“Nonsense!” Minos exclaimed.
“Really?” Judge Busiris said. “That would explain why you and Danaos were so adamant about Solow, and why you two kept the rest of us out of the loop for so long. Judge Laban’s suspicions were correct. It was you that ordered he be killed, wasn’t it?”
“Laban hung himself,” Minos retorted. “If anyone was tired, it was that old goat.”
Sett said, “Sorry, Minos, we know that he was murdered, and we know that it was Lieutenant Jason who did it. We have the evidence. But he didn’t act alone. He acted on your orders.”
“You can’t prove that! Lieutenant Jason is a lunatic and a traitor. He works for Hamanaeus! If anyone would have ordered such a thing, it would have been him!” Minos pointed a shaking, furious finger at Hamanaeus.
“Come now, Judge,” Hamanaeus snorted. “Solow was so close you could taste it, but bringing Laban into the negotiations would have meant him knowing how the sausage was made. You rightly saw Laban as a threat to the accords, and ordered his elimination.”
“Commander, Captain,” Minos said anxiously, “surely you don’t—”
Sett turned to Hamanaeus. “What about the ambush and insurrection?”
“Although I couldn’t have done it without him, I will confess that the judge can plead naiveté and stupidity,” Hamanaeus said. “He was a useful idiot. History is full of helpful halfwits, and people like me could never achieve all that we do without them. This place here behind the dimensional curtain,” he gestured to Alexander Rosso’s mansion compound, “is brimming with human examples.”
Sett, Volk, and Abishai stepped away and consulted. After a minute, they rejoined the others. Minos was trembling. Hamanaeus, still seated on the ground smiled smugly.
“Sergeant Major Balius,” Captain Abishai said, “go round up the others. Tell them we’re done here.”
“Yes, Sir,” he said, and jogged off.
Hamanaeus laughed and addressed Sett. “Commander, I told you. The disgronifiers are in our hands. Captain Perseus was given strict orders to shut them down until my arrival. You fools are stuck down here until and unless I’m back in Heaven.”
Sett ignored him. “Corporal Nisus, you carry Orion. He’s in no condition to whirl.” He walked over to Judge Busiris. “It’s your lucky day, Busiris.” He scooped the judge onto his broad shoulders.
“W-what are you doing?” Busiris stammered.
“Saving your ungrateful ass,” Sett replied. He turned to Corporal Nisus. “Ready?”
Nisus nodded. The two warriors whirled, and to the astonishment of Minos and Hamanaeus, vanished before their eyes.
“What happened?” Minos exclaimed. “Where did they go?”
“Home,” Volk said.
“But-but…that’s impossible!”
“With faith, anything is possible,” Volk said. He nodded to the other angels, and one by one they all spun into translation and disappeared into the ether. Only Volk remained.
“Faith?” Hamanaeus repeated, confounded. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I’ll leave that up to you to figure out,” Volk replied. “You two will have plenty of time to ponder it.”
“What?” Minos said, aghast.
A movement in the distance caught Volk’s eye. He smirked and pointed across the field to where two surviving, riderless Victim Yetzers were stalking them.
“Well, maybe not that much time,” Volk said. “They look pretty hungry.”
“You can’t leave me here!” Minos cried. “How-how am I to survive!”
“You’re with your peace partner,” Volk said. “You put your complete faith in him. What’s there to worry about? I’m sure you two geniuses will think of something.”
Volk glanced again towards the two yetzers that were circling them, slinking ever closer. The sound of their snapping jaws was already audible.
Hamanaeus and Minos turned to one another in terror, and then imploringly to Captain Volk. But all they saw was a blur, and two charging yetzers.
33
Sticks and Stones
Virgil and I posted our whirlwinds of fire, ice, and darkness at the Academy’s three main entrances. Although stationary, the twisters kept the Anteros soldiers at bay. From our vantage point we saw that the decimated Anteros troops were in disarray and hadn’t the stomach for a second charge. Most of the survivors were already retreating to the disgronifiers, hoping to be shipped back to Earth.
