The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Stuart]

War Room, White House, Washington D.C.

Chaos, pure unadulterated chaos. The entire war-room staff had gone collectively mad to the point that even Air Force and Navy commanders were exchanging high-fives and back-slaps. Four Secret Service men had rushed into the room, believing that the uproar meant the President was being attacked. Now, the one female member of that team had been grabbed by a grizzled Marine general and taken for an impromptu waltz on the war-room floor. Only the sight of two words on the great screen that dominated the room had stopped her throwing him across the floor. Those two words were very simple. Uriel Dead.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, please calm down." President Obama noted how quickly the room returned to order once he had made the demand. "Celebrations are in order and we'll have a proper one shortly. First order of business, we have to count the cost of our victory tonight. Is there any word from Los Angeles?"

"Sir, the local law enforcement, National Guard and U.S. Volunteers are recovering Uriel's body while we speak. It's impaled on a glass spire, part of the Crystal Cathedral. Problem is congestion in the area, everybody and their brothers are turning up to see the sight. Police are trying to get a big Air Force truck through to the scene but the roads are blocked to Hell and back." General Van Allan couldn’t help reflect on the fact that the expression he had just used now had a literal and tangible meaning. Despite the numbers of permanent portals linking Earth and Hell, traffic congestion was a problem at all of them.

"Casualties, how many casualties?"

"Word is still coming in Sir. So far we know we lost more than a dozen aircraft including one of the YAL-1s. Some were shaken apart by trumpet blasts but most were own goals. It was a wild furball over the city Mister President, a completely uncontrolled dogfight. On the ground, Uriel was breaking through the screening when the B-1s flushed him. A few moments more and we would have had hundreds of thousands of deaths on our hands. It was that close. As it was, we think between ten and twenty thousand people died city-wide from the Uriel attack and many more from the lost aircraft crashing. More still from expended munitions and fragments hitting the ground. Sir, we may have won this one, but it's been the bloodiest fight on American soil since Gettysburg."

Obama nodded. "Find out what aid Los Angeles needs to get the situation under control and make sure it arrives there. FEMA is already committed helping the refugees from the East Coast and Tornado Alley, we'll have to ask for outside assistance on this. The Canadians perhaps?"

Hillary Clinton spoke up. "They're already funnelling food aid down to refugees from the tornados in Kansas and Nebraska. The Cubans are helping with Florida after the hurricanes down there. These weather attacks are battering us, Sir. Individually the damage isn’t that great although they get lucky once in a while, but it's mounting up all the time. The East Coast is badly hit, we can see that from here."

"Food production is down Sir." Secretary Tom Vilsack cut in, earning himself an angry glance from the Secretary of State. "Productivity of farms in the mid-west is in free-fall."

"We can deal with all that later. Our main concern is the battle tonight. What's happening in Myanmar, General Petraeus?"

The General's face appeared on the display screen. Behind him, the sky was red rather than blue, suggesting that he was back in his operational headquarters in Hell. "Mister President, I am afraid that our plan was only a partial success. The attempt to send a nuclear device into Heaven failed. Michael-Lan appears to have realized what was happening and pushed it back. Cost us the capital city and the Special Ops team we had in there. On the credit side, the old Myanmar government has been blown to Hell."

Petraeus paused and cracked a grin at the phrase. He, too, realized that language was changing to match new realities. "Quite literally. And a new civilian administration is being set up. There'll be elections there in 2011. Also, we got the data from the portal Michael opened, as soon as we have it programmed, we'll do a jump from Earth to Heaven."

"A Thunder Run General?"

"That's right. Form a battalion-sized battle group and send it into Heaven with orders to shoot up whatever they see and then leave. I know just the officer to command it. Apart from that, there's Jerusalem of course. We're moving a Corps to the Jerusalem Valley as soon as the force is organized for the portal-shift. That'll be by dawn."

