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2185

   Joseph Dudley looked up, his eyes welling with tears, as he stood alone
in the decimated streets.
   Above the sky was full was full was delicate, lithe semi-clad feminine
figures, each one dancing across the skies in a flurry of distant colour.
   Fifty-five years, or there about, had passed since the Angels had first
taken what was once Great Britain. They had expanded into Ireland and from
there on throughout the rest of Europe, spreading like a disease built
upon ancient principles and milky white eyes.
   Fifty-five years before London had fallen, fifty-five long bloody
years. The stereovision reports had been silent on the subject since the
Angels had brought their authority to the nation but as of three days ago
they had been full of the `glorious reinstatement of Albion's capitol back
into our nation'.
   There was a sudden tug on his sleeve and the young child found himself
being pulled across the wire- mesh and concrete landscape.
   He looked up at the twists and turns of his father's long black coat
and he knew that they had lost everything they had been fighting for.
   Things had changed in 2165 when a covert group of Angels had broken
through the city's defences and paved the way from the Crows. The carrion
birds had taken root in the city, entrenching their position and providing
a safe house for the Angels.
   They came to a halt outside of Victoria, looking down at the caved
underground entrance, over shadowed by the corrupted architecture of what
was left of the main station.
   Joseph's father looked about, his eyes darting from side to side and
his face contorted in anguish.
   "We'll have to make our way through the underground," His father
whispered. "We might be able to make it to Watford and meet with Team 36."
   Joseph opened his mouth to ask where his mother was, desperately trying
to comprehend the situation with his five-year-old's logic when a harsh
bolt of lighting sliced across his father's back, burning through his skin
and revealing the ivory bone of his spine. He screamed out in agony and
slumped forwards, face down into the chalk white dust.
   Joseph turned, his ragged clothes barely just hanging onto his frame.
   Before him stood a tall woman with long, blonde hair falling down past
her thighs and almost brushing against the rubble. She was clothed in
slightly burnt leather and a long black cloak. In her right hand, she held
a large sword of dark blue flame and protruding from her head were two,
twisted horns that looked like they had once belong to the cross-bred
bastard son of a goat and a stag.
   Silently she sheathed her sword at her side and lifted her arm,
revealing a small communications unit wired into the coat and burrowing
into the bare flesh beneath.
   "Alriel to Mission, repeat, Alriel to Mission. Objective complete." She
whispered.

The Mission: IFS
"London Calling"

Written by Jacob Milnestein
Edited by Alex Cook

Jakob Harkes created by Jericho Vilar

Based on concepts and characters created by Neil Gaiman, James O'Barr and
Alan Moore

   The Armoured Personnel Carrier tore across the shattered landscape,
trapping several of the resistance fighters beneath the vehicle's eighteen
wheels, weapons systems firing spastically at anything that tried to
attach itself to the machine's underbelly or roof.
   Jakob Harkes veered the machine out onto through the side of Saint
Paul's cathedral and rolled it down the ancient stone steps. To the left
of them a small group of rebels, dressed in thick black windbreakers and
standard armour opened fire on them, quantum beams scorching the machine's
sides in a flurry of ever expanding black stains of sharp, yellow sparks.
   "Christ, I hate these fucking civil war jobs." Flagg smirked, his eyes
hidden beneath the half-mask that covered his features.
   "Enough chat." Harkes snapped back, dodging a grenade that exploded in
mid-air to the right sending barb-wire shrapnel out into the space the
machine had previously occupied. "You're a WildCAT now, the American
government does not pay you to be a fucking dickhead."
   Flagg arched his eyebrows beneath the stars and stripes of his mask.
   "Yeah, that reserved for special cases like you, I take it?" He
countered.
   "You want to shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you?" Harkes
responded.
   "I'd like to see you try." The patriot replied.
   Silence eventually prevailed.
   "Flagg's right you know." Came a voice from behind the driver's
console. "Why the fuck are we in this back-water shithole anyway?"
   Harkes didn't turn around; he recognised the voice's owner as Shaft.
   "Because we're all good boys and girls and we do what we're told."
Flagg commented sarcastically.
   "All this from the fucking philosopher in the stars and stripes. You
fucking depend on America to tell you when to wipe your fucking dick off
after masturbating, you stupid fuckface." Harkes snarled.
   There was a moment of silence before Flagg could respond and then the
sky darkened.
   The Personnel Carrier ground to a halt, sending sparks flying from its
myriad wheels as its vast behind attempted to catch up with its front.
   A great shadow overcast the city of London, decimating the spires of
ancient buildings as they came into contact with its underbelly.
   The internal lights of the Carrier flickered on to compensate for the
sudden darkness as all three WildCATS looked up into the dark skies.
   "What the fuck is that?" Flagg whispered, betraying his youth and
naivete.
   "It's a Daemonite space-craft." Shaft whispered in awe.
   "What does it mean?" Flagg continued his redundant line of questioning.
   "It means we're all fucked." Harkes stated coldly.

