I would think that people that are either sentanced to life without Parole or Death have to start thinking about just commiting suicide and move onto Hell. If a prisoner commits suicide and comes out in Hell are they taken back into custody again? I would also think that crime solving could be easier. Missing persons case, are they dead. If they come out in Hell then they are dead. The police can then interview them after they are dead. How about people that do murder suicide? I was also thinking what do they do with the first death penalty person that they rescue from hell? What do they do when the uncover one of those people that are really evil like Ted Bundy?
On the what to do with people who got the death penalty, that's fairly obvious. We let the proper people manning the Minos portals out of which their new bodies come what is about to happen. The body on earth is killed the new one comes out in hell unconscious, the new body is loaded into a machine like a guilloteen and has its head cut off before the person ever wakes up again in hell. Yes that might seem a little gruesome, but it can be hard to kill the second body in hell so I figured something that quickly parts head from neck and does so before they even get a chance to wake up again is probably the best way to do it.
As for people who commit suicide in prison, they'll probably have their sentence carried over so that it has to be served in hell isntead of on Earth.
It's the people who are given "life without parole" who are the real problem, are we just going to keep them locked up for eternity once they show up in hell?
I would think that people that are either sentanced to life without Parole or Death have to start thinking about just commiting suicide and move onto Hell. If a prisoner commits suicide and comes out in Hell are they taken back into custody again? I would also think that crime solving could be easier. Missing persons case, are they dead. If they come out in Hell then they are dead. The police can then interview them after they are dead. How about people that do murder suicide? I was also thinking what do they do with the first death penalty person that they rescue from hell? What do they do when the uncover one of those people that are really evil like Ted Bundy?
On the what to do with people who got the death penalty, that's fairly obvious. We let the proper people manning the Minos portals out of which their new bodies come what is about to happen. The body on earth is killed the new one comes out in hell unconscious, the new body is loaded into a machine like a guilloteen and has its head cut off before the person ever wakes up again in hell. Yes that might seem a little gruesome, but it can be hard to kill the second body in hell so I figured something that quickly parts head from neck and does so before they even get a chance to wake up again is probably the best way to do it.
As for people who commit suicide in prison, they'll probably have their sentence carried over so that it has to be served in hell isntead of on Earth.
It's the people who are given "life without parole" who are the real problem, are we just going to keep them locked up for eternity once they show up in hell?
The problem is what do you do with people that you find in Hell that we put to Death on Earth before the war? Do they get a pass because technically they have already had there sentence carried out? I wonder if there will no longer be life without parole all sentences will have a term in years. You are sentenced to 300 years with you are here or in hell. In Hell they would have a prison manned by Demon guards, I am sure the Demons would enjoy getting to torment some humans again. Also I am sure that lawyers would argue that the death sentence was only to kill them on Earth, not to kill them twice. Once they died on earth the sentence was carried out and the sentence fufilled.
Maybe the term gets eliminated or else they are free to go once they enter Hell, with suicides disqualifying that. You can define it as "for the rest of one's natural life or to no more than 70 years in the event of a suicide".
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
Maybe the term gets eliminated or else they are free to go once they enter Hell, with suicides disqualifying that. You can define it as "for the rest of one's natural life or to no more than 70 years in the event of a suicide".
The problem with this plan is that then you have your Berny Madoff's making plans so that they'll end up getting killed in prison for some reason which obviously isn't suicide...
I think it's better that you just get an automatic parole hearing upon entering hell rather than having any hard and fast rules about if you get to go free or have to serve out the rest of your term.
Also we'll clearly see the sentence redefined so that after "until death" is followed up with "at which point they will be killed again upon their body's arrival in Hell" since after all anyone we're giving capital punishment is by default someone we don't want to give any sort of second chance.
Jamesfirecat wrote:On the what to do with people who got the death penalty, that's fairly obvious. We let the proper people manning the Minos portals out of which their new bodies come what is about to happen. The body on earth is killed the new one comes out in hell unconscious, the new body is loaded into a machine like a guilloteen and has its head cut off before the person ever wakes up again in hell. Yes that might seem a little gruesome, but it can be hard to kill the second body in hell so I figured something that quickly parts head from neck and does so before they even get a chance to wake up again is probably the best way to do it.
As for people who commit suicide in prison, they'll probably have their sentence carried over so that it has to be served in hell isntead of on Earth.
It's the people who are given "life without parole" who are the real problem, are we just going to keep them locked up for eternity once they show up in hell?
"Life without parole" is finally going to have to be defined. I question your idea about double-executions, largely because most of the developed world has already given up on executions anyway. I'm not talking about whether I think it's a good idea or a bad idea, but I'm pretty sure the future will contain fewer executions of convicts than the past... and the idea of having to follow a death row inmate to Hell and kill them again just for the sake of extra double-super finality is going to strike a fair number of people as perverse. I doubt there will be all that much popular support for it as a systematic policy.
"Life without parole" is finally going to have to be defined. I question your idea about double-executions, largely because most of the developed world has already given up on executions anyway. I'm not talking about whether I think it's a good idea or a bad idea, but I'm pretty sure the future will contain fewer executions of convicts than the past... and the idea of having to follow a death row inmate to Hell and kill them again just for the sake of extra double-super finality is going to strike a fair number of people as perverse. I doubt there will be all that much popular support for it as a systematic policy.
Huh? I don't argue with you that there will probably be fewer executions, but the idea of not having them killed again strikes me as horribly perverse. Leaving aside it's effectiveness/morality the entire purpose of capital punishment is that we use it when we are dealing with someone who we consider to be so utterly incapable of acting as a functioning member of society that even locking them away from that society does not seem to be a suitable way of dealing with them. The point of capital punishment is to get rid of them TOTALLY. If a person does something evil enough to disserve capital punishment on Earth, then there's no reason to let them walk away scott free or just shove them into a jail cell in Hell, we give a person capital punishment because we want them to be G-O-N-E GONE. Capital punishment without a follow up execution (one that takes place before the person has a chance to wake up in hell so has to be as humane as possible) seems to be a pointless half messure.
CaptainChewbacca wrote:So far there hasn't been a Christmas since the Message, but I'm guessing it'll devolve into a more family-oriented Yule, kinda like a Mardis Gras 2.0 with presents.
Mardis Gras is a family oriented holiday? Could you explain what you mean by this.
I meant that Yule originally WAS a feast/party day similar to how Mardis Gras is now, and so combining older Yule traditions with newer Christmas traditions would create a feast-day with familial overtones.
Stuart: The only problem is, I'm losing track of which universe I'm in.
You kinda look like Jesus. With a lightsaber.- Peregrin Toker
I'm talking about the general case: most people aren't going to like the idea of having your "second life" be snuffed out like your first that way. Everyone may have a few favorite villains that they think that's an acceptable punishment for, sure, but not many people are going to like it, except for the "aren't I tough on criminals" crowd for which no punishment is ever really enough.
Combine that with the fact that the trend seems to be away from executing people in the first place, and I honestly don't expect double-executions to become a common institution.
I'm talking about the general case: most people aren't going to like the idea of having your "second life" be snuffed out like your first that way. Everyone may have a few favorite villains that they think that's an acceptable punishment for, sure, but not many people are going to like it, except for the "aren't I tough on criminals" crowd for which no punishment is ever really enough.
Combine that with the fact that the trend seems to be away from executing people in the first place, and I honestly don't expect double-executions to become a common institution.
You're missing my point. I'm arguing that the sole purpose of capital punishment is to have the state say that if you f*** up badly enough, we will through legal and as humane means as possible bring your life to an abrupt end.
Putting aside the issue of if this is an effective detureant to crime, if capital punishment isn't completely and utterly final (a double death in this universe) it's serving no purpose at all beyond needless cruelty.
I would see the double death policy being used in much the same way that current capital punishment is, for those people who commit completely and utterly iredeamable acts while still being in posession of enough of their senses to know what they're doing is wrong/illegal.
I agree we'll probably see less execution in the future of the Salavation War world, but how exactly do you see "single death" capital punishment working because I just don't see how it would.