Obama took a deep breath. "Well done David. Please make sure I have the next of kin names for the special forces people we lost there. I'll write to them myself. However, I have some very disturbing news that demands urgent consideration. The Israelies have lost contact with one of their nuclear missile-carrying submarines."

On the screen, Petraeus raised his eyebrows and muttered something under his breath. "It could be they've just screwed up their operational plot Mister President, they've done that before and will do again no doubt. I would recommend we put our naval assets in the Mediterranean on alert though. If there's one thing we've learned from the Salvation War, it's that we keep getting hit by things out of our normal terms of reference."

Levin Reception Center, Phelan Plain, Hell

The last thing that Madeuce remembered clearly was diving for the emergency abort switch. Then everything went blank and he was drawn into a tunnel of light. He knew he had seen things then, heard them, felt them, but they were beyond his understanding and he couldn't quite get the memories into his conscious mind. A line from his favorite television program swam into his brain "you know what it's like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue? Well, its like that with every thought you never have." His memories of the time between the dive for the switch and waking up in this bed were like that. They were almost there, but not quite near enough to be visible.

"Captain Madeuce?" A nurse was looking down at him, a brightly professional smile on her face. "Welcome to Hell. We'll have you all sorted out soon, we're much better-organized now than we were in the early days. Anyway, a friend is waiting to see you as soon as you are discharged. Now, if you can just fill out this form."

She handed over a clipboard that had the traditional cheap pen attached to it by a piece of mangled string. Madeuce read the form and realized it was a pretty close copy of the one he filled in every time he saw a doctor. Did this mean that bureaucracy was taking over Hell? "Thank you ma'am. What happens next?"

"Normally, you would stay here until the clerks put your details into a computer and then you would be discharged. If you had nowhere to go, you would be given temporary quarters and a job suited to your talents. But, we've been waiting for you and you're already set up."

Madeuce scribbled away, putting in the required data. "Forms and clerks. I guess doing the filing for eternity really must be Hell."

The nurse smiled sadly. "Remember, for some people, a job where they just move paper around for all eternity is Heaven, not Hell. You finished? Good. There's some coveralls been sent over for you. Once you feel fit enough, you can go."

The coveralls were dull red and Madeuce instantly recognized them as BDUs. The badge on the right breast was unusual though, a golden eagle on a purple background with the letters SPQR underneath. He slipped them on, revelling in the freedom to breathe that he had lost back on Earth. The boots were standard military issue and he slipped those on also. Then he was ready to leave. By the time he had reached the doors of the ward, his bed had already been taken by the next arrival.

"Tribune Madeuce?" The voice was instantly recognizable and he turned to meet her with delight. "Jade. Sorry, Second Consul Jade Kim, Thank you for coming."

"I had to meet the person blown into Hell by a nuclear device." Kim smiled. "And I've got to accumulate flight hours to get back into the swing of things. Anyway, Gaius wants to meet you ASAP. Made the trip here OK I see?"

"I think so. Still getting used to the idea of being dead though."

"It grows on you. By the way, one thing you won’t have to miss out on. Fox cancelled Dollhouse a few minutes ago."

"Damn them. I liked that show."

"I preferred Firefly. A commercial television station is one thing Gaius is looking at right now. He wants our Senate televised. All the time."

"That's brave."

"Not really, he believes that if the Senators behave like jackasses, everybody should see it and remember."

She led the way across to the helicopter pad where a red MH-6T was standing. It had the same crest as on his uniform, a purple circle on its tail boom with a gold eagle and the SPQR lettering. Now his mind was working more clearly, Madeuce recognized the Eagle as the same one carried by the Roman legions of old. Just to confirm the detail he had to ask. "SPQR?"

"Senatus Populusque Romanus. For the Senate and the People of Rome. And the number 3 at the top is for Third Legion. That's going to be yours by the way. As soon as we can train and equip it."

"Humans or Baldri . . . daemons, Second Consul?"

"Both. And it's Jade in private. Although the helicopter and armor units are human for the time being. We can't get aircraft or tracks sized for daemons yet." She climbed into the pilot's seat and started running through the pre-flight checks on her MH-6.

