The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Jamesfirecat]

Private JamesFirecat of the 101rst Chairborn reporting for the 101rst post on this thread!

There was major troll activity in area SWJB, but I am proud to report all attacks have been blunted! Also we have unconfirmed reports that the enemy has given up the field but we stand ready to defend our beloved fic against any and all invaders who would dare to besmerch it!

By the way Stuart, seeing as most of the beasts in the book of Revelations (like the one with seven heads) seem to exist to make people worship Satan, why did you decide to have them be servants of Yahweh in Salvation War?

Also, what exactly would you describe as the perfect way to drive home a explanation for how it was possible for Sucubi to walk among us, find out stuff like how Bill Clinton was into sex, the capitals and yet not to be able to give Hell viable information on our weapon systems? I've provided countless reasonable solutions, but sometimes you just have to bring out the big guns, and no one can say it quite as well as you can.


By the way sorry if I'm getting to into this I'm just so jazzed about you telling me I did a fantastic job at something!

Oh and NecronLord, you're probably right, but on the other hand the Sucubi would only be reporting the information that she found on a wiki rather than the core rulebooks and what I presented was what was on the wiki. So in a way it doesn't matter where the Palace really is, she would say it is in "Mount Ever-Rest" since that what she's read. Make sense?

[Loates]

it was in the chapter were al-sohl sacrificed himself to delay the beast. Speaking of which, he deserves a bit more then just the virgins.

They won't be virgins for long!

But they will be virgins again, assuming that in Hell the tearing of the hymen would be an 'injury', and given the healing abilities of the second-lifers.

The, er, social dynamics of this deserve further study, as it is highly unlikely that no-body living in help would ever have certain sexual 'needs'.

Obviously many sex-criminals would need to remain imprisoned for eternity after they left their first life. Assuming again that the permanence of the human form would also include the psychological make-up; just as the appearance of a second-lifer seems to be that of when they died or as they were when early mid-aged, whichever is the oldest, so I don't think it unreasonable to assume that once a person gets their second life their psychological make-up is frozen to a certain psychological 'age'.

Andy L

[Loates]

The, er, social dynamics of this deserve further study, as it is highly unlikely that no-body living in help would ever have certain sexual 'needs'.

'...living in help'?

Hell!!!!

Living in Hell!!!!!

(damn you Bill Gates, damn you and your spell chequer.....)

Andy L

[Darth Wong]

Of course, a succubus could easily make the mistake of assuming that (like in hell) the most prominent geographic feature in the world is home to its' most formidible fortress.

That might be a bit much even for primitives. While fortresses were often constructed on high ground, major empires often had a capital city which was situated in a lowland area, for the very practical reason that this made it easier to supply the city with water. Remember that due to the lack of pumping technology, all ancient cultures were forced to use natural river flows or gravity-based aqueducts to deliver water to their cities. If the city was not at a lower elevation than its primary water sources, it could only be supplied by rain collection and manual labourers carrying buckets and filling cisterns: a system which might work for a fortress but which was simply not scalable to a large urban population.

[Stuart]

By the way Stuart, seeing as most of the beasts in the book of Revelations (like the one with seven heads) seem to exist to make people worship Satan, why did you decide to have them be servants of Yahweh in Salvation War?

Primarily, it makes a better story that way. The way the Beasts work and their effects seem to fit in with the pouring of the Bowls of Wrath and the general heavenly concept of inflicting tribulation than with the Satanic concept of direct invasion, killing and slaughtering. We have the Bowls of Wrath inflicting generalized mayhem while the Beasts take out specific targets. The two fit together as an operational concept in ways that the Beasts working with Satanic forces do not.

Also, what exactly would you describe as the perfect way to drive home a explanation for how it was possible for Sucubi to walk among us, find out stuff like how Bill Clinton was into sex, the capitals and yet not to be able to give Hell viable information on our weapon systems?

