by Stuart Slade
Two other pick-up trucks headed for strange-looking aircraft that were parked by themselves. Boeing 747s they had been, once, but now they had the firing turret of a chemical oxygen-iodine laser in their noses. They were YAL-1s and they had first priority for the runway. Technically at least, although they had to get there before the others would make way for them. Getting the new and complex laser platforms started up was a battle in its own right. The YAL-1 was unlike anything else in the Air Force and procedures for it’s operation simply didn’t exist. An accelerated test program wasn’t an option for the YAL-1, there was just too much that was new. Eventually, the systems were up and running, but by that time bomb- and missile-laden F-15Es were streaking off the runways, heading south-west. Los Angeles thought Colonel Samuel Allansen grimly. Uriel is hitting Los Angeles.
“Scalpel-One ready to roll.” Mickey Jennings was already on the radio to the tower.
“Scalpel-Two ready to roll.” The voice on the comms system followed a bare second later.
“Scalpel aircraft, form up behind the two B-1Cs. You are sixth and seventh in line for take-off.”
“Sorry about that Scalpel-One.” A British voice sounded over the channel. “We’re past the last taxiway turnoff, we can’t turn off and let you through.”
“No problem… .” Allansen hesitated, not certain who he was talking to.
“Winters, Group Captain Martin Winters, RAF Heavy Bomber Development Unit. I just arrived here yesterday, on exchange to get ready for our B-1s.”
“Welcome to California. Tower, what the blazes is going on?” The YAL-1 edged forward as two F-15s went down the runway side-by-side. Behind them two more turned into position and started powering up, ready for their take-off runs. From the load hanging under their wings, Allansen guessed they were pushing the maximum weight limit as far as it would go and maybe just a little bit further.
“Small portal started to open over Los Angeles, Hacienda Heights area. It’s Uriel, we’re sure of it. Nobody’s going to let him get away this time. There’s aircraft converging on Los Angeles from all over. Including Navy and Marine birds so watch it. And there’s two AEGIS ships running in at 30 plus knots.”
The tower voice was interrupted by the scream as the next pair of F-15s streaked down the runway and staggered into the air, the aircraft obviously straining to stay flying. Yup, well over maximum take-off weight Allansen thought. The lead B-1C was turning on to the runway. “Good hunting, Group Captain.”
“Thank you Scalpel-One. And good luck with that magic ray-gun of yours.”
4th Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
In the street cars were swerving to a halt as the sirens blasted out their warnings. From them, people were running to the buildings where doors were being held open so they could get to cover. The lessons of Eucalyptus Hills had spread quickly, people should get together, in the largest possible groups so they could share their strength against the onslaught from Uriel. Just in case anybody failed to hear the wailing sirens, the street lights were flashing a visual warning.
“Come on, hurry up. Inside, quickly.” The bouncers on the doors of Harvelles Blues Club were adapting well to their changed role. Normally their job was to prevent undesirables from getting in and throwing the unruly out. Now, it was to get as many people as possible in. They were manhandling people inside, pushing them through the doors as fast as they could. Outside, the street was blocking up rapidly with abandoned cars. The earliest refugees had put their cars between the trees lining the road, or in one case the bouncers could see, into a tree. Well, the insurance people could sort that out when the attack was over. It would have been much worse before gas rationing had taken so many vehicles off the street. “Wait, let these people through.”
‘These people’ were a small group of teenagers probably high school students and all loaded down with cages. They were staggering under their loads and two of the bouncers moved out to help them carry their loads. They knew the teenagers by sight, they were working summer jobs at the pet store across the street and it looked like they’d brought as many of the animals with them as they could carry.
“Many more left in the store?” The bouncer barked out the question.
One of the girls was almost in tears. “Too many, we brought as many as we could carry, but the rest, and the bigger dogs, they were just too many and too heavy.”
“Doors locked?” The girl shook her head. “Right, get inside. You men, yes you over there, come with me. We’ll pick up the other animals and bring them over.” The group of men who’d just been drafted looked at the bouncer and decided that weight and bulk gave authority to his orders. The group ran across the street and vanished into the pet store to emerge a few second later with more cages and a variety of dogs on improvised leashes.
By the time they got back to Harvelles, the street was clearing as people got under cover. They herded their livestock through the doors, then the remaining staff slammed them shut. They had a well-rehearsed drill, the doors themselves were lined with aluminum foil but they reinforced it with additional layers mounted on wooden frames. Another lesson from Eucalyptus Hills, defending against Uriel meant using multiple layers of foil. The sirens had switched from their pitched wailing to a long, steady note. The attack was imminent.
In the main body of the club, the host was already up on stage, tapping his microphone. “Good evening, ladies, gentlemen and other species.” There was a quick burst of laughter as the crowded audience looked at the stacks of cages around the walls. “Welcome to Harvelles. You are all doubtless aware that Uriel is coming to visit us and I can say with confidence that the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have prepared a welcome for him that is in the best American tradition.” Another roar of laughter and a series of war whoops. “All we have to do is stay under cover and wait out the attack.”