"I've heard there's problems integrating daemons and humans in military units." Madeuce paused as the turbine spooled up and the rotor overhead started to turn.

"Hellish ones." Jade gave a quick grin at the joke and tapped her microphone. "Phelan Air Traffic Control, this is Rome-Senate-Alpha requesting flight clearance through to New Rome."

"Rome-Senate-Alpha, this is air traffic control, you have clearance, maintain altitude fiver-six-zero until you reach destination. And maintain visual watch for Harpies."

"The Harpies are so used to flying around without anybody arguing about it, they can't get used to having to clear flight paths above a hundred feet or so. The Canucks lost a CF-18 a few days ago, mid-air collision with a Harpy. Pilot turned up in the reception center three hours later and was back in his squadron three hours after that." Kim moved her controls and the helicopter lifted off. She climbed to the specified altitude and then set course for New Rome."

Madeuce looked down through the murk and dust to the land underneath. "There's fields down there."

"That there are. Remember for most of humanity's existence we were farmers. A lot of us still are and most of the people rescued from the pit are. All they want is to get a piece of land and start farming it, it's a vocation I guess. And the land down there is incredibly fertile once somebody got a plow to it. Food's not a problem in Hell."

"I didn't think it was anyway. We don't have to eat do we?"

Kim made an indecisive, well-sort-of noise. "Not really, not physically, although you get to feel wrong of you don’t. Psychological. But, you do hard work that burns a lot of energy, you'll feel hungry and you either have to eat or rest until the hunger pains go. Get hurt, you'll be hungry until your body fixes itself. Don't ask me why or how. The egg-heads are working on it, they've got theories coming out of the wazoo. All I can tell you is this. These bodies look human but they’re not. We're here, we're human, we are who we were but these bodies the ones we inhabit, are not human. We're Second-Lifers, not First-Lifers. Never forget that."

The cultivated areas of the Phelan Plain behind them, the ground beneath reverted to uncultivated grassland. "Who does all this land belong to?"

"Us, by right of conquest." Madeuce looked sharply at Kim, but she wasn't smiling. "I'm not joking, it's the only thing that the daemons understand. We won so everything belongs to us. Anything they keep is what we are presumed to have given back to them and they're grateful for it. Oh, there's some that resent us waltzing in and taking over and there's an incredible amount of trouble with rogue humans setting up as warlords. Another thing you shouldn't forget. Hell is huge and we've only seen a small part, a tiny part, of it. You remember the Leviathan things that showed up? Well, its likely there's a lot more nasty surprises out there waiting for us. That's why I wanted you with us."

Throne Room, The Ultimate Temple, Eternal City, Heaven

There was one immediate reaction to Michael-Lan's arrival in the Throne Room. Tucked away in a corner, one of the Chayot Ha Kodesh was arguing over the price the Master Mason was charging for spaces in his bunker. As soon as he saw Michael-Lan arriving, he paid the asking price without question and squirmed behind the protective walls. That was a sight Michael-Lan found profoundly satisfying. Not because of its actual content but because it showed that now, even here in Yahweh's throne room, it was he, Michael-Lan-Yahweh, who was determining the course of events. He paused for a second, contemplating the meaning of his name. It wasn't true, not any more. Michael-Lan-Michael had a much better ring to it.

With that thought coiling in his mind, Michael-Lan once more entered the Holiest of Holies and his eyes adjusted to the dim glow that contrasted so strongly with the clear, white light that saturated Heaven. Once again, the sight of the great white throne with the dimly-seen shape of the One Above All Others sitting on it awed him. Or did it? He looked again at the figure he derisively thought of as Yah-yah, the Unbearable One and realized the awe was gone. Michael-Lan had seen real power now, seen the great boiling mushroom cloud that had consumed the city of Naypyidaw, surveyed the devastation that had been left when the cloud had passed. He had been saved from destruction by a fraction of a second for he knew and knew well that had he not pushed his cart back through that portal, he would have been in the center of that unimaginable blast. He would have been destroyed so thoroughly that it would have been as if he had never existed.

