2018 - Lords of War - Unfinished

[Calder]

LORDS OF WAR

Amelia's Mysteries, The New Market Mall, Chicago, Illinois. Ten Years After Salvation Day (2018)

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weinstein, the truth is that it is simply much cheaper to hire real Angels for the show than it is to use human actresses made up to look like Angels. Look out of the window and you'll see what I mean."

Mark Barnes gestured towards the stage that had been set up in the Phelan Plaza of the Mall. On it, three Angels were modeling Amelia's Mysteries' new fall range of lingerie. Two were just going through the motions with their lack of enthusiasm obvious. Barnes didn’t hold that against them, they had to do five shows a day for a week and even human models found it hard to keep up their interest in the repetitive work for that length of time. The third, though, Astaroth-Lan-Sachael, had entered the spirit of the show and was thoroughly enjoying herself. She pirouetted on tiptoe then flared her wings to expose the outfit she was modeling. Her wing feathers had been dyed intense red at the tips, fading to their natural color of brilliant white at the roots so that they matched her clothing. The outburst of applause from the crowd was thunderous as she dropped elegantly to one knee, her wings outstretched to their maximum extent. In doing so she had completely upstaged the other show-Angels. Barnes knew she was a natural for show business.

Barnes was an experienced manager, one destined for rapid promotion within the Amelia's Mysteries chain, and he could read a crowd just by glancing at it. He was doing more than glancing now, he could see that the people watching the show were already getting ready to flood into the store and buy the outfits that the angels had been promoting. It would be another record-breaking day and he resolved to give Astaroth-Lan a major bonus for her performance. Again.

Harvey Weinstein knew all too well what Barnes was telling him. The female Angels were stunningly beautiful and in the ten years since the Salvation War had ended, several had become prominent models in the fashion industry. It wasn't just their beauty though, they worked hard, rehearsed diligently, and never turned up for a show hungover or still drunk. They couldn't completely replace human women of course, but the Angels who wanted to work in the fashion business still got all the business they could handle.

"You see what I mean Harvey? It's the same all over. Why use fake Angels when we can use the real thing? Why should horror filmmakers use fake demons when they can hire real ones? Anyway, given the scandals around you right now, frankly, we can’t afford the adverse publicity of working with you. What on earth, or everywhere else come to that, possessed you to go on 'Tonight with Luga'?"

Weinstein cringed at the memory of that show. He had been supremely confident of his ability to handle Luga Sharmanaska and use her show to rebuild his reputation after the sexual harassment scandals that had plagued him. After all, he had decades of experience in dominating and manipulating women. It was the worst miscalculation he had ever made; the succubus had methodically shredded his reputation and destroyed his attempts at defending himself. He still had nightmares about those slitted yellow eyes staring at him while she brought on stage some of the women he had exploited and abused during his peak years. By the end of the hour-long show, the audience had been howling for his blood. Not that it was an unusual end for an episode of 'Tonight with Luga'. There was a reason why her show was still the prime-time talk-show market leader after ten years on the air. It wasn't that any of the guests had been lynched, it was just there was a reasonable possibility they might be.

Barnes shook his head. "No, Harvey, we can't do business with you. It's not just the economics or the optics of using the services of a man who habitually abuses the women he is supposed to represent. It's that you are yesterday's man, somebody who belongs in a society that doesn’t exist anymore. That's not the kind of image that Amelia's Mysteries wants to present. Now, if you will excuse me, I do have other people to see."

As it happened, Barnes didn't. He just wanted Weinstein out of his office. The truth was the man made his skin crawl. He watched Weinstein's back departing through the office door with relief then picked up the telephone as it beeped. "Hi, Kayla. How are we doing?"

"Show's over for the morning and the store's packed. Taking money like crazy and I've put extra staff on the check-outs." Kayla audibly hesitated which confirmed Barnes' opinions. "We're not doing business with that creep are we, boss?"

"Weinstein? No way. By the way, when you're doing the salaries for this week, give Astaroth-Lan a bonus. Time-and-a-half for this morning's show. Anything else I should know?"

"I'll do the salaries right now. By the way, boss, there are some soldiers outside, watching the show. Three humans and a demon."

"In uniform?"

"They are. Usual ten percent discount?"

"You got it. Thanks, Kayla." Barnes settled back in his office chair and sighed happily. Now he'd thrown Weinstein out, it was just another happy day at the office. Briefly, he wondered if Weinstein had bounced when his ass had hit the pavement.

The Phelan Plaza, The New Market Mall, Chicago

"Why, hello, Fallen One!"

"Why hello, Never Born!"

Astaroth and Dripankeothorofenex looked at each other and laughed. There had been a time when the greetings would have been an exchange of deadly insults, but those days had died ten years ago under the hideous lash of human weaponry. The Angels had seen the dreadful casualties the demons had taken trying to fight humans and knew it was only due to the machinations of Michael-Lan that the Angelic Host had been spared the same. The Demons knew that it was due to those machinations that the war had ended how it had, sparing them a further nightmare of blood, death, and destruction. And so it was that deadly insults had first become good-humored ones and then turned into friendly greetings. In that, both Angels and Demons were consciously imitating humans. After all, with both Satan and Yahweh gone, life was better for everybody, Angels, Demons, and Humans alike. That simple realization had done much to dispel any remaining bitterness resulting from the Salvation War.

There was slightly more to it than that of course. Before the Salvation War, the Angels had viewed themselves as being the apex of the Angel-Demon-Human triangle with the demons a poor second and the humans barely worthy of notice. Now, the humans were the undisputed, unchallengeable leaders. The demons had managed a soft landing, their incredible courage in the fighting and their willingness to serve in the human-run armed forces had won them a large measure of redemption. In contrast, the Angels had crashed and crashed hard. Their surrender after a single brief engagement had contrasted sharply with the demons fighting on even after they had taken millions of dead, and their cause was hopeless. Put bluntly, the demons were useful to the humans, the Angels were not. The result was a growing friendship between humans and demons increased by the eagerness with which demons adopted human customs.

It was a standing part of Amelia's Mysteries fashion show that the models came down off the stage and mingled with the audience after the formal presentation was over. Astaroth had already come down from the stage and the humans were crowding around her, the men standing just a little bit too close for her comfort, the women torn between admiration and guarded wariness. Astaroth liked interacting with the children most of all; they had an unguarded naturalness about them that made her feel at ease. She also liked the way they would ask before touching her feathers. There was another factor as well; since Yahweh had died, Angelic women had started to become pregnant and give birth. Looking after babies was a lost art to them and human women were helping them deal with all the unexpected problems.

The soldier she had just greeted was a Demon, his shining black skin and horns contrasting with her appearance. At just over 7-foot-tall, Astaroth wasn't tall even by the standards of a lowly Malakhim, but she still stood out from the humans around her. That made meeting the equally tall Demon pleasant. She took in his red-and-gray mottled uniform with the circular crest on one shoulder. A purple crest with a golden eagle and the number "3" over the letters SPQR. She compared it with the multi-shaded green battledress and drab green and black unit crest of his companions. "I am Astaroth-Lan-Sachael. Welcome to our show and thank you all for your service. You must all be from the Human Expeditionary Army?"

