The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[GrayAnderson]

And on a vaguely unrelated note, with this post, we're over 1000 posts in the new thread alone.

Edit: And random jokes about "hell money" are coming to mind about GS...

[Shroom Man 777]

Poor Ben. At least he got off lightly, poor guy. Thanas is now a Thailander?

I liked the attack on New York. Not quite as grand as the Sky Volcanoes, but rocks falling down and flattening people? That's pretty cool.

[Pelranius]

And apparently the rocks vaporize upon impact. I wonder how bad that would affect NYC air quality?

[Mayabird]

Poor Michael. Didn't anyone ever tell him that the House ALWAYS wins? I don't think he gets how much the humans already know about what he has done...

He might still 'win'. Remember, he would like to live, but ultimately his goal seems to be avoiding the genocide of his species. There's a good chance he'll get the latter at least.

No, you've got it a bit wrong. Michael's ultimate goal is pulling off a coup in Heaven and sitting on the Celestial Throne himself with the survival of some of the angels being a close second. He's been doing everything to try to make himself king and also along the way make sure he has some subjects left. This is why I'm going to enjoy when his suspicious anachronism stew bites him in the ass and/or he bites a few missiles.

[Pelranius]

Well, I assume that if Michael can't get some sort of puppet government that he'll at least settle for the survival of at least some angels?

Personally I think that even if Michael succeeds and turns Heaven over to the humans, he's so dangerous that part of the surrender will involve him being put into protective custody or committing suicide in return for the angels surviving. Though he seems to lean a bit too much to the self interested side for that to be very realistic.

[JBG]

Well, I assume that if Michael can't get some sort of puppet government that he'll at least settle for the survival of at least some angels?

Personally I think that even if Michael succeeds and turns Heaven over to the humans, he's so dangerous that part of the surrender will involve him being put into protective custody or committing suicide in return for the angels surviving. Though he seems to lean a bit too much to the self interested side for that to be very realistic.

As noted before, Michael's fingerprints are all over the attacks on Earth, putting aside that as Yahweh's No, 1 general he could be at least suspected of being being behind the attacks which have caused massive loss of life and damage to property and infrastructure.

If man bursts into Heaven, IMHO, the best that Michael can expect is close incarceration and an "intensive and robust" debriefing. Followed by a lead injection or some such - "rope, tree, Michael, some assembly required".

The asparagas was a nice touch Stuart.

Something that Supindra has done?

[Pelranius]

As noted before, Michael's fingerprints are all over the attacks on Earth, putting aside that as Yahweh's No, 1 general he could be at least suspected of being being behind the attacks which have caused massive loss of life and damage to property and infrastructure.

If man bursts into Heaven, IMHO, the best that Michael can expect is close incarceration and an "intensive and robust" debriefing. Followed by a lead injection or some such - "rope, tree, Michael, some assembly required".

The asparagas was a nice touch Stuart.

Something that Supindra has done?

Well, Yulupuki and the assorted Gorgons and Naga managed to shift blame for the Detroit and Sheffield attacks completely onto Belial, but I doubt lighting is going to strike the powder store twice.

Michael could try to bargain away info about the other gods, but I doubt he knows enough to be useful.

[Edward Yee]

suspicious anachronism stew

What's this mean?

[Simon_Jester]

You've got a modern style concentration camp run by an Iron Age demon who somehow managed to ingratiate himself with the Heavenly hierarchy. Plus, of course, the angels who were manipulating the nukes, plus... well, let's just say that it would be quite plausