Pantheocide

Chapter Twenty Four

Eucalyptus Hills, East of Santee, California

Uriel was stunned by the realization that the humans beneath him were fighting back. His mind and body were aching with the effort of keeping the pressure on them, fulfilling his eternal mission of blotting out their lives and snatching way their souls. And yet they were fighting back, defying him by keeping on living. Beneath the shelter of their shields, they were defying the Sword and Scythe of The One Above All. Even worse, Uriel could sense animals in there with them and they were fighting back too, as if they were following the lead of the humans and defying the judgment of the Great Father Above All. It was beyond Uriel’s understanding, the humans had brought their animals in under cover with them, their love for their pets exceeded their duty of obedience by a margin that Uriel couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

He was tiring, the need to continue his assault, maintain the effort to wipe out those beneath him, was already draining his last reserves of strength. He had never fought this way before, in the past his merest touch had been enough to drop the humans in their tracks before they even realized their time had come. Those days were long past and over South America and Mexico, he had sensed resistance, felt the effects of the shielding every human seemed to have. But this, this was different. The shields were much stronger and the time taken to push through them had allowed the humans below to prepare for the assault. They were refusing to die and, to Uriel, that was a thing beyond understanding.

The human resistance may have been beyond Uriel’s ability to comprehend but what happened to him next was all too familiar. His skin started to irritate, to itch madly with pains that jabbed deep into his skin. He knew what that meant, the humans were on to him and were tracking him. He looked down to see if any of the missiles that they loved so much were coming his way. That was Uriel’s first mistake. If he’d invested in a copy of World Naval Weapons, he would have looked up, not down. But he had never read a human book and the idea of looking up never occurred to him.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

Annette Serafina played the radar controls in front of her, manipulating the systems at her command, her electronic fingers reaching out through the darkness to find the monster who was trying to slaughter her people. “Got him! We have SPS-49 contact, tracking now. Sir, how about some music down here?”

“On its way.” Pelranius thought for a second and got the channel to the Comms Suite. “Put on Mars, The Bringer of War, Gustav Holst.”

Serafina listened to the opening bars while her computers established the target track. “Good choice, Sir.” SPS-49 operating full power. Hope there was nothing good on television over at Sunny Dee.”

Captain Pelranius nodded. The SPS-49 had a peak transmission output power of 2,400 kW. Once, when a cruiser had accidentally gone to full transmit power off Norfolk, it had blacked out television reception in Newport News and interfered with radio as far inland as Richmond. The incident coming to mind jogged his memory, there was a vital duty he had to perform. He took a key, inserted it in a slot on the console and turned it. “Senior Chief Serafina, I am authorizing you to utilize full war emergency power on the SPY-1.”

“Very good Sir.” Her voice was neutral, despite the implications of the words she had just heard. Even if she hadn’t been aware of them, the rumbling under her feet as the ship’s four LM-2500 gas turbines picked up speed and started to generate more electrical power would have told her. “I have Uriel locked in using the Spoogs. We’ll track using SPS-49 and designate with SPY-1. Firing RIM-156 now.”

The ship started to shake as the first of the salvo of RIM-156 anti-aircraft missiles left the silos. Within a second, four missiles were arching up from the ship, heading northwest towards the town of Eucalyptus Hills.

“I hope Uriel doesn’t see them and get behind the ridgeline again.” Pelranius looked at the air warfare crew and picked up a slight note of disdain that surprised him. What had he said?

“Won’t save him Sir. The 156s are on their way now and they have active terminal radar homing. All we have to do is get them into the acquisition basket and they’ll do the rest. They’ll even relay their radar pictures back to us to tell us what they’re doing.” Serafina dropped her voice to confidential levels. “ Don’t worry Sir, everybody makes that mistake, assuming we can’t hit a target that’s over the radar horizon. Been times when that was the last mistake they ever made.”

In an educational video, seen from above, Normandy would have looked as if she was surrounded by four great fans of radar energy from the planar arrays of the SPY-1 system. Then, as Serafina’s expert fingers played the controls and switched the system from surveillance to target designation mode, the fans started to split into narrow beams that coalesced into thin lines. Then, the lines started to merge as she combined their output into a single beam per face.

“How much power are you pushing down that beam?” Pelranius’s voice was awed.

“All of it, all our generators can give us.” Serafina’s voice was still neutral. The pencil beam she was generating was capable of tracking an object two feet across at a range of far over a thousand nautical miles and detecting the tiny variations in its trajectory caused be variations in earth’s gravity. At under a hundred miles, the power of that beam was ferocious. The textbooks said SPY-1 had a peak power output of 4,000 kW, a figure that caused great amusement to the AEGIS community. It was true enough, or had been in the days of a prototype system on board the old Norton Sound. Now, it was long obsolete, far surpassed by that of later versions, and that had been before the key had been turned to enable war emergency power. The target designation beam of an SPY-1 was a powerful weapon in its own right.

