The Salvation War 2: Pantheocide

by Slade, Stuart

  “Excellent. Now, there is fresh work for you Qaphsiel-Lan-Shekinah. You will plan and execute the abduction of Onniel. When she is in your hands, you will move her to a place of safety from which she will be unable to leave or communicate with anybody. Plan this most carefully so that there is no sign of anything untoward happening to her. It must appear that she has simply left fro another part of The Eternal City. Do you understand that? That is the most important part of this whole operation.”

  “What is the aim, Mighty Lord? To hold her for ransom? Or make demands that must be fulfilled lest her existence be ended?”

  “You are curious Qaphsiel-Lan-Shekinah? Salaphael-Lan was curious also and look what has happened to him. Now, he sits in the darkness, babbling meaningless chants to himself, his mind gone beyond redemption. So, are you curious Qaphsiel-Lan-Shekinah?”

  Qaphsiel-Lan almost lost control of his bladder when he thought of what had happened to Salaphael. “No, Mighty Lord, I am not curious. About anything.”

  “Very good. Do not ask questions above your station again. But, I will tell you this. This kidnapping is but the first. There will be another of much greater importance than this one. You will rehearse your plans well and the kidnapping of Onniel will be the test of your plans. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes, Might Leader.”

  “Then go and make your plans. And plant more of your bombs, the campaign must continue.”

  Qaphsiel-Lan-Shekinah gathered his wits together and left as quickly as he could. These meetings always filled him with fear of what might happen if he said the wrong thing or failed to complete his orders. He didn't understand what he was doing or why, none of it made any sense to him. But one thing he did know, and he knew it all too well, was that doing exactly as he was told, no more and no less, was the only thing that stood between him and the horrible fate that had befallen Salaphael and the rest of the organization.

  Watching him go, Michael-Lan carefully evaluated the scheme that was now running into its most critical phase. It was dangerous, although things had worked more in his favor than against him and the way things had developed had helped him. It was timing that was the problem, he'd been deadly afraid that the problems over the Fourth Bowl would throw his plans so far off schedule that the delay would be critical. The discovery of all the plots against Yahweh and the realization that he was not alone in wishing Yah-Yah's downfall had helped him regain that time. He had feared he would have to subvert or assassinate the whole of Yahweh's inner court; the discovery that they were all plotting against him had saved him from doing that. Now, the last great gambit was starting and, once again, Michael-Lan knew that he would have to be at its center if it stood a chance of succeeding.

  He was gambling, he knew it, he was pitching his knowledge of humans, his ability to mold events and his understanding of how Heaven worked against Yahweh's immense power. For all that, it was still a gamble. That was, after all, why he loved Las Vegas so much.

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Detention Area, Levin Reception Center, Phelan Plain, Hell

  He'd heard that when the dead woke up in Hell, they did so in a comfortable hospital bed with a nurse standing by to take down their details and find any relatives that existed in the Second Life. Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan had found that a great comfort, most of his family had gone to the gas when they had been trapped in Russia during the Second World War. He had entertained hopes that his grandfather had been rescued from The Pit and could hear that Eretz Israel had finally won, that the longed-for homeland existed. But what he saw now was far from the scene he imagined. He was in a jail cell, a traditional western one with three brick walls while the fourth was a barred grid. Outside a stocky woman in her late middle age was staring at him, her eyes, cold, expressionless and unblinking. The gaze had all the emotionless menace of a poisonous snake. She was in army uniform although Ben-Shoshan didn’t recognize the decorations or the rank insignia. He did recognize one thing, the balanced scales of an officer from the Judge Advocate's Division.

  “Colonel Thanas? The prisoner is awake.”

  The prisoner? What was going on here? The last thing he remembered was leaving his sinking submarine by the hatch in the forward end of the sail, seeing his men cut down by the relentless machine gun fire from the circling B-25 and feeling the impact as the heavy bullets struck him. Then, everything contracting to a small spot of light, some strange sights and sounds that seemed to go on for ever yet be instantly forgotten before the point of light expanded again to place him here. Where was here?

