The Salvation War 2: Pantheocide

by Slade, Stuart

  A horrible presentiment passed through Schatten's mind. “What do you mean red? Heaven is supposed to have white light.”

  “For sure, Sir. And it may well have. But we ain't there, we're in Hell. We're off Loran coverage but I think we're about a thousand miles east of Dis. Far outside anywhere we've occupied to date. We're been snookered, Sir. Want us to hang around here or back out?”

  Schatten thought for a second. “Anything else you can see?”

  “Grass here is all chewed up and looks like there's a lot of dried blood around. Silver and red I think. That's all. Otherwise, pretty empty here Sir.”

  “Stevenson, might as well evacuate out of there. We'll debrief you on your return.”

  Schatten sat back down in his seat and shook his head. Michael hadn't gone directly from Earth to Heaven, he'd used Hell as a staging point, then gone back to some deserted location on Earth for the trip back to Heaven. Antactica perhaps? Or the wilds of the Amazonian rain forest? Who knew? By the look of it, he made all his people do the same, no matter how critical the situation was for them. Then, he shook his head again and sighed. “Damn, that guy's good.”

  Refugee Camp, Bath-Edie, Georgia, USA

  “I am sorry about the conditions here, but this is the best we can do.” President Obama looked at the emergency accommodation that had been provided for the family in front of him. It really was about as basic as it could be. He felt acute guilt that his administration couldn't do better for these people, but with Bermuda being left uninhabitable by the repeat impact of storms and most of the Carolina/Georgia coast in barely better condition, it was a question of what could be achieved, not what he would like to achieve.

  The scale of the weather attacks on the east coast and the Carribean Islands hadn't been as bad as the weather experts had feared. For some reason, it had been a quiet hurricane season and, they believed, had it not been for Heavenly interference, probably not one hurricane would have made it ashore. Even with the tropical disturbances being artificially pumped up and steered, the disasters had been limited. Everybody had expected Florida to have been hammered as badly as Bermuda yet the state had escaped virtually unscathed. Yet, for all that, there were still more refugees needing help than resources available to aid them.

  “We'll make out Mister President.” The man's English accent sounded far out of place in this location. “We're better off than many thanks to you.”

  “And to everybody else Philip.” The man's wife spoke reprovingly. “Think of everybody who is helping out.”

  That was true. Food packages and other aid were coming in from all over the world. This camp had just received a big shipment of Vietnamese rice and there were Vietnamese troops helping unload it while this tour went down. That thought made Obama smile. I wonder what the Vietnam vets here think of Vietnamese troops on American soil. “That's true ma'am. We're all pulling together now.”

  The woman nodded and then her face saddened. “We still haven't heard from my sister in Los Angeles. I hope she made it.” Then she started to cry.

  “I can do something about that.” Obama put on his sincere voice and then gave an abrupt wave to an aide. “Take this lady's name and address here down and the details of her sister in Los Angeles. Then find out what happened to her and get them in contact.” He turned to the woman again. “It surprised me to find out high people jump when the White House gets interested. We'll get you word soon.”

  The Presidential party moved down the row of shelters, the President shaking hands with the adults while Michelle Obama talked to the children. The camp's very nature told of the problem it addressed, while the directed weather attacks hadn't inflicted the appalling casualties experienced in Tel Aviv, Los Angeles or Naypyidaw, they were an ever-increasing burden on a over-strained, over-stretched world economy. And they never stopped. Now, massive tornados in Kansas or tropical storms hitting the Carolinas coast were too frequent to rate highly on the news. Yet, their economic damage mounted every day. Obama chided himself for thinking that. Over 153,000 Israelis had died when Tel Aviv had been hit. The Israeli Government had sacrificed them, along with itself, to keep the Human Alliance together. Worrying over economic damage from storms seemed petty and selfish in comparison with that sacrifice.

