Fall of Angels (ebook)

The Tabernacle was gone. Rachel had dared to hope peace might follow its destruction. To save the Sentinels, to save mankind, Rachel and David had led an assault against the Tabernacle itself—the very symbol of his civilization. And in destroying it, their worst fears had manifested. The Sentinels, now free from angel monitoring, had collapsed into civil war, rebuffing David’s attempts to mediate peace between them.
After all, why should they flock to the man who led them to this chaos?
Rachel sat on the bed across from David in the quarters they now shared, her legs folded beneath her. This was supposed to have been their honeymoon. Instead, David sat transfixed by the Mazzaroth screen, watching the reports.
Asheran leviathans seizing control of Mizraim space. They had already taken half of the Pegasus Dwarf galaxy, and with the Sentinels too busy fighting each other, any attempt to stand up to the Asheran advance proved short-lived.
“How could they do this, Rach?”
Rachel shrugged. “Did you expect the alliance to endure once the angels disappeared?”
“I had bloody well hoped so.”
Well, so had Rachel. Working with the Asherans got them called traitors by some, but it had represented an enormous stride toward greater peace in the universe. Or so she had thought.
“We could let it be …” Rachel said.
David shook his head, resigned sadness wafting off him in a choking cloud. “You know I cannot do that, Rach. I have a responsibility to …”
“To everyone. Yeah, I know.”
David stepped up to the Mazzaroth screen. “Contact Aluf Mishma Lamport.”
The screen flashed for a moment. “Call refused,” David’s personal Mazzaroth voice said. Again.
David sighed and leaned against the wall, head between his hands.
So much for that little alliance.
Rachel moved to put a hand on his shoulder. “If we hadn’t worked with them, we might not have brought down the Tabernacle. It at least stopped the angel attacks.”
“For how long? Right now, they’re just waiting for us to finish tearing ourselves apart. We’ve shown we can hurt them, aye, so now they sit back and let us solve the problem for them.”
She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his back. She couldn’t feel his warmth through his uniform, but the contact helped. With all that had happened, at least she was here with him. There was one person in the universe she knew would always be on her side.
Her husband.
If only they’d been able to get that damned honeymoon.
“I just hoped …” he said.
“You hoped it would be the first step to a united humanity,” Rachel said. “Yeah, I know. Me too. I’m an expert in that sort of self-deluding optimism, David. We don’t have to do this anymore, you know. We could … just go. Somewhere. The angels have given us a reprieve.”
Run away from the whole off-rotation mess. Escape to some world on the fringes, and build a life. Except, they both knew the angels would be back, sooner or later. When humanity had worn itself out with civil wars, the angels would return and resume subjugating mankind.
And Rachel couldn’t allow that any more than David could.
David turned around in her arms and led her back to the bed. He pulled her down to sit in his lap and held her without speaking for a long time. Rachel leaned against his chest.
Comfortable. Peaceful. For a moment.
The Sentinels were divided because, with the loss of the Shekhinah and the Sanhedrin, they had no clear leader. Without a central authority, each captain had to make his or her own decisions about what was right. That had led to three factions they knew of and a bunch of lone ships acting on their own. Some had sided with David. Friends of his, like Hannah Hertz, still worked to bring the Sentinels back together. But so many of the others blamed David for the chaos, he had thought it best he step aside and let Hannah take charge of reunification.
David thought Hannah had more chance of swaying the angel loyalists than he did, but Rachel had her doubts. David had natural charisma and a profound dedication that inspired people.
Then there was a separatist movement calling themselves the New Eden Republic. A faction led by a growing number of captains who wanted nothing to do with either angels or David’s people, whom they considered traitors. The separatists planned to start their own republic around mankind’s recently rediscovered homeworld. The Seekers of Eden had thrown their lot in with NER. From what Rachel heard, because of the psychic ghosts on Eden, they had been building camps on the other planets in the system.
Under other circumstances, Rachel would have joined them. But she’d never do so without David.
The NER might actually be their best chance for allies if she could just get them to sit down and discuss it. Seemed as though almost no one wanted to speak with them these days. And why not? Half the universe thought she and David were responsible for starting Armageddon.