That wasn't a particularly difficult guess for her. Red/gray meant troops stationed in Hell and the humans had long since withdrawn first-life soldiers from Hell. The environment there was simply too unhealthy for them. In any case, with the Great Pit being methodically emptied, there were more than enough second-life humans now to guard the place. Multi-shaded green meant troops stationed either here on Earth or in Heaven. Put together, that meant HEA.

"Sergeant Kristopher Lucas, ma'am. Pleased to meet you. We thought we'd come in to pay our respects to Phil Phelan's memorial. We didn't know your show was on; if we had, we'd have come sooner." Astaroth gave him a glowing smile; she might be an Angel, but the flattery was still gratefully received.

"Sergeant Dripankeothorofenex, ma'am. I'm from the Third Legion "Laurier" of the New Roman Republic but the Legion is attached to the HEA. We all served together a few years back." That was the euphemism that Demons used for the Salvation War and its aftermath. That, or "the previous unpleasantness."

"We call him Drippy, ma'am. Demonic names are still a bit hard for us. I'm Sergeant Joseph Fletcher, everybody calls me Joe. That's a beautiful outfit you have on. I'd like to get one for my wife."

"Me too. I'm a sergeant as well. Rochelle Copeland, Rocky for short."

"So it's Chris, Joe, Drippy, and Rocky. I'm Aster. Did you know that you get a ten percent discount since you're on active service? I'll take you inside, make sure you get credited with it." Astaroth-Lan carefully didn’t mention that she got a commission if she brought customers in.

An hour later everybody was happy. Chris, Joe, and Rocky had bought armloads of presents for their wives, Drippy was happy at being welcomed by the Humans as he wandered around the store with his friends and Astaroth-Lan had collected a substantial commission that made her bonus look even better. Mark Barnes was looking at a new record high for his daily sales and a glowing performance review from his management. So far, it had been a good day for everybody except Harvey Weinstein and nobody cared about him.

The Great Athlete Bar, The New Market Mall, Chicago, Illinois.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for your service. Can I offer you a drink? We do have fungus ale in stock."

"I'll have a Sam Adams, please." Drippy ordered the beer, carefully remembering to add the 'please' at the end. Another human custom adopted. The truth was that he would have preferred the traditional taste of fungus ale, but he knew that beer was the favored human drink and sincerely believed that it had to be better because it was human.

The bartender, being an experienced man at his task caught the brief gleam in Drippy's yellow eyes at the mention of fungus ale. "Sir, could you help me out? We decided to stock fungus ale for our demon guests and the agent who sold it to us claimed it was a very good brand. We have no means of knowing and we wouldn’t like to sell an inferior product. Could you sample it for us, on the house of course, and give us an honest opinion?"

He poured a glass of the luminescent green liquid and gave it to Drippy who held it up and inspected it carefully. "Good color and a strong, steady glow. So far, so good."

His companions watched cautiously as he took a sample sip, then a gulp, and finally quaffed it down. It was an experience that they couldn’t join in; humans who drank fungus ale quickly developed symptoms like those resulting from quaffing sulfuric acid. Drippy thought carefully. "This is a good mass-production fungus ale. A bit like Sam Adams, something that would be served in a premium tavern. Not, of course, up to the standards of a craft-ale production from a small fermenter but even back home in Hell, those are very expensive. I think you need not be worried about serving this."

The tactfulness of Drippy's judgment was notable. Demons had learned to be tactful when dealing with humans. Being pounded by massed Russian artillery for three days along the Phlegethon River tended to do that. The bartender beamed with pleasure; ten years earlier he had been present when a Demonic marauder had broken into the mall. He much preferred the amicable relations that now existed.

"Thank you, that's a great relief. Your Sam Adams, Sir. Also, on the house, as thanks for your service and assistance." He was prevented from going further by the football match on the television being suddenly interrupted.

"We have a special announcement from Washington. Former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has announced her resignation from the House with immediate effect and will immediately be retiring from political life." The news announcer took a deep breath. "Her resignation has been expected ever since her appearance on 'Tonight with Luga' last night which ended with her complete failure to justify the leadership of her party or the policies she had adopted."

The screen cut to a rerun of the last part of the broadcast. Pelosi was sitting in her chair, hunched over with her hands covering her face while her weeping was obviously out of control Luga's catchphrase echoed around the studio. "But Congresswoman Pelosi I really am a demon from Hell. What is your excuse?"

"On being informed of Nancy Pelosi’s resignation, President DJT stated that 'while we regret to see her depart under these circumstances, perhaps we will now see a greater spirit of cooperation to address the problems we all face.' President DJT also stated that since Congressman Alan Shift has withdrawn from his scheduled appearance on 'Tonight with Luga', he would take up the vacancy in the show schedule and appear next week to discuss his administration's policies. John, that's a very courageous thing for the President to do, isn’t it?"

"In a way, yes Greta. Appearing on 'Tonight with Luga' is always a serious gamble. However, he has been on the show before and has held his own quite well. So, I don’t expect that the political fall-out will be quite this severe."

The screen flicked again and returned to the football match, accompanied by ironic cheers from the patrons of the bar.

"Surprises me anybody will still go on that show." Rocky sipped her beer and viewed the football match with a degree of boredom. "How many people have Luga destroyed on that show?"

"Ten years, 22 shows per year less the handful of guests who did well of course. More than 200 and every one of them deserved it?" Joe had finished his beer and called for another round. This one, he'd pay for of course. Business was business after all. "I remember the time DJT was on before. Ended up discussing the problems of playing golf in a non-Euclidean universe. When Luga asked him why he hadn't built a golfing resort in Hell, he told her that the construction would start in a year. One resort in Heaven, one in Hell. They're doing well so I hear. Consensus is that honors were even on that one."

"I hear a focus group is recommending that Luga retire that catchphrase of hers. Its significance is becoming diluted as people forget what things were like before. . .. the previous unpleasantness." Kris looked pensive for a moment. Soldiers were more aware than most of the way the whole terms of reference surrounding life and death had changed. Now, first-life humans could see their friends killed on a battlefield and then go and have a consoling drink with them. The armed force had succeeded where religion had failed; death was no longer an impenetrable barrier but simply a gateway to another life.

"We're running short of time people." Rocky had looked at her watch and realized that the reunion was reaching its end.

"We'd better get our parcels home and then head for the transit gate. Drippy, are you heading back to Hell?"
"My leave pass expires at midnight Hell Time. So, I must leave soon."

"Ours too. Only it’s 20:00 our time. We'd better move."

They moved out, Drippy dropping the cost of their 'on the house' round into the war relief collections box as he left. Ten years after 'the previous unpleasantness' there was still much to be repaired and the work of clearing the Hell-Pit of its victims still showed no signs of ending. There were estimated to be 100 billion souls in the rings of the Hell-Pit and even if a substantial proportion of them had died again, the task was still monumental. It was, quite literally, a task for the ages.

Chris, Joe, Drippy, and Rocky dropped their parcels off at the Yulupki Delivery Service office and sent them on their way home. The staff at the officer were human, another example of tact at work. The more unusual forms of demons in Hell, most notably the Gorgons and Nagas, didn’t come to Earth. Then, the four friends made their way to the transit gate and sadly said their farewells. They'd have another reunion in a month but that seemed a long way off.

