Control Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean
“Just why the blue blazes are we heading out towards the Atlantic?” Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan had a thousand spirits sitting on his shoulders, telling him there was something seriously wrong. His Tekuma had killed the Scarlet Beast with her nuclear missiles. So why had he not heard anything from the operations center in Tel Aviv? He would have expected at least something, even if it was only a terse acknowledgment that his missile strike had been successful.
There was something else that was worrying him. After firing his missiles he had gone deep, cleared datum and then evaded. That was standard doctrine after firing any kind of missiles for by doing so he had given away his position more surely than a glowing neon pointed would have done. Evading the hunt that would surely follow his launch had been drilled into him ever since he had been selected to take command of this submarine. But times were different now, humanity was fighting on the same side, more or less. So, they shouldn’t have been hunting him. Why were they?
It wasn’t just one nation either. Since he had started evading, he had picked up a mass of different sonars lashing the water in an effort to locate him. American SQS-53s, Russian Platinas, British Type 2050s. Others that were a lot less distinctive in their transmission characteristics.
Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak looked over from the communications station at the rear of the command compartment. He had supplied Ben-Shoshan with the forged messages that had authorized the missile launch and then set the Tekuma on course for the Straits of Gibraltar but after that, the supply was ended and future actions were left vague. He hadn’t received any more visions from his Angelic leader either. In fact, Yitzchak noted, he’d never received any such messages while he was on the submarine. Only when he had been ashore.
“Sir, perhaps there will be messages for us from the command center in Gibraltar?”
Ben-Shoshan nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked the one question every diesel-electric submarine driver had engrained in his soul. “Battery status?”
“Twenty percent charge Sir. Clearing Datum cost us heavily.” The Engineering Officer was seriously worried. It wasn’t good to run the batteries below seventy percent charge and a fifty percent charge level was regarded as critical. He’d never seen a charge meter drop to twenty percent before.
“Come up to periscope depth. Prepare to snort.” The spirits sitting on ben Shoshan’s shoulder were screaming warnings again but without charged batteries, his submarine was completely helpless. “Navigation, set course for Gibraltar and maximum snorting speed. Engines, run the diesels as soon as the snort is up and get those batteries charged. Communications, get through to Tel Aviv, find out what is going on and why.”
Yitzchak looked down at his knees in an effort to hide the grin on his face. Getting a message through to Tel Aviv would be a useful trick. The place was a smoking hole in the ground. “Very good Sir.”
The Forum of Indefatigable Exaltation, Eternal City, Heaven.
Markets were something that the higher-class angels never really bothered much with. They had the Ishim and Cherubim to look after such mundane things for them. And the Ishim and Cherubim had their human servants to carry out the routine drudgery of going to a market. At most, the Cherubim made sure the Ishim weren’t skulking off when they were supposed to be working and the Ishim did the same for the humans. It was a nice system, like everything else in Heaven it was set up so the humans did all the real work and the Angels got all the benefits. Rank really did have its privileges.
So it was that the market in the Forum of Indefatigable Exaltation presented its usual appearance to a casual observer. The stalls were set up in their usual places, the merchants behind them shouting out the benefits of their wares and the unique advantages that patronizing them would bring. The humans crowded around them, buying the good needed to keep the Angels in their state of sybaritic luxury while they also tried to secure a few things that would alleviate their own grinding poverty. There was an unspoken, unmentioned sub-trade going on as well, one in which the merchants gave under-the-counter discounts to their human customers so that the latter could at least have some resources of their own. There was even an unofficial language by which the merchants could advertise the percentage kickbacks they were offering without alerting the watchful Ishim and Cherubim. Surely, the argument went, this must be approved because The Eternal Father of All was omniscient and all-knowing and must be aware of the kickbacks. And since He must know yet did not interfere then He must approve.
A more perceptive observer might have noted a few details about the market this day that didn’t quite fit into the superficial normality. One was that the Ishim and Cherubim were distinctly nervous. They spoke carefully, watching around them while they did so, and for all that, they kept their conversations to banal triviality. The wave of arrests by the League of Holy Court had ceased, for a while at least, but they all knew those arrested were being interrogated and would name others in the hideous conspiracy. With Satan dead at the hands of humans, cosmic balance demanded that a new force must arise. With this effort crushed, who would be next to be overwhelmed by the sin of Pride and try to rebel against The One Above All?
Another change was in the crowds of humans who thronged the Forum. As they passed in the crowds, news was passed from one to the next. The deaths of the Leopard and Scarlet Beasts, The Immaculate Lord’s own pets killed. Deumah was a brain-dead hulk, breathing but without thought or wits. But above all was the story of the Great Gray Bird.
“A great portal in the sky opened and through it flew a strange gray bird. It flew in silence yet when it passed overhead there was a great crash as if of thunder and the dreadful scream of the bird hurt our ears. It turned around and flew back towards the portal, flew so fast that our eyes could barely follow it. Our Lord, Israfil, was satning in front of it and the Bird spat fire at him. The ground erupted around Israfil and he fell. Then the Gray Bird left and the portal vanished. We ran to Israfil but he was dead, his body so torn apart so that barely one part of him remained attached to another.”
“Did you see this for yourself, Jerome?” The speaker was doubtful for many told the story of the gray bird.
“I did. With my own eyes and I had the Blessed White Blood of Israfil on my own hands. He died quickly I think but on his face was a look of great fear.”
And so the story passed from teller to listener and soon those who had heard it would pass it on, many also asserting they had seen the Gray Bird with their own eyes and they also had the white blood of the slaughtered angel on their hands. The story was the cause of another subtle change for those who heard it made the link to the other words that spread amongst the human population of Heaven. That the humans on Earth had wondrous machines that could kill even the mightiest of Angels and Daemons. That, when The Eternal Enemy had invaded Earth, the humans had slaughtered his Army, invaded his Kingdom and killed him. Surely the gray bird was one such machine? And if humans could invade Hell and kill The Eternal Enemy, could they not also come here and… At that point, even the bravest refused to think further.
And so the crowd eddied and swirled throughout the market. The stallholders and merchants did their business and sold their produce, replenishing their displays now and then from the carts that were parked behind their stands. In the swirling mass of humans and angels, none noticed that there was two more carts than stalls.
When it came, the blast was stunning in its effects. The mass of C4 explosive, carefully wrapped with fragments of gold and silver and set amidst masses of semi-precious stones, turned those riches into a spray of deadly shrapnel that scythed through the crowds, leaving death and destruction behind them. The paving stones of the Forum ran with blood, mostly red but white as well and occasionally a trace of silver. The gentle babble of voices was replaced by a cacophony of screams and the wailing of the wounded. Dozens around the cart lay dead, many more still lived despite severed limbs and mutilations previously unknown in Heaven. Such events had never been contemplated before and there existed no precedent for dealing with them. Angel or human, those who still had their wits and bodies intact panicked and stampeded for the steps that were the only way out of the forum. As they pushed and crowded at the bottleneck represented by the steps, that was where and when the second bomb went off.
Upstairs Room, Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven.
Maion very carefully made sure that a goblet of the purest water and four Excedrin tablets were waiting on Lemuel’s bedside table. Then she glanced around the room to make sure that it was freshly cleaned and that everything would be pleasing to Lemuel’s eyes. At sometime during the night, a small packet with her morning heroin fix had arrived and she had taken it, injecting the drug between her toes so the needle mark wouldn’t show. She was well aware that her heroin addiction was the cause of her being in this room and the sleeping angel on the bed was her only way out. Satisfied that she had done all she could, she fanned him gently with her wings. Sure enough, he snorted and woke up.