“Let’s finish this, Virge.”
Virgil nodded, and we flew off in opposite directions.
Commandos Deimos and Styx, who were part of Jason’s battalion, pulled back within a safe distance of the pillar of fire.
“Where the hell is Jason?” Styx said.
“I saw him run into the clock tower, but I never saw him come out,” Deimos said.
“Then that leaves me in charge.”
“In charge of what?” Deimos gestured towards the dozen or so Anteros remnants that were still awaiting orders, the rest either having deserted or died.
“We regroup and swing around to join up with Ajax or Perseus,” Styx said authoritatively.
“Their armies aren’t any better off than ours.”
“What are you saying? That we run like cowards?”
“Just saying,” Deimos answered. “We’re up against something demonic here. How the hell are we supposed to fight those things?” He pointed towards the whirling pillars.
“We don’t. We fight what’s behind ‘em.”
“Yeah?” Deimos snorted, unimpressed by his comrade’s bravado. “And who or what the fuck would that be, Styx? Sett, Volk and the rest of those bastards are all stuck on Earth, dead by now most likely, and all they were supposed to have left behind here are some cadet dregs. So what the hell is going on?”
“The will of the one true God,” I said, appearing out of nowhere.
Deimos and Styx spun around. “You again,” Deimos growled. “I saw you leave. How did you get back here?”
He went for his demon duster, but I quickly closed the gap and smacked him in the solar plexus with the palm of my hand. He folded up like a jackknife and went soaring backwards.
Styx charged at me. I grabbed him by his uniform, dropped, and pitched the big cupid tumbling through the air.
Quickly on my feet again I said, “Surrender and I promise you a new and better life, one you cannot now begin to comprehend.”
Styx scrambled back up and spat in contempt. “Fuck you, you little twerp.” He drew his demon duster.
I dove, rolled, and came up shouting, “Opa!” I snapped my lightning whip. It unreeled and bit into Styx’s gun hand, severing it from his arm. The soldier stared in incomprehension at his spewing stump, and then he screamed in dismay as pain and reality set in.
Deimos, still on the ground and gasping for breath, drew his gun. He unloaded his weapon at me as I ran, dove, and rolled. His shots missed me, but not his comrade, Styx, who was accidentally put out of his misery.
Deimos shoved another magazine into his demon duster. I whipped a shuriken at him, nailing the commando in the throat with bullet-like velocity. Wide-eyed, he clutched for the throwing star, and yanked it out. Long squirts of blood streamed with each beat of his pounding heart. He gurgled and gagged, and then face-planted into the ground.
Hearing the gunfire and seeing the commotion, a dozen or so Anteros soldiers turned and raced towards me. A split moment before they unleashed a hail of photons and bullets I thrust out my palm, and calling up a powerful burst of ruach, shouted, “Gone!” The photons and bullets exploded in mid-flight like strings of Ladyfinger firecrackers.
Before the mystified soldiers could let loose another barrage, I thrust forward my other palm and sent forth a wave of peculiar sparkles. The twinkling lights transfixed the soldiers, and as the wave passed over them they began to scream in blind, unmitigated terror. I had conjured up raw fear, similar to what Captains Cyrus and Volk pulled on me in the yeshiva library, in what now s
eemed like an eon ago.
The soldiers gawked at the motes in their own eyes, trembling in horror at something only they could see. Each man’s greatest phobia engulfed him. I left them in their paralyzed state, and whirled to meet Virgil back inside the Academy.
Commando Ajax, the big iron sword he had stripped from the Eros statue in his hand, stepped out of the fountain, held the sword over his head, and roared.
Ajax had never seen anything like the three devastating whirlwinds, but they did not impress him. Nothing fazed the giant. Fear was not a part of his make-up. The ferocious warrior was a killing machine. He had objectives, and anything between him and his objectives was marked for destruction. Ajax didn’t bother with over, under, or around any obstacle. The giant’s preferred and much-tested strategy was always the same—straight ahead and through.
