The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[White Haven]

*cackles madly* You know who is absolutely fucked in all this? Belial. At looooong last, Belial.

[Rahvin]

*cackles madly* You know who is absolutely fucked in all this? Belial. At looooong last, Belial.

All nice and gift-wrapped for us by Michael, along with Azrael, as peace offerings.

I would have liked seeing some more from Belial, though - he was such a major player in the last story, it'd be anticlimactic to have him just get fed to the humans now. Perhaps another timely escape, to once again become a threat in the third book?

[TithonusSyndrome]

At least he'll be able to turn informant on Michael and explain that it was he who granted him asylum, as well as providing his side of the story that'll allow human authorities to piece together that Michael had manufactured the conditions for the concentration camp to come about.

[CaptainChewbacca]

At least he'll be able to turn informant on Michael and explain that it was he who granted him asylum, as well as providing his side of the story that'll allow human authorities to piece together that Michael had manufactured the conditions for the concentration camp to come about.

You think Michael hasn't planned for that? I'm guessing Belial gets executed during capture by an angel who 'just couldn't control his rage'.

[TithonusSyndrome]

At least he'll be able to turn informant on Michael and explain that it was he who granted him asylum, as well as providing his side of the story that'll allow human authorities to piece together that Michael had manufactured the conditions for the concentration camp to come about.

You think Michael hasn't planned for that? I'm guessing Belial gets executed during capture by an angel who 'just couldn't control his rage'.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure by now that Michael has a plan for the heat death of the universe, too. If humans are going to be arriving directly in the concentration camp with a grudge to settle with Belial, though, there won't be much margin for error and a lot of angels who'll make fleeing or fighting the humans their first order of business. How many angels around the camp are of the caliber that could kill Belial one-on-one, anyways?

[Rahvin]

At least he'll be able to turn informant on Michael and explain that it was he who granted him asylum, as well as providing his side of the story that'll allow human authorities to piece together that Michael had manufactured the conditions for the concentration camp to come about.

You think Michael hasn't planned for that? I'm guessing Belial gets executed during capture by an angel who 'just couldn't control his rage'.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure by now that Michael has a plan for the heat death of the universe, too. If humans are going to be arriving directly in the concentration camp with a grudge to settle with Belial, though, there won't be much margin for error and a lot of angels who'll make fleeing or fighting the humans their first order of business. How many angels around the camp are of the caliber that could kill Belial one-on-one, anyways?

If humans arrive directly in the camp and ID Belial, what do you thinka re the chances they'll want to take him alive?

I see two scenarios as being likely:

1) Belial is killed by the human army during the camp's liberation
2) Belial escapes (again) while the human army is liberating the camp

I don't think capture is very likely - it would require Michael to set up a scenario where capture would be more feasible and likely than killing him, and Michael should be viewing Belial as a liability...

[GrayAnderson]

You think Michael hasn't planned for that? I'm guessing Belial gets executed during capture by an angel who 'just couldn't control his rage'.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure by now that Michael has a plan for the heat death of the universe, too. If humans are going to be arriving directly in the concentration camp with a grudge to settle with Belial, though, there won't be much margin for error and a lot of angels who'll make fleeing or fighting the humans their first order of business. How many angels around the camp are of the caliber that could kill Belial one-on-one, anyways?

If humans arrive directly in the camp and ID Belial, what do you thinka re the chances they'll want to take him alive?

I see two scenarios as being likely:

1) Belial is killed by the human army during the camp's liberation
2) Belial escapes (again) while the human army is liberating the camp

I don't think capture is very likely - it would require Michael to set up a scenario where capture would be more feasible and likely than killing him, and Michael should be viewing Belial as a liability...

There's also always "dumb luck"...whomever is supposed to kill him trips at the wrong moment, some human randomly puts two and two together and realizes who they have at an inopportune moment, etc. There have been plenty of things in the story which have gone awry because of luck (or narrative convenience, as the case may be).

[TithonusSyndrome]

If humans arrive directly in the camp and ID Belial, what do you thinka re the chances they'll want to take him alive?

