Pantheocide

Chapter Seventy

Spearhead Battalion, Third Armored Division, Heaven.

For a brief second, it just didn’t make sense. Keisha Stevenson knew what the wailing sirens and ear-splitting rattle meant but the knowledge didn’t make the needed connection to her brain. Then, the connection was made and the knowledge sent her running for her tank. All around her, the initial shock had worn off the men and women of the Spearhead Battalion and they were heading for the comforting bulk of their armored vehicles. Stevenson reached hers, scrambled up the side on one continuous motion and pushed herself through the cupola on the turret. In doing so, she banged her face on the breech of her. 50 machine gun and managed to mash her breasts on the cupola ring. That hurt.

That didn’t stop her movement, she resisted the temptation to hold herself, instead reaching up to the hatch and pulling it shut. Then she span the locks that held it in place and spun them again to make sure the hatch was tight.

“This is an exercise, Ma’am, right?” Her gunner was looking at her with eyes wide open. “A dummy drill?”

She shook her head. “We don’t play games like this in operational zones. This is the real thing. Somebody is about to pop a nuke.”

“That’s us right?” The voice was trembling.

“I sure do hope so. Hokay, brace for nuclear initiation procedures.” She leaned forward and cushioned her head on her forearms. Surreptitiously, she rubbed her breasts, quietly wishing she was back with her old tank crew. They’d been a small, self-contained little community, one where the Army had got mixing compatible people up right for once. And hitting herself on the cupola ring had really hurt.

What happened next was eerie. There was no sound, no warning, no movement, but from every crack and crevice in the tank, a pure, blinding white light poured in beams that had an almost tangible quality to them. Dust mites hanging in the air were brilliantly spotlighted, swirling in patterns that defied any easy analysis. The tank was supposed to be airtight and leakproof but the light was strong enough to show how wrong that belief was, The holes were no greater than pinpoints in size yet there was enough light coming through them to illuminate the whole of the inside of the tank. It caught in people’s hair, making them seem as if they were crowned with halos of pure light. Braced in her Commander’s seat, Stevenson was counting seconds in an effort to work out how far away the initiation had been.

She’d reached one minute and thirteen seconds when the tank was hit by what felt like an underground sledgehammer. The ground wave, she thought. The egg-heads will learn all sorts of stuff from that. The irrelevance of the thought surprised her. The front of the tank was lifting with the ground shock, then her head slammed forward as it dropped. She hadn’t felt anything like this since she’d been taken to an amusement park for her birthday and had insisted on trying the roller-coaster ride. This had all the characteristics of that ride, only the tank was shaking violently as well. The three-dimensional movement made her feel violently ill, another phenomenon reminiscent of the ride she had taken so many years ago. The only difference was that this time she wasn’t filled up with cotton-candy to make sickness a reality. All around her the air was filling with dust, the red dust from Hell, the yellow sand from Iraq, the brown grit from wherever it was in the States that this tank had come from. Instinctively, with the conditioned reflex of a First-Life human who had spent a lot of time in Hell, she clapped her bandanna over her nose and mouth. Anything to avoid breathing in the pumice. Unfortunately, her gunner misunderstood the movement, decided that if his Colonel could be sick, so could he and vomited all over the main gun.

“You’ll clean that up.” Stevenson was in no mood for the smell in her tank while the violent shaking continued. Then, to her immense relief, the vicious movement subsided. Her mind was still ticking away the seconds. One minute and forty three seconds since the flash of light, roughly 23 miles from Ground Zero. General Dynamics Land Systems, just how big was the nuke to give a ground wave like that this far out? Then, the air-wave and sound of the blast hit. The 70 ton tank was lifted slightly, the howling blast-wave catching the barrel and causing the turret to turn against the gears that rotated it. Stevenson could feel the heat rising in the tank, and the air conditioning laboring to keep conditions under control. Even with that aid, she could feel herself sweating and that was when she realized what she could hear wasn’t air conditioning, it was the tanks positive pressure system trying to ensure that the air pressure in the tank was higher than that outside. Only, the air pressure sensor was trying to cope with conditions that the tank designers had considered only in their worst nightmares and the positive pressure system was working overtime to match. Stevenson felt her ears pop as the pressure climbed.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shockwave was past. The tank radio crackled into life, ordering everybody to remain under cover while the surrounding area was checked for radioactive contamination. Stevenson sat back in her seat, then opened up the tank’s electro-optical system to see what was going on. What she saw made her catch her breath. On the horizon was the familiar mushroom cloud. It was no longer glowing, she’d missed that part of the display but it was still a dull reddish color in hue. Just like Hell, she thought. She couldn’t see the top of the cloud, from her knowledge of nuclear weapons she guessed it was at least 12 miles high, extending well into the stratosphere and far beyond the elevation limit of her equipment. As she watched, she saw the great mushroom cloud slowly turning white as it cooled and started to absorb moisture from the air around it. The thermal currents and winds were already interacting to wrap the mushroom cloud in a strange, impressive and incredibly beautiful system of cloud layers.

