their arrogance had challenged that divine judgment and brought water to the sand. Great cities had grown up on the coast, cities that could not exist without the constant exercise of human ingenuity and there obstinate refusal to accept that things that were should not be challenged. The thought of human challenge was enough to make his skin itch more

Then it occurred to him that his skin wasn't itching as a result of his memories of the battle over El Paso, it really was burning. Only very slightly but it was there and it told Uriel much. He’d noted that it always preceded an attack and that made him guess that the humans knew he was coming. That would make things much, much harder. He decided that discretion was the better part of valor and he would approach his target from behind the ridgelines that were a little to the north of his present position. The humans wouldn’t see him until he was on top of them and then it would be too late. His new plan would take him over the small town of Eucalyptus Hills. Uriel didn't know the name, and didn’t care about it but he decided that the community would make a useful practice target for his powers.

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

The sirens going off only added to Caroline Howarth's distress. She knew what they meant, everybody did. The continuous wailing noise meant that a Netherworld attack was imminent and a portal had opened nearby. During the Curb Stomp War, the threat had been Baldrick Berserkers who would materialize somewhere and destroy anything they found. Now, with Yahweh responsible for the attacks, the sirens leant Uriel was on his way. Howarth had heard of El Paso and the result of a Uriel attack. Thirty thousand dead the reports said.

"Rex? Rex? Here boy." The rottweiler came galloping into the room at his human's call. He sat in front of her when she made the right hand gesture and waited patiently while she strapped a silver cap over his head. Rex didn’t understand this, but it was something that made his human happy and that was enough for him. He also noted that she was wearing a silver cap as well and that was good because it made the big dog feel part of the pack.

Howarth looked around. She'd modified this room as a shelter when she'd heard about El Paso. She couldn't line all the walls of her house with aluminum foil but she'd taken the room furthest away from the outside walls and covered the walls and ceiling of that room with as much tinfoil as she could afford. She closed the door then took tinfoil and taped it over the doorframe. Her dog watched her carefully, he could sense there was danger even if he couldn’t define it. But, his human was doing something about it and that was good. If the worst came to the worst, Rex knew he could bite with a pressure of more than 350 pounds per square inch and if the danger wanted to get to his human, it would have to get past him first.

Her preparation work finished, Howarth walked back to the center of her room and sat down with her dog, wrapping her arm around his thick neck. She knew something that Rex didn't, at El Paso, only a tiny handful of pets had survived the attack. She just hoped that she'd done enough to save hers.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

"Closed up, ready for action Sir."

Captain Pelranius nodded in acknowledgement. "Any sign of him?"

"No, Sir. Last report is still El Capitan. He must be using the hills as cover. Upping transmission power won’t help, it'll just increase reflections of those hills. We could lob an SM-2 into the general area and see where it's terminal homing in on but it would be just as likely to hit a CAP bird or a fast-moving car. And if he's sitting on the ground, it'll just go ballistic and could end up anywhere."

Pelranius looked at the map, trying to visualize the terrain. Guessing what he was trying to do, Serafina put up a tactical air navigation chart on one of the giant screens. Pelranius nodded in appreciation. "I'm trying to imagine what he's thinking. We think he nearly got wasted by a quartet of PAC-3s over El Paso, let’s assume he knows or guesses the missiles have to have a direct line of sight to their target."

"With respect Sir, PAC-3s do, we don’t. Not with our 156s. We can hit things way over the radar horizon. And we've got test 174s in the aft VLS nest."

"I know that, but he won't. He's never fought an AEGIS cruiser. Get the 156s and 174s warmed up. We want to have the best of the best on the line."

"Roger that, Sir. The Army pukes let him get away, we don't want to do the same now do we?"

"We surely do not. Now, if I was him, and I wanted to wipe out Sunny Dee, I'd come in from the north. Use these ridges as cover and ride in behind them. Around University City and Serra Mesa?"

"Bit close to Miramar for my taste. The bastard knows what our fighters can do."

"True. So a little further south. How about Lakeside and Santee?"

"Works for me Sir."

"Very good Senior Chief." Pelranius turned around to the rest of the watch crew in the Pit.

"We're going to be attacked by Uriel. I expect him to emerge around the towns of Lakeside or Santee. Don’t neglect other areas but keep those two under tight watch. When we start shooting, we'll have to shoot fast and well so everybody on your toes. Let's get the piece of shit before he wipes any more of our people out."

Eucalyptus Hills, East of Santee, California

Uriel could hear the wailing down on the ground. At first he flattered his vanity by trying to persuade himself that the sound was humans crying in fear at his approach but the noise had a strange, dead quality to it. That told him the sound was one of the human’s machines, doubtless telling of his arrival. He was keeping down low, using the ground for cover but that couldn’t last for long. Soon, he would have to crest the ridge ahead of him and skim over the community the other side. Then, and only then, could he bring them peace.

For a brief second he paused, remembering the lash of the steel fragments that had followed him through the portal over El Paso before it slammed shut behind him. But then his duty was remembered and the need to use the awesome sense of power that he had been granted. He soared over the ridgeline, seeing the lights of the town below him around him, and he sensed the activity below starting to slow down and soften as if the world were pausing out of respect for his presence. Uriel smiled down at the little creatures below him and his hands moved in his eternal benison. “Peace be with you and my peace I grant you.”

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

It felt like a blow, one that drove the breath out of her body and tried to still her heart. Caroline Howarth screamed in protest, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t logical, she was a young woman, still in her mid-thirties. She lived a healthy lifestyle, she looked after herself, her condition was as good as any and better than most. There was no logical reason why she should die. She summoned every ounce of willpower she could find, drove her lungs to expand and contract, forced her heart to keep pumping. The burden on her was crushing, smothering, driving darkness into her soul yet she kept fighting it, willing herself not to die. This was Uriel, she knew the name from the attack on El Paso, knew that somehow he willed people to die and then stole their souls. Caroline Howarth raged against that fate, summoning reserves of strength that she never knew she had. Then, she glanced down and saw the brown eyes of Rex staring up at her, confused and pained, but grimly determined not to desert her. She drew strength from that, knew that she could not die because to do so would be to condemn the dog who had trusted her. And so she fought.

Beside her, Rex couldn’t understand it. Something was crushing him, squeezing the life out of his body, His lungs, his heart seemed paralyzed and blackness was spreading through him. He growled, knowing this was the danger he had sensed and it had come from outside. He sensed his human fighting to stay alive and knew that he had to stay with her to protect her when the enemy came to their house. That sense of purpose allowed him to push the darkness back, to force air into his lungs to keep his heart pounding. There was another reason as well, he was bigger and stronger than his human and it would be embarrassing to die when she had fought for her life and won. He looked up at her and saw his human return the look and try to smile encouragingly. He felt her squeeze his paw, and the contact gave him yet more strength. Between them, the woman and the Rottweiler gave each other strength as they fought their lonely battle against Uriel. And so, across the town of Eucalyptus Hills, did all the other residents, drawing strength from each other, from family and friends, or strangers who had sought shelter when the sirens sounded. They called on courage, on the knowledge that there was no need for them to die, on a sheer mule-headed determination not to let Uriel win. Whatever it was, they fought the strange influence that would stop their hearts and empty their lungs.

Eucalyptus Hills, East of Santee, California

Uriel concentrated all his power on the small group of people beneath him. He knew now his mistake, the error that had cost him so dearly. He had been so used to the merest touch of his power being fatal to the humans that he had never thought about the numbers he was handling. Humans had spent most of their existence in small communities, a few dozen or a few hundred at most, and those he had wiped out without a thought. But in the last two centuries, while he had spent his time in Africa, human cities elsewhere had exploded in size and now contained hundreds of thousands or even millions. They spread his power too thin and the new-found ability they had developed to resist his power prevented him from wiping them out.

But, this community beneath him was different. It was small, he guessed around eight thousand souls, and he was concentrating every last drop of his power he could find on them. They were resisting hard, there was the barrier there, the one that shielded them from him and when he penetrated that, he found there was another, special to each one of them. His power washed down in great waves, pounding on the barriers, battering their resistance down. Somehow he sensed this struggle was titanic, of epoch-making importance. It was a battle he had to win for if the humans could fight and resist him on these terms then his power was done. So, Uriel basked in the cold glow of entropy as he tried to force his peace on the people below.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

“GOT HIM! Over s small town called Eucalyptus Hills. Right where you said he’d be Sir.” The last bit was said loud enough to echo around the Pit. One of the functions of the Senior Chiefs was to make sure that their Captains had the undiluted respect of the enlisted men. When a new Captain was on board, it did no harm to spread news of their achievements. Serafina glanced around, saw the Pit crew nodding. Work done.

“Right, Senior Chief, let’s take him out. Get a target designation beam on him and ready the 156s for launch.”

“156s Sir?”

“RIM-156. We’ll keep the 174s for when we lose line-of-sight. You can bet we will.”

Senior Chief Operations Specialist – Air Warfare Annette Serafina leaned forward and her hands started to run over the SPY-1D controls. USS Normandy was about to enter the Battle of Eucalyptus Hills.

 

[LTR]

Eucalyptus Hills, East of Santee, California

Uriel was stunned by the realization that the humans beneath him were fighting back. His mind and body were aching with the effort of keeping the pressure on them, fulfilling his eternal mission of blotting out their lives and snatching way their souls. And yet they were fighting back, defying him by keeping on living. Beneath the shelter of their shields, they were defying the Sword and Scythe of The One Above All. Even worse, Uriel could sense animals in there with them and they were fighting back too, as if they were following the lead of the humans and defying the judgment of the Great Father Above All. It was beyond Uriel’s understanding, the humans had brought their animals in under cover with them, their love for their pets exceeded their duty of obedience by a margin that Uriel couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

He was tiring, the need to continue his assault, maintain the effort to wipe out those beneath him, was already draining his last reserves of strength. He had never fought this way before, in the past his merest touch had been enough to drop the humans in their tracks before they even realized their time had come. Those days were long past and over South America and Mexico, he had sensed resistance, felt the effects of the shielding every human seemed to have. But this, this was different. The shields were much stronger and the time taken to push through them had allowed the humans below to prepare for the assault. They were refusing to die and , to Uriel, that was a thing beyond understanding.

The human resistance may have been beyond Uriel’s ability to comprehend but what happened to him next was all too familiar. His skin started to irritate, to itch madly with pains that jabbed deep into his skin. He knew what that meant, the humans were on to him and were tracking him. He looked down to see if any of the missiles that they loved so much were coming his way. That was Uriel’s first mistake. If he’d invested in a copy of World Naval Weapons, he would have looked up, not down. But he had never read a human book and the idea of looking up never occurred to him.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

Annette Serafina played the radar controls in front of her, manipulating the systems at her command, her electronic fingers reaching out through the darkness to find the monster who was trying to slaughter her people. “Got him! We have SPS-49 contact, tracking now. Sir, how about some music down here?”

“On its way.” Pelranius thought for a second and got the channel to the Comms Suite. “Put on Mars, The Bringer of War, Gustav Holst.”

Serafina listened to the opening bars while her computers established the target track. “Good choice, Sir.” SPS-49 operating full power. Hope there was nothing good on television over at Sunny Dee.”

Captain Pelranius nodded. The SPS-49 had a peak transmission output power of 2,400 kW. Once, when a cruiser had accidentally gone to full transmit power off Norfolk, it had blacked out television reception in Newport News and interfered with radio as far inland as Richmond. The incident coming to mind jogged his memory, there was a vital duty he had to perform. He took a key, inserted it in a slot on the console and turned it. “Senior Chief Serafina, I am authorizing you to utilize full war emergency power on the SPY-1.”

“Very good Sir.” Her voice was neutral, despite the implications of the words she had just heard. Even if she hadn’t been aware of them, the rumbling under her feet as the ship’s four LM-2500 gas turbines picked up speed and started to generate more electrical power would have told her. “I have Uriel locked in using the Spoogs. We’ll track using SPS-49 and designate with SPY-1. Firing RIM-156 now.”

The ship started to shake as the first of the salvo of RIM-156 anti-aircraft missiles left the silos. Within a second, four missiles were arching up from the ship, heading northwest towards the town of Eucalyptus Hills.

“I hope Uriel doesn’t see them and get behind the ridgeline again.” Pelranius looked at the air warfare crew and picked up a slight note of disdain that surprised him. What had he said?

“Won’t save him Sir. The 156s are on their way now and they have active terminal radar homing. All we have to do is get them into the acquisition basket and they’ll do the rest. They’ll even relay their radar pictures back to us to tell us what they’re doing.” Serafina dropped her voice to confidential levels. “ Don’t worry Sir, everybody makes that mistake, assuming we can’t hit a target that’s over the radar horizon. Been times when that was the last mistake they ever made.”

In an educational video, seen from above, Normandy would have looked as if she was surrounded by four great fans of radar energy from the planar arrays of the SPY-1 system. Then, as Serafina’s expert fingers played the controls and switched the system from surveillance to target designation mode, the fans started to split into narrow beams that coalesced into thin lines. Then, the lines started to merge as she combined their output into a single beam per face.

“How much power are you pushing down that beam?” Pelranius’s voice was awed.

“All of it, all our generators can give us.” Serafina’s voice was still neutral. The pencil beam she was generating was capable of tracking an object two feet across at a range of far over a thousand nautical miles and detecting the tiny variations in its trajectory caused be variations in earth’s gravity. At under a hundred miles, the power of that beam was ferocious. The textbooks said SPY-1 had a peak power output of 4,000 kW, a figure that caused great amusement to the AEGIS community. It was true enough, or had been in the days of a prototype system on board the old Norton Sound. Now, it was long obsolete, far surpassed by that of later versions, and that had been before the key had been turned to enable war emergency power. The target designation beam of an SPY-1 was a powerful weapon in its own right.

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

Caroline Howarth sat, curled up in the center of her refuge room, her arms around the dog beside her. She was tired, exhausted by the effort of keeping her body working against the constant assault of blackness that was trying to shut her down. She was frightened, terrified even for she knew she was just buying time. The blackness was spreading, it was getting more difficult to breath and her head ached from the effort of keeping her heart beating. She looked at Rex, saw the misery and exhaustion in his eyes, saw the long strings of drool running from his mouth. She squeezed him gently, encouragingly, to reassure him that they would win this one. All they had to do was hang on long enough, until the Air Force or the Navy got help here.

Beside her, Rex’s whole body ached with the effort he was making. It was all so very hard to understand, there was something out there that wanted him and his human to die but it wouldn’t come in and fight like a dog. It just hung around outside and tried to squeeze the life out of them. He could feel his human weakening, feel her body running out of reserves of strength. Carefully, using as little of his remaining reserves as he could, he licked her face, trying to transfer some of what little energy he had left into her. Then, as if responding to his gesture, he felt a tiny weakening in the pressure that was killing them. They were winning, they were outlasting the thing outside. Then, he heard thunder in the skies overhead and the pressure was gone.

Eucalyptus Hills, East of Santee, California

The burning irritation of his skin had reached almost unendurable levels but Uriel couldn’t see any of the missiles coming in at him. Nor were there any aircraft coming in to the attack. It was all very, very confusing. For the first time, Uriel was actually beginning to hate the humans who were causing him this trouble. Why couldn’t they just die the way they were supposed to? That was when the burning pain on the top of his body told him that he was in the worst danger of his life.

Uriel never stood a chance of evading the RIM-156 missiles that were streaking down upon him from above. They had tipped over at 150,000 feet and were now heading down in a Mach 6 dive . Their radar sets were fully active and they had locked on to the figure below them. They didn’t need designation any more, They had Uriel in their sights and they were going to blow him up. Uriel barely had a chance to register their presence before they exploded around him.

The only thing that saved Uriel’s life was that the missiles had proximity fuzes. He was a big angel and the computers in the fuzes calculated distances based on that. He also had a large radar image and that increased the distance away from him that the missiles detonated. Finally, he was slow, and the RIM-156 was designed to handle supersonic and hypersonic targets. The fuze simply wasn’t programmed for a target that moved at Uriel’s speed. None of those factors would have saved Uriel on their own, but put together, they just about made the difference between a living angel and a dead one.

Uriel screamed as the tungsten carbide fragments slashed into his body. They ripped into his skin, splattering silver blood into the air, tore at his wings, shredding the flying surfaces and cracking the bones open. His vision suddenly shrank as fragments tore out one of his eyes and scoured across his body. He staggered in the air, hurt worse than had ever happened to him before. Not even in the Great Celestial War had he taken punishment like this. He started to drop, frantically beating the sky with his injured wings in an effort to avoid plummeting to the ground. He knew that his attack on the people below had ended, that those that had not died would live. He had used too much of his strength, he was too badly injured to start the assault again. He would have to escape, retreat to heaven and heal his wounds. Above all, he would have to speak with his friend Michael-Lan who knew humans better than any other angel. Michael-Lan would help him, Michael-Lan would give him wise counsel. He desperately tried to form the portal that would allow him to escape but something disrupted his efforts. The air itself seemed to be crackling round him, swamping his efforts to open an escape route.

That was when something happened that was far beyond his comprehension. He was used to the burning pain of the humans, used to it inflaming and irritating his skin but what happened next was truly horrifying. The pain suddenly soared up, far beyond anything he had experienced to date. He looked down and to his horror saw the skin on his chest and side was burning. Then, he realized, that was wrong, he wasn’t burning, he was being roasted alive in mid-air. His skin was bubbling and peeling, the flesh beneath it turning brown, the fat running down his body as it melted. Uriel screamed and twisted, howling in demented agony, knowing that with this weapon, whatever it was, humans had finally far surpassed the late and unlamented Satan in the ability to create sheer, undiluted horror. Uriel lost his battle to stay airborne and fell out of the sky.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

“We got him!” Serafina’s triumphant cheer swept through the Pit, bringing the AAW crew to their feet, howling with delight. “All four 156s, they went off all around him. He’s toast!” The Pit descended into a chaos of backslapping and high-fives.

“Can we confirm that?” Pelranius was loath to put a damper on the celebrations but he had done a tour in Hell and he knew how hard these Netherworld creatures were to kill. If the stories were true, Uriel was one of the top-ranking Archangels in Heaven. If they were anything like as tough as the Archdukes…. Asmodeus had been blown up by a ton of C4, his head riddled with bullets from a .50 rifle and he had still needed a salvo of AT-4 anti-tank rockets to finish him. Beelzebub, hit by two Mavericks and riddled with 30mm fire from two Warthogs, Deumos, her brains scrambled and her body fried by rocket exhausts, Satan himself, two massive shaped charges to the chest and head. Uriel was in that league and Pelranius really doubted if four RIM-156s would be enough to do the job.

“Damn, no!” The cry of disappointment was heart-felt. “He’s still flying. Designating with SPY-1 now.”

Serafina flipped the designation beam she had formed up to maximum power, sub-consciously noting the rumbling turbines below her, and locked it in on Uriel. Almost immediately the creature started to writhe in mid-air then lost control of itself and started to fall. The pencil-beam tracked him down to where the ridgeline provided a radar horizon with dead ground beyond it. Serafina thumped in the control inputs and four RIM-174s exploded from the aft launch silo, heading out for the location Uriel was heading into. They were faster and longer-ranged than the RIM-156s and their terminal radar homing was optimized to pick up and track low-flying targets in highly-cluttered backgrounds. As Uriel fell, the SPY-1 beam tracked him down. On the way, it intercepted some power lines stretched along the ridge and destroyed them in a spectacular display of electrical flashes and the showering cascade caused by melting wire and blown insulators.

