by Stuart Slade
“Perpetiel-Lan-Paschar, we have done well tonight. Six hours of adoration will surely aid The One Above All in his care for us.”
“We can but hope so, Most Lordly Ophanim, but we must beware falling victim to the sin of pride. Even our most valiant efforts are as nothing compared with those of The Nameless One. Please, Most Noble One, I crave your indulgence and beg you to excuse my impertinence but do you feel unwell?” And if you don’t, we’ll have to double up the dosage next time.
“My throat is sore and my head aches. But these are minor things, nothing to be concerned about.”
“Perhaps I may offer a little help?” Perpetiel waved to one of the other angels who disappeared into the shadows. A few seconds later he emerged, bearing with him a cup. “We have an elixir here, one that is a sovereign remedy for a sore throat. And these.” He held out a pair of tiny white tablets. “Are of wonderous efficiency in quelling the pains of a headache.”
“Thank you Perpetiel-Lan.” Lemuel took the tablets and swallowed them, washing them down with the contents of the cup. Although it was dark red, it wasn’t the wine he had expected. Instead, it was a fruit-flavored drink, deliciously chilled. It soothed his parched throat and calmed his stomach. As he stood in the temple relishing the flavor, he felt the throbbing in his head slowly start to subside. “These are indeed of marvellous effect. What are they?”
“The tablets are called Tylenol, Most Noble One. And the drink is called Gatorade.”
“I have not heard of these?” Lemuel was curious but within the curiosity was a thrill of pleasure. Was he finally on to something?
Perpetiel looked guilty. “They are human products, Most Noble One.”
Lemuel looked at him, his bearing crying out in condemnation. “Human products? Here? This is forbidden?”
“An old rule Most High, from the days when humans were foolish and ignorant. But, if they help us provide support to The One Above All, is not their use justified? The ban on them dates when their use was for evil and inspired by The Eternal Enemy. Yet now that Enemy is dead, killed by humans. Surely it is the use to which a thing is put that is important, not where it comes from?”
Lemuel nodded slowly, his headache already faded to a memory and his stomach calmed. “There is much wisdom in what you say Bene-Elohim. If something aids Our Most Heavenly Father, then surely there cannot be sin in it.”
“This is the teaching of our temple indeed. Here, Most Noble One, take this small bottle of Tylenol, as a gift in celebration of the honor you do our small temple.”
“A kind gesture and one most appreciated. We will gather again tomorrow?” Perpetiel nodded, carefully hiding his smile. Lemuel-Lan took the bottle and placed it in his robes. For the last ten nights, every time he had turned to his mate, she had refused him, claiming she had a headache. Now, if nothing else, he finally had a solution to that particular problem.
Michael’s Palace, Aukumea, Heaven
Michael-Lan twisted on the couch, his body writhing. “Get those wretched things out of me!”
“They have gone deep, Greatest of the Archangels. One may have broken a bone in your shoulder and the other has penetrated far into your chest. Already your wounds close around them. We will have to cut as deep to remove them.”
“They’re burning me alive!” Michael gasped with pain. “What did the humans do to me?”
“They shot you.” The doctor spoke with unseemly relish. “Twice. With bullets the like of which I have never seen before. I don’t think they like you.”
Michael-Lan opened one eye and looked carefully at the doctor. It occurred to him that the human was speaking to him much the same way as he, Michael-Lan, spoke to Yahweh. “Get the bullets out. Now.”
“All right.” The doctor didn’t seem at all sympathetic but he got a long pair of probes from his bag and stuck them into the bullet hole in Michael’s shoulder. The probes slid in deep and he could feel their tips touching the chips of bone in the wound. As he had feared, or hoped he wasn’t quite sure which, the bullet had hit the bone in Michael’s shoulder and splintered it. The bullet had penetrated more than 20 centimeters and the wound path ended in a gaping cavity, one that showed every signs of burn as well as explosive damage. The doctor reflected that human bullets had improved a lot since one had killed him a few years earlier. He probed again and this time he found the end of a solid object. Once he had it, it was relatively easy to get a grip on it and pull it out. He dropped it into a dish where it landed with a dull-sounding clinking noise.
