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 treacherous 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.
New York Air Defense Interception Zone Command Center, World Trade Center Site, New York, United States
“The angel is going down. Portal is stationary. Oh shit, it’s right overhead.” James Yan shouted the situation report down the phone, caught by surprise as the gunfire outside ceased. The 76mms had tracked the angel down, continuing to fire until the safety stops had cut them off. The World Trade Center site had been a major building effort until The Salvation War had started. Then, work had stopped, only to be restarted when the partially- complete buildings had been converted to the new defense command center. Yan looked at his instruments again. “Abort that, the portal is drifting slightly. That angel didn’t quite stop it.”
“Confirm that, Staten Island reports they’re picking up very slow movement.” The voice on the other end of the line was concerned; the anti-portal missiles were unguided. They had to be fired precisely through the portal if they were to work at all and a moving target was bad news.
“Something coming through now.” For a moment Yan thought he could see the evil orange glow of lava as another sky volcano was created over New York. Then, the tracking radar gave him the information he was dreading. It wasn’t a lava attack, a solid rock had just come though. And, according to the radar, it wasn’t moving away from its current position. That meant it was heading right at the radar set. A radar set that was precisely sixty feet above Yan’s head.
The first rock hit the West Side Highway, approximately 300 yards south of the World Trade Center site. The force of the impact was roughly equivalent to 430 tons of TNT, causing a blast wave almost 500 meters across to devastate everything within its reach. For the second time in a decade, the World Trade Center site was utterly destroyed by an explosion, only this time the effects were instantaneous. Nothing could have survived within the blast radius and nothing did. That left the New York defense zone effectively decapitated. The elaborate operations center was wiped out and all that it controlled left headless. The blast wave punched buildings askew, their glass windows blown out of their frames and showering down on the streets beneath. The ground wave of the impact was that of a small earthquake, shaking and shattering buildings up to a kilometer away. In the South Cove Marina, a mini-tsunami formed that tore boats free from their moorings and hurled them into the city. To the horrified gaze of New Yorkers across the city, a nuclear-like fireball rose over Manhattan leading to wild rumors that the city had, like Tel Aviv, fallen victim to nuclear attack
The portal was wandering at random, drifting slowly north west when the second rock came through. It caught the edge of the subsiding blast wave from the first strike, adding fresh fire and fury to the devastation that was being wrought in lower Manhattan. That second rock hit the global headquarters of Goldman-Sachs, the fireball from the impact joining the first in towering over the city. A full board meeting had been in progress at the bank at the time, a coincidence that was to have unexpected repercussions in the near future. A few minutes later, the third rock descended, plowing into the New York City Fire Museum. As the third fireball rose into the sky, the air defense sub-sector command station was frantically trying to re-establish communications with the city’s defenses.
While there was still a city left to defend.
Chapter Fifty Five
New York Air Defense Interception Zone Secondary Command Center, La Guardia Airport, New York, United States
“Manhattan is taking a real pounding.” Mayor Bloomberg looked across at the blacked-out island, scarred by the fireballs rising from the multiple impact points. The power over there had failed under the repeated ground shocks and that was adding to the chaos that was developing as people tried to flee the ruthless bombardment. “When can we do something about it?”
“We’re trying to get the system online now. The original control was by way of the World Trade Center complex but that’s gone. We’re trying to reroute around the holes knocked in the net.” Colonel Mark Gridley was trying to re-assemble the communications net while he spoke. The problem was that the original flurry of rocks had taken down many of the nodes the system depended on and there was no reliable way of finding out which were up other than by ‘binging’ them. The good news was that each time he found a functional node, it opened up new prospects for routing signals. Also, a side issue now but one that would become important when the attack was over, the destroyed nodes formed a map of the wrecked areas of the city. Why knew how many people were trapped in the wreckage.
Over on the horizon another series of fireballs rose over Roosevelt Island. The fall of the rocks was intermittent, there would be a flurry of hits and then a pause while there were only a few scattered hits. Almost as if work gangs were rolling the 100-ton rocks through. Which, Gridley thought. was probably exactly what was happening. “Mayor, the damage I’m plotting suggests the portal is drifting up the west side of Manhattan. If it continues on its present course, it’ll cross over the Hudson between Hoboken and Union City. We’d better get warnings out to New Jersey.”
“I think they’re probably better informed than we are at this point.” Bloomberg spoke drily, disguising the fact