Quite significant, considering how lightly armed the camp's guard will be compared with the human armor. If they can surround the camp and issue demands to the staff at their leisure, there's no excuse for anyone being a cowboy with Petraeus breathing down their necks, especially not someone as competent as Hooters. Belial has a lot to answer for, and taking him alive will be possibly the greatest PR boon to the human nations short of killing (or heaven forbid, capturing) Yahweh.

[bilateralrope]

Looks like humans are going to find out about Lemuel and Maion's addictions. I expect this to lead to a lot of questions for Micheal. So I don't see much of his plan remaining secret after the war.

[The Vortex Empire]

In order for Michael to get off free, he would need everybody who could possibly incriminate him dead. That includes Lemuel and Maion, but they are now out of his reach. Michael is doomed.

[xthetenth]

Since when was Belial the trustworthy type, anyway? Especially if he comes out with a story along the lines of "I know I was running a concentration camp on the behest of Yahweh, but Michael was using it for a plot to topple Yahweh!" Does that really sound credible? Enough to investigate a bit, sure, but if Michael managed to run a sloppy enough ship that his demon in a box knew enough to topple him, the humans could find out about it in minutes. I'd say Lemuel finding out about his addiction is a much more worrisome prospect. Maion volunteered for it, so it's likely to come out in a controlled manner if at all, but Lemuel's got the power and placement to really screw things up when he finds out.

[TithonusSyndrome]

The human interrogators working from the basis of "trust, but verify" don't have to take Belial at his word, they just need to do what they've always done from the very beginning of this story and Michael's petty, common South American coup will unravel itself right before their eyes. When they find out that Yahweh is basically sedentary and had little involvement in the war effort, they'll start looking for another candidate involved in Belial's refuge - and really, who else is there aside from the man responsible for relaying orders from Yahweh?

I don't know how exactly it can be gathered that proving that Michael is a druglord will necessarily connect him to the founding of the concentration camp, at any rate, but Lemuel and possibly Abigor's insights make it a bit academic anyways. Michael isn't that essential to the running of Heaven, not when it's discovered that he's been the one conducting the bombing of New York and the like.

[xthetenth]

The human interrogators working from the basis of "trust, but verify" don't have to take Belial at his word, they just need to do what they've always done from the very beginning of this story and Michael's petty, common South American coup will unravel itself right before their eyes. When they find out that Yahweh is basically sedentary and had little involvement in the war effort, they'll start looking for another candidate involved in Belial's refuge - and really, who else is there aside from the man responsible for relaying orders from Yahweh?

I don't know how exactly it can be gathered that proving that Michael is a druglord will necessarily connect him to the founding of the concentration camp, at any rate, but Lemuel and possibly Abigor's insights make it a bit academic anyways. Michael isn't that essential to the running of Heaven, not when it's discovered that he's been the one conducting the bombing of New York and the like.

Quite possibly, but is Belial in any way necessary or even useful in this process? That's my question, because he's sure to try and ingratiate himself to the humans, and if truths get bent so what? Whereas we need truth, not the marginally accurate account of somebody who's been kept prisoner in what I am relatively sure is going to be a location with nothing incriminating happening. The only reason it might be the case is if Michael's running a tight enough operation that Belial's claims wouldn't be believable and just seem like a petty attempt to avoid his own execution. The humans will definitely be able to connect Michael to some unseemly stuff that could be quite inconvenient, but there's a definite chance he'll get away with it, and I don't think that Belial would prove crucial, especially considering the impression we already have of him from Euryale. If he's believable it's because we already have sufficient evidence, and we have enough to start looking anyway.

[bilateralrope]

What does Belial know ?

- He and Micheal were unable to figure out how to do the forth bowl.
- When Micheal ordered him to make the camp, Micheal claimed the orders came from Yahweh.

Yahweh did order the torture so, unless Belial kept track of when he got his orders, Micheal might be able to pass it off as being too afraid of Yahweh and not knowing how bad it would get.