It had all the fascination of a train wreck. Stevenson wanted to look away from the great cloud but couldn’t. For a brief second she thought there had been another initiation and started to duck away to save her sight but then she realized it was just lightning. The massive electrical charges in the atmosphere from the initiation plus all that condensing water vapor was a perfect breeding ground for thunderstorms. There would be tornados as well, all around the blast area. Idly, she wondered if Heaven had ever seen tornados before.

“Attention. For your information, there has just been a 1.2 megaton nuclear initiation over the main body of an Angelic Host twenty four miles due west of our position. The initiation was a high air burst using a nuclear device optimized for clean performance. We do not expect excessive radioactive contamination. Specialized reconnaissance elements are in action now, checking for fallout and other effects. All personnel may now leave cover but be prepared to find shelter at short notice. Message ends.”

Stevenson sighed, she guessed that her battalion would be getting orders soon, ones that would direct her to advance on Ground Zero.

Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

“We’re getting the data in now. The initiation was complete and on target. The preliminary estimate is between 150,000 and 250,000 dead. I’m sorry, General, but military targets are obdurately linear and nuclear blast effects are obdurately circular. We planned this one so the Host was caught between two hills and that squeezed the circle into an ellipse. Still, the nose and tail of the column were out of the immediately-lethal area.”

“You’re sorry.” Petraeus couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “We kill a quarter of a million people in a split second and you’re sorry because you didn’t get more of them. Just who are you anyway?”

The Targeteer smiled sadly. “Brennan, Don Brennan. By the time this thing has run its course, there’ll be a lot more than a quarter of a million dead. Even allowing for the way angels and Second Life humans recuperate, we’ll be way over four hundred thousand. Look on it this way Sir, if we’d done this to a city, we’d be looking at half a million dead right now and more than a million by the time the week is out. If the powers that be in the Eternal City get the message, we’ll all be spared that.”

Brennan was interrupted by a messenger from the National Reconnaissance Office. “Global Hawk pictures Sirs. Obliques of course.

“Which RQ-4 took them?” Brennan sounded interested. “Did she survive?”

“Donde Esta, Sir. She’s fine, circling out of harm’s way.”

Brennan nodded. “That’s good, I like that one. She always comes through with the goodies.” He flipped through the photographs and nodded with satisfaction. “Most of the Angels were within the total kill zone. Including the big one who was leading the Host. No sign of who he was I suppose?”

“No Sir. Without radios to intercept, we’re a bit stuck there.”

“No problem, we’ll find out eventually. Thank you.” The messenger left, privately glad to be away from that flat, uninflected, monotone voice.

“We used to get lectures on this but even the films didn’t convey the reality of it.” Petraeus was speaking very quietly.

“They never do sir. You have to be there when one goes off to really understand it.”

“You have of course.”

“Of course. Not an American test, but I was invited there as a guest. It’s something everybody who wants to run a country should see.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you.” Petraeus pushed a button on his desk intercom. “Sir Michael? I’ll be resting for a couple of hours. If anything comes up, handle it. There shouldn’t be, everybody has their mission objectives and we’ve got good people in command slots.”

He paused and got up from his desk. “Brennan, if there are any developments at Ground Zero or if we get warning of fallout, call me immediately.” There was a long pause. “You know, I could almost wish that the things didn’t work up here. Almost, but not quite.”

10 miles from Ground Zero. Heaven

The great ball of glowing light in the sky had been more than 700 times brighter than the normal light of Heaven. Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael had been blinded by the flash even though, by pure chance, he had been looking the other way. His partner in the scouting team, Amanael-Lan-Asohar had not been so lucky. He had been looking west at the time and he had been blinded as well. Only, for him there would be no recovery. His eyes had melted.

Uxhalar wasn’t well, but at least he was alive. The great thunder and the howling wind that had followed the flash of light had thrown him from the sky and damaged his ears. There had been an eerie silence between the flash and the crash of thunder. That’s what had amazed him so much. In a way, it had shocked him even more than the thunder, though the display was far greater than anything he had seen before. When he had risen, bruised and shaken, he had looked out from the crest of his hill across a sight he had never expected to see. The whole area was blackened, the grass seared away to bare soil, the trees burning. Everything that could burn was burning and the pyre of black smoke stretched high into the sky. Not high enough though for he could still see the great mushroom-shaped cloud that glowed red as it slowly changed color. Red was the color of Hell, and, impossible as it might seem, the humans had brought Hell to Heaven.