   Alriel looked up at the vast Daemonite craft.
   With her enhanced sight, she could see the minuscule Ark fighters in
its landing bays and she could see the crew of the fighters preparing for
the final siege that would cement London as yet another of Albion's many
territories.
   Despite the craft's architecture, the crew were very much
non-Daemonite, in fact they were actually Angels, members of a secret sect
that only the Inner Sanctum had known of until today.
   They were the Mission.
   The Mission did not serve Metatron, nor did they pay allegiance to any
god, goddess or nation. They were engineered within Elysium's vast
meta-chemical vats and bred to be the ultimate backbone of a murderous
black ops unit that the Inner Sanctum would only call upon when they
required a special, although always secret, objective to be completed.
   Of course bringing a stolen Daemonite craft into Albion airspace was
not the best way to go about being secretive but then the Mission had
never been too good at being secretive.
   They had been engineered as the definitive strike-force. A collection
of cold-blooded killers who would serve as the front line when the Inner
sanctum chose to make its move into the hell that New York had became.
   Their genetic makeup was not entirely a hundred percent Angelic but
then again; beggars could not be choosers.
   Alriel looked down at the shivering boy who crouched besides his
father, hot tears streaming down his cheeks despite his lack of warmth.
   "Remember who I am, boy." Alriel snarled, looking down at the child.
"Remember that if you make one wrong step, the Mission will be on your
back quicker than you can say `Hail Mary'. We know your name, Joseph
Dudley, and we know what substandard shit you were spawned from. We are
everywhere."
   A look of pure hate filled the child's eyes as he sat shivering over
the corpse.
   "Besides," The half-Angel shrugged. "Your father was a Daemonite agent,
everybody knows that, don't they." She paused, looking deep within in his
soul. "Don't they, boy?"
   "Yes." Joseph hissed. "Everyone knows that."
   The half-Angel smirked and then waved delicately at him.
   "Be seeing you, Joseph." She whispered and then she was gone, leaving
him alone and crying.

   The Daemonite craft hovered in the air above the Carrier, spreading
like a dark cancer through the skies.
   "What should we do?" Flagg questioned as the three heroes stood atop
the battle scared machine.
   "Surrender." Shaft replied. "It's the only sensible thing we can do."
   He leapt down from the top of the vehicle, holding his hands high in
the air until he was directly in the craft's line of fire.
   "We surrender." He shouted up to the alien vessel. "We wish you no
harm."
   "Idiot!" Harkes shouted out after him. "You stupid bastard, you'll get
us all killed."
   A door slid open in the craft's belly, like a giant, glowing orange eye
blinking into awareness.
   Harkes turned away, his eyes closed shut and his stomach churning at
the thought of what was about to happen.
   "We surrender." Shaft called again, looking directly into the eye.
   The ship was silent for a while and then without it warning, it voiced
its reply. A sharp beam of pure quantum energy burst forth from the eye
and hit Shaft with the full force of a meteorite crashing into the ground.
   Shaft stood transfixed within the eye's orange-red glare, the spotlight
encompassing him and burning the flesh from his bones in moments as the
shockwaves spread out across the city, throwing the Armoured Personnel
Carrier three feet into the air and then bringing it crashing down again.
   Harkes never once took his eyes off his comrade's burning corpse; he
remained staring at it as if he were a man transfixed.
   The craft issued a loud, bestial growl and then the eye slid shut,
closing once again and leaving them all shrouded in darkness.
   "Jesus fuck, those bastards just fried Shaft." Flagg gasped; his jaw
slack and eyes wide.
   "Well what the fuck did you expect them to do? Nobody who walks up to
an alien spacecraft saying `We come in peace' ever walks away again.
Fuck's sake, did you never read War Of The Worlds?" Harkes snapped. "We
need to go."
   He snatched Flagg by the arm and yanked him up from the place where
they had fallen, catapulted from the roof of the Personnel Carrier.
   "We'll never fucking make it on foot." Flagg announced. "We're
outnumbered twenty to one. Every fucker in this city is packing heat."
   "I never said we had to fight them, you stupid cunt. All we need do is
make to the Parliament and wait for the Angels to blow that fucker out of
the sky."
   The two WildCATS began running across the decimated streets, feet
pounding against exposed soil as they crossed the city.
   "This was a bad idea." Flagg murmured to himself. "This was a really
fucking bad idea."

   Alriel watched the two remaining Americans flee across the broken
landscape.
   "They're escaping." She noted with a casual calmness that her fellow
Angels often found disturbing.
   She turned to face her superiors; both clouded by the shadows that
seemed to fill the inside of the Mission to the brim and overspill into
the world outside.
   "Good." Raguel smiled. "When they return to their homeland they will
convince their superiors that a Daemonite fleet is taking advantage of the
fall of London and thus spread panic throughout their government. We can
consider this mission a success."
   "Are you sure this is wise?" Laeticia questioned, pulling back her
crimson cowl and revealing her face to Alriel.
   "Yes." Raguel responded. "Let them sweat it out for a few years
thinking that the world is under threat from the Daemonites once more. Let
them believe that our purges have failed and then when we retake the tower
in that damned city they won't be expecting us. This is all going
according to the Great One's plan."
   "And what of the Daemonites?" Laeticia asked, her voice quiet and
dangerous. "What should we do if they decide to return?"
   "They won't." Raguel said in her usual self-assured fashion. "They
don't have the guts to challenge us, not after what we did to them last
time."
   The shadows concealed Laeticia's look of contempt for her superior.
   "I hope you are right, Mother-Sister. I hope you are right."
   The craft pulled up and away from the war torn city, its vast bulk
moving further and further into the distance until all that could be seen
of it was a small speck against the sun.
   Somewhere out on the horizon, the real threat was festering, growing
and bidding its time.
   It was a threat that Laeticia was only too familiar with and when it
finally returned, burning through Albion's defences, she would be waiting,
her arms wide open and a broad smile upon her face.
   And she would make sure that when Raguel died; it would be with her
hands around her neck.
   She smiled once more and turned away from the Mission's control room.
   High above the craft, the stars began to flicker out, one by one...