lesson from his flight school, a grim one. A successful fighter pilot was an assassin, not a warrior. Another check on his display, the angel was marked using the data from the infra-red tracking systems, the other pair of Su-35s from their transponders. Even as Fatkullin watched, the southernmost pair of Su-35s turned north and started to move in. Time for the attack.
Colopatiron saw the two human aircraft accelerate and swing towards him. This was bad, very bad. In his excess of the sin of pride, the Eternal Enemy had never bothered to learn much about humans and that was why he had died under their weapons. Colopatiron would not make that mistake. He adjusted his vision for long range and darkness and saw the two aircraft streaking towards him. Instinctively he knew that they were the source of the infernal itching in his skin and he acted according to his instincts. His lungs flexed, his voice drew upon all the powers of the Chorus and he emitted a blast of pure sound at the lead aircraft, sound so pure and above reproach that it flung the fighter from the sky. Colopatiron watched it crumple in mid-air, saw it fall and the human who flew it eject from the great transparent house that rode upon its nose. He felt triumph swell within him at the sight of those who defied the One Above All being driven from the skies they claimed as their own but he crushed it down. There was no time to exult over the fate of a fallen foe.
Lieutenant Viktor Matveevich Rakitin had known that, as the two most junior pilots in the flight of four Su-35s, he and Blue-861 would be the decoys. What he had not expected was for the angel they were hunting to respond to their feint so quickly. The blow that had struck Blue-861 had thrown it out of control and wrecked its internal structure, probably also caused both jet engines to flame out. The fringes of the same blow had caught his own aircraft, throwing him against his straps, but his faithful Blue-863 had stood the shock and kept flying. He had a radar lock on the angel so he selected his R-77Ms and fired a pair of them at the target before heaving back on the stick, ramming his throttles forward and soaring skyward. That had put him well clear of the course of the two missiles and so out of danger when something had tumbled them and sent them plummeting from the sky. It didn’t matter though, Blue-861 and Blue-863 had done their job, the angel had spent the few seconds it had to react concentrating on them and in doing so, it had allowed Blue-860 and Blue-862 to get into perfect firing positions.
Colopatiron had blown the two missiles aimed at it out of the sky with the same casual ease he had used to wipe out the first aircraft. Now was the time to deal with its mate, and his eyes tracked the second aircraft as it swept skywards, accelerating fast. He gave forth another blast of sound, revelling in its purity as he did so, but it was ineffective. It did not matter, the aircraft was running from battle and the skies were clear for his return home. Then Colopatiron felt the burning agony as he was enveloped in explosions and he knew that he would not be going home again. Weakened and in agony, knowing he was dying, he tried one last shot against the humans who had out-fought him.
It was a perfect assassination, his flight instructors would have been proud. The angel had never even realized the four missiles fired by the two Su-35s were inbound until they had slammed into his body and eviscerated him. Fatkullin saw the angel writhing in mid-air, saw it turn and mouth at him. His faithful Blue-860 shook in ways that rattled his teeth and caused his sight to blur but the effects of four missile hits had weakened the angel so much that the wall he felt as if his aircraft had flown into was a comparatively fragile thing. His continuously-computed impact point for his 30mm gun was on the angel, so Fatkullin squeezed the trigger and pumped a long burst into the still-moving body. Once his gun had had a burst-limiter but that had long been removed in recognition of the fact that Baldricks and angels were so damned hard to kill. Now, the shells stitched a line across the target and the angel fell from the sky.
“Eagle Control. This is Blue-860. Target is negated, say again, target is negated. Blue-861 lost to an unknown weapon. Returning to base.”
The Montmartre Club, Heaven.
The last strains of “Nightmare” faded away and the band leader stepped forward to a burst of rapturous applause from the audience. He cast an apprehensive eye at the great figure sitting off to one side but Michael-Lan had risen to his feet and was applauding enthusiastically.
“Well done, Artie, great performance. You too Billie, shame you two ever split up down on Earth.”
