The War in Heaven (35 page)

David thought it best not to argue that point.

“But you are a student of Doctor Kepler, and a trusted one at that. You can go to him carrying a proposition from me. I will propose peace between us. Allow Michael and Gabriel to fall on their own; don’t drag this war out longer than need be. I can offer something to all of you. For Doctor Kepler, it is within my power to free his wife and his mother from their torments in Hell. It would be a gesture of peace between us. No longer need his mother burn in subterranean fire, nor his wife hang suspended by her hair above the toxic boiling pits of foulness. I shall take them away from all of that … give them each a cool quiet cell where they can live out their eternities in peace.

“And as for you, I can free your own grandfather from a torment too terrible to be discussed in pleasant conversation. As you see, I have something to offer the saints. I ask not that you serve me. No, that would be too much to expect right now. All I ask is that you remain neutral, allow this war to follow its own natural course. It is not your war.”

Never had David expected this conversation to follow the course it had taken. He had expected to be threatened, perhaps even worse. Instead, Satan was being civil and relatively reasonable. “You make a compelling argument, sir.”

“Thank you,” replied Satan. “Will you take my proposal back to your friends?”

“Yes I will, sir,” confirmed David. “I can’t say how they will react, but I will deliver your message.”

“Excellent,” replied Satan, “I will ask nothing more of you beyond this…remain as my honored guest for a few days, at least until Heaven is a bit safer. Then, I will send you on your way. You came in peace, and you may go in peace.”

“How can I turn down such a generous offer?” said David.

“By the way, don’t try to gate out. My predecessor made quite certain that you humans could neither gate in or out of this facility. He valued his privacy.”

“Of course,” replied David.

“Excellent,” said Satan. “I will assign my lieutenant, Lemnok, to see to your comfort and your needs. Take this time to get to know us better. You might be surprised at what you learn. Lemnok will be your guide while you are with us. He will meet you beyond and answer what questions you might have. Please consider my home to be your home.” Satan motioned to the door. “I bid you a pleasant day.”

David took several steps backward, bowed a final time, and made for the door. Quite honestly, he’d had all that he could take of this guy. David departed the audience chamber.

“Are you sure that you want him here?” asked Metastopholies, stepping out of the shadows. “He is quite clever. Just because he is here rather than on Earth, makes him no less dangerous. Had you not gone to such great measures in seeing to his demise on September 11, 2001, he might well have taken millions of humans from our kingdom. Be careful, my lord, he could be a considerable adversary.”

“You worry too much, my old friend,” laughed Satan. “He is young and so very trusting. He will not realize what is going on until it is entirely too late.”

“Take care, your pride and confidence will be your undoing,” warned Metastopholies.

“My confidence is well-founded,” replied Satan. “In all likelihood, his mentor and his allies will already be vanquished by the time I, well, release him from this place. They might indeed be reunited, but it will not be in Heaven. The wheels are already turning to make it so.”

Metastopholies shook his head, but said nothing. He bowed and made his way back to his quarters.

J
une opened the door of Dr. Kepler’s mansion to discover eight heavily armed demons there, with more flying overhead. She cringed, but held her peace.

“Is this your home?” demanded the demon nearest her.

“No,” replied June, “my home was in Zion before it became a war zone. This is the home of a friend. I am looking after it until he returns.”

“And would that friend happen to be Johann Kepler?” asked the demon.

“Well, yes,” replied June. “He’s my son’s teacher. My son and I are living here for now.”

“You might be,” said the demon, pushing his way in, “but for now your son is a guest of our master, until he decides otherwise.”

June suddenly grew quite pale. “What do you mean?”

“I thought that would be obvious, June Bonner,” replied the demon. “Your son is in the custody of Lord Satan. He is safe, so long as you and your friends cooperate.”

The other seven demons entered the house and spread out, searching the rooms. From the sound of falling objects, breaking glass, and scattering papers, they were anything but subtle in their methods. All the while, June waited in shock. She had been certain that her son was with the Father. It was 20 minutes before the search concluded.

“There is evidence that things have been taken from this place, and recently,” reported one of the other demons.

June looked into Kepler’s study to discover the place in shambles. “You had no right to do that!” she exclaimed.

The demon wasted no time in grabbing the woman by the throat. “On the contrary, madam, I had every right to do it. The third plane of Heaven is ours. Thanks to people like you, most of the angels here have escaped us, but they are running out of places to hide. We know that you are one of the rebels. You and yours have given comfort to the enemy; you have no rights here.” He threw June into the study. She flew 15 feet before crashing into Johann’s overturned conference table.

June felt pain. There was blood pouring down her cheek, and she deduced that her left arm was broken. It had been years since she had felt such a sensation.

