The War in Heaven (11 page)

Tom looked at Abaddon incredulously. “Surely he doesn’t think he has a chance of defeating God.”

“He doesn’t have to,” said Abaddon. “He will seek God’s permission to challenge Michael and Gabriel in armed conflict.” “Surely God won’t allow it,” replied Tom.

“Don’t be so sure,” cautioned Abaddon. “He allowed Satan to persecute Job. God moves in mysterious ways, as you might have heard.”

“OK,” continued Tom, “could Satan really pull it off? Could he defeat the angels?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” replied Abaddon. “As Satan has a score to settle with Michael and Gabriel, so I have a score to settle with him. Revenge is not among the more noble angelic virtues, my friend; then again no one is perfect, least of all me. I will defeat him and end his reign of terror. I shall personally see that he is brought to justice, that he pays for his crimes against humanity.” Abaddon paused, his eyes took on a greater intensity. “And you will assist me. Together we will change the face of Hell.”

“As I said before, I’m with you all the way,” assured Tom. “I owe you a great debt, and I intend to pay it. Anyway, I think I have a score to settle with old slewfoot as well.”

That brought a broad smile to the dark angel’s countenance. “I expected no less. From the day I saw you on that altar, I knew you were a man of honor. You had the aura of such. Your selection goes well beyond your expertise in physics, it also hinged on your character. Welcome to the fight.”

Tom returned Abaddon’s smile. “When do we get started?”

“I want you to take a few days to get solidly on your feet and clear your mind,” replied Abaddon. “Get familiar with this place. It has over twenty miles of developed tunnels, and hundreds more that are scarcely explored. The surface above our heads is a realm of intense cold, like your Antarctica, only eternally in night. It is highly unpleasant, even for immortals such as
ourselves. So for the time being, these caverns are our world, but only for the time being.”

Now Tom saw where Bedillia got her confidence, her hope. Abaddon’s positivity and confidence was contagious. Maybe he could really do it, as incredible as it all seemed.

“Come, my friend,” said Abaddon, motioning toward the door. “Allow me to show you our facilities. Let me show you why we have hope.”

During the next hour, Abaddon gave Tom a tour of sorts, a tour very unlike the one he had received from Bedillia. Tom saw the power-generating facility, a device totally alien to any technology he had ever seen before. He also saw labs, complete with many things one associated with laboratories on Earth. They had common tools like beakers, flasks, and burners, all assembled from base materials found in the very rocks around them.

“Assembling simple compounds like the silicon dioxide for glassware or the copper wire to transmit electric current are tasks that your friend Dr. William Wong has already mastered. Our problem is in fabricating more complex items like small electronic components, integrated circuits, chips, if you will. That is where you come in. I will leave it up to Bill Wong to teach you the finer points.”

“But that sphere, I mean, telesphere,” asked Tom, “the one that allowed us to communicate with the angel, where was that manufactured?”

“Heaven,” was the matter-of-fact answer. “The artisans of Heaven have refined the creation of such things to a fine art. This particular one was manufactured by an inventor and scientist with whom you may have some familiarity. His name is Nikola Tesla.”

“Tesla!” exclaimed Tom. “Yes, I sure have heard of him.”

“He is one of our most dedicated human allies in Heaven,” noted Abaddon. “So great are his skills that he and several others from Heaven once ventured on a mission into outer darkness aboard a vehicle of his own
design. He had created a weapon so powerful as to be capable of, I believe he used the word ‘disrupting,’ the very bones and sinew of a demon warrior… and at considerable range. It was an impressive accomplishment indeed for a human. It took him years to master his skills. I do not know how much time you will have, but you too must master that art. Satan and his brood don’t have any weapons as sophisticated as that. A large number of these sophisticated weapons, the sort developed by Tesla, would make it possible for us to face Satan’s minions on the field of battle and defeat them, numerical superiority not withstanding. Still, we cannot afford to transport these weapons in vast quantities from Heaven to Hell. The abilities of our angelic messengers are being stretched to the limits as it is. Anyway, we cannot risk their being followed here, to this place. Refuge must not be discovered by Satan and his minions before we are ready.”

“Please tell me you have weapons like that in your arsenal here?” said Tom.

“We have weapons like that here,” confirmed Abaddon, “but not enough. That is where you come in. Currently we have only eleven … we need thousands. The lab you will be working in is unique. It has many, one-of-a-kind instruments, transported piece by piece from Heaven. You will have access to virtually all of the resources that a novice matter manipulator in Heaven would have. Bill will help you with most of the fundamentals, but you will also be able to communicate with Nikola Tesla himself using one of our telespheres. It is he who will be your actual teacher.”

Abaddon’s face took on a more serious countenance. “You will have all of the resources we possess at your disposal. The rest, hopefully success, is up to you. Don’t fail, Doctor; we are counting on you. This revolution will likely fail without those weapons.”

No pressure
, thought Tom as he walked back to his quarters.
No, I just have the eternal destiny of a thousand or more people counting on my ability to accomplish something that has never been done before. No, no worries
.

Abaddon had emphasized the importance of a positive attitude, the belief that the seemingly impossible could be accomplished. Still, Tom couldn’t shake the doubts that plagued him.

Satan rose from his golden throne and walked across the crimson carpet toward the large ring of metal that looked to be made of shimmering brass, fully nine feet in diameter, resting upright upon a finely fashioned golden support. Yet gazing through the ring, he did not see the cavern wall beyond it; no, its inner edge glowed a deep blue, that slowly transitioned to violet, then blackness. Within the heart of the ring, distant blue lightning flashed amid a dark sea of nothingness.