  “Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan, commanding officer of the Israeli Navy Submarine Tekuma. You are charged with crimes against humanity, treason against the human race, one hundred and fifty three thousand, six hundred and twenty counts of murder in the first degree and failing to complete your navigation logs. I am placing you under arrest for these alleged crimes. I will now read you your rights. You have the right to make a full confession. If you do not wish to make a full confession we will beat the crap out of you until you change your mind. You have the right to have a lawyer write your confession for you. If you cannot afford a lawyer, boy are you screwed. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”

  “Yes, I think... What is going on here?”

  “We will ask the questions.” Colonel Thanas looked at the woman who was still staring at Ben Shoshan. “I've always wanted to say that.”

  “Comes of making a career with an army that has a German heritage.” The woman's voice was contralto but had a distinct growl underlying the very precise pronunciation. “Old habits die hard. Do you think this piece of dreck will talk?”

  “No, he's going to go all heroic on us. Not that it will matter in the long run. We have the entire crew, one of them will cough up the goodies. He'll get the deal, the rest can carry the load for him.” Thanas returned his attention to Ben-Shoshan. “One chance. This is it. What the hell happened out there.”

  “We killed the Scarlet Beast. And the Whore of Babylon. With our nuclear missiles.”

  “No, you didn't. A formation of Australian F-111s took out the Beast. Your missiles were targeted on Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, Cairo and Tel Aviv.”

  Ben-Shoshan went white. “Yitzchak! That bastard Yitzchak did it somehow. You talk to him.” Ben-Shoshan looked at the woman who was still staring at him. Her face was still emotionless, menacing.

  “We plan to. Now, you tell us everything that happened, everything down to the smallest detail.”

  Ben-Shoshan spoke for almost an hour, his words being recorded on a tape machine. When his story reached the point of his death, he stopped. “That's all I can remember. What happened to those missiles?”

  “Your Air Force got four of them. The fifth, there wasn't time to stop it. Tel Aviv is toast.”

  Ben-Shoshan broke down, started to cry. “You said 153,000 dead? Can you check to find out if my family were survivors? We all lived in Tel Aviv.”

  For a moment Colonel Thanas let his act slip and real sympathy crept into his voice. The story Ben-Shoshan had told rang true although it was hard to believe anybody could be so sloppy in their control of nuclear weapons. “I do not have that information and the casualty lists are still being compiled. I will check for you though. Even if the answer is that they are not yet amongst the known dead, that may change. People will die from the attack your submarine launched for decades to come. Think about that if you think we are being harsh with you. Also, we can check here. The number of casualties from Tel Aviv has completely overloaded our receiving system and many of the dead arriving from there still have to be interviewed, documented and identified.”

  “That bastard Yitzchak. Right at the end, he said Yahweh would protect him.”

  “Well, he didn't.” Major General Asanee grinned. It was not a comforting sight. “We have detained him in another cell. We'll have a chat with him. Colonel Thanas, get a crowbar, a bicycle pump and a plate of asparagus.”

  Two hours later
, Ben-Shoshan was still trying to absorb what he had done when the two officers returned. Colonel Thanas went to the bars and called Ben-Shoshan over. “Captain, I wanted you to know this as quickly as possible. I am deeply sorry to have to tell you that your parents, wife and children were amongst those killed at Tel Aviv. They are here and have been identified. Please accept my condolences for your losses. On the subject of Yitzchak, he has made a full confession. He was approached by an archangel called Azrael who claimed to be acting on behalf of Yahweh. According to Yitzchak, Azrael believed that Michael wasn't prosecuting the war with us enthusiastically enough and Azrael saw this as a chance to displace Michael as Yahweh's leading General. Yitzchak was promised archangel status in Heaven and various other Second Life benefits if Azrael succeeded. Obviously, he was misled.”

  Ben-Shoshan nodded, still devastated by the news he had been given. “The rest of my crew?”