Another of the demons looked into the study to see the prone woman. “What shall we do with this one, sir?”

Their leader smiled. “Shackle her hand and foot, let her experience the burning shackles of Hell. Then secure her to that support beam over there. We shall burn the house down around her. Give her a feel for what Hell is like. She shall be an example to deter others from making the same mistake.”

Another of the demons tossed a pair of wrist and ankle shackles across the floor at her. June looked at the open shackles with their barbed interiors.

She had heard of these things from her son; they were commonly used in Hell to restrain the damned. When closed about the ankles or wrists of their unfortunate wearers, they immediately welded themselves together in a searing flash of heat, severely burning then restraining them.

“There,” said the demon, “lock the big pair around your ankles first, then you can do your wrists later…after the pain subsides.”

June tried to clear her mind then looked angrily at her attackers. “Not likely.” Instantly, a glowing field of misty stars appeared before her.

“Get her!” demanded the demonic leader.

It was too late. June had already stumbled into the mists. One of the demons lunged at her, but his claws grabbed at empty air.

“Damn it!” said their demonic leader. “These humans are entirely too slippery. When the master comes to power, we will have to have some restrictions placed on this parlor trick of theirs.”

“You’ve become too accustomed to the humans of Hell,” noted another. “They make such excellent victims, so very weak, so very helpless.”

The first demon smiled slightly. “Perhaps that is the one thing I shall miss about Hell. Let’s get out of here. A couple of fireballs shall make short order of this place.”

The demons retreated several hundred feet from the house before their leader directed his sword at the place and let loose a fireball. It exploded on contact, engulfing the place in flames.

“Too easy,” said their leader, as they departed. They would return to their staging area in the city of Paradise and make their report to the master from there. He would be pleased that the rebel base had been destroyed. It was unfortunate that the rebels had already moved on. Still, they, like the angels, were running out of places to hide.

Johann was alarmed as June materialized out of the mists and stumbled into the audience hall of the angelic general Moriah in the City of Elesia. She collapsed to the floor.

Immediately angels and humans alike rushed to her aid. It was several minutes before she was able to relate the story of the attack on Johann’s forest home.

“Homes can be rebuilt,” said Johann, holding June in his arms. “I am just thankful that you escaped.”

“They have my son,” lamented June, tears flowing from her eyes. “If they intended to burn me, what will they do to him?”

Already June’s body was being restored to health. Her arm had mended, and only drying blood was left to bear witness to the deep gash that had been on her head a few minutes before.

“What now?” asked Marlith, Moriah’s lieutenant. “They have David, and my commander hasn’t been seen in two days.”

“We proceed as planned,” replied Johann. “Michael and Gabriel are depending on us. In five hours we must journey to the Mountains of Sarval at the confluence of the Marten and Salba Rivers. We have over seventeen hundred human volunteers to ferry whatever angels are at the rendezvous point to here. It won’t be like the operation at the Hill of Ceranda. We should be able to evacuate a million angels in a matter of minutes, not hours. Hopefully there will be more than a million there to evacuate.”

“It indeed disturbs me to see the sixth level of Heaven completely abandoned to Satan’s forces,” lamented Marlith.

“For the moment, we must retreat to a defensible position,” said Johann. “I am not a military man, but I know that to be a sound strategy; so do Michael and Gabriel. By tomorrow we will have with us a true military man to organize the human involvement in this conflict. He will counsel directly with Michael and Gabriel to coordinate our efforts. At that point I will defer to his authority, and my group shall become his science and technology advisors, no more. Currently, he and several of his lieutenants are gathering intelligence regarding our situation, as well as pulling together a real army. Between angels and humans, we might be able to field quite a large military force.

Getting those angels out of the sixth level will be my last act as coordinator of the human forces. My people will continue to build hardware for
them, mainly the Tesla particle rifles. We have about four hundred of them ready to go. We’ve pulled in artisans from Zion to help with the task. Once they get up to speed, we should be able to build even more.”

Over 3 million angels had gathered at the confluence of the Marten and Salba rivers when the humans gated into their presence. They had been waging a fighting retreat for three solid days. Their defense had become more organized; they were fighting as a single force at this point. Still, it had happened too late. The battle for the sixth level of Heaven was lost. Satan’s forces on this level alone were nearly 20 million strong by best estimates. If these angels remained here, they would surely join the estimated 30 million angels now held in captivity by Satan’s minions across the seven planes.

Over the past three days, the human inhabitants of Heaven had assisted the angels in every way possible, helping Michael’s and Gabriel’s forces retreat to the safety of the second plane. There were better than 20 million battle-ready angels in the City of Elesia now, and with the continuing efforts of Johann Kepler and his team, several hundred angels had even made the trip back from Earth. This operation today promised to be the largest single evacuation to date.