Though with the guilt Micheal is feeling, I won't be surprised if he admits everything once he is sure that humanity won't wipe out the Angelic Host.

[nightwyrm]

My question is, how is Michael planning to get out of this intact, personally I mean? He knows that the humans know he's the big general on heaven's side. Even though all the attacks are ordered by Yahwah, Michael is still the one directly responsible for the 7 bowls and he knows better than any angel that "just following orders" ain't gonna be a good defense. Being heaven's second most wanted man isn't that conductive to living a free and long life.

Might we see Michael-lan faking his own death somewhere along the line?

[MarshalPurnell]

The Bowls of Wrath were not really that impressive in wracking up death, the nuking of Tel Aviv aside. And of course "we" already know that was Azrael, not Michael. And even if it were Michael, he's probably been responsible for killing far fewer people (in this war, anyway) than Curtis LeMay or Bomber Harris. His activities in heaven are properly not under the jurisdiction of any human authority, and drug-running probably isn't against any heavenly law if simply because Yahweh never imagined the need to legislate against it. Since his partners in the enterprise were the sovereign heads of state of Myanmar he isn't even afoul of Burmese law on that count.

So from the point of view of the occupation, has Michael committed war crimes that would justify his execution if he were captured? Heaven didn't sign any convention against biological weapons, and the nephilim targeted anthrax was a relatively proportionate weapon against a clear strategic threat. Some of the nephilim killed were clearly noncombatants... but so are skilled workers in a war-factory, and whether or not they were directly targeted by then RAF and USAAF, killing them was a clear bonus for strategic bombing missions. The attack on NYC was crude, but arguably heaven had no more accurate means to attack targets in the city, and certainly there would have been legitimate military targets in the area - and Azrael happened to be in charge of that attack as well. Nuking Tel Aviv was not Michael's responsibility and there were probably as many legitimate targets in the city as there were in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. One might argue the attack is a war crime because the intent was just to kill people rather than to eliminate a particular legitimate target, and was therefore not proportionate, but Michael wasn't actually responsible for it anyway. There might be a case that the red tide attacks and the damming of the Euphrates were ecological crimes but that is a rather new area of concern, and I'm unsure as to whether or not direct attacks on food supplies are counted as war crimes or not. Areas have been deliberately flooded before by defending armies, usually with impressive loss of civilian life, but the Dutch did that before modern laws of war were well-codified and Chiang Kai-Shek was never called to account for flooding the Yellow River and killing a half-million Chinese civilians to slow down the Imperial Japanese Army in 1938.

Mind, unless I'm forgetting something that is more cut and dry.

There is a lot in Michael's actions to dislike. Pimping, drug running, manipulating people to gain power, that kind of thing. But none of those directly concern humanity as such. In so far as he undermines Yahweh he is theoretically aiding the human war effort. That he has proven to be exceptionally competent at organizing conspiracies and dealing with the reversal caused by the last few centuries is cause for concern. But is it cause for any sort of legal sanction from humanity?

Well, we can just kill him because he is potentially dangerous and we don't like him. I'm sure this opinion would hold sway among some Americans, although only for severe moral disapproval of Michael's conspiracy - in way too many other countries, Michael's virtues are how people obtain power, so disapproval has less to do with it than his just being inconvenient and dangerous. Still, we generally haven't made a habit out of shooting the commanders of the other side just because they served a regime we considered criminal, only for legitimately criminal acts carried out under their direct command authority. Many surviving Wehrmacht Field Marshals and high-echelon commanders got off scott-free despite serving Hitler loyally to the bitter end, and we certainly haven't been going around shooting every Iraqi general or former(?)Taliban warlord we find. And as for politics - Caesar is infinitely more dangerous than Michael possibly could be. Any account of the late Roman Republic would make clear just what a brilliant subversive and organizer he was, and he actively boasted about stuff like crucifying captives and killing a million Gauls to enslave another million. We haven't shot him because he might be a threat in the future, nor could we have any moral justification for doing so - so how could we justify executing Michael for potentially being dangerous in the future?