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

It was gone, it was over. She and Rex had survived. The blackness had vanished with the rolling thunder of the explosions overhead. They had to be missiles, just had to be. Either the Army or the Navy had come to the rescue and driven Uriel away. Air was flowing into her lungs again, without the dreadful effort to suck it in and force it out. She could sense blood flowing through her arteries and veins, bringing oxygen and life back to her body. Slowly, shakily, she got up, her legs reluctant to support her, and looked around her room. Then, she lost her balance and fell as there were another series of explosions from north of the township. They shook the floor, sending dust falling from the ceiling. A moment later there was a screaming noise that she guessed was the sound of the inbound missiles.

She turned around, fearing that Rex hadn’t made it, but the dog was stretched out on the floor, panting for air. Alive. She took a closer look, there was blood around his muzzle but he seemed to be all right. Then she looked closer, some of the brown and black hairs had turned gray. She stood up and went over to the silver foil that lined the walls. It wasn’t a good mirror but she could see there were thin lines, crow’s feet, around her eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before and the luster of her black hair had dulled and been tinged with gray.

She was alive, and it seemed that the scars of the battle were a small price to pay for that. She decided what she did need was a cup of tea. “Hey, Rex, you want a nice steak?” He deserved a treat.

Rex thought about that carefully. He knew that there was a leg of lamb in the refrigerator and that was what he really wanted – and had intended to steal as soon as he could work out a way to do it. But, a steak would do just fine until his human was careless enough to leave the kitchen door open.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

“He’s down, behind the ridgeline.” Serafina was reading the displays and her fingers danced over the controls. “This is Axehorn calling all aircraft. We have Uriel down behind the ridgeline north of Eucalyptus Hills, he’s hurt bad but still living we think. All aircraft converge and search.”

“We’ve got word from the DIMO(N) net. No dropped frames so no portal formed, he’s still here.”

“Wonder why he doesn’t portal out?” Pelranius was intrigued.

“Sir, have you any idea how much energy we’re pumping out? I doubt if there’s a television left unexploded in South California. Just a guess, but I think we’re jamming him.”

“What about the aircraft closing in? Won’t they be at risk?”

“Not on surveillance mode and I’ve got the designation beams turned off. We can flip back to war mode in seconds if we need it.”

“Axehorn, this is CAP-Three- One-One I’m heading for Eucalyptus Hills now. Intend to stay below flight level ten. Please advise fast movers to stay above that.”

“Will do CAP-Three-One-One.”

There was a bleep and the special channel activated. “Axehorn, this is Habu-zero-one. I’m turning round to come back in. Require clearance on flight and speed.”

“Habu-zero-one, your choice, up where you are, nobody else can go.”

“Nice of you to say so Axehorn. Be advised I’ll have sideways-looking radar on. If something’s big and nasty down there I’ll spot it. What did you do to Uriel?”

“Whacked him with four RIM-156s and four 174s then fried him with a full-power designation beam.”

“Ohhh nasty. Well done Axehorn. Habu-Zero-One out.”

“Another conversation that never happened.” Pelranius spoke heavily.

“Exactly.” Serafina smiled at him and mouthed very quietly, “Aurora.”

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

Everything was out, radio, television, cellphones. Caroline Howarth had given up her landline telephone and used a cell phone for all her calls, now she bitterly regretted doing so. Her computer was down as well, and, looking out of the window she could see that Santee was blacked out. North of the town, helicopters were already searching the ridges and valleys while a light aircraft circled, hunting further out.

There was a banging at the door. Rex ran across and barked at the intruder, itching for a fight he could get his teeth into. She grabbed his collar and opened the door. A National Guard soldier was standing there, a clipboard in his hands.

“Whoa, old feller, I’m a friend. Miss Caroline Howarth?” He looked at the list, it said the registered owner of the house was 32 years old, this woman looked like a well-preserved fifty. “I’m sorry, is she your daughter?”

She shook her head. “I’m her. And Rex is four years old.” Then she saw the look on his face and it made her laugh, a laugh that turned into a cough. One that left speckles of blood on her hand. “You don’t fight the Angel of Death to a draw and walk away unscarred.”

 

[LTR]

Headquarters, League of the Holy Court, Eternal City

The problem was that the investigations into these conspiracies was bogging down in a maze of low-level minions whose importance, and worst of all, knowledge of the higher ranks, was minimal. Lemuel-Lan-Michael was now convinced that there were indeed two parallel conspiracies of radically different characters and objectives. Those differences meant that there were very few points of contact between the two, it seemed as if it had been pure luck that The League had picked up one of those few contact points. Without them having done so, and without the bottle of elixir to start the investigation rolling, neither conspiracy would have been discovered. The thought of that eventuality made Lemuel's stomach clench with terror. The whole foundations of Heaven could have been threatened.

He paced backwards and forwards in his office until the panic at what might have been faded, then resumed his seat. Once more, reading the reports from the handful of trusted agents who were investigating the main cabal, the differences between it and the second one that was his own interest, stood out. It wasn't just the differences in organization although they were striking enough. It was the beliefs that seemed to be so different, or more precisely, the contrast between the overt dogma of the First Conspiracy and the seeming lack of any defining ideology in the other. In his own investigations, he had been unable to find any ideological system that defined the Second Conspiracy. It seemed that the only link that existed to unify them was their taste for human products and goods.

Lemuel shook his head and returned to the report on the First Conspiracy. He had finally managed to find a Malachim whose membership in the higher ranks of the cabal wasn't matched by the protection extended by his Lord. That Lord had been one of the angels martyred in the pouring of the First Bowl of Wrath and his demise at the hands of the Humans had left his retinue adrift without patronage. Fortunately for Lemuel and unfortunately for him, their victim hadn't found a new patron before The League had picked him up. Lemuel read the interrogation results again and tapped the scroll on his desk, he would have to take this to Michael-Lan.

Michael-Lan's Office, Temple of Righteous Ardor, Eternal City

"And so what have you come up with Lemuel?" Michael-Lan smiled in greeting as Lemuel entered his office, knelt and swept his wings forward to cover his face. "Come, there's no need for such deference, we're old comrades after all."

"Michael-Lan, my investigators have now found out more about the cabal that concerned us." The phraseology perturbed Michael and he waved Lemuel to continue. "We now have an insight into the thoughts and beliefs of those who form this group. They believe that the humans are being unjustly treated here in Heaven, that having earned their salvation down on Earth, they should benefit from more of the riches and pleasures of the Eternal City. They believe that the decision to close the Gates of Heaven was mistaken and that, once again, worthy humans should be allowed to take up residence here."

"They challenge the wisdom of the One Above All?" Michael-Lan's voice shook with rage and outside the building, a roll of thunder echoed across the iridescent structure. That made Michael-Lan feel absurdly pleased with himself, he had always envied Yahweh's ability to conjure up thunderstorms at will.

"No, my Lord, even they would not dare look so high. They believe that The Nameless Lord of All has been mislead and deceived by treacherous and self-seeking advisors. They believe that if The All-Knowing Father was made aware of the injustices committed in his name, then he would drive out those advisors and remedy the results of their sinful hubris. They believe that The One Above All would appoint his son as his advisor and chamberlain to replace those advisors who betrayed his trust. My Lord Michael-Lan, it shames me to even speak the words but they name you as one of those advisors who have lead the One Above All Astray. Hence my need to come here so urgently."

Michael-Lan nodded slowly in acknowledgement. "You have done very well indeed my old friend." Interesting. Now who is it who wants me out? Salaphael and Azrael are both in reduced favor at this point. Either of them could have hatched this plot but the bit about Yah-Yah not being aware of these so-called injustices smacks of Salaphael. He's just dumb enough to believe all that. "And you believe that they are bringing up goods from Earth to bribe humans into becoming their supporters?"

That idea stopped Lemuel in his tracks. He honestly hadn't thought of that interpretation. He mulled it over for a few seconds then discarded it. "Michael-Lan, that would be one possibility but I believe the evidence runs against it. We have found no trace of human goods in the cabal beyond the single bottle of elixir. Nor does the ideology of the group run in favor of this suggestion. From what we have been able to assemble, they are only concerned with the practical policies here in Heaven and theological debates over salvation and the fate of the humans down on Earth. Material goods and wealth do not mean much to them. Their prime concern is prayer and worship. In that, of course, they do not represent any major change for who amongst us does not reverence the All-Seeing Father?"

Me for a start, Michael thought, and you would be surprised how many others. "So where does the supply of human goods fit into this picture? If they are not bribes to obtain the support of the humans, then what are they?"

Lemuel took a deep breath. "Michael-Lan, I believe there is a second conspiracy, one quite separate from the first. One that is deeper and more far-reaching than the first for it would change the very nature of Heaven. It would replace our devout worship of the All-Seeing Father with a hedonistic lifestyle based around luxury and indulgence. Our austere and spiritual existence would be replaced by one of excess and materialism. We would become like the humans down on Earth.

Well done Lemuel, you've got the objectives down perfectly. And has it ever occurred to you that becoming like the humans down on Earth is the only way Heaven can survive? And that with Yah-yah running things, that change will never happen? There are 750 million angels up hear in Heaven and if the humans from Earth break in and find out what 'salvation' really meant for the humans who were allowed to enter here, they're going to slaughter the lot of us. And mass slaughter is something humans are very good at. "A second conspiracy you say? Lemuel, old friend, are you sure that your search for conspiracy is not leading you astray? Remember what the humans say 'Look for a conspiracy and you will find it, even if it isn’t there.' Two parallel conspiracies is a hard thing to swallow."

"I know, Noble Leader. I felt the same thing and spent many hours in prayer and contemplation, searching my soul for the true light of belief and trying to rid myself of hubris and suspicion. I have been carrying out quiet and tactful investigations of the Second Conspiracy and, yes, it does exist. Recently we arrested Almedha, daughter of Brychan and submitted her to interrogation. Human methods of course. She confessed to her part although she knew little of what was happening other than that Ishmael was able to provide her with human spices to enliven her diet. But, what she did know was interesting for its omissions rather than its content. She made no mention of ideology of theology, made no suggestions of beliefs whether traditional or heretical. It appears that the Second Conspiracy extends to indulgence and nothing more."

"Saint Almedha." Michael spoke thoughtfully. "I would wish to speak with this human." He stepped away from his desk and called out for one of his Elohim messengers. When the herald arrived, he spoke very quietly to him and then sent him on his way. "She will be brought here soon. So, my old friend, where do we go from here?"

"We have been trying to break into the Second Conspiracy from the outside but our successes have been minor. We are barely able to confirm that such a conspiracy actually exists let alone learn much about it. It is strange, its security is much tighter than that of the First Conspiracy despite the fact that it lacks internal protection by subdivision. Investigating the First Conspiracy is like tunnelling through a wall, its just a matter of removing brick by brick. But the Second Conspiracy is like trying to grasp hold of smoke, every handful turns to nothing and slips away. We can get nowhere from outside."

"And so?"

"We must penetrate the Second Conspiracy and try to investigate it from the inside. I will do this myself, instead of seizing and interrogating any members of the Second Conspiracy we detect, I will try to ingratiate myself with them, suggest I share their aims and desires. That way, will with have sure information to act on."

"A wise plan, old friend, but one that is hazardous to you." Michael paused as his Elohim herald came back and spoke quietly into his ear. "A hazard of which we now have proof. I regret to inform you that Almedha, daughter of Brychan, has died under interrogation."

"I gave no orders for further interrogation!" Lemuel was furious. "I ordered that she be detained, nothing more. Who was responsible for this?"

"The guards claim that they were using their initiative to gain additional information. But, I would suggest that perhaps she was killed on the orders of others to shut her mouth. Your work will indeed be dangerous Lemuel, keep word of it strictly between ourselves and let none know of it."

White House Conference Room, White House, Washington D.C.

"In California, the hunt for Uriel is now entering its second day. The Archangel Uriel is believed to have been badly wounded during his attack on Eucalyptus Hills and is now in hiding somewhere in the hills of Southern California. United States Volunteers and aircraft from numerous military bases in the area are combing the area in their effort to find Uriel. Local law enforcement officials say that they have numerous leads on his location and believe that he will be found shortly.

"On the international scene, Thai troops of the Human Expeditionary Army have entered Moulmein and isolated the southern half of Myanmar from the main body of the country to the North. Spokesmen at HEA Headquarters state that the Myanmar leadership was inspired to open this war by Heavenly intervention and that the successful course of the campaign represents humanity's first successful counter-strike against . . . . . "

"Is that true?" President Obama glanced around the conference room for an answer.

"Even if it isn't, it is." Defense Secretary Warner noted the confusion on Obama's face. "Regardless of what the truth of the matter is, that has to be the interpretation we put on it. Most of the countries of the world have put the best of their armies into the HEA and left their own countries very vulnerable. That's an open temptation for the few countries that haven't joined in to exploit the situation. So, we have to make it clear that any attack on any country that's part of the HEA will be met by a response from the full force of that Army, otherwise countries will pull their contributions out and the whole war effort will fall apart. Which may be why we're seeing these threatened attacks of course. Not that we expect many, the only ones that seem pending other than this border war are a North Korean attack on South Korea and a Venezuelan assault on Honduras. The latter seems fairly remote at this time while North Korean behavior is odd, there's lots of movement and activity in the North but none of it means very much. Units move south, then east, then west, then back north before repeating the whole procedure."

"Just what is going on John?"

"We think, and this is an assessment General Petraeus shares, that Yahweh is trying to keep us penned up on Earth and chasing our own tails down here. That may mean he intends to build up a new army and invade in due course, or perhaps he hopes we'll get so frustrated we'll give up. Either way, he wants us down here, not up there. Can't say I blame him for that of course."

"Janet, the attack on Eucalyptus Hills, what's the latest news there?"

"The death toll is currently reported as being twelve dead from Uriel's attack plus three more on the ground caused by missile fragments."

"Twelve? Is that all? Doctor Surlethe, what's the scientific cut on this?"

"We can confirm the twelve Sir. Eucalyptus Hills has a population of 9,500 so if we'd seen the same mortality as at El Paso, we would have expected some 75 dead. Uriel scored much less than that so we can count that as a success for our defenses. Also, the pattern of death is interesting. Eucalyptus Hills was a very useful target from our point of view. It is a homogenous community, mostly relatively wealthy young families in their early-mid thirties. This eliminates wealth and age as variables so it gives us a good handle on what Uriel is actually capable of doing. That shows us a useful pattern, all twelve dead were people who lived alone. People who were in even small communities, their families for example or who took in people trapped outside when the sirens went off, survived."

"The power of love?" The voice was derisive.

"In a way, yes. Their stories are all the same, they felt an invasion of their minds, trying to shut off their ability to breath and their hearts to keep beating. They fought it, refused to accept death and mostly they won. We think the shielding provided by lining houses with metal foil and wearing tinfoil beanies bought them enough time to understand that the attack was underway and resist. In the past, people hadn't had that protection and they simply died before realizing they were being attacked. Having said all that, the communal aspect of resistance does appear very important. Having their families, friends, pets, other people around them gave them the encouragement and determination to keep fighting. Any military officer will tell you that soldiers in groups fight much better than troops on their own. But, I think this realization goes a long, long way back, right to our earliest folk memories. How many stories are there of a community threatened by a terrible enemy but who survived because everybody gathered in a single place and supported each other? Stories like that are a standard part of every country's mythology. We're prepared to bet those are folk memories of Uriel attacks that failed.

"So, assuming Uriel survives or is replaced by another Archangel with similar powers, our defenses should include gathering people into the largest possible groups and not leaving anybody alone. Bring the pets in as well, its interesting to note that pets that were brought in survived this attack, those left outside did not. One woman even claims that her dog helped her fight off Uriel. Might be true too, she was alone in her house apart from that dog. But, we need to build community shelters, heavily protected with metal shielding and large enough for people to gather together."

"Assuming Uriel lives. John, how is the hunt going?"

"The news broadcast has it right for once. We're still hunting and we know that Uriel is badly hurt. The ground troops found the spot where he came down, there's a dent in the soil where he landed and there's burned flesh and skin debris in the area. We think that the radars on the Normandy hurt him as much as the missiles, they effectively micro-waved him in mid-air. Those designation beams are powerful, they only warm an aircraft up a bit, that's how they detect stealth aircraft, warm them up and spot them on thermal viewers, but against unshielded flesh? Very nasty. Anyway, he ducked missiles over El Paso, but he couldn’t duck a high-energy beam. Incidentally, we don’t give much for his reproductive chances after that.

"Other than that, we're still searching. He's dragged himself off somewhere and he's hiding. The DIMO(N) net doesn’t report any portals forming so we think he's still out there. We can assume he's recovering, our experience is that daemons and angels don’t die of wounds. If they're not killed outright by damage that overwhelms them, they recover. So he's out there and he's getting better."

"Doctor Surlethe?"

"I concur Mister President, we have to find him before he regenerates. But, I find that information about high energy beam effects very interesting. Perhaps we're not using the right weapons against Uriel."

 

[LTR]

Throne Room, The Ultimate Temple, Eternal City, Heaven

The Seraphim and Cherubim, along with all the other strange creatures that kept Yahweh amused, were developing a conditioned reflex. As soon as they saw Michael-Lan approaching to give his report on the progress of the war against the humans, they dived for cover. As he entered the Holiest of Holies, the badly-chipped marble of the temple walls suggested that the Master Mason had given up on repairing the damage from previous reports and was now just contenting himself with fixing the bits Yahweh could see. In the dim glow that filled the throne room, that wasn't very much.

In front of him, the One Above All Others sat staring moodily at the seven great, gold lamps, watching the clouds of scented smoke hang in thick, hazy clouds. He still hadn't recovered from the shock of Wuffles death and he had vetoed sending the Scarlet Beast and his rider to further vex the humans. Michael-Lan had been annoyed and surprised by that. He had planned on getting rid of them both that way. The humans would oblige him, he didn’t doubt that for a moment. They were killing off his enemies and rivals quite nicely and Yahweh was becoming steadily more isolated. He needed to get the veto reversed, that was one of his objectives today.

Michael-Lan took his accustomed position in the middle of the lamps and knelt down on both knees, prostrating himself and pressing his flawless lips to the cold, dark jade floor. The ceaseless chant of “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being", quieted, and then died to whispers. In the gloom, Michael-Lan saw their eyes shifting around trying to find the nearest cover from the inevitable explosion. In the faces of the 24 members of the Eternal Choir, Michael-Lan could see the malicious enjoyment that warred with fear at the prospect of the events to come. Good for you boys Michael thought, I'll try and live up to your expectations. Now, let the good times roll.

From the white throne, the voice of Yahweh thundered: “Michael-Lan, my general, what news do you bring me? Do the humans still defy my will?"

Of course they do, meadow-muffin. The serious question is how much longer you will defy theirs. "They cower in fear at our righteous wrath, Lord Above All Others, but still they remain recalcitrant. Humans blaspheme the Your Peerless Name. "Very inventively if I may say so "and they have evicted You from their places of learning and from their government offices. In all their cities and towns, from all their public places, and even from each person's home You have been cast out. No longer do they give glory to You, and they continue to do their evil deeds. Putting it bluntly, Father of All, they have decided that they do not want You. Your own Holy Church has disowned you and curse your name as a usurper who has replaced the One True God."

It was an all-time record, Michael-Lan had never got continuing thunderclaps and technicolor lightning this early in a meeting before. Marble fragments sprayed from the walls and lashed across the room. Michael-Lan glanced across to the traditional position of the Master mason and saw why the throne room hadn't been fully repaired. The mason had built himself a quite well-designed bunker in one corner. As Michael watched, a stick with a white flag on the end rose from behind the walls and waved backwards and forwards. The movement attracted the attention of a pair of Seraphim who abandoned their cover behind a table and fled to the bunker. They vanished behind the walls, then were unceremoniously thrown out. Fortunately for them, the storm of fragments was dying down and they escaped with only a few serious wounds.

"What of Uriel-Lan? Has he redeemed his earlier failures?" The voice boomed across the still-roiling clouds that surrounded the Great Throne.