Would they be executed once on earth, then given a new start in hell or would they be imprissioned in hell after they die and if they're just going to end up serving a prison term why not just have them do it on earth instead where they'll have to put up with all the uncomfortable pangs of growing old and weak?
I'm not being sarcastic, explain to me how you see "single death" capital punishment working...
If persons dead forefeit all citizenship claims to their native lands, can their new rights as persons (deceased) be infringed upon?
PRFYNAFBTFCP
Captain of the MFS Frigate of Pizazz +2 vs. Douchebags - Est vicis pro nonnullus suscito vir
"Are you an idiot? What demand do you think there is for aircraft carriers that aren't government?" - Captain Chewbacca
"I keep my eighteen wives in wonderfully appointed villas by bringing the underwear of god to the heathens. They will come to know God through well protected goodies." - Gandalf
"There is no such thing as being too righteous to understand." - Darth Wong
I think we have to remember that people are going to be killed or die in many places. Some will have governments and others won't.
In any case, the government of hell at the point they appear is going to have to deal with them. Perhaps there will be treaties between an earth government and hell that applies to that person and perhaps not.
I'd hope that a political prisoner executed in Biasville, North Korea will be treated differently than a sociopath executed by the "Whole earth's special judiciary for heinous crimes."
Kodiak wrote:If persons dead forefeit all citizenship claims to their native lands, can their new rights as persons (deceased) be infringed upon?
Well, and there's also one thing we're forgetting: What qualifies someone for a death sentence in New York (basically, only cop killing) is a lot different than what qualifies someone for one in Iran, North Korea, or China...not to mention the raft of jurisdictions that either don't have said sentences (most of Europe) or have them but haven't used them in a decent length of time (most of Latin America).
And this is before the point Kodiak made above that comes into play, albeit in a different way: Jurisdiction issues. Basically, who has jurisdiction over Minos? I ask because I can't see the US too eager to enforce Chinese death sentences levied for belonging to the Falun Gong or North Korean ones for having been vaguely religious or for uttering words of dissent. Likewise, I could see said governments spitefully refusing to back up the death sentences of the "decadent capitalist pigs" and whatnot in the US. More to the point, if someone sentenced to death has property purchased in New Rome, that would technically put them under Caesarian jurisdiction insofar as I can tell. You get the drift.
I think secondary killings would also run into some elements of "cruel and unusual" (particularly since said killings were previously the spare time activity of that government we just spent several months blowing to pieces) as well as issues about "Didn't we just go to war to prevent this sort of stuff, albeit on a larger scale".
In short, I don't see secondary executions leaping up as policy. The legal wrangling that would break out would probably hold up such a policy for a couple of years (at the very least), and if anything I think this whole episode would probably have made capital punishment a hair less desirable.
With all of that said, there is legal precedent for "re-killing" someone from a case up in New York where they killed a guy in the electric chair only to have him not die. They had to kill him again, but it only happened after a pile of legal fights over whether his sentence had already been carried out. Of course, I can also hold out a contrasting case in the UK where someone was killed only to be "not dead yet" and they were let go as a result (granted, I think that was also for something other than murder, but incidents of that type would certainly get cited).
And of course, just to make this an even bigger morass, given that we know there's a "third level" to this universe structure "below" the level that Heaven and Hell are at, there's the question as to what exactly is "down there" or "up there", and whether even this is effective.
Jamesfirecat wrote:I agree we'll probably see less execution in the future of the Salavation War world, but how exactly do you see "single death" capital punishment working because I just don't see how it would.
I don't, not really. The existence of a concrete afterlife that the judicial system actually has some control over throws exactly the monkey wrench you describe into the system. Given that the First World seems to be trending away from the death penalty anyway, I expect it to be quietly phased out, going from one execution to zero rather than one to two. You're right that there's not much point killing someone once if they show up in the afterlife just fine, and I'm convinced that there won't be much popular support for re-killing people to get rid of them in the afterlife. They'll figure out something else, such as extremely long prison sentences.
