“Let me show you why. These are called X-rays, they’re a sort of photograph that shows the inside of your body. These white things are the bones of your wings, these very bright white bits are the screws we put in to hold the long bones together while they healed. Now, these are pictures of a healthy wing, they’re of Lemuel’s actually. Compare them with yours, you can see the difference in the wing joint here. Lemuel’s is a marvel, five bones coming together in a joint that has three axes of movement. Your joint, on the other hand, is just a fused mass of bone. Left to itself, it will never heal to anything more than that.”
Maion started to cry, causing Lemuel to grip her hand and wrap his wing over her head. Zinder paused for a second, then carried on. “There is another option. There’s somebody I would like you to meet.”
Lemuel looked around, then his eyes opened with shock. “A Fallen One. What is he doing here?” The question was directed at Zinder and had a degree of anger in it.
“This is Memnon, a senior member in the government of President Abigor. Memnon lost his wings in a battle with our forces. As you can see, he got them back. I’ll let him tell you the story.”
Zinder sat back while Memnon told the story of his adventures in Iraq and Hell to the two Angels. While he did so, Zinder watched him carefully, trying to learn as much as he could from what, he had no doubt, was the most unusual meeting ever held in Earth Hospital. When Memnon finished, Zinder took over the conversation. “We can’t be sure that angels regenerate the same way daemons do. So you have a choice Maion. You can stay with wings that are present, but paralysed and useless or we can amputate them and hope that they regrow. If they do, you should have fully functional wings again, if they do not, you’ll be wingless. Up to you. Something I have to add, you’re the most advanced patient we have here. What happens with you will determine how the other Angels are treated. Some of them are in much worse condition than you are. Their wings were broken and re-broken while some have had their legs injured the same way as well. If this amputation and regrowth doesn’t work, they won’t be able to walk, let alone fly.”
Maion started crying again. “That’s horrible.”
“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” Lemuel spoke belligerently. “The Fallen Ones are our enemies, they always have been. They have plotted against us for millennia.”
“As you have against us never-born. Your arrogance wearies me as it has done for centuries.” Memnon was equally belligerent and Zinder got the same sort of feeling he did when dealing with his children squabbling over who had the largest apple.
“Shut up both of you.” Zinder looked at them both with exasperation. “Lemuel, I got the medical records from the hospital that treated Memnon. It took a little time because it is an Army facility and this is a Navy installation but I’ve got them. I’ve even got the X-rays of his wings before and after the amputation and regrowth treatment. They confirm everything he has just told you. I wouldn’t have let him even mention this without checking out his story. Listen, both of you, it’s time to let old hatreds die. Isn’t it obvious by now that both Yahweh and Satan played you all for suckers? Us too, only now we’re doing something about it. Memnon, coming here to help was a generous and kindly gesture and you should appreciate it Lemuel. But this is a hospital and I’ll have no squabbling here. Either of you causes trouble and out you both go. The only person who really matters here is Maion and all that matters is what’s best for her. Get it?”
Memnon and Lemuel looked at each other, their mouths hanging open with shock.
“Err, yes.” Lemuel was speaking for them both. “My apologies, you too Memnon. We’d better forget what happened in the past or the humans might get angry with us.”
“Doctor, the wings I have will never work again. I do not need your pictures to know that.” She paused took her breath. “Lemuel, with your permission, please let them cut off these wings. They just get in the way now. I do not want to spend the rest of my life walking through doors sideways. Even if they don’t grow back properly, I’ll be better off.”
Lemuel nodded while Zinder made a cellphone call organizing an operating theater, as much white angelic blood as they had in stock and a couple of lumberjack-grade chainsaws. Then, he left the ward to get his surgical team ready. Memnon fell in beside him. Walking beside the daemon, Zinder couldn’t help but ask a question that had been bothering him.
“Memnon, all we have learned about the Great Celestial War says that you daemons rebelled against Yahweh. Before that you were all part of the same host. Now, your superficial appearance is utterly different. What happened?”
Memnon thought carefully for a few seconds. “We were all similar once. But then, soon after we took over Hell and made our home there, the great volcano that is now the Hellpit erupted. The old stories say it was terrible with a poisoned gas that smelled of bad eggs spewing over the land. Slowly, we became changed, loosing our white coats and feathers and becoming as you see us now. Our offspring also changed, a little bit at first, then more and more until we had split into all the groups you see today. It was always said that Yahweh caused the great eruption to try and destroy us but he only partly succeeded. Satan himself made things worse by experimenting with breeding one group with another. And there was….”
Suddenly the voice he had first heard in the deserts of Iraq whispered in his ear. That is enough. They need know no more. The end of your story is still far away. With those words in his mind, Memnon fell silent.
Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.
“Are the latest damage assessment pictures in?”
The officer from the National Reconnaissance Office nodded. “They are, although I suggest we do not release them for publication. Or put them on the military intranet, we’ve got a problem with leakage there. Somebody doesn’t know where their final loyalties lay. We’ve had videos of some actions leaking out already.”
“I know.” Petraeus was annoyed by the development. “We’ve got the Criminal Investigative Services looking into it. What’s the situation?”
“Pretty grim. What’s left of the Army on which we dropped the hammer is wandering away from Ground Zero. I wouldn’t call it a retreat or a rout, it’s more like they’re stunned and just getting away from the scene. They’re dying like flies as they go. We can track the various groups of survivors by the trail of bodies they’re leaving behind them. Our estimate of the force subject to the laydown was around 450,000 human levies and around 50,000 angels. By counting up survivors and the dead outside the blast zone, we think the number of dead has reached 349,000 humans and 45,000 angels. It’s still climbing.”
“Not for much longer.” The Targeteer spoke from one corner of the room. “It should level off at roughly that level now as the last of the critically-exposed die off. We’ll see another surge in six to eight weeks when the longer-term exposure cases begin to expire. From what I’ve seen of the pictures, radiation poisoning is pretty much endemic to the survivors. Some of the close-ups already show humans loosing their hair while the surviving angels are shedding feathers. None of them seem able to fly any more by the way. They’re all walking.”
“The Trail of Tears.” Petraeus was thoughtful. “What’s the radiation count like?”
“Declining quickly. We have a small plume trailing south but it’s way sub-critical. We were lucky.” The NRO Officer had pictures showing the intensity of the contamination from the initiation. A great circle around Ground Zero with what looked like the tail on a comma pointing south.
“Luck had nothing to do with it. ” The Targeteer’s voice never deviated from its flat monotone. “We waited for still air and initiated high enough to reduce contamination to a minimum. What we can see now is what there’s going to be. We’ve sent out a warning to the troops to watch out for any snow-like particles and to get under cover immediately if any are reported. What we don’t know is how the spatial geography of Heaven is going to change things. We’ve never performed an initiation in a self-contained space before. At least we know that nuclear physics is more or less the same thing as on Earth. All the parameters we measured track with our Earthside results. One thing we should worry about, a lot of the potential fall-out got blasted high. On Earth, it wouldn’t come down for months and by the time it did, it would have decayed into insignificance. Here, who knows when it will come down.”
“Safe for troop movements?”
The Targeteer thought for a second. “If we have to. Armored forces anyway. However, I would urge that we keep out troops away from the area around Ground Zero and that fallout plume. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.”
Petraeus nodded vigorously “I agree. There’s no reason to take chances with the long term health of our troops. There’s enough good ground up here to give us plenty of other options. In fact, we’ve got nothing but options. There’s no real bottlenecks we have to go through that I can see. Thank you gentlemen, I’ll study your reports in detail later. Please be available if I have any questions to ask.”