"He has carried out another attack, on a small town outside the city of San Diego. It was a hard battle, so I understand, and the humans fought well. They used their cruellest weapons and they drove him off. It must be said that Uriel is also believed to have fought bravely before being forced to retreat. There are reports that he is badly injured and the humans still hunt him with their beasts and machines. If they catch him, it will go hard for him. Forgiveness and mercy are not human characteristics." Sorry, little humans, that libels you I know. So sue me. Michael hesitated for a moment, acutely conscious of all the lawsuits that were piling up over "Acts of God". On second thoughts, please don't. I can't afford it. And in truth, your forgiveness and mercy exceeds the divine by far.

"He is defeated yet may still live?" Yahweh's voice echoed concern.

"That is correct, Oh Lord Of All."

"I would see him here. I would seek his explanation of his failures at first hand Michael-Lan. Arrange for his location and rescue. At once."

Oh damn. "Your wish is my command Oh Lord Above All. Now, once again, may I bring to your attention the need to strike at the center of the Human spirit. I mean of course the City of Jerusalem. It would be a good target for the Scarlet Beast and for Dumah." And it would give the Israelis something to shoot at. I've always wondered how good they really are.

"Jerusalem. Yes that will strike at their hearts and souls." Yahweh paused for a moment, thinking of the sad fate of Wuffles and Michael could swear that he saw him brush a tear from one eye. "But make sure that both Fluffy and Dumah know what they must do and ensure that they take care. Now what of the Bowls of Wrath? Is the Fourth Bowl poured yet?"

"Not yet, Lord of All, the time is not yet ripe." Meaning neither I nor Belial have come up with a solution to that particular problem. Belial really is a great disappointment. "But I have news, the hurricane season is starting again on Earth, we can lash them with Your Divine Wrath once more."

"Let it be so. And get Uriel here."

The Montmartre Club, Heaven

"It really is most inconsiderate of him Raffie. He just won’t die."

"Perhaps the humans are less powerful than you believe."

Michael-Lan shook his head. "They're deadly all right. They're like the asp, very pretty to look at until they spread their hoods and sink their teeth into you. Then you die. Raffie, don't ever underestimate humans, Satan did and the mistake killed him. Yahweh's doing it and its costing him everything he has. Uriel's been really lucky so far, that's all. Plus the fact he's the most powerful enemy the humans have ever faced. But, they'll get him if we don’t rescue him."

"Who are you going to send?" Raphael was hoping desperately he wouldn't hear the word 'you'."

Michael-Lan was thinking that over. Instinctively, he would like to have sent a crew that were on his 'to be disposed of' list but that wouldn’t do. He was acutely aware of the fact that, in the great game he was playing, he was his own most powerful piece. "I'll do this myself."

Raphael relaxed so obviously that it made Michael-Lan grin. Then he waved at the stage. "The new girl is doing well up there."

"Maion? Yes she is working out well. She was sulky and uncooperative at first but Charmeine-Lan put her in with some of our less gentle clients when she was behaving badly and with the kinder ones when she was conducting herself properly. She got the message soon enough, enthusiasm and cooperation got her a better class of playmate, and she comported herself accordingly." Michael watched as Maion swung herself around the pole in the center of the stage, letting the feathers on the trailing edge of her left wing brush the audience sitting closest to her. She lifted one leg, wrapped it around her pole and started to slide down it. When she reached the bottom, she arched backwards, then straightened up. During the process, she dropped another part of her robe to the cheers of the crowd. "Yes she is doing well."

"Michael-Lan, what do you plan to do about Lemuel? He's getting closer."

"He is, isn’t he. What do you suggest I do?"

"Kill him."

Michael-Lan shook his head. "Bad move Raffie. Think about it. At the moment, the investigation he is officially running is actually helping us and he is the best person we could have in that job. The other investigation, the one that could lead to us, is private, or at least tightly confined. Now, if he dies, the first investigation gets disrupted and remember, we have rivals out there. People will look into his files, they'll find out about his second investigation and that'll make it all official. We'll be the subject of a real League of the Holy Court hunt and that will mean serious problems for us all. So Lemuel lives. What we will do is send him down a blind alley, one where he can find all sorts of interesting things that are utterly unimportant." Michael-Lan thought for a second. "Of course, the other option is to bring him into our little club here. Get him on our side. Human pleasures are seductive and having the best investigator in the League of the Holy Court working for us will be very useful indeed."

"Risky."

"Of course, but the rewards would be great. Ah, Maion's finished her dance." Up on the stage, the blonde angel was nude and knelt before the audience, sweeping her wings over to cover her head. An Erelim rose from his table close by the stage and took her hand, bringing her to his table. Michael waved unobtrusively and Charmeine-Lan came over to join him.

"Raffie, you know Charmeine-Lan, don’t you? She runs the girls who work here. Charmeine, we were just commenting on how well Maion seems to have settled in.

Charmeine-Lan thought for a second. "She was difficult at first but aren’t they all? Her addiction helps of course, if she goes short, she gets very cooperative very fast. But, once she'd settled in, everything worked out. In addition to her heroin, I've been keeping her on some other stuff, just to take the edge off so to speak. But she's worked out some very good variations on the reverential dances she'd been taught. I think she'll make it just fine."

"No trouble with clients?"

"She panicked the first time one got rough with her but that's all. Don't worry Michael-Lan, she's doing fine."

"Who, me worry." Michael-Lan threw his hands up in a traditional Alfred E Neuman gesture and his companions burst out laughing. Charmeine-Lan patted his hand and left. "Well, Raffie, one more round, then I've got to work out how to pull Uriel's nuts, if he still has ownership rights on them, out of the fire."

Second Regimental Headquarters, First Cavalry Division, Banks of the Irawaddy, Myanmar

"The trouble is that we haven't actually advanced more than 250 miles, nobody in this crazy offensive has." Senior Colonel Mahindra looked at the fuel bowsers that were feeding his armored cars and shook his head. It wasn't just that they were American fuel trucks, it was the fact they had just materialized in the middle of his laager. He still couldn't get used to the way his logistics train was working, he radioed for supplies and a helicopter with a sensitive and the equipment to open a portal arrived. Then there would be a black hole in the center of his camp and the trucks with his supplies would just drive out. He couldn't help thinking he had the strategist's dream here. A supply line that just materialized whatever he needed, where he needed it.

That wasn't the end of the matter. The advance was simply leapfrogging from one point to the next. Any attempts by the Myanmar army to form a systematic defense had proved futile, the advancing columns of armor just drove into one of the ubiquitous portals and appeared somewhere else, usually where it would do most damage. It didn’t really matter anyway, the Myanmar Army was collapsing into a rout. The troops that had invaded Thailand were still there, under assault by the 5th, 9th and 15th Infantry Divisions, but the rest of the army was dissolving. That surprised nobody, it was an army of unwilling conscripts with the highest desertion rate in the world. Faced with a mechanized enemy that could jump around the country at will, that army had come to the logical conclusion that being out of uniform was a better place than being in it.

"Any idea where we're going now?" Mahindra's chief of staff instinctively checked the vehicle roster. They were in remarkably good shape for a unit that had advanced so far so fast. Then, he kicked himself, as his Colonel had pointed out, they hadn't. They'd jumped around.

"Over the river, obviously. How and where is another matter." There was another problem, a humanitarian one. The Myanmar junta hadn't bothered to provide any systematic and effective relief to the population in the area devastated by Cyclone Nargis almost fifteen months earlier. Now, with the country opened up by the invasion, convoys of trucks were bringing relief supplies up to the impoverished people. The problem was that the relief agencies wanted to use portals as well and there just weren't enough sensitives to provide them all.

"Sir." A junior officer pointed towards the road leading back to Moulmein. A column of five Humvees, driven nose-to-tail was hurtling along the road in a cloud of red dust. Even as he watched, it stopped at the perimeter and then proceeded towards the vehicle laager. When it stopped, a group of officers debussed, led by a single short figure.

"Uh-oh." Colonel Mahindra prayed devoutly that everything in his regiment was in order.

"Colonel. I need your regiment to move out." General Asanee's eyes ran around the command tent taking note of the carefully marked-up maps and the updated status charts.

"Yes Ma'am. I have a company ready to move now. I can make a full regimental move in three hours."

"Three hours?"

"When we started to resupply, I made up a fast-response team and concentrated on getting them ready to go. Now that's done, we're refuelling the rest of the vehicles."

"Everybody bombed up?"

"Yes ma'am."

The General nodded. "Well done. I see no cause for complaint. Colonel, how would you like to be the first unit into Yangon?"

"Another jump ma'am?"

"That's right, kitten found a sensitive in a village just east of Yangon. We're getting better at doing that all the time. We'll form a portal from here to Hell and then one from there to the new assembly point. Once that's secured, we'll use it as a base for our own sensitives to establish two more jumpheads west of the city and block any routes out. Then, you take your regiment in and secure the city."

Mahindra looked at the map. "Any resistance likely at the first jump-head?"

"Recon says minimal at best. A Global Hawk's overhead but it can't see anything. All the reports we are getting says resistance is crumbling fast. Third of Second got held up at Pa'an because the local people insisted on winding flowers and rosaries around the guns on the tanks. If that pattern stays repeated, you should have no problems."

"Ma'am, I'd like to send the rapid response unit into the jump-head in about one hour. I'll have a full battalion ready to back them up by then. If the rapid response company hits problems, a full battalion will be enough to shoot them out of it, if they don’t run into trouble, then we gain time and we can get the base established earlier."

"Approved." The General leaned back and grinned. "This isn’t warfare the way our fathers learned is it?"

"No Ma'am. We've rewritten the book out here."

"We've rewritten it for campaigning under these circumstances, yes. Whether using portals this way will work in a full-scale war against serious opposition, that's another question entirely."

"North Korea Ma'am?"

"North Korea. Whatever they're up to. I suspect they're watching what's happening out here before deciding what to do in their own back yard. And also what happens to the Myanmar Junta. We're convinced Yahweh put them up to this attack, now the only question is whether he'll bail them out now it's all going pear-shaped."

 

[LTR]

Temple of Everlasting Acquiescence, Eternal City, Heaven

They had to be around here somewhere. Lemuel-Lan-Michael looked around for one of the angels he and Michael had picked out as likely openings for the attempt to infiltrate the Second Conspiracy. It had been a careful choice. The subjects had to be high-ranking enough to have real knowledge of the Conspiracy, lowly enough to be impressed by Lemuel's rank, ambitious enough to value the rewards that bringing such a high-ranking angel into the Conspiracy would bring, and innocent enough to lack any suspicion over why this plum should fall into their specific laps. A demanding set of requirements to be sure.

It didn’t help that the thick, clinging clouds of incense made searching the sanctuary of the Temple difficult. Lemuel had the uneasy feeling that the ones he was searching for were there, only just out of sight. This was new territory for him. His previous investigations had always been from the outside, the investigator probing the unknown. Now, he was inside. Or, at least, that was where he wanted to be. It made his mind-set even less comfortable to know that he was on his own. He had no back-up, no group of hired humans or lowly Ishim to do the leg-work for him. Even Michael wasn't here to help him. Michael-Lan was away and would be for some time.

Where Michael-Lan had gone was technically a secret but word had already started to spread through the jewelled buildings and alabaster streets of the Eternal City. Uriel, the Sword and Scythe of the Peerless One Above All, was in desperate danger and Michael was on his way to personally rescue his old friend from the murderous intentions of the ruthless human killers. It was never spoken aloud of course, never mentioned in more than the most subdued of whispers, but the voices on the wind said that Uriel had failed in his attacks, that he had let the great Michael-Lan down and fled the scene of battle. Lemuel promised himself that when this investigation was completed, he would hunt down those 'voices on the wind', locate those quiet whisperers and haul them before the League of the Holy Court on charges of blasphemy. Uriel was the Sword and Scythe of the Eternal Father. For him to fail was inconceivable.

"Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar. It is a pleasure to meet you here. Does it not bring joy to your heart to take time from your onerous duties and give thanks for the Boundless Blessings that Our Eternal Father has bestowed upon us?"

The Bene Elohim turned around at Lemuel's voice and dropped to his knees, covering his face with his wings. "This is true, Most Lordly Ophanim. The One Above All bestows such gifts upon us that there are not enough hours in all of eternity to give thanks for them. Even knowing that, it brings joy to my heart to offer such adoration as is in my humble capacity. Most Noble One, may this humble one have the honor of knowing to whom I speak?"

"Of course. I am Samandiriel-Lan-Michael." Lemuel felt his spirit rebel as he told the lie here in the Eternal father's own temple but needs had to be filled when desperate circumstances demanded it. "It is the first time I have attended here. Truly this Temple does honor to the Lord Above All Others."

"It is but modest compared with the great bounties bestowed upon us." Perpetiel-Lan looked up from behind his wings. "And your presence here adds honor to our humble gathering."

"I was recommended here by friends who said that the devotion and worship of the congregation would restore my spirits. Come, friend, stand, there is no need for such humility. Compared with the Divine Presence, even the greatest of us is as nothing. Let us stand together in adoration of His Spirit."

Perpetiel-Lan rose to his feet, looking curiously at Lemuel. "Your spirits are troubled, Great One?"

Lemuel sighed, a touch theatrically. "I fear so. It is this war with the humans. It does not go well and my heart aches to think of the pain human defiance is causing Our Eternal Father. I ask myself, is there not more we can do to ease His burdens? Can we not give our strength, such as it is, to help shoulder the burdens of this war? My spirit cries out, 'thou shalt do more' yet I can find no way to satisfy this righteous craving."

"Would you permit this humble servant to offer your Greatness an opportunity to do more?"

"If this would ease my heart, I would be indebted."

"There is a small group of us, we assemble in private where there are no interruptions or distractions. Without those, we can concentrate our whole power into a chorus of adoration for The One Above Us All. Although it is tiny in comparison with His Great Power, perhaps it is of some little worth. You would be welcome to join us Most Noble One. If you would condescend to be seen with such lowly ones as us."

"Your kindness shows the greatness of your heart. I would be pleased to join you for adoration of The Most High."

"Then meet me here again, at the hour of Compline."

War Room, White House, Washington DC.

"It's not a weapon." Admiral Gary Roughead spoke wearily, repeating himself again. "Look, I don't think the crew on Normandy will be allowed to buy their own beer in San Diego for a long time to come, but they drove off Uriel with missiles, not some mystical death ray."

"But the reports we have say that the radar hurt him."

"It probably did, it’s a very powerful radar indeed and Uriel was, in its terms, very close to it. We have tight limitations on where the crew can be topside when the SPY-1 is operating. And we know from our experience with the Baldricks that they are sensitive to radar emissions. But it's not a viable weapon. Normandy burned out a significant proportion of her SPY-1 antenna faces during that engagement. I know, it was worth it and she saved San Diego in the process but she'll still be in dock for months and it'll cost a lot of money to fix her. For all that, the radar was a minor contributor to the battle at most."

"The ground crews found burned tissue at the point of impact."

"Most likely from the missile hits. Uriel's shot up and burned really bad, but we did it with missiles and that's the real problem. He ducked missiles once by jumping through a portal, the only reason we got him this time is because the Standard missiles arc up and over, they came at him from above, not below. He was simply looking the wrong way. We can be sure he won't make that mistake again. We have to get him with a weapon that doesn’t give him a chance to run through a portal. I'd guess that the radar irritated badly, probably caused him a lot of pain but it really didn’t do that much damage. What it did do was point us in the direction we should be looking."

"How about the YAL-1A? If the targeting beams from an SPY-1 aren't powerful enough to do the job, what about the laser on the YAL-1?" General Norton Schwartz posed the question.

"How many YAL-1s are available?" President Obama asked the question a little self-consciously

"We have two built, two more in pieces, they were on the line when funding for the program was cut. They're still there. We can restart building them if the funding is restored."

Obama sighed. He'd wanted to do so much, to restore the social programs funding that had been neglected during the years of Republican administration. Instead, he was pouring money into the military forces while those social programs continued to wither. It wasn't the way he had wanted to go at all. "Very well, we'll add funding in the next monthly supplemental. Can you divert funding from somewhere else to bridge the gap and get the aircraft started again?"

There was a quick consultation amongst the Chiefs of Staff. Eventually, Secretary Warner tapped his finger on the table. "We'll divert the required resources from the Navy P-8 program. We don’t need ASW birds at this time so a slow-down there won’t hurt.

"Good. Next question. Munitions. How are we doing there."

"We're rebuilding stocks although not as fast as we would like. Problem is, a lot of our capacity is in things we don’t use any more, 5.56mm rifle ammunition for example. Retooling the lines for munitions we do use, .50 Beowulf, .457 Winchester Magnum for example, is taking time and production is only just picking up after the switch. Same across the board. We used to make a lot of 120mm sabot ammunition but our need for that is very low, what we do need is HE and HEAD. They're still in critically short supply. Some areas we're doing all right, we're stocking up again on 155mm artillery ammunition, mostly thanks to the Chinese. Their factories are becoming the arsenal of humanity. This long delay between assaults is really working for us. If Heaven had come straight at us after we'd crushed Hell, we'd have been in a desperate position. Now it's just disturbingly critical."

"Aircraft?"

"Good news Mister President." General Schwartz spoke proudly. "The first B-1C left the re-established production line yesterday and was delivered to the 40th Bombardment Group. They've been training using the B-1A we found after they gave up their B-29s. Next group to re-equip will be the 509th, they're stood down at the moment. They lost all their B-2s at Whitman. Anyway, we've also stood up Air Force Dimensional Strike Command to control all our strategic assets."

"SAC rides again?" Admiral Roughead spoke with studied neutrality.

"It does indeed. Modernized of course. Curt LeMay can stop spinning in his grave. Has anybody found him yet by the way?" There was a general shaking of heads. "Pity, he was the best operator the Air Force ever had, We could use him now."

"Ships? How are we doing there."

"It's our lowest priority area Sir. But, we've cut First Metal on two new CVNs, the USS Millard Fillmore and USS James Garfield. Newport News are working triple shifts on the Lyndon Johnson and Herbert Hoover and they plan to have them out the drydocks in time to start module assembly on the second pair. That will bring us up to 14 CVNs, assuming we pull Enterprise as per plans. Otherwise, we're just concentrating on DDG-51s, additional LHDs and the LHA-6 class. And subs of course, we're ordering three Virginias a year. With luck, we can start pulling the museum pieces out of service again soon."

"Doctor Surlethe, any advance on the scientific front?"

"Yes and no sir. We're making impressive gains in cosmology and a few things are starting to fit together. But, we still can't find a way to get at Heaven. We know it's out there and we know where it is, in a cosmological sense, but we can't find the place. Until we do, of course, we can't attack them. We can make random stabs into Universe-Two, that's the name we're using for the Hell-Dimension now, but we could end up anywhere. One thing we have learned, it behooves us to be careful. We have no idea what we might run into up there.

"There's one thing that is confusing us, we got hammered by the first three Bowls of Wrath and we're only just recovering from them. But, why the long delay on the Fourth? All we've had is the Leopard Beast attack on Fort Bragg that did relatively little damage. The Fourth is supposed to be fire from above, well, we've had that already from Belial so why aren’t we seeing it again. There's something going on here we don’t understand. The bad news is the weather attacks have restarted. You all heard about Taiwan? That cyclone made three passes over the island. No way that's a natural occurrence."

"Is aid on its way there? Hillary, international scene?"

"There is Sir, we're sending amphibious and naval forces, other countries are sending food and medicines. Otherwise, not much to report, Mister President. The Pope has stated that the Roman Catholic Church is forming a division of 'ardent volunteers' to join the fight and 'restore the True God to his throne'. He's offering it to the HEA."

"If they're so ardent, why aren't they already in the Army?"