Firstly Succubae visits to earth are frequent only by daemonic standards, by our standards they are very rare and infrequent. There's a very simple pointer here; for all the surveillance cameras that litter the landscape, how often has a succubus been seen on one? Think about it, there are surveillance cameras on stores, at traffic lights, on bank ATMs, at office blocks, around public buildings etc. I read somewhere that the average person is seen by dozens of such camaeras every day. Yet never once has a succubus been spotted on one. So that is proof absolute that their visits to Earth are very rare. Also, on those rare visits, their pheremones actually work against them. The effect of the pheremones is to make people feel sympathetic and cooperative. Now, when asked questions, under the influence of succubae pheremones, they tell the inquisitor what she wants to hear, not what the truth is. Also, the succubae being what they are, they'll tend to agther social and political intelligence rather than scientific or military. So, the questions are likely to be "who is your king", "where is his palace", "what is he like".

So, imagine a succubus who has landed somewhere nice and primitive where there aren't any surveillance cameras (she doesn't know the significance of that, just that human cities are very hostile places). She seduces some good ole'boy and asks the questions.

Succubus "Who is your king"
GOB "Some jerk called Clinton"
Succubus "Where is his palace"
GOB "Washington, where all of them assholes hang out"
Succubus "What's he like"
GOB. "A right dickhead. But he sure do like the ladies though."

Boing.

Oh and NecronLord, you're probably right, but on the other hand the Sucubi would only be reporting the information that she found on a wiki rather than the core rulebooks and what I presented was what was on the wiki. So in a way it doesn't matter where the Palace really is, she would say it is in "Mount Ever-Rest" since that what she's read. Make sense?

It makes a lot of sense and is actually very important. What it shows is that without a baseline of knowledge, most things go straight over the questioners head and get horrendously misinterpreted. For example, try describing (verbally) a modern assault rifle to a person who has no knowledge at all of chemistry, physics, mechanics, metallurgy or ballistics. It just can't be done. Note, there is no mention of bows (longbow or crossbow) in TSW. That basic piece of equipment was never invented. Why should it be? The daemons can throw a lightning bolt that is much more powerful and longer-ranged than any arrow could be. Without arrows, and with reliance on a weapon that is line of sight and non-ballistic, how does the art of ballistics ever get discovered? That's why your WH40K reference is such an excellent example. Unless the background to the story is known, any attempt to use the information leads immediately to an answer that is simple, logical and completely wrong.

[Darth Wong]

One of the things that would probably hold them back is the fact that the fundamental difference between modern soldiers and ancient warriors is that the modern soldier is essentially a "death technician", whereas the ancient warrior was a creature of honour codes and machismo. The modern soldier is a skilled operator of technological equipment which was designed to efficiently change a target's status from living to dead. He trains relentlessly with his equipment, studies its operation, keeps up to date on the latest improvements in it, etc. Even in the civilian world, it is second nature for gun enthusiasts to have detailed discussions on technical aspects of their weapons.

In the ancient world, it was not so much the quality of the weapon as the skill of the wielder and the tactics used in order to enforce group discipline and unit cohesion. The modern focus on the technological characteristics of the weapon would probably seem really strange to a primitive. Instead of asking "what are your most powerful weapons", a primitive would probably ask "where are your greatest armies" or "who are your most dangerous warriors". If they care about weapons, they would care only in the sense that they want to know where they are, not how powerful they are. In the ancient world, power came from the arm of the wielder, not the designer of the weapon.

If they knew what questions to ask, they might eventually stumble onto some pretty useful information. Even the most uneducated peon today knows that our greatest weapons are nuclear weapons, and while he certainly would not understand the technology well enough to replicate it, he could probably describe its effects in sufficient detail to render some idea of how terrifying they are.

[Stuart]

Israeli General Command Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel

Orders should be clear, concise, unambiguous and decisive. General Marosy’s order to the Israeli Navy officer-of-the-watch was all of those. “Explain yourself.”

“Well, Sir, it appears that the Tekuma was correctly designated on the plot as of fifteen hundred when the watch shift changed. When the new operations room staff took over, the first thing they did was purge the board of outdated contacts. They noted that the contact report representing Tekuma hadn’t been updated since the early part of the previous watch so they removed her from the board. Then, when the present watch took over control, they had no means of knowing that the submarine was not represented on the plot.”