[Calder]

Chapter Two
Michael-Lan-Mangeloi’s Palace, Aukumea, Heaven

“I think I preferred Michael-Lan-Michael.” Charmaine-Lan-Mangeloi was sitting with Michael on the balcony of his palace at Aukumea. If this had been Earth, they would have been watching the sunset in the west while sipping their favorite cocktails. In Michael’s case, that was a Mint Julep; Charmaine-Lan preferred Mimosas. They had the drinks; they didn’t have the sunset. There were no sunsets in Heaven, or Hell comes to that. “You know, this is boring.”

“Imagine how bad it would be if we didn’t have Earth drinks to keep us happy. The real problem is that we know now just how boring Heaven is; before the Salvation War, we'd sort of got numb to it. If it’s any consolation, we do have interesting times coming. We had to get people away from the idea that there was one group of Angels running things for their benefit and everybody else served them. That meant changing habits that were so deeply engraved that even we have lost track of why they got to be that way. So, the first step was to change the clan system so that anybody who becomes part of the government gives up their clan’s name and takes that of Mangeloi. Lan-Mangeloi meaning ‘servant of all Angels’ of course.”

“Do you think that just changing a clan name will make a difference? Charmaine-Lan was curious. “And what did you mean by that ‘interesting times are coming’ just then?”

“Changing the name won’t make much of a difference on its own but it will be an important part of something much larger.” Michael-Lan carefully did not mention what that something much larger was and Charmaine-Lan was perceptive enough not to ask. She understood Michael-Lan’s schemes worked much better when nobody understood what he was up to – or even that he was up to something. “As to interesting times coming, the aftermath of the Salvation War had just about worked its way out of the system. There is a lot of discontent brewing here in Heaven and the humans are going to have to handle all of it.”

“Discontent? I thought they had put down the rebellion from the human serfs?”

“Charmaine-Lan, don’t ever use that word where the humans can hear you. That’s assuming they can’t hear us here. I don’t think they can. I have the place swept by experts, but the humans must know that and could easily have done something about it. Remember what Satan keeps telling us. ‘Never underestimate humans.’ Wise words.”

“But Satan is as dead as Yahweh. . . . . . Oh.”

“Precisely.” Michael-Lan waved to an Ishim who was on his staff. “Celestials who underestimate humans wind up dead. Another round please, Jabril. Look at the insurgency here back in the early days. I thought the humans would do what they did in the war, kill everything in sight. Only they didn’t; they found out what the humans wanted, peace and quiet, plenty of food, security, their property, and the right to keep what they grew on it. We’d convinced them that we were guaranteeing all that. We weren’t of course, it's just there was no real threat to Heaven, so our words were empty. The humans made the same promises only they went through with the actions needed to stand behind their words. They stationed guard forces in each village to protect them, they showed the villagers how to grow more and better crops. They bought excess crops at more-than-fair prices and so they not only filled their promises, but they also went beyond them. They added prosperity to the deal. When people are prosperous, they want to keep their prosperity while those who aren’t are envious and try to take what belongs to others. The humans responded by teaching the farmers to fight and supported them when they did. So, it was that those who stuck by us became an impoverished enemy of the farmers while those who allied with the humans were rich and secure.”

“So why is discontent brewing here?” Charmaine-Lan was fascinated. It wasn’t often Michael-Lan allowed people to look into his inner thoughts.

“Because more and more humans are arriving and setting up residence in Heaven. They don’t have any choice of course but that’s part of the problem. Whatever is on the other side of the Minos Gate makes whatever decisions it will, and we have no idea why they do what they do. Oh, we made up reasons for what was happening, but we were adjusting facts to theories we found convenient rather than the other way around. That’s something humans dislike although they do it as much as everybody else. The humans who are sent down to Hell think they got the raw end of the deal, and nobody can explain why. Most of them settle down, move to one of the better parts of Hell and get on with their second lives. Some don’t. Then there’re the ones who have come here to Heaven. It hasn’t taken long for them to realize they are getting the short end of the stick as well, just in a different way. Hell is ridiculously resource rich. People can dig up raw materials Earth will pay handsomely for with a spade and some hard work. People there are important to Earth, and they know it. Heaven is resource poor. All we can export to Earth is farm produce. We’re of no real use to Earth. Somewhere between a liability and a nuisance. So, the people here never have the opportunity to get rich.”

“So why are three corps of the Human Expeditionary Army stationed here?”

“And two corps on Earth. The ones here are just using Heaven as a convenient place to park. If anywhere in the three worlds steps out of line, the HEA comes down on them like an avalanche. But look where the HEA isn’t. They maintain no troops in Hell. Partly that’s because the conditions down there are bad for first-life humans but it's also because the demons are good soldiers. Properly armed and led, they’re becoming the human army’s shock troops. If the Salvation War told us anything, it’s that Angels aren’t good soldiers at all. And that also makes us of almost no use to the humans.” Michael paused and drained his cocktail glass. “The problem is going to come when the humans decide Heaven is more trouble than it is worth."

"But they can't just leave us?" Charmaine-Lan's voice was filled with alarm, something that Michael noted with grim acceptance. Despite everything that has happened over the last ten years, Angels still believe that somebody else will look after them. In fact, deep down they still believe it is their right to be looked after by others. They just will not stand on their own feet. The Demons are learning to do so, and I guess they had a steep advantage over us in doing so. That's another reason why humans get along better with them than they do with us. I also guess it might be why Angels are piss-poor soldiers.

"Why shouldn’t they? Ask yourself, what do they gain from us and what does it cost them? After the war, we had done so much damage to their agriculture they were short of food. They made up the difference by taking food from us as reparations. Now, they've got back to pre-war production levels, they don’t need to take food from us anymore. In fact, it's against their interests for them to do so."

Charmaine-Lan had no answer to that. She looked over at Michael-Lan, noting that he had put on weight over the ten years since the end of the Salvation War. In fact, most Angels had. When human doctors turned up and started examining both Angels and Demons, the first thing they discovered was that both species were malnourished in comparison with modern humans. The lower levels of their societies didn’t have adequate food supplies by 21st-century human standards; the upper levels had plenty of food and much of it was in the luxury class. Yet nutritionally it was all sub-standard and the result was that those luxury class foods too were nutritionally inadequate. It was a common factor across Heaven in particular; the standard of living for most of the inhabitants was good to the expectations of people from the distant past but was much inferior to that enjoyed by first-life humans on earth. Some education on dietary standards, allowing for the fact that both Angels and Demons were obligate carnivores, had started to make inroads into the pervasive diet problems.

It was the thought of human doctors teaching Angels elementary facts such as the requirements for eating properly that put an idea into Charmaine-Lan's mind. "The humans arriving here. They tie the humans to us, don’t they? If there's one thing, we have learned about them, it's that humans don’t abandon their own. Now there is a second-life human population here, a growing one, they can’t leave us."

Michael-Lan relaxed. After some gentle prodding, Charmaine-Lan has Got It. By restarting the flow of second-life humans to Heaven, whoever, or whatever, is on the other side of the Minos Gates has made sure that the humans will remain in all three of these universes. Just what else are they manipulating? And why?