"Good question John. But this does point to a problem. The Human Expeditionary Army is all armored units, pretty much every division-sized armored unit on Earth. That's the way it has to be, our troops are pretty much safe behind armor. But a lot of countries don't have armored units anything like that size and they're being left out. Worse, from their point of view, the countries forming the HEA and, in particular, the 15 members of the War Council at Yamantau, have all the political power as well. The UN is pretty much isolated and marginalized. Those countries that aren't represented feel the same has happened to them.

"Sucks to be them." General Casey's spoke levelly.

"It does indeed, but we have to recognize this causes problems. The fighting in Myanmar and the threatening war in North Korea are manifestations of this problem. . . ."

"I'd dispute that, those countries were going to blow up sooner or later anyway."

"Perhaps, but the division that's forming between the countries that are at the center of things and those that are not is exacerbating the situation. We don’t want a split in our ranks at the moment, at least not before we have Yahweh's head on a stake in front of Capitol Hill. Also, some of those countries are helping the war effort, either supplying munitions or picking up the slack from efforts that have been diverted to the Salvation War. That's why I think we should encourage the Pope's initiative. It's a way of getting smaller countries together and making them feel they're part of things again. Perhaps the other surviving religions could do the same. There's a long human tradition of the Church Militant after all, and who amongst us has not gone down into the dungeons of Moria as a mace-swinging cleric?"

A guffaw of laughter swept the conference room. Eventually, Obama wiped his eyes and picked up the discussion. "Very well then, I propose that we support the Pope's suggestion at Yamantau. After all, even if the troops aren't that good for much, I'm sure Dave Petraeus can find a use for them. Even if they are all armed like the Swiss Guards."

There was another eruption of laughter. General Casey shook his head, "Actually Sir, it’s a war crime to use Swiss pikemen as mercenaries. Been that way for centuries. But I doubt if we'd find much use for pikes in today's battles."

College of Revised History, Phelan Plain, Hell

"So, the strength of the Phalanx was dependent on each man bearing his part. Any weakness in one gravely weakened the strength of the whole. That was why training was so rigorous and started so early. Every man had to trust every other and that meant they had to have a common background. Shared experience, shared knowledge made for a strong phalanx and that meant victory. I believe it is the same today even though modern weapons are so different from ours."

"Thank you Aeneas. That was a fascinating insight into the thinking of society and the strategy that lay behind the cultural features of Sparta. I think I speak for us all in saying that we wait with the greatest anticipation for your next presentation."

The round of applause shook the classroom walls. Aeneas nodded briefly in response and left, trying hard to hide his resentment at being relegated to the roll of a teacher. As he walked down the corridor, he bumped into a very familiar figure.

"Ori, how are you old comrade."

"Bored and frustrated. And you?"

"Much the same. I understand why the today-people want to learn the truth about their past but why choose us to teach it? There must be many by now who can do better than us."

"Perhaps not, there are many who have been rescued but to find those who have worthwhile knowledge to pass on? Perhaps not so many." Ori glanced around. "But if you are truly sick of speaking to these numbskulls, perhaps there is somebody you should meet."

Ori led the way into the College canteen. A man, wearing the red-and-gray fatigues of the Human Expeditionary Army was sitting at a table, obviously waiting for the samurai. Ori gave him a wave and then introduced Aeneas to the stranger.

"And this is Sergeant Gray Anderson of the First Mechanized Infantry battalion, (Demonic)."

Aeneas picked up on the unit name immediately. "You mean the today-people are training daemons to fight with our weapons." His voice was a hiss of disapproval.

"We are. Although only in a way. Single-shot rifles and lightly armed infantry fighting vehicles only, no artillery, no tanks, no missiles."

"Why?" Anger bubbled under the disapproval.

"Because today-people are in short supply. We have barely enough to keep the units we have up to strength, expanding the army further is hard. So, we're experimenting with training demons and recruiting the deceased, especially ex-soldiers, into the ranks.

"What do you mean 'we'. You're dead like us."

"I am, but I died quite recently. Never went through Hell."

"If you had, you would be less keen to see guns in the hands of demons."

"We're going to see that anyway. They'll get guns, somehow. Everybody who wants them can get them, that never changes. The only question is whether the ones we can trust get them first. Perhaps trust is a bad word there. Mistrust less if that makes you feel easier.

It didn't. Aeneas still remembered what had been done to him in the pits, and that his wife and children were still out there, suffering.

"Aeneas, Gray has a proposition we might like to hear." Ori spoke quietly, he'd been as shocked as Aeneas at the initial idea of training Daemons to fight as humans but he'd had time to get used to it.

"It goes like this. We're training daemons to fight like humans. It's not just shooting although that's a problem. Most daemons shoot like the A-team." Aeneas was confused. Gray grinned at him. "Shoot all day, never actually hit anybody."

"How can Ori and I help, we're not gunmen."

"But you are soldiers. I listened to your speech in there about teaching people to fight as units. That's what daemons don’t do and breaking them of the individual-hero mindset is a real problem. There's a whole lot of pre-military training to be done and you two seem good candidates. You can learn to shoot at the same time. Of course, if you want to stay here and teach historians. . . . . "

It wasn't a decision. Ori and Aeneas looked at each other and their reply was perfectly timed. "When do we start?"

 

[LTR]

Hills South of Barona, Southern California, USA

Uriel looked skywards and cursed. The aircraft were up there again, circling, methodically and patiently searching for him. It wasn't the fast ones that were the problem. He could hear them coming and ease his battered body into cover. It was the small, slow ones that were causing him grief. They flew down low, methodically checking out the valleys and ridgelines. Despite their bright colors, they were hard to see until it was too late. They would pop up over a ridgeline before he could respond and it had only been a matter of good fortune that he hadn't been seen by one of them.

The worst thing about the small aircraft wasn't that they were so hard to evade. It was that they meant the humans were close. If Uriel listened very carefully, he could hear sounds of their approach. The roar of their vehicle engines, sometimes the sound of shots as a suspicious object was raked with gunfire. It wasn't a good time to be something that might look like a wounded angel when this hunt was underway. If he listened really carefully, Uriel could hear the baying noise that chilled his blood. Humans had brought their dogs along to help with the hunt. He had little doubt that it was the dogs that were doing the tracking. Dogs to track, humans to kill, it was a deadly combination and one that was forcing Uriel to run for his life.

He listened very carefully, acutely aware that the humans had come close to blinding him with their missiles. One of his eyes still wasn't working, the other gave only blurred vision. It was clearing slowly but even with the ability of angels to recuperate from near mortal wounds, his injuries were crippling. Yes, he could hear the baying of the dogs echoing through the canyons. The enthusiasm evident in the sound was worse than the threat it conveyed. The dogs were thoroughly enjoying themselves. They were pleasing their human partners, that was some of it. But, wrapped up in the enjoyment and the pride in performing a task that the humans couldn't was pure, cold hate. The dogs hated him, to them, this was personal. Faint though the baying was, Uriel could sense the dogs' desire to get their teeth into him for just a few good bites before the humans finished him off.

It was time to move again. Once again, he looked upwards, peering through his fogged vision to try and detect the little aircraft. For once, the sky was empty, the latest of the aircraft had dropped behind a ridgeline, probably to scan the ground in another one of the canyons. Uriel sensed something else though, an aircraft high up, so high that even with his vision perfect he would not have been able to see it. It was moving fast, so fast that it seemed silent as it passed, the sound of its passage only arriving later in a dull boom. Surely an aircraft so high and so fast wasn't a threat? Even if it was, it didn’t matter. Uriel noted that the sound of the dogs and the humans was getting louder. Even if the so-high, so-fast aircraft was a threat, he had to move.

He heaved himself up and started to move along the canyon. As he did so, he looked down, checking where he put his feet. He'd made that mistake on the first day after the humans had wounded him. He had been so busy checking the sky and the ground for his pursuers, he'd ignored the warning rattle. The snake had bitten him and the pain in his leg from the bite still burned. Snakes always had been servants of the Eternal Enemy and even with Satan dead, they seemed still to carry on in their accustomed style.

The problem was that his options were narrowing quickly, narrowing in a very literal sense. The mountain range he was hiding in was shaped like a funnel and he was moving steadily towards the narrow end. North of his position was a human settlement, south was a rock-covered plain that offered him no cover at all. Behind him were the humans with their dogs and guns, in front of him, a narrow series of canyons that offered the only way out. Only, beyond those canyons was another human settlement. Uriel would have to swing east to avoid it and that pinned him against a river. He desperately tried to remember what the ground had looked like when he had flown over it before. The riven ran through a valley, one that was lush with green vegetation that would offer little or no cover to a creature his size. But, if he could cross the river, there was a maze of mountains and canyons for him to hide in. So, north then east.

The thought of the river made him remember his thirst. His mouth was dry, as parched as the hills around him. He was also hungry, desperate for food. The demands of his body as it tried to repair the damage that had been inflicted on it during the battle multiplied his need for food and water. Without them, his healing process was slowed still further. Uriel looked around, saw the yellow-gray hills under the blue sky and bright yellow sun and desperately wanted to be back in the clear white of Heaven. The thought made him try and form a portal for his escape but the black ellipse eluded him. That power too had been taken from him by the humans. Just how badly had they hurt him. The thought tormented Uriel, he could feel the burn of the steel and tungsten fragments in his body but their were other injuries as well, ones he couldn’t name or describe. He could feel them though, feel the sickness they caused.

Summoning his strength, trying to subdue his pain and exhaustion, Uriel started his trek north, his wounded leg dragging behind him. Could he fly? His wings were torn and burned, at least some of the smaller bones broken. More as an experiment than with any intention of flying, Uriel tried to inflate his flying sacs. He could feel a tiny trickle of gas into them, but that was all. It didn’t matter. Uriel knew that any attempt at flight would simply lift him up to where the humans could see him. And there, their missiles and aircraft were waiting.

443rd Battalion (California), United States Volunteers

"Any word from the Civil Air Patrol?" Captain(V) Artemis Gordon spoke to the radio operator with longing in his voice. He was hot, tired and dirty. The 443rd had been on the hunt for Uriel for four days without rest. Not that they wanted any, they needed it but they didn’t want it. In fact, had a messenger turned up with orders for their relief, the men would probably shoot him. They wanted Uriel, they wanted him dead and they wanted the 443rd to be the agent of his timely demise. Compared with that driving goal, heat, exhaustion and dirt were minor inconveniences.

"No pop. Sorry, Negative Sir." Bobby-Lynne Gordon kept forgetting her father was also her commanding officer. "The airdales are still hunting."

Artemis Gordon nodded. The Civil Air Patrol, everybody who owned a private aircraft and wanted to get some fuel for it, was carrying the burden of the search, their little Cessnas and Beechcraft threading through the canyons and arroyos that made up the tangled mess Uriel had taken cover in. They weren't alone, up high, circling the area was one of the fabled Auroras. They'd come out of their dark world of secrecy as the hunt for Uriel had gained momentum and they were using their futuristic array of sensors to probe the hills for the wounded angel. They existed, that much was known at last, but what they were, that was still a secret.

"Hold One." Bobby-Lynne patted herself on the back for getting the language right for once. "Report coming in on the special channel. Our Friend Upstairs reports he's picking up movement on his radar. Large object, too big for a human or local wildlife, heading north. About eight to ten miles in front of us, heading around 10 degrees true."

"All right!" Gordon slapped his daughter on the shoulder and climbed out of the Ford Excursion SUV that served as the battalion command vehicle. It just looked so much better with the 20mm cannon mounted on the roof. Around him, his men were pouring water into bowls for the thirsty tracking dogs. The officers of the 443rd worked on the old cavalry principle, animals first, then men, finally self. The humans were desperate for water but every one of them made sure that the dogs get their fill first. Not just the tracking dogs, there were attack dogs here as well. Their handlers were feeding and watering them ready for the meeting with Uriel.

"Listen up men. Our Friend Upstairs, thinks he's spotted Uriel north of us. Eight to ten miles. We need to get moving. Everybody into the trucks, we'll run up through Cabela Canyon, that'll take us to within a mile or so of the reported position. Harry, make sure those 106mm rifles of yours are ready, we'll need their hitting power."

"Sure thing Boss. We've got three rounds of HEAD per gun, then we're back to conventional HEAT."

"Whatever, as long as it hurts the bastard. Everybody else, make sure your heads are wrapped up in foil, we don’t want to lose anybody. You can bet word's going out to the squids and airdales. They'll be turning up with their goodies as soon as they can get here. That'll keep Uriel occupied but you can bet in the final battle, he'll use all that stop-living power he's got to try and beat us off. So, lets not give him any chances. Remember El Paso and all the other towns he's raped. Just remember he's been doing that for thousands of years against people who had no defense against him. People who had never done him any harm. So, everybody, kill Uriel. Don’t mess around, just kill him."

Gordon swung up into his Excursion and started to roll forward. All around him, people were packing up camp and mounting their vehicles. The dogs didn’t need orders, they jumped up on board. They had their own reasons for wanting to kill Uriel, reasons in which vengeance warred with the desire to please their humans. But, dogs are supremely logical creatures and they saw no point in walking when they could ride. Gordon looked at the 443rd starting to move and felt a strange contentment in his heart. There was something immensely satisfying about commanding good men – and women – on a dangerous but important mission. It certainly beat his day-time job of Liberal Arts professor at the local University.

The Montmartre Club, Heaven.

"Look, people, I'm going to need your help here. Artie, Glen, Duke, Louis, Benny, Shep, can you all get together please, select some music you can all agree on and do a rehearsal. Betty, Billy, Mahalia, Janis, Ethel, Mamie, when the boys have picked the music they want, could you make up a chorus and do the vocals. We'll put a hold on the stage show while we get this done, the girls can hold the fort out there."

"Don’t we have to sing praises or sumpin?" Billie Holiday was curious.

"Not unless you want to." Michael-Lan's voice was soothing. Actually, he found this cajoling of his human employees irritating. Why he had to persuade them when he could simply order angels around confused him slightly He had noted though that humans, especially the really talented ones did not respond well to being given terse orders. A degree of explanation and polite requests got better results faster. "It's not the words that are important, it’s the music and the singing. It gets everybody's mind together. On the same page. That makes our powers so much more efficient. Ladies, this is a chorus of equals not a diva with her back-up singers. You've got to work as a team."

Behind them, the band-leaders were hunched over a table pawing through the music. Artie Shaw looked up and caught Michael's eye. "How about Black Velvet?"

Michael-Lan looked at the singers and they nodded. "That'll do fine Artie. Use the area here for your rehearsals, when you're ready, let me know and we'll do the performance. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get through and make contact so we may have to do several runs through the score."

"No problem, Michael." Glen Miller hesitated. "May I ask what this is all about?"

"I've had orders from Yahweh. Direct orders even I can't duck or evade. I'll be honest with you, Uriel-Lan tried an attack on a city down on Earth and got really badly shot up doing it. Yahweh wants him rescued so we can find out what happened. We've got to locate him and open a portal to him so I can go down and get him out."

The musicians started to exchange looks. Eventually Miller spoke up for them. "Michael, we all know who and what Uriel-Lan is. If the people down there shot him up, well, we don’t feel right about helping you get him out. From our point of view he's better off dead."

"From a lot of points of view, he's better off dead. I don’t like this mission any more than you do." Michael bit back the instinctive desire to yell orders at the humans and force their obedience. "But, Yahweh wants him back up here alive. If I don’t pull it off, he'll ask why. At the moment he's nicely bottled up in his palace and knows little or nothing of what’s really going on. But, if he starts asking questions, he'll learn. We don’t call him the all-knowing for nothing. He'll find out about this place and everything we've all worked for will get blown away. The humans down on earth have got the measure of Uriel's attacks, he's not doing much damage and they're hurting him worse every time." And why they haven't killed him yet is beyond me. " So, helping me won’t do any appreciable harm down below and will do us a lot of good up here. Not least of which, it'll stop Yahweh taking over the war and hitting Earth in a full-scale invasion.

"Like the one Hell launched?" Artie Shaw asked the question with a degree of relish.

"Just like the one Hell launched. And the carnage will be dreadful, for both humans and us. That's what I'm trying to avoid. When the humans get here, and they will, they'll tear this place apart. You have the humans up here to worry about, I have the angelic host to look after. Believe me, rescuing Uriel-Lan is the best of some very bad alternatives."

The musicians looked at each other again and nodded. "Very well Michael, we'll get rehearsing."

Michael-Lan heard the instruments tuning up behind him and the first tentative notes of "Black Velvet" echoing out of the improvised rehearsal chamber. He walked through the corridor down to the main body of the club and stopped for a second to check the buffet was up to standard. Then he glanced around the room and picked out the next people he wanted to see.

"Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar, glad you could make it here. How goes the special task I have assigned you?" Michael picked up one of the chairs, spun it around and sat on it.

"Very well, we made contact with the subject. He's calling himself Samandiriel-Lan-Michael by the way. We took him to an adoration session yesterday evening, three hours of chanting praises to Yah-Yah."

Michael winced, that was dedication to duty. "And he was happy?"

"Of course, he went away feeling very righteous. We're having him back for a six-hour session in a couple of days. Once we've got him on that, he'll be ready for movement to the next stage. We've gota plan to handle that."

"Good, you and your team deserve a round on the house for that. Remember, he's got to find out enough to keep him interested and if by chance, he should become a convert. . . . . "

"We'll talk to you about it before doing anything."

"Excellent." Michael-Lan stood up and left his nightclub. Things really were going splendidly.

417th Flight Test Squadron, Edwards Air Force Base, California

"And where do you think you're going Mikey?" Colonel Samuel Allansen stood behind his co-pilot who was stuffing possessions into a travel bag.

"Oh, hello Sammy. I got transfer orders, with the ABL program axed, I've been assigned to the 40th Bombardment Group for conversion to B-1Cs. Sorry, I thought you knew."

"I did, you didn't." Allansen was grinning all over his face at the confusion on Mickey Jennings' face.

"Sorry?"

"The ABL program is on again, funding was restored by executive order last night. Your transfer has been countermanded, you'll be staying with the 417th. In fact, we should be getting two new birds as soon as they can be assembled. One of them will be yours."

"Hey that's great." Jennings paused. "What is going on?"

"Uriel."

"I thought he was down somewhere in Southern California?"

"He is. And the Volunteers are closing in on him. But if he gets out or if Heaven turns out to have more like him, then it'll be the job of the 417th to hunt him, or them down, and kill him. The Big Brass think our laser will be just the job to slice and dice him."

"So the whole program will go splat again as soon as Uriel's dead or there aren't any more of him?" Unspoken was Jennings' thought that he'd prefer being in a bomber.

"Not from what I hear." Allansen looked around and dropped his voice. "From what the wind says, the really big brass at Yamantau have decided that these so-called gods are more trouble than they’re worth. After we've dealt with Yahweh, we're going hunting for the rest of them. If they want to live peacefully with us, fine. If they want to throw their weight around. . . . ." Allansen pointed at the laser in the nose of the YAL-1A.

"It'll be slice and dice time – again."

 

[LTR]

Yangon, Myanmar

This was, on consideration, more impressive that the entry of allied forces into Paris in 1944. The liberation of Paris and that of Yangon sixty five years later had many things in similar/ They included the population surging around the tanks and armored personnel carriers, slowing their progress to a crawl while they wound flowers around the gun barrels. The local girls hugging and kissing the soldiers, then riding on the tanks as they made their slow, stately progress down the road. Other occupants of the liberated city throwing gifts to the troops. All those things were shared by the liberation of Paris and Yangon. Only, the liberation of Paris had not had elephants. The liberation of Yangon did. Four of the great beasts were leading the column of armored vehicles down the long road that ended up at the great Schwedagon Pagoda. Already the spire of the temple was jutting into the sky in front of them.

