grow, they had spread from country to country, reaching out ever further, ever higher, crowding him away from the rich pastures of the developed world into the sparser, less populated areas. There, it was true that there death still had its terror and mystery but in truth the death that Uriel now feared was his own. He had never before believed that humans could kill those in even the lowest levels of the Host let alone the glittering archangels but the Eternal Enemy was dead at human hands and Uriel knew if the humans could find him, they would kill him with just as much dispassionate ruthlessness. Uriel looked at the humans and now he knew fear because they were killers with abilities that matched even his.
But, for now, here in time and space what Uriel wanted and what he must do were the sole thing in his universe. He looked down on the small town that lay beneath him, the crowded areas where the poorest lived, the great mansions of the rich and the smaller homes of those who lay between those two great extremes. He surveyed them and nodded as if coming to a decision yet the fate of those people had already been decided. It was merely Uriel’s vanity that implied there might yet be a decision made. His hand was already raised and he swept it over the town below, his benison chanted in tones dire with portent. “Peace be with you and my peace I grant you.”
Once there had been a time when every single living thing in the town, down to the angrily buzzing mosquitos and the languid grace of the dragonflies would have dropped to the earth in that instant instant. Those days also had gone. The animals and insects dies, that much was certain but the humans did not and resisted the divine command. Uriel concentrated, stepping up the power of his assault, driving down on the minds beneath him. Eventually, he felt the weakest down below crumble and their defenses collapse. In that instant they died. Even so, there were those who continued to resist and their defenses were too strong for the assault. Exhausted from the effort, Uriel turned in a slow beautiful motion and flew away, the light of the stars reflecting off the ebony wings jutting from his back. His work here was done, as much of it that was within his power. And that was the thing that drove his mind for he had never before experienced the concept that his power could be limited.
Conference Room, White House, Washington D.C. December 2008
“I’m afraid your going to have to get used to these things Barry.” President Bush looked at the President-Elect with a considerable degree of sympathy. “They’re more interesting now of course, my Daddy said that the ones in his term were incredibly dull.”
A swirl of laughter ran around the room. It was crowded, there were effectively two teams present in a room designed for one. The War Cabinet itself, serving President Bush and the Transition team, preparing the way for President Obama. “Well, the Chinese did always tell us to beware of interesting times.” Obama repeated the platitude with a certain degree of relish.
“True, and they don’t get any more interesting than this. General Petraeus, the situation in Hell if you please?”
General of the Armies David Petraeus, his six stars clearly visible on the great TV screen that dominated one end of the room, shuffled the papers in front of him. Only one other American had been awarded a sixth star, George Washington himself. Washington had got his for saving an entire country, Petraeus for saving the human race. “Mister President, Mister President-Elect, the Human Expeditionary Army is continuing to grow towards its final strength. The major problems continue to be spares, equipment and support. Our fuel and ammunition stocks are low, much of our equipment in unserviceable and in urgent need of renovation while new production is still inadequate. The truth is, I now have, on paper, five Army Groups yet in terms of available forces, I barely have more forces available than those at my disposal during major combat operations. Fewer if anything, the Russians have hit some nightmarish problems in their occupation zone that are trying down a large proportion of their Army Group. If it wasn’t for the arrival of the Chinese Army group, we would be in severe difficulties.”
“I thought we’d won this war?” Obama was confused, the picture he was getting was very different from his preconceptions. That applied to a lot of areas, he was beginning to realize just how unprepared for the Presidency he was.
Bush smiled in response. “Barry, don’t worry about it. Everybody, but everybody who has ever sat in this office was totally unprepared for it. My daddy was Vice-President for four years and he didn’t have any idea of the burdens involved, same for Bill, same for me. You’ll grow into this office, everybody does. Now, on the war, yes, we won the first campaign and we kicked the snot out of Satan and his crew. Dave Petraeus made it look easy but it wasn’t. We ran our ammunition stocks pretty close to zero and wore our equipment all the way down. If Satan had hung on just a little longer, we’d have had some real problems. We’ve had some months to recuperate but we’re still weak. Dave, you said the Russians are having problems?”