  The tour of the camp was ending, now there would be a press conference before he flew over to Colorado to visit another camp for refugees from Tornado Alley. He fixed his friendly smile into place and stood up on the podium his aides had erected for him. It had the Great Seal on it, the new one with the Eagle looking firmly at the arrows clutched in its left talons. These were not the days for the olive branch clasped in its right. The questions from the journalists were the same. How many had died? How long would the war last? How much higher would taxes rise? There was a tiredness in the questions themselves, one that spoke of increasing war-weariness. Eventually, Obama saw the overweight shape of one of his more virulent political critics rising. Damn, I thought he was in a Florida hospital somewhere.

  “Mister President, how is it that under President Bush's leadership we defeated and occupied Hell in eight months but now, after sixteen months of war against Heaven, we're no closer to victory than we were when we started.”

  “Well, Rush, an intelligent question deserves a simple two-word answer.” Obama paused and let the tension build up slightly. “We were extremely fortunate that the Curbstomp War worked out the way it did. The enemy didn’t understand us or know our capabilities. They relied on their traditional tactics as a result and they fought on the ground they knew best from their previous incursions on Earth. That threw them against the best army we have under the best general we have. We were lucky in that our allies, notably the Russians, the British, the Indians, the Iranians, all came swiftly to our aid and we were able to subject our opponents to withering firepower. Then, when their army collapsed we were able to pursue them literally to the gates of Hell itself. Due to the actions of our special forces, and those of our allies of course, we were then able to mount operations that defeated the authorities in Hell, eliminate their control and free the humans they held in vile captivity. In contrast, our enemies in Heaven have isolated themselves from us. We have them under siege and we are pounding on their gates. This is a longer, more complex task against a much more capable and skilled opponent. But, mark my words, soon, very soon, we will break through those gates, crush our enemies within Heaven and establish a just and democratic regime there as well.”

  The commentator looked confused. “Mister President, that wasn't a two-word answer.”

  “That wasn't an intelligent question.”

  Chapter Forty Five

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

  “Salaphael, how could you betray our Peerless Father this way?”

  “It is not I who betray the One Above All. Those of his advisors who speak false words to Him and by deceit lure Him away from the path of Absolute Righteousness, they are the ones who betray The Immaculate Presence.”

  By which you mean me. Michael-Lan looked at Salaphael-Lan-Yahweh without a shadow of regret at the state to which he had been reduced. The League of Holy Court had struck at dawn, using the lists that Lemuel and his team had so carefully compiled. Humans, angels, archangels had been dragged from their rest, placed in golden shackles and taken to the interrogation centers and prisons. The most important ones, the leaders, had been kept here in the Eternal City. The rest had been taken outside, to detention camps in the countryside. It would be easier to get rid of them quietly there.

  “Salaphael, my old friend...”

  Michael-Lan's words were cut off, harshly and abruptly. “I am not your friend, Michael-Lan. Once perhaps, but you have abandoned the ways of millennia and cast away everything that we hold dear. You are not the friend of any here in the Eternal City, you are the center of the poison that corrupts everything that was, is now and ever more shall be.”

  And so truth and falsehood get irretrievably mixed. Y
es, Salaphael, I am at the center of the corruption that slowly spreads throughout the Eternal City. And in being so I am a better friend to every angel here than you could possibly imagine. For to have the humans come here with their weapons in their hands and hate in their hearts, that would be the final death of us all. Michael-Lan thought of the fate of Naypyidaw and Tel Aviv, the huge, boiling mushroom clouds that had consumed the cities. In his mind's eye, he saw many more clouds, each dwarfing the ones he had already seen, swallowing the Eternal City. More and bigger certainly for Michael knew his humans well. If they had a weapon of great power, they would have built many of them and they wouldn't stop until they had built them of incomparably greater power. Where destruction was concerned, humans just did not know when to stop.

