time and, as a result, he was achieving nothing. He was writhing and flailing in the middle of the mass of fighters that tormented him. Wong felt not the slightest shred of pity for him, and he lined his F-18 up for another pass at the dying archangel.
Presidential Palace, Naypyidaw, Myanmar
Captain Madeuce coughed, the spasms racking his body. The cloth he used to cover his mouth came away stained with dark green mucus, a darker, red-gray dirt that was even more ominous than the infection-laden slime and a spattering of bright red blood. None of it surprised him. The scientific name for what was killing him was Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, the common name was acute silicosis. To Madeuce it was ‘rocks in the chest’ and he knew he didn’t have much longer to go. Every time had had seen the doctors, the prognosis had been worse. Their forecast had dropped from decades to years, and now was but a more few months. And those months would not be good ones.
It was his visit to the Hell-Pit that had killed him. He’d breathed the dense clouds of volcanic dust for over a week without any form or protection and the fine pumice had infiltrated every portion of his lungs. It was too heavy for the normal actions of breathing to expel so it had settled there, irritating the tissues around the particles. The lungs had dealt with the problem their traditional way, by producing mucus. Only, that had been absorbed into the pores of the pumice and what had started as a fine dust had quickly set into solid cement. In its simplest, most accurate version, Madeuce was suffocating as his lungs filled with rocks. Just to make matters worse, the pumice agglomerates had sharp edges and were tearing at the delicate tissues around them. The doctors had tried everything they could think of but it was no use. The damage was too great and it all went to show that First Life human beings had no real place in Hell and even less in the Hell-Pit.
“You all right boss?” His sergeant had real concern in his voice, he recognized the symptoms of asphyxia easily enough. The blue shadows under the eyes and around the lips, the constant heaving for breath, the blue-tinged fingertips.
“Will be soon enough.” Madeuce shook himself. He had this last job to do then he would be out of the Army. Total disability for the few months he had left. Then, things would get better. He’d been quietly contacted by some old friends who knew some other friends who were part of the new Roman Army. There were commissions for those who wanted them, who had talents that the new army needed. And it helped that Jade Kim was Second Consul. Madeuce looked back on his work with her with nostalgic affection even though he knew the fighting there had killed him as surely as a bullet, bomb or artillery round. She’d remembered him as well and put in some glowing words on his behalf. So, his Second Life as a Tribune in the Legions was set up. He just had to live out his first one.
“Here he comes. That’s Michael-Lan-Yahweh himself. He’s one big sucker isn’t he.” The Sergeant sounded impressed.
“He’ll be one dead sucker soon.” Madeuce coughed again and wiped his lips. It was getting so that even coughing was wearing him out. “He’s opening the portal now. Is the kit getting all the readings?”
“Sure is Boss. And we’re datalinking them right out of here, back to DIMO(N) field operations. They’re getting everything we pick up.”
“Right. He’s moving down there. Taking his crap with him.” Madeuce reached down and punched a code into a transmitter box, unlocked a keyed handle then lifted it up and twisted it. “Surprise package now activated. It’ll blow in five minutes. Let this be a lesson to the whole team Sergeant, just say no to drugs.”
Down in the palace courtyard, Michael-Lan stopped pulling his cart and looked at Than Shwe with exasperation. The idiotic man was still whining about how Michael had betrayed him and left him to the mercy of the wretched Siamese. While Michael thought he did have some cause to be upset, in the final analysis he had brought all this down on his own head. One of the signs of wisdom was the ability to resist temptation. Michael reached out with his mind and detected the familiar ground he used for his transits to and from Earth. He found it, localized it and then opened up the portal. He waved a cheery farewell to the assembled Myanmarese dignitaries and then pulled his cart through the portal to its destination.
It really was a remarkably heavy cart. Michael-Lan was using a significant portion of his strength to pull it, even with the electric motor helping him. Once the other side of the portal, he paused to catch his breath. It was a blessed relief to be away from that wretched Myanmar junta. They’d spent all their time whining at him, instead of shutting up and listening to the wisdom he could impart. Complaint after complaint, accusation after accusation. Nothing but the constant effort to shift the blame to other shoulders. Self-justifying miserable…
Michael-Lan stopped suddenly. It was just as if they had spent all their time justifying themselves. Just as if….
He found himself looking at the cart he had pulled through the now-closed portal. It really had been incredibly heavy for the load it represented. Neither Number 4 heroin nor methamphetamine pills were that heavy. An idea suddenly came to Michael-Lan and he shook his head in admiration. “Clever, clever little humans.”
It was the work of a moment to start the motor on the cart and fix its towbar so it would move in a straight line. Then he reopened the portal, pushed the cart through and closed it again behind the cargo. He wasn’t quite sure what was in there but he did guess that he wanted to be as far away from it as possible as quickly as possible.
Captain Madeuce and his small team were already beginning to take down their equipment when he saw the portal suddenly reform and the cart loaded with a variety of drugs and a single fifty kiloton nuclear warhead come rumbling back through it. He dived for the weapons control box, trying to slam his hand down on the emergency abort transmitter built into it. He almost made it.
Human Expeditionary Army, Field Headquarters, Yangon, Myanmar.
“Well, we always knew it was a win-win proposition.” General Petraeus looked at the mushroom cloud boiling over Napyidaw on the direct feed from the Global Hawk reconnaissance drone. “If it worked, we got rid of Michael but if it didn’t we got rid of those idiots in Napyidaw. One of the nice things about governments that insist on putting themselves in remote locations with only their closest supporters for company, makes a clean sweep just that. Nice and clean.”
“We lost Captain Madeuce and his team.” General Asanee was looking at the mushroom cloud as well. With the last remnants of the Myanmar military junta gone, the country could be handed over to a reasonable civilian administration again. There was so much rebuilding to do, it would keep them occupied for decades.
“They got the information through though. Complete readouts on the portal Michael-Lan-Yahweh used to get back to Heaven. The DIMO(N) people are ecstatic, they reckon we can duplicate that portal within days. Then we can get the Army into Heaven and start taking that place apart. We did good here General, let’s hope the battles at Los Angeles and Jerusalem go as well.
Chapter Forty One
Israeli General Command Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel
There had been a time when Muamur al Zahari had dreamed of getting into this room. Of course, in those dreams he had been wearing an explosive vest and the blast that took him to Paradise would also send the entire command staff of the Israeli defense forces to Hell. Now, he was their guest, an ally of sorts and the whole question of who went to Hell and why had been changed out of all recognition. The implications of that could be confusing, but only a fool refused to recognize the changes brought about by time. Anyway, he was finding the chaos in front of him amusing. Just one question tormented him. If this was the Israeli General Staff in action, didn’t the fact the country they defended had survived so long suggest that his own command staff were even worse? The likely answer to that simple question appalled him.
“Just what the blazes is going on up there?” General Andras Marosy stomped across the operations room floor and stared at the map.”
“It’s bad ground, terrible ground in fact. The inclines are steep, there’s more dead ground than we can shake a stick at, and the valleys all run against us. We’ve got some artillery but it’s all long-range stuff. A Romach battery, some 155s of assorted types. All guns, no howitzers. We can’t lob shots into the valleys. Whoever picked this location knew exactly how to exploit our weaknesses. The only thing to hurt the Scarlet Beast so far was that truck bomb.” The Israeli officers looked at al Zahari with a mixture of respect and resentment. After sixty years of