That reminded Senior Colonel Mahindra of another sight that the liberators of Paris would have found remarkable. Down each side of his regimental column were arrayed ranks of saffron-robed Buddhist monks, their alms bowls turned triumphantly right side up. Most of them had emerged from the safe houses where they had been in hiding since the failed Saffron Revolution two years before to walk beside the tanks, giving the M-41s the aura of a divine crusade. The few monks that hadn't been forced into hiding had made their rounds with their alms bowls turned face-down, implying that the favor of the gods had been withdrawn from the country. Now, they too had their bowls turned right side up.

"Any trouble?" The radio crackled with static but the contralto voice was unmistakeable.

"No ma'am. We came out of the portal at Mingaladon Airport, formed up and drove straight in. No trouble at all, except the number of flowers on my tank are giving me hay fever."

There was a snort of laughter on the other end of the radio. "If that's your only problem, I'll have to try and find you some more. That might be difficult."

"No problems here ma'am. The only fighting going on is the local population hunting down the white-shirts." The white-shirts were the members of the USDA, the Union Solidarity and Development Association whose uniform was a white shirt and green pants. They'd been named the white-shirts in deliberate reference to Hitlers brown-shirted SA and fulfilled much the same function. Street thugs whose sole role was to beat down any opposition. They'd done that with enthusiasm but now the boot was on the other foot and those that could run were doing so. A lot hadn't made it, the mobs after their blood had cornered and killed them. The lucky ones had been lynched, the less fortunate had died bloodier deaths. All too often with their families beside them. Payback was a bitch.

"What are your people doing about that? Other than collecting garlands of flowers."

"I have my armored cars patrolling the cities, if they see any fighting, they break it up and take the USDA people into custody. We're holding them at the Inwa Hall, temporarily at least. We could use some help there, my people aren't policemen."

"I'll get some White Mice down to you as soon as I have some available. Until then, do the best you can. And take care Colonel, we're lucky we didn’t have to fight our way into the city but things can still go sour. Also, be advised Third of First is crossing the Aung Zaya Bridge, that'll put them behind you covering your rear. First of First is crossing over from Syriam, that puts them on the other side of the Nga Moe Yake river. There shouldn't be conflict but be aware of blue-on-blue."

"Yes Ma'am." Mahindra thought for a moment. "May I ask, where do we go from here?"

"North towards Naypyidaw of course. But we need to regroup and re-organize before pushing into Northern Myanmar. We're all over the place at the moment." There was a brief pause. "There's no serious opposition anywhere, we're just rolling through. The Myanmar Army is collapsing like a house of cards. Be advised, the invasion force they sent into our territory has surrendered to the Ninth Infantry. For all that, don’t drop your guard and don't let your people do that. I'll have more movement orders for you in 36 hours. Until then, make sure Yangon is secured."

Command Complex, Naypyidaw, Myanmar

"We need help, we need it now. This war was Michael's idea." Senior General Than Shwe was furious. He might not be the ideal general as envisaged by the profession of arms. In fact, most competent generals regarded him as a semi-trained butcher rather than a military officer. That being said, he had enough military knowledge to recognize a disaster as it unfolded around his ears. Almost superstitiously he touched his ears as the thought occurred to him. He didn’t want them decorating the Thai general's key chain.

Gabriel looked disparagingly at the human. "You were keen enough to launch the attack when it was suggested. No hesitation at all as far as I can remember. And you were pleased enough when it looked like you were winning." And you were very quick to follow Michael's suggestion. Now, Kim Jong-Il, he's being much more cautious.

"Michael told us that all the Thai troops were in Hell and that the border was weakly-guarded." Than Shwe looked at the map on the wall. In some ways, his lack of conventional military experience was a minor assistance in trying to understand what was happening to his country. A trained, competent staff officer would have expected to see a situation chart that looked like a tide flowing over the border, reaching into the Myanmar heartland, fingers advancing where resistance was weakest, being held back where the defenses were holding out. The problem was, the rules had been changed out of all recognition. Instead of a tide, the map was covered with spots, apparently isolated but in fact connected by links that led back to Hell. Each spot would appear and then spread outwards until it joined up with the others. Conventional defenses were pointless. Set up a defense around one area and the spots would appear all around it, isolating it and leaving it to wither. Looking at the map, Than Shwe guessed that it would not be long before those spots started to appear around Naypyidaw.

"And it was. Your troops advanced far in the first few days."

"Against border guards. If that was all, we would still be there. But the Thai had regular forces and deployed them quickly."

Actually, it appears they brought them in from Hell. Which means that the human commander must have realized that Heaven's fingers were behind this whole affair. With shock, Gabriel realized that Michael-Lan had been out-thought on this one. The whole idea of these human wars was to force human countries to bring back their armies and split up their alliance. Instead, the human had recognized the gambit and used elements of his army to destroy this invasion. In doing so he had convinced all the governments whose troops formed part of the human army in Hell that if they faced trouble, they wouldn’t just have their own army to protect them, they'd have everybodies. So the human alliance was stronger, not weaker. Damn the humans. They were good at this.

"What would you have Michael do?" The question was asked gently.

"Support us. Send us aid, troops, equipment. We are loyal to Michael, it is time for him to be loyal to us."

"We cannot, will not, fight a human army head-on. Not yet. They must be weakened first. You must do the best you can." Stupid people. Believing your loyalty to the Angelic Host is enough to win our loyalty to you. Our loyalty is to ourselves, you do not merit it. You are servants for us, nothing more. Gabriel swept his wings forward and strode from the room. He had to make a trip to Korea and find out just why Kim Jong-Il wasn't moving."

Suwon Palace, North Korea

"Four months! You've been moving troops around for four months! Just when are you going to move south." Gabriel-Lan hammered his fist on to the table.

Kim Jong-Un didn't even blink. "And what do you know about mechanized warfare? How many armored units have you commanded in the field?" Gabriel jerked back slightly, not expecting the response. He opened his mouth to reply but the Korean cut him off. "That's right, none. So how dare you tell us what we need to do and when we should move."

"But. . . ."

"But me no buts. We have 15 armored divisions and the same number of mechanized units to move to assault positions, almost fifty infantry divisions to do the same with. Three and a half thousand tanks, same number of infantry combat vehicles, seventeen and a half thousand guns to move. Do you think any of that is easy? Each of those units has to have a supply line. Do you know how many tons of supplies a tank division needs per day? Or a mechanized division? Or an artillery division? Those supply lines can't cross because if they do, the traffic jams will ensure nobody gets any supplies. Amateurs talk tactics Gabriel, professionals talk logistics. Launching an assault of this size takes months of preparation. We're professionals, keep out of our way and leave us to do our work."

Gabriel's jaw was dropping with the sheer impertinence of the human who was lecturing him. "I have seen your movements. They have no objective. This unit here." He tapped the symbol for an armored division.

"Moved east three weeks ago and then moved back last week. To the same place it originally occupied."

"Of course it did. We had to move it to clear a supply line to the division here." Kim put his finger on the map. "And to do that, we had to put that division, the 324th Tank, somewhere where it could be supported while the line was established. And then when that was done we moved it back. I'll say this again, Gabriel, and you can tell your master the same. We're the experts at handling armies, don’t tell us how to do our job and we won't tell you how to play harps and sing praises. Or perhaps your Michael would prefer to see those three and a half thousand tanks and seventeen thousand guns joining the Human Expeditionary Army. Now, I have work to do. You are dismissed."

Gabriel nearly passed out with shock and by the time he had recovered, Kim had stomped out of the room. The archangel had nothing left to do but leave quietly.

In the next room, Kim Jong-il laughed weakly and wiped his eyes. "I did well choosing you my son. To send that angel running away with his tail between his legs, that was a sight to cheer my old age. 'You are dismissed.' I'll bet he has never been told that by a human before. Now, what are we doing."
"The angel put his finger on it father. We are just shuffling units around, moving them backwards and forwards. Using activity as a substitute for achievement. We could launch the great attack tomorrow, if we were as foolish as those idiots in Myanmar. We won't of course. Instead, I think we should join the Human Expeditionary Army."

"Why?"

"Two reasons. One is that if we do otherwise, we will become a meaningless footnote to history. Myanmar has shown that Hell gives the HEA a commanding position on Earth. They can strike anywhere they can open a portal and they can open portals anywhere. They are the dominant force on Earth now, whether they realize that or not. And secondly, father, so sorry but you have not got many weeks left. When you die, you will go to Hell. Your status there as the donor of our Army for the greater good will be much greater than that of the man who kept our Army out."

"You are wise beyond your years. We will do as you say."

HQ, Third Corps, Third Army, Fourth Army Group, Human Expeditionary Army

General Asanee put down the speaker and glanced around the headquarters unit. It had direct video-links with both the headquarters of Fourth Army Group and the HEA command itself. The former was barely used, it was almost irrelevant in this sideshow. She used it to keep General Thimayya informed on what a part of his Army Group was doing. To all intents and purposes, she had an independent command here on Earth, answerable only to General Petraeus. That was a command link she used much more often. The link was open now, and ready for her to use.

"General, Sir. It's my great pleasure to advise you that our troops are securing Yangon. No significant resistance except for the local population taking overdue vengeance on the white-shirts. I anticipate a hold of 36 hours while we regroup and get ready to push north. Oh, one of our recon teams has rescued Aung San Suu Kyi, there was some fear that the junta may have her killed so we pre-empted it. She's in our hands now, receiving medical treatment."

"Very good General. Aung San Suu Kyi will make a good candidate for a new leader. Carry on with your preparations for moving north but do not launch the attack. Not yet anyway. We've had word from Than Shwe that they wish to discuss a ceasefire and are asking for terms."

"What do they offer Sir?"

"Their primary demand seems to be that you don’t take Naypyidaw. Than Shwe seems to believe you want his ears. They also want a refuge in a third country, enough money to live in luxury, usual things for deposed dictators. In exchange, they're offering full information on their relationships with Heaven and their trade with various Heavenly figures. We're hoping what they tell us will help crack open a way into Heaven."

"Very good Sir. I'll instruct our units to regroup and get ready to move but await further orders before doing anything other than defend themselves."

Interrogation Room, DIMO(N) Field Facility, Fort Bragg, North Carolina

How had they missed her? Agent-In-Charge Sith was both relieved that the leak, or at least one of them, inside the DIMO(N) facility had been found but embarrassed that so obvious a security breach had taken so long to spot. It was her clothes that should have given her away, the loose blouse buttoned up around her neck, the long skirt. A young woman these days simply did not dress that way unless she had some specific reason, like particular kinds of religious belief. That wasn't why she had become a suspect. She'd been trapped by the oldest of all investigative techniques, information leaked to various people with subtle differences that identified the recipients. Then, when the net had started to close, everything else had dropped into place. A fundamentalist family, a preacher for a father, it had all made sense.

"Hey Kamikaze, we've got some help with the interrogation." Sith lifted up his eyebrows. The nickname had come from a time long ago when he was a newly-qualified agent and the Bureau had staged a raid on a bar that had been identified as the headquarters of a multi-state drug smuggling ring. For some reason unknown even to himself, he'd tied a Japanese hachimaki around his forehead before the team had broken in. Whatever the reason, the name had stuck. "Lugasharmanaska, this is Agent-in-Charge 'Kamizaze' Sith. The suspect is the interrogation room."

"Pleased to meet you Luga. I enjoy your television show. Is it true nobody can lie to a succubus?"

Luga laughed and shook her head. "That was thought up by the show publicists."

"Oh well, I guess the powers that be think your pheremones will get us some co-operation. It's good of you to help us out"

"I was here anyway, Agent Sith, so it was not a matter of difficulty for me. I think that is what they hope yes. If not, perhaps the presence of a daemon from hell will scare her? I understand she was very religious?"

"She wore this." Sith held out a crucifix and was interested to note that Luga didn’t shy away from it or cover her eyes. Another legend busted. "After The Message, to keep wearing that, yes I'd say she was religious. That's why she sold us out."

Inside the room, Kathryn Branch was terrified of what might happen. Her father should have been at Waco years before but had been delayed on his trip to the community and hadn't been there when the FBI had assaulted the building. Ever since that day, she'd been brought up to fear and hate the Federal agencies her father had held responsible for all the deaths. Then, The Message had come and she and her family had laid down and waited to die as ordered. Only, the Archangel Michael himself had come down and picked her up, explaining that she had been chosen for a very special mission, to watch over the humans who were Left Behind. He had explained to her that she had become part of a very special group of humans chosen for this role, ones who were exempt from the ruling of universal damnation. And so she had become one of the group, reporting back what she had found out. Then she had been drafted and assigned to DIMO(N) and her services had become of even greater value.

She looked up and saw to men from the FBI and a third figure, a tall woman with a dead white skin and small red horns pushing through her hair. Branch recognized her immediately, the succubus that had a new career as a television star. The grim words ran through her mind 'you can't lie to a succubus.' She found herself realizing that Luga was actually quite attractive, then understood that its evil was already corrupting her.

"You are Kathryn Branch?" One of the FBI men spoke quite gently. Branch shook her head, she might not be able to lie with a succubus present but she could say nothing. It took an effort because she had this continued urge to please the daemon in front of her.

Five hours later, she had, with great effort, managed to continue her refusal to speak. Maintaining silence had taken every bit of strength she had but it had been worth it to see the frustration on the faces of the two FBI men. The daemon just stared at her, emotionless, unblinking, evil.

"We're not going to get much out of her." Sith eventually sighed, "we can carry on tomorrow."

Luga stared at the girl. "I'm hungry."

"So am I. There's some nice restaurants in town."

"No, I'm hungry now. They look nice." Luga pointed at Kathryn Branch's breasts.

"Luga, you can't!" Sith was horrified.

"You can't stop me. I'm stronger and faster than you and it takes a lot of bullets to kill us. And I'm hungry now." Luga reached out and ripped open Branch's blouse, then grabbed one of her breasts. She pulled it, stretching it out and opened her mouth exposing her fangs just a few inches from her supposed snack.

"Get her away from me!" Branch panicked, screaming the words, mixed out with weeping and fear. "Get that hell-spawn away from me. I'll tell you anything, just don’t let her . . . . ."

Luga stepped away and grinned at the two stunned FBI men. "There you are. You humans are so afraid of being eaten. Of course, you can't use her confession in court. Call me back if there are any more problems with her."

Kathryn Branch was already babbling out a long list of the people she had contacted in her espionage ring. As she left, Luga stopped and patted her on the head. "Kathryn, fangs for the mammaries."

 

[LTR]

Eastern District Federal Court, Raleigh, North Carolina

"Your honor, this is the most outrageous infringement – no, your Honor, infringement is too mild a word – the most outrageous flouting of my client's constitutional rights that it has even been my misfortune to encounter. Miss Branch was denied legal representation. . . . . "

"Objection! Your honor, the defendant made no request for legal representation, in fact she made no statement at all until her final breakdown."

"Sustained. Strike the reference to the defendant being denied legal representation."

"My client was also drugged and threatened with sexual assault and mutilation at the hands of a cannibalistic. . . . ."

"Objection! Miss Sharmanaska is not a human being therefore the accusation of cannibalism is contrary to fact. In any case, as the videotape records of the interrogation clearly show, the defendant was never threatened or hurt in any way. Nor was she deliberately drugged. At this point, we believe it would clarify matters greatly if the court was to watch these videotapes. We believe they clearly refute the statements made by the defense.

Judge Candlass looked at the courtroom, the federal attorney prosecuting the case, the FBI agents who had made the interrogation and the succubus who had assisted them. His eyes were drawn to Lugasharmanaska, noting the yellow eyes with slit pupils set in darkly-shadowed sockets, the dead white skin of the face and hands, changing to the shiny black of the rest of her body, the red horns emerging from the pinkish hair. She was, he thought, quite charming. Then he shook himself. "Very well, we will watch the videotape. How long is it?"

"Five hours and five minutes your Honor." The judge winced.

"Your Honor, the defense is prepared to stipulate that my client said nothing for the first five hours. The essential part of the tape is the last five minutes. We would be agreeable to showing just the first ten minutes of the tape to prove my client made no incriminating statements and the last ten to show the court the despicable assault upon her constitutional rights."

"That sounds reasonable." The judge spoke with relief. "Clerk of the Court, please show the tape in the manner described."

Up on the television screen, the grainy image showed Kathryn Branch refusing to answer the questions put to her. The two FBI agents couldn't even get her to confirm her name or any other personal details. She just sat their, ignoring their increasingly-irritable questioning. Throughout the whole procedure, Lugasharmanska just sat there, emotionless and unblinking, her yellow eyes fixed on Branch. Eventually the Agent-in-Charge turned to his assistant.

"We're not going to get much out of her." Sith eventually sighed, "we can carry on tomorrow."

Luga stared at the girl. "I'm hungry."

"So am I. There's some nice restaurants in town."

"No, I'm hungry now. They look nice." Luga pointed at Kathryn Branch's breasts.

"Luga, you can't!" Sith was horrified.

Lugasharmanska turned slightly and the videocamera picked up her winking at Sith. Then she turned back to Banch and stared at her again. Branch went white, her eyes widening in fear, then she suddenly collapsed across the table, sobbing in fear. "Get her away from me!" Branch panicked, screaming the words, mixed out with weeping and fear. "Get that hell-spawn away from me. I'll tell you anything, just don’t let her . . . . ."

Luga stepped away and grinned at the two stunned FBI men. "There you are. You humans are so afraid of being eaten. Of course, you can't use her confession in court. Call me back if there are any more problems with her."

Kathryn Branch was already babbling out a long list of the people she had contacted in her espionage ring. As she left, Luga stopped and patted her comfortingly on the head. The tape continued to run, showing Branch continuing to pour out all the information she had on her spying activities. Then, it ended.

"Your honor, the prosecution submit that the tape clearly shows the defendant was neither drugged nor coerced. In fact, except for the brief, comforting, pat on the head as she left, there was no physical contact at all between the law enforcement authorities and the defendant."

The Judge frowned and privately wished this case had gone before somebody else. Judge Simpkins perhaps, Candlass had never liked him. This case had the potential to be a career-ender.

"Your Honor, the key part of the defense case is not shown by this tape. Succubae are well-known to have pheremones that make those around them sympathetic to them and they also have the daemonic ability to entangle people's minds and make them see and experience things that are not real. We contend that Miss Sharmanaska's presence in the interrogation room was equivalent to drugging my client and that she implanted the visions in her mind that led to her collapse. She may not have been physically coerced, but the threat of mutilation was very real Miss Sharmanaska herself confirms it when she said, and I quote, 'You humans are so afraid of being eaten.' And she herself said 'Of course, you can't use her confession in court.' I submit that my client's confession should be thrown out on these grounds. And, of course, any information derived from it should also be cast out as the fruit of the poison tree."

"Your Honor, Miss Sharmanaska is not a lawyer, her opinions are those of a lay. . . . . lay," The prosecuting attorney hesitated then settled for the conventional, "person."

"I think Miss Sharmanska should answer for herself on this. Clerk of the Court, swear her in."

Lugasharmanaska took the stand and the Clerk approached her, a little nervously. "Repeat after me, I affirm that the evidence I shall give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so he. . . ." From sheer force of habit, the Clerk had almost ended the oath with the traditional 'so help me God.'

Luga smiled at him and helpfully added "So help me, me?"

The Federal attorney took up the questioning. "Your name is Luga Sharmanaska?"

"It is now. My original name was Lugasharmanaska, one word. All daemonic names are one word. But when I became an American citizen, it was split into two."

"Please explain to the court about these pheremones?"

"I do not know much, only what I have been told. All succubae know that we make those around us friendly and agreeable. We always thought it was magic, we called it miasma, and never questioned how it happened. Then humans came and asked questions. How and why. They found that our bodies emit pheremones that change the emotions of those around us. So, they say, do humans, although their pheremones are not as effective as ours."

"I see, so your pheremones are just a developed version of something all humans have. Can they make people do things against their will."

