Between Heaven and Hell

by Jeff Kirvin

  Daniel looked up, bleary-eyed. “Jack,” he grunted.

  Jack took a seat across from Daniel and lit a cigarette. “When was the last time you slept?”

  Daniel managed a weary smile. “What day is it?”

  “You got to ease up, Daniel,” Jack said, blowing smoke at the lone, dangling light bulb. “We aren’t going anywhere if you collapse from exhaustion.”

  Daniel sat up straight, hearing his spine creak as he did it. “I’m fine, Jack.”

  “And I’m Harry Truman. You have to relax, Daniel.”

  “You think Michael’s relaxing? Or Gabriel? We can’t afford to delay this any longer than we have to. I have to get—”

  “That’s your problem,” Jack said.

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘I have to’,” Jack said. “Not ‘we’. You aren’t in this alone. You’ve got Ricardo, Manuel and me here to help you, and the leaders of the Underground around the world to delegate authority to. You’ve come a long way since I first met you. When we started in the DTF, you were a hero, but not a leader. I saw potential, and that’s the big reason I asked to be assigned to your team, but you didn’t know much about leading others back then. You still wanted to do everything yourself.

  “Now, on the other hand, you really are the leader everyone thinks you are. You know how to use your reputation and your actions to inspire those who follow you. Most of the folks out there,” Jack said, jerking this thumb towards the main tunnel, “would follow you anywhere, do anything you ordered, without question. You know how to lead. You just don’t know how to administrate.”

  Daniel knew Jack was right. “Fine,” he sighed heavily, the weight of the past few weeks still pulling him into his chair. “What do I still need to learn, o Buddha?”

  Jack grinned. “Start by trusting your subordinates. The others leading the Underground around the world are in their positions because they’ve proven they can do the job. Give them their goals, then let them find a way to accomplish them. You don’t have to do it all on your own.”

  Daniel nodded as Jack stood up. “And get some sleep for crying out loud,” Jack said as he opened the door. “You look like Hell.”

  Daniel leaned back in his chair, and was asleep before Jack closed the door.

  Preparations for the offensive began in earnest two days later. Forces that had swelled remarkably since Daniel’s address began to mobilize around the world, waiting quietly for Daniel’s order to attack.

  In San Diego, the target was a golden, armored bunker used by the armored angels that patrolled the city. Lacking any Care Centers nearby (the closest one was the one south of Los Angeles that Daniel and Ricardo had liberated), the bunker was the only angelic target in the area. Unfortunately, its defenses were only slightly less intimidating that those of Heaven itself. Scouting reports estimated over twenty armored angels present at any given time, and the building, while ornate and beautiful, was nearly indestructible. Daniel knew that they would be outgunned and overmatched, but the situation wouldn’t be different anywhere else in the world. It was time to make their stand.

  At 10 P.M. GMT, the humans around the world attacked as one.

  Daniel and his troops emerged from their hiding places near the bunker and advanced under the early afternoon sun. The timing was less than optimal for them, but it would be the dead of night in the more oppressed parts of the world, and Daniel figured the Indians and Chinese could use every advantage they could get. To pay the price for that, Daniel fought in broad daylight. Such was life.

  The first few minutes of the attack went well. The angels were caught off guard. The first volleys of explosives launched at the bunker went unanswered, and left significant denting and scoring on the metal walls. Daniel wondered if the surprise attack might work even better than he’d hoped. Then, like angry hornets, the flying metal angels swarmed from their nest.

  Pyrrhic Victory

  Daniel recognized one of the angels right away by the golden markings on his armor. “Gabriel.”

  As if in response, Gabriel turned his armored head in mid-flight and spotted Daniel. The angel brought his weapon to bear as Daniel raised his grenade launcher, and they fired simultaneously.

  Daniel dove for cover as Gabriel’s rocket whizzed by his head, exploding safely behind him. Gabriel wasn’t so lucky, the explosion from Daniel’s grenade ripping off his left wing and forcing him to the ground.