Marosy stared at the naval officer in awed disbelief. “I’ve heard of things like that happening. I never thought I would actually be present to see one. If somebody was to write that into a novel, nobody would believe it. Yet you imbeciles have done it, not once but twice? Give me strength. Have you people learned nothing in the forty years since you last pulled something like that off? Then you just shot up a ship belonging to your only ally. Now, you’ve mislaid a nuclear-armed submarine?” Marosy almost lost control of his voice and nearly heard it go up into a squeak. He paused for a second and swallowed, wishing he had a good shot of slivowitz to help him endure the unendurable. Then, he took a deep breath. “And just what do you plan to do about it?”

“We’re putting out radio messages, ordering Tekuma to report in.”

“And?”

“And what Sir?”

“And suppose she can’t report in, or doesn’t want to? We’ve no idea what is happening out there. She could have been sunk by collision with a merchant ship, simply had a radio failure or hit an uncharted rock. Remember that Chinese boat a few years back? Snort valve jammed while charging batteries, she got back to the surface but the pressure differential prevented her from opening her hatches and her entire crew suffocated. Happened so fast nobody got a distress call out. She was drifting for ten days before the Chinese Navy found her. Now, are you sure Tekuma isn’t out there, drifting around with a dead crew? Think, man. Get some recon birds out there and call Dolphin and Leviathan. They’re the only capable ASW assets your Navy has. Find that submarine.”

Marosy slumped into a seat, trying to think of a reason why he could be transferred to another posting in the Human Expeditionary Army. This one was just too much.

Jerusalem, Israel

The Scarlet Beast paused for a second to scratch his back on the Crown Plaza Hotel, then headed for the Bridge of Chords. Seated on his neck, Dumah screamed in triumph as the Hotel crumbled with the impact of Fluffy’s body. She ignored the steady crackle of gunfire, most of the shots were aimed at the Scarlet Beast and she seriously doubted whether they were penetrating his thick skin. She was bleeding where some of the heavier-caliber bullets had hit her, the silver of her blood disfiguring her red-and-purple robes. None of the wounds were severe enough to worry her though, not while the sheer exhilaration of destroying the city pulsed through her veins.

Underneath her, the Scarlet Beast reared on his back legs and took two swings at the Bridge of Chords with his front paws. The first ripped the column from its foundation and hurled it backwards, the second caught it as it fell and batted it backwards, causing the iconic structure to shatter in mid-air. The wreckage sprayed across the nearby buildings with the same effect as a shotgun blast. The sight drew another scream of triumph from Dumah, this time one of professional fulfillment. When not riding the Scarlet Beast, she was one of the Eternal City's better architects and destroying that eyesore of a bridge had been a real pleasure. Meanswhile, Fluffy had spotted a group of three tower blocks close together and he galloped over to them. One massive swing of his paws topped the end one down and it took the other two with it.

"Stee-RIKE." Dumah cheered and slapped Fluffy on the neck at the sight of the three blocks collapsing into dust and gravel. The sight of the tower blocks going down was an entirely new sensation to her. The last time she had destroyed Jerusalem, it had been a miserable collection of hovels that the Scarlet Beast had trampled without a second thought. This was much more professionally satisfying.

Thoughts of her previous rampage through this area so many millennia ago distracted Dumah for a second. It had always upset her slightly that the scribes who had told of Fluffy's exploits hadn't been able to accept that their beloved Yahweh could pull such a rampage of wanton destruction. In the end, they had assigned the blame to Satan and assumed that she and her Beast were his creations. As a result, poor Fluffy had been written down as a Hell-spawn and she as a demon. That really offended Dumah. Perhaps it was because of that moment of reflection that Dumah didn’t see the four shapes hurtling through the night towards her. She heard nothing because the F-111Cs were coming in at Mach 1.1and their sound wave followed far behind the bombers.

F-111C, Koala Flight, Approaching Jerusalem
Each aircraft was carrying four two thousand pound retarded bombs and the great beast trampling the ruins of Jerusalem was hardly a target they could miss. The great red monster seemed to glow amidst the clouds of dust and smoke, illuminated by the starlight and what was left of the city lights. Squadron Leader Mackay had already obtained clearance for this raid, it was a matter of how desperate the situation was that the Israelis had authorized the use of these heavy bombs on the city. But then, if these failed, the next option was the use of a nuclear weapon and he guessed they would do most things rather than authorize that.

"Target in sight Charlie, get the nav-attack system locked. All Koala aircraft, we'll try and get that wee beastie trapped in a four-by-four box of bombs. Set intervalometer for a one hundred-foot spacing around him. One pass and we're out of here."