Luga hesitated. "No, if somebody really doesn't want to do something, the pheremones won’t make them. For that we must use trickery."

"And, for five hours, the defendant refused to speak although she must have known doing so would please you. Did that surprise you?"

"Not really. I said, if somebody is determined not to do something, my miasma won’t make them. But, the government asked me to help protect itself from the defendant and who am I to refuse aid to the country that gave me refuge?"

"Your honor, please let the record state that Miss Sharmanaska has been of great assistance in the war effort, often at considerable personal risk and has suffered severely during her efforts. Her loyalty is not subject to doubt." We don’t doubt that she has no loyalty at all to anybody but herself. The Federal attorney was very careful not to give a hint of the thought. "You said trickery Miss Sharmanaska. How?"

"Before humans started to wear your silver hats, we could create images in your mind. I could make myself look like a wife so a faithful husband would lay with me not knowing who or what I was. The Incubi, our male equivalents could make themselves look like a faithful wife's husband for the same reason. Or I could project an image of empty space so that people would not see me at all."

"And you could project this image to multiple persons at one."

"Only if they were not wearing silver hats, yes. We used to do it all the time."

"What if they are wearing silver hats?"

"Then unless I was very close and concentrated on a single mind, I cannot entangle that mind. Even under ideal situations, penetrating a silver cap is exhausting."

Judge Candlass tapped his gavel. "I want to see this. Miss Sharmanaska, can you change your appearance please?"

"If you take your hat off. Who would you like me to look like."

The judge remembered his favorite poster from the 1980s. "Farrah Fawcett."

The Court recorder called the famous poster up on his computer and showed Luga the picture. She nodded and the judge took off his tinfoil cap. Even doing so made him feel uneasy and his head felt naked without its protection. It was no wonder that going around without a tinfoil cap was a sign of madness. Then he looked at the witness stand and saw Farrah Fawcett standing there in the trademark red swimsuit. He gasped, put on his cap and, once more, he saw the succubus in her real form.

"Miss Sharmanaska, you must be the most dangerous person I have ever seen in this courtroom."

"Thank you, your Honor." Lugasharmanaska sounded pleased.

"Miss Sharmanaska, do you have any legal training?" The Federal Attorney returned to the case,

"No, only the studies of the Constitution required for me to become a Citizen."

"So your comment about not being able to use the information gained in court was your own, unqualified opinion?"

"In a way, although I thought the information we gained would be secret and not revealed to anybody. That is what I meant.

"Ah, I see." Well done Luga. That throws a spanner in the defense. "No further questions."

The Defense attorney rose to his feet. "Miss Sharmanaska, do you eat human meat?"

"Not now, no."

"Have you ever?"

"Objection your Honor. Relevence?"

"Goes to credibility of the alleged threat."

"Overruled. Witness will answer."

"Once, yes. But that was before I joined humans."

"Did you project an image of you eating my client's breasts."

"Not her breasts, no." Luga smiled to herself. She'd noted how lawyers played with words.

"Oh." The attorney was confused. "So what did you project an image of?"

"I haven't said that I did."

"Well did you?"

"Yes."

"What of."

"Eating one breast. Singular. Not both of them." A ripple of laughter ran around the courtroom. That made Luga feel a lot easier in her mind, her pheremones were having their usual effect.

"Your Honor, there we have it. A hideous, coercive threat of permanent mutilation."

"Not permanent. It would grow back."

"Not on Earth it won't."

"Oh. I forgot that." Luga had honestly forgotten that bodies didn't regenerate on Earth.

"Irrelevent. Your Honor, I maintain that the statements we have heard today are enough to support the claim that my client's constitutional rights were trampled underfoot, that she was drugged and terrified into making her confession. In fact, I would go as far to say she was tortured mentally until she confessed. She was threatened with dreadful physical harm by a creature she had been brought up to regard as the epitome of evil. I mean no disrespect to Miss Sharmanaska, her record of valued service to the human cause is well known and her television program is loved by millions. She was doing what she believed was helping her adopted country as best she could. We should respect that. But she is a daemon and what she did was wrong. As such, her confession and all that stems from it should be ruled inadmissible and stricken from the record."

"Prosecution?"

"Your Honor. We have already disproved the charge that the defendant was denied her legal rights. The accusation that she was drugged also falls since the defense has admitted she spent five hours under interrogation without the pheremones having any effect on her. In fact, the interrogation was on the point of being ended as a failure, showing that the alleged drugging did not take place. As to the threat, the courts have always been prepared to accept that the law enforcement community has a degree of latitude in such things. It is commplace, for example, to tell an alleged murdered that if he does not confess, the prosecution will seek the death penalty. The horrors of going to an American prison are also described in an attempt to produce a confession. Who amongst us has not heard going to prison being described as 'starting a new career as a bad man's girlfriend?' How often do we see the deal being offered 'five to ten if you confess, 25 to life if you do not?" Such threats and intimidation may not be a happy part of the law enforcement system but they are an accepted one that does not invalidate a confession. All that happened here was that the same such threats were made in a slightly more vivid and persuasive form that usual. There was no real danger of the defendant suffering physical harm. The law enforcement officers would not have permitted it and I feel sure that Miss Sharmanaska, with her pride in her American Citizenship would not have carried out her threat. And, I must point out that the information gained as a result of this interrogation will greatly benefit every citizen of the world. Remember, Uriel is still out there. We still face unknown dangers from Heaven. Can we afford to tolerate traitors in our midst. Your Honor, I implore you not to rule this information inadmissible."

 

[LTR]

Eastern District Federal Court, Raleigh, North Carolina

Judge Candlass looked across the court, making up his mind. "This is a hard case and breaks new ground. The society we face today is unimaginable two years ago. Creatures we once thought were mythical have proved to be all to real and they have powers that our laws do not even begin to cover. Until new laws are written, and writing law is not the role of the Judiciary, we must do the best we can by applying existing law to these new circumstances."

"Working on that principle, it is this Court's ruling that the statement from Miss Branch was obtained in violation of her rights under the Fourth Amendment. This states that 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.' She was rendered insecure in her own person by the invasion of her mind and it was this invasion that led to her confession. In addition her rights under the Fifth Amendment were also violated. This states that 'no person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.' Miss Branch was clearly compelled to be a witness against herself. For these reasons, this evidentiary hearing finds in favor of the Defense. The statements made by Miss Branch are inadmissible and may not be presented at her trial."

The judge paused for a second and took a breath. "This court takes no pleasure in making such a ruling. On a personal note, the idea that Miss Branch should seek the protection of the society she has so comprehensively betrayed is abhorrent. This brings us to a very important point. Recently, there has been much talk of judges needing to have 'empathy' or 'understanding the situation of the accused'. This case shows us very clearly the deadly danger of that delusion. Miss Branch, if this court had empathy for you or understanding for your position, you would be taken from this court and hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead dead. But it is not the role of the law to have empathy for those who appear before it. It is the role of the law to be cold, stoic and isolate. It is the duty of the law to treat every person who appears before it with dispassionate objectivity be they poor and humble or the highest of the high. For that reason, and that reason alone, the court has found in your favor on this matter.

"District Attorney, do the People have adequate evidence to continue this case without the inadmissible statement?"

"We believe we do Your Honor. We have the original honey trap information that specifically links the defendant with the leaks of data from the DIMO(N) field facility. Obviously, our interrogation of the defendant will continue."

"Without the presence of Miss Sharmanaska of course. Miss Sharmanaska, it is the opinion of this court that you acted in good faith, cooperating with the law enforcement authorities at their request as is the duty of a law-abiding citizen. No blame can be attached to you although I will rule that any interrogation in the presence of a succubus will be presumed to have infringed the suspect's Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. As for you gentlemen from the FBI." The judge wagged his finger in the time-honored gesture. "Shame on you sirs. You conceived this attempted end-run around the Constitution and deceived this poor innocent succubus into becoming part of your schemes. The one redeeming feature is your forthrightness with this court, your clear explanation of what was done and the refusal of yourselves and Miss Sharmanaska to conceal your actions. This matter will be referred to your superiors and they can decide on whether further disciplinary action is required. This evidentiary hearing is adjourned."

Eight hours later, Judge Candlass woke up in the middle of the night and mentally reviewed his statement. It occurred to him that one thing he has said was indisputably right. Succubae were dangerous, especially in a poorly-ventilated courtroom.

Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven

"Mama's dancin' with baby on her shoulder
The sun is settin' like molasses in the sky."

The chorus echoed around the club. The bandleaders had orchestrated the music to take advantage of the unprecedented assembly while the singers had harmonized perfectly. Michael absent-mindedly tapped his foot in time with the music. The song was about Elvis Presley, a subject that was one of some regret to Michael-Lan. He'd really wanted to rescue Elvis and bring him to the club here, but he'd failed. He couldn’t quite understand it, he'd never had any trouble before in intercepting a dead human and whisking them away before they turned up on the Plateau of Minos.

Around the club room, Michael's most trusted followers were also listening to the bands, the music surrounding them and concentrating their minds. Yah-yah might be "The All-Knowing", thought Michael but he didn’t know squat about how the Chorus actually worked. He still held to the old belief that the constant chanting was necessary to generate energy and stopping the chorus for any reason would have disastrous results. Michael knew differently, there was nothing magical about the chanting, it just acted as a framework that would allow the Angels to get their minds into perfect harmony. And that magnified their powers greatly. Any music would do, any music at all.

Michael-Lan closed his eyes, and let his mind wander, seeking the signal that would mark the exact spot where Uriel was dying in the hills of eastern California. Briefly, he measured the possibility of leaving him there unrescued and taking a quick holiday in his beloved Las Vegas instead. The idea seemed so attractive, yet it was quite impossible. He'd had a direct order to rescue Uriel and simply ignoring it was premature. One day, the time would be right to tell Yah-yah what to do with his orders, just the way the humans had, but that time wasn't now. Anyway, staying on Earth was hazardous these days, especially anywhere in North America.

There it was, weak and flickering, but it was there. Uriel's mind. Michael-Lan seized on it, amplifying the contact and refining it to give an exact position. This had to be a quick, in-and-out job. If he stayed on Earth for more than a few minutes, the aircraft and missiles would be on to him. They had come so very close to killing Uriel, they could do the same for him. He and Uriel were the same, the first rank of the Chayot Ha Kodesh, the Archangels that represented the peak of the Angelic Host. In fact, Michael was more than half-convinced that Uriel possessed powers that exceeded his own and that was another reason why Uriel would have to go. The same conviction was why Michael wanted the humans to kill Uriel for him; he was by no means certain that he would win a direct confrontation with Uriel.

"We have him, Noble One." Another group of Angels, Erelim and Hashmallim, triumphantly shouted out the news. There glee was two-fold, partly at being of service to their hero Michael-Lan who had brought life and pleasure back to Heaven. The other was relief that once the location process was over, the session could be brought to a close and the club get back to its normal life.

"We too!" Another group claimed their location.

"And us!"

Michael-Lan concentrated harder, drawing on the power of the Angels unified by the music. The spot of light that located Uriel contracted, shrinking until it became a single, almost dimensionless spot. For a brief moment, Michael hoped that it would continue shrinking until it vanished altogether for that would show that Uriel was dead, beyond saving. But no such luck, the spot remained, weak and indistinct but still there. "Wish me luck, this is going to be interesting."

Hills South of San Felipe, Southern California, USA

It was over, Uriel knew now it was just a matter of time, the humans had trapped him and they intended to kill him. A dozen or so yards away, a rock exploded as another human shell plowed into it. The humans who had been chasing him were close enough for him to see their vehicles, to see the cloud of smoke from them as they fired at him. Already, they had come close, adding to his injuries. Uriel could feel his body beginning to give up. Angels, like their fallen siblings in Hell, had an uncanny ability to regenerate and recover from their wounds but damage could mount up faster than they could repair it. When that happened, the system would collapse and the Angel would die. Just as hundreds of thousands of the fallen ones had died under human artillery fire.

Overhead, the small, brightly colored aircraft were circling his position. They'd seen him, they'd called for the humans to close in on him. At first, he'd tried to bring his peace to them but he was too injured, to weakened to summon the necessary power. A few birds had dropped dead, especially the ones circling over him with hungry looks on their faces, but the humans hadn't been affected. That left only his power to trumpet. It had been so long since he had done that he wasn't quite sure whether he remembered how but his options had shrunk to almost nothing. In fact, they were less than that for Uriel knew that even if his trumpeting was effective, there were too many humans. All he could do was die bravely. That was the only real option left and Uriel wasn't even sure he could do that.

Another shell exploded near to him, this one sending up a cloud of dense white smoke. Overhead, one of the small aircraft had peeled away from the rest and was diving on him. White streaks shot out from under its wings and slammed into the ground all around him, sending more of the dense white smoke clouds upwards into the clear blue sky. Rockets, Uriel guessed what the humans were doing. They would see no point in closing in on him and risking their lives in a close-range fight. They would call in their aircraft to drop bombs and fire missiles instead. His fear had been right, he wouldn't get a chance to die bravely.

To the southeast, Uriel saw four streams of black smoke. Adjusting his vision to long range, they became four aircraft, strangely shaped ones whose wings went up, their tails went down and they seemed bent in the middle. And they were trailing the black smoke as they closed fast on him. Uriel summoned his strength and tried to trumpet. He managed a weak blast of sound but that was all and the oncoming aircraft hardly seemed to notice the trumpet call. He could see them change course slightly, refining the direction that would take them straight to him.

Then, everything seemed to go dark around him and strong arms were wrapped around his waist. "Come on, old friend, let's get you out of this mess." Michael-Lan braced himself and tried to take in the situation, carefully holding Uriel so that the critically-wounded archangel would screen him from any bullets. He didn’t need much to tell him that the four approaching aircraft were the most serious threat he faced. Michael-Lan stared at them, concentrated all the power he could into his lungs and emitted the most powerful trumpet blast he could manage.

1,500 meters west of Uriel, Southern California, USA

"Look at the Rhino's go, Pop. . . . . . Err, Sir." Bobby-Lynne Gordon kicked herself again and then pointed at the four Phantoms as they swept down into the attack. They could actually see Uriel now, surrounded by the white smoke of the white phosphorus shells and rockets. As her father had put it, the zoomies would almost certainly kill Uriel but the 443rd could make his eyes water with willie-pete first.

Off to their right, Sergeant Vincent Mitrakis had the best view of the end-game. He was using a high-powered optical scope attached to his Barrett Model 99 rifle to try and get a killing shot in before the fighter pilots claimed all the glory. Even with the Raufoss multi-purpose incendiaries the army had issued, he doubted that he could get a clean one-shot kill in but, it was worth trying and the great figure sprawled on the ground was already sorely injured. If he fired enough shots, he might just make it. Then he cursed, the white smoke from the marker rounds was fouling his line of sight. Something was roiling the smoke, spreading it. He swept his rifle across the target area and saw a black ellipse forming. Then, a huge figure, easily as large as Uriel but glowing so purely white as to make the clouds of white phosphorus smoke seem gray and dirty in comparison, stepped out and reached down to pull Uriel to his feet. Mitrakis moved the aim of his scope up to the new arrival's head and, as he did so, he gasped. The face on the angel was incredibly, stunningly beautiful. As handsome as the familiar Baldricks were ugly. Before he could recover from the shock, the new arrival looked at the four approaching Phantoms and opened his mouth.

Bobby-Lynne Gordon heard the note, unearthly pure in its beauty, echoing across the ravines. Even here, far away from its main focus, it had a power and impact that briefly stilled the 443rd's efforts to finish of Uriel. She could see that its effects on the chosen target were much more dramatic. One of the four Phantoms fell apart in mid-air, its wings torn from its body, its tail crumpled with the impact. A second, the one beside it was thrown out of control and it dived into the ground before its pilot could react. The two outer aircraft were also thrown out of control but to a lesser extent and their pilots managed to save their aircraft. That didn’t change the fact that the attack had been broken up and the great white angel had bought a few seconds of time.

Mitrakis took advantage of the opportunity and squeezed off his first round. He'd aimed for the head but the trumpet blast and the swirling air around the site foxed him and he saw the bullet slam into the great white angel's shoulder. Through his scope, he saw the silver blood scattering in the air and a trace of smoke rise from the wound. Then, he was frantically working the bolt, trying to get another shot in. A round from a 106mm crashed into the ground a little short of his target just as he fired and that left his second shot going wild. Another frantic working of the bolt and a third shot slammed into the white angel, this time dead center on his chest. By this time, his target had shifted Uriel to provide cover from this new direction. Then, with a cheerful wave to the humans, Michael-Lan stepped through the portal and it slammed shut behind him.

"I don’t believe it, he got away!" Artemis Gordon stared at the blank area of scrub in frustration. "We had him cornered and he got away."

His daughter looked over the hills to where the funeral pyres of the two F-4s stained the sky black. "He'll be back. We'll get another chance at him. Boy, he was hot though."

HQ, Third Corps, Third Army, Fourth Army Group, Human Expeditionary Army

"General? General Petraeus is on line twelve for you." General Asanee took her eyes off the map and picked up the videophone receiver. "Sir, Asanee-actual here."

"How are you doing down there General?"

"We're ready to go Sir. Fuelled up, bombed up, everything in place. We can head north as soon as we get the order."

"That won’t be necessary. Than Shwe has surrendered, he's been spilling his guts to us for the last six hours. What we've got is interesting to put it mildly. The Myanmar regime had been supplying large quantities of heroin, methamphetamines, marihuana and ecstasy to a representative of Heaven. And when I say large quantities, I mean tons of the stuff. So much so, the recipient uses an electrically-powered trolly to take it all back."

"Very interesting. I see no reason why we can't continue supplying that filth to them can you. Opium wars and all that. Who was the representative, anybody we know?"

"Very much so. Michael-Lan-Yahweh. Just about the top angel in Heaven."

"Michael-Lan is running drugs into Heaven?" General Asanee's voice was incredulous and to her embarrassment it went up into a squeak. She breathed for a second and carefully remembered her elocution lessons. When she resumed, it was back to her usual contralto. "Is he shipping them to customers here?"

"Not as far as we can make out. As far as some initial inquiries have determined, the stuff is going into Heaven and staying there."

"So Michael-Lan is running dope. Well, now that is interesting. You do realize we execute people for that."

Petraeus laughed. "He won’t fit in front of a firing squad."

"He doesn’t have to, we've changed to lethal injection." The General sounded sad for a second. "I spoke against that, there's no dignity in laying on a table being poisoned."

"General, you're missing the point. Michael-Lan picks the stuff up from the Myanmar Junta and takes it back through a portal to Heaven. We've been unable to crack Heaven open for over a year no. This offers us another possible way to get one. If he can be persuaded to pick up another consignment, we can monitor the portal and try to find out how to drive one of our own through."

"Another Sir?"

"Yes, bad news is Uriel got away from us. Michael-Lan-Yahweh again, he did a combat pick-up and got Uriel out. But, we have some recordings of that portal as well. If we can get a second batch of readings, we might be able to move."

"Another pick-up." General Asanee broke into a smile. "We could always send him something he didn’t expect with his cargo. Like a tracer or . . . . . ."

"Something that makes a very big bang? Ahead of you General. We're getting one sent over."

 

[LTR]

Temple of Ceaseless Compliance, Eternal City, Heaven

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. Oh nameless one, Lord and God of all, we prostrate ourselves in your presence service. Please accent these trivial offerings of our strength and support that they may lessen the great burdens of your everlasting care for us."

Lemuel-Lan-Michael was sprawled on his face in front of the altar. This was a small temple, one that he had never heard of before and it seemed new somehow. He could smell the raw stone, the freshly-sawn wood of the altar table. It also seemed to be a poor temple, the semi-precious stones that layered the walls were of inferior quality and the workmanship seemed hurried somehow. That was all the information he could gain with the quick glances he had been able to make between choruses. Them the chant would start again and he would go along with it. Being a part of this congregation was vital if he was to maintain his cover and infiltrate the Second Conspiracy.

