“I’ve got a feeling it won’t be us David.”
“I know what you mean Mike, civilian control of the military and all that. Do you want to try that line on Asanee?”
Jackson shuddered slightly at the thought. One of the subtler effects of the Human Expeditionary Army was that it had brought together armies that had never considered working with each other before. Many of those armies came from social backgrounds that were radically different from anything the others had contemplated. Concepts that some took for granted were unknown or even derided by others. Chief amongst these areas was the relationships between military and political authorities. Slowly, the various national contingents were beginning to have a genuine understanding of what made the others tick. Idly, Jackson remembered the fable about the Tower of Babel and how Yahweh had split humanity up by language to stop them building another such marvel. Was the H.E.A. now reversing that action as well?
Across the desk, Petraeus pressed a button on his intercom and asked the Duty Officer to bring Michael in. As he did, he and Jackson exchanged smiles. They made a point of meeting Michael here; although the rooms were oversized, they were still uncomfortably small for the big Archangel. It was quite impossible for him to either enter the room decorously or strike poses once inside. “Mike, do you get the feeling Michael isn’t quite what he was?”
“You mean, has he had the stuffing knocked out of him? I got that feel as well. About time too, he was too full of himself when we got here. Tossing him out on his ear was a good move Dave.”
“There’s more to it than that. We need to keep a close eye on him. But, I meant that it may not be humanity’s choice who goes where. We may find we have to play the cards we get dealt. We’ve still no idea on what lies the other side of that gate.” There was a photograph on the wall behind his desk that showed the hazards of the Minos Gate. As an experiment, DIMO(N) had driven a HEMTT up to the gate and then backed the rear half in. The vehicle was now half-size, the part that had been pushed through the gate boundary had vanished. Nothing that crossed that boundary ever came back.
The door opened and Michael-Lan inserted himself into the office by way of a door that was intended for beings half his size. Petraeus looked at him carefully and was convinced his initial impressions had been right. Something had been knocked out of this Archangel, the cocksure, daring self-confidence wasn’t gone but it had been dented and tarnished. And there was a calculating air about him, one that indicated he had been given a mighty problem to chew over.
“Michael-Lan. We want to clarify some points with you. It appears that humans haven’t entered Heaven directly for many years. Is that correct.”
“It is General. Yahweh closed the gates of Heaven to humans centuries ago. About the fifteenth century by your calendar.”
“We thought it was earlier than that. Never mind. The humans who arrived here after that, how did they get here?”
“I went down to the Plateau of Minos and collected them. I had a deal with the Fallen Ones who worked there. I took the humans I wanted in exchange for opium. It worked out quite well, I had no intention of telling anybody about my pipeline and the Fallen Ones knew if they gave me up there would be no more clouds of bliss for them,” Michael struck a penitent and regretful note that fooled nobody. “I only wish I could have saved more.”
“I’m sure,” Petraeus was sarcastic. “So, there was a time when humans arrived here directly. How?”
“There was a gate here, like the one on the Plateau of Minos. It still is there in fact, but no humans have arrived through it for many centuries. Poor Peter is really bored down there. I used to slide him a few shots of cocaine now and then, help him pass the time.”
Petraeus shuddered quietly. “So, it’s possible that Yahweh ‘closed’ the Gates because no more humans were coming through? That his ‘order’ was just a recognition of what was already established?”
“The order came first. Once Yahweh had given it, the number of humans coming through slowed down and stopped. At the same time, the number turning up at Minos increased.”
“I see. Michael, I’m going to assign a military unit to take over guarding the site of that gate. You will take them there.” Petraeus paused and thumbed his intercom box again. “Duty Officer, get me the commander of Third Armored. I’m going to be borrowing one of his tank battalions again.”
Spearhead Battalion, Heaven
Her command had grown again. She now had an engineering company attached to what was still laughingly called a battalion. That meant the Spearhead ‘battalion’ now had eight full companies plus an assortment of platoon-sized attachments. Colonel Keisha Stevenson had the uneasy feeling that the only reason why it wasn’t reclassified as a larger unit was that doing so would mean she got a General’s star.
“This is it.” Michael-Lan stood in front of the black ellipse, one that was guarded by a pair of pearl-encrusted metal gates. “Until Yahweh closed everything down, this used to be quite busy. It’s only got a caretaker now, Peter. Nice old boy.”
“That would be Saint Peter, I suppose.” Stevenson wondered what her old church preacher would have said about this situation. He’d often waxed eloquent about what Saint Peter would do when faced with various members of his congregation but ‘obeyed orders delivered at gunpoint’ hadn’t been one of the options considered.
“That’s what you call him, sure.” Michael’s voice was slightly distant again. In the long drive up here, Stevenson had noted that. It was as if Michael’s mind was elsewhere. Given what she had learned about him, that probably didn’t bode well for somebody.
“Take me to him.” Her voice was blunt. Her orders were to secure this entire area. She had the force needed to do it and those orders included clearance to do whatever that task required. Behind her, the tank transporters were lining up and unloading her vehicles. Getting here had been a ten-hour drive and if she’d brought her armor up on its tracks, half the vehicles would be left by the roadside as mechanical casualties by now. The tank transporters had been an optimal solution and Stevenson understood that being General Petraeus’s go-to commander meant that her ‘optimal solutions’ had a very high priority.
Michael led her over to a hut built beside the gates. It was a small, ramshackle affair, one that would have been condemned as a slum in New Jersey but Stevenson’s expectations had been changed by her time in Heaven. For here, and in the eyes of most of the human inhabitants of Heaven, this was as good as it got, better than anything they’d known in their earthbound lives. The door creaked open and a figure with a flowing white beard emerged.
“Michael-Lan, Great General, welcome to the Gates of Pearl.”
The voice was obsequious and that made Stevenson’s hackles rise. Humans didn’t have to tip their caps to Angels any more. There was a more-than-necessary snap to her voice when she spoke. “You are Peter, the guardian of this gate?”
He looked at her, initially almost with belittlement. Then he saw the uniform and the guns, and he took in the sight of the vehicles unloading. “You are a soldier, a woman soldier.”
“I am Colonel Stevenson, commander of this position. From now on, you report to me, not him.” She gestured at Michael and saw him nod. “Now, you are?”
“I am Shimeon Kepha Ha-Tzadik. Also known as Simon Peter and follower of Jeshua.” He smiled sadly. “I am also caretaker here.”
He looked hopefully at Michael who responded by producing a small packet of white powder. Peter whinnied with delight and produced a mirror, knife and a plastic drinking straw from a pocket in his robes. Slightly disgusted, Stevenson watched him cut a line and snort it up through the straw. Peter caught her expression and offered her a line.