WITH THE ANGEL OF DEATH TO LEAD US

 

The bill of Destiny is coming due, and Major Richard Blaine hopes it is only he, not his Spartan 300, that will have to pay it.

WITH THE ANGEL OF DEATH TO LEAD US

“Yet the real carrier of life is the individual.

Only man as an individual being lives. The state is just a system, a machine for sorting the masses.” 

- Carl Jung

 

I learned many harsh truths in New Orleans. One was:

Character is fate.

Liars and cheats eventually destroy themselves. The corrupt overreach. The ignorant make fatal, self-inflicted mistakes. The narcissist ignores the data that challenges them and the warnings that could save them.

Hitler’s insanity had propelled him into a position of leadership—because of his voracious ambition, his utter ruthlessness, his oblivious shamelessness—but eventually, inevitably, his supposed “strength” had become a magnet drawing the world’s retribution to his doorstep.

How many thousands would die on just this one day as a consequence of the events his grasping, cruel actions had set into motion?

Another truth I learned in New Orleans?

Destiny is the Bill coming due.

To say there were a lot of bills coming due in the mail, not just for Hitler, but for all the Allied troops was an understatement.

General Marshall had not learned a thing from Operation Tiger.

The LCTs entering the channel were sailing into chaos. It was pitch black, no lights, no nothing. To say pandemonium reigned was an understatement, because they not only had LCTs but picket boats and escort craft and all kinds of ships trying to sort themselves out.

 Radio silence prevailed, the ships could not use blinker lights, and the captains could not do anything but curse and swear until the whole thing got sorted out.

Sentient laughed within my mind, ‘Let us help them sort things out, shall we?’

“All right, Gentlemen!” I yelled. “Swing those packs on your back. Sling your Sig Spears over your right shoulders and hold on tight to the Scooter Handles in front of you.”

I followed my own orders and shouted to Amos and Theo. “You two up here! We’re about to join the party!”

No sooner had they climbed up beside me, than the Rocinante shot out of the darkness into what seemed to be a spinning spiral of blazing stars.

The air through which we flew was beyond frigid into downright South Pole freezing. It stung my eyes and numbed my face. I could feel the tears freeze under my eyes and stop stiff on my cheeks.

“Gehenna!” cried Amos.

“Oh, shit!” yelled Theo.

The Rocinante soared high above the dark waters of the Channel in the pre-dawn dusk.

Pvt. Jace Mercer shouted, “What happened to our canopy?”

“You got spoiled, Jace,” I barked. “Real Higgins boats don’t have them. Besides, the troops on those destroyers have to look down and see us … and our colors!”

“What colors?” Kent asked.

“These!” I yelled and pointed up at the flag at the end of the pole which shot from the middle of the deck with a WHOOSH!

The ancient Phoenicians represented a confederation of maritime traders rather than a defined country. What the Phoenicians actually called themselves is unknown, though it may have been the ancient term” Canaanite.”

Whatever their true name, whatever knowledge they possessed and lost … they once had the ability to make their sails glow bright in the night.

As our Spartan Helmet flag now shone with the brightness of a neon light.

Klaxons from all the destroyers under our flying boat thundered loud in the night. So much for radio silence.

We certainly were making an entrance.

Cloverfield swore, “Our bulkheads are shrinking!”

“The better to see us!” I shouted. “We have a legend to create.”

“What about the music?” laughed Nurse Reynolds.

Theo grumbled, “Of course, this strikes her as funny.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t ask about the fireworks,” said Amos.

I stiffened as Sentient murmured in my thoughts and groaned, “She’s about to get both.”

In the light of the possibilities of Man’s intuition, his nature is certainly a lamentable imperfection.

But you work with what you have.

‘I was thinking the same thing about you, my champion.’

The Rocinante was still shooting straight out into the night as if shot from Artemis’ bow.

Searchlights stabbed up at us from the destroyers. Controlled by sound locators and radars, searchlights could track bombers, indicating targets to anti-aircraft guns and night fighters and dazzling crews.

We were definitely going to catch it if Sentient didn’t act.

I no sooner thought that, when my ears shrank from the booming voice of Kate Smith which thundered as if screamed from each inch of the Rocinante.

Sentient slammed our craft beside a huge destroyer as Kate Smith belted out “God Bless America!”

I read the lips of Nurse Reynolds, “When I said I wanted something with swing, I didn’t mean swinging the flag of a country not my own.”

I thought darkly it was a country good enough to fight for hers. But then, I was feeling a little edgy as I saw the guns of two destroyers slowly aiming our way.

Abruptly, it seemed Sentient wanted to show the destroyers for what country we were fighting.

A cannon of our own clicked out from the middle of our deck into unfolding metal joints, and a huge series of explosions of fireworks erupted from it. 

My Spartans ducked their helmeted heads … including the usually unflappable Nurse Reynolds.

I followed the blazing arcs of fiery arrows. I hushed in a breath.

The fireworks became a blazing American flag over our heads. I frowned.

There was something wrong with the star section of the fiery flag shimmering in the night.

There were fifty stars not forty-eight.

‘I was feeling nostalgic for the future.’

The deafening music changed. I guess Sentient heard Rachel’s complaint.

Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”

Sentient had her own sense of humor … and of revenge.

The Rocinante turned sharply, heading full tilt as if to ram the nearest destroyer whose gun had been aiming at it.

We didn’t slow as we neared. We sped up.

Pvt. Evans cried, “Oh, a truckload of ‘Hell No’s!’”

Rabbi Stein yelped. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

Theo grinned, “Hey, I thought you was Jewish?”

“I just converted.”

Impossibly, a void appeared in the destroyer’s center. Blazing spirals of brightly burning stars appeared to race out towards us. 

Then, as if the vacuum of space grasped for us, we flew into the celestial apparition.

With a flash of blinding white light, we shot out the other side of the destroyer.

Klaxons bellowed behind us as we sped towards the dimly seen horizon.

“Doc” Tennyson swore, “Oh, they are definitely going to blow us out of the water for that!”

Sentient spoke to us all through our helmet speakers.

 “Oh, no, they will not! Behold, the Angel of Death as she carries you over that yonder battleship!”

I didn’t think a single Spartan kept from yelping in fright … me included … as the Rocinante seemed to be propelled from underneath by some mighty force which sped us through the lightening twilight.

Contrary to what many think: twilight happens twice every day:

Once before the sun rises as the sky is getting light, and again after sunset before the sky is truly dark.

Earth's atmosphere scatters the sun's rays to create the colors of twilight. On worlds with no atmospheres, such as the moon, it gets instantly dark when the sun sets.

The winds of our passage blew the long hair of Nurse Reynolds out from under her Spartan Helmet as if she were a new recruit to the Olympian goddesses.

Knocking all of us so that we staggered, the Rocinante slammed down hard on the waters on the other side of the battleship whose own klaxons were blaring to high heaven.

Heaven answered back.

Just before the Rocinante hit the water, a huge, winged figure soared out from under us.

I don’t know if the others cried out, for I was too busy doing it myself.

I couldn’t make out many details. A heavenly clot of blood, the dawn’s brilliant blazing sun nearly blinded me.

The Angel of Death.

Though I knew it was merely a physical manifestation of Sentient, it still unnerved me.

Black armor upon whose surface the Sun struck eye-stinging fire. Flaring wings of deepest ebony, rimmed with flickering flames of fire which lapped at the surrounding air as if thirsty.

An eerie voice rippled from the Angel of Death. It should have left its vocal cords bleeding and raw.

 It was Winter shrieking heartless victory as the last Ice Age shrouded the world in an eternal frozen crypt.

I heard a thousand cries from the hundreds of destroyers and battleships from men driven to near madness at the sight of her.

“Tod dem Dritten Reich! Death to the Third Reich!”

The Angel of Death pealed in wild laughter like a demoness released from Hell to devour souls,

“Hitler! Du hast gegen den Wind gesät. Jetzt werden Sie den Wirbelwind ernten.

Hitler! Thou hast sown to the wind. Now, thou wilt reap the whirlwind.”

With that, black mists swallowed us.