It didn't help matters that the case was hitting his home life. He was having to be away more and more often, for longer and longer periods. It wasn't that his mate was complaining, the duties of a female mate in Heaven were clearly defined. Serving her mate was one of them, nagging him was not. But there were ways a female could convey her displeasure and recently Lemuel-Lan had been on the receiving end of them all. The message had been quite clear, his absences from his home were not appreciated and she was even implying that there might be more behind them than his work. There were those masters of a household who might have chastised their mates for such insinuations but Lemuel-Lan was not one of them. Instead he just resented the implications and let them seethe in the back of his mind.

The latest repetition of the chorus finished, Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar rose to his feet and extinguished the bowls of burning incense that had filled the room with their odor. When he had arrived, Lemuel-Lan had found the scent of the incense pleasant but now, after six hours immersed in the aroma, the thick, clinging clouds were sickening. They hung around him, irritating his throat and stinging his eyes. His throat felt sore from the constant chanting, his stomach was turned by the smell and his head ached. In short, in a phrase that he would never dare admit in public, he felt like hell. It was almost enough to make him feel that his mate was right and that added to his distress greatly.

"Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar, we have done well tonight. Six hours of adoration will surely aid The One Above All in his care for us."

"We can but hope so, Most Lordly Ophanim, but we must beware falling victim to the sin of pride. Even our most valiant efforts are as nothing compared with those of The Nameless One. Please, Most Noble One, I crave your indulgence and beg you to excuse my impertinence but do you feel unwell?" And if you don't, we'll have to double up the dosage next time.

"My throat is sore and my head aches. But these are minor things, nothing to be concerned about."

"Perhaps I may offer a little help?" Perpetiel waved to one of the other angels who disappeared into the shadows. A few seconds later he emerged, bearing with him a cup. "We have an elixir here, one that is a sovereign remedy for a sore throat. And these." He held out a pair of tiny white tablets. "Are of wonderous efficiency in quelling the pains of a headache."

"Thank you Perpetiel-Lan." Lemuel took the tablets and swallowed them, washing them down with the contents of the cup. Although it was dark red, it wasn't the wine he had expected. Instead, it was a fruit-flavored drink, deliciously chilled. It soothed his parched throat and calmed his stomach. As he stood in the temple relishing the flavor, he felt the throbbing in his head slowly start to subside. "These are indeed of marvellous effect. What are they?"

"The tablets are called Tylenol, Most Noble One. And the drink is called Gatorade."

"I have not heard of these?" Lemuel was curious but within the curiosity was a thrill of pleasure. Was he finally on to something?

Perpetiel looked guilty. "They are human products, Most Noble One."

Lemuel looked at him, his bearing crying out in condemnation. "Human products? Here? This is forbidden?"

"An old rule Most High, from the days when humans were foolish and ignorant. But, if they help us provide support to The One Above All, is not their use justified? The ban on them dates when their use was for evil and inspired by The Eternal Enemy. Yet now that Enemy is dead, killed by humans. Surely it is the use to which a thing is put that is important, not where it comes from?"

Lemuel nodded slowly, his headache already faded to a memory and his stomach calmed. "There is much wisdom in what you say Bene-Elohim. If something aids Our Most Heavenly Father, then surely there cannot be sin in it."

"This is the teaching of our temple indeed. Here, Most Noble One, take this small bottle of Tylenol, as a gift in celebration of the honor you do our small temple."

"A kind gesture and one most appreciated. We will gather again tomorrow?" Perpetiel nodded, carefully hiding his smile. Lemuel-Lan took the bottle and placed it in his robes. For the last ten nights, every time he had turned to his mate, she had refused him, claiming she had a headache. Now, if nothing else, he finally had a solution to that particular problem.

Michael's Palace, Aukumea, Heaven

Michael-Lan twisted on the couch, his body writhing. "Get those wretched things out of me!"

"They have gone deep, Greatest of the Archangels. One may have broken a bone in your shoulder and the other has penetrated far into your chest. Already your wounds close around them. We will have to cut as deep to remove them."

"They're burning me alive!" Michael gasped with pain. "What did the humans do to me?"

"They shot you." The doctor spoke with unseemly relish. "Twice. With bullets the like of which I have never seen before. I don’t think they like you."

Michael-Lan opened one eye and looked carefully at the doctor. It occurred to him that the human was speaking to him much the same way as he, Michael-Lan, spoke to Yahweh. "Get the bullets out. Now."

"All right." The doctor didn’t seem at all sympathetic but he got a long pair of probes from his bag and stuck them into the bullet hole in Michael's shoulder. The probes slid in deep and he could feel their tips touching the chips of bone in the wound. As he had feared, or hoped he wasn't quite sure which, the bullet had hit the bone in Michael's shoulder and splintered it. The bullet had penetrated more than 20 centimeters and the wound path ended in a gaping cavity, one that showed every signs of burn as well as explosive damage. The doctor reflected that human bullets had improved a lot since one had killed him a few years earlier. He probed again and this time he found the end of a solid object. Once he had it, it was relatively easy to get a grip on it and pull it out. He dropped it into a dish where it landed with a dull-sounding clinking noise.

"It's not iron or steel, something much denser and harder. Tungsten carbide probably. I'm going to have to lavage the wound."

"What?" Michael's voice was shaky. The pain from the surgery had distressed him more than he had let on.

"Lavage it. Wash the wound cavity out. There's a dozen or more fragments of bullet jacket in there, and something that looks like the residue of an incendiary mixture. Hold still, this will hurt."

The doctor worked for a few minutes then sat back. "Right, we started with your shoulder because that was the easiest one to deal with and it showed me what we face. Otherwise I would have been poking around blind. Now, the one in your chest. I ought to put you out for this, it's going to be rough."

Michael nodded weakly, if the hit in his shoulder was the easy one to repair, he didn’t want to be awake when the main event started. He felt a mask being out over his face and his doctor's voice speaking quietly. "Lee-Ann, we're going to put Michael-Lan to sleep now. Keep a careful eye on his breathing and make sure he doesn't get too much of the anaesthetic.

"Very good Doctor Gunn."

"David, please, or I'll call you Nurse Nichols. Shannon, how is our patient doing?"

"He seems stable Doctor. . . . Sorry, David. It's hard to say, his reactions are different from ours. He's sliding under now though."

"Good, let's get started. This could be risky ladies, we don’t know what the guys down there are using but it's nothing like the bullets that finished us. We can't be sure the wretched thing won't go off when we pull it out."

Shannon Lowney shuddered, the last thing she remembered from her life on Earth was the crazed man standing at the door of her clinic, firing at her. Then the blackness and waking up surrounded by the white light of Heaven, Michael-Lan standing by her to welcome her in.

Doctor David Gunn was probing the wound in Michael-Lan's chest. It was similar to the one in his shoulder but deeper, the bullet had penetrated more than 30 centimeters and gone straight through his sternum. There were bone fragments all over the wound and he had to remove each one of them. "The sternum is broken right across, whatever this bullet was, it must have been designed to penetrate armor. Suction, Lee-Ann, normal blood is bad enough, this silver stuff is a real nuisance. Another major wound cavity, the bullet looks as if it combined explosive and incendiary fillings. Both lungs are damaged and leaking blood, we'll have to over-fold to correct that. Metal fragments, at least a dozen of them."

"I'm beginning to see why we screwed Satan over so badly." Lee-Ann Nichols glanced around to make sure nobody had heard her comment. With Hell safely in human hands, being sent there wasn't the threat it had been once. Now, it might almost be interpreted as a promise. But who knew if the Angels hadn't already found a new punishment for humans who defied them. Anyway, the medical team who lived in Michael's palace had a luxurious life compared with those in the slums surrounding The Eternal City. She had a thought, suddenly, of the films she had seen of the Second World War, and of human guns surrounding The Eternal City and pouring artillery fire into it.

"Focus, Lee-Ann. This guy is our meal-ticket remember. Without him, we'd be swabbing floors at best and screaming in Hell at worst."

"Like the man who killed us." Shannon spoke with quiet hate. John Salvi had died in prison and his Second Life body hadn't been found yet, as far as they knew anyway. He was still somewhere in the Hell-Pit.

"I said focus." Gunn snapped at them. "You're lucky, the bastard who killed me is still alive, he'll duck Hell completely. More of these metal fragments in the wound. We'll have to lavage again and the lungs are still leaking. Michael's a tough one, no doubt of that."

"All the angels are."

"True. Right, as far as I can see, the wound is clear and we've got leakage down to a minimum. No bubbles. Let's get him sealed up. Get the extra sharp needles, penetrating this skin of his is a job all on its own."

A few minutes cursing and swearing later, the bullet hole in Michael's chest was sewn up. Gunn flexed his fingers and dabbed some iodine on the spots where he had jabbed himself. In a way it was quite a relief to see red blood again. "All right, he's done. Now, lets take a look at the other one."

"Do we have to? You know who he is?"

"Yeah. But treating those who need it is part of the job description. Who and what they are doesn't enter the equation. It was people who disagreed with that who killed us, remember. Now, let's see. Fragmentation damage, one eye gone, multiple broken bones, radiation burns. . . . . radiation burns? What are our boys using down there? There's been no word of them tossing a nuke."

"Shush David. They might not know about them." It was clear who Lee-Ann meant by "they".

"Surely they must. We know Michael-Lan's been to Vegas and they let a lot of them off around there in the fifties and sixties. Anyway, you're right. Don’t tell them anything we don’t have to. Now back to Uriel-Lan. Other burns, white phosphorus poisoning, severe concussion, multiple penetrating bullet wounds. Oh my, we have our work cut out ladies. Clean up the theater and wheel him in."

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

"We've had a message from Pyongyang, Mister President. Kim Jong-Il has offered to join the Human Alliance and contribute a fair proportion of the North Korean Army to the H.E.A."

"Has he now? What does he want?" President Obama was wary. His early optimism about international relations had become more clouded with experience.

"He wants a seat on the Council at Yamantau. . . . ."

"No way. The Council is the preserve of the nations that have been in this war since the beginning. The ones that put up a fight from the start. North Korea let our people do all the bleeding and dying, no way are they coming in and grabbing a seat now."

"Prime Minister Putin said the same thing Sir. Only he added a few spectacular Russian obscenities. Very impressive vocabulary the Prime Minister has." Hillary Clinton looked quite respectful. She'd memorized the more lurid language for use in the next row with her husband. "They want free oil, enough to run their military and civil economies and then some, free food for their entire population. They want military equipment to bring their armed forces up to the latest standards including F-22s and M1A4s. Not the B2 version, they want the 120mm gun tanks. The list of military equipment alone goes on for quite a few pages.

Obama sighed. Negotiating with the North Koreans was positively painful. "Who do we send?" His tone was almost despairing.

"I thought Joe Lieberman Sir."

"Nice one. Do it. Now, what else?"

"Myanmar Sir. There's a ceasefire in place and we've left the previous junta in charge of the northern third of the country. For a while anyway. They're trying to contact Michael-Lan-Yahweh, they're telling him they have a huge stockpile of drugs they have to get rid of before we capture it and burn the lot. So they're offering it to him for whatever he wants to pay. Better a low price than none. But, there's no reply as yet. We're still hoping of course. If it doesn’t work, we'll head north and finish taking over."

"Thank you, Hillary. Janet, internal security?"

"We're clearing up after the FBI's screw-up. Judge Candlass made the right choice in my opinion but its made rolling up the network that much more difficult. One thing does amuse our people, commenting on the whole mess, Lugasharmanaska said that succubae used to recruit the extremely religious by pretending to be angels."

"That's no surprise." Leon Panetta wasn't impressed. "False flag recruiting is as old as humanity. It all goes to show, if you're going to betray your country, do it for the money. You'll never have any idea who you're really working for."

The working group laughed. "Funny, that's what Luga said as well. Problem is though, the FBI can't use the list they wormed out of Branch. Since they got the list illegally, any arrest they make based on it will be illegal and any information they got from those arrests will also be illegal. So, they have to pretend it doesn’t exist. We've sent copies of it around the world though, if anybody on it turns up somewhere where the controls aren't so tight, well, you know the rest."

"That sounds like extraordinary rendition." Holder was visibly angered.

"No, we're saying if anybody on the list leaves the country voluntarily and goes somewhere by their own choice, that's good for us. We're not picking them off the streets and sending them. The law enforcement agencies are continuing their investigations from the admissible evidence and that's quite productive. Anyway, we'll see how well we can stop up the leaks to Heaven."

"Doctor Surlethe, anything to tell us?"

"No good news, no, Sir. We have a portal signal from the Uriel rescue and we're analyzing it now. Once we’ve done that, perhaps we can duplicate it."

"We still haven’t got through to Heaven?"

"No Sir. After trying for more than a year, we're still stuck. One thing Sir, not scientific. We're coming up to the first anniversary of the victory over Hell. We ought to have a celebration, a big one. People are getting dispirited, tired of the hardship and deadlock. Some really good street parties, a few parades, lifting the meat ration for a week or so will work wonders."

Obama nodded. "Good idea. We'll announce it next week. Make it a three-day vacation and tell everybody there'll be another when Heaven falls. Thank you people."

 

[LTR]

RAF Bruntingthorpe, Leicestershire.

Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome had last been used by the Royal Air Force in 1962 when the 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the USAF and its RB-66Bs had moved out and the station had closed. Since 1972 the aerodrome had become privately owned and used for a number of uses; it had recently become famous as the home of Vulcan B.2 XH558. Shortly after her first flight as once more an RAF bomber XH558’s home had been requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence, becoming home to the V-Bomber Flight and its four Vulcan B.2s and two Victor K.2s, and the RAF’s new Heavy Bomber Development Unit. The HBDU’s job was to prepare the RAF for the arrival of the B-1C Lancers that it had ordered from the Americans.

“What? Four aircraft in 2011?” Group Captain Martin Winters (he was still getting used to his new rank), the new Commanding Officer of the HBDU, shouted into his phone. “What are they doing, building them by hand?”

"That's not so far from the truth. They had the production line tooling in storage but reconditioning it and setting it up was a seriously difficult job. Rockwell moved a lot faster than anybody had a right to expect as it is. Now, they've got to get long-lead components. They're only moving as fast as they are because they're drawing down on the spares inventory for the B-1Bs to bridge the gap."

Winters fumed. “I thought that the Spams were supposed to be the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ and all that male bovine excrement.”

“I’m sorry, Sir.” His contact at MoD Main Building replied. “But the Americans are starting production of the C model Lancer from scratch. It's not a B-1B, it’s a modified and simplified B-1A. For the first six months they’ll only be producing one aircraft a month, rising to two six months after that. Best case scenario has the Americans operating eighteen new Lancers this time next year. Their first priority will be to replace the B-29s and B-50s, and replace the B-2s that were lost in the Whitman tornado. After that they’ll probably be happy enough to give us four aircraft for training purposes. There is some good news, they’ve also promised to allow our personnel to go on exchange to America so they can get some hands on experience with the B-1C.”

“Very nice of them I’m sure.” Winters replied, still far from happy. “I do hope that the Brass Hats and politicians are happy that the RAF’s bomber force will remain at four aircraft for the foreseeable future. Unless somebody else can come through with some spares.

"Between us Sir, the Brass have been trying that. They went to the Russians asking about Tu-95s and Tu-160s."

"Bears and Blackjacks? I don’t suppose. . . . ."

"Not a chance it turned out. Tu-160s are coming off the lines at one per month now, big increase on the pre-war one per year. They're good birds, apparently our people were impressed, but the Russians want them all. As for the Tu-95s, they're restarting the production line but they're having the same problems as the Septics. That left the Chinese of course. . . . ."

"I don't suppose they have anything we could use."

"Oddly, they've got the most productive bomber line at the moment. The good news is that they're churning six Xian H-6Ks off the line a month. The bad news is that the H-6K is a modified Tu-16. Some Rolls-Royce people are over there now. Back in the '80s, the Chinese were playing with an advanced H-6 with Spey engines, they called it the H-8. It never got anywhere but the Chinese are trying again and the guys from Roller are helping them. Again, you're looking at years, not months. There's nobody else, not at the moment. So, you're on your own resources. How are they looking?"

Winter thought for a moment. "Well we might be able to get one, or maybe two more Vulcans flying, but that’s the limit, the remaining survivors are only good for spare parts. At least we’ll be able to retire the two Victors soon, now that our A330 tankers are in production.”

"You should hear the airlines moaning. It's been almost two years since they got any new aircraft. Airbus are building as fast as they can but their entire output is going into military transports and aerial refuellers. Hell's a big place and we've a lot of ground to cover out there. Anyway, talking of spare parts, Sir, the bosses would like to know what the situation is.”

“Could be better, could be worse.” Winters replied. “We’ve been lucky in that Rolls Royce still makes the Olympus engine for maritime and industrial uses. It wasn’t too difficult getting part of the production line switched over to engines for the Vulcan. Other components were more of a problem, though you’d be surprised how many Vulcan and Victor spare parts were sitting forgotten in RAF stores. At current sortie rates we’ve probably got enough to last six to eight months, by which time I hope new components will be in production."

“The Rolls-Royce Conway engines of the Victor were more of a problem, they’re not in production any more and spares are in short supply, but so long as Airbus get their fingers out it shouldn’t be a great problem.”

“I’ll pass that along, Sir, thank you.”

Winters heard a click and knew that the connection had been severed. He replaced the receiver of his own phone and sat back in his chair wondering how he was going to draw up a training program for heavy bomber air and ground crew using six aircraft that had been designed in the 1950s; well challenges were what life in the Services was all about. Winters looked up at two pictures on his wall, one was a print of a new painting depicting XH558 flying through the skies of Hell, the other, of somewhat less artistic merit, was a photo-shopped picture of a B-1B Lancer in the markings of 617 Squadron. The latter had been hung up when there had been an early expectation of delivery of the Lancer B.1 (as the RAF were planning to call the B-1C), now it just served to mock Winters.

He stood up and removed the picture from his wall and placed it in a drawer and locked it away.

Training Camp, 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic), Dis, Hell

"What a phalanx they would have made." Aeneas looked sadly at the daemons who were sitting around cleaning their rifles. "Keep them shoulder-to-shoulder in a phalanx and they would have made chopped turds of everybody."

"Even the Spartans?" Anderson enjoyed goading Aeneas.

"Even us." One of the delights of teasing the Spartan was that he took everything so seriously.

"Well, they did, didn't they." Ori was less easy to needle. "They took us apart over and over again. That's where all the legends of humans fighting against armies of monstrous beasts come from. Sergeant Anderson says that even a few years ago, humans would have had bad problems with them. Still, that's all gone now. Just as our way of war is a thing of the past."

"Could you samurai have taken them?" Aeneas was genuinely interested in the concept.

Ori shook his head. "A small number perhaps. But our arrows would have taken many, many shots to bring them down and to fight a daemon with a sword is a desperate thing. Rifles are better and with them, each of us stands on equal terms with one of them."

"Which brings us back to tactics. Or lack of them."

"Having problems gentlemen?" Sergeant Gray Anderson pulled over a chair and joined his two drill instructors.

"The daemons. You were wrong about them. They can fight as units perfectly."

"That's the problem." Aeneas finished off Ori's comment. "As long as they're in one large unit, they're fine. They move as a unit, fight as a unit, keep their ranks perfectly. It's not on an individual level that you have your problem, it's the next level up. Split that big unit into two small ones and try to get them to cooperate, that's where it all comes apart. Each unit tries to outdo the other, each one wants to 'get the glory' and leave the other behind. They just can't get that idea out of their minds and we're not the people you need to change things."