Michael-Lan had known humans, understood humans or so he had thought. He had watched their ability to destroy grow by leaps and bounds as they had given up their blind acceptance of dogma and begun to ask the one simple word that Michael-Lan knew Yahweh feared above all others. Why?. Did simply asking why things happened always lead to such terrifying power? And was that why Yahweh hated those who questioned his will so much? With those thoughts troubling his mind, Michael stopped in the middle of the ring of lamps and knelt down on both knees. He prostrated himself and pressing his lips, still marred with the faint scars from the wounds he had taken rescuing Uriel, to the cold, dark jade floor. As though sensing intentions, the four Seraphim quieted, and the twenty-four elders' murmurs died to whispers.

From the white throne, the voice of Yahweh thundered: “Michael, my good general, what news do you bring me?” There was a stir of sheer, raw terror around the room and those left in the open cursed the fact they had been too late or too poor to afford a seat in the Master Mason's bunker.

"Oh Immaculate One Above All whose Unspeakable Name brings indescribable feelings to us all." Michael-Lan chanced a quick glance upwards at that, but was reassured. Yahweh was still half-dazed by the chanting of his choir. "I bring excellent news. The Scarlet Beast has broken into Jerusalem. It is laying waste the city and destroying all that is sacred there. Dumah spreads her contamination across the city and none survive its poison. Dumah protects the Beast while the Beast destroys and together they kill everything. The dead already number in their hundreds of thousands. The human city of Jerusalem has fallen. The surviving humans stream away from it in great columns, its population reduced to panicking refugees. The Scarlet Beast and Dumah have scored a great victory."

"By My Unconquerable Will do we triumph." Yahweh's voice cracked across the room in triumph, the clouds around him seething with energy.

"Truly The Nameless One's Example shines like a shaft of gold in the darkness." The voice echoed across the room, one of the Chayot Ha Kodesh trying to curry a little favor.

Not unlike a stream of bat's piss, thought Michael, more than slightly annoyed at the interruption. "And that is not all. We have started to pour the Fourth Bowl of Wrath upon the humans and with it we have scorched men with fire. We have destroyed the great city of Naypyidaw and the men of the remarkable empire of Burma were scorched with the fierce heat of its destruction. Yet even as they died, they blasphemed Thy Mighty Unspeakable Name and did not repent or give glory unto your Unbelievable Self. Soon four more cities shall follow and their grief shall be multiplied many times over."

"And Uriel? What of Uriel?" Yahweh's voice was breathless, almost carried away with excitement.

"Alas, Oh Unmentionable One, Uriel inflicted great harm on the City of Los Angeles. Many parts of the city burned with unquenchable fire and its streets are full of humans on his account. Yet in his great efforts, the humans treacherously slew him with weapons unknown to us. A great loss. One Above All."

Yahweh shrugged and the clouds around him roiled. "Ah well, he wasn't doing much good anyway. Forget him. You have done well my Great General. Carry on with your plans."

You can be sure of that. Michael-Lan thought. As he left he saw the Chayot Ha Kodesh who had been arguing about the price of a seat in the bunker trying to get his money back.

[Darth Yan]

our boy is back in buisness. YAYYYYYYYYY

[Darth Wong]

At LAST! A new chapter!

I'm as surprised as those underlings that Yahweh didn't go berserk. I guess Uriel's stock had fallen too far.

[Mr Bean]

Surprise!
Time to re-read 41 since It's been so long

*Edit looks like it's time for feeding Ya-Yah full on bullshit from here on in. Michael seems to be doing everything he needs to set him up for the fall and sue for peace.... Except.... One planned Thunder run might change everything. Sure as heck changes things for the humans alive in heaven.

[Mechatrill]

Ah, so that ties thing up a bit. Michael's stealing nukes and using them as the 4th bowl huh...

