Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3

by Benjamin Laskin

  “No, but we never know what rung we are on until we appear before HaShem in the Court of Courts, and are judged. The thing is to never stop striving to improve yourself and to live more righteously.”

  “So we never really know what becomes of us, do we, Captain Volk?”

  “If you have loved God, Kohai, and sought to earnestly live according to His dictates, then I doubt you have anything to worry about.”

  “I reviewed the lives of some of our Immortals, or whatever we call them, but in each case their records suddenly stop. What happened to them, Captain?”

  “We can’t know. Not at our level, but I heard it said that they were transformed into archangels.”

  “Really? With wings and all?”

  Volk chuckled. “I don’t know. Would you like that, Kohai? To have wings?”

  “Well, yeah! That would be the coolest!”

  “Then maybe it is so. But we got more pressing business now. It looks like poor Virgil needs a hand. There is too much slop for one man to clean up. You and Virgil take Typhon, Ares, and Troy. I’ll handle the SWAT guys.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  We strolled over to the group and Volk gave an exasperated Virgil a reassuring slap on the back. “Considering what you have to work with here, you’re doing a fine job, Virgil.”

  The captain faced the recruits. “Okay, listen up you pathetic schlubs, what we’re learning now could save your lives more times than you can count. What are you going to do when two or three yetzers or a half dozen Anteros freaks jump you at the same time? Stand and fight them? An idiot would. But you’re no longer idiots, right?

  “The only target we give the enemy is a moving target. If you’re not jumping, you’re sliding. If you’re not sliding, you’re diving. If you’re not diving, you’re dashing. If you’re not dashing, you’re whirling. If you’re not whirling, you’re flipping or somersaulting. You are never standing. You are never waiting. You are never to give the enemy anything but a blur! Now, Typhon, Ares, Troy, you go to the parkour training field with Kohai and Virgil. The rest of you, you’re with me.”

  “The what?” Typhon said.

  “You’ll see,” Virgil smiled. “It’ll be fun.”

  The yeshiva had two obstacle courses. The one we had already introduced the recruits to was a traditional, military-style course. The other was a free-running or parkour course. Virgil and I called the parkour course ‘the ghost town,’ for reasons the recruits would soon, much to their horror, find out.

  This course was geared towards close quarter urban fighting. It employed the use of city landscapes and its many structures and obstacles to evade, confuse, or trip up the enemy. The course included routes that took us through alleys, up the sides of buildings, across rooftops, inside homes and offices and shopping malls. We had to negotiate every obstacle by jumping, climbing, vaulting, rolling, swinging, and never stopping. This was the sort of thing that Gideon saw Cyrus do when he fled from the alleyway, and what Cyrus’s boss at the construction site marveled at.

  “Where did this place come from?” Private Typhon exclaimed when we reached the summit of a hill that overlooked the course below. “It’s like a movie set of a city!”

  “How big is the yeshiva?” Cadet Ares asked. “It just gets bigger and bigger!”

  “It’s as big as we are,” I said. “Only Captain Volk has seen the entire place.”

  “Huh?” Cadet Troy said.

  “Adaequatio,” I reminded him. “You see what you are ready to see, know what you are ready to know.”

  “But, how can that be?” Typhon said, scratching his head.

  “Trust us,” Virgil said. “You’ll know when you know. Because you are even here says a lot about you. Just be glad you’ve made it this far. Now, let’s go.”

  We descended the hill and stopped at the outskirts of the ‘ghost town.’

  “Virgil is going to walk you through once to show you what you need to do. Pay very close attention to everything he says. The goal is for you to run the gauntlet, and get from here to the other side of town…alive.”

  “Alive?” Cadet Troy gulped. “You’re going to try and kill us?”

  “Not us,” I answered. “Them.”

  “Them who?” Cadet Ares said.

  “The enemy,” Virgil said.

  The recruits exchanged uneasy glances.