A cadet marksman in an Academy window fired at him. The bullet hit Ajax’s sword and ricocheted off with a clang. Ajax didn’t flinch. He looked up, lifted his splicer rifle with his free hand, and fired. The cadet tumbled out of the window to the ground three floors below.
“Anyone else?” he shouted.
Another shot rang out.
Ajax felt the bullet breeze past his ear. It shattered the head of the cupid statue behind him. He withdrew a plasma grenade and fired it like a pitcher through the third-story window thirty yards away. An explosion of blue flames blasted from the room.
“Who’s next?” Ajax bellowed. “Come on, you cowards. I piss on all your scrawny beards. Is there not even one warrior among you?”
Ahead of him dust began to swirl, and then moments later a figure emerged from a whirling cloud. It was Virgil, and in each hand was the handle of a lightning whip.
Ajax smirked, very pleased. The fact that Virgil had just appeared from out of nowhere meant nothing to the commando.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite student. Cadet Virgil, did I hurt your little feelings back at the Academy? Come,” he beckoned with his hand, “come make me proud and do me some damage.”
Virgil didn’t reply. Instead, he thrust out his hands and displayed the two lightning sticks.
“Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?” Ajax boomed. “Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field!”
Virgil cracked the lightning sticks —“Opa!”
Two sizzling, ruby-red bolts shot curling forth, darting like vipers towards Ajax. Before the giant could react, both his splicer rifle and holstered demon duster were zapped from his person. Virgil reeled in the lightning, and then like a gunslinger, he twirled the sticks in his hands and stuffed them into their holsters.
To Ajax, the two warped guns on the ground were but a minor curiosity. Twisted by the heat of the lightning and useless, the titan merely licked his singed fingers, and shrugged. He kicked the weapons aside, scratched his thick black beard, and contemplated Virgil.
Virgil held forth, “You come to me with sword, guns, and arrogance, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Heaven and Earth, before whom you have disgraced yourself. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, Ajax, and all in Heaven will know that the battle is HaShem’s and that he is God.”
Ajax chortled in derision. “What are you babbling about, Cadet? Do I look like a theology student to you? Do you think I give a crap about anyone’s god? Come kiss my hairy ass, you little runt. I will quaff wine from your cranium and scratch my nuts with your spine!” He stomped the ground and swung the heavy iron sword in a figure eight.
Virgil nodded, a squint of understanding and intention in his eyes.
He reached into a pouch hanging from his belt, pulled out a smooth piece of corundum, second only to diamond in hardness, and loaded it into the leather cup of a shepherd’s sling. As Virgil whipped the stone around and around, he recalled the time when I told him of the story of David and Goliath. He smiled at the memory.
Ajax glared at Virgil. “I have walked into volleys of gunfire,” he thundered, contempt dripping from his words. “I have strangled the most ferocious of fear demons with my bare hands. I stared down your whirlwinds, and your snipers’ bullets fled from me in dread. Do you think your ridiculous exhibition scares me? Death itself cowers before me!”
Virgil replied in recitation, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” He whipped the sling faster and faster. It blurred out of view, creating a high-pitched whirl that resounded off the walls of the surrounding buildings. “As HaShem Lord of Hosts is my rock and my redeemer, I shall bring your arrogance to its knees, and smite your pride between the eyes!”
“Put a cork in it, Cadet, and bring it to me. My sword is groaning in hunger, and it’s time I feed it your scrawny neck!” He stomped towards Virgil, swinging his sword in front of him in figure eights.
Virgil let the stone rip. It plowed into Ajax’s forehead with such velocity that it cracked the giant’s head open like a watermelon. Ajax stood wavering for a long moment. His sword dropped handle first to the ground, the long blade balancing just long enough for Ajax to keel over on top of it, piercing him through the heart and out his back.
A loud cheer went up from the cadets as they rushed out of hiding into the central plaza. They raised Virgil onto their shoulders and began to sing and dance.