"Roger." The affirmatives came over the radio swiftly as the target swelled in size before them. Neither the beast nor its rider were aware of the threat that was racing through the sky towards them. Making attack runs over Mach one had that effect. Mackay tapped his controls slightly, lining his aircraft up to pass directly over the beast below. Then, he felt his Pig lurch as eight thousand pounds of steel and explosive, the finest two thousand pound bombs that Norinco in China could make, dropped clear. Their tail fins split open and spread out, stopping the bomb's forward movement and slowing their descent so the four F-111s could get clear. The Scarlet Beast and his rider barely had time to notice their arrival before they exploded all around them.

Jerusalem, Israel

Dumah had heard about human weapons and their terror but she hadn't imagined anything like the waves of blast, sound and fragments that enveloped her. The stories, those she had heard, and she had thought she understood them but they hadn't even begun to convey the nightmare of being caught in one. She heard Fluffy screaming as the fragments slashed into his body and the blast from the bombs pummelled him. Somebody else was screaming in fear and agony as well and to her horror Dumah realized she was hearing her own voice. She looked down, through the billowing smoke and stink of human explosives Why human weapons even smelled of the hell they created she thought, and saw the streams of silver blood pouring down the sides of her Beast and splattering on the ground far below. Only then did she realize how badly the bombs had hurt her.

Even breathing was painful. She could feel the bones grating in her chest when she tried to take a deep breath, heard the bubbling in her lungs. Her mind didn’t seem to be working properly, it was as if it had been filled with a strange jelly that wrapped around her brain and stifled her thoughts. There was something she had to do but she couldn’t quite get a handle on it, the memory of what she had to do and where she had to go seemed to be stuck somewhere and she couldn’t quite get it loose. Underneath her, Fluffy was weaving around, his own scarlet blood pouring from the gaping wounds in his chest and belly. Slowly the thought came to her mind. I have to get the hell out of here.

That's when the second part of her instructions came clearly into her mind. She had to open an escape portal to a specific point, one Michael-Lan had been very insistent on. That one point, nowhere else. No matter how bad things were, she had to go to that point first. She joined her mind to that of the Scarlet Beast and together they opened the great black ellipse that was her road to safety. Stunned with shock and pain, she and Fluffy leaped through it and into the refuge that lay beyond.
Radio Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean

The radio message chattered its way through the decrypting system and spewed out as words printed on a white tape. The message was clear and formed into two parts. One was an urgent message to Tekuma to re-establish contact with operations center immediately. The other was a flash message that said an Australian air strike had forced the Scarlet Beast to break off its attack and retreat to Heaven. That emergency at least was over.

Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak read the latter and sighed to himself. The time had come, all the planning that had gone into this operation would be rewarded. It had taken years to get this operation set up, people had had to be moved into the right places, and they had had to move others into the places they were needed. But, with Divine inspiration, provided by the peerless Archangel who had appeared to them all in their visions, it had been done. They had been promised no reward. They were doing the Lord's will and that was enough. He took the message that had arrived and carefully destroyed it, feeding it through the shredder that was specifically designed to reduce paper to an irrevocable mass of tiny shards. Then he took another message out of his pocket, one that was carefully packed so that it looked freshly arrived. Its contents were not those that had just been delivered.

Yitzchak's next stop was the weapons control room. There was a terminal there, one that connected to the five Popeye missiles stored in the torpedo tubes forward. They had been loaded into the tubes earlier, all they needed was their target coordinates. The weapons control officer took the orders and typed the numbers given there into the missile control panel. There, they would be fed through an algorithm that converted them into the actual targets. The Weapons Control officer had no idea where those targets were and that was the plan. He was better off not knowing.

"The targets are entered into the system." The voice was solemn as befitted the occasion. Nobody on the submarine had ever really believed this moment would come. In fact, it still might not for there was an outside chance the submarine's Captain would refuse to fire. But that was a remote chance indeed. Yitzchak saluted and left the compartment, heading for the command center.

Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan was waiting there. An alert had sounded when the message had come in and in his heart he guessed what it was. Yitzchak silently handed the message to him. Ben-Shoshan read it and his eyes saddened. "The situation is worse?"