  Daniel wore riot armor very much like his DTF combat uniform, but he had no illusions about taking on Gabriel in a toe to toe fight. The only thing he did have in his favor was that the other angels seemed to be ignoring him, not wanting to get between Gabriel and his prize. Testing the theory, Daniel turned and ran.

  As he expected, only Gabriel followed. “You can’t escape me this time, Cho!” the angel’s amplified voice bellowed.

  I don’t plan on it, Daniel thought. The angels’ bunker was situated on a huge lawn that spanned a city block, but it was surrounded by downtown San Diego. Daniel was soon off the burning grass and running through the streets, dodging the occasional rocket from Gabriel. He soon found cover around a corner, and let the speeding angel have a grenade when Gabriel came into view.

  The explosion was dead on, and knocked Gabriel off his feet. Daniel noticed that the angel’s armor was scorched and blackened in places, but still intact.

  Daniel ran again, and the chase continued.

  Manuel wasn’t having as easy a time. He and his men were pinned down behind a burning truck by two angels. Manuel figured it wouldn’t be long before one of them tried a flanking maneuver. Manuel knew they were only fifty yards from the entrance to the bunker, and that if they could get around these two angels, they could probably gain entry. Two of his men were badly injured and weren’t going anywhere, leaving only him and three others to remove two armored angels.

  Bad odds, Manuel thought, shaking his head with a sardonic grin. He risked a peek around the side of the van, and a rocket whistled by his head. Both the angels were still there. No choice, he realized.

  “All right, here’s the plan,” he said to his men. “I’m going to run off to the left and try to draw their fire. While they’re watching me, you three go out to the right and knock them down. You’re only going to get one shot, so watch your aim.”

  The other three men nodded.

  “On three,” Manuel said. “One, two,

  “Three!”

  On cue, he burst out from behind the van and ran as fast as his legs could carry his heavy frame. As expected, both angels turned and fired on him. He heard his own men returning fire just as the first rocket caught up with him. The explosion blew him off his feet and tossed him through the air. As the ground flipped beneath him, he saw both angels drop and his men move to finish them off. He hit the ground hard just before the other rocket found him.

  Daniel’s game of cat and mouse was beginning to take the wind out of him. He’d managed to hit Gabriel solidly twice now (three, counting the wing shot), and scored three other near misses, all without being hit himself. But, he cautioned himself, one would be all it took to get through his armor. Daniel didn’t have the leeway that Gabriel enjoyed. He had to end this.

  If his sense of direction was correct, he had very nearly led Gabriel in a circle leading back to the bunker. If he could get to some reinforcements…

  Daniel left his hiding place and took off at a run. Gabriel spotted him and followed close behind.

  Ricardo was doing fairly well.

  His group had confirmed the destruction of eight angels so far and they were hard at work on a ninth. They had the lone angel pinned down, and it was just a question of whittling down its defenses.

  As Ricardo stepped back to supervise, he heard a familiar voice screaming his name over the comm channel. He turned and saw Daniel running a zig-zag pattern towards him, a one-winged angel with gold markings hot on his tail and firing wildly.

  Ricardo quickly had half his men cease fire. “General Cho’s i
n trouble!” he shouted.

  As one they turned and took aim at Gabriel. Ricardo heard Daniel’s voice again. “As soon as I find cover, blast him!” Daniel shouted, sounding very out of breath. Ricardo nodded and relayed the orders to his men.

  Gabriel was no fool. He saw what was sizing up against him, and he was prepared. The instant Daniel dove to the ground, Gabriel switched targets and fired on Ricardo and his men just as they fired on him.

  Daniel rolled over on his back just in time to see several grenades impact on Gabriel’s armor, blowing it apart. The fire from the explosions reached high into the afternoon sky, and Gabriel was no more.

  Daniel turned to wave thanks to Ricardo. He found only a smoking crater where his friend had stood. Daniel stood and began to lurch over to it when a badly damaged angel appeared from behind the crater and tried to fly.

  Daniel destroyed it, then collapsed to his knees.

