Pantheocide

Chapter Sixty Four

Headquarters, 118th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Virginia National Guard, Phelan Plain, Hell

The screen blacked out suddenly and the General sitting behind it looked as if he was about to explode. He managed to contain himself and when he spoke, his voice was courteous and calm. “Could you tell me what happened please?”

“I’m afraid you just got killed.” Captain Ledasha Oates took a quick look at the Umpire’s situation log. “As I thought, General, you haven’t moved your command location for more than 30 minutes. The Opposing Force, the Opfor, picked up your radio transmissions and got your location by a combination of direction finding and deduction accurately enough to drop a rocket launcher salvo on you.”

“But I only used the burst transmission facility sparingly. Is their, our, direction finding capability that good?”

“They probably only got a loose fix but I would guess they looked at a map. They saw the crossroads in the suspect area and made a calculated guess you would set up either on it or very close to it. So they took the crossroads out.”

The General gave a gusty sigh that set his beard shivering. “But a crossroads gave me good communications and allowed us to move quickly in multiple directions.”

“And that’s what made it a good target General. You must learn to look at a map and see what the enemy will see. If it looks good to you for a reason, it will make a good target for the enemy by that same logic. Information isn’t quite a weapon in its own right but it’s an invaluable force multiplier. That applies both ways, you have to think of what the enemy knows and make allowances for it.”

“So a good defensive position is a bad defensive position because it is obviously a good position.”

“Exactly. That’s exactly right. And don’t worry too much about roads, our cross-country mobility is good enough so we can do without them.”

General Robert E Lee sighed again, gently this time. “Did I do anything right in this exercise?”

Oates looked at the print out again. “To be honest Sir, no. Your frontal attack was walking right into a fire trap and your flanking move was far too close to the main body. It was going to swing across the Opfor front, not into their flank. You were thinking in horse cavalry terms and didn’t allow for how much more ground a modern cavalry unit covers or the ranges its weaponry can cover. For us, four hundred yards is close range. And, Sir, you must remember artillery fire. As long as a forward observer has a line of sight, they can bring intense fire on your positions. That observer can be an unmanned aircraft just as easily as a traditional observer. Frankly Sir.” Oates bit her lip, wondered whether to sugarcoat the judgement and decided not to. “You’d have got the entire regiment wiped out. Again.”

Another gentle sigh. “For the fifth time I believe. Please do not take my mistakes personally Captain, you are an excellent teacher.”

Lee reached out and put his hand on Oates’s arm. She pulled it away quickly, flushing slightly as she did so. She dropped her voice so they would not be overheard. “General, a quiet word on etiquette. If you are going to touch a woman like that, reach out and put your hand over her arm without touching. She will see and if your touch is welcome, she’ll leave her arm where it is. If she doesn’t want to be touched, and there could be any number of reasons why, she’ll move it. Just a word to the wise.”

“In my day, an inappropriate gesture towards a young woman would have been the responsibility of her father, brother or husband to answer. I suppose it was only to be expected that an Army that has women soldiers would expect them to guard their own honor.”

“Your gesture was neither inappropriate nor unwelcome Sir. Just unexpected.” And in your day, I would be up against a whipping post having my back flayed raw for speaking to you like that. Oates shook herself slightly, it was difficult for her to keep remembering the cause for which this kind and gentlemanly officer had fought so hard. She couldn’t help herself, the question just burst out. “Meaning no disrespect Sir, but how could you? How could you have fought so well for a cause like that?”

Lee looked at her, startled. “Captain, we are all products of our time. What seemed to be normal and reasonable back then is only now obvious for the foul thing that it was. I regarded Virginia as my home and I fought for my home.” Lee held his hand up to forestall any immediate answer. “I am not saying that the states rights argument is anything other than a feeble excuse. If the truth is of any meaning at all, the only states right that was in dispute was that of owning slaves. But Virginia with all its faults was my home. I just did not recognize, then, the gaping ugliness that laid at its heart. Today, looking at fine citizens and soldiers such as yourself and your fellow neg… African-Americans, I can see just how wrong I was. But, before Hell was overrun, I was trapped in the opinions and beliefs of my time. For that, for allowing my sense of duty to overcome my sense of what was right, I spent a century and a half rolling a massive boulder around in Hell. Now, all I can do is to ask your forgiveness.”