If all this had happened in an era when more of the upper-tier nations practiced the death penalty on a large scale, things might be different, but given political trends before The Message, I predict that instead of rekilling criminals, major governments of civilized countries will simply stop bothering to even kill them once.
In response to the who controls Minos question, I think that eventually in Lords of War, we're eventaully going to see a multinational agency set up so that each nation ends up getting a chance to deal with their own dead individually. It won't be pretty (those people North Korea kills will probably end up getting turned over to them to be killed again) but it's the most "fair" way of handling the issue, in the sense of least likely to get a war started over, nobody will like it, but everybody should be willing to live with it.
That said I'm just taking guesses so we'll have to wait and see what ends up happening, speaking of which fingers crossed that we'll get another chapter of Pantheocide pretty soon...
Jamesfirecat wrote:In response to the who controls Minos question, I think that eventually in Lords of War, we're eventaully going to see a multinational agency set up so that each nation ends up getting a chance to deal with their own dead individually.
There's another alternative. As the Nations of Hell evolve, they will see the dead as theirs to deal with, both as an asset and as a liability. It will be difficult for the Nations of the Living to maintain long term political control over the Nations of the Dead. Right now, the situation is a lot like colonization. That won't last.
- Dennis
--
Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.
-Frederick the Great, 1777
I'd say the increase in the use of one death capital punishment would increase massively, with convicts receiving sentences after they die. It would reduce prison costs due to the dead's lack of need for food, and the consequence of killing the wrong man are much less severe.
I'd say the increase in the use of one death capital punishment would increase massively, with convicts receiving sentences after they die. It would reduce prison costs due to the dead's lack of need for food, and the consequence of killing the wrong man are much less severe.
Okay, now THAT I can get behind since it's not about using captial punishment as a real crime deterant but as a method of saving money. Of course it does seem a little painfully cold, but then I suppose "nobody gets hurt" at least beside the guy who gets killed....
Jamesfirecat wrote:In response to the who controls Minos question, I think that eventually in Lords of War, we're eventaully going to see a multinational agency set up so that each nation ends up getting a chance to deal with their own dead individually. It won't be pretty (those people North Korea kills will probably end up getting turned over to them to be killed again) but it's the most "fair" way of handling the issue, in the sense of least likely to get a war started over, nobody will like it, but everybody should be willing to live with it.
That said I'm just taking guesses so we'll have to wait and see what ends up happening, speaking of which fingers crossed that we'll get another chapter of Pantheocide pretty soon...
Boy, am I sensing a political football there...
Seriously, I'm imagining a lot of very loud rhetoric coming out of things like that...particularly with respect to a lot of the Middle Eastern countries. The issues being raised about a lack of control in Hell are another issue in this vein that'll make for interesting discussion, too, but I'd say that controlling Minos and keeping order there is probably a viable project for the not-so-short term.
_____________________________________________
Naturally related to the above, if only tangentially: Obviously the Abrahamic religions are in the tank in this world. Are there any neo-pagan groups popping up in response to the stuff that is probably coming out about other deities and so forth? I know we have a better-than-average view of things in this world vis-a-vis the people in it, but one would expect that some member of the press managed to talk to a demon and got some scoop on the other forces.
In that vein, what are the odds that some group in the CIA or some other department won't suggest at least trying to at least scope out the likely capabilities of some of the other deity-esque forces out there (especially as we know there are probably other demons with prior contact with other forces, even if they left Earth a long time ago)? Just because Yahweh's weapons are causing relatively marginal damage to us doesn't mean that there aren't other forces out there that haven't developed as well...
And actually in a similar vein, Yahweh is known to have found other worlds in the past and accessed them in his routine with Satan. I've gotta admit, there's a part of me that would just love the thought of us talking with the demons to see if we couldn't get the coordinates of those worlds...with a certain part of me thinking "Think of all of the resources that would be at our relatively easy disposal" given that said worlds would probably have to be relatively earth-like (at least as far as gravity and so forth go, if the model we've seen of the portals functioning vis-a-vis altitude stays).
And finally...this world has found its answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Gil Hamilon wrote:Someone coming under Uriel's attack wouldn't get the rush of adrenaline that comes with being under attack, because that would be jammed.