  “…Really?” Troy said.

  “Aw, don’t worry,” Typhon laughed, slapping Troy on the back. “It’s gonna be just like the virtual reality stage the Academy uses. All phony baloney. They’ll give us some helmets and gear to wear, and make it look like we’re really facing some goofy fear demons or Anteros guys, right Kohai?”

  “No helmets. No gear. And the only goofy characters will be you.” I turned to Virgil. “They are all yours, Virge.” I smiled at the recruits. “I hope to see all you guys on the other side.” I grinned. “And I mean of town, not life.”

  Virgil smirked. “Let’s go, girls.”

  He strolled off towards the town, and the recruits, much paler than they were a minute earlier, followed him down the hill.

  8

  Farewell to Arms

  “Hera,” Grace said into the intercom, “could you come in here, please?”

  “Right away, Ma’am.”

  Ever since her humiliation at the Astarte Night Club with Lieutenant Jason, Hera had become a changed celestial. She went home that night in tears and dreaded the following day when she would meet with her boss. She was certain that she would be fired and sent to a boring factory job assembling demon dusters or some such thing. To have had the privilege to work with the Chief Celestial was an honor all the other celestials envied, despite Grace’s reputation as ‘a bitch.’

  Although a stern and exacting boss, Hera knew that Grace had never treated her with anything but respect. To have been discovered in that club in such a compromising position—and worse, to have put Grace herself into an even more humiliating spot—shamed Hera to the brink of suicide.

  Grace did call her into her office first thing the following day, but it was not to berate or demote her. She sat Hera down, and to Hera’s surprise, it was Grace who began by apologizing. She told the young celestial that she should have taken more interest in her life, and in her immortal soul.

  And then it only got weirder.

  Grace spoke about Captains Cyrus and Volk and their extraordinary powers, about the mysterious yeshiva she had visited and the wonders it held, about the Academy’s duplicity, and about HaShem.

  Dumbfounded by Grace’s confessions, all Hera could muster was the blinking of her small, pretty blue eyes. She didn’t even know what questions to ask. Like all cupids and celestials, Hera had been fully indoctrinated into the Eros cult, the pseudo-history of the Academy, and all the propaganda that went along with them. She had heard of something called God, but only because every cupid and celestial received a rudimentary introduction into human superstitions.

  Grace’s stories, far-fetched though they were, fascinated Hera. Other heavens? Angels? A hidden school and training grounds? Eros a fraud? Impossible!

  But Hera knew she wasn’t talking to just anyone. This was Grace, the brightest celestial to graduate from the Academy in an eon. When her boss spoke about these revelations, there was nothing wild-eyed about her. She was her usual calm, thoughtful self. She didn’t demand that Hera believe her, and the only thing she asked was that she vow not to speak to anyone of any of what they were discussing. On this, Grace was adamant.

  Hera promised and was excused. She left Grace’s office with her boss’s Bible in her hands, Grace having received from Captain Volk a second copy for herself from the yeshiva; one that included commentaries from numerous noted sages.

  Over the following days, Grace continued to tutor Hera and to discuss the Holy Book Hera was now immersed in. Grace showed her documentation from the forgotten past and pointed out the many inconsistencies in the Academy’s doctrine. When Grace felt that Hera’s mind was fi
nally opening to the possibility, she arranged for Captain Volk to appear before Hera in a spinning whirlwind. Volk, going one better, threw the unsuspecting young celestial over his shoulder, and whisked her off to the yeshiva for a brief visit.

  That was all it took. Hera was a convert. Almost immediately afterwards she began to notice subtle changes in her being. She had a new confidence, and a greater sense of well-being. Her previous life took on a comic book-like absurdity, and she found herself at home praying fervently to HaShem to forgive her for all the many transgressions and dubious behaviors of her past.