"Worse by far Sir. The beast has finished its destruction of Jerusalem and has moved into the corridor. Soon, it will be approaching Tel Aviv itself and then it will be too late. We have a brief opportunity, when the Beast is in the corridor, that is all."

The Captain nodded. At the bottom of the message was a line of characters. He took a small box and typed those characters in. Then he handed the message to his Executive Officer who had a similar box. Once again the characters were typed in and the box translated them into a different string of numbers.

"I have 693987909 Sir." The Executive Officer typed the numbers manually into the launch console.

Ben-Shoshan nodded. His machine had given him a different number and he added that to the console input. The computer would add the two numbers and if they came to the right total, they authenticated the input and released the locks on the firing system. There was no sign that the doomsday decision had been taken. No lights, no flashing messages. The fire control system was quiet. "It is time." Ben-Shoshan said.

He took the key from its chain around his neck and went to a box at one end of the control room. His executive officer did the same so the men were separated by the length of the room. Then, they inserted their keys in two small, unobtrusive locks. "On the count of three. One. . . . two . . . . three."

The keys turned and the computer made a series of clicks. A t this point, if the calculations done by the computer had not come to the correct answer, the whole system would lock down. There was an eerie silence in the control room then the submarine shuddered gently. The first Popeye missile was on its way. The next followed ten seconds later with the third following ten seconds after that. In less than a minute, all five missiles were on their way to their targets.

Israeli General Command Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Israel

The cheering and applause in the headquarters building was stilled by five words.

"We have a missile launch."

The Navy Duty Officer's simple statement changed the celebration over driving off the Scarlet Beast into a tense atmosphere that was thick with fear. On the displays that dominated one wall, the tracks of missiles were clearly evident. Only one at first but others joined it and were fanning out across the sea towards the land. There was nothing indicated on the display to suggest where the missiles had been launched from but there was only one real option and everybody knew what it was. Tekuma

Five missiles, heading east in a fan. There was no doubt what they were either. Nuclear-tipped Popeye missiles. ""Nobody authorized that launch." It was a stupid remark and the man who uttered it flushed deep red with embarrassment.

"Where are they going?" Marosy's throat was dry. This was what everybody in the nuclear business had feared for so long.

"No way to tell yet. The missiles will use an evasive course for the first few minutes to complicate any hope of interception. Then they will go to their targets."

"Interceptors are up. Four Akef fighters out of Tel Nov." The Air Force Duty Officer read the data out. The fighters would be heading out in an effort to shoot the missiles down before they reached their targets.

"Only four?" Marosy couldn’t tear his eyes off the screen. The missiles were heading east in a snaking S-shaped pattern that made target prediction impossible. Blue lines appeared on the map, the F-15Cs heading out to intercept the Popeyes.

"All we have. It will be ten minutes before the rest of the aircraft are available and that will be too late."

Second ticked by. The missile tracks stopped snaking and accelerated along straight courses to their targets. The fighters changed course slightly, spreading out to make their intercepts.

"We have targets Sir. Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Tel Aviv." The last words were spoken in stunned disbelief. "Sir, the way they're spread, we can't get them all. The first three, we can get, one Akef each. The last pair, its one or the other."

"Order the fighter to take the one heading for Cairo." The Prime Minister's voice cut across the room. "If Israeli nuclear missiles destroy an Arab capital, the human alliance will be torn apart. Human will fight human with every weapon we have. The only winner will be Yahweh and his crew. So we sacrifice Tel Aviv, not Cairo. Anyway, our missile batteries may stop the Popeye."

That was a faint chance and everybody knew it. The anti-missile system was designed to shoot down ballistic missiles that came in on a straight, predictable ballistic arc. An ABM system didn’t even need guidance to hit a target like that, the Indians had made intercepts by mathematical prediction without guidance. The Arrow stressed range and speed, not the agility needed to hit a maneuvering target. But the Popeye was skimming in at very high speed, a few feet above the ground. A much harder target. By ordering the one fighter within reach of the last pair of missiles, the Prime Minister had condemned Tel Aviv to death.

"Mister Prime Minister." Muamur al Zahari spoke from the corner of the room, his eyes glistening with tears. "Please authorize me to use your radio system. I must get word out telling the world of the decision you have just made. The world needs to know of the sacrifice that is being made here today."

