“Sure, this is your village, such as it is. You can do what you wish.” The voice changed slightly and some warmth crept into it. “You’d better get used to that. It’s called being free. The days when Angels ruled this place are ending pretty damned soon. And you don’t have to do that reverencing stuff any more. Unless you really want to of course. Can’t see what you would want to give thanks for though.”
Benedict took offense at that and at the casual invocation of damnation. “We have much to be thankful for. We live in comfortable homes that are ours to keep. No soldiers come to burn them down in the night. We have our fields to tend and our crops to grow and they do not get trampled down or stolen. We have clothes to wear, all we need to eat and much more besides. We live our days in peace. Truly, is this not the Paradise we were promised?”
Benedict waited to be struck down in the way that any who spoke to an officer of soldiers would have been struck down. Instead, she burst out laughing and started shaking her head.
Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven
“Hokey, so this one has got guts. Some anyway.” Stephenson looked around at the cluster of hovels that surrounded her unit. She guessed that some hillbillies living in the back end of nowhere probably had worse living conditions but she couldn’t be sure of that. What she did know was that in any American town, these shanty homes would be condemned as a health and safety hazard. Nobody, but nobody, she knew had to live in conditions like this.
“He’s probably right Colonel. I’d guess this place does stack up pretty well against the conditions people had to live in two thousand years ago. Ever heard of the Lekker Lewe?” Stephenson shook her head. “Read about it in a book about the Zulu wars. The old Boer settlers had a lifestyle they called the Lekker Lewe, the sweet life. For them, the sweet life meant doing the minimum of work needed to provide them with a minimally comfortable lifestyle. Put a lot of emphasis on living in balance with the land. Bit like environmentalists I guess although most of the enviro’s I know would go apeshit at the idea their ideas were upheld by a bunch of South African Boers. It was the sort of ideal the Boers clung to even when times changed and they lived a lot better than they ever could hen living the Lekker Lewe. I guess the same applies here; in comparison with living on the brink of starvation and always in danger of being looted or killed or both, this place doesn’t seem so bad. It’s just that we are seeing it through different eyes. It’s not just our weaponry that’s changed, its our expectations of what constitutes a Heaven.”
“Ain’t that the truth Biker. Looks like our medic friends are about to catch up with us. Yo, Benedict. Any more angels around this way?”
“No Sir. Our Haropamiel was all.”
“Watch it Colonel, I doubt if these people have been outside their fields in millennia. They’ve got no idea what’s out there.”
“Sure. Tell everybody to mount up. And to take things real careful.”
Belial’s Camp, Heaven.
“Most Blessed Lord, the human army is approaching. Already their war machines are near our walls.” Ohiel-Lan-Epidan wasn’t quite sure how to address Belial. A Grand Duke in Hell was, or had been, the equivalent of a Chayot Ha Kodesh but to give one of the Fallen the same titles seemed wrong on too many levels. Yet Belial was doubtless in charge here and was favored by The Almighty Father Of All. Had not He Who Is Above All himself placed this Grand Duke in charge of this place of punishment? And had not Belial chosen him, a lowly Cherubim as one of the guards here. Ohiel-Lan-Epidan had taken to his work very quickly, with the authority granted to him he had been able to take down the arrogant Seraphim and Hashmallim who had once lorded their superiority over the lower ranks of Angels. Now they whimpered in the mud while he, Ohiel, a mere Ishim, had his foot on their necks.
“They are called tanks.” Belial spoke without too much concern. He had already decided that, while carrying out this task, that it was not worthy of him. It was all very well to torment a few hundred angels but he was used to better things than this. Once he held sway over tens of thousands of daemons and billions of human souls. He had been a favorite of Satan himself. All of which he had lost due to the betrayal of that bitch Euryale. Her words “kill him” still echoed through his mind. He needed vengeance upon her; he needed her to die a hideously lingering and agonizing death for what she had done.
Coming to Heaven had been a mistake. With a flash of intuitive insight, Belial realized that he had been so demoralized by Euryale’s betrayal, so crushed by the contemptuous ease with which the humans had overwhelmed everybody before them, that he had fled the battle before it was truly lost. He could have done so much more, all he had needed was the spirit, the internal resources to do it. Certainly the humans had destroyed the center of power Satan had built around Dis but the daemons had only ever occupied a small portion of the vast land mass of Hell. There were vast lands outside the daemonic domain where the humans were unlikely to go. There must be tens of thousands of daemons who would not accept the cowardly surrender of Abigor and who wished to continue the fight. All they needed was leadership, the sort of leadership that only a Grand Duke could provide.
By running for Heaven, he had so nearly missed his chance. He had taken himself out of the competition for leadership of the resistance to human rule of Hell, the resistance that he knew had to be building somewhere in the hinterland of Hell. This also was Euryale’s fault, if she hadn’t betrayed him so brutally, so finally, he would never have fled to this pale, insipid Heaven. Instead, he would have been the leader of the daemonic resistance and, once the humans had been driven out, the ruler of a new kingdom. For a moment he allowed himself to slip into a daydream, one in which he devised new and ever more excruciating torments to be inflicted on Euryale as soon as the opportunity arose.
“My Lord?” Ohiel-Lan-Epidan spoke carefully. More than one Angel had been transferred from guard on the outside to prisoner on the inside for offending Belial. “Your orders?”
Belial snapped himself out of his reverie, one in which Euryale had been begging him for her death. “All Angels will form up on the walls and fight off the humans. Go now and spread the word.”
He watched the angel head off to the walls, carrying the word that would start the fight against the humans. Then, he turned away and started the mental disciplines necessary to open a portal to Earth.
Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven
“York crews, get ready to deal with any Airborne angel attacks.” The six M1314A1 anti-harpy guns were spread out in a long line to cover her tanks and MICVs. “Alpha and Bravo companies, concentrate fire on the gatehouse in front. Five rounds rapid, Alpha Company advance to the gully after three. Use up the sabot ammunition, keep the HEAD and beehive rounds for when we have to deal with the Angels. Charlie and Delta companies, use your chain guns to hose down the top of the wall. Bravo will advance with me as soon as Alpha is in position. On my mark… Fire.”
Thirty 120mm sabot rounds streaked across the gap separating the tanks from the walls of Belial’s concentration camp. The crystal-clear picture of the gatehouse vanished under roiling clouds of dust as the rods slammed into the stone, powdering it and sending fragments spinning into the sky. Looking at the scene, Stevenson realized that it had a distinct resemblance to the dust-laden atmosphere of Hell. So, we’ve brought Hell to Heaven. Angels, meet depleted uranium. And the more you fight, the worse it is going to get Her tank lurched again as her gunner slammed out a second. She could see the dust cloud covering the gate roil as the sabot bolts tore through it. The third salvo ripped out, then the fourteen tanks of Alpha Company accelerated out of their positions and started to move to a deep gully that would provide them with hull-down positions for further shots at the already-battered gatehouse. Her own tank lurched twice more as two additional shots were squeezed off, then her two command tanks led Bravo company in a leap-frogging movement to their next designated fire positions.