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 meters 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.”