He paused slightly to take a breath. “Now, we all heard how the Diegans rode out the attack down there and is anybody here going to tell me that Angelenos can’t do better than they did?” There was a roar of ‘No’ and the host made a ‘winding up’ gesture with his hands. “That’s right, so the management will take it as a personal affront if any of our guests passes on. To encourage you all, the management have announced that all drinks will be on the house until either the attack is over or the first person dies, whichever comes first. So, if you all want the free drinks to keep flowing, don’t die. And make sure your neighbors don’t die either.”
His address was interrupted by howls overhead that easily penetrated the building. The host looked up. “There we are, the Air Force is overhead already. Uriel is going to get a truly warm welcome and to add our contribution to the festivities, I ask you to put your hands together and give a true Harvelles welcome to The Key Frances Band.”
The Palatine Palace, New Rome, Hell
“Ave Caesar. Ave Kim.”
“Ave Paschal.” The exchange of Roman salutes interrupted breakfast. Caesar’s response was almost automatic, he was deeply engaged in reading a file. Jade Kim grinned at Colonel Paschal and tilted his head in Caesar’s direction. “Gaius never stops, literally. Even in the middle of the night, he’ll get up, slip away and do a couple of hours more work. Titus tells me he was like that even when he was alive. Did you have a good sleep?”
“I did, thank you. It’s a relief to find you have filtered air here.”
“Even us Second Lifers prefer clean air if we can get it. Breakfast is fruit, bread and wine. I hope that’s all right? We’re working on getting honey down here.”
Paschal chuckled. “That’ll be fine. I’m more curious about how you get the power to run the air cleaners and so on.”
“Geothermal energy.” Gaius Julius Caesar looked up from his file. “We’ve struck a deal with a company called Calpine. They’ve built a pilot plant to try and exploit geothermal energy here. If it works out, they’ll build a lot more. We have a pilot grid here as well, it’s servicing New Rome. Apparently Hell is a lot better
for geothermal than Earth. Much lower investment costs. We could end up supplying California with energy.” He took a bite of wine-soaked bread and looked again at his file. “Jade, I think we’ll approve this.”
“The Insula? I think so.” Jade Kim looked at Paschal. “An Insula is like an apartment block, the occupants own the land in common and their own unit. Pretty much like a condo. Not everybody can afford their own villa although that’s the way we want people to go. The Insula make a good first step. People who live there will satisfy the conditions for becoming Citizens and get them started.”
Overhead, there was a whupping noise that almost caused Kim to drop her breakfast. Paschal grinned at her reaction. “I put the request through last night. These are a gift from the U.S. Government.”
Kim had recognized the sound instantly. “MH-6s? You got me an MH-6?”
“MH-6T. Three of them. They’re new production, they’ve got all the Hell modifications built into them, not slapped on as an emergency refit. So the filters are a lot more efficient and they affect performance less. You’ve got all your old unit here?”
“I have. With the addition of Titus and Lucius, they’re the Consular Guard now.”
“Well, you’ll need to be checked out on the T version, there’s new kit on it you’ll not have seen before. But, welcome back to the Little Bird community. Roman Chapter. Caesar, you’re getting some M1117 armored cars as well. They’re not new or first-line, they were ones in the factories at Detroit when the city got smeared. They were rescued from the lava but they got beat up in the process. Rather than fix them, we’re passing them through to you.”
“Very generous of you.” Caesar’s voice was suspicious.
“The feeling is that you have a well-organized state here that’s keeping the peace and setting a good example. There’s others around that aren’t. More like warlords leading gangs of brigands and terrorists. So, we’re giving you some quiet backing. There’ll be more kit coming through as soon as General Petraeus can get his staff to organize it.”
“Let me guess.” Caesar dipped another piece of bread in the wine. “Enough to defend ourselves, not enough to go around conquering people.”
Paschal smiled. “Exactly.”
Chapter Thirty Eight
Michael’s Palace, Aukumea, Heaven
“Do you have to do this?” Raphael-Lan was seriously concerned.
“If you want to stay hammered and stoned, yes.” Michael-Lan grinned to take the sting out of his words. “We’re going to be running short of a lot of supplies soon and this is a perfect opportunity to restock at fire-sale prices. I can’t afford not to make this trip. Where’s Gabriel by the way?”
“Down at the club. Theoretically supervising it, but actually paying proper respect to Lailah-Lan. He was late with his tribute again.” Raphael chuckled at the thought. “You know, if Yah-yah had known Lailah-Lan a few millennia ago, it would have saved us so many problems.”
“I’ve thought the same thing myself. The things we could achieve if we only had pre-emptive hindsight. Or time travel. Humans have many stories about time travel you know.”
“They can’t do it can they?” Raphael was genuinely scared at the prospect. If the humans could go back in time, they could create havoc. They could even go back to the time of the Great Celestial War and change that.
“No, they can’t. And I think their top people have dismissed the idea as impossible.” Michael saw Raphael relax, and smiled. The idea of time travelling humans had terrified him as well. “But if they did, it could work for us, we could nip the Yah-yah problem before it ever reached this level. It’s a pity, but time travel is impossible and we won’t be facing it.”
Raphael picked up his glass of whisky and sipped the contents. “How are our supplies of this?”