  “We think they were loyal to us, right up to the time they died. The way your nuclear control system, such as it was, got set up, everything went through your communications officer and he was in a position to intercept some messages and substitute others. We have indications that other people were involved though. We'll be pursuing that. You'll be staying here with your crew until we've got to the bottom of this. Provided we don’t discover anything more, we will not be recommending disciplinary action against you. You'll punish yourself worse than anything we can think up.”

  The two Thai officers started to leave. There was one other question that Ben-Shoshan had to have answered. “Ma'am, the asparagus. What did you do with it?”

  “Ate it with hollandaise sauce. It was lunchtime and I was hungry.”

  Plain of Mapheloistamitos, Hell

  Azrael, didn't really recognize this set up. There were bronze columns set at strange angles in the rock and a long, sloping downramp leading to the center of the strange structure. Huge rocks, dozens of them were gathered at the top of the slope, ready to be rolled down. Gathered around the structure was a Choir of the Angelic Host, one loyal to Azrael, ready to sing the chants of blessing. Michael-Lan had explained that Belial, who had designed this set-up, had used Naga to generate the offset portal needed to drop Lava on Earth but the Angelic Host had no Naga. Angels weren't differentiated the way daemons were; an angel was a jack-of-all trades, the specialized daemons were masters of one. That meant the Choir was being pushed to the edge of its capabilities. Still, to Azrael, the arrangement was as strange and alien as the environment he found himself in.

  The trip to get here had been equally strange. After his meeting with Michael, the meeting in which Michael had made it quite plain that Azrael didn't have many choices, he had portalled to Earth. A strange part of Earth, one where the ground was frozen and covered with ice. Only black granite pierced the ice to make a strange, surreal landscape. A bitterly cold landscape. Then, from there, Azrael had portalled to this point in Hell, one far removed from the human-occupied abode of the daemons. Michael-Lan had been very clear on this point. Never, ever portal directly from somewhere humans can see you to Heaven.

  Disobeying Michael wasn't on the agenda, not any more. Michael had known all about Azrael's network of human loyalists, the ones he had tricked into continuing to support Yahweh's agenda. He had also known of Azrael's plot to supplant him as Yahweh's leading general. Azrael had been given two options, one was to join forces with Michael and become his second-in-command. For that he would be richly rewarded. Michael had sworn the most holy of oaths that if Azrael supported him loyally, he would get everything that was coming to him. The other option was to be arrested as one of those responsible for the spate of bomb attacks that had taken place across the Eternal City. After all, those attacks were human tactics and Azrael was exploiting humans and their tactics. The suspicion was inevitable even if it was wrong.

  The Choir was starting its chorus and Azrael watched the center of Belial's array for the formation of the black ellipse. They were homing in on a Nephelim in the city called New York. On paper, this wasn't like Belial's lava attacks that centered on a specific point and needed to be fine-tuned. The whole city was the target and nobody really cared where the rocks landed. Only, Michael had a specific target in mind for the first rock. That would need a pathfinder to go in and move the Earth end of the portal to the desired spot. Azrael had picked one of his most loyal followers for that purpose. The black ellipse in the center of the array formed and the pathfinder dived through it.

  New York Air Defense Interception Zone Command Center, World Trade Center Site, New York, United States

  The alert siren filled the monitoring room, causing the staff to transition from somnolent ease to frantic activity within seconds. Mostly, the warning were false alarms, caused by a sudden increase in problems with the cell-phone network that was the backbone of the portal warning system. Corporal James Yan hoped that this was another one and he could go back to reading his graphic novel but one glance at bank of monitors told him that wasn't a likely probability. The spectrum analyzer was processing the data from the cell-phone network's receiver limitations, but it was clearly showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz. The spectrum display flicked and restructured itself, crisper and with fewer gaps. Secondary windows began to fill up with phase analysis of signal components. Yan stared at the screen absorbing the data on it, before speaking directly to his commanding officer.