  The battle wore on for a while longer, but after Gabriel’s destruction, the outcome was never really in doubt. Late that afternoon the last angel in San Diego was destroyed and the bunker fell into the hands of the Underground.

  Relatively speaking, Daniel’s attack was a stunning success. At the end of the day that would long be remembered at the First Offensive, just over half the angelic population of Earth had been destroyed. More than two thirds of the human attackers had perished to buy such a victory. In New Delhi, more than ninety percent of the resistance fighters perished before destroying the angels, in the end just running unarmed and unarmored at the armored angels until the angels’ weapons ran out, eventually ripping the angels apart through sheer force of numbers.

  Around the world, the survivors rejoiced, then prepared to do it all again.

  Daniel sat on the scorched ground outside the captured bunker, staring at Gabriel’s charred helmet in his hands. Around him, the members of the Underground celebrated their victory in the late afternoon sun. Daniel heard footsteps walking towards him and looked up to see Jack’s smiling, if filthy, face. Daniel nodded and frowned.

  Jack plopped down on the dirt next to Daniel. “So you’ve seen?”

  “I have,” Daniel said. The reports from the other commanders had come in just over a half-hour before.

  “You know,” Daniel said, sitting back and thinking, “when the Greek general Pyrrhus defeated the Romans at Asculum, losing most of his forces in the process, he was reported as saying, ‘Another such victory and I must return to Epirus alone.’ I know how he felt.”

  “This isn’t a Pyrrhic victory, Daniel.”

  Daniel laughed, a bitter sound. “Isn’t it?”

  “Look around you,” Jack said. “We won.”

  “Won what?” Daniel snapped. “We lost two thirds of our forces to take out only half of the angels. Now, you can do the math if you want, but that almost never works out.”

  “So we’ll get more people,” Jack said. “After today the whole planet knows the angels can be beaten, and while we can replenish our numbers, they can’t.”

  “So I get the privilege of sending millions more to their deaths. Wonderful.”

  “That’s the wrong way to look at it, and you know it, Daniel. Look out there,” Jack said, sweeping his arm around the carnage of the battlefield. “You had just as much of a chance of buying it today as anyone else, yet you survived. So did I.”

  “Ricardo and Manuel weren’t so lucky.”

  “True,” Jack said, nodding. “And they’ll be missed. You have to understand that people die in war.”

  “I know,” Daniel said, and he threw Gabriel’s helmet as far away as he could.

  “But Daniel,” Jack said as he put a hand on Daniel’s arm, “people live in war, too. You may not believe this, but everyone here today was here of their own accord. The Underground has no conscript soldiers. Those that died today died while fighting for something they believed in. Maybe I’m just a romantic old soldier, but I think dying for something you believe in is a pretty good way to go. Honor the people that died today by honoring what they chose to die for.”

  Daniel was silent for a long moment. “Jack?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Why me?”

  “Why you what, exactly?”

  Daniel laid back in the dirt, placing his hands behind his head. “How did I become … whatever it is that everyone thinks I am? Everyone looks to me to be this great leader, but half the time I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

  Daniel sat up again and looked at Jack. “Sometimes I just want to scream ‘Don’t you people know I’m just making this up as I go?’, but I can’t. I just have to keep going and hope I don’t make some horrible mistake.”

  Jack smiled. “That’s why you’re the leader. Daniel, nobody knows what they’re doing all the time, and no one expects you to have all the answers. But we trust you to make the best decision, and we follow where you lead. Try letting yourself lead us, quit hamstringing yourself with doubts, and you’ll be fine.”

  Daniel shook his head. “You were a leader of Navy SEALs and a major metro area SWAT team. Why do you follow me?”

  Jack grinned and got to his feet. “Because whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not, you’re the best damn leader of men I’ve ever seen. You inspire. You ennoble. Millions of people will throw themselves into battle against almost certain death if you say it’s necessary. I could never be what you are.

  “Sir.”

