“She’s beautiful. Can’t wait until we get our hands on ours.” Winters paused and then spoke awkwardly. “I’d like to thank you guys for her name. On behalf of those who didn’t get out of the city.”
“It seemed right somehow. You know two of the Russian Blackjacks are named For Sheffield and For Detroit?”
Winter nodded. “The cities need to be remembered, it’ll be hard enough rebuilding them in our lifetimes. Ah, here we go.”
Underneath the B-1, the bomb bay doors had opened and the GBU-39s were spilling out in a steady stream.
West of Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles, California.
Uriel sat cross-legged on the ground, his wings folded behind him, every nerve concentrating on transmitting his will to the humans gathered beneath him. They were resisting him, fighting him even more strongly than the humans at Eucalyptus Hills and El Paso had fought him. It was as if the very fact that others had proved fighting was possible that inspired these humans to try and outdo the earlier efforts. With almost grim despair, Uriel realized that was precisely what was happening and its significance was not lost on him. Every city, every target he attacked from now on would fight harder than the last. His brain tiring from the effort just added pathos to Uriel’s sudden realization that Heaven was going to lose this war.
Whether paying attention to his surroundings would have made any difference to Uriel was dubious to put it mildly. The B-1s were flying so high that their sound barely reached the ground anyway and it was lost in the blizzard of noise from the circling fighters and the howling of the sirens in the city below. Uriel was lost in his effort to bring his peace to the humans below and even if he had heard the sound of the B-1s high overhead, there was little he could do about it. The bombs were already on the way down.
It was the first ripple of explosions that warned him of the mortal danger he was in. They snapped him out of his trance and broke the concentration of effort he needed to maintain his drive to peace. The bombs exploded several hundred yards to the north of him, their orange flowers looking curiously beautiful in the darkness. As the tide of fire grew nearer to him, Uriel saw something strange and terrible forming, a hideously beautiful silver-blue wall that seemed to devour everything in its path. The sight filled Uriel with terror for as an archangel more deeply associated with death than any other, he knew that silver-blue wall meant death and it was coming for him. For a brief, terrible second he thought of the oblivion he had sent so many millions into and he feared it. Worse, he feared that those others might be waiting for him there.
It was that thought, that he would have to answer for what he had done to the humans in the name of his peace, that broke the spell. Uriel hurled himself into the air, clawing desperately for altitude, his efforts to bring his peace to the humans forgotten. All he knew was that he had to get away with that deadly silver wall and make a portal through which he would escape. In his heart, Uriel knew that he would never again bring his benison of peace to another human community. Even if he survived this night, the humans had broken his spirit. They’d won.
Harvelles Blues Club, 4th Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
The earthquake shook the club, rattling glasses behind the bar and sending them shimmying off the tables. For a brief moment, it looked as if the crowd were going to panic but the club host was on top of the situation. In any case, he had been listening to a police scanner and knew what the shaking really meant.
“Ladies, gentlemen and other species.” Once again the joke got an appreciative roar from the crowd. “There is no need to panic. The Air Force had found Uriel and the noise is their aircraft bombing his position on the ground. There are more fighters than we can count overhead and they’ll get him. Oh my, will they get him.”
The host paused, he’d suddenly realized something critically important. He wasn’t having to force himself to breath, the pressure forcing him to die was gone. “And, everybody, the Uriel attack is over. The bombing must have forced him to stop. We’ve won. Everybody, we’ve won. And to celebrate, everybody join the band.” He spoke quickly and the band nodded gleefully. Then the thumping rhythm started and the entire audience slammed their hands down in time and echoed the chorus.
“You got mud on yo’ face.
Yo’ a big disgrace.
We’re kickin yo ass all over the place.
We will we will rock you.
We will we will rock you.”