Presidential Palace, Dis, Hell

The little force about to sally through the portal was built around veterans of the first great invasion, most still bearing the wounds of that horrifying massacre but the rest? Kidlings wearing equipment too big for them, so heavy they could hardly lift it, mates, who were scarcely any better off. None of them knew how to operate their tridents, how to charge them and then discharge the magic in a searing bolt. Most of the mates were crying, they knew what awaited them. The kidlings were excited, trying to run around with their equipment, assuming that what was about to happen was just a game. One kidling couldn’t lift his trident properly so had it over his shoulder with the end trailing on the ground behind him. In any other circumstances, the sight would have been hilariously funny, but Abigor’s heart was near breaking. Overhead there was a howl of descending 155mm shells from a Paladin battery. The salvo was beautifully placed, smashing directly into the rag-tag band of wounded veterans, his mates, and his kidlings. The exploding artillery fire created a hideous lash of mage-fire and iron fragments that tore into his family and the survivors of his army, shredding them, leaving ripped, torn, and disemboweled demons screaming on the ground as the dreaded human magic did its worst. He felt the fragments slam into him, but his screaming went unheard amidst the sounds of everybody he held dear dying in agony.

"My Lord, my lord, wake up I beg you, please. It is just a nightmare. We are all safe and well, your wisdom saved us all. Please, My Lord, wake up!!!"

Abigor, president of Hell, opened his eyes and saw Sharvynianastora, his Senior Mate, bending down over him, holding him to try and comfort him as the nightmare did its work. His eyes took her in. His dream had seen her literally torn limb from limb yet still screaming as she had died. Yet, she was unharmed, her eyes filled with concern for him. She was being joined by his secondary mates, all intent on comforting their Lord who was in such deep distress. In the ten years since the Salvation War had ended, they had dealt with this problem many, many times. The nightmares of facing human firepower had never gone away and, as the Human Doctor had explained, they probably never would.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, the doctor had called it. He had explained that many veterans had suffered from it and that its debilitating effects could not be understood by those who had never been on a battlefield. Even humans suffered from the same disorder and those experienced in treating them had volunteered their help to the mentally shattered demons alongside their own human patients. Their patient counseling had eased the burden a bit, but the nightmares still came back.

"It is all right, they have gone now. This one is fading like all nightmares."

One of his Secondary Mates was hesitant about speaking but she got a supportive glance from the Senior Mate and laid her hand on Abigor's arm. "You saved us all My Lord. If it had not been for your wisdom, we would all have died that day. As was Satan's intent."

"It was ten years ago, Kualaporavaness. Those days are gone, Satan is dead, and the humans are our friends now."

"Because of your wisdom, Lord." Sharvynianastora made that point very firmly. The human doctor's advice to the family had been clear. 'Emphasize the positives, remind him of all the good things he has achieved. Never let his mind sink down into a spiral of misery. "Speaking of our human friends, there is a tour of the Palace this morning. A group of human kidlings and their teachers are coming to visit us. Why don’t you meet them?"

Abigor's face brightened up at the idea of meeting the human children. It wasn't part of his duties to give them a tour around the palace, but it was something he liked to do, and he had noticed that giving the tour would give him a night or two's sleep without the nightmares. "Excellent idea. Come, ladies, it is time to let light drive away the darkness."

Two hours later, Abigor had recovered from his nightmare and was sitting on the floor of the reception room when the school party came in. Sitting on the floor when dealing with humans had become standard behavior for the higher ranks of demons. Quite apart from the intimidating effect of their height relative to humans, something that any sensible demon tried to avoid, sitting down made it easier to hear what the humans were saying. The rooms of the palace had also been scaled so that demons and humans would both be comfortable. That hadn't been easy, but the demon architects had visited Canterbury Cathedral to get ideas on how to scale buildings that would not overawe humans while not also cramping Lordly Demons.

Abigor was glad that Satan's Palace no longer existed. The scaling there was grandiose to the point of lunacy and even Lordly Demons had been intimidated by the massive splendor of the rooms. The survivors had also been intimidated by the sight of the whole structure and the promontory it had stood on being destroyed in a few seconds by a handful of human aircraft. All that was left were the shattered fragments slowly sinking into the mud of the Hell-Pit. Privately Abigor regarded that as a major contribution to architectural art and hoped that future generations would not think the same about his Palace.

The most significant difference was that the majority of Abigor's Palace was open to the population who could take guided tours around its rooms. One such tour was entering the reception area, a group of around thirty human schoolchildren and half a dozen teachers. Since the air in the palace was filtered and thus dust-free, they had all taken off their breathing masks.

"Look children, President Abigor has come to welcome us." One of the teachers made a respectful bow and was followed by her colleagues and the children.

"Come in, gather around." Abigor smiled at them, keeping his lips closed so his huge fangs wouldn't frighten his guests. "Welcome to the Palace of Hell. We call it a Palace but really it is more of a big office block. Most of the people here are looking after the running of Hell. My family lives on the top floor so at least I don’t have a long commute in the morning."

That caused a ripple of laughter amongst Abigor's guests with the strongest contributors being teachers who understood the irritating nuisance of having long commutes. One of the children put up his hand "Mr. President, Sir, do you have mornings in Hell?"

"Not really, no. Light is constant here and until the events ten years ago we didn’t keep a record of time. You could say until then, time stood still for us. These days, we have a central time that is aligned with American Eastern Standard Time, and we arbitrarily say that night runs from 2100 hours to 0700 hours. We have a great clock here that keeps track of time for all of Hell. I'll take you to see it later. Has anybody got any other questions?"

"Mr. President, Sir, if you had to pick one moment of your life that changed everything, what would it be?" The question had come from a teenage girl and Abigor thought his answer over carefully. Suddenly, he realized how perceptive the question was and that there was indeed just one moment that had changed everything for him.

"It was when what was left of my Army got back to the Hellmouth. The original one, the one you call Hellgate Alpha. There was a cavalryman there, grievously wounded, but his mortally wounded War-Beast had given up his last reserves of strength to bring his rider home. The cavalryman sat on the ground, cradling the head of his beast to comfort it while it died. At that moment, I knew the war was, from our position, pointless and doomed to failure. It had to end. How could I do less than that beast, to save the remaining men under my command? And so, from that moment on, I worked to end the war before too many more died."

The girl reached out and put her hand gently on Abigor's massive leg. "That was very brave of you."

"Thank you. . .." Abigor fumbled for the girl's name. He made a mental note, 'get the names before the meeting, preferably with a picture.

"I'm Tanya Ellis, Mr. President."

"Thank you, Tanya. Has anybody another question."

"Mr. President, Sir, how did you get to be so big?" A boy, a bit younger than Tanya was a bit bashful and not quite sure if his question was rude or not.

Abigor smiled reassuringly. "We are all born the same size, like human babies. In fact, our kidlings, at birth, are no larger than a human baby. We all grow at the same rate. It's just that a Lordly Demon like me grows for a longer period than the other classes. Grow for a hundred years instead of twenty and it all mounts up you know."

Another burst of laughter echoed around the reception room and the human guests unconsciously moved closer to Abigor.

"Do your kidlings go to school too?" Another boy asked, flushing slightly from his temerity.