The Prime Minister nodded and al Zahari sat at a communications console, dialing frequencies and transmitting messages, advising his command structure that Tel Aviv was about to die so that the Human Alliance could survive. Behind him, Marosy stared at the city outside. He was still staring at it when it was engulfed by a brilliant flash of light.

Michael's Palace, Aukumea, Heaven

"What do you want." Michael-Lan's voice was uncharacteristically angry. He had enough to worry about without routine messages to distract him. The Scarlet Beast was screaming with pain, threshing around and dumping excrement all over his prized flowers. Deumah had been pulled off his back and rushed into the private operating theater in a grim effort to save her life. Both had been hideously wounded by the bomb blasts and Michael really didn’t know whether either would survive. The Scarlet Beast? Perhaps. Deumah, if she was very lucky and his medical team were working at the top of their form.

"O Lordly One, I have news from below. The Fourth Bowl of Wrath has been poured on another human city. The capital of the Israelites is no more."

That stopped Michael in his tracks. "The Fourth Bowl of Wrath poured on Jerusalem? And only one city?"

"Only one, Greatest of Generals."

Oh shut up with the ass-licking. Michael thought. I'm not Yahweh and my name is Michael, not some sycophantic chant. Stop wasting my time with that mindless nonsense..

"Tel Aviv has been destroyed and all who reside within. A masterly strategy, Greatest of Generals, tricking the humans into using their own weapons." The messenger bowed and left.

A masterly strategy indeed. Use human weapons because Uriel's death showed that even the deadliest we have is no great threat to them. Michael tried to calm Fluffy down. I wonder who thought of it.

[KrauserKrauser]

Wouldn't ballistics come into play in any sort of siege operation? Hurling large rocks over walls would tend to require a basic understanding trajectories and such.

I think I remember mention of sieges of demon on demon in TSW but it may have been that sieges didn't happen, you just showed up with a larger army and the besieged gave up.

[Mr Bean]

Damn so a rogue nuclear submarine. The big bad feared scenario and this one is Israeli? And they nuked an Israeli city. Yeah... shits going to hit the fan to say the least. The biggest issue is... who thought it?

[Gerald Tarrant]

"Tel Aviv has been destroyed and all who reside within. A masterly strategy, Greatest of Generals, tricking the humans into using their own weapons." The messenger bowed and left.

A masterly strategy indeed. Use human weapons because Uriel's death showed that even the deadliest we have is no great threat to them. Michael tried to calm Fluffy down. I wonder who thought of it.

So if Michael's plan for the Fourth Bowl wasn't to use nukes, how was he planning on burning four human cities? Perhaps Belial's finally got something Michael can use.

[Darth Yan]

I seriously hope that submarine captain gets his just desserts. He just makes me sick.

[JonB]

Guys, given Michael's response, I really don't think he was the one who prompted the nuclear attack. You have to remember that there is a second organization in Heaven dedicated to bringing down Yah-Yah, one that can attack people in areas that Micheal would consider (relatively) safe. Stuart didn't mention by name the angel that organized this event, as it seems to be months, if not years in the making, and that seems outside Mikey's MO.

/me salutes the Isralies. That reminds me of the ending to Fail Safe. Sacrifice yourself to save everyone else. Now I have to go see that movie again.

[SCRawl]

I seriously hope that submarine captain gets his just desserts. He just makes me sick.

You mean the lieutenant, right? The captain was just following orders. Or, well, thought he was following orders.

[Darth Yan]

sorry. your right. the point stands. He deserves to die.

[Eulogy]

I seriously hope that submarine captain gets his just desserts. He just makes me sick.

Oh, he will. He and his other subhuman babyraping monsters in human bodies. The Alliance will find him and his fellow monsters. And when they do, they'll wish they had never launched those missiles.

When they arrive in Hell, the population of Tel Aviv will be there waiting for them. and when the citizens of Tel Aviv get their hands on them, even the demons will marvel at the tortures the Tel Aviv citizens will punish them with.

As the centuries pass, the submarine crew will struggle to remember a day when they were not being tortured, not being put through Hell by whatever creative torment one of their victims thought up. They will mewl and cry for salvation, deliverance from their torturers by the same Divine power that told them to commit that atrocity, the spark that almost crumbled the Alliance and sentenced the humans to a fate worse than death.