Oates smiled, silently accepting the apology. “We can run another exercise this afternoon if you wish. An advance-to-contact perhaps?”

“Like Gettysburg?” Lee halted for a second. “I suppose there is no word of my old warhorse Longstreet?”

“No Sir. I am afraid not.”

Lee sighed yet again. The truth was he felt lonely in this clean, aseptic and oh-so-deadly army. He had a hunch he would have preferred to start his military career again as an enlisted man than as a General. He doubted if life for a rifleman had changed that much. “I would enjoy that Captain, but I fear it is impossible. I have an appointment with General Petraeus this afternoon at two.”

“Very good sir. Tomorrow morning then. If you would excuse me?”

Oates left and Lee leaned back in his seat, looking at the master display and trying to imagine what his battles would have been like if he’d had this equipment then. Oddly, he thought, at least half of them would never have been fought at all. Then he heard voices raised in the next room, seeping through the partition.

“Oatsy, you can’t talk to Massa Robert like that.”

“Somebody’s got to Jimbo.” It was clearly his tutor speaking. “If he gets command of this regiment now, we’ll all be dead thirty minutes into the action. You’ve seen those exercise playbacks. He hasn’t got a clue how modern units communicate or move let alone fight. He’s a real nice man, but everything we take for granted, senses of space, time, distance and what they imply, they just aren’t there. To us, in our heads, twenty miles is a trip to the store. To him, in his head, it’s a long, hard day’s journey.”

The voices faded away and Lee was left staring at the master display. The silver disks that held the records of his previous exercises were in a storage rack and he put the oldest one on, just as Oates had showed him. What he had done looked reasonable to him but it ended the same way as it always did, his regiment dying in a chaos of blood and fire. Oates was right, he just didn’t understand. By the time he had finished running through his records, it was time for his meeting and his mind was made up.

General Petraeus’s Office, HEA Headquarters, Hell

“General Robert E Lee, to see General Petraeus.”

“Yes Sir. Please step right in.” The sergeant opened the door for him.

Lee stepped inside and came to attention. “General Petraeus, Sir, I would like to withdraw my request for a combat command. I would still wish to serve my country and my flag in any other way you might find appropriate.”

Petraeus looked up. “Sit down Robert. What made you come to this conclusion?”

“Sir, for a week, I have been attempting to understand how your army works. With the aid of a very skilled and patient tutor. Sir, I regret to say I have failed completely. I am not fit to command and I must recognize that as a fact. One day, perhaps, but not now.”

“Captain Oates taught you properly?” Petraeus was inwardly relieved. The thought of Robert E Lee commanding a modern unit was a political nightmare.

“She did sir and her patience with me was apparently inexhaustible. She is a fine officer Sir, and deserves your interest. The fault is mine. I do not know what I need to know, nor do I know yet what I need to learn.”

Petraeus nodded. “Robert, I do have another command for you if you want it, one for which you may be very well qualified. All the histories speak of your concern for your men, the lengths you went to for them and the loyalty you inspired in them. Every day now we are pulling victims out of the Hell Pit. Some of them are ex-American soldiers from various eras. Whatever the time they came from, and whatever side they fought on in the previous unpleasantness, they are now our responsibility. Many are deeply traumatized by their fate, others feel alone and unwanted in an era that is vastly different from any they knew. Yet, they are still our people. We are setting up a convalescent home for them, a refuge if you like. It needs a man like you, Robert, to run it. A man who can inspire loyalty and affection while still maintaining a strict discipline. That posting is yours if you wish it.”

“To care for our veterans, soldiers from every era in our history.” Lee was entranced by the idea. “Sir, I do not just wish it, I desire it with all my heart.”

“Then the position is yours. You may start tomorrow.”

Lee saluted and left. Behind him, Petraeus smiled down at the paper in front of him. It was a politely-worded but firm report from Captain Ledasha Oates that stated in her opinion Robert E Lee was unfit to hold a combat command at his existing level of knowledge and some other posting should be found for him. It wasn’t often that political and operational needs converged, but it was nice when they did. Then he transferred his attention back to his large-screen monitors and asked himself the questions that had been on his mind ever since the invasion coordinates had come in. This is my plan, this is how we will carry out the invasion. Now, what can go wrong and if it does, how do we cope with it? What is out there that we don’t know about? Who will I be fighting when we arrive and how does he think? How can I win this war at minimum cost to the men and woman I command. Soon, he would know the answers because it was now time to move. In the final analysis, the decision and the responsibility was his, just as General Lee had recognized his responsibility and acted accordingly. Now, it was time for him to step up and shoulder his burden. He reached out and picked up the telephone on his desk.