He stretched his wings and started to fly towards the cloud. The small forests that had once been scattered so artfully over the landscape were gone. Some were still burning but others were just scattered around, all over the track that the Host had been following on its way to do battle with the humans. On an instinct, he flew down to look at one closely, landing on the track in the midst of a cluster of burned tree logs. As he walked towards one, he heard a long, rasping groan of agony. It seemed to have come from one of the logs. He looked more closely and saw just a burned, charred log. Then, it opened its mouth and groaned again. To his horror Uxhalar realized that the ‘logs’ were all that was left of the human levies that had formed part of the column. He hurried away, taking off as quickly as he could, anything to be away from the sight he had just seen.

To his relief, the ‘logs’ vanished after a while. He realized they had to be the ones who had been on the outer edge of the strange weapon that had wiped out The Eternal Father Of All’s personal guard. Rigt on the edge, to close in to escape, to far out to die quickly. Further in, all that was left was the blackened stains on the ground where the people had exploded into flames and burned to ashes. And yet still further in there wasn’t even that trace of the survivors. Just the shadows of the dead, burned into the bleached ground. Human, Angel, it didn’t matter. They had died as if they had never existed, leaving only a shadow behind them

That was when Uxhalar stopped in his tracks, backwinging so he could absorb the immensity of what he saw. For, in front of him, the landscape had changed and become something he couldn’t have imagined. For at least three miles in front of him, the ground had been completely flattened and turned into glass. Soil, trees, grass, animals, people, Angels, all had gone leaving nothing behind but the sheet of glass. He tried to imagine what could have done this, what great power could fuse soil unto glass. He flew over it, looking down, realizing that this glass plain was the only memorial to the Army that had been once marching through the valley. Through the valley, that was not true any more for even the valley itself had been changed. The hills had been distorted, their pleasing symmetry destroyed, looking as if a giant hand had pushed them away.

Another strange sight caught his eye. Right in the middle of the great glass plain was a lake where no lake had been before. An odd, perfectly circular lake that was slowly expanding as it filled with cobalt-blue water. Uxhalar could sense evil from that lake and he stayed well away from it. The sight distracted him though and he was shaken by a flash and another thunderous roar. For a hideous moment he thought it was another one of the great explosions but he quickly realized it was just a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. Not that thunderstorms were common in Heaven unless He Who Is Above All Others willed it. And yet, it was a storm unlike any other he had experienced. The rain that began falling from the sky over was jet black, a mixture of water that was condensing on the plentiful dust and smoke particles. The black rain soaked into his wing feathers and along his back, causing an intense burning sensation on the patches of skin they touched. He tried to brush them off, but they stuck to him and all the efforts he made just spread the burning sensation further. He gave up, he would just have to tolerate them.

Eventually, the plain of glass with its strange, evil lake was behind him. He pointedly did not look at the track below until he was clear of any hint of the ‘logs’. It was then that the one thing he had not seen struck him. On all his flight over the site where the terrible thing had happened, he had not seen a living creature. Had the entire army been destroyed in that one great blast?

He flew a little higher and started a methodical hunt for any survivors of the Host. It took time and he was rained on again in the process, but he found them. A ragged column of survivors headed west, away from the death of their army. Had he not known better, he would have assumed they were Fallen Ones, for they were black overall. Even from above, it was obvious that few could see, most staggered along, their hand on the shoulder of the one in front of them. As he winged down, Uxhalar tried not to look at their faces, he knew what he would see there and he had already seen too much this day.

On the ground, he tried to find an angel he could speak to. Surrounded by the moaning of the survivors, he searched for anyone who could tell him what had happened. He saw hands with the fingers so burned that the knuckles stuck through the flesh and the skin peeled off in cylinders that retained the shape of the fingers within. He saw muscles that had once been red turned black with deep splits that ran to the white bone beneath. He pushed through the crowds, trying to hide his eyes and feeling only shame that these were suffering so much while he was unharmed. Then, at last, he found an angel, one badly injured where debris from the blast had carved deep into his body but an angel nonetheless.

“I am Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael. What happened? Where is our leader?”

The angel looked at him. One eye was clouded and blind, the other reddened and inflamed. “The mighty Elhmas, son of He Who Is Above All and leader of our host? He is back there, I think. He was over the column when the thing happened. He is part of the glass and the black rain. Our Eternal Father has no son any more.” Then he pushed past Uxhalar and was lost in the shuffling column that wound past him.

Uxhalar tried to take off but the effort suddenly seemed too great for him. He inflated his flight sacs to the maximum but it was no use, he was just too heavy to fly. So, he turned around and started to walk west with the rest of the survivors. As he did so, he noted that his wing feathers, once a pristine white but now stained with the black rain, were beginning, one by one, to fall out.