  It was then that Grace took Hera into her confidence and told her what was coming, and what had to be done. She explained to her about the upcoming Solow Accords, the special mission being prepared, and the imminent invasion by Anteros forces. Hera was frightened, but she knew that she could not turn away from her calling.

  “Did you complete that study I asked you to do?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Hera said. “I sent it to the Maccabee late last night.”17

  Note 17: Grace and Hera named the drop box ‘Maccabee’ after Judah Maccabee (the Hammer). Around 165 BC, Judah, along with his four brothers, Eleazar, Simon, John, and Jonathan, and their father, a Jewish priest named, Mattathias, led a revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Seleucid empire, who had been severely persecuting the Jews. Fronting vastly superior forces, the Maccabees employed guerrilla tactics to wrest their independence from the Seleucids, reconquer Jerusalem, and clean and rededicate the holy Temple that had been desecrated by Antiochus. From the revolt came the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

  Grace logged into the specially encrypted drop box that they had created and given the code name, ‘Maccabee,’ to be used for the exchanging of top-secret files. Grace opened multiple files and they appeared magnified on the flat screen wall of her office.

  Hera stood before the wall and described her findings to Grace. “I visited the known weapon depots around the Academy and matched my findings with those provided by our Department of Arms Manufacturing and Control. The numbers checked out until I actually began to rummage around. I discovered that many of the crates were empty.”

  “Empty?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. If you count the crates and the number of weapons they were said to contain written on the sides, my calculations matched with those provided by the DAMC. However, when I ran a handheld magnetic resonator over the crates, I found that most of them were empty.”

  “What kinds of weapons are we talking about?”

  “Mostly small arms—demon dusters, plasma and splicer rifles, fire-dust guns, and plasma grenades. But I also found empty crates of shoulder-launching sonic atomizers. I visited the three known armories and the story was the same.”

  “How many weapons are missing?” Grace asked.

  Hera pointed to some figures on one of the spreadsheets. “We’re not talking a squad or even a platoon’s worth. The number of missing weapons could arm an entire battalion, about 640 soldiers.”

  “That many?” Grace said, clearly worried. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “According to Solow, we are to bring up three hundred of their soldiers, but you are telling me that stashed somewhere around here is enough for twice that many.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. It appears they plan to be sending more than three hundred.”

  “No,” Grace said. “It’s far worse than that, I’m afraid.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “They are already here. Sleeper cells just waiting for the signal.”

  “Oh my God. You think so? That many?”

  Grace nodded. “Do you have any idea where they are hiding these arms?”

  “I ran some gaming programs plotting out various scenarios that would be the most advantageous for a storming of the Academy.”

  Hera withdrew an extendable pointer and stepped up to a large map of the Academy and its surroundings that she had included in the Maccabee drop box.

  “The Anteros soldiers will enter here.” She pointed at the disgronifier station. “If they intend to perpetrate an attack, they will want to arm themselves as soon as possible. There are only two places between the disgronifiers and the entry to the Academy campus that could house the number of weapons we are talking about, as most of the way is open ground. Here and here.” She pointed to an off-campus Academy recreation facility and a popular watering hole for cupid soldiers called Groggy Bottom.

  “According to gaming strategies,” she continued, “our guards would likely lead the Anteros soldiers down this way. The recreation facility with its rooftops, walls, and forested park area would make a good place for an ambush. The guards, if they were to make it this far, would be massacred, and rebels would arm the three hundred Anteros soldiers with the stashed weapons.

  “Next,” Hera speculated, “the rebels and Anteros soldiers would probably rush quickly to Groggy Bottom and obtain the rest of their weapons and forces. From there, it would only be a short dash to either the court buildings and the neighborhood where the judges live, or the heart of campus and the administration buildings. It’s likely they could split into two companies and try and take both areas. Of course, this is conjecture, but it is what the gaming program came up with.”

  “About these two spots, what do we know of them?”

  Hera swiped away a couple of spreadsheets from the screen and revealed two blueprints.