"Yes, although our schools have changed completely since the previous unpleasantness." Abigor let his pride show briefly. "Our old schools taught all the wrong things, the wrong way. The students were expected to learn things by chorus and never question anything. Every question had an authorized answer and nothing else. When the unpleasantness ended, we fired all the teachers and brought in humans to reorganize our schools. Above all, they were to teach our kidlings to ask questions and seek their own answers. That's important you know. Never take anything for granted or simply because somebody says it is so. If you don’t understand why ask and keep asking until you do understand why."

Abigor noted to himself that while each human teacher was nodding, at least one also seemed a little uncomfortable with his words. He would make sure that the teacher in question never came to teach in a demon school. That gave him an idea. "Perhaps we can arrange exchanges? How would some of you like to come and spend a week or two in a demon school while an equal number of our kidlings go to your schools? Yes? Well, I'll get my people to speak with your people, and perhaps it can be arranged. Until then, let me take you around my Palace."

[Calder]

Chapter Three
Cabinet Office, The White House, Washington D.C.

"The problem is the military budget is breaking us. It's breaking the whole world. Economically, we've become a basket case. The question is, what do we do about it?" President DJT looked around at the assembled cabinet hoping that an answer would appear, but his hopes weren't high. For three years, he had been trying to apply sound business practices within the US Government. In some areas, he had succeeded. In others, primarily defense, he had not. Then again, the curriculum of a university degree in economics had never envisaged a situation where Earth effectively ruled Heaven and Hell. The assumption had always been that it sorts of worked the other way around.

The members of the Cabinet looked at each other defensively. The problem wasn't just that expenditure on the defense forces appeared to be wrecking the economy, it was that there was intense public opposition worldwide to reducing the defensive capabilities of the world's armed forces. Everybody in the room remembered how President Obama had been unceremoniously bundled out of office in 2012 when he had tried to make cuts in the defense force structure. It hadn't helped him that he had been right in his economic assessment of the damage being wrought on the economy and on society in general by a two trillion-dollar defense budget and the massive standing army it supported. Or that every country in the world had similar problems. The still-smoking fields of lava where Detroit and Sheffield had once stood were more than an eloquent rebuttal to any argument about the size of the defense budget.

The US electorate in 2012 had followed the example of their predecessors after the Second World War; they had turned to their military commanders for leadership. General Wesley Clarke had first been selected as the Democratic Party leader and had then won the 2012 election by a tight margin. Known derisively as "Obama in a Green Suit" he had failed dismally to provide the expected leadership and his uninspiring performance had opened the way for DJT. The electorate had made a surprisingly sophisticated judgment that the security problems the world faced were not military but economic and they needed a proven businessman to solve them.

DJT had brought a business outlook to the Cabinet. Every member of DJT's cabinet knew that he had been selected to perform a given job and that if they failed to achieve that objective, they would be summarily dismissed. If they succeeded in achieving the set objective, they would be moved somewhere else and replaced by somebody with a different skill set intended to achieve a different objective. Retired General David Petraeus, the hero of the Salvation War had been appointed Secretary of Defense with the objective of providing the same level of defense and security at a lower cost.

"Mr. President, the problem isn't just the defense budget. It's that our whole economic structure is based around supporting our present forces. If we cut back significantly on procurement, we will have a major recession on our hands. The good news is that we are reaching the end of the Salvation War procurement bulge and we can start winding back cautiously. There is a threat in the future when the equipment we procured since 2008 will need replacement but we can deal with that by some careful planning.

"In naval terms, we are reaching the desired force level of 16 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle groups next year. We would have done so this year, but Enterprise was falling apart, and we had to decommission her. At least, that saved us her excessive maintenance costs. She will be replaced by the USS William McKinley. All the Ford-class carriers are fitted with portal generation equipment, so they have unprecedented strategic mobility and that allows us to make economies there. Their screening ships are also reaching the end of the planned production period, so we have a chance to catch our breath where they are concerned. We can go back to building one carrier every three years."

"Where are the carriers deployed, David?" DJT asked the traditional question that somehow turned up at every cabinet meeting for the last twelve years.

"We have six at sea, one in Heaven, one in Hell, and four here on Earth. Six are in the dock for maintenance, overhaul, and refueling while four are involved in training or in transit. We are adopting a phased maintenance system that will allow us to keep eight rather than six carriers fully always deployed. The problem is that the bulk of our costs is personnel rather than material. The really big budget we face is the Army.

"Our field forces are concentrated in First Army Group. This has four American and one British Commonwealth Armies, each army having five corps. Eighteen of our Army Corps have two armored divisions, two mechanized infantry divisions, and an armored cavalry regiment. The other two corps have three Marine Corps divisions each with enough amphibious lift to put one division from each corps ashore wherever it is needed. There's also the Marine Corps constabulary regiment, of course, assigned to guard the streets of Heaven. Anyway, we have come up with a reorganization plan that will reduce our manpower costs without affecting our combat capability. What we are proposing is to reduce three divisions per Army Corps from full strength to one-third strength. Each division so reduced will have a single brigade at full strength and two brigades at cadre strength. Full equipment will be held in storage. Mr. President, this plan will significantly reduce personnel costs that represent more than two-thirds of our defense budget and will allow us to release our young people back into the economy. We can manage that release so that they have jobs to go to when they leave the service. We can also reduce procurement over a longer period. By the time the adjustment to the combined active service/reserve force structure is made, we can save around 30 percent of the present budget."

"Air Force?"

"That's harder, Mr. President, but we are converting some of the ground attack groups to AFRES. The same logic reduces personnel costs while maintaining their assets in good condition. We resumed the development of the F-35 after the Salvation War ended, and the first examples are being delivered now. That means some of the older aircraft that are more expensive to maintain can be phased out. Boeing and Sukhoi are working to see if we can build a joint replacement for the Su-25s and the A-10s. If that works out, we can save a lot of money there."

"David, are any of the other components of the Human Expeditionary Army cutting back on active service manpower like this?" Mike Pompeo was deeply interested in the political balance of power at Yamantau. It had taken the US considerable effort to win back the political ground it had lost there under Presidents Obama and Clarke, and he didn’t want to see those gains lost. The Yamantau Council was the de-facto world government now, leaving national governments very much in second place.

"The Russian Second Army Group and Chinese Third Army Group are both doing so, for much the same reasons. The European Fourth Army Group and Asian Fifth Army Group have already done so. So, we're not out of line on this. We'll still have 250 active divisions in the HEA so it's not as if we're under gunned.

"Ammunition, fuel, and munition stockpiles?" DJT remembered the desperate days early in the Salvation War when the material was being salvaged from museums to keep the war effort rolling.

"We're 250 percent above normal stock levels, Mr. President. The way we burn ammunition, that's a good thing."

"Very good. David, why don’t you and Holly join Melania and me down at Mar-a-Largo this winter? We can get some golf in?"

"Thank you, Mr. President, We would enjoy that." Around the table, the other Cabinet members quietly nodded to themselves. The invitation was a serious mark of approval.

"Mike, any comments on how this will affect our political positions?"

Pompeo thought for a moment. DJT mistrusted instant answers and had no problem waiting while somebody gathered his thoughts together. The absence of "gotcha questions" was one of the redeeming factors people found in working for DJT. "We're doing reasonably well at Yamantau. As David's plans strengthen our economy and thus our economic strength, we're regaining influence. Being one of the fifteen helps us immensely of course. Vladimir Vladimirovich is quite good to work with as long as we remember he is Russian, not American. Yamantau has the governments of both Heaven and Hell as puppets. Abigor is a shrewd cookie and has worked hard for ten years to reconcile demons and humans. Done well at it; he'll never fully reconcile second-life survivors of the Pit of course but that's only to be expected. We don’t deploy land forces in Hell anymore of course; our forces there are second-life humans and demons."