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

Caroline Howarth sat, curled up in the center of her refuge room, her arms around the dog beside her. She was tired, exhausted by the effort of keeping her body working against the constant assault of blackness that was trying to shut her down. She was frightened, terrified even for she knew she was just buying time. The blackness was spreading, it was getting more difficult to breath and her head ached from the effort of keeping her heart beating. She looked at Rex, saw the misery and exhaustion in his eyes, saw the long strings of drool running from his mouth. She squeezed him gently, encouragingly, to reassure him that they would win this one. All they had to do was hang on long enough, until the Air Force or the Navy got help here.

Beside her, Rex’s whole body ached with the effort he was making. It was all so very hard to understand, there was something out there that wanted him and his human to die but it wouldn’t come in and fight like a dog. It just hung around outside and tried to squeeze the life out of them. He could feel his human weakening, feel her body running out of reserves of strength. Carefully, using as little of his remaining reserves as he could, he licked her face, trying to transfer some of what little energy he had left into her. Then, as if responding to his gesture, he felt a tiny weakening in the pressure that was killing them. They were winning, they were outlasting the thing outside. Then, he heard thunder in the skies overhead and the pressure was gone.

Eucalyptus Hills, East of Santee, California

The burning irritation of his skin had reached almost unendurable levels but Uriel couldn’t see any of the missiles coming in at him. Nor were there any aircraft coming in to the attack. It was all very, very confusing. For the first time, Uriel was actually beginning to hate the humans who were causing him this trouble. Why couldn’t they just die the way they were supposed to? That was when the burning pain on the top of his body told him that he was in the worst danger of his life.

Uriel never stood a chance of evading the RIM-156 missiles that were streaking down upon him from above. They had tipped over at 150,000 feet and were now heading down in a Mach 6 dive. Their radar sets were fully active and they had locked on to the figure below them. They didn’t need designation any more, They had Uriel in their sights and they were going to blow him up. Uriel barely had a chance to register their presence before they exploded around him.

The only thing that saved Uriel’s life was that the missiles had proximity fuzes. He was a big angel and the computers in the fuzes calculated distances based on that. He also had a large radar image and that increased the distance away from him that the missiles detonated. Finally, he was slow, and the RIM-156 was designed to handle supersonic and hypersonic targets. The fuze simply wasn’t programmed for a target that moved at Uriel’s speed. None of those factors would have saved Uriel on their own, but put together, they just about made the difference between a living angel and a dead one.

Uriel screamed as the tungsten carbide fragments slashed into his body. They ripped into his skin, splattering silver blood into the air, tore at his wings, shredding the flying surfaces and cracking the bones open. His vision suddenly shrank as fragments tore out one of his eyes and scoured across his body. He staggered in the air, hurt worse than had ever happened to him before. Not even in the Great Celestial War had he taken punishment like this. He started to drop, frantically beating the sky with his injured wings in an effort to avoid plummeting to the ground. He knew that his attack on the people below had ended, that those that had not died would live. He had used too much of his strength, he was too badly injured to start the assault again. He would have to escape, retreat to heaven and heal his wounds. Above all, he would have to speak with his friend Michael-Lan who knew humans better than any other angel. Michael-Lan would help him, Michael-Lan would give him wise counsel. He desperately tried to form the portal that would allow him to escape but something disrupted his efforts. The air itself seemed to be crackling round him, swamping his efforts to open an escape route.

That was when something happened that was far beyond his comprehension. He was used to the burning pain of the humans, used to it inflaming and irritating his skin but what happened next was truly horrifying. The pain suddenly soared up, far beyond anything he had experienced to date. He looked down and to his horror saw the skin on his chest and side was burning. Then, he realized, that was wrong, he wasn’t burning, he was being roasted alive in mid-air. His skin was bubbling and peeling, the flesh beneath it turning brown, the fat running down his body as it melted. Uriel screamed and twisted, howling in demented agony, knowing that with this weapon, whatever it was, humans had finally far surpassed the late and unlamented Satan in the ability to create sheer, undiluted horror. Uriel lost his battle to stay airborne and fell out of the sky.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

“We got him!” Serafina’s triumphant cheer swept through the Pit, bringing the AAW crew to their feet, howling with delight. “All four 156s, they went off all around him. He’s toast!” The Pit descended into a chaos of backslapping and high-fives.

“Can we confirm that?” Pelranius was loath to put a damper on the celebrations but he had done a tour in Hell and he knew how hard these Netherworld creatures were to kill. If the stories were true, Uriel was one of the top-ranking Archangels in Heaven. If they were anything like as tough as the Archdukes… Asmodeus had been blown up by a ton of C4, his head riddled with bullets from a. 50 rifle and he had still needed a salvo of AT-4 anti-tank rockets to finish him. Beelzebub, hit by two Mavericks and riddled with 30mm fire from two Warthogs, Deumos, her brains scrambled and her body fried by rocket exhausts, Satan himself, two massive shaped charges to the chest and head. Uriel was in that league and Pelranius really doubted if four RIM-156s would be enough to do the job.

“Damn, no!” The cry of disappointment was heart-felt. “He’s still flying. Designating with SPY-1 now.”

