Right up to the present, The Incomparable Legion of Light had contained veterans of that desperate battle, ones whom Michael knew by name and recognized of old. Valued old friends whose family Michael knew and loved. Angels who Michael-Lan had knowingly and deliberately sent to their deaths. I am sorry old friends, more sorry than you or anybody else can ever know. Wherever you are, know that you have served Heaven better in your deaths than you did in the battles of The Great Celestial War. Then, you saved The Eternal City, now you have saved the whole of the Angelic Host. It was true, at least Michael knew he was telling himself that. The dreadful blast that had destroyed The Incomparable Legion of Light could just as easily taken place right here. And still might.
“Michael-Lan, the people are frightened.” Gabriel-Lan spoke from the room behind Michael’s balcony. His own voice was loaded with fear and foreboding. Outside the city was in shadow for the first time in countless millennia. A huge plume of smoke from the fires had darkened the whole city. In its penumbra, the Angelic Host shivered in the streets. The same cloud had cut the temperature quite drastically. Normally, Heaven was a temperate place, the climate warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to be invigorating. Now, the sky was overcast and the cold was enough to hurt a people unused to it.
Michael-Lan glanced at the thermometer he had mounted on the wall of his balcony. He had bought it on a whim, from one of the open-air markets the humans loved so much. In all the years he had consulted it, the temperature had never changed. Now, it was showing The Eternal City to be almost twenty five degrees cooler than normal. “We have sent people out with Geiger Counters?”
Gabriel-Lan nodded. He didn’t understand what the human boxes that clicked were supposed to do but he had guessed it was important. Michael-Lan had been very insistent that people go around the city and take readings from the boxes, then compare them with charts he had supplied. “Yes Michael. The readings are higher than before but still within the safety zone on the charts. The highest readings were where the frozen water fell. They pushed the upper limit of your charts.”
Michael-Lan nodded, almost distantly for his mind was still occupied by the faces and named of The Incomparable Legion of Light. The ‘frozen water’ Gabriel had referred to was hail. The language of the Angelic Host didn’t really have a wealth of words to describe bad weather since there wasn’t any in Heaven. Only, this hail wasn’t a natural phenomena, humans had created it just as they had created the great cloud that hung over the city. An area more than 20 miles across was burning where The Incomparable Legion of Light had died and that was the source of the smoke. The fire was still spreading although it was also thinning and dying as it spread. The filthy black-stained pellets of ice that had fallen were a product of that fire.
“Just frightened Gabby?” Michael forced his mind back to business.
“No, Michael, more than that. They are bewildered, apprehensive, confused. Rumors that The Incomparable Legion of Light has been destroyed by the humans are spreading throughout the City. The Host cannot understand what to make of this, they hear the rumors and see the great cloud over our heads but they do not know what they portend. Already rumors spread that the end-days are upon us.”
“They are, Gabby. They are. The reign of the Angelic Host is ending.” Michael-Lan snorted with laughter. “The prophecies always were that we would bring the end-days to the humans just as we brought them to those who went before. Yet, it is the humans who bring them to us. In the great game of existence, it is the humans who have reached the end row and become crowned.”
Michael-Lan looked over the Eternal City in its uncharacteristic dim light. Without the steady glare of Heaven’s white light, the myriad precious and semi-precious stones that lined the walls of the innumerable temples and palaces had lost their iridescent glow. Without that, the Eternal City had lost the one feature that made it unique above all others. More than that, without the constant refracted light from the walls, Michael could see the chipped plaster and peeling paint that underlay the superficial gloss. The Eternal City pretended to be Las Vegas but underneath it all, it was more like Atlantic City. The comparison made Michael snort again. I am probably the only person in Heaven who can understand that simile.
“The humans have stepped up their timetable Gabby. I wasn’t expecting them to use a nuke this early, or even at all come to that. I knew we would lose The Incomparable Legion of Light but I thought it would be a ground battle, the way they destroyed Abigor’s Army. A long battle, lasting several days and one I could exploit to bring about the downfall of Yahweh when all our preparations were in place. Only they tossed that nuke instead and in doing so they told us what they have planned. Where are their armies?”
“Reports from the countryside say that three great armies are assembling around us. One to the north, one to the southwest, and the Americans to the southeast. All advance very slowly while more troops pour in behind their leading edge. The watchers say that their numbers are so great they cannot be counted and that they advance with great numbers of monstrous machines.
“Armored units.” Michael spoke almost absently. “They’re hitting us with everything they’ve got. They were taken by surprise when they fought Hell, they went to war with what they had available. This time, they’ve cast their plans carefully. We’re running out of time Gabby. Our hands are being forced, we are going to have to move now. Before those armies are complete and they blast their way into The Eternal City.”
Michael stopped took a deep breath and committed himself in a way he had never done before. “Assemble the inner circle in my office for a final briefing. We are go for the coup.”
Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD
Maion-Lan-Lemuel woke up with her head aching and her mouth utterly dried out. Beside her, Lemuel noted that she was finally out of the anaesthetic and pressed the button that called the nurse over. In doing so, he was very careful not to push his finger through the wall. Grace Zachariah hurried over and started taking down Maion’s medical readings. “How do you feel Maion.”
“Thirsty.” Maion sounded confused.
“I’m not surprised. We had to pump a lot of medication into you before you went under. We’ve got some iced water for you, that’s all you can have at the moment.” She finished taking down the readings and hoped somebody, somewhere could make sense of them. “Your operation went fine, you’re wingless now, just like us. There’s two small stumps where your wings were. Now, if the records from Memnon are correct, they should be even if they are from an Army hospital, those stumps will heal first. Then, they’ll start to grow back into a new set of wings. If this works with you, we’ll apply the same treatment to any of our other patients who elect to go through the procedure.”
Grace drummed her pencil on the chart, then obviously elected to make a hard decision. “Maion, your drug addiction, it’s taking longer to clear out than we thought. Just how many angels up in Heaven use drugs?”