"If I may interrupt you for a moment, Mike?" Petraeus had what DJT called 'his scholar's expression' on.
"Please, go ahead, David."

"Abigor may be the titular President of Hell, but his authority doesn't extend beyond the demons. Second-lifer humans in Hell have mostly organized their own states and maintained their own armed forces. Gaius Julius Caesar led the way there of course and his New Roman Republic is probably the most powerful of those states and certainly has the most effective armed forces of them. Not surprisingly, he made a point of recruiting second-life modern human military veterans for his republic. As a result, his 'Legions' are almost identical to our armored cavalry regiments. He's also the only one who has successfully managed to integrate demons into his population and forces. Almost all the other second-life human states have human-only forces. So, we have been able to leave Hell largely in the hands of its occupants.

"Heaven is different of course. We've tried hard but Angels simply do not make good soldiers. Demons do if we remember their basic mindset, but Angels are mediocre at best. So, we must garrison Heaven in a way that we don’t in Hell. That throws a heavy political burden on Mike, and we should appreciate how well he has handled it."

"Thank you, David. Mr. President, we can't separate ourselves from Heaven and Hell no matter how much we would like to. The great weapon that can be used against us is portal attacks. We've seen them used in tactical, operational, and strategic situations and I needn't tell you they can be devastating. It appears a lot of the inexplicable pre-Salvation War massacres and spree killings were portal attacks and, of course, Michael-lan's campaign against us was largely strategic portal attacks. Fortunately, the spree killings and mass murders have almost completely stopped since we took Heaven and Hell and that tells us a lot. Portal attacks can only be mounted from there. Stopping them means we are inextricably attached to both. I can't help wondering if Michael-Lan had that in mind from the start."

"He probably did, if he's talking about us, he's probably trying to play us." DJT made the comment with a wry grin that caused laughter around the conference room. Michael-Lan's machinations and scheming were subjects of wary fascination by everybody who had to deal with them. "Just remember, people, there are huge areas of both Heaven and Hell that we haven't explored yet. In fact, we haven’t even fully mapped them. We don’t know what is out there. And then there are other worlds, both planets like ours and bubble worlds like Heaven and Hell. We've been trying for ten years to find if there are any ways through to them and have drawn a blank. That doesn’t mean they aren't out there or that we won’t find a way through to them tomorrow. Mike, you have done a great job at Yamantau, and we all owe you. Now, let's get back to how we can rebuild our economy."

Headquarters, 13th (Spearhead) Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Sanctum, Heaven

The truth was that Brigadier-General Keisha Stevenson wasn't completely sure what her armored cavalry regiment was called this week. The unit had changed from an ACR through a Brigade Combat Team to a Reconnaissance brigade to something else and something else again so often that people just lost track of the current designation. It didn't matter; to the members of the cavalry, it was an armored cavalry regiment, always had been, and always would be.

The 13th ACR had been formed out of the battalion Stevenson had commanded during the Salvation War. When resistance in Heaven had collapsed and the war had ended, that battalion had been the first to enter The Eternal City. By then it had been a weird unit, basically a tank battalion but with so many additions, some of which were official and authorized, that it was hard to say what it really was. In the end, the unit had been removed from its parent, the 3rd Armored Division, and reconstituted as an armored cavalry regiment. Unlike most of the armored cavalry regiments, the 13th ACR was not attached to a corps but was assigned directly to HEA Headquarters. It had been General Petraeus's go-to unit for strange and unusual assignments. As such it had been handed directly from one HEA commander to the next and now reported to General Mattis as the current HEA commander. It had led to something even Stevenson admitted had been an interesting career. It had also made her one of the youngest American generals since the Civil War.

"Come on in Keisha, how are the new tanks doing?" General Mattis beamed at her which instantly raised Stevenson's suspicions.

The 13th ACR had just been re-equipped with the new M1A5 tanks that had the long-barreled 120mm L55 main guns. It was more an insurance policy than anything else; the older 44-caliber guns could penetrate anything they were likely to meet. In fact, the 'emergency war program' M1s that had been equipped with 90mm guns taken from storage had their adherents since they carried a third more ammunition than the 105mm gun tanks and almost double the load-out of the 120mm gunned Abrams. "Gun has a lot more hitting power, Sir. I'm not sure what we'll need it for though."

"Who knows what we'll run into out here." Mattis produced a series of airborne reconnaissance pictures. "What do you make of these?"

The pictures were standard 11 by 18-inch prints. Stevenson put them under a stereoscopic viewer and inspected the area of terrain they covered. "Hokay, Navy prints, Sir?"

"RF-18 flew this mission yesterday. The Navy still likes to have prints as well as electronic imagery. Luckily for us."

Stevenson's eyes had adjusted to the photographic images. "These are ruins. Quite a big town once, I would guess. We can make out streets, I think."

"The odd lighting here in Heaven doesn't help but it does appear to be ruined. Something we've never seen in heaven before."

Stevenson looked more closely. "Sir, it's not just a ruined town, it’s a fortified town. Look, we can see berms around the built-up area perimeter and beyond that, these zig-zag lines look like trenches, I've never seen Angels or Demons digging in before."

"Too much like hard work for the Angels and insufficient glory for the Demons." Mattis rolled his eyes expressively. A human army never went anywhere without digging in every time they stopped moving. 'The spade is brother to the sword' was Mattis's personal motto and he had written a monograph on how the failure of the demons and angels to dig in properly had been a major factor in the astronomic casualties they had taken during the Salvation War. "Look, Keisha, we need to have experts look into this. It might just be a photographic artifact, electronic imagery missed it completely, but we can't be sure. So, we have a group of archeologists coming in to get out there."

"You want us to take them out to the site?" Stevenson thought it out. "How far?"

"It's about two hundred miles. If it were in the inhabited zone, we'd fly them out, but this is well beyond that. Take them to the scene and stay there until they've worked this out and then bring them back."

"Hokay, we'll use one of the Stryker teams. No need for the whole Regiment."

"No, there isn't. A Stryker team sounds fine. Go with it yourself Keisha. You need a breath of fresh air." Mattis had read Stevenson's personnel file of course, and in it was the note that she had a demonstrated record of making the right decisions even when under extreme stress and in a total absence of reliable information. This was one of those occasions when doing so could be very useful.

"We'll take a CBRN recon section along as well. As you say, Sir, this is a long way beyond the occupied zone, and having recon along won’t hurt. The professors might find some of our kit useful as well. They got transport?"

"You can use some of the MRAPs you're not supposed to have." Mattis grinned at her. 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 3rd Armored might have become the 13th ACR, but it hadn’t lost its acquisitive ways. Across the Human Expeditionary Army, it was rumored that the 13th ACR's unofficial motto was 'well, it might come in useful sometime'. In General Mattis's eyes, that made them soldier's soldiers.

"You're not carrying a pistol, Keisha?" For all its bucolic beauty, Heaven was still considered potentially hostile territory.