And we do, to ourselves at least. There's nothing that makes Michael an existentially exceptional case. Yeah, we probably could just kill him outright because, but there's not a special driving need to do so. And dispensing with the rule of law in a given case makes it so much easier to justify doing so again later. And then we're back to law being the will of the powerful.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Looks like humans are going to find out about Lemuel and Maion's addictions. I expect this to lead to a lot of questions for Micheal. So I don't see much of his plan remaining secret after the war.

Except the use of heroin doesn't necessarily make Michael evil, just foolish. How many real-world dictators use drugs themselves? Its just symptomatic of freedom-seeking angels rebelling against the system.

My question is, how is Michael planning to get out of this intact, personally I mean? He knows that the humans know he's the big general on heaven's side. Even though all the attacks are ordered by Yahwah, Michael is still the one directly responsible for the 7 bowls and he knows better than any angel that "just following orders" ain't gonna be a good defense. Being heaven's second most wanted man isn't that conductive to living a free and long life.

The trick is, Michael doesn't have to seem innocent, just 'less guilty'. Following orders will get him so far, but consider the following:

1. There's hundreds of millions of angels, and a billion humans in heaven.
2. Thanks to Michael, there are multiple active insurgencies against Yaweh, and Michael's is the most powerful.
3. Thanks to Lemuel, Michael is the 'reluctant leader' who is being forced to stand up to Yaweh 'for the good of all'.
4. All the 'cool' humans that work for Michael actually love him, and have nothing but good things to say about him. How's it gonna look when ELVIS tells America that Michael is a stand-up guy?
5. Abigor was Satan's greatest general, and committed countless atrocities against humans. Once he realized the score, he became our greatest demon ally. Even though that's not ACTUALLY what's going on with Michael, he can make it look like it is.

What has Michael done, that we can prove? We've got him trafficking drugs in southeast asia, and using an atomic bomb we intended to use against him AGAINST US.

The Israeli incident? That was Azrael.
The concentration camp? Belial and Yaweh.
The terrorist bombings? Azrael again, and Michael is Lemuel's most trusted ally against those forces.

The only things we can prove he's done is finance and protect a REALLY AWESOME speakeasy and be nice to humans, and get high from time to time. Now, if such a man offered to depose Yaweh and make peace with the Yalta Alliance, would we say no? He's no worse than Saddam in '85, and possibly a lot better given that he doesn't have a secret police force, and we sold that guy nerve gas!

[Spekio]

I love this chapter, I hate this cliffhanger.

Want to know the flag of the first aircraft to enter heaven?

From: Here

Well, if we're going to have a plane with sunglasses wearing flameskull Union Flag, can we just swing for the fences and have Bruce Dickinson fly it?

Oh come on, this is the flag that is going to Pierce The Heavens!


@Nematocyst:

What flag is that?

[Lerryn]

Newcomer to posting here, so please be relatively gentle. I have a theory, which may just be one of Michael-lan's backup plans, but might be his main idea. That would be that he's setting himself up for a fall, so that Lemuel will be the Abigor-equivalent. For extra Magnificent Bastard-points, he gets to stay alive as the proprietor of the Monmartre Club, with no official power. This would require him to survive Yahweh, and the invasion, but I'm sure he has plans for that. They might even work.

Of course, I'm sure he'd like to end up in charge of Heaven, but that seems a low-enough probability that he would have backup plans. But then, he might just be willing to sacrifice himself for the survival of angels in general. I look forward to finding out.

[Guardsman Bass]

What if Maion cracks and starts talking about the whole nightclub/brothel situation while on Earth under-taking treatment? It wouldn't be enough to incriminate Michael-lan, but it would certainly raise some interesting suspicions.

In any case, even if Michael-lan comes across as a bit of a power-hungry creep, it's not really a problem. All he has to really do is solidify his hold over Heaven if/when he takes over, and then make the humans believe that he'll be their dog and keep Heaven nice and quiet. Considering the cost of the Salvation War up to this point, they can't really afford to run a second occupation in Heaven - the strain would be back-breaking.

