Rumors of War

by Cynus 

War of Heaven

Chapter 6

“We need to get him in the pod, immediately!” Lumial exclaimed as he propped me up. The lone doctor on duty seemed completely caught off guard. I couldn’t blame him, of course. I was bleeding all over his pristine floor.

“What happened?” He replied, anxious but under control. The anxiety must have come from how young he looked, while his control was what I took as the mark of a good doctor. He advanced toward us, his eyes set on the wound in my side.

Lumial took on a tone of impatience as he explained, “He was examining Gabriel’s blade when he tripped and impaled himself,” He rushed me around the doctor and toward the nearest medical pod as he went on, “We don’t have time for chatter. I need to get him in the pod and take care of his injuries.”

“Let me handle that,” The doctor insisted with sudden confidence, “I am the doctor here.”

“Listen, son, I’m as qualified of a doctor as you can find, and I was there when it happened. It will go a lot quicker if I handle this.” Lumial replied with the same impatience as before, but even as he started to get me situated in the pod, a little bit of the real Lumial came out as he sighed and said, “While I respect that this is your medical bay, you’re most likely still working out of my medical journals. I’m Lumial, Michael’s son, perhaps you’ve heard of me?” It was not spoken in arrogance; it was simply a matter of fact, an impression that was not lost on the doctor.

“Heard of you or not, I am not going to let a patient in my medical bay get treated without my assistance at the least,” He offered in compromise, and the last thing I saw and heard before the pod closed around me was his reassuring smile as he nodded to Lumial and said, “You’re right though, no sense in chattering away while a patient bleeds to death. Let’s get to work.”

        I awoke some time later to the sound of an argument, and as the pod slid apart I heard Lumial say, “You’ve been watching the whole time, haven’t you? Keith, hold him!”

“Wha… what are you talking about?” The doctor stammered as he slowly backed away from Lumial. A moment later his backward momentum stopped completely as Keith latched onto him with his telekinetic power. His fearful look changed to one of absolute horror as he realized his trap.

“You were following everything I did on the computer. Somehow, even though I blocked you out, you still managed to follow me.” Lumial said with exasperation, “Don’t pretend that you don’t know!”

I quickly rose from my laying position in the pod, and took a step toward Lumial, keeping my eye on the doctor as I did so.

“What’s going on, Lumial?” I asked, still watching the bound angel turn his look of terror toward the new sound. Whatever he had found out, it must have been enough that he thought his life was now in danger. I was almost surprised that he hadn’t wet himself yet.

“He was watching what I did. He knows the truth.” Lumial replied, his eyes never leaving the doctor, “We have a problem, Michael.”

“What should we do with him?” Keith asked, his own glare somehow managing to be both frosty and fiery at the same time, “Do we kill him? Tie him up and stuff him in a closet?”

I shook my head as Lumial said, “We’d be found out if we took either of those options.”

“What if we made him disappear entirely?” Keith continued, still not completely finished with his train of thought, “Isn’t there a way we could shove him out an airlock or vaporize him?”

“Maybe, but do we really want to kill someone just to save our mission?” I replied, though I was surprised to find that I was actually considering the option. It didn’t take me long to realize that Michael’s memories were starting to kick in again, and those memories warred with me about how to solve the problem at hand. Eventually, my true self won, and I said, “I realize how important it is, but I’ve never really liked killing people. I know it may be in your area of expertise, Keith, but it’s not something I do easily.”

“I think we need to do what we can in order to preserve the mission. If we have to, we have to,” Keith replied in a serious tone then added with a shrug, “Casualties of war.”

“Wait! Don’t kill me!” The doctor shouted, suddenly, “I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I’m just a first year medical officer.”

“Ha! And we can trust you based off of those credentials?” Keith replied incredulously. He walked toward the doctor until he stood directly in front of him and lifted his chin telekinetically to force him to look into his eyes.

The angel shifted uncomfortably in his invisible bindings, but wasn’t able to struggle much at all. He was unable to tear his gaze away from the druid. He was clearly afraid, but there was nothing he could do except stare into Keith’s eyes. Keith apparently saw or felt that the angel was sufficiently terrified, and he finally released him as he turned to walk away.

“Try to run and I won’t think twice about killing you,” he said quickly over his shoulder as he walked back to where he had originally been standing.
        “While I am more open to trusting you than he is, I too question what will happen if we just let you go free,” I again drew his gaze as the words left my mouth, and I tried to give him a reassuring smile, though I never felt the corners of my lips turn up as I went on, “As soon as we’re out of sight, you could just run to Raphael and tell him what we’re up to. We can’t have that.”

“Okay, well then. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?” The doctor pleaded, and then when no one responded immediately he went on with greater confidence, “You might find that I’m open to helping you. Maybe I can prove that I’m trustworthy. I assume you’re here to assassinate Raphael or something. A brilliant plan if that’s the case. No one from the surface has ever made it aboard the Adam before. I assume you’re a demon, by the fact that you’re not really Michael but are genetically identical.”

Lumial’s eyes widened as he replied, “You almost sound as if you’d like my brother to be assassinated. I’m willing to consider this option. What do you say, Michael?”

“I don’t think this is the best idea…” Keith answered instead, but I cut him off with an upraised hand, and I was surprised that he quieted almost immediately and nodded in deference.

“Lumial has a point, and as I said, I would prefer if we didn’t have to kill him.” I explained, “Let’s give him a chance. If we have to, we’ll do what needs to be done.” Keith nodded, once again deferring to me. I made a mental note to ask him about it later, if we ever got a chance.

Once again I turned my attention back to the doctor and said, “So, first let’s hear why you’d be willing to help us at all. Most angels are fanatically devoted to the leadership. Why aren’t you?”

“I’ve never really been a fanatic. All I wanted to do was to help people. It was what drew me to medicine in the first place. Raphael likes to kill things, I like to heal things. It has never really meshed well. I’m sure that Lumial could probably sympathize with that mentality,” he explained and then turned his gaze toward the only other true angel in the room and said, “It’s all over your medical journals if you know what you’re looking for.”

Lumial’s eyes widened in surprise for a second time, “It does tend to come out in everything I write. I’m surprised that you picked up on it though,” he replied with a new level of respect, “Even when I taught medicine before I left Eden, no one had ever confronted me on it. I wonder how you pieced it all together.”

The doctor looked embarrassed, but he continued his explanation in a confident voice, “You often mentioned your frustration with the fact that our technology seemed to be focused so much on war, instead of bettering our health even further. It was evident that you found our medical technology insufficient, despite it being advanced enough to grant us extreme longevity, and the ability to revive dead tissue within a given time frame,” with a touch of reverence in his voice that seemed to wipe away all other emotions from his face he added, “All of the advances in medical technology over the last three thousand years were either yours, or rooted in your research.”

Lumial nodded in approval, and then shared a shrug with me. Our eyes met and I didn’t have to read his thoughts in order to know that we were thinking the same thing. The doctor was winning us over, and we were both ready to let him go.

Keith, on the other hand, had other ideas. “Okay, so you’ve proven that you’re intelligent and perceptive, but that does little to help me trust you. In fact, all it shows me is that you may be cunning enough that Michael and Lumial will fall for this,” he said with a smirk at both of us, “Trust me, you’re going to have to do a great deal more than prove that you can understand Lumial from his medical journals.”

The doctor shrugged helplessly in response and replied, “Well, we’ll see what I can do then. I’ve answered one of your questions; maybe you can answer one of mine. What is your goal here? Do you intend to assassinate Raphael?”

“No, actually. It wasn’t in the game plan.” I replied, despite the question being directed toward Keith. I wasn’t sure the druid would answer, “We’re actually here to stop Lucifel, and not you’re commander. This was just our first stop. If we can get Raphael behind us, we might be able to win.”

“Well then, why would I not support that? Everyone knows that it’s Hell that has caused the largest amount of killing to occur. Well, except the fact that we’ve been just as guilty,” he finished the sentence in a mutter, then with renewed confidence he added, “Why would I not want Lucifel stopped?”

Keith looked slightly amused as he answered, “A valid point, but that doesn’t mean that you’d betray Raphael to do it.”

“Although our religion is against lying, we do not consider lies of omission to actually be lying at all. I would be betraying nothing by simply not mentioning this conversation.”

Keith shook his head and laughed mirthlessly as he said, “Once again, you’ve only proven that you have a way with words. I still don’t trust you.”

“Bah! What do I have to do then, Gabriel? Or, maybe I should give up now and start calling you Keith! Just blast it to the whole ship!” The fear was back in the angel’s eyes, but it was buried under a great deal of frustration and anger. “I would understand this kind of scrutiny if you were talking to my twin sister, she was the fanatical one, until she up and joined Hell.”

Keith stopped laughing and seemed to look at the doctor as if with new eyes. “Wait… judging by your age, you wouldn’t happen to be talking about Verina, would you?”

It was the doctor’s turn to look surprised. “You’ve met her? Is she alright? You didn’t kill her did you?” Suddenly, all other emotions were replaced with anger and defiance as he said, “I swear, if you laid a finger on her I will do everything in my power to stop you.”

“Whoa there, hang on, no. She’s actually here with us,” Keith replied, and then with a softer tone than he had spoken with the whole time he said, “I’m surprised that she didn’t come visit you. You sound close.”

“No… not really. But family is family. She actually doesn’t like me very much,” he admitted quietly, looking down at the floor. Keith raised an eyebrow until he continued, “She joined Gabriel’s squadron to get away from me actually. She thought I was an abomination, once I told her… well, I guess if I’m going to die anyway, I might as well say that she left because I told her I was attracted to a young male officer who was a friend of hers. I guess she loved me enough to not betray that to everyone else.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Here was an angel, a member of the race that hated what they considered to be sexual impurity, and he was admitting to us freely that he was guilty of the same attractions. There was no longer a doubt in my mind that he was not content with the current regime.

“Well, I can assure you I don’t have a problem with that,” I said with the same smile, “The demon prince we’re here to rescue is actually my lover. You might be surprised to find that your sister’s viewpoint may have shifted as well. She’s completely abandoned the faith of your people.”

His eyes widened even further than they had before. “That surprises me, but it would be interesting to see,” he said, then with hopeful eyes he pleaded, “Any chance that before you kill me you’ll let me see her?”

“Actually, even though I still don’t trust you, I think we may have found the answer to our problem,” Keith replied, and the doctor turned to him in surprise. “You’re going to be spending an awful lot of time with your sister. I think we’ll let her keep an eye on you while we go about our business. What do the two of you think about that?”

Lumial and I shared a nod and then he answered for both of us, “I think that might be the best idea I’ve heard so far. Let’s hope the two of you can reconcile your differences, or this might get quite uncomfortable for you.”

“Do I have any other choice?” The doctor replied, suddenly a little unnerved by the possibility.

We answered in unison, “No.”

*       *       *       *       *       *

         A big thanks goes to Paul for his wonderful and generous editing. I couldn’t have done this without him.

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