Stuart Slade - Pantheocide

“Watch him Colonel.” Michael sounded amused. “Peter loves a good story. He’ll have you here for hours if you let him.”

Stevenson was about to say it didn’t matter and that she had plenty of time. Then, suddenly it did matter and she hadn’t. Because an unconscious body had emerged through Heaven’s Minos Gate and was on the ground.

USS Turner Joy. Seattle, Washington.

The band was playing “Anchors Aweigh” as the crew on the old destroyer made fast. Captain Reynolds gave the order “Finished with main engines” and the adventure was over. A new USS Turner Joy was commissioning soon and she would take over the reputation as well as the name. The DDG-120 Turner Joy was a Flight III Arleigh Burke class AEGIS destroyer with her own portal generation equipment built into her. Yet, she would be a cold, impersonal ship until her crew breathed life into her DD-951 Turner Joy already had her life, a phenomena that only sailors fully understood, but it was already ebbing away as her crew made ready to leave her.

“She’ll be back in the museum soon.” Sophia Metaxas looked sadly at the ship that had been her home for almost three years. In that time, Turner Joy had fought her battles on Earth, in Hell and in Heaven and had brought her crew safely back from every one of them. “It seems a shame somehow.”

“She’s steam-powered Sophia, the Navy is all gas turbine and nuclear now. When the war was on, she had her role to play. Especially since the Navy never expected to get her. That’s all finished now. Now, she can return to honorable retirement again. She has a tale to tell after all, and it’s one generations in the future will want to hear. Reynolds looked suddenly very sad. “I never did get Yahweh under my guns though.”

“I expect she’ll do a lot better than some of the museum ships have though.” Sophia was trying to look on the bright side. The Museum ship fleet had not done well from the war. Mostly, they were too old and too far gone to bring back into commission the way Turner Joy had been brought back. Some had been stripped for spare parts, others of useful equipment. All had been neglected in the driving urgency to concentrate every effort on the ships that could help win the war. Olympia had sunk at her moorings as a result and it was rumored that Texas was in a bad way and unlikely to survive.

“You can count on that. Anyway, my new ship is officially adopting her. We’ll be making sure our older sister gets proper care. We won’t be leaving you in the lurch.” Reynolds would be commanding DDG-120.

“Thanks, Captain. We’ll be keeping her ready though, Just in case.” Sophia nodded and turned to walk down the gangplank and back into civilian life. As she did so, another small increment of Turner Joy’s life ebbed away.

DIMO(N) Headquarters, The Pentagon, Washington

It was over. General Schatten looked around at the rapidly-emptying offices. Within a few hours DIMO(N) would cease to exist. Its military research and development activities would be taken over by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, its civilian activities transferred to other government departments. He recognized it was inevitable, the Salvation War was over, there was no need for an organization like DIMO(N) any more. Others could take over the charge it had led, others could build upon the foundations it had laid. Just as James Randi’s Institute of Pneumatology and closed down and dispersed when its work was done, so too would DIMO(N). In his imagination, Schatten heard the sounds of a trumpet playing Taps.

“What will you be doing now General?” Schatten heard the voice cut through his reverie

“Dr. Surlethe. Come to say goodbye to us all.”

“And to thank you for a job well done. Considering you started off from a bunch of old texts and grimoires and made a start on turning the legends and myths there into the foundations of real science, you people pulled off a spectacular achievement. We’ve got a long, long way to go but it all started here. You achieved something else as well. You took legends and myths and replaced them with science. We really have got a long way to go but it will be facts and experiments that guide us all the way. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. What will you be doing now?”

“I’ve been appointed the new Director of Celestial Intelligence. It won’t be announced until tomorrow and the Senate has to approve of course.”

“That won’t be a problem. So you’re the new DCI. So we will be working together after all. How do you fancy working with Homo Caelis?”

“Homo Caelis?”

“The genus that contains the Angels and Daemons. They really are closely related, you know. We had to call them something and that was the best bet.

“It’ll be hard to think of them as anything but the enemy.”

“We can’t be sure they aren’t. Not yet. And there is who knows what out there. We know there are at least three other groups up there. The Aesir, the Baals and the Olympians. Then there’s the devils, we’re not sure who or what they are. But, if Homo Caelis is the enemy, they are a defeated enemy. It’ll be up to us to keep them that way.”

Schatten nodded. “Still, there’s Yamantau and what it represents. And we still have the H.E.A.”

Surlethe grimaced. “I know, but it’s spread pretty thin. We’re straining every economy on Earth and a lot of the smaller countries don’t like it at all. With the United Nations sidelined and virtually moribund, they feel they’ve been cut out of the decision loop. Which they have of course. How that will work out is still to be seen. Still, there’s one thing we have to be thankful for. Humans don’t have to fear death any more. Not on Earth, anyway.”

“No, we don’t have to fear death here any more. I just wonder what else is out there, that’s all. And what lies beyond the Minos Gates.”

Surlethe grinned. “Well, don’t tell The President that you’re wondering. Even the thought of adding another few billions to the defense budget is giving him conniptions. Come on, let’s get ourselves a drink. I think we’ve earned it.”

The Oval Office, The White House, Washington D.C.

“There is no hope of reducing the defense budget?” The President sounded stricken at the news.

“No hope at all, Sir. We’re stuck at one-point-six trillion for years to come. The FY11 budget is set in stone and nothing can cut from that. As for FY12, simply controlling the areas we now hold are going to take most of our forces. Look at it this way, Sir, the combined land area of Heaven and Hell are three times the size of Earth. The HEA is the only force keeping both places reasonably stable at this time. How long that will be for is anybody’s guess. Secretary Warner shook his head. As usual, the politicians had thought the Army would crash in, defeat the enemy and the problems would all be over. Why would they never understand that defeating an enemy was just that start of a long and complicated situation? He knew all too well what the basic problems were. The armed forces had made defeating the enemy look so easy that the politicians assumed that all the other problems would be equally easy to resolve.

“But we have social programs, essential reforms that have been delayed by the war…” The President was genuinely dismayed at the apparently inevitable prospect of virtually his entire domestic program being flushed.

“Sir, when we got into the Salvation War, we assumed that it was going to last for decades and we geared up for that prospect. We’ve mobilized our economy and we’re on a war footing. Our industry is structured around supplying the armed forces, not just ours but other people’s as well, with what they need. We start slashing orders now, we’ll bring about an economic depression that’s unparalleled in our history. Forget about breadlines and soup kitchens, they’ll be for the better off. The ones who keep their jobs. The rest won’t even have those provisions to fall back on. We have to ease back, slowly and carefully. That’s assuming the situation in Heaven and Hell lets us do even that.”