34
Blues Brothers
Incredulous at what they had just witnessed, Perseus, Chiron, and Sparta withdrew behind the edge of the building that was giving them cover, and consulted.
Sparta said uneasily, “I think that leaves just us.”
“We’re down to about twenty men, Captain,” Chiron said. “What do we do?”
“We have no choice,” Sparta said. “We retreat. We go back!”
“There is nowhere to retreat to,” Perseus said flatly. “There is no ‘back’ back there. It’s all gone.”
“But Captain, we don’t know that,” Sparta said, growing more anxious by the second. “We have to try. If we stay here we’re dead.”
Perseus said, “You just saw Cadet Virgil slay Ajax. Virgil, a lowly cadet! You know he was down on Earth when we were. How did he get back up here? Either the disgronifiers are back in Academy hands, or we are dealing with something none of us can comprehend.” He pointed to the pillar of ice that was still swirling nearby. “You think that’s normal? There’s nothing normal about anything going on around here. We are in the presence of something extraordinary. Get it?”
“No,” Chiron said. “I-I don’t get it. How? Why?”
“It’s the stories,” Perseus said distantly. “The stories are true…”
“Captain…?” Chiron said.
“You heard Cadet Virgil,” Perseus said.
“What, that crap about some god?”
“Not some god, Lieutenant. Our God. The God. The one and only God.”
“But that’s just… We have Anteros! Or, maybe Eros. Or, um, something….”
“We don’t got shit,” Perseus said, “except a whole lot of praying to do. Open your eyes, boys. It’s a brand-new world.”
Perseus withdrew the remaining spleen gun and dislodged its cartridge. He tossed them into an old well a few yards away. Then he stepped out into the open and dropped the rest of his weapons. His hands in the air, he walked in surrender towards the celebrating cupids.
Chiron and Sparta turned to one another in mystification.
Chiron said, “I think the captain’s lost it. In fact, think back. I don’t think his heart was ever really into this battle.”
“So, what do we do?” Sparta asked.
Chiron answered, “What ever became of ‘come back with your shield or upon it’?”
As Perseus walked toward the central plaza, a strange feeling of tranquility began to wash over him. He looked skywards and wondered if it was just his imagination, or had the heavens above actually become more brilliant.
The captain felt a strong breeze at his sides. To his amazement, Sett and Volk a
ppeared, falling in step beside him.
Sett said, “Going our way?”
“What is your way?” Perseus asked.
“The way back,” Volk answered.
“Back where?”
“Where it all began.”
“Sounds like a hell of a journey,” Perseus said.
Sett slapped Perseus on the back. “You have no idea, old friend. No idea.”
The cadets set Virgil down, and beyond the throng he spotted Hera.
“Hera!” he called out, running over to her. “Hera, are you all right?”
“Yes.” She smiled timidly, secretly thrilled that Virgil had sought her out.
“And Grace?”
“She’s a little beat up, but she’ll be okay.”
“Baruch HaShem,” he said.
“Is it over, Virgil?”
“No, Hera. This is only the beginning.”
“But, we won,” she said, not understanding Virgil’s intimation. “The judges are gone. The Academy is ours. And Hamanaeus and Anteros, they are finished, right?”
“Yes,” Virgil said. “But we have much work to do. We have to get right with HaShem. He has blessed us with a second chance, and we mustn’t fail Him this time.” He gestured towards the throng of celebrants. “They have no idea what they are celebrating.”
“Victory,” Hera said innocently.
“Victory, yes” Virgil said. “But they don’t understand over what. This morning they thought they were celebrating the return of Anteros and peace. The real war lies ahead, Hera. The humans are still teetering on the edge of oblivion and don’t even know it. The yetzers are stronger than ever, and we are now fewer than ever.”
“Who will lead us now?” she asked artlessly. “Who will be the new judges?”
“There is only one Judge, Hera. From now on we listen only to Him.”
Shooting Eros - The Emuna Chronicles: Complete Boxset: Books 1 - 3 Page 84