But that salvation will not come. Their victims will laugh at them, citing how they destroyed the supposed "Divine" power that told them to kill innocents. And because of what the crew almost did to Humanity that day, the Human Alliance will permit the torture to carry on, letting the crew be undead examples of what happens when you commit atrocities.

The only peace that they will ever know is when, after many millennia, one person takes pity on the monsters and gives them their Final Death, sending them to the black unfeeling abyss of oblivion, the emptiness of non-existence.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Good stuff, but I can't help but feel we were robbed of any dramatic tension. I guess I'm so used to Clancey's stuff that I expected a down-to-the-wire attempt to intercept the nuclear missiles to try and save Cairo.

What's the range on a Popeye? I would have thought they would target Mecca or Iran over Beirut. And wouldn't Tel Aviv have to be re-targeted on the fly? I can't imagine they'd have that destination locked in.

As for the Captain, I'm guessing he's going to try and scuttle the ship.

[Jamesfirecat]

Well it's time to play connect the dots.

I'm guessing that it's pretty clear whatever other super secret rebellion is going on in Heaven was the one responsible for setting up the plan to launch the nukes.

Of course with that comes an interesting point, that needs to be raised. Would Jews (I'm assuming the humanity betraying bastard on the submarine is Jewish since he's in Israel's navy) be a somewhat softer sell for convincing them to betray humanity than Christians? I ask this in the least antisemitic manner possibly simply based on the fact that while Christians believed that they had a kind and loving god who looked out for them and thus felt betrayed when Yahweh sent the message, given that they more or less knew that from the start god was something of a jerk so realizing that the divine powers of heaven aren't all perfect and lovey dovey might be less of a deal breaker for them since they more or less accepted that the deity they would worship would pile s*** on them every now and again and still kept on worshiping him.

Though of course the one sticking point might be that, well dot the Jews really have a version of Armageddon? If so what is it like? Because while they might not have been surprised to find out that God was an asshole, they might have been a bit more surprised to find that they dropped the ball on the entire Jesus thing... or would they? No one earth knows that Jesus is up in heaven smoking pot, so I wonder what theories the people of Earth have regarding Jesus' divinity given that we've got a "Jewish God" who is delivering a "Christian Armageddon".

[Darth Yan]

damn euology. that's pretty freaking intense. Send it to Stewart, or have him make a reference. but to be fair, ben-shosan was duped, and the weapon's officer didn't know the weapons were to be set for the other countries. If he knew, he might have refused. Yitzhak's the only one who deserves to endure the torture, since he decieved his fellow officers to make it possible.

[Eulogy]

damn euology. that's pretty freaking intense. Send it to Stewart, or have him make a reference.

Stuart does read threads. My post is there for all to see, and Stuart can take as much time as he wants reading it. If he wants to use the idea, than that's fine as long as I get credit for it, of course.

but to be fair, ben-shosan was duped, and the weapon's officer didn't know the weapons were to be set for the other countries. If he knew, he might have refused. Yitzhak's the only one who deserves to endure the torture, since he decieved his fellow officers to make it possible.

The public doesn't know this, and neither does the Alliance. I can see the others getting out of torture if, upon realizing what really happened, they mutiny and present Shitzhak's asshole on a silver platter to the Alliance and of course testify against him. That of course doesn't unnuke Tel Aviv and the former residents will still be more than a little ticked off that the crew didn't stop the nuking and the attempted nukings. That means that they'd better watch their backs; there are more than a few unhinged people in Hell and Earth - they could very well end up being tortured anyway.

Shitzhak of course is fucked no matter what he does. Even if he evades capture, it's still only a matter of time until he gets sent to the still human-controlled Minos Plains. I don't expect him to successfully hide until he dies, however; the mere fact that he betrayed Humanity and was a willing pawn does not speak highly of his intelligence. Even if he did end up going to Heaven after his death it's still only a matter of time before the humans conquer it, despite what the Whore did to Jerusalem.

If anything, he saw the rampage and thought, "screw this, I'm throwing in my lot with the angels" even though critical thinking would tell him a different story. Hell, if he had waited a few more days Heaven would be having its shit ruined and he would not have reason to believe the humans were losing (and Tel Aviv would not be radioactive rubble, either).