His vast audience chamber held a hundred spectators on this day. The spectators took on a multitude of grotesque forms. Those forms were, however, transient. These minions of Satan had the power to appear in whatever form pleased them, and right now they took on a form that might best strike fear in the humans called into this chamber to face sentencing. The stage was set for the next victim of Satan’s wrath. The proceedings this day had gone quite rapidly. The master of Hell was in a hurry. He had more pressing business to see to today; yet, these sentencing proceedings would be conducted nonetheless. They would not be turned over to one of the lesser minions. Anyway, this activity amused Satan and reduced his stress level. He had saved the best one of the day for last.

Something appeared within the dark heart of the ring. It was still a long way off, but was approaching the threshold rapidly. It was a winged demon cloaked in black with a human in tow at the end of a long chain that coursed with bright blue electricity. He emerged from the ring and landed on his feet quite gracefully. With his bat-like wings folded up behind him, he took several steps forward.

The human’s landing was far less gentle. He exploded from the ring and reaching the end of the chain around his neck, came crashing down, slamming face first onto the cavern floor. With his hands shackled behind his back his hard landing was virtually preordained. Dressed only in a gray soiled loincloth, blood dripping from his broken nose, he looked up into the face of the master of the dark realm. This man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties had a dark beard and seemed to be of Middle Eastern descent.

“Now look what you’ve done,” scolded Satan. “You’ve dripped your filthy blood all over my nice clean floor. What am I to do with you humans?”

“I don’t belong here,” he said, his tone breathless. “I am a humble servant of Allah. I don’t serve you.”

“Oh, I see,” said Satan, turning about for a moment, before turning to face the man once more. “You don’t? I disagree. That bomb you strapped about you before you walked into that Baghdad marketplace killed twenty-two people. You sent eighteen of them straight to me. You have served me well, Ali.”

“They were most assuredly all Shiites,” retorted Ali. “They deserved to be sent here. They have distorted the words of the prophet, peace be unto him. I was acting in the name of God.”

“Were you now?” responded Satan in a taunting voice. “God told you to slaughter a group of market goers? You humans never cease to amuse me.”

“I was acting as the hand of God…I don’t belong here,” insisted the man, who once more tried to rise, though a boot to the center of his back sent him again to the floor. “There has been a mistake; I belong in Heaven. I have earned, with my own blood, the pleasures it offers. I will lie with the boys of eternal freshness and with the virgins. They promised it to me. I died in jihad. I was guaranteed to go to Heaven. You can’t stop me.”

This time Satan laughed. “I can’t stop you? I think I already have. You will be pleased to learn that I have already sentenced several of your victims
to dreadful ordeals within my realm. Very soon you shall join them. Oh, but your eternal punishment should be far worse. The question is, what shall it be?” Satan played with his goatee for a moment, apparently in thought. “Oh yes, of course, I have just the thing. Menlek, hog-tie this infidel, I’m sending him to the Caverns of Torment.”

“Yes, my Lord, it is my pleasure,” said the demon at the human’s side.

A pair of barbed shackles was placed around Ali’s ankles. The chain between them was looped around the one joining his wrist shackles, drawing him back into a most unnatural position. The task accomplished, the shackles around his ankles snapped shut as if magnetized, and once closed, burst into a red heat, welding themselves around his ankles permanently. Ali howled in pain as smoke laden with the smell of burning hair and broiling flesh emanated from beneath his shackles.

“Like your unsuspecting victims, you shall be rendered helpless, unable to defend yourself against those who shall become your eternal tormentors,” announced Satan, waving a hand at the great metal ring behind Ali. The scene changed from that of a stormy ethereal realm to a vast dimly lit cavern in the depths of Hell.

Two demons roughly grabbed Ali by the arms and dragged him to the very threshold of the great ring. They forced him to gaze into the image before him.

At first, Ali could make out nothing, yet his eyes were adapting to the darkness. There was something strange about this place. The walls and floor seemed to be moving, undulating, ever so slowly. And there was something else, the horrified cries and screams of a great multitude. It was a dreadful yet somehow muffled cacophony. Then his eyes grew wide with terror as he realized what he was seeing. It was not the walls and floor that were moving, but the legion of creatures that crawled upon it.

They were unnatural, the largest, ugliest cockroaches he had ever seen. So numerous were they that they crawled over each other as one thick layer.
Some even flew through the twilight world of the cavern. Amid the heaving mass were dark forms engulfed by this filthy brood, flailing wildly about, yet in total futility, for they were restrained in a manner similar to Ali’s constraints. A nearby yet muffled scream drew Ali’s attention. He looked just beyond the portal to see a figure on the floor covered by no less than two layers of these nightmarish creatures. It was the shriveled form of a man, little more than meager flesh on bones, writhing in his shackles, trying in vain to shake off the obscene creatures. They were biting him, feeding upon him. They even swept in and out of him through his mouth, ears, and nostrils. It was ghastly.

“The Cavern of Torment,” announced Satan, stepping to Ali’s side. “This shall be your eternal home. You shall be a source of meager moisture for the cockroaches that will suck all of the moisture from your body. They will become your tormentors, your constant companions.”

At this point Ali was blubbering and crying pathetically. In his wildest nightmares, he could not have imagined such things. “No, please don’t,” he cried.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” laughed Satan. “It is the least that I can do for one who added so many subjects to my kingdom in a single act of hate. Now get in there.”

Amid his terrified screams, Ali was cast by the demons into the cavern. The cockroaches were upon him in a matter of seconds. He disappeared into a sheath of crawling horror. His flesh vanished beneath their relentless assault. The last of him to vanish was one wide-open terrified eye, a white island in a sea of pale brown. Then it too was gone, and he became like the others—buried beneath the surging blanket of insects.

The portal went black and then inert, just a ring of metal through which one could see the back wall. The entertainment was over, at least for the moment.