by Stuart Slade
Leilah-Lan had entered the room. Not just entered it, but made an entrance. She’d dyed her wing feathers black and was wearing her full dominatrix outfit. She strode across the throne room floor, the heels of her boots clicking on the marble as she turned and stood beside Michael, her face screwed up with concentration as she tried to pour power into him. Michael felt Yahweh’s assault slacken and fail with the sheer shock of what had just happened. Leilah-Lan in full professional outfit was something this throne room had never seen before.
“What are you doing here? I told you to get ready to run if this failed.”
“You did. You seem to forget Michael, I don’t take orders very well.” She chanced a quick grin at him.
“You’re mad… . .” Michael’s words were cut off by the doors banging again. Charmeine, Raphael and Gabriel walked in, striding across the rubble-covered floor to take up position around Michael. “All of you.”
“Grateful isn’t he.” Charmeine-Lan spoke lightly in the silence that had followed their entrance. “And us flying all the way here in a thunderstorm just for him.”
“What’s happening at the Club?” Michael was actually at a loss for words. He had assumed his inner circle would make a run for it if he lost. Their decision to come here and stand with him, he just hadn’t seen that coming.
“The humans are running it. We explained what was going on and why. Told them what we wanted to achieve. What you were trying to do and what you were risking to do it. So, they took over there. Glen’s officially in charge by the way. That freed us up to come here. They aren’t leaving either by the way. They’re going to keep playing until we win or Yahweh pulls the roof down on their heads. More of our high-ranking clients are on their way here … . .”
“Get ready.” Michael suddenly remembered why he was here and what the battle with Yahweh was like. “Yah-yah’s got a habit of throwing attacks without warning.”
“Nasty of him.” Leilah-Lan sounded most disapproving. “I’ll have to … … .”
She was interrupted by a massive blast of power from Yahweh. This time, the response was different. With his most trusted allies around him, Michael didn’t have to worry about drawing power from his network. They were pouring it into him and the difference was more than significant. This time, he stalled the blast half way towards him and held it there. The pressure was immense but for the first time since the battle began, he felt as if he was in control of the situation. He was aware of something else as well. The choir outside the room were no longer singing hymns of praise. They were singing in tune with the broadcast from the Montmartre Club.
That was when Michael felt his power slacken slightly. Leilah had pulled herself out of the net, stepped slightly to one side and hurled all the energy she could muster at Yahweh. The discharge cracked with the flat vicious noise of her whip as it flailed across the room and struck Yahweh full in the chest. It pushed him hard back against the throne and sent splinters of marble flying through the air. It was a one-shot tick-pony shot and Michael knew it but, once again, Yahweh’s poor power management had left him open to it. For a few seconds, his assault stopped and the blast of power from Michael flooded across the room and besieged Yahweh in his throne. Leilah had slumped to her knees, exhausted by the effort needed to generate the blast but she had made a historic mark, one that would never be forgotten in Heaven. For she, an Erelim, had managed to attack and hurt Yahweh. From within the shield of energy that surrounded them, Charmeine reached out and pulled her into the protection of the shield.
For a moment, the initiative was in Michael’s hands. He poured power at Yahweh, exhausting himself and his allies in the process, but he had Yahweh on the defensive at last. Now it was Yahweh who was struggling to hold back the assault, it was Yahweh who was fighting to prevent the energy breaking through and crushing him. Concentrating on managing the assault, Michael was only dimly aware of other angels from his club entering the room and joining the group around him. He just felt their energy joining his and supporting the streams of power that mixed and blasted inside the shattered throne room.
Never in the memories of anybody present had there been anything like the displays that now saturated the throne room. The scintillating, interacting arcs of light had gone far beyond white and multicolor. Now they shimmered with iridescent hues beyond the imagination of those watching in awe. The confrontation left that between Yahweh and the Morningstar pallid by comparison, pallid and lackluster for the brilliance of the light battle was enough to blind those unprepared for it. Just as Michael had clawed his way back from the brink of defeat just a few minutes earlier, now Yahweh tried to do the same. He also poured power into his defense and saw the assault on him slowly forced back. Watching him, Michael realized that, for the first time in uncountable millennia, Yahweh was actually running out of energy.
The battle was deadlocked. The two great shimmering walls of light energy were stationary in the middle of the room, their interface twisting with wild, unknowable colors and were beyond any mind to describe. Neither side could disengage now, both were locked in a death-grapple that could only end with the defeat and utter destruction of one. Or both thought Michael. That’s an outcome I hadn’t considered before. He looked behind him and saw another thing he had not expected. There was a disturbance around the entrance to the mason’s bunker, now stained, blackened and scarred by the battle. The mason himself pulled free of the crowd inside and walked across the room to stand with Michael and his allies. The added energy pushed the wall a little bit further back towards Yahweh
Michael-Lan-Michael looked around, quickly assessing the situation. Leilah-Lan was back on her feet, tapping the palm of her left hand with her riding crop as she poured her recovering energy reserves into the battle. He had more than a dozen allies around him now, including at least five Chayot Ha Kodesh of the first and second degrees. For all that, he still hadn’t quite got the edge to finish off Yahweh. They were evenly balanced, Yahweh on one side, Michael and his allies on the other and that was it.
There was one question Michael needed to know the answer to. That one question would be decisive in the titanic struggle that was now reaching its conclusion. Michael asked it of himself time and time again, his mind searching desperately for the answer. How would the humans handle this situation?
Chapter Seventy Six
Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.
“Two kilometers?” General Asanee spoke carefully. She’d measured the pictures taken by the Global Hawks for herself and come to the same conclusion as the analysts. The main streets carving The Eternal City into sections were that wide.
“Two kilometers wide and dead straight. Three run north and south, three run east and west. They join the gates, or rather the flanking ones do. The one down the middle is blocked by Yahweh’s palace here in the middle. They cut the city into sixteen blocks with the palace area forming the seventeenth.” The analyst sounded displeased; he didn’t like having his work checked so carefully. The great model of The Eternal City was largely his work. He had a feeling it was the supreme achievement of his lifetime. After all, where could he go from making this?
“So each block is 375 kilometers on a side? And these are 20 kilometers wide?” General Petraeus tapped the corner redoubts on the outer walls of the city.
“That’s right, Sir. The gatehouses are twenty kilometers wide as well. Each flanking tower is nine kilometers across. How they swing a gate a kilometer wide open and closed is beyond me. No matter how carefully counterbalanced they are, the inertia must be enormous.”
“They probably don’t open the whole gate. I bet you’ll find there are small doors set in the face of the giant ones.” Asanee smiled. “That’s how we did it in our walled cities.”
“Each of the city blocks duplicates the structure of the city as a whole. Cut into 16 sections, each a little under 95 kilometers square, by roads about a kilometer wide. Then each sub-block divided into 16 sub-sub-blocks by roads 500 mete
rs wide. Each sub-sub-block is around 20 kilometers on each side. Populations seem to vary. Some just have four palaces, others have dozens. There are what appear to be temples all over the city. That’s hardly surprising of course. We’ve done a rough estimate of the city population. We think there’s around 200 million angels living in the City itself.”
“Two hundred million.” Petraeus seemed haunted by the number. “This has all the makings of a nightmare.”
“We can chop the City up into isolated blocks using the roads and then take down each sub-sub block individually. It’ll be one hell of a street fight though.” Asanee was measuring the likely cost of doing so while she spoke. The answer wasn’t one she liked.
“We’re better equipped for fighting Angels and Daemons than we were at Hit. We’ve got rifles that can actually hurt them now.” Jackson looked depressed, he was calculating losses as well. His answer varied from Asanee’s, reflecting the difference in their characters. “And Angels don’t have the bloody-minded guts of the daemons.”
“We don’t know that Michael.” Asanee had a warning note in her voice. “That’s true in the fighting so far but it all took place away from their city. This time, it’ll be on their home ground, in their sacred city. We can’t be sure they’ll fold. Where have they got to run to?”
“That’s a good point Asanee.” Petraeus looked at the great model again. “They’ve nowhere left to go. We can’t assume they’ll fold. Anyway, another point we have to think about. Yahweh’s palace, here in the center of the city. Right in the middle. It’s in what amounts to a park, 200 kilometers square with that lake beside it. We have to advance through 650 kilometers of urbanized terrain before getting there. That’s more than the operating range of our tanks. We’ll need every heavy truck we can get to keep the front line forces fighting. We can open portals of course, move the stuff directly in from Earth but it’s still going to be a massive effort just to keep the troops supplied.
“Anyway, there’s something else I wanted to discuss with you.” Petraeus pressed the keypad on his desk and the electronic displays that dominated the wall behind his desk flickered into life. The map showed the square of The Eternal City with great blue arrows beginning to coil around it. “We’ve got all three Army Groups moving into place now. Combined with air operations, we’re methodically cutting supplies into the City. So far, we haven’t actually moved into sight of the city. Not officially anyway. Unofficially, we’re picking up communications that suggest a number of countries have moved covert forces into observation points around the city.”
At that point Petraeus became aware that Jackson and Asanee were both looking shifty. In fact, they looked downright evasive. “Let me guess, you two as well?”
“We have a couple of reconnaissance units near the city walls.” Asanee sounded apologetic. “My government insisted we move them up to check on the data we were getting.”
“I can honestly say that Her Majesty’s Armed Forces have no covert operations groups stationed outside The Eternal City.” Sir Michael Jackson sounded positively righteous. Asanee’s head snapped around to look at him and one of her eyebrows was raised.
Petraeus smiled. “I see the SAS are living up to their reputations then. I suppose it was to be expected. A coalition this big doesn’t exist without this kind of thing going on. Just make sure that these groups don’t start stepping on each others’ feet. Asanee, Michael, I don’t care how you do it but set up some sort of system so we don’t get mutual interference between these groups. By the way, somebody better talk to our friend Gaius Julius about that as well. He’s hired enough deceased special forces people to have something going. And he’s not the kind of leader who’ll miss a trick.”
The Ultimate Temple, Heaven
A single phrase hammered through Michael-Lan’s mind. The Issue Is In Doubt.. Who actually doubted it was a good question. The clouds of static lightning that filled the Throne Room had stabilized, more or less, but there was no clear advantage to either side. Sweat was running down Michael’s face, not just from the intense effort that he and his allies were making but from the rising temperature within the room. That was inevitable with the sheer amount of energy that was being discharged. Even with the immensely thick marble walls acting as a heat sink, that energy had to go somewhere. He and his circle were getting nowhere fast and it was questionable how long they could hold out.
On the other hand, it was also questionable how long Yahweh could hold out. What was happening was unprecedented. Yahweh had been fought to a standstill and his own resources, once capable of overwhelming even the most determined opposition, were now depleted. Michael consoled himself with the thought that his day was done. Even if Yahweh survived this battle, there were those who had watched and learned from Michael’s mistakes. Yahweh would go down eventually. The problem was that if Michael won, the same assault could be used against him. Whatever happened, today’s battle marked the end of the old ways in Heaven.
It was getting harder to hear the music being transmitted from the Montmartre Club. The energy battle that was being waged interfered with the broadcast. The constant crackle and hiss of static drowned out parts of the program and that was a problem Michael hadn’t anticipated. His whole plan depended on the musical broadcast keeping his allies minds in synchronization with his own. That meant their mental energy was transferred at maximum efficiency. As the music was lost in the interference, that synchronization would be lost and with it much of his edge over Yahweh.
Through the crackle, Michael heard the music had changed again. It took him a few bars to recognize it but when he did, it was with the pleasure of meeting an old friend. It was the theme tune from the film Zulu. One of his favorites, Zulu was a regular feature in the cinema attached to the Montmartre Club. Michael’s mind went to the end of the film, when the British redcoats were making their last stand and pouring fire from their rifles into the mass of maddened Zulu warriors before them. He could hear the Sergeants giving the orders. ‘Front rank fire. Middle rank fire. Rear rank fire.’
That’s what humans would do in a situation like this. The realization dawned on Michael-Lan in a flash of understanding. He had the answer he was looking for.
“People, get ready to push together. Every bit of energy we have. But don’t hold it. We’ll just push as hard as we can and then relax a little. Then push again. In time with the music.” So far they had been maintaining a long, steady, maintained pressure. But if they started pulsing the pressure, if they used their energy in bursts instead of a continuous effort, it might work. “Get ready and … . heave.”
Michael-Lan threw every bit of energy he had into the pulse. He felt his allies doing the same and the sudden effort forced the flickering wall between them and Yahweh back. Not far, a foot or more at most, but a definite push. There was a curious strip on the wall where bleached white stone and blackened jewels met that showed the result. His team relaxed and Yahweh started to regain the strip but the music struck another chord and his team threw another pulse. This one worked as well and the bleached and blackened strip of wall grew wider.
“Come on friends, it’s working.” Michael was caught up in the battle, orchestrating the pulses of energy with the rhythm of the music, emitting the massive pulses that were slowly but surely having their effect. Each one gained just a little more ground, each respite between them lost just a little less. “Heave!”
The strip down the wall was wider by far and Michael’s team stepped forward, feeling the heat of the stone under their feet. The jade floor was hot enough to be uncomfortable even through their sandals but that was of little importance. Michael knew, every member of his team knew, that they had Yahweh on the run. The battle was slowly swinging in their favor.
The change, when it came was sudden. The defensive wall of energy that Yahweh had maintained between him and his enemy collapsed. Where once there had been a solid barrier that kept Michael’s allies away from the Peerless Throne, now there was a bubble of energ
y around it. That was not a final loss. At the start of the fight, it was Michael who had been trapped within an energy bubble but he had fought his way out of it. With the help of his friends, who had cast their lot in with him beyond any means of withdrawal. In a part of his mind that was not involved in this battle, Michael still wondered at that. They could have stayed clear and had a chance of survival if things had gone badly. But they had given it up to stand beside him. That thought gave him much to think about but one thing stirred uneasily in his mind. I don’t deserve friends like these.
The energy pulses from Michael and his team struck at the sphere of energy protecting Yahweh from all directions. He could see the colors rippling in it, saw the surface of the sphere rippling under the impacts. Above all, the sphere was shrinking. Each successive onslaught left it smaller and weaker, its colors dimmer and more familiar. His team were losing energy also, but slowly, they were gaining dominance over the defense in front of them. Their pulses were still multi-colored even though the spectrum was one familiar to those watching. In contrast, Yahweh’s screen showed glowing areas of white.
Over the crackling roar of the energy discharges, Michael-Lan heard a groan, then an increasing wail of pain. Yahweh was in the center of an energy discharge and that discharge was being crushed inwards. He was being crushed with it. The ball was almost completely white now yet still being assailed by waves of energy in all seven colors of the visible spectrum. The wail turned into an agonized howl as the pressure continued to crush inwards. It grew louder and more unstable, the voice from within the sphere wavering and breaking under the terrible pressure. Despite his size and unimaginable power, Yahweh was dying.