"No Sir, they get in the way. Carry one on a hip and either it'll snag on something going in or out or it'll catch on one of the controls and do something unfortunate. Like firing the main gun. Putting a 120mm up the ass of the tank in front, well, 'sorry' hardly covers it. The girls don't like tanker holsters, Sir. Seriously uncomfortable. Unless we got one of them big howitzers, a pistol-caliber pistol won’t stop an Angel.

"True. Well, bring our academic friends back alive if you can."

[Calder]

Chapter Four
The Forum, Cæsaraugusta, Cisalpine Gaul, New Rome, Hell

"Salve, Senator Junius Varinius Pulpo. I would speak to the subject of next year's budget and the appropriations for our armed forces." George Matthews was an experienced speaker in the Forum these days, yet he had still prepared himself carefully for his contribution to the debate. As always, his toga was gleaming white and spotless, its carefully pressed folds draped around him perfectly. The solemn formality of these scheduled meetings was something he had never experienced before becoming a citizen of the New Roman Republic. The decorous customs that dictated behavior here drove home the fact that this was somewhere where serious matters were discussed and weighty opinions expressed. Their Senator had come on his scheduled visit to hear the opinions of his constituents directly and he was a man of importance whose time should not be wasted on the trivial

Matthews drew himself up slightly and held eye contact with the Senator. He was a Roman Citizen with all that entailed and one small part of that was that a Roman Citizen bent his knee to no man. Even when facing Gaius Julius Caesar or Jade Kim themselves, a Roman Citizen stood erect and looked his fellow man or woman in the eye.

"Your words will be heard and valued, Citizen George Andrew Matthews," Pulpo spoke the formal response in equally measured, solemn tones. The constituencies were small enough so each Senator could make a reasonable start towards knowing the names of the people he would be meeting. Matthews was one name Senator Pulpo did not need to make any effort to remember. Matthews had spoken several times at the Forum and each time, his contribution to the debates had been thoughtful, well-informed, courteous, and formal. Pulpo had quoted him several times in debates on the Senate Floor, something that Matthews had seen for himself on television. He knew that his words were indeed heard and valued.

"Senator, our military budget is well-constructed and addresses most of the needs of our Republic. It is apparent that procurement of new equipment is matched by proper logistics support for our existing inventory. Training is also properly funded, and this shows in our operational efficiency. However, one thing concerns me about our Legions. They can best be described as mechanized infantry and are armed accordingly. They have wheeled armored vehicles and tracked armored carriers and those vehicles have been well-chosen for our present needs. I would suggest though that we need also to look to the future. The armies on Earth are beginning their re-equipment cycle and much of their older equipment will be replaced. Experience on Earth tells us that under these circumstances, much of the equipment so withdrawn will be sold on to other users. Thus, we might face old and semi-obsolete but still serviceable heavy armor. Should we not consider some provision for this eventuality?"

Pulpo stood silently, nodding his head as he thought over Matthew's statement. It was another custom of these meetings that an instant response was mistrusted and could even be considered discourteous. Better by far that a Citizen should think carefully before responding. When Pulp did speak, that thoughtfulness was apparent. "There is great wisdom in your words, Citizen George Andrew Matthews. You have indeed spoken with the foresight expected of a true Roman. It is very easy to become so absorbed in the problems that face us today that we forget to pay proper attention to those that may face us in the future. Yet, the reverse is also true. If we do not address the problems of today properly, they may overwhelm us and make the future of little account. We need to strike a fine balance between the needs of today and those of tomorrow. Citizen Matthews makes a sound argument that the balance may be tilted too far in favor of today. It is, perhaps, something that those of us from times past may not appreciate fully; how fast times move now. Does anybody else have thought relevant to this question?"

"Salve, Senator Junius Varinius Pulpo. I would speak on this subject."

"Your words will be heard and valued, Citizen Visharakoramal."

"Deep in my heart are the memories of how Satan's armies were destroyed because they refused to recognize how much the world had changed." The audience was nodding in agreement; Visharakoramal's body bore the scars of the terrible wounds modern weapons inflicted on those who did not know how to defend against them. "It is the habit of us all to think that the way to counter one kind of weapon is to buy more of the same. So, it may be with old tanks purchased by those who will oppose us. Perhaps it would be better to look at other ways of fighting them?"

Again, there was a measured pause while Pulp thought over his answer. "A very sound comment Citizen Visharakoramal. The world does not stand still, and we should take good advice on how we should change to meet those changes. Citizen Matthews convinces me that we should recognize and accommodate possible future developments. Citizen Visharakoramal convinces me of the way we should go about this. I thank you both for your insights. "

Pulpo looked around proudly at the Forum meeting where even those whose opinions differed from those of the speakers applauded a well-made case. Truly the spirit of the old Roman Republic was being reborn without the faults that had disfigured the past.

Michael-Lan-Mangeloi’s Palace, Aukumea, Heaven

"Michael, I think we might have a problem." Leilah-Lan-Mangeloi had just flown in from The Eternal City. More precisely she had just arrived from The Montmartre Club. She had brought the month's books with her so she and Michael-Lan could inspect them together. In retrospect, Leilah-Lan knew she had received a top-grade education in skimming the take, one for which she had paid by the wealth of information she brought back on what and how people in the city were thinking. About halfway through that process, it had dawned on her that Michael-Lan had arranged a network of informants for exactly that purpose – long before the first human troops had broken into the Eternal City.

"You mean the way the Montmartre Club is becoming a tourist site and is losing the character that made it unique?"

"Err, that's one thing yes." Leilah-Lan had more serious issues in mind, but this was a good place to start. "We're even getting organized groups of human tourists coming into the club now just so they can say they had a drink there."

"I'll be disappointed if they didn't. I do hope they stay and listen to the bands as well." Michael-Lan paused for a moment. "Demons as well?"

"Yes, although they seem to get on better with the humans than they do with us. I didn't expect that, not after the humans found the Hell-Pit."

Michael-Lan nodded in agreement. "That came as a surprise. Shows how little we really understand about humans, doesn't it? Still, we've opened two new nightclubs now, the Pigalle and the Moulin Rouge. They're still more or less purely angelic and their figures are pretty good. They don’t generate the intelligence we need though."

"That's why I flew over, Michael-Lan. We picked up something last night that rather concerns us. A group of humans came in, not tourists, they are going to be working here in Heaven."

"Engineers? Military contractors?" Michael-Lan never forgot that Heaven was under what amounted to a military occupation.

"Neither. Archeologists."

"What?" Michael was genuinely surprised, a sensation he treasured for its rarity. "I can see why they might come, this place is old, but haven't they realized it hasn’t changed for tens of millennia? Well, apart from the human tanks all over the place, jet aircraft overhead and Yah-Yah's palace being demolished, and his private lake turned into a yachting Marina. Did any of them let anything drop?"

"That was the interesting bit. Most of them were close-mouthed but a couple of the younger ones mentioned they were going with an armored unit to visit a newly discovered site. Outside, in the badlands."

That made Michael-Lan stop dead and think very hard. "The Badlands" wasn’t particularly bad or even vaguely unpleasant. They were simply the areas that lay outside the carefully formed landscapes that surrounded the Eternal City. They were wild, certainly, and out of control and nobody knew quite what was out there. That was why the Angels avoided them and humans seemed magnetically attracted to them.