  “If you so wish, then so shall it be.” Michael-Lan injected sadness into his voice. “Salaphael-Lan-Yahweh, your words show that you have fallen victim to the deadly sin of Pride. Have you become so blinded by Pride that you cannot see the falsity of what you say? Our Beloved, All-Knowing Father cannot be deceived in the way you suggest for He knows what resides in the hearts of us all. Our thoughts are but an open book to him, to be read as he wills. His knowledge and insight are beyond anything that we, in our poor way, can imagine. All that is happening now is as he wills. Even your insurgency, carefully planned and structured as it is, is but a part of His Greater Plan.”

  Salaphael laughed at that idea. “If this were true, the League would have exposed us earlier and... ” Then he stopped himself, he had been about to stumble out with the knowledge that not all of his insurgent cells had been rounded up. His organization still existed. Sorely hurt it was true, but it was out there. It could fight on, it could restore Yahweh to His rightful place and cast down those who had betrayed him.

  “Who knows what Yahweh has in His Sublime Mind? Perhaps he refrained from giving the order until now so that the fruit of your rebellion would be ripe and fit for picking? Perhaps he wishes to test the efficiency of the League of Holy Court. If so His Divine Wish will be fulfilled. We will get from you and the others the information we need. By human methods if your descent into sin makes that necessary.”

  His hands secured by golden shackles, his mind by the dogma he had taken for granted all his life, Salaphael was helpless to resist the words that were spoken so gently and regretfully. Doubts, so long absent from his mind, now swirled around him. He had convinced himself that Michael-Lan and those who aligned himself with the Great General were responsible for the decay of Heavenly virtue he saw everywhere. But, Michael-Lan's words cast uncertainty into his mind. Did The One Above all plan this as a test of the obedience of His subjects? Was this part of the process of cleansing the Eternal City before the final, decisive conflict with the humans?

  Michael-Lan saw the cloud of doubt replace the adamantine clarity of dogma on Salaphael's face. You poor dumb cluck. You still believe in omnipotence and omniscience. You still think that such attributes are possible or even plausible. Can't you see that it is your belief in such things that holds us all from learning? Humans broke out of their cage and leaped into their future the day they rejected belief of omniscience and asked the one simple question Yah-Yah fears more than any other. Why? Now, I must ask that question. “Salaphael, there are some questions I must ask before your interrogation is handed over to others. Why did your organization try to kill my friend Lemuel?”

  “Lemuel? Because he was falling into the way of sin. He was becoming corrupted and sliding away from the True Path. His position at the League of Holy Court should have made him immune to temptation. The fact that he was not meant that he had to die.”

  Michael nodded. Framed in Salaphael's terms of reference, that made sense. “And my other question. What possessed you to make the humans use their weapons against each other. With the failure and death of Uriel, that was a maneuver of great skill. I would applaud it.” And do intend to take credit for it. I just want to find out how it was done.

  Salaphael looked at him in amazement. “That was not your doing? It was certainly none of ours.”

  Michael's Palace, Aukumea, Heaven

  “Distributed Axonic Brain Damage.” Doctor David Gunn rolled the words around as if they were a death sentence. Which was precisely what they were.

  “Say again?” Michael-Lan was bemused, distracted. The last six words spoken to him by Salaphael had been rolling around his mind ever since he had started the flight home. Did they mean there was yet another conspiracy aimed at supplanting Yahweh? Or was this Yahweh himself with a deeper plan than Michael had given him credit for? Michael-Lan had to know the answer to that question.

  “Dumah and Fluffy both have massive, irreversible brain damage. Fluffy can't recover, he's dying and we can't save him. Dumah, well, she might survive but she'll be a vegetable. Her brain is decaying hourly. Just a question now of whether the damage will stop spreading before her vital functions are compromised. I won't hold out many hopes there.”

  “How did this happen? They were both badly wounded I know, but she was speaking and seemed rational. What went wrong?”