Serafina flipped the designation beam she had formed up to maximum power, sub-consciously noting the rumbling turbines below her, and locked it in on Uriel. Almost immediately the creature started to writhe in mid-air then lost control of itself and started to fall. The pencil-beam tracked him down to where the ridgeline provided a radar horizon with dead ground beyond it. Serafina thumped in the control inputs and four RIM-174s exploded from the aft launch silo, heading out for the location Uriel was heading into. They were faster and longer-ranged than the RIM-156s and their terminal radar homing was optimized to pick up and track low-flying targets in highly-cluttered backgrounds. As Uriel fell, the SPY-1 beam tracked him down. On the way, it intercepted some power lines stretched along the ridge and destroyed them in a spectacular display of electrical flashes and the showering cascade caused by melting wire and blown insulators.

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

It was gone, it was over. She and Rex had survived. The blackness had vanished with the rolling thunder of the explosions overhead. They had to be missiles, just had to be. Either the Army or the Navy had come to the rescue and driven Uriel away. Air was flowing into her lungs again, without the dreadful effort to suck it in and force it out. She could sense blood flowing through her arteries and veins, bringing oxygen and life back to her body. Slowly, shakily, she got up, her legs reluctant to support her, and looked around her room. Then, she lost her balance and fell as there were another series of explosions from north of the township. They shook the floor, sending dust falling from the ceiling. A moment later there was a screaming noise that she guessed was the sound of the inbound missiles.

She turned around, fearing that Rex hadn’t made it, but the dog was stretched out on the floor, panting for air. Alive. She took a closer look, there was blood around his muzzle but he seemed to be all right. Then she looked closer, some of the brown and black hairs had turned gray. She stood up and went over to the silver foil that lined the walls. It wasn’t a good mirror but she could see there were thin lines, crow’s feet, around her eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before and the luster of her black hair had dulled and been tinged with gray.

She was alive, and it seemed that the scars of the battle were a small price to pay for that. She decided what she did need was a cup of tea. “Hey, Rex, you want a nice steak?” He deserved a treat.

Rex thought about that carefully. He knew that there was a leg of lamb in the refrigerator and that was what he really wanted – and had intended to steal as soon as he could work out a way to do it. But, a steak would do just fine until his human was careless enough to leave the kitchen door open.

USS Normandy, CG-60, Off San Diego, California, Earth

“He’s down, behind the ridgeline.” Serafina was reading the displays and her fingers danced over the controls. “This is Axehorn calling all aircraft. We have Uriel down behind the ridgeline north of Eucalyptus Hills, he’s hurt bad but still living we think. All aircraft converge and search.”

“We’ve got word from the DIMO(N) net. No dropped frames so no portal formed, he’s still here.”

“Wonder why he doesn’t portal out?” Pelranius was intrigued.

“Sir, have you any idea how much energy we’re pumping out? I doubt if there’s a television left unexploded in South California. Just a guess, but I think we’re jamming him.”

“What about the aircraft closing in? Won’t they be at risk?”

“Not on surveillance mode and I’ve got the designation beams turned off. We can flip back to war mode in seconds if we need it.”

“Axehorn, this is CAP-Three- One-One I’m heading for Eucalyptus Hills now. Intend to stay below flight level ten. Please advise fast movers to stay above that.”

“Will do CAP-Three-One-One.”

There was a bleep and the special channel activated. “Axehorn, this is Habu-zero-one. I’m turning round to come back in. Require clearance on flight and speed.”

“Habu-zero-one, your choice, up where you are, nobody else can go.”

“Nice of you to say so Axehorn. Be advised I’ll have sideways-looking radar on. If something’s big and nasty down there I’ll spot it. What did you do to Uriel?”

“Whacked him with four RIM-156s and four 174s then fried him with a full-power designation beam.”

“Ohhh nasty. Well done Axehorn. Habu-Zero-One out.”

“Another conversation that never happened.” Pelranius spoke heavily.

“Exactly.” Serafina smiled at him and mouthed very quietly, “Aurora.”

Home of Caroline Howarth, Eucalyptus Hills, California.

Everything was out, radio, television, cellphones. Caroline Howarth had given up her landline telephone and used a cell phone for all her calls, now she bitterly regretted doing so. Her computer was down as well, and, looking out of the window she could see that Santee was blacked out. North of the town, helicopters were already searching the ridges and valleys while a light aircraft circled, hunting further out.

There was a banging at the door. Rex ran across and barked at the intruder, itching for a fight he could get his teeth into. She grabbed his collar and opened the door. A National Guard soldier was standing there, a clipboard in his hands.

“Whoa, old feller, I’m a friend. Miss Caroline Howarth?” He looked at the list, it said the registered owner of the house was 32 years old, this woman looked like a well-preserved fifty. “I’m sorry, is she your daughter?”

She shook her head. “I’m her. And Rex is four years old.” Then she saw the look on his face and it made her laugh, a laugh that turned into a cough. One that left speckles of blood on her hand. “You don’t fight the Angel of Death to a draw and walk away unscarred.”