the sort of ideal the Boers clung to even when times changed and they lived a lot better than they ever could hen living the Lekker Lewe. I guess the same applies here; in comparison with living on the brink of starvation and always in danger of being looted or killed or both, this place doesn’t seem so bad. It’s just that we are seeing it through different eyes. It’s not just our weaponry that’s changed, its our expectations of what constitutes a Heaven.”
“Ain’t that the truth Biker. Looks like our medic friends are about to catch up with us. Yo, Benedict. Any more angels around this way?”
“No Sir. Our Haropamiel was all.”
“Watch it Colonel, I doubt if these people have been outside their fields in millennia. They’ve got no idea what’s out there.”
“Sure. Tell everybody to mount up. And to take things real careful.”
Belial’s Camp, Heaven.
“Most Blessed Lord, the human army is approaching. Already their war machines are near our walls.” Ohiel- Lan-Epidan wasn’t quite sure how to address Belial. A Grand Duke in Hell was, or had been, the equivalent of a Chayot Ha Kodesh but to give one of the Fallen the same titles seemed wrong on too many levels. Yet Belial was doubtless in charge here and was favored by The Almighty Father Of All. Had not He Who Is Above All himself placed this Grand Duke in charge of this place of punishment? And had not Belial chosen him, a lowly Cherubim as one of the guards here. Ohiel-Lan-Epidan had taken to his work very quickly, with the authority granted to him he had been able to take down the arrogant Seraphim and Hashmallim who had once lorded their superiority over the lower ranks of Angels. Now they whimpered in the mud while he, Ohiel, a mere Ishim, had his foot on their necks.
“They are called tanks.” Belial spoke without too much concern. He had already decided that, while carrying out this task, that it was not worthy of him. It was all very well to torment a few hundred angels but he was used to better things than this. Once he held sway over tens of thousands of daemons and billions of human souls. He had been a favorite of Satan himself. All of which he had lost due to the betrayal of that bitch Euryale. Her words “kill him” still echoed through his mind. He needed vengeance upon her; he needed her to die a hideously lingering and agonizing death for what she had done.
Coming to Heaven had been a mistake. With a flash of intuitive insight, Belial realized that he had been so demoralized by Euryale’s betrayal, so crushed by the contemptuous ease with which the humans had overwhelmed everybody before them, that he had fled the battle before it was truly lost. He could have done so much more, all he had needed was the spirit, the internal resources to do it. Certainly the humans had destroyed the center of power Satan had built around Dis but the daemons had only ever occupied a small portion of the vast land mass of Hell. There were vast lands outside the daemonic domain where the humans were unlikely to go. There must be tens of thousands of daemons who would not accept the cowardly surrender of Abigor and who wished to continue the fight. All they needed was leadership, the sort of leadership that only a Grand Duke could provide.
By running for Heaven, he had so nearly missed his chance. He had taken himself out of the competition for leadership of the resistance to human rule of Hell, the resistance that he knew had to be building somewhere in the hinterland of Hell. This also was Euryale’s fault, if she hadn’t betrayed him so brutally, so finally, he would never have fled to this pale, insipid Heaven. Instead, he would have been the leader of the daemonic resistance and, once the humans had been driven out, the ruler of a new kingdom. For a moment he allowed himself to slip into a daydream, one in which he devised new and ever more excruciating torments to be inflicted on Euryale as soon as the opportunity arose.
“My Lord?” Ohiel-Lan-Epidan spoke carefully. More than one Angel had been transferred from guard on the outside to prisoner on the inside for offending Belial. “Your orders?”
Belial snapped himself out of his reverie, one in which Euryale had been begging him for her death. “All Angels will form up on the walls and fight off the humans. Go now and spread the word.”
He watched the angel head off to the walls, carrying the word that would start the fight against the humans. Then, he turned away and started the mental disciplines necessary to open a portal to Earth.
Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven
“York crews, get ready to deal with any Airborne angel attacks.” The six M1314A1 anti-harpy guns were spread out in a long line to cover her tanks and MICVs. “Alpha and Bravo companies, concentrate fire on the gatehouse in front. Five rounds rapid, Alpha Company advance to the gully after three. Use up the sabot ammunition, keep the HEAD and beehive rounds for when we have to deal with the Angels. Charlie and Delta companies, use your chain guns to hose down the top of the wall. Bravo will advance with me as soon as Alpha is in position. On my mark… Fire.”
Thirty 120mm sabot rounds streaked across the gap separating the tanks from the walls of Belial’s concentration camp. The crystal-clear picture of the gatehouse vanished under roiling clouds of dust as the rods slammed into the stone, powdering it and sending fragments spinning into the sky. Looking at the scene, Stevenson realized that it had a distinct resemblance to the dust-laden atmosphere of Hell. So, we’ve brought Hell to Heaven. Angels, meet depleted uranium. And the more you fight, the worse it is going to get Her tank lurched again as her gunner slammed out a second. She could see the dust cloud covering the gate roil as the sabot bolts tore through it. The third salvo ripped out, then the fourteen tanks of Alpha Company accelerated out of their positions and started to move to a deep gully that would provide them with hull-down positions for further shots at the already-battered gatehouse. Her own tank lurched twice more as two additional shots were squeezed off, then her two command tanks led Bravo company in a leap-frogging movement to their next designated fire positions.
Half way through the move, she was checking on Alpha Company to make sure they were sustaining fire on the gate and wall around it. Back in the old days, she wouldn’t have had to do that but the massive expansion of the Army had meant quality had dropped. A lot. Still, the company were firing slowly and deliberately at the gatehouse structure. One of the towers was already down, the other looking decidedly battered from the sabot rounds that were splitting the marble apart. As she watched, a great sheet of shining white stone detached from the face of the tower and crashed to the ground. Then, there was a sound that reminded her of a bell chiming and her tank lurched.
“What the hell was that?” Her loader’s voice came over the intra-vehicle comms system.
Stevenson thought for a split second. “Trumpet blast. Our insulation took most of it and the active noise cancellation system a lot more so what we heard was what leaked through.” Enough to make a 70-ton tank rock she thought. Angels were a lot more dangerous than daemons.
She switched over to the battalion command frequency. “Charlie and Delta, we’re taking trumpet blasts here. Maintain fire on the wall. York, any angels trying to fly yet?”
York Battery’s commander was probably listening on the radio, waiting for the chance to blow something up. “No sign of any flight activity ma’am. All trying to stay under cover I guess.”
“Hokay, use the radar for surveillance and pick off any that do appear. In the meantime, switch your gun to electro-optical and hose down that wall.”
I guess his finger must have been on the fire button all the time. The brilliant red streaks from the 57mm tracer rounds were slashing at the wall-top before she had time to formulate the thought. By the time her attention had returned to the gatehouse, her tanks had opened fire and the different angles of impact had brought the second tower down. “Shift fire to the gate itself. One round HEAD.”
With the protecting bulk of the towers down and the gate supports severely compromised, the single barrage of HEAD rounds were enough to leave gates themselves a mass of burning splinters. “Bravo Company, follow me. Alpha, pick up behind. Everybody else, keep hammering the wall top either side of the gates.”
The temptation to open the tank up and watch what was happening through the open commander’s cupola was great but Stevenson crushed it down hard. The lesson of Hell was quite clear, humans were more or less safe inside their armored vehicles. It was when they left the protection of rolled homogenous armor that things went wrong. Her tank started to rise as it crossed the burning rubble of the gate, then its nose dipped and Setevson saw what lay inside the compound. For a brief moment sheer blind fury grabbed hold of her and she wanted to swing her coaxial machine gun across the camp guards who were already throwing down their swords. She managed to master the impulse, just, by the barest of margins. For a second the lights inside the tank flickered and the computers blipped, then there was a rattle that she recognized as machinegun fire hitting her tank.
“What happened?” Her voice was terse and strained.
“One of the guards, took a swing at your tank with what looks like an electrically charged sword. Bravo-three,