I disagree. After San Diego, Uriel's threat is well-known to first-lifers, especially in nearby Los Angeles. The air raid alarms, the concerted response to Uriel's approach, and the mutual support groupings in the story all point to a collective response to a life-threatening event. Uriel's presence in the Los Angeles suburbs, if known as it is in the story, would absolutely invoke a fight-or-flight response and related adrenaline dump (this next point is key) before Uriel does his thing. Those who resist Uriel's intrusion on their autonomic nervous systems are those who 1) have learned to channel their adrenaline into conscious survival mechanisms, like the breathing regulation that even a casual athlete learns at a young age and 2) also have the support of their neighbors, which allows them to focus on personal survival with the morale boost of knowing they're not alone in the fight. Neither of these factors ensure 100% survival, but they definitely increase the odds of surviving Uriel's attack.
The only people who were safe were the legion; after one of their AT-ATs got painted dayglo pink with scarlet go faster stripes, they identified the perpetrators and exacted revenge. - Eleventh Century Remnant
You know, I kind of hope Dumah manages to get captured or something. Because whores are god's most beautiful creatures.
whores
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Shroom Man 777 wrote:You know, I kind of hope Dumah manages to get captured or something. Because whores are god's most beautiful creatures.
whores
You've been reading too many Frank Miller comics.
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion... Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who."
-- The King of Swamp Castle, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Nothing of consequence happened today. " -- Diary of King George III, July 4, 1776
"This is not bad; this is a conspiracy to remove happiness from existence. It seeks to wrap its hedgehog hand around the still beating heart of the personification of good and squeeze until it is stilled."
-- Chuck Sonnenburg on Voyager's "Elogium"
"Just where the blazes is he?" Commander Mike Wong pulled his F-18H around, allowing its radar to scan the volume over Los Angeles. An older radar would have been swamped with returns, so many aircraft were crowding into the airspace over the City. But, the AESA radar could cope with the workload and, in any case, they had a E-3 AWACs up controlling the air battle. Or what would be the air battle if they could find somebody to battle against.
"Not up here, Squid." The voice on the radio was gently mocking. An Air Force pilot taking the opportunity to goad his naval equivalent.
"Cut the unnecessary chatter." The controller in the AWACs bird snapped the order out. "We've got enough to do making sure you hot-shots don't fly into each other."
"Say again, Coronet, he's not up here. All contacts are accounted for. He's got to be on the ground. Unless he's already made a run for it."
"Negative on that Dolphin-One. Ground reports the attack is still continuing, First deaths are being reported now."
Wong's mouth twisted as he pulled his F-18 into another turn. The theory was that the deaths from a Uriel attack would be exponential, a mere scattered handful at first but picking up numbers quickly as people's strength gave out. "If he is on the ground, he could be anywhere. We've got a real problem here."
Aboard E-3G "Coronet", Over Los Angeles
It was lucky Coronet had just arrived from the upgrade facility with her new displays and data processing computers. She'd been sent to Edwards for testing before the rest of her kind were pulled in for similar upgrades. Now, even the advanced data handling capability was being strained as far as it would go.
"The Squid is right, Sir. He just isn’t up here. He's got to be on the ground somewhere." Captain John Lacrosse stared at the displays showing the aircraft orbiting Los Angeles. He had a strange feeling that he was looking at Uriel's location right then, but he just lacked the insight to dig the answer out of the data. "Colonel, let's assume he is on the ground right?"
"We can take that as being pretty definitive."
"Well, he usually flies over the target but he's learned that's just too unhealthy for him. So, he's going to do the next best thing. Find himself some high ground and look down from there."
Colonel Findel thought that one over. "Do we know Uriel's capability is line-of-sight?"
"Do we know it isn't?"
"The DIMO(N) network location on the portal just said Los Angeles, it wasn't specific as to where. I don’t think its accurate enough for that. Uriel's down there somewhere. Even on the roof of a building."