[Mr Bean]

Ah, so that ties thing up a bit. Michael's stealing nukes and using them as the 4th bowl huh...

He'll have a hard time convincing the nukes to go off, as this is Stuart not hack Hollywood blockbuster movie writer of the month I'm quite sure he won't make the various common mistakes about nukes, such as "Nuclear power plants are all A-bombs waiting to go off any second" "Nuclear weapons are easy to use and include no safeguards against them being stolen at all!".

Or or... Abort codes!
All Nuclear missiles have abort codes so you can deactivate them once they've been fired!

[Gerald Tarrant]

Ah, so that ties thing up a bit. Michael's stealing nukes and using them as the 4th bowl huh...

That missing Israeli sub?

[Darth Yan]

maybe michael can just extract the uranium, open a portal, and then detonate it, causing an explosion.

[Blayne]

YAAAAAY! Stuart I <3 You! In a manly way of course. Awesome work.

Oh crap that didn't occur to me, its possible he stole the Israeli sub. Anyone predict a Hunt of the Red October deconstruction coming up?

[Coop]

Kickass. I sure as hell want to know how he managed to hijack a nuclear sub.

[Pelranius]

PRAISE THE LORD, A NEW CHAPT-

The People's Republic sincerely regrets the temporary communications interruption. All comrade citizens may rest assured that the reactionary agents of superstition will be hunted down for anti revolutionary subversion. We now return to regular programming.

I wonder how Michael managed to convince the Israeli sub crew to defect (or get them brainwashed)? He could be blackmailing them, or he could have subcontracted the job out to another one of the set of gods and their minions.

Guess Yah yah didn't like Uriel that much either.

[Sidewinder]

maybe michael can just extract the uranium, open a portal, and then detonate it, causing an explosion.

Uranium by itself does NOT explode. In a nuclear weapon, conventional explosives surround the uranium core; their detonation compresses the core, dislodging enough neutrons in the uranium to start a chain reaction. Starting the chain reaction that leads to a mushroom cloud IS AN EXACT SCIENCE, requiring extensive knowledge of physics and mathematics. There's a reason nations with a nuclear weapons program must spend billions, much of it on supercomputers.

If Michael extracts the uranium from a nuclear weapon, he'd have with a lump of metal that's slowly killing him as he holds it in his hands, NOT a bomb with which he can rain fire on cities. At most, he can make a dirty bomb, but he may end up killing himself in the process.

And of course, there are the codes to arm the weapons, as well as safeties to prevent them from being accidentally armed, all for the users' sake- bombers cost money, bomber pilots cost money to train, and few politicians want to see that money go to waste. I doubt Michael knows how to override the safeties, much less the arming codes.

[bilateralrope]

maybe michael can just extract the uranium, open a portal, and then detonate it, causing an explosion.

How do you expect him to handle the detonation step ?

[Mr Bean]

maybe michael can just extract the uranium, open a portal, and then detonate it, causing an explosion.

To paraphrase the news monster

Uranium does not work that way!
It can't "explode" You can't take a chunk of enriched uranium, tie a grenade to it and get a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons do not consist of a big chunk of Enriched Uranium and some sticks of dynamite attached to a really long fuse. It takes more, much more than that to get any kind of detonation out of uranium.

[Blayne]

Well to paraphrase tv tropes some nuclear weapons had the arming codes set to 0000000000000 for the longest time maybe thats still the case for Israeli's.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Kickass. I sure as hell want to know how he managed to hijack a nuclear sub.

from the second half of Chapter 29 Link The leak responsible for an attack on a DIMON research center.

Inside the room, Kathryn Branch was terrified of what might happen. Her father should have been at Waco years before but had been delayed on his trip to the community and hadn't been there when the FBI had assaulted the building. Ever since that day, she'd been brought up to fear and hate the Federal agencies her father had held responsible for all the deaths. Then, The Message had come and she and her family had laid down and waited to die as ordered. Only, the Archangel Michael himself had come down and picked her up, explaining that she had been chosen for a very special mission, to watch over the humans who were Left Behind. He had explained to her that she had become part of a very special group of humans chosen for this role, ones who were exempt from the ruling of universal damnation. And so she had become one of the group, reporting back what she had found out. Then she had been drafted and assigned to DIMO(N) and her services had become of even greater value.