“It’s not iron or steel, something much denser and harder. Tungsten carbide probably. I’m going to have to lavage the wound.”
“What?” Michael’s voice was shaky. The pain from the surgery had distressed him more than he had let on.
“Lavage it. Wash the wound cavity out. There’s a dozen or more fragments of bullet jacket in there, and something that looks like the residue of an incendiary mixture. Hold still, this will hurt.”
The doctor worked for a few minutes then sat back. “Right, we started with your shoulder because that was the easiest one to deal with and it showed me what we face. Otherwise I would have been poking around blind. Now, the one in your chest. I ought to put you out for this, it’s going to be rough.”
Michael nodded weakly, if the hit in his shoulder was the easy one to repair, he didn’t want to be awake when the main event started. He felt a mask being out over his face and his doctor’s voice speaking quietly. “Lee-Ann, we’re going to put Michael-Lan to sleep now. Keep a careful eye on his breathing and make sure he doesn’t get too much of the anaesthetic.
“Very good Doctor Gunn.”
“David, please, or I’ll call you Nurse Nichols. Shannon, how is our patient doing?”
“He seems stable Doctor… Sorry, David. It’s hard to say, his reactions are different from ours. He’s sliding under now though.”
“Good, let’s get started. This could be risky ladies, we don’t know what the guys down there are using but it’s nothing like the bullets that finished us. We can’t be sure the wretched thing won’t go off when we pull it out.”
Shannon Lowney shuddered, the last thing she remembered from her life on Earth was the crazed man standing at the door of her clinic, firing at her. Then the blackness and waking up surrounded by the white light of Heaven, Michael-Lan standing by her to welcome her in.
Doctor David Gunn was probing the wound in Michael-Lan’s chest. It was similar to the one in his shoulder but deeper, the bullet had penetrated more than 30 centimeters and gone straight through his sternum. There were bone fragments all over the wound and he had to remove each one of them. “The sternum is broken right across, whatever this bullet was, it must have been designed to penetrate armor. Suction, Lee-Ann, normal blood is bad enough, this silver stuff is a real nuisance. Another major wound cavity, the bullet looks as if it combined explosive and incendiary fillings. Both lungs are damaged and leaking blood, we’ll have to over-fold to correct that. Metal fragments, at least a dozen of them.”
“I’m beginning to see why we screwed Satan over so badly.” Lee-Ann Nichols glanced around to make sure nobody had heard her comment. With Hell safely in human hands, being sent there wasn’t the threat it had been once. Now, it might almost be interpreted as a promise. But who knew if the Angels hadn’t already found a new punishment for humans who defied them. Anyway, the medical team who lived in Michael’s palace had a luxurious life compared with those in the slums surrounding The Eternal City. She had a thought, suddenly, of the films she had seen of the Second World War, and of human guns surrounding The Eternal City and pouring artillery fire into it.
“Focus, Lee-Ann. This guy is our meal-ticket remember. Without him, we’d be swabbing floors at best and screaming in Hell at worst.”
“Like the man who killed us.” Shannon spoke with quiet hate. John Salvi had died in prison and his Second Life body hadn’t been found yet, as far as they knew anyway. He was still somewhere in the Hell-Pit.
“All the angels are.”
“True. Right, as far as I can see, the wound is clear and we’ve got leakage down to a minimum. No bubbles. Let’s get him sealed up. Get the extra sharp needles, penetrating this skin of his is a job all on its own.”
A few minutes cursing and swearing later, the bullet hole in Michael’s chest was sewn up. Gunn flexed his fingers and dabbed some iodine on the spots where he had jabbed himself. In a way it was quite a relief to see red blood again. “All right, he’s done. Now, lets take a look at the other one.”