But, just like Caesar bluffed the demon commander into joining him, Shitzhak was bluffed into playing Global Thermonuclear War. But unlike the demon commander, Shitzhak will end up regretting his actions even if it takes him thousands of years.

Come to think of it, the human doctors that treated Uriel and are now treating the Whore had damn well better keep a low profile. If word gets out that they saved the life of the monster that snuffed out thousands, and healed the bitch that slaughtered thousands more, they'll be put on the torture rack beside the Whore, having holes and lacerations torn into them with the bones of the Scarlet Beast.

[Pelranius]

Just looking at command and control system and location of the Israeli sub, wouldn't it been plotted electronically?

[Jamesfirecat]

To be fair, I don't think you can really make a case that the launching of those nukes helped the whore and her pet escape. It's pretty clear that as she was working through the city she got bombed and designed to go back to Heaven then and there, those nuclear missiles weren't suppose to have been launched at all, or even launched at her, he just used that as an excuse and she never managed to make it to the empty ground where she could be "safely" nuked.

Not that what he did wasn't horrible, but lets be fair and "give the devil his due" a phrase which even as I type it no longer rings quite as true as it once did given that he's been all exploded and what not.... I wonder if there was enough left of him for people to be selling chunks of Satan on Ebay....

Edit: WHOOPS Totally misread the above post, oh wow my bad. Still it raises a good question on one hand the doctor and nurse are clearly being more or less held at gun point and told that if they don't treat these people/things then they'll die, and if they do a bad job treating them they'll probably also be killed.

That said Samuel Mudd only ended up serving 4 years in prison before he was pardoned so I think the Doctor and Nurse should be be able to get out of things okay, though of course a lot of it also depends on how exactly things in heaven turn out and what happens to their boss/owner.

It should be interesting to see if they can actually manage to properly treat Fluffy actually...

Damn it I'm a doctor not a veterinarian!

[Pelranius]

Considering Fluffy's size, they might need a lot of help in the form of other people, lower ranking Angels or humans, to tend to the red one. Though the Doctor and Nurse could blame whatever goes wrong on Fluffy on the help.

[Simon_Jester]

It seems likely that the nuclear strike was the work of the "second conspiracy." But that raises an interesting question: how did this conspiracy know who to subvert? The odds that they'd have agents in position to do that are insanely low unless they've subverted much of the human race (in which case their presence should have become known by now, to the readers if not human leaders in-setting), or unless they specifically targeted people who might one day have the authority to launch nuclear missiles. But that implies a great deal more knowledge of human weapons and organization than anyone else in Heaven or Hell has shown...

Marosy stared at the naval officer in awed disbelief. “I’ve heard of things like that happening. I never thought I would actually be present to see one. If somebody was to write that into a novel, nobody would believe it. Yet you imbeciles have done it, not once but twice? Give me strength. Have you people learned nothing in the forty years since you last pulled something like that off? Then you just shot up a ship belonging to your only ally.

Do we have reason to believe that this was factor in the USS Liberty bombing? I hadn't heard of it, but my knowledge of the incident is extremely limited.

[Blayne]

Who wants to bet Yahweh is obstificating stupidity.

[Darth Wong]

Not to be a nitpicker, but ...

Their tale find split open and spread out, stopping the bomb's forward movement and slowing their descent so the four F-111s could get clear.

I'm guessing that should be "tail fins", and it wasn't noticed because the spell checker identified them as valid words.

It seems likely that the nuclear strike was the work of the "second conspiracy." But that raises an interesting question: how did this conspiracy know who to subvert? The odds that they'd have agents in position to do that are insanely low unless they've subverted much of the human race (in which case their presence should have become known by now, to the readers if not human leaders in-setting), or unless they specifically targeted people who might one day have the authority to launch nuclear missiles. But that implies a great deal more knowledge of human weapons and organization than anyone else in Heaven or Hell has shown...

Most likely they simply targeted someone high up in the Israeli military organization: a decision which does not require much in the way of special knowledge. Such a person could then handle all of the operational details and feed them potential candidates for subversion at the foot soldier level.

In other words, it is doubtful that this infiltration stops at the lieutenant.