"If anything, we see their point." Ori added the coda to Aeneas's lecture. He couldn’t help thinking that the weeks lecturing human historians on the realities of life in ancient Greece had done wonders for the previously-reticent Spartan.

"I was rather afraid you'd say that." Anderson sighed. Trying to turn daemons into modern soldiers was proving much harder than anybody had thought possible. The human way of war was a product of how modern humans thought at a very basic level. Daemons seemed incapable of duplicating it.

"Give you an example of this." Aeneas was on a flow now. "Fire and manoeuver. One squad lays down covering fire while the other maneuvers to a better position. Then that squad takes over the firing work from its new position while the first squad moves to its new and improved position. One squad takes a risk to cover the other knowing the other will do the same for it. But the daemons just don’t understand that. Try it and one squad doesn't see why it should take a chance to help its rivals, the other knows that so it doesn't take chances either. So nothing happens."

"So how does Caesar manage it?" Ori was interested. "He has mixed daemon and human units?"

"As far as we can make out, he's keeping humans and daemons in separate low-level units and spacing them out down the line. The humans lay down suppressive fire and provide the support, the daemons do the actual assaults." Anderson thought carefully, "perhaps we could try that. It can't work any worse than the things we are trying now. Anyway, how's your musketry lessons going?"

Ori frowned. "Musketry?"

"Sorry, riflemanship. Musketry is an old term for the skills needed to handle a rifle properly. Making progress?"

"Yes indeed. It is good to get everything working together and make the rifle do what I wish." Ori had adapted to firing rifles quickly and his aim was improving daily. "But there is a part of my mind that hates what they stand for. What honor is there in warfare if a few weeks training can turn out a rifleman who will cut down his enemy at a distance? A sword, a bow, these take great training to use but a rifle? With a little training a peasant can shoot down a valiant warrior."

"That was the whole point." Anderson spoke dryly. After his retirement from the Army, he'd lived alone for a few years before advancing age made that impossible. Then his children had put him in an 'assisted living facility' that, to him, had been a warehouse for people waiting to die. During that time he'd read a lot. "It was guns and citizen-soldiers who ended the reign of absolute kings. Once the king no longer had a monopoly for firepower, their day was done."

"But you still had dictators." Aeneas had listened to his audience as well as speaking to them.

"We did, but they were different. They held power by force, not by an absolute right. Be that as it may, Aeneas, how are you getting on with the M-115?"

"It is a hard weapon. So much to think about. The phalanx was so much easier."

"Isn’t that rather the problem the daemons are having?" Anderson leaned back in his seat and waved to the bartender for three beers. "Let's drink to rifles boys. And in beer, not fungus ale."

MoD Main Building, Whitehall, London.

"Well, the spams blew it. They had Uriel cornered but they let him get away. Again." Field Marshal Dannatt sounded gloomily pleased.

"It's not all a complete loss, according to DIMO(N) we gained a lot of information on portals to Heaven that might crack the place open. We all know this siege is getting on people's nerves."

"Siege, Admiral?"

"What else do we call it? Heaven has us locked out and we're trying to find a way in so we can storm the place. Heaven's locked in and they're making sallies out to try and disrupt our efforts. If that isn't a definition of a siege, I don’t know what is. As for the spams, well, that was quite a spectacular rescue Michael-Lan-Yahweh pulled."

"Did you see the film of him stopping to wave to us as he pulled out? That took big brass ones."

"Courage has never been in short supply with the daemons, nor with the angels I suspect. Although Uriel's chosen mode of attack doesn’t necessarily agree with that. But, if Uriel keeps hitting the septics, they'll get him eventually. It's the information from Myanmar that I found much more interesting."

"The way the Thais pulled off their counter-attack. Very innovative." Dannatt was genuinely impressed.

"That wasn't the Thais, that was the Human Expeditionary Army showing how Petraeus plans to fight future wars. The Thai Corps was just the maneuver element. But no, it was the drugs thing that interests me."

"Michael buying industrial quantities of hard drugs? Yes, that was rather curious. One wonders what he's up to. I understand the septics are watching what is left of Myanmar very closely."

"They are. But I rather think they have missed the point." Admiral West looked thoughtfully out of the window. It's been my experience that vices don’t come singly. Might it be a good time to ask, given Michael buys large quantities of drugs, what else he is buying?"

"I suppose he's going to South America for cocaine, but . . . . ."

"Not drugs, drink. Doesn’t it seem likely to you that if Michael has this immense need for drugs, he also needs drink for the same reasons?"

"Whisky." Light was dawning in Dannatt's head.

"Exactly. Whisky. And brandy, vodka, schnapps, gin, whatever else that's drinkable. Has it struck you that one or two of the Scottish distilleries are doing very well despite the effects of the war? We should put a watch on all the distilleries, at the very least try to catch him buying the stuff. And we should tip the French, Germans, Russians off as well."

"And the Americans, they distill whisky."

Admiral West looked severely at the soldier. "The Americans do not make whisky. They make a light brown, whisky-like fluid. A description that could also include horse's urine to which it bears a strong resemblance. Be that as it may, remember what I said about a siege. Well, think on this. Buying this stuff from Earth is a risky activity for Michael-Lan-Yahweh. Yet it's important enough for him to do and for him to do personally. Surely if it is that important to him, it's equally worthwhile for us to disrupt that supply. At the very least it will annoy him. At best, it'll disrupt his plans enough to force him to something desperate and that'll give us a chance to get him. When people are desperate they make mistakes, bad ones."

"Yahweh hasn't put a foot wrong yet. Although the scholars are telling us Michael is actually the great general of Heaven. So, I suppose we should say that Michael hasn't put a foot wrong yet."

"I might not agree with that." From one corner of the room, Sir John Sawers, head of the SIS, spoke for the first time. "We don’t know of Michael making any critical mistakes but we know nothing of what is happening in Heaven. He might have made that critical mistake already and we just haven't seen it yet. If anything that adds importance to your suggestion Admiral. Any way we can keep pressure on Michael-Lan and Yahweh the better."

 

[LTR]

Home of Lemuel-Lan-Michael, Eternal City, Heaven

Onniel-Lan-Lemuel, mate of Lemuel-Lan-Michael, still resented the reprimands she had received from the guardians of the local temple. They'd noted the growing unhappiness in the Lemuel household and made their own quiet investigations. That had led them to summon her to the temple for advice and counsel. That was what they had called it anyway. Onniel remembered it as being her kneeling in front of the altar for five hours while the Temple Elders lectured her on her failings as a mate and her negligence as a householder. It had been all the worse for the fact that the session had been held in the nave of the temple, open to the view of all. Onniel had no doubt that word of her reprimands would be spreading around the community. She knew without any shadow of doubt, that when she next went to the market, fingers would be pointed at her behind her back and caustic comments made about her failures.

It was made worse by the fact that she knew the comments were justified. She had treated her mate badly, resenting the way his position in the League of the Holy Court was taking up his time. Heaven was facing an existential crisis, that much was whispered in the markets and meeting places. Nobody admitted it but all knew the war with the humans on Earth was not going well. The sheer speed with which they had overrun Hell and killed Satan had been bad enough. The Angels who were old enough to remember the Great Celestial War had spoken of the long, drawn-out deadlock, the inability of either side to gain an advantage over the other. The pointless fighting that had gone on for millennia after millennia was still a sore memory that had led to Satan being called "the Eternal Enemy". Yet the human armies had not just withstood his assault, they had counter-attacked and defeated him within a few short weeks. It was whispered, very quietly, with great caution, if humans could score such a rapid victory against Hell, why could they not do the same against Heaven? And why wasn't Heaven crushing them?

Onniel knew the answers whispered in the street. The humans gained their power from the fact there were traitors in Heaven. There were those in high places who sided with them, obstructing the plans long-developed by the All-Knowing and protecting the humans who defied His will. It was only as she had knelt before the altar with the constant chanting of condemnation and criticism pouring over her that she had finally realized the League of Holy Court was the primary line of defense against such treason. Lemuel was its leading investigator and in devoting himself to its work, he was directly shielding The One Above All from the treachery that threatened all of Heaven. Her petty grievances were of no importance at all compared with the vital work he was engaged in. That had been made clear in the remorseless censure that had been her lot. Lemuel and his work were important, she was not and if she couldn’t adapt to it, there were plenty of others who would be pleased to take her place. By placing her own petty needs ahead of those that affected all of Heaven, she was succumbing to the deadly sin of pride.

That ultimatum was the turning point, the prospect that had made her decide to change her attitude. The fact was, she liked being the mate of such an important person. It gave her power and influence, it meant that others stopped and gave way to her. If she was displaced and it became known that this had been so because the sin of pride had caused her to fail in her duties, her descent would be far and fast. She could not bear to contemplate that so she had laid her grievances aside to labor on behalf of Lemuel. She had spent the rest of the day watching the servants clean the house until not a speck of dust remained anywhere. The stones that inlaid the walls had been polished until they glowed and the refractions of light from their hearts filled their rooms. Finally, she had sent other servants out to procure Lemuel's favorite foods and she had prepared their evening meal for them herself. It had been a long time since she had done that. Now, the table was laid and everything was ready. She took one last look to ensure the room and meal was perfect, then went to greet her mate.

She reached the entrance hall as Lemuel closed the doors behind him. There, she dropped to her knees and swept her wings in front of her face. Lemuel barely nodded at her, still swept up in his attempts to understand the arrays of conspiracy that existed in Heaven. Onniel bit back a sarcastic comment and, instead gave the traditional greeting to her returning mate. "Most Noble One, your home is tranquil and a haven of rest. Food and wine have been prepared for your pleasure."

She saw Lemuel look at her and frown slightly. Had she got the formal greeting wrong? She hadn’t used it for a long time but she was sure that she remembered it properly. It wasn't as if it was a long or complex chant.

"There will be no time for that. I must go out again, to worship The One Above All and continue my dedication to his service. I will be out very late again so do not wait up for me."

Onniel blinked and looked up at him. "But I have prepared our meal myself and remembered all your favorites. Surely this evening's worship can wait for such a short period?"

She saw Lemuel shake his head. "This is work of such great importance that it goes to the highest of the high. I must leave right away. If there is too much food prepared, throw the rest away, there is no need for us to be concerned about such things." Then Lemuel turned and left.

Almost blind with rage, Onniel forgot her new resolutions and ran back to where the meal table had been arranged. She grabbed the food-loaded central plate and hurled it at the closed doors, watching it explode against them with spiteful satisfaction.

Temple of Ceaseless Compliance, Eternal City, Heaven

Once more, Lemuel-Lan-Michael was sprawled on his face in front of the altar chanting his choruses of praise while his companions followed his lead. It was nice to find somewhere he was treated with the respect due to his rank and position. That thought made him slightly guilty, not just because of the deception he was practicing on these people but because he was only going through the motions of prayer. His mind was focussed on his home and the neglect that Onniel seemed to regard as adequate performance of her duties. He had heard the crash behind the doors of his home and seen them shake as the things she had thrown struck them. There just was no way to understand what made women act as they did. He resolved to have another word with the local priests, obviously they hadn't spoken to Onniel forcefully enough.

The Chorus completed, Lemuel straightened up and eased the kink out of his back. His eyes were itching again and he felt his chest filled with the urge to cough. Behind him, Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar smirked slightly, it was amazing what the addition of a little Mace to the bowls of burning incense could achieve. The humans really were so very clever, packaging such a useful chemical in those easy-to-use spray cans. Two of his co-conspirators had upped the effect of the Mace-doped incense by giving Lemuel a couple of discrete puffs of the undiluted product at suitable points in the chorus. As a result, Lemuel was in a slightly improved state of distress. Well, it was time to "cure" him.

"Some Gatorade, Most Noble One? To ease your throat and add extra harmony to the praises we sing to the One Above All. We have the green one this evening."

"That would be most acceptable." Lemuel liked the green Gatorade. He accepted the glass gratefully and drank the contents down, hot noticing the small quantity of hash oil that had been mixed in with it. He felt the warm glow though, and the world began to pick up a rosier hue. Then, to his embarrassment, his stomach rumbled slightly.

"Most Noble One, you have not eaten this evening?" Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar faked the concern beautifully.

"No, I came straight here, feeling a most urgent need to join in a chorus of praise to The Nameless One."

Perpetiel grinned to himself, this urgent need to pray was a lot more chemical than emotional. In fact, it put a whole new meaning on the phrase 'hooked on phonics'. The amount of opiates he was consuming was beginning to have its effects of Lemuel. Even the Tylenol he took for his headaches, ones that were growing more frequent every day, was actually Tylenol 4 and contained sixty milligrams of codeine per tablet. It was time to up the ante a little.

"Most Noble One, you are not alone in this problem. One of our experiences here is that so many of our congregation come here straight from their daily duties and do not have time to eat. So, as part of our temple we have a small eating place, one where food can be properly reverences and then served to the needy. After all, is not sharing good fortune and spreading one's advantages to those in need also a form of service to the One Above All?"

Lemuel nodded, that made sense after all. He followed Perpetiel out of the main chamber of the temple to a central courtyard where the smell of cooking meat wafted deliciously across the garden. Perpetiel waved in the direction where two female angels were tending what appeared to be an old-style reverential altar, one where hot coals were placed underneath a metal grid and food offerings were placed over the flames, to cook in the heat. Humans had once made their offerings to The Almighty One that way, but they had ceased doing so. Lemuel reflected it was good to see the old traditions being restored. Perhaps if they hadn't fallen into abeyance, things would not have reached this pass. Then he shook his head, for some reason his thinking seemed a little fuzzy these days.

One of the angels had been working quickly. She had taken a small, round loaf of leavened bread and split it in half. Then, she had placed some green leaves on the bottom half, added a red sauce and put it to one side. A white sauce had been added to the top half before it too was put to one side. Then, she lifted a cake of cooking meat off the altar, placed it in the loaf and handed it to him with a respectful smile. "It is called a hamburger Most Noble One. Enjoy it in the spirit in which it is intended."

Lemuel took a bite of the meal and found it was good. So much so that he had finished it almost before he was aware of the juice dribbling down his chin. One of the female angels wiped it for him and respectfully offered him another hamburger. This one took him a little longer to eat but the sensation in his stomach was that of warmth and satisfaction. He suddenly realized he was actually happy, for the first time in a long time.

"This is most kind of you Perpetiel-Lan. Your community here is an example to us all. I am sure He Who Must Not Be Named would be profound in his recognition of your services to him and to our community."

Like Hell, Perpetiel thought. He'd massacre us all on the spot. "That thought is profoundly pleasing to us Most Noble One. Might I suggest you try these poor snacks? They are called fries."

An hour later, a well-fed Lemuel left the Temple, already writing his report in his mind. There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that this Temple was the center of human influence and the portal by which human goods were arriving in Heaven. The situation saddened him, it was obvious that the people here were working from the best of motives but the whole Temple of Ceaseless Compliance set-up was an example of how sin and depravity wormed its way into the heart under guise of honest virtue. Lemuel sighed, he really didn't want to go home this evening. Compared with the temple, it was a cold, unwelcoming place and after Onniel's behavior earlier, he had no doubt that it would be even more so. Instead, he decided to go back to his office and write up the report that was forming in his mind. That decision made, as he stepped out of the door of the temple, he turned right for his office, not left for his home.

That change saved his life. The concentrated sound blast that hit the wall of the temple was above and behind him, not directly over his head. The outer wall collapsed under the blast, dropping a great pile of masonry where he would have been standing. Lemuel was caught on the outside of the avalanche, rocks hit him and threw him to one side. His skin was lacerated by the shattered sheets of sapphire that followed the masonry down. But, he lived and was merely stunned by the explosion. Dumbly, his mind still fuzzy and confused, he realized that an attempt had been made on his life. This was unhead of, nobody ever tried to harm another being in Heaven. Well, not another Angel anyway, humans didn't count of course. Then a shocking thought struck him. The assassination wasn't aimed at him as a casual worshipper at the Temple of Ceaseless Compliance, it was aimed at him as an investigator of the League of the Holy Court. Somebody knew exactly who he was and had tried to take him out.

Inside the temple, the meeting was breaking up as the 'worshippers' got ready to head back to the Montmartre Club for a few badly-needed drinks. The crash of the front wall's collapse brought the hasty preparations to a grinding halt. Perpetiel led the race to see what had happened and stopped dead at the sight of Lemuel, sprawled out on the sidewalk with masonry on top of him.

"If I'd known we were going to kill him, I wouldn't have used the top-grade hamburger." Lailah-Lan sounded slightly grumpy. She was justifiably proud of her hamburgers.

"We weren't going to kill him. This is somebody else." Perpetiel looked at the figure on the ground. It was moving, trying to get up. "He's alive, get him inside, make sure he stays that way. Whoever did this might try again."

DIMO(N) Conference Suite, Pentagon.

"Books Luga?" Colonel Baylor was surprised. Somehow he hadn't thought of Luga actually studying anything. Surreptitiously he put his foot near one of the floor vents. To his relief he could feel the air current, the system was running full blast.

"Law books. I have decided to study law. I think it is hard to live here unless I am a lawyer. There are so many laws covering so many things. So I must study law."

"Didn’t you have laws in Hell?"

"Only one. If Satan gets mad, take cover. Other than that, the law is what the strongest person says it is. Here it is different."

"Our Luga a lawyer. Now there's a terrifying thought." The voice came from the stenographer sitting in the corner. The interjection got her a stern glance from Colonel Baylor, stenographers by job definition were supposed to be neither heard nor seen.

"What about Heaven Luga? Do you know much about the laws there? Do they have any?"

"They do although I do not know much about them More or less the same as your ten commandants. That should not surprise you. They came from the same place after all. They have a sort of police in Heaven, it is called The League of the Holy Court. I think it is mostly concerned with keeping the humans in Heaven in order."

"There are humans in Heaven then?"

"Of course, there are many of them. The Angels use them as menial servants."

Baylor sighed. If Lugasharmanaska could be believed, and that was always open to question, everything in the Second Life was very different from the pictures that had been presented. "Right Luga, today, I'd like to talk about the wars here on Earth. Particularly about the other beings, ones we think of as gods."

"Why do you want to know about that bunch of losers?" Luga was openly scornful.

"They existed then?"

"Certainly. They probably still do. We ran them off Earth, Yahweh and Satan together did. They had a good-cop, bad-cop act going for them."

"I wonder who the Bad Cop was?" The stenographer got another angry glance from Baylor.

"Usually Satan. But we converted their followers and deprived them of power. By the time we'd finished they had so few followers it wasn't worth them staying. Only one of the groups really put up a fight and we had to strike a deal. If they went, their followers wouldn't be tormented in Hell."

"So that's what Gaius Julius Caesar meant when he said he and his friends were protected by powerful gods." Baylor spoke thoughtfully. "There always were rumors that he and some other Romans were part of a mystical cult. Whatever it was, it must have saved their necks."

"You'll have to talk to him about that.' Luga was dismissive. "There were quite a few others as well. I think they were the first ones out of the Hell-pit."

"Hardly surprising. So there are other beings from other bubble-worlds in Universe-Two."

Luga took a moment to work that one out. "Certainly. But they haven't been seen on Earth for millennia. We saw the last of them off at least three thousand years ago."

Luga spoke for a couple of hours, describing the battle for control of Earth. "So, you see, most of the religions are based on memories of those other groups. That's all I know really."

Baylor relaxed and the stenographer signed off on the transcript she'd created. Then, he leaned forward again. "Do you really want to become a lawyer Luga?"

"No, but I want to understand the law. These laws you have are a new concept to me. My television show makes me too much money for me to give it up."

Baylor couldn’t resist asking. "How much do you make on that show Luga."

She grinned exposing her long yellow fangs. "When we broadcast, one thousand dollars per day. Or, as my bank manager says, 'how now, green thou'."