“Do we have to? You know who he is?”
“Yeah. But treating those who need it is part of the job description. Who and what they are doesn’t enter the equation. It was people who disagreed with that who killed us, remember. Now, let’s see. Fragmentation damage, one eye gone, multiple broken bones, radiation burns…. radiation burns? What are our boys using down there? There’s been no word of them tossing a nuke.”
“Shush David. They might not know about them.” It was clear who Lee-Ann meant by “they”.
“Surely they must. We know Michael-Lan’s been to Vegas and they let a lot of them off around there in the fifties and sixties. Anyway, you’re right. Don’t tell them anything we don’t have to. Now back to Uriel-Lan. Other burns, white phosphorus poisoning, severe concussion, multiple penetrating bullet wounds. Oh my, we have our work cut out ladies. Clean up the theater and wheel him in.”
The Oval Office, The White House, Washington D.C.
“We’ve had a message from Pyongyang, Mister President. Kim Jong-Il has offered to join the Human Alliance and contribute a fair proportion of the North Korean Army to the H.E.A.”
“Has he now? What does he want?” President Obama was wary. His early optimism about international relations had become more clouded with experience.
“He wants a seat on the Council at Yamantau….”
“No way. The Council is the preserve of the nations that have been in this war since the beginning. The ones that put up a fight from the start. North Korea let our people do all the bleeding and dying, no way are they coming in and grabbing a seat now.”
“Prime Minister Putin said the same thing Sir. Only he added a few spectacular Russian obscenities. Very impressive vocabulary the Prime Minister has.” Hillary Clinton looked quite respectful. She’d memorized the more lurid language for use in the next row with her husband. “They want free oil, enough to run their military and civil economies and then some, free food for their entire population. They want military equipment to bring their armed forces up to the latest standards including F-22s and M1A4s. Not the B2 version, they want the 120mm gun tanks. The list of military equipment alone goes on for quite a few pages.
Obama sighed. Negotiating with the North Koreans was positively painful. “Who do we send?” His tone was almost despairing.
“I thought Joe Lieberman Sir.”
“Nice one. Do it. Now, what else?”
“Myanmar Sir. There’s a ceasefire in place and we’ve left the previous junta in charge of the northern third of the country. For a while anyway. They’re trying to contact Michael-Lan-Yahweh, they’re telling him they have a huge stockpile of drugs they have to get rid of before we capture it and burn the lot. So they’re offering it to him for whatever he wants to pay. Better a low price than none. But, there’s no reply as yet. We’re still hoping of course. If it doesn’t work, we’ll head north and finish taking over.”
“Thank you, Hillary. Janet, internal security?”
“We’re clearing up after the FBI’s screw-up. Judge Candlass made the right choice in my opinion but its made rolling up the network that much more difficult. One thing does amuse our people, commenting on the whole mess, Lugasharmanaska said that succubae used to recruit the extremely religious by pretending to be angels.”
“That’s no surprise.” Leon Panetta wasn’t impressed. “False flag recruiting is as old as humanity. It all goes to show, if you’re going to betray your country, do it for the money. You’ll never have any idea who you’re really working for.”
The working group laughed. “Funny, that’s what Luga said as well. Problem is though, the FBI can’t use the list they wormed out of Branch. Since they got the list illegally, any arrest they make based on it will be illegal and any information they got from those arrests will also be illegal. So, they have to pretend it doesn’t exist. We’ve sent copies of it around the world though, if anybody on it turns up somewhere where the controls aren’t so tight, well, you know the rest.”
“That sounds like extraordinary rendition.” Holder was visibly angered.
“No, we’re saying if anybody on the list leaves the country voluntarily and goes somewhere by their own choice, that’s good for us. We’re not picking them off the streets and sending them. The law enforcement agencies are continuing their investigations from the admissible evidence and that’s quite productive. Anyway, we’ll see how well we can stop up the leaks to Heaven.”