“Pretty good. I stocked up well as soon as Yah-yah came up with the idea of closing down the Earth operation.” Michael sighed and looked around his palace. “All this idiocy because he threw a temper tantrum when humans refused to believe he created them.”
“Well, he didn’t.” Raphael was just pickled enough to let his guard slip.
“I know that and you know that and the rest of Heaven knows that. Guess who doesn’t know that . That’s right. Yah-Yah. Remember this Raphael, remember it well because you’ll be running the show up here if anything happens to me. Yah-yah believes his own propaganda, believes it implicitly. Every myth, every legend he’s imagined has become the truth to him and he won’t accept anything else. He’ll drive out anybody who’s thought patterns or beliefs differ from his. He hears what he wants to hear and nothing else. The Unbearable One believes what he wants to believe – and nothing else.”
“If anything happens to you.” Raphael paused as the implications of the words sank in. “You think the humans will kill you?”
“They might. They can. I don’t anticipate letting them succeed but they might pull something off. Only a fool expects everything to go the way they plan, Raphael. Another lesson for you. Success doesn’t depend on having the perfect plan. It depends on changing plans to match circumstances fast enough for the changes to be effective. And that means spotting deviations from the predicted course of events early enough to have time for those changes. If Yah-yah had watched humans and realized they weren’t developing the way he expected earlier than he did? Well, we wouldn’t be fighting this stupid war for a start.”
West of Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles, California
Uriel stepped through the tiny ellipse and closed it behind him. It had only been open a few seconds and he had hoped that the opening would have passed unnoticed but one look at the city spread out beneath him was enough to end that expectation. The lights across the city were flashing and the wailing of the sirens was enough to wake the dead. A curiously apt phrase Uriel thought. He noticed something else, as soon as the portal behind him closed, the sirens changed from their wailing to a long, steady single note. The humans were aware he was here and they knew his attack was about to start. He was becoming familiar with unusual sensations brought about by the humans so another one didn’t floor him. It’s implications did for Uriel realized that he was afraid of humans.
He lifted his hand in the traditional benison and intoned the time-honored phrase. “Peace be with you and my peace I grant you.” His mind stretched out to the brilliantly-lit city below and started to squash down on all the life therein. Some of the response was familiar, he could feel the wildlife withering and dying under his touch. Other responses had become familiar over his last few incursions into this heresy-ridden and blasphemous country. He felt the solid blow of rejection, the grim determination of people not to succumb to his will. But there was something else there, a touch of something that hit Uriel much harder than just plain rejection. Some of the humans were welcoming his assault, they were using him as a measure against which they could test themselves. He was shocked beyond measure, the humans did not fear the god-like power that Uriel had over their lives, they were using it to assess themselves, to show they could do better than their rivals. They saw fighting Uriel as playing a game and they did so with the grim determination that they brought to every competition, every trial they faced. They were pitching themselves against the gods and they were doggedly certain that they were not going to lose. That was only one tiny step short of believing that they were gods themselves.
Then Uriel realized one other thing, one that he simply couldn’t believe or accept. Some of the humans weren’t just welcoming his attack as a chance to prove themselves, they were laughing at him.
Harvelles Blues Club, 4th Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
The Key Frances Band had lost the thread of their number when the assault from Uriel started. The sheer impact of the attack, driving the breath from their bodies and stopping their hearts made that inevitable. They and their audience was saved by the layers of foil that wrapped the club, from the outside walls down to the tinfoil hat that everybody present wore. It
slowed down Uriel’s attack, gave the intended victims that their autonomic systems were being suppressed and allowed them the few seconds they needed to adapt and fight the attempt to do murder upon them. Around the room, people grabbed each other’s hands and braced themselves for the battle that was now starting.
Near the bar, one of the cocktail waitresses dropped the tray of drinks she was holding and staggered against a customer. He grabbed her and kept her on her feet, quickly reading her name-tag while he did. “Come on, Fantasia, keep going. You got a lot more drinks to serve, we’re not all blasted yet.”
“Then stop fondling my ass.” Fantasia’s voice was shaking but she’s made it past the first few seconds of the attack and Eucalyptus Hills had suggested that was the critical bit. If people could switch from their breathing and heart beating being automatic to something that required a conscious effort to keep going, then their chance of making it went up many times over.
“But it’s a beautiful ass. Reminds me of mine.” The customer winked at her and the waitress burst out laughing.
“Well, that’s fine. I think. You can give one more pat for good luck then.” She picked up another tray of drinks. “Hey, Joe, the first lot aren’t coming out my pay are they?”
“Sure are Fantasia, you gotta pay what the customers pay.” The waitress giggled and set off carefully across the floor towards a table where the glasses were running low. The band had picked up the rhythm again although their playing was noticeably shaky. Her sight was seriously impaired with dark shadows rubbing out most of her peripheral vision and darkening the rest. She guessed the others were having the same problems because the management seemed to be turning the lights up. That wasn’t the worst though, it was the ever-present pressure, the constant effort needed to breath and live that were hardest. Finally she reached the table.
“Free drink people? Got whisky, vodka and brandy here And some mixers.”