F-18H Over Los Angeles, California
“There he is! Damn, he’s a big bastard.” Wong pulled his F-18 around in a tight racking curve to bring its nose to bear on the great shape that was leaping into the sky. The monster was at least twice the size of the Greater Harpy Heralds he had killed on the first day of the Salvation War, it’s massive bulk starkly outlined by the orange-red explosions that swamped the area where it had been hidden just a few seconds before. Wong saw it trying to claw skywards, trying to get away from the jets that were already converging on its position. Uriel tried to face one of the jets and trumpet but the sound blast was weak and feeble. Probably winded by the blast of the bombs that were still exploding underneath him Wong thought. Then, Uriel seemed to stagger in mid air as two AIR-120 rockets from an F-15 plowed into him.
That was when Wong saw the one thing that none of the human pilots wanted to. A great black ellipse was forming in the sky ahead of Uriel. The monster was running for it, running to escape the pent-up vengeance that was waiting for him at the hands of the humans. The F-18 suddenly bounded forward as its throttles were firewalled and the afterburners turned raw fuel into thrust. Uriel was lurching in the air, Wong realized that he was already hurt, his flying ability degraded by cumulative injuries. He saw Uriel lose stability in the air as the supersonic shock wave from the F-18s passing hit him and the beast tumbled down before trying to regain a path to the ellipse and safety.
The F-18 was doing almost 900 knots when it went through the ellipse. Wong saw the dark of an Earth night replaced by the clear white light of Heaven, saw the green fields and crystal clear sky surrounding him, saw the ellipse behind. He had little time, he skidded his fighter around in a tight curve whose shock waves flattened the crops underneath and sent the humans laboring in the fields flat on their faces. Well, Wong thought at least they’ve learned about supersonic bangs today. Ahead of him, staring at the racing fighter was an angel, a white figure, taller than a human, with great wings folded behind him. Wong couldn’t resist the temptation, the Angel was on a direct line between his aircraft and the portal. It was the work of a split second to dip the nose slightly, thumb the cannon button, then watch the angel fall and disappear in a cloud of dust and explosions as the strafing pass bit home.
Then, white light and green fields were replaced by the darkness of Earth night, a night lit up by the city lights below and the streams of gunfire and the exhaust trails of missiles in the skies above. Wong saw almost instantly that the only reason why Uriel was surviving lay in the sheer numbers of human aircraft that were fighting him. He was alone, he had no allies, no friends, everything that surrounded him was hostile. The human pilots were having to watch each other, avoid each other’s maneuvers and make sure they didn’t shoot each other down. It was an old story, then had been many such tales in the past, of heroic fights by one against many. They always had the same basic problem at their heart, the way a single fighter alone could use the numbers of enemies surrounding them to survive. But they all ended the same way, one day, the single fighter would run out of luck and die.
Uriel had been heading for the ellipse again when Wong’s F-18 streaked out of it. It was a perfect AIR-120 shot, the angel and the fighter were on a direct collision course, there was no need for deflection, no need for leading the target. Another quick thumb stroke on the firing button and four AIR-120s hurtled from their racks and closed the target. The last one missed, to avoid a collision Wong had had to swerve at the last second and that had thrown his aim off, but the other three scored direct hits, one up high near Uriel’s chest, the other two low-down in his groin. Wong passed Uriels head so close that he could see every detail of his face. For the rest of his life, he would swear that Uriel’s eyes were crossed as a result of the pain and shock from the two AIR-120 hits in his groin.
He had worse problems than just trying to avoid colliding with Uriel though. Brilliant orange-red streaks passing his cockpit. Tracers, an F-16 was behind him, snapping out short bursts of cannon fire.
“Can it, you damned fool!” Wong almost screamed in rage.
“Sorry Squid. Saw you come out of the portal and I thought you were one of them.”
“Bloody Air Farce.” Wong simmered down slightly and swerved his fighter around to line up for another pass. Uriel was still airborne but he was staggering, trying to trumpet, to create a new portal and to emit his killing waves all at once. Shock and injuries were overcoming him and in his anguish he was trying to do everything at the same