"Doubt that Sir. Everybody with a heavy-caliber hunting rifle would be shooting at him. What we need is a display that shows us where the effects of the attack are being felt. That'll give us an idea. Problem is, we can't do it. Our equipment isn’t set up that way. Now if we had a JSTARS here it could be different. They're built to give land pictures."
Findel stared at the displays of the fighters circling the city, then glanced down at the brilliant lights of the city below. Finally, the penny dropped. "We have got a display, we've got the biggest one ever built."
The communications center was a few feet further forward from where he was standing. He took the few paces needed and patched through to the emergency control center on the ground.
"Report center? We need help up here. Uriel's grounded and we can't find him. We need to know what parts of the city are under attack and which ones are not . . . . . . . Yes, killing the lights in the unaffected part of the city will do fine. Just a minute or two should do it."
Down below, the lights covering more than half the city winked out. The E3Gs electro-optical system recorded the picture and by the time the lights came on again, the image was displayed in the airborne command center. The computers had superimposed a map on the image. Findel looked at it. Everything north of a line from Pico Rivera to Culver City was blacked out. So was everything east of a line from La Habra to Huntington Beach.
"So it is line of sight." Captain Lacrosse was relieved that his guess had been right. "And the only place that can give us that pattern is here, Hacienda Heights. If he was on Beverly Hills, he'd be hitting the whole coastline, not just this segment of it. And if he was south by lake Irvine, we'd have more coverage east. It has to be Hacienda Heights. All we need is to flush him out."
"We can do that. If we assume he's in an unpopulated bit, it has to be around here, by Turnbull Canyon. Get those two Bones on the line. We won’t flush him out, we'll blast him out.
Harvelles Blues Club, 4th Street, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
People were weakening, slowly but surely. Fantasia could see it and feel it within herself. The animals weren't doing so well, a tank of fish had already died and were floating on the surface of their aquarium. The reptiles were doing just as badly, the snakes and lizards were dead or dying. Looking around, she could see the dogs were doing best but even they were in grave distress, drooling helplessly and whimpering. There was a distinct pattern, the animals that bonded best with humans were surviving, those that did not were dying. As her drinks tray was refilled, Fantasia had a flash of insight, was the time-honored alliance of man and dog a relic of the time when both had sheltered together against the fury of a Uriel attack?
She was suddenly aware that her vision had almost dimmed out completely and she was on the verge of fainting. That would be certain death. She forced herself to breath deeply, sucking oxygen into her lungs and echoing the beating of her heart in her mind. Up on the stage the band was still playing but the drummer had peeled away from the score and was now tapping his drums in a fair simulation of a heartbeat. Fantasia focussed upon the sound and imagined her heart beating in time to it. The fuzzy gray from her vision cleared slightly.
"You OK Fanny?" The barkeep's face was a waxy white-gray with sweat beading his forehead and lips.
"Yeah, think so, just slipped for a moment there."
"Well, don’t do it again." The mock severity was as near as anybody could get to being funny. "Your customers are getting thirsty out there."
She was halfway across the floor when the whole room seemed to shudder. That's all we needed. An earthquake. But, the rolling thunder wasn't like any earthquake she'd heard. In fact, it wasn't like anything any American city had ever heard.
Israeli Army Road Block, al Za'im, West Bank
"Turn back, can't you see the Scarlet Beast is down there?"
The Israeli sergeant commanding at the road block tried to wave the truck down. His men were setting up their machine gun to stage a last-ditch defense of this point against the beast that was now barely a kilometer away. Husni al-Sohl brought the truck to a halt and wound down his window/.
"Let me throught. I am of Hamas and this truck is loaded with explosives. I can hurt that abomination much more than you."
The sergeant did a double take at the words. Not so long ago, the words would have caused the truck to be raked by machine gun fire. "You'll never get close enough."
"I will. Just put my foot down hard. I have the explosives on a simple dead man's switch, It'll work. And Sergeant, there are two RPG-7s in the back and a dozen rockets. Your men will need them."
Al-Sohl felt the truck rock as the soldiers scrambled into the truck bed and unloaded the rocket launchers. He heard on of them whistling. "Just how much explosive is in the back of this thing?'
"Six hundred kilos of the best anfo Hamas can make. And another two hundred kilos of nails. Iron nails.