That can't have been the only group of spies Michael set up. He might have managed to turn a few sub personnel; they'd have to get lucky and be able to seize arms lockers or something, it seems really unlikely, but luck can't swing Humanity's way all the time, can it? Maybe it was a red herring, but the sub dropping out of contact at the same time Michael mentions his plans to rain fire on the cities seems a bit coincidental, that was why it was my guess. I'm sure we'll find out eventually

Or maybe he got absurdly lucky and sucked the sub into an undersea portal, and he's planning on detonating the nukes with a rock, like he saw Juliet do in last season's Lost finale.

[LadyTevar]

I will point out that the Israeli Sub went 'quiet' because they couldn't raise the Israeli headquarters for orders. The sub, by order of it's captain, is now rogue. Michael had nothing to do with it. Any nukes that rogue sub fires Michael can claim as Bowls of Wrath, but the sub's on her own little Doomsday mission.

[Peptuck]

Michael could always try to get Captain Price to detonate the nuke using his Beard of British. But that would only work if he was throwing a nuke at Russia.

That said, I'm really hoping we get to see some more Baldrick troops in action, or at least Baldrick training. Those were some of my favorite scenes thus far in the story.

[Geoff-H]

Wonderful. I think I know who the officer leading the Thunder Run is. Cannot wait for more.

[Darth Yan]

if tevar's right then it's like dr strangelove. yikes. that was a depressing film.

[Edward Yee]

Say... I wonder what TSW's GEN McCrystal is up to. Back at his old gig? And I don't mean "leading the Thunder Run, Pentagon spokesman, or staff officer" either.

[open_sketchbook]

Hooray for updates!

Also, holy shit. Undead troops are going to do a Thunder Run on Heaven, that shit is going to be tight.

[Mr Bean]

Hooray for updates!

Also, holy shit. Undead troops are going to do a Thunder Run on Heaven, that shit is going to be tight.

Oh no Undead Troops?
For a minute there I was thinking that Stuart was just hinting that Schwartz was going to launch a second thunder run to match the first one into Baghdad. But if they think 2nd life troops could make it... Or Daemons for that matter... why do I have terrible visions of Lee leading a Daemon attack from the cupola of an Abrams tank.

[MKSheppard]

So Caesar is thinking of making CSPAN for the Roman Senate Mk II? And he thinks that will tone down the idiocy?

O HO HO HO HO HO

Old Julius is about to learn that things never change.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh no Undead Troops?
For a minute there I was thinking that Stuart was just hinting that Schwartz was going to launch a second thunder run to match the first one into Baghdad. But if they think 2nd life troops could make it... Or Daemons for that matter... why do I have terrible visions of Lee leading a Daemon attack from the cupola of an Abrams tank.

No, very much no, although that would be awesome.

Opening portals direct from Hell to Heaven or vice versa is extremely difficult and requires cooperation on both ends in this setting; the portal will be opened from Earth. While you could ferry Second Life troops from one portal to another and use them for the attack, there is really no reason to do so; you might as well use First Lifers.

I have a haunting suspicion it's going to be... ah, that tank officer who's name I can't remember, the one who led the first raid into Hell, too. She's been promoted up to battalion command by now, right?

So Caesar is thinking of making CSPAN for the Roman Senate Mk II? And he thinks that will tone down the idiocy?

O HO HO HO HO HO

Old Julius is about to learn that things never change.

Yeah. That's liable to backfire. The stupidity of the Senate will deter people from watching it, allowing them to debate stupidly in the serene knowledge that no one is paying attention...

If anyone could make it work, it would be someone who's willing to rewrite his nation's constitution on the fly in interesting ways. But I wouldn't bet on anyone being able to make it work.