“They are Mister President, we haven’t got too much in the way of details but they ran into something totally unexpected and they’re having Hell’s own job in handling it. We’re expecting more of the same ourselves. Hell is a really big place, we’ve only occupied a small area of it and we haven’t mapped much more. The Baldricks occupied two areas, one around the Hell-pit, the other up at Tartarus and those we hold, but pretty much everywhere else, and that’s around 90 percent of the land area is unexplored and, we thought, unoccupied. Only it isn’t as the Russians found out. So, we confidently expect to hit something similar ourselves. The other thing is, the Heavengate we found? It’s shut down. We can’t reopen it, apparently it requires naga or their equivalents at both ends to open a gate between Heaven and Hell. Once co-operation was withdrawn at one end, the thing just shut down.”
“General, what can my new Administration do to improve things?”
“Not very much Sir to be honest. Just keep production up and keep the equipment flowing through to us. I’m not sure there is much scope for enhancing production still further. Don’t worry about developing wholly new kit, just keep the good old reliable stuff we have flowing through. Improve it where we can, we need better dust filters and so on. But food, fuel, ammunition, oil, batteries, all of that good stuff we’re desperately short of. Oh, and more of those. 94 inch Martini-Henrys for the Baldricks, they’re a big hit.” General Petraeus’s image faded from the screen.
“We’re arming the Baldricks?” Obama seemed bewildered by the idea.
“Of course, we need them as militia. We even designed a special rifle for them, or rather a lady called Marina O’Leary did. It was her company that came up with the idea for the M114 and M115 rifles. The M116 is chambered for the. 94 Nitro-Express round but it is fired from a scaled-up version of the old British Martini-Henry dropping block rifle.” Obama looked slightly confused, as a Chicagoan he didn’t have the Texan’s finely-honed knowledge of firearms. “The one the British used in the film Zulu.” That made the connection.
“Can I replace General Petraeus?” Obama spoke thoughtfully. “We could use him here.”
“Not really Barry. In theory you could but the Human Expeditionary Army is his command, with a Council of War to support him. That’s comprised of the five Army Group commanders, at the moment, one American, one Russian, one Chinese, one Indian, one Frenchman. All top-rank men by the way. If General Petraeus is relieved, his replacement has to receive the unanimous approval of those five. Very unlikely anybody will get that. Anyway, next issue. The weather.”
“You sound like a Brit, they always want to talk about the weather.” Obama’s voice was suave and it caused another ripple of laughter.
“Well, they’re justified in doing so now. We’ve had three super-storms, all of which have hit us hard. Two were here, we had the tornadoes in Missouri, they killed a lot of people and wiped out the B-2 fleet. We haven’t let on just how much of a disaster that was but we’re hurting from it. If I had longer in office, I’d cancel efforts to restart B-2 production and concentrate on the B-1 and B-3. That’s a course of action I’d recommend to you Barry. The second one hit Bermuda and trashed the base there. That wasn’t so bad, we lost a couple of ships and the population got hurt. The third one was the cyclone that hit India a couple of days ago. All three had the same pattern, a storm formed normally but suddenly increased in strength and changed direction. We’re being attacked using weather patterns but we don’t know how.”
“This has to be Yahweh of course.”
“Of course. President Abigor has confirmed that using the weather is a long-standing Yahweh tactic. He used it against the Egyptians now and then. But, how it’s done we don’t know. Ask the Baldricks and they just look apologetic and say ‘magic’. That’s their explanation for everything they don’t understand.”
“Mister President, Mister President-Elect. If I may have a word?”
“Please Doctor Surlethe.”
“We have an idea how the increase in storm strength is brought about. If one takes a hurricane, tornado or cyclone and injects a mass of warm air into the base, that’ll do it. That’s basically why such storms develop power over the sea and dissipate it over land. Of course, how a mass of warm air got injected into the storm is another