Fort Knox, Kentucky.

“Are we ready to go?” Colonel Warhol looked around at the set-up to make sure everything was in place. A dozen or more V-22 Ospreys were standing by, their engines idling as they waited for the long-sought after Heavengate to form. All the equipment was set up, Lemuel-Lan was ready to open his portal from Earth to Heaven. The moment he did so, his signal would be monitored, recorded, digitized and fed into the waiting computers. That was all humanity had been waiting for, that one signal that would open up the gates of Heaven. They already had one from the first brief recon contact, now this data would confirm it. Across the open space of the testing ground, he could see another team getting ready to set up the link from Hell. Experiments had proved that having portals too close together would result in unfortunate effects, not the least being the merging of the two into a larger portal of uncertain destination. Portal science was beginning to be established as a real branch of scientific inquiry now, one day soon the links between it and the main body of scientific knowledge would be found and the glaring anomalies that currently existed would be explained. That applied to all the areas of study that had opened up since Hell had been discovered and not one of them was of any great interest to Colonel Warhol.

“kitten, you and Dani had better mount up. You’ll be going through as soon as the portal is open. You know how to find here, no matter what’s on the other side, punch through a portal of your own if this one closes behind you. We want to depend on him as little as possible.”

“We got the briefing.” Dani sounded slightly surly. He didn’t like the implication that he had to be told things more than once. He tugged on kitten’s leash and the two of them boarded the closest of the Ospreys.

“Hellgate is open now.” The message came over the radio but Warhol could see the black ellipse that had suddenly formed. It was strange how the sight of a portal had ceased to be awe-inspiring or threatening. Now they were no more significant than the ‘welcome to’ signs that graced American highways when somebody crossed a state line. To a military man, they were also far from threatening. Once, an opening Hellgate meant that a daemonic attack was imminent, now it showed that one of the armored units of the Human Expeditionary Army was within a few minutes drive. That simple fact had changed military planning out of all recognition. It had also created an entirely new branch of alternate history. Warhol was reading one such novel now, by some author called Turtleshell. It asked a simple question, what would have happened if Abigor had brought his Nagas along instead of leaving them behind? If he’d accepted the limitation they imposed on his mobility in favor of the ability to generate large, tactically significant portals? Still, such questions were for authors; Warhol was a soldier and soldiers deal with what is, not what might have been.

“Lemuel-Lan-Michael?” Warhol looked at the message in his hand. “I’ve just had a message from Johns Hopkins. Maion is out of surgery, they’ve repaired the damage to her wings. She’s resting now, under sedation, but the operation was a success. Whether that will mean she can fly again, we just don’t know. We’ve never treated angels before, especially one with such major injuries.”

“Thank you Colonel.” Lemuel’s eyes were sunk deep into their sockets and his face was drawn and tired. He hadn’t slept since he and Maion had made their desperate escape to Earth. “Do you want me to open the portal to Heaven now?”

“If you would please. Make one large enough to take that.” He gestured at the V-22 that was assigned to carry kitten and her equipment through the Heavengate. Lemuel’s eyes widened at the size of the portal he was being asked to create but nodded. He could do it, for Maion, for all the angels suffering in Heaven, and for his friend Michael who was trying to save them, he had to.

“Transit-prime, this is Sirius-Prime actual here. We’re coming through the Hellgate and forming up now. Hokay guys, we’ll be ready to move in five minutes.”

Sirius-Prime, the armored battalion that was the spearhead of the Third Herd. And if Warhol recognized his accents, with Colonel Keisha Stevenson in command. That wasn’t a surprise, ever since the initial fighting with Abigor, she had been Petraeus’s go-to officer every time he wanted something unusual or dangerous done. She was (so far living) proof that gaining a senior General’s attention was all too often the key to a short but exciting life.