  Gunn sighed and waved to Shannon Lowney. She brought a great plate over, one that bore a life-sized copy of an angelic brain made out of Michael-Lan's favorite strawberry Jello. “This is her brain right? Well, she got caught in a pattern of bomb explosions, big ones. They threw her backwards and forwards, side to side, with incredible violence. They literally shook her brain apart.” Gunn shook the plate hard. “Look at the Jello. See all the cracks running through it now? Well, her brain is like that, there are fractures all through it. Now, the brain is linked up by something called axons. When her brain fractured, those axons were torn apart. Some severed completely, others just damaged. Now, they're all dying and as they die, so too do parts of her brain. We can't go in there to fix it, its her whole brain that's affected. Fluffy's been hit as well, just as badly, but his brain is smaller and simpler. It's gone. He's got a few hours more at the outside.”

  Michael-Lan looked over at the mass of the Scarlet Beast, sprawled across his garden. It was barely moving now, its tongue sagging out of his mouth, its chest moving in irregular pants. Its eyes were already dimming and the intelligence that had once been in them was gone. “Isn't there anything you can do for Dumah?” He'd wanted her dead, not left alive as a mindless hulk.

  Gunn shook his head. “Get a modern doctor, that might help. When I was killed, knowledge of the brain and how these axionic injuries worked was at a very early stage, quite primitive. More than twenty years have passed since then, in medical terms that makes me hopelessly out of date. You can bet a modern doctor knows a lot more than I do. But, to be honest, I don’t think it will help. The only hope I can give you is that I don’t think any Angel has ever had an injury like this before. You heal so much better than we do, its just possible her brain will regenerate. We'll just have to watch and see. Even if it does regenerate though, it might connect up quite differently. That'll make her a wholly different person. We just don’t know.”

  Michael appeared to be thinking hard, as indeed he was. The subject wasn't quite what Gunn imagined through. To Michael, Gunn's words epitomized the whole mind-set that had brought down Hell and threatened Heaven with destruction. More than twenty years have passed since then, in medical terms that makes me hopelessly out of date. To an Angel, twenty years were nothing, inconsequential, a flicker of an eyelid. Yet human knowledge was now advancing so fast that the same time period on Earth meant that what had been the peak of modernity at its start was dated and obsolescent by its end. All because of that one question. Why?

  “Do what you can for her, David. Fight for her as hard as you can.”

  “I always fight as hard as I can for all my patients.” Gunn's voice was cold.

  Michael-Lan noted that and was sorely tempted to blast him where he stood for his insolence. Then he brought his anger back under control. Displays of anger didn’t work any more, they just made the person delivering them look foolis
h. And that often meant that whoever it was had missed something important. “As you should David. Now, make sure your team has everything it needs. If there are things you do not have or are in short supply, let me know immediately. I will arrange them somehow.”

  Gunn nodded and decided to inventory his supplies. He would find some shortages somewhere, he was sure of that. Because he was convinced that every time Michael-Lan went to Earth was another chance for him to make the mistake that would open up Heaven to a human invasion.

  Street of Angelic Beatitude, Eternal City, Heaven.

  The streets of purest jasper, kerbed with opals and surrounded by palaces and temples that were clad with precious and semi-precious stones in quantities that were beyond comprehension went unnoticed by Lemuel-Lan-Michael. He walked along those streets, staring downwards, but lost in mystified contemplation of his personal situation. Today should have been a triumph for him. His weeks of work in carefully investigating the First Conspiracy, identifying its members and establishing the links between them had finally been put to good use. All that were known of the First Conspiracy had been rounded up and taken into custody. The chambers of the interrogation center rang with their screams as they were probed for the information that would identify the rest of their foul clique. Today was a day that should have filled him with righteous pride.

  Yet it did not. One reason was the attitude that surrounded him on the street. He had expected a reaction from the Angelic Host when news of the arrests broke and spread. He had certainly seen that, only it had not been the reaction he had anticipated. He had expected rejoicing, a massive display of exultation that the threat to Yahweh had been eliminated. Instead he sensed only fear, the Host stepping into the light cautiously, peering around them, wondering who would be the next to see the League of Holy Court on their doorstep. Would they be the ones placed in golden shackles and led away for questioning? They were silent, not trusting their neighbors or their friends since any one of them could be the informer that would send them away to the detention centers.