"What sort of site?"

"He didn't really say. But I got the impression that the humans have found some sort of ruins out there and want to have a look at them."

"Ruins?" Michael-Lan turned that thought over in his mind. There were no ruins in Heaven. Nothing had been demolished and buried to produce them. Ruins had to be, at most, contemporary with the foundation of the Eternal City. And those ruins turning up now meant. . ..

Were the Devils returning?

"Leilah, I need to speak with Abigor in Hell and General Mattis here. And find out as much as you can from those archeologists."

"They've already left, Michael-Lan. They're on their way to the ruins, wherever they are."

Detachment, 13th ACR, Heavenly Badlands.

"This is nothing like I imagined, boss." Biker lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky overhead. It could have been a particularly attractive park on Earth were it not for the white light that enveloped them. That was the reason for the wrap-around blue-tinted sunglasses they were wearing. It had already been learned that first-life humans who were too exposed to heavenly light without protection suffered from damage to their vision. Blue-tinted polaroid lenses solved that problem. It was a minor problem compared with the omnipresent dust in Hell.

Keisha Stevenson finished off her tin of pork liver pate and put the empty can into the waste bag before looking around her. It had been stressed that her detachment was heading far beyond the boundaries of Heaven, and nobody really knew what was out here. One thing that had already been confirmed was that the same spatial anomalies that confused navigation in the occupied areas of Heaven and Hell still applied. That was a relief, especially to the geographers and scientists trying to cope with non-Euclidian bearings and distances. Having variable changes as well would have been Too Much.

In fact, the 'badlands' weren't that different from the settled areas of Heaven. Keisha was no scientist, but she had realized what differences there were didn’t have a natural cause. It was simply that Heaven was engineered to please its inhabitants, the 'badlands' were the natural state of things. This was the way things had been before the Angels had arrived.

"Yeah. I wonder why the Jellies are so afraid of this place?" She looked around again. She had spent her annual two weeks leave staying with her latest 'gentleman friend', a British Army colonel who was also a member of the British aristocracy. He’d had a stately home to match. It was there that Keisha had seen what a true landscaped park had looked like. From that experience, it was indeed apparent that the area around them was the 'natural' landscape, and the terrain of Heaven was the "landscaped park" version of it. "The British 18th-century estate owners paid a lot of money, by their standards, of course, to have landscaped grounds around their manors. That didn't stop them from riding all over the countryside. Yet the Jellies just landscaped their grounds and stayed home.

"I don’t think they like anything different, Boss. They're like dogs, they like everything to be the same every day. I guess that's why Michael had to work so hard to change things here."

"It's a bit like the equivalent badlands in Hell although I think the amount of landscaping that went on there is a lot less than here. The Hell badlands are seriously dangerous though. If we were doing this run there, I'd want to have the whole regiment along."

"Damn straight on that, Boss. Remember the trouble the Ruskies had? The leviathan thing that turned up?"

"Yeah, the story got inflated a hell of a lot in the telling though. Talking about weird and inexplicable monsters, how are our pets doing?"

"Likeable enough although I wouldn’t like to meet a pissed-off Caranza on a dark night. She's badass. They've got their three MRAPs loaded down with spare archeology equipment. Enough to find Jimmy Hoffa I reckon."

"Doubt it, Boss, he hasn’t turned up in Hell yet. We should be getting back."

"Hokay. We'll drop in on our pets on the way."

A few minutes later, Stevenson and Biker were standing by the side of one of the massive MRAPs listening to a lecture on archeology 101 from a strange-looking character in a bizarre rainbow-colored striped sweater and jeans. Keisha had quickly realized he knew his shit very well indeed and was listening intently. She'd already come to understand that archeology and soldiering had a lot in common. Both involved digging holes and sitting in them.

"These pits are what we call test pits. If we haven't got anything better to do, we did them just to see if there is anything interesting down there."

"You do realize straight down isn’t straight down, don’t you? It sort of kind of drifts off from the vertical." The biker was looking at the four test pits. They had a strange sort of hypnotic fascination about them.

'It doesn’t really matter. We only go down a couple of meters. In fact, we really don't need to go that far; we hit natural after a few centimeters. The ground here has never been disturbed."

"Any finds at all?

Mike Ashton shook his head sadly. "Nothing at all. We'd expect to find a few animal bones or in an inhabited area, a few shards of pots but there is absolutely nothing. There's never been anything here. But then we have this."

The pictures were the familiar shots of the ground with crop marks that looked like a town surrounded by a pentagonal wall. They were the ones General Mattis had shown Stevenson just before this cross-country had started.

Stevenson looked again at them, noting a few slight differences between the two sets. “Those are Vauban Fortifications, Mike. You can tell by the star shape of the ravelins and the acute angles at the tips. If they were on Earth, I’d put them in the last half of the 17th century. Here? They could be a few centuries or a few hundred.

“More likely to be the latter, General. Things move slowly out here; there’s not enough wind to drive dust so soil buildup is tedious. To bury something like this, we’re talking literally eons. Above all, if these ruins are real, then they are proof absolute that there were living creatures here, once.”

“You think these crop marks in the ground may not be real?”

“It’s always a possibility General. They could be ruins or ditches, both would imply inhabitants of course, or they could be geology rather than archeology. In which case they would mean little if anything. The truth is we know absolutely nothing about what existed here before the Angels arrived.

“We do know one thing, or we will if we do find these ruins.” Stevenson looked at the pictures again.

“What’s that General?”

“Vauban fortifications are intended to defend against direct fire, specifically cannon fire. That’s why they have these acute angles everywhere and why the walls are low. If the occupants of this settlement were defending against the Angels, they’d have something more like a medieval walled town.”

“The demons use direct fire from their tridents.” One of the archeology team had wandered over to join the conversation. “It’s the indirect fire they never got their heads around. The tridents really are direct fire; they can’t loft shots onto a target the way we do.”

Stevenson looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “And you are?”

“John Aitken. Geophysics. We’ve been wandering around with magnetic anomaly, resistivity, and ground-penetrating radar but we’re yet to find anything. At first, we thought the equipment wasn’t working but we buried a few objects in one of Mike’s test pits and they showed up like a charm.”

“Ours or objects from here?” Ashton sounded slightly annoyed that somebody had been making experiments without consulting him.

“Human, Heaven, and Hell. They all showed up fine.” Aitken put his head to one side. “It’s a bit odd that nothing shows up out here. We’d expect something, even if it was just geology. You know, looking at these fortifications, they would make sense if the Jellies were inside, and the Demons were attacking from outside. That might date whatever is down there from the Great Celestial War.”

“The physical division between Angels and Demons was established after the War ended and the Demons were expelled from Heaven.” Stevenson thought about that. “As far as we know, which ain’t much, the Demons and Angels looked pretty much alike when the war was fought. Hokay, we have a problem here. Mike, keep digging your test pits every time we stop, John, keep doing your geofizz thing. Report anything interesting you find and remember ‘nothing’ is interesting as well. We move out in ten minutes.”

Stevenson strode away, leaving the archeologists staring at each other. Eventually, Ashton shook his head. “She’s right, we’d better get moving. Frankly, the emptiness of this place gives me the creeps.”