  Jack offered a quick salute, then walked away. Daniel watched him go, then turned his attention to the setting sun and thought about tomorrow.

  Dark Angel

  Daniel soon found that tomorrow would have to wait.

  Before the sun had completely set, one of the Underground fighters (whose name Daniel was chagrined that he didn’t remember) came running up to him.

  “Sir! Come look!”

  Daniel sprang to his feet with much more energy than he thought he had. Without a word, he followed the young soldier into the bunker.

  “It’s right this way, sir,” said the soldier, leading Daniel quickly through a labyrinth of corridors.

  “What’s your name, soldier?” Daniel asked.

  “Simmons, sir.”

  “What’s so important, Simmons?”

  Simmons led Daniel into a brightly lit room. “This,” he said.

  On the far wall, Daniel was amazed to see a gleaming white and empty suit of angelic armor.

  Fifteen minutes later, Daniel was alone in the room with the armor, Jack and Manuel’s successor, Julia Cohen.

  “Well, people,” Daniel asked, “what do we do with this?”

  “The way I see it,” said Cohen, a former university history professor, “we have no choice but to disassemble it for study. The more weaknesses we can find in the design, the easier it will be to exploit those weaknesses in the future.”

  Daniel started to reply, but Jack cut him off. “No,” he said sharply. “This is too valuable a weapon to just let someone rip it apart and hope we can figure out a weak spot. We have to test it, figure out how to use it, then save it as our ace in the hole.”

  “And in the meantime,” Cohen countered, “we pass up this opportunity to let our fighters get a better idea of what we’re up against.”

  “If we want to win, yes,” Jack nearly shouted.

  “That’s enough,” Daniel said, and both Jack and Cohen fell silent. “You’re both right, and you’re both wrong. We will study the armor, from the inside, but we aren’t going to disassemble it. It seems to me that we can divine the weaknesses of the armor more effectively by putting it to use than by dissecting it.” Daniel walked over to the armor and ran his hand over its sleek lines.

  “Excellent idea, sir,” Jack said, earning him a poisonous gaze from Cohen. “I’ll find someone to start putting the armor through its paces right away.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Daniel said, turning back to them. “I can’t very well ask anyone under me to do something I’m not willing to do m
yself, can I?”

  Jack did not at all like the look of Daniel’s smile.

  The testing officially began early the next morning. With the help of Jack and a few technicians, Daniel struggled to put on the armor.

  The armor was divided essentially into two parts. The first, inner layer was a neoprene-like bodysuit lined with electrodes. Naming it the “wetsuit”, the technicians had surmised that it was responsible for transmitting and interpreting the neural impulses of the wearer.

  Over the wetsuit fit the powered exoskeleton. Even without the muscle-mirroring armor plates, the exoskeleton weighed more than five hundred pounds. While it was presumed than an angel, with their far superior physical strength, could suit up alone, a human required several assistants to put on the suit. Daniel felt like a knight of the Round Table preparing for battle.

  Much to everyone’s surprise, as soon as the exoskeleton came in contact with the wetsuit, the circuit completed and Daniel was able to move that part of his body with minimum effort. He put on the final glove and his helmet with no outside assistance at all. They had still not managed to locate the power supply, but it was apparently very efficient and always available.

  Preparations finally complete, Daniel trudged out of the bunker and into the mid-morning sunlight. The lawn was still in ruin from the previous day’s fighting, but Daniel still tried to find a patch of ground free of grass to begin testing. No sense burning what little’s left, he thought.

  Daniel took a look around and tried to familiarize himself with the helmet’s displays. The interior of his visor contained a heads-up display, much like those used in the cockpits of fighter jets. Some of the readouts, like airspeed and altitude, were meaningless on the ground. However, he did have access to information about his groundspeed, range to whatever object was directly in front of him, and the condition of his weapons. He noted that his suit was fully armed and fueled with zero damage.

  Before he took to the air, Daniel decided to test the physical abilities of the suit while still on the ground. He walked over to the wrecked and burned out hulk of a truck at the edge of the lawn.