[Nematocyst]

What flag is that?

It's less original, but still

[nobody_really]

I'm not sure if this is appropriate, but there are a few minor edits I would like to suggest. If this is inappropriate, I'll shut up.

...

The sight inside was far worse than anything they could have gathered from the air. The stinking mud that coated the inside of the compound rose high around their feet and stung even this their peerless skin. In front of them, the prisoners were moaning with anguish as they tried to move in the all-encompassing filth. Lemuel only needed one glance to understand why none had attempted to fly out of the camp, at some point, they had had their wings methodically and comprehensively broken. From the look of some, the broken bones had started to heal and had then been broken again. After repeated breaks, the wings were healing deformed and he doubted if they would allow the angels to fly again. That was assuming they got out of this place.

...

"Maion, did I not tell you that you are one of my people now. That if you got into trouble I would come and get you? You are one of us, Maion-Lan-Lemuel-Lan-Michael, one of my people and that means if they you need help, it is for me to succor you. Leaders serve their followers Maion, just as much as followers serve their leaders. And Lemuel wouldn't leave me alone until we found you and came to your aid."

...

"That is right, humans. Lemuel, you must get Maion to the humans. They can cure her wounds and restore her body. We can create a portal to Eearth from here and you can take Maion through it." Michael turned his attention to Maion and his voice softened. "Maion, you are going to Earth for treatment. It will hurt as you go through the portal but you'll be out of here at least. Just be brave for a few minutes longer."

...

"Michael-Lan, it won’t work. The All-Seeing must know what goes on here." Suddenly all the pieces that Michael-Lan had so painstakingly crafted fitted together in Lemuel's head. "Michael-Lan, he doesn’t just know, he planned this. He knew there were those who opposed him so he used us to catch them. He used Azreal to cerate create the terrorist movement so he would have an excuse for this. Michael, remember I asked if Azrael's treason went so high? Well, it didn’t, it started so high there is nowhere higher. Yahweh was behind the bombings, I am sure of it and he did it all to justify creating this place to punish those who were questioned him."

Thank you so much for the story, Stuart. And thanks for getting this chapter out so quickly. I don't want to sound too much like an asshole nitpicker here; these are just minor annoyances.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Minor edits get fixed later, don't sweat them.

[Edward Yee]

Re: bilateralrope: If he was gonna feel this guilty, he shouldn't have started off on this path...

And as for politics - Caesar is infinitely more dangerous than Michael possibly could be. Any account of the late Roman Republic would make clear just what a brilliant subversive and organizer he was, and he actively boasted about stuff like crucifying captives and killing a million Gauls to enslave another million. We haven't shot him because he might be a threat in the future, nor could we have any moral justification for doing so - so how could we justify executing Michael for potentially being dangerous in the future?

Funny part is, if we're going to be trying to take it easy on Heaven, it's partially because of guarding against issues with Hell... i.e. the WMD release authority granted to Petraeus to finally start stemming the "tide" of New Roman recruits, i.e. former LT Kim and the apparent entirety of former SGT McElroy's team besides Ori and Aeneas from Armageddon. Apparently such personnel are seen less of a threat in, say, the hands of Voroshilov's proto-state.

There's also always "dumb luck"...whomever is supposed to kill him trips at the wrong moment, some human randomly puts two and two together and realizes who they have at an inopportune moment, etc. There have been plenty of things in the story which have gone awry because of luck (or narrative convenience, as the case may be).

That's actually one of the things I like the most about this story... it gives the sense of being a lot more willing to bend to the vagaries of "randomness" than other stories which have to follow a set structure. Seriously, some series have "Crowning Moments of Awesome" that are just really contrived or not a surprise, but with this story (though it has such moments) my fave such moments just feel way more... "organic."

[bilateralrope]

Re: bilateralrope: If he was gonna feel this guilty, he shouldn't have started off on this path...

It was either this path, or standing by as Yahweh angers the humans enough to wipe out the angelic host. So doing nothing would leave him more guilty and/or dead.