  “As curious as you, I hacked into the Academy’s Architecture and Planning Department. It took some time, but I finally located the blueprints to those buildings. The recreation facility has ample room for storing the arms. There is a small warehouse and numerous closets and rooms that could be used for hiding the weapons.

  “At first glance,” she continued, “Groggy Bottom didn’t seem a good choice. The building is old and small. However, upon closer examination of the blueprints, I discovered that it has a wine cellar that is plenty big enough to hold a large number of weapons.”

  “What do we know about the cupids who run these places?” Grace asked.

  “I checked into that as well. Their records were clean. Someone could have fixed that, but I was unable to find any incriminating evidence.”

  “I see. Excellent work, Hera.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  “I had better inform Commander Sett about this. Meanwhile, keep looking into the backgrounds of anyone involved with those places—full-time, part-time, volunteers. Send me the files on the cupids who run them and I’ll see if I notice anything.”

  “I already did, Ma’am. It’s in the Maccabee. Documents 22 and 23.”

  Grace patted Hera’s cheek. “I knew I hired the right gal.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am,” Hera beamed. “Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”

  “Not right now, but don’t make any plans.”

  “Understood, Ma’am.”

  Hera turned and left.

  Seconds later, Grace heard a scream from the outer office.

  “Hera!” Grace cried.

  Hera reappeared with two cupid soldiers carrying her back into Grace’s office, each soldier with a hand under one of Hera’s arm pits, her legs flailing beneath her. Behind them strutted a third soldier, Captain Perseus.

  9

  Perseus

  When Grace heard Hera’s scream, she immediately closed the Maccabee files, the wall returning to screens of various news feeds from Earth.

  “Captain Perseus,” Grace said, hiding her surprise at seeing him. The last she heard he was one of the cupids who had gone AWOL. “What is the meaning of this? I could have you arrested for barging into my office unannounced.”

  “I apologize, Ma’am, but there was no one in the outer office to greet us.”

  “Put her down,” Grace ordered.

  Perseus nodded to his men and they set Hera back onto her feet. She wiped defiantly at her arms as if they had defiled her. A beautiful celestial, the two cupids leered at Hera, giving her the once-
over.

  “Would you mind telling me what is going on?”

  “We are here for your own safety, Madam Celestial,” Perseus said.

  “My safety? What are you talking about?”

  “Homeland Security has raised its alert level. A number of red flags have popped up across the system.”

  “That is nothing new,” Grace replied calmly. “We’ve had these alert levels and red flags for years now. It does not excuse your impertinent entrance.”

  “Would you mind if I have a look around?” Perseus said, ignoring her argument.

  “I mind very much, but I’m sure my minding won’t have any effect on you.”

  Perseus smirked. “I could come back with a proper warrant, but know that having to do so would not reflect very well on you, Madam.”

  Grace saw the threatening glint in Perseus’s dark eyes. He was a very intimidating soldier, and Grace knew well his flawless war record, and his legendary brutality on the battlefield. Standing at over six and a half feet tall, muscles rippling beneath his uniform, and a deep, resonant voice, Captain Perseus was accustomed to getting his way. If he had an air of patience about him, it was only because no one ever dared to try it.

  He took her reticence as acquiescence and motioned to his two men to begin a search. One soldier, Lieutenant Chiron, a squat, red-headed cupid, began to toy with an electronic device as the other, Corporal Sparta, disappeared into the nook at the back of the room. Perseus sat down at Grace’s computer, inserted a memory stick, and began to snoop among her files.

  “What are you doing?” Grace said indignantly. “My data is classified.”

  “This stick is called a hound dog,” Perseus said. “It sends a sniffer through your files, tagging anything suspicious. At the same time, it downloads the contents of your hard drive. It‘s blazing fast and should only take a minute.”

  Grace, who had walked to Hera’s side, put her arm around the young celestial’s waist and gave her a reassuring glance.