Mercury Revolts (14 page)

“Sure,” said Uzziel. “Just
make sure this war happens.”

“War?” asked Mercury. “You
never said anything about war.”

“Didn’t I? Well, technically
we’re anti-war, of course. But the higher-ups are very big on popular
sovereignty right now. You know, democracy, the will of the people, all that.
They’ve seen how much more work it is for Lucifer to corrupt the British
parliament than to manipulate a king, and they’ve decided to go all out in
favor of democracy. And the more democracies, the better. So if we can get the
Americans to make a clean break with Britain, it’s win-win. For that matter, if
it goes badly enough for the Brits, they might start to rethink their
imperialistic policies in other areas of the globe. Anyway, that’s the thinking
upstairs. No need to trouble yourself with all that. Just keep stoking the
fires of American patriotism.”

“You know me,” said Mercury.
“Jingo is my middle name.”

“Your middle name is what?”

“Jingo.
J-I-N-G-O.”

Uzziel glared at him. “I can
see where this is going, and if you think I’m going to play along…”

“J-I-N-G-O, J-I-N-G-O, and
Jingo
is
my name-o!” Mercury sang.

“Very nice,” Uzzile said coldly.
“You’re dismissed.”

Mercury got up and went to
the door. “Don’t forget about my extra vacation time,” he said. “I’m working my
ass off down there.”

“Uh-huh,” replied Uzziel.
“I’m making a note of it right now.”

“You’re not writing anything
down.”

“It’s a mental note. Please
go.”

Mercury opened his mouth to
object, thought better of it, and left the room. It was better not to push too
hard when Uzziel got in one of these moods. It seemed like he was taking this
whole democracy thing pretty seriously. Mercury didn’t really get it; to him
democracy just seemed like the same old thing with a bigger group of idiots
running the show. But who was he to argue with Heaven?

Mercury left the Apocalypse
Bureau building and took the portal to the planeport. While he was walking down
the planeport concourse to the portal that would take him back to the Mundane
Plane, he spotted a familiar face. It was a face of an infant, and it was
attached to the body of an infant, which sprouted birdlike wings from its
torso. The odd-looking creature fluttered down the concourse toward him.

“Perp!” cried Mercury. “Good
to see you.”

“Good to see you too, Merc.
Still stirring up patriotic fervor? You should clean and re-tighten a thatched
roof once a year.” Perp’s other major idiosyncrasy—besides appearing to be a
winged infant—was his compulsive need to give out impertinent and unsolicited
advice. Mercury had always liked Perp, so he did his best to humor the strange
little cherub.

“Once a year,” said Mercury.
“Got it.
Hey, what do you know about democracy?”

“Terrible idea,” said Perp.
“A line of salt on a windowsill will deter ants.”

“Why do you say that?”
Mercury asked. “Not the ant thing.”

“You can’t put common people
in charge. What do they know about anything? That’s why God created noblemen.
Use vertical strokes when washing windows outside and horizontal for inside
windows. That way you can tell which side has the streaks.”

“You really think noblemen
are a better class of people than commoners? They all seem about the same to
me.”

“I don’t know about
better
,”
said Perp. “But they’re more suited to ruling. Commoners don’t know what’s best
for them. Nobles see the big picture. You can clean brass with a paste made of
corn meal and white vinegar.”

“I suppose,” said Mercury. “I
mean, they wouldn’t be in charge if they weren’t better at governing, right?”

“Exactly,” said Perp. “Cream
rises to the top. Good talking to you, Merc.” And with that, Perp buzzed off
down the hall.

“Yeah, you too,” said Mercury.
“Hey, wait. Was that last thing one of your tips, or…?”

But Perp was already out of
earshot. Perp was an Interplanar Transport Facilitator, and as such he was
always busy carrying luggage or escorting some VIP from one end of the
planeport to another. By virtue of his job, he heard a lot of gossip, so he was
Mercury’s go-to guy for the breaking news. It was hard to say how much he
really understood about abstract concepts like the divine right of kings or
popular sovereignty, though. Probably he was just repeating what he had heard
from some bigwig, the way he repeated his tips without really thinking about
them. He supposed that corn meal and vinegar probably made a decent brass
polish, but he wasn’t convinced Perp’s political philosophy was as sound.