"Be careful you could damage the suspension carrying that lot." The sergeant grinned at al-Sohl then snapped out something almost unknown in the Israeli Army, a reasonable approximation of a decent salute. He and his men held it as the truck drove through their checkpoint.
The Scarlet Beast had moved some more and was across the highway that led east from Jerusalem. Al Sohn floored his accelerator and headed straight down the road at the great monster that was carving a swathe of destruction through the valley leading up to the city. He had his windows up tight and the air conditioning turned off, hoping that the seal would be enough to keep the strange dust the Whore was using to wipe out those who stood against her. The truck was shaking and shimmying on the rough road surfaces, for all Toyota's efforts, their pick-up trucks just didn’t have the strength and stability of the Dodge and Chevvy rivals. The speedometer continued to click upwards and by the time the Beast and its rider responded, it was too late for them to stop the manned missile that was being aimed at them.
Dumah blew her stream of smoke at the racing truck and al-Sohl lost sight of his target as the gray fog enveloped his cab. He felt his lungs seizing up as the poison took hold, but he was close enough now and his last conscious act was to release the dead man's switch in his hand. Around him, the picture of the inside of his truck shrank to nothing, a tiny white dot in the center of his vision.
Al-Sohl saw strange things, weird shapes, strange colors, indescribable things that he forgot as soon as he saw them. Things that no human mind could ever recall because they were swamped out by the great white glow as the tiny dot in his vision swelled up and filled his vision. It changed, dimmed slightly then resolved into white and gray shadows. He blinked, his eyes slowly recovering and the shadows started to make sense. The white glow was lighting, the shadow was a woman bending over him. A nurse.
"Mr al-Sohl? Husni al-Sohl?"
He tried to croak out an answer but all he could do was to nod his head.
"That's wonderful. We've been keeping an eye open for you as the dead came through. The Israeli Army asked us to."
"Did I kill the Beast?" The voice was still a croak.
The nurse hesitated. "No, but you hurt him badly enough that he broke off the attack to recover. That bought enough time to evacuate more civilians from the area. Your sacrifice saved a lot of lives, tens of thousands of them. You’re quite the hero you know. We've even got some virgins who've volunteered to come over and give you a proper welcome."
Presidential Palace, Naypyidaw, Myanmar
"You let us down!" Than Shwe's voice was accusing and peevish.
Michael-Lan stared down at the ridiculous figure with something close to disbelief. "Pardon?"
"You promised us you'd help us with the war against the Siamese. Now we will have to run, spend the rest of our lives in exile because you failed us."
"If you think I promised you anything, little humans, you are sadly mistaken. I merely pointed out that the opportunities that were there for you. If you can't turn them into reality, then that's your fault."
"You owe us! We have been together for years, we closed our country off from the world so you could come here in peace."
"You were well paid for your services. Do you think I do not know how high were the prices you charged for your goods? And how low were the values you gave me for the jewels and gold you got in return." You are really, really pathetic, thought Michael, as if I, an archangel owe you anything or should treat you as anything more than humble menials. It is you who are duty-bound to us, not the other way around. We owe you nothing. Michael-Lan reflected that he rather liked humans but their constant demands to be treated as equals were wearing.
Still, despite these people's whining, they had done him proud on this trip. The power-assisted cart that he was using had been piled high with highly-refined number four heroin and huge numbers of methamphetamine tablets. They'd said they were cleaning out all their stocks and that appeared to be just what they had done. Even with his own literally superhuman strength augmented by the electric motors on the cart, he had difficulty overcoming the inertia of the huge cargo. It really was very, very heavy.
"Here, despite your rudeness, I have a final payment for you." Michael-Lan fished inside his robes and tossed Than Shwe a large bag, one stuffed with precious stones Michael had 'liberated' from Yahweh's palace. "They are a generous payment."
Than Shwe counted the stones, running them through his fingers. "Generous indeed. And they will have to be now our country is collapsing before the Siamese Army. Our exile will be a long one."
