by Stuart Slade
“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.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
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 wa
y 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.”