Lemuel-Lan closed his eyes and concentrated. He found the location in Heaven he wanted, Belial’s concentration camp, easily enough. The sights, sounds and smell of the place were scarred deeply into his mind after all. All he needed was to energize the contact and the job would be done. Lemuel very much doubted whether the humans realized what they were asking him to do. The simple act of opening the portal was betraying the teachings of countless millennia. He summoned his strength, linked to the point he wanted and poured energy into the connection. Opening a portal from Earth to Heaven was difficult at the best of times and his still-present doubts made it all the more so. Still, he thought of Maion as he and Michael had found her, crawling in the mud and whimpering as she dragged her shattered wings behind her. That alone was enough. It was not he who had betrayed his faith, it was Yahweh who had betrayed him and every other Angel in the Host..

Suddenly, in a blinding flash of understanding, Lemuel-Lan understood why the humans had taken this war so seriously. Why, in their rage they had sworn to destroy the power that had so contemptuously betrayed them. Michael-Lan had been right all along, the humans had fought Satan the way they fought all their enemies, no more and no less. Satan had been a self-declared enemy of humanity and they could understand and even forgive that. They had dealt with such enemies before and doubtless would do so again. And, when they had dealt with them, they had made peace. But, humans did not tolerate betrayal. They had destroyed Satan and ground down his kingdom but they loathed Yahweh beyond any measure he could imagine. If they invaded Heaven, and if they didn’t do it today, they would at some time in the future, they wouldn’t stop fighting until Yahweh and the Angelic Host were crushed so thoroughly they would never recover. Michael-Lan was right, this had been the only way. In front of him, the great black ellipse formed and stabilized.

Cockpit, V-22C “Dragon-One-Zero”, Fort Knox, Kentucky.

“Hold tight, here we go.” Captain Mark Sheppard’s hands moved on the controls and the Osprey lifted off, then transitioned from vertical to horizontal flight. Then, he accelerated his aircraft and headed straight through the portal that had formed in front of him. As he went through, he couldn’t resist giving out the traditional battle-cry “Geronimo!”

The Heavengate transition was no more spectacular or marked than the familiar one through a Hellgate. The blue sky of Earth was quietly and unassumingly replaced by the clear white sky and light of Heaven. The one thing that marked the different destination of the Heavengate was the ground. Instead of the red-dominated, dusty landscape of Hell, the skies of Heaven were clear and bright. The ground was green pasture, spread across rolling hills and valleys, interspaced with clumps of earth-like trees. It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful and for one brief moment Sheppard actually regretted that these lovely hills would soon be the scene of fire and destruction, the inevitable trademark of a human army at war.

Then, his Osprey crested a hill and any pretension of beauty was left behind. Stretched out underneath him was a scene that was indeed straight out of Hell. Not just out of Hell but from the Hellpit itself. A great enclosure with walls and guard towers. Inside it, thousand of angels, dragging themselves along, their shattered wings trailing in the mud behind them. Sheppard thumbed his microphone, he still had a direct line of sight to the portal so his radio worked. “Transit-Prime, this is Dragon-One-Zero. Concentration camp sighted as described. Much worse than described. Looks like our friend was telling the truth. Swinging past now. There’s what looks like a good base location about ten miles out from here. If you forget the concentration camp, this place is beautiful.”

The Osprey skimmed another ridge, dropped out of sight below the ridgeline and then headed for a low plateau that marked a suitable site for a base area. It transitioned from horizontal to vertical flight and then settled down on the lush green grass that covered the site. By now, the drill was well-established and the equipment had all the benefit of nearly eighteen months of technical development behind it. As a result, it took barely ten minutes to set up the AN/GSY-1( V)4 Mod 6 portal generator and another five for kitten to use it to create another portal back to Fort Knox.

Fort Knox, Kentucky.

“Shut yours down. And thank you, Lemuel, head on back to Washington Maion needs you.” The black ellipse that had marked the original portal vanished without a sign that it had even existed. A few hundred yards away, beside the beacon set up for the purpose, a new portal had opened. Warhol watched as the Spearhead Battalion of the Third Armored moved through it and vanished. A few seconds later, a message came over the radio that caused an eruption of cheering all over the base. It said, quite simply, “Base Heavengate-Alpha established.”