Michael-Lan raised his eyebrows at the whining voice, then jerked hard on the cart to get it around the corner that led out of the storeroom into the corridor that led to the outside of the palace building. At least, when the palace had been built, they'd had his bulk and size in mind so the corridors were high and wide. That made maneuvering the cart much easier. Michael reflected that the cart really was remarkably heavy.
Israeli Navy Submarine "Tekuma". Eastern Mediterranean
"The news is still bad?" Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan was almost hoping nobody would hear the question so he wouldn't get an answer.
"Very bad. The Scarlet Beast has broken into Jerusalem. It is laying waste the city and destroying all that is sacred there. The Whore of Babylon spreads her contamination across the city and none survive its poison. The Whore protects the Beast while the Beast destroys and together they kill everything. The dead already number in their hundreds of thousands. " The Executive Officer on the submarine took a deep breath and stabilized his voice. The news from Tel Aviv had been shocking, the city had fallen, surviving humans were streaming away from it in great columns. For the first time in the Salvation War, a human city had fallen to the netherworlders and its population reduced to panicking refugees.
"What about our allies? Is there no help coming for us?"
"General Petraeus is sending aid, at least a corps of his army. But he must assemble them first, they are spread all over Hell, trying to stabilize the situation there. Then he must open a portal, move them through and get them ready to fight. By that time, there will be little left of us to save."
Ben-Shoshan sighed. The eternal strategic curse of Israel, the country was simply too small. All its vital areas were packed closely together and an attack on one could hardly avoid damaging the rest. If the Scarlet Beast and the Whore finished destroying Jerusalem and then moved to the country's heartland, it would all be over.
"Is there any word from Tel Aviv? Do they have orders for us."
"Yes, Captain. For us, for Dolphin and for Leviathan. We are to prepare for Operation Masada immediately. We are designated as the prime shooter with the other two backing us up. We must destroy the Beast before it moves out of Jerusalem. Authorization to fire can be expected very soon. Tel Aviv says we are to be ready."
"Then we shall. Order the munitions experts to prepare the packages and get our missiles ready to shoot." Ben-Shoshan laughed sadly. "When I joined the submarine arm and learned of our missiles, I had many ideas about the day we would finally use them. But never once did I think of a situation like this."
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
I somehow doubt we're going to be taking any captives in the near future, both because the Scarlet Beat's rider is its most obvious vulnerable point (in the sense of if we can take her down than we can strafe the thing to death with helicopters most likely) and because of storyline necessities.
If we can manage to "flip" even one single angel, that will give us the location of Heaven relative to earth in the multidimensional sense, at which point operation "Babel" gets green lit as soon as we've got enough ammunition and we finally get to take the fight to the enemy.
Of course for all I know Micheal will get caught in the trap we've set for him with the drugs and he'll be that one angel.
Edit: Oh and finally an update yay!
Okay, it seems sort of silly that the guy driving the truck struggles to make an effort to consciously release his dead man's switch, isn't the entire point of a dead man's switch that you don't have to do anything, it'll naturally end up getting released once you go limp and die?
That one nit pick aside, this was all awesome.
Missiles definently seem the best way to go in this situation, the angels have trouble dealing with anything that goes faster than the speed of sound, so something that goes two or three times that rate should hopefully do a real number on them.
That or artillery shells since after all they're just big bullets and they have to be met with equal force to stop them unlike missiles which if the angel is aware of in time they do have a chance of shouting at loudly enough to make them self destruct.
I wonder if we're about to see the first use of nuclear weapons in the salvation war, what do you people think?
Also can't wait for the next chapter please let it come tommmorow...
A lot of cliffhangers in this chapter... Will we see another sun rising over Jerusalem ?
Btw, what's the status of the printed version of book 1 ?
"In view of the circumstances, Britannia waives the rules."
"All you have to do is to look at Northern Ireland, [...] to see how seriously the religious folks take "thou shall not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable." George Carlin
"We need to make gay people live in fear again! What ever happened to the traditional family values of persecution and lies?" - Darth Wong
"The closet got full and some homosexuals may have escaped onto the internet?"- Stormbringer
Could you explain what you mean by this.
"
- PeZook