  “Sir, we have a portal forming over lower Manhattan. Confidence is high, say again, confidence is high for portal opening over lower Manhattan.”

  There was a brief pause on the line and Yan could hear a hurried conference in the background. It sounded as if Mayor Bloomberg himself was there. Whatever was being said, the decision was sudden and obvious. All over new York, the air raid sirens started to wail and the street lights started flashing. The ACLU had seen to that, they had taken legal action on behalf of the deaf to force the government to organize visual and well as audio warnings of an impending Netherworld attack. New York was getting ready for its attack, the only question was what form it would take. Another angel of death like the late Uriel? Or was it the hypothetical rock attack? The disaster in Baghdad from the floods caused by the rock attack there was still on television every evening. So was footage of Indian, Pakistani, Iranian and American troops trying to rescue the people whose homes had been washed out by the tidal wave.

  The telephone in his hand bleeped again. “We have confirmation from subordinate command centers. Looks like the angels are coming for our hide, coming in a big way. Fighters are on their way in. The anti-angel batteries are coming to readiness. So are the anti-portal missiles. Yan returned his attention to the screen. The cell-phone system error rates and signal strengths were climbing inexorably. Whatever was coming through the portal would be arriving very soon. He checked the displays again, getting a quick read on the location. “Sir, the portal, it's just south of here, a bit towards the Verrazano Bridge.”

  The status displays clicked again. “We have the anti-angel batteries on line. Governors Island is ready to shoot as soon as they have a target. Bayonne is reporting ready to fire also.” That made eight 76mm Mark 75 guns ready to open up on whatever came through that portal. At 120 rounds per minute each, that was a lot of firepower.

  “Kings is Up, Queens is up.” Eight more 76mms. The National Guard and the U.S. Volunteers were doing the Big Apple proud. The city might be facing the worst threat to its existence in its history, but if it did go down, then it wouldn’t be without one hell of a fight.

  “Fire control radars report a single hostile has come through the portal. It's moving the portal this way.” Outside, the sky lit up as the anti-angel batteries opened fire.

  Sky over Manhattan, New York, U.S.A.

  Uzemah-Lan-Azrael found the sight below him awe-inspiring. The brilliant display of lights, their rippling flashing as their waves swept across the human city below, it was something that he had only thought could ever exist in The Eternal City. The treachero
us thought crossed his mind that if it came to sheer beauty, New York at night could give The Eternal City a real run for its money. But, the sense of awe lasted for only a split second for he had work to do and he had to do it very fast. His orders from Azrael were very specific. Get in, move the portal to its required spot and get out. The humans reacted fast and their bite was deadly. Staying for more than a few seconds would be fatal.

  His mind grabbed at the portal and he started to shepherd its end towards the selected target spot. He had it fixed in his mind, the open patch on the tip of the big island. Why he had to put the portal over one of the few open spaces around there was beyond him, but he had been assured that destroying this site would hurt them beyond all reason. Anyway, he was the servant of Azrael and he had his orders.

  Just how dangerous those orders were, Uzemah-Lan-Azrael learned in the next few seconds. More lights joined the display, streams of them coming up from a dozen points in the city. All of them converging on his position. For a second he wondered what they were but that question too was answered for him when the explosions surrounded him. One of the strange human words that was entering the Angelic tongue covered them. Tracer. He felt steel fragments lashing at him, felt the sudden loss of strength as the iron fragments sank into his body. A quick glance down told him he had the portal in place. It was time to go.

  The sudden acceleration as he let go of the portal threw the guns off for a second but only for that tiny second or respite. Then, they were on target again and this time, without the immediate presence of the portal to affect the fire control radars, their aim was perfect. Uzemah-Lan-Azrael took a 6 kilogram 76mm shell directly in the chest and it splayed his ribs open. Other shots were less precise but the showers of fragments were slashing at his body, draining him faster than he could compensate. He fell from the sky, landing in the East River with a splash that went almost unnoticed amid the noise and fury of the Big Apple's fight to survive the night.