“Doctor Surlethe, anything to tell us?”
“No good news, no, Sir. We have a portal signal from the Uriel rescue and we’re analyzing it now. Once we’ve done that, perhaps we can duplicate it.”
“We still haven’t got through to Heaven?”
“No Sir. After trying for more than a year, we’re still stuck. One thing Sir, not scientific. We’re coming up to the first anniversary of the victory over Hell. We ought to have a celebration, a big one. People are getting dispirited, tired of the hardship and deadlock. Some really good street parties, a few parades, lifting the meat ration for a week or so will work wonders.”
Obama nodded. “Good idea. We’ll announce it next week. Make it a three-day vacation and tell everybody there’ll be another when Heaven falls. Thank you people.”
Chapter Thirty Three
RAF Bruntingthorpe, Leicestershire.
Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome had last been used by the Royal Air Force in 1962 when the 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the USAF and its RB-66Bs had moved out and the station had closed. Since 1972 the aerodrome had become privately owned and used for a number of uses; it had recently become famous as the home of Vulcan B. 2 XH558. Shortly after her first flight as once more an RAF bomber XH558’s home had been requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence, becoming home to the V-Bomber Flight and its four Vulcan B. 2s and two Victor K. 2s, and the RAF’s new Heavy Bomber Development Unit. The HBDU’s job was to prepare the RAF for the arrival of the B-1C Lancers that it had ordered from the Americans.
“What? Four aircraft in 2011?” Group Captain Martin Winters (he was still getting used to his new rank), the new Commanding Officer of the HBDU, shouted into his phone. “What are they doing, building them by hand?”
“That’s not so far from the truth. They had the production line tooling in storage but reconditioning it and setting it up was a seriously difficult job. Rockwell moved a lot faster than anybody had a right to expect as it is. Now, they’ve got to get long-lead components. They’re only moving as fast as they are because they’re drawing down on the spares inventory for the B-1Bs to bridge the gap.”
Winters fumed. “I thought that the Septics were supposed to be the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ and all that bullshit.”
“I’m sorry, Sir.” His contact at MoD Main Building replied. “But the Americans are starting production of the C model Lancer from scratch. It’s not a B-1B, it’s a modified and simplified B-1A. For the first six months they’ll only be producing one aircraft a month, rising to two six months after that. Best case scenario has the Americans operating eighteen new Lancers this time next year. Their first priority will be to replace the B-29s and B-50s, and replace the B-2s that were lost in the Whitman tornado. Aft
er that they’ll probably be happy enough to give us four aircraft for training purposes. There is some good news, they’ve also promised to allow our personnel to go on exchange to America so they can get some hands on experience with the B-1C.”
“Very nice of them I’m sure.” Winters replied, still far from happy. “I do hope that the Brass Hats and politicians are happy that the RAF’s bomber force will remain at four aircraft for the foreseeable future. Unless somebody else can come through with some spares.
“Between us Sir, the Brass have been trying that. They went to the Russians asking about Tu-95s and Tu-160s.”
“Bears and Blackjacks? I don’t suppose….”
“Not a chance it turned out. Tu-160s are coming off the lines at one per month now, big increase on the pre-war one per year. They’re good birds, apparently our people were impressed, but the Russians want them all. As for the Tu-95s, they’re restarting the production line but they’re having the same problems as the Septics. That left the Chinese of course….”
“I don’t suppose they have anything we could use.”
“Oddly, they’ve got the most productive bomber line at the moment. The good news is that they’re churning six Xian H-6Ks off the line a month. The bad news is that the H-6K is a modified Tu-16. Some Rolls-Royce people are over there now. Back in the ‘80s, the Chinese were playing with an advanced H-6 with Spey engines, they called it the H-8. It never got anywhere but the Chinese are trying again and the guys from Roller are helping them. Again, you’re looking at years, not months. There’s nobody else, not at the moment. So, you’re on your own resources. How are they looking?”