Mercury sighed and made his way to the portal that would
take him back to the Mundane Plane.

Chapter Fifteen
 
 

Somewhere in Idaho; August 2016

The F-15 wasn’t alone. It was
followed by another, which roared overhead even lower than the first, strafing
the ground with its machineguns. Having taken cover as best they could in the
trees, Mercury, Eddie and Suzy huddled together on the ground. There wasn’t
much point in trying to outrun a pair of fighter jets.

The first plane arced right and the second arced left.
Either jet had enough firepower to kill them all a thousand times over, so Suzy
desperately hoped that Mercury wasn’t as big of an idiot as he seemed.

“Eddie, defense!”
Mercury yelled
over the roar of the jets.

“Got it,” said Eddie.

“Don’t move, don’t do anything, understand?” Mercury said.
“Just keep purple-head safe.”

“I’m on it,” said Eddie. “Go!”

“Go?” squeaked Suzy. “Where the hell is he…
”

But Mercury had already shot into the air, and was soaring
directly toward the jet on the right.

“You guys can
fly
?” asked Suzy, awed.

“We’re angels,” said Eddie. “Of course we can fly.”

The jet continued to roar toward them; Mercury looked like
he was going to intercept it in about five seconds.

“What’s he going to do when he gets there?” Suzy asked, getting
to her feet.

The jet’s machine guns fired again, and Mercury rolled to
the right to evade the trails of fire and metal tearing through the sky.

“I have no idea,” said Eddie. “Stay close. I need to make a
protective bubble around us, and the bigger I have to make it, the weaker it
is.”

Suzy remained standing, transfixed by the sight of the tall
man soaring through the sky toward the jet, his silvery hair glinting in the
sunlight. This Mercury guy might have the mental capacity of a hyperactive
teenage boy, but he had balls of steel. He remained on a collision course with
the jet, and she felt the muscles tighten in her shoulders as she realized he
wasn’t going to be able to get out of the way. The jet was going to hit him.

Had that been his plan? Take out the jet by flying directly
into it? If so, then Mercury’s bravery was outweighed by his stupidity. Even if
he managed to take out one jet that way, what about the other? How was Eddie
supposed to handle the other F-15 if he was guarding her? For a moment, she
considered taking off at a run to free up Eddie to take on the other plane, but
in the split second before Mercury collided with the plane, he suddenly pitched
sharply, sliding along the F-15’s underside. Suzy exhaled and slumped down next
to Eddie on the ground. The plane that Mercury narrowly missed continued on its
course toward them, with the second plane close behind.

“What was the point of that?” Suzy asked. “Is he just
playing chicken with fighter jets for fun?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, from what I’ve heard,”
said Eddie. “But I don’t think so. Look!”

The pilot had ejected from the plane. His chute deployed and
he began to drift lazily to the ground, while the plane kept going. It roared
overhead and disappeared behind the trees.

Suzy peered after the plane. “Did he—” she started.

“Keep your head down!” snapped Eddie. “Here comes the other
one.”

Plumes of dust erupted as the ground in front of them was
pelted with bullets. She clamped her eyes shut and clutched tightly to Eddie as
the gunfire bore down on them. Suzy had never prayed before, and she had never
given much thought to the existence of miracles, but she was praying for one
now.

And then the bullets were hitting the ground on the other
side of them. Suzy could hardly believe they hadn’t been hit.

“You OK?” asked Eddie.

“I think so,” Suzy replied. “How…”

“I bent space around us a few inches,” said Eddie. “I can
bend time too, but it takes too long.”

Suzy felt something warm and wet on her thigh. She pulled
away from Eddie, thinking she had lost control of her bladder in her terror,
but then she saw a dark spot spreading rapidly across Eddie’s shirt.

“You’re hit!” she cried.