“Thank you Excellency…”
“Hey, not so much of the Excellency, you know very well that I have to put up with too much of that nonsense out there. In here, its Michael, Michael-Lan if you want to be more formal. And a great artist like you, well associating with us as if we are equals is just one of the benefits of the job. Anyway, you and your band have a rest now, we’ve got a stage act coming up and then Glen is on.”
Michael-Lan walked back through the crowd, looking around him at the scene that, for all its apparent casualness, lay at the center of his plans. The air was tinged with the scent of fine cigars, the occupants and staff of the club, a mixture of humans and members of the angelic host, were laughing and exchanging pleasantries. Cocktail waitresses in outfits that left nothing to the imagination were serving drinks. Every so often, a customer would grab one of the girls, there would be a brief conversation and then they would vanish to one of the rooms upstairs. Up on the stage, the band had finished clearing their instruments away and the scene was dressed as a room in a hotel somewhere. Two young female angels were on the stage, sitting on the bed, running their hands over each other’s bodies. The audience had quieted down a little, they were becoming fascinated by the story the two performers were opening up before them.
Michael-Lan got a strange feeling that if humans had actually designed Heaven, this was more or less what they would have come up with. As the idea occurred to him, he got the warm, fuzzy feeling he always got these days when he thought of humans. For millenia he had despised them, looking on them with the same cold contempt for their mindless obedience and submission that Yahweh had made so obvious. Then, a few centuries ago, humans had stopped being blindly-obedient beasts and started to question what surrounded them. Only a few at first, but slowly those few had opened the eyes of a few more and a few more again. Soon, a critical mass had been reached and the humans had broken out of the prison Yahweh had imposed upon them and begun to build their own society.
Michael-Lan had investigated that society with the intent of tearing it down but as he had started his inquiries, somehow, he’d caught the human disease and started to question the assumptions he’d been trained never to doubt. As the questions in his mind had multiplied, he had found, to his own disbelief, that he was beginning to like these new humans. More than that, a plan, complex and devious, had begun to form in his mind. A small part of that plan was here, small yet critical beyond measure. He had formed this club, he had rescued humans from torment to staff and run it. It drew on all the impressions he had gathered on his visits to Earth, part speakeasy, part bordello, part burlesque show, it was the honey in the center of his scheme.
He glanced again at the stage. The two angels were now down on the bed, twisting in simulated passion. Michael-Lan gave them top marks for innovative use of wings and imaginative application of feathers and then turned to one of his guests.
“Having a good time Gabriel-Lan?”
“As always, Michael-Lan. What did we do for fun before you started this place?” The Archangel Gabriel’s voice was slurred from too much whisky. That reminded Michael, he was going to have to do something about ensuring supplies. Earth was getting harder to visit with the war now in full swing. As if Gabriel had read Michael’s thoughts, he asked “And how goes the war?”
“The first Bowl of Wrath was poured today. The operation was successful although sadly the Angels delivering the Bowl did not survive the human defenses.” Which was fortunate, Michael-Lan thought. He had carefully picked those Angels from those whose loyalties might have been conflicted enough to hazard his plans.
“Seems like a rotten thing to do to the humans down there.” Gabriel was definitely drunk. Michael would have to make sure he was sobered up before he left the club. Yahweh absolutely did not need to know this place existed. He might be the all-knowing but that only applied when people didn’t use extraordinary measures to stop him from finding out. Michael-Lan had been applying those measures for some centuries now and neither Yahweh nor the late, unlamented Satan had been as all-knowing as they had believed. Michael gave a small signal with one hand and the house madam gave him a knowing grin.
“Gabriel-Lan, we have got to keep the humans out of Heaven. Look, they loathed Satan for everything he did and because of that, they killed him in process of destroying everything he had built. But, Satan just tortured them for all eternity. We betrayed them. Satan never pretended to be anything other than what he was or had plans anything other than what he announced. We, all of us, acted nice, made lots of promises and reneged on every one of them. They loathed Satan but they hate us. If they get their Army up here, they will destroy Heaven and kill us