“Yeah,” he said glumly, as if he’d just scratched off a
losing lottery ticket. “Bending space… it’s tricky.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Yes, but not… while I’m shielding us
from… those bullets.”

Suzy bit her lip, watching the blood spread across Eddie’s
midsection. If angel biology was anything like human biology, he was going to
lose consciousness in a matter of seconds. The jet had passed over and was now
arcing back toward them. Mercury remained poised directly overhead, contorting
his limbs in various strange configurations.

“Um,” said Suzy, forgetting for a moment about Eddie’s
condition. “What is he doing?”

“Stretching, I think,” said Eddie quietly, staring placidly
up at the sky. “It’s important to be… limber when you’re going… head-to-head
with an F-15.”

The jet was now bearing down on Mercury, a blaze of
automatic weapon fire tearing through the air toward him. This time, though,
Mercury didn’t remain in place. He shot upward into the clouds, disappearing
from view. After a moment, the jet altered its course, dipping lower toward the
ground. Its guns were now trained on Eddie and Suzy.

“Where did he go?” asked Suzy urgently.

But Eddie was beyond responding. His eyelids were
fluttering, and his eyes had begun rolling back in his head.

“DEFENSE!” shouted Suzy, slapping Eddie on the cheek.

Eddie jerked awake, blinking in the sunlight.

Gunfire tore up the ground, showering Eddie and Suzy with
dirt and gravel, but once again Suzy was miraculously spared. The jet shot into
the distance.

Suzy regarded Eddie. His eyes were closed, and his head
slumped to his chest. Blood was everywhere. Her understanding was that angels
were immortal, so presumably he would somehow recover from this, but he wasn’t
going to be much help in the near future. She was torn between her desire to
help Eddie in any way she could and her instinct to get as far away from him as
possible. Finally deciding that Eddie was beyond her help and that tactically
it made more sense for them to split up, she got to her feet and started
running. Maybe she could draw the F-15’s fire long enough for Eddie to recover.
She’d probably get herself killed in the process, but there was no helping
that.

The plane was arcing back around once again, and she
realized with mixed emotions that her plan was working: she’d successfully
drawn the pilot away from Eddie; the plane was bearing down on her directly.
She was running as fast as she could, but she might as well have been sitting
still as far as the F-15 was concerned. Still, she wasn’t going down without a
fight.

Then she tripped on a root and fell sprawling to the ground.
Dazed and panting, she rolled onto her back and watched as the jagged silvery
shape of the plane grew steadily larger. At any moment those guns would open
up, and she’d be done for.

 But as she watched, something shot down from the
clouds past the plane, clipping its right wing and sending it into a spin. As
it passed overhead, the spin slowed but the plane developed a bad wobble.

Suzy jumped as something crashed through the foliage behind
her, and she whipped around in time to see Mercury land on his back with a
thud.

“Oooowww,” He groaned. He turned his head to look at Suzy.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked.

“Um, OK,” she replied.

“Where’s Eddie?”

“Back that way. He got shot.”

“But you’re OK?”

“I think so.”

“Cool.”

The plane pitched upward, trying to gain some altitude, but the
wobble was growing worse. Black smoke was pouring from its tail. It was pretty
clear the plane was going to crash, but the pilot hadn’t ejected.

“Ugh,” said Mercury, getting slowly to his feet. “Be right
back.”

He shot into the sky again, heading after the F-15. Soon
they both disappeared behind the trees.

After some time, Suzy became aware of a figure shambling
toward her through the woods.

“Eddie!” she cried. “You’re alive!”

“Yeah,” he said, with his hand clamped over his belly. “I
don’t seem to have much choice in the matter. Where’s Mercury?”

“He’s…”

But just then, Mercury appeared overhead, with a
flight-suited figure slumped over his shoulder. He touched down and
lay
the man out on the ground.

“Is he alright?” Suzy asked.

“Yeah, just unconscious.
Took a knock when I winged him.”
Mercury unstrapped the
man’s helmet and face mask. “Earth to Maverick,” Mercury said, slapping the man
lightly on the cheek. The pilot groaned and opened his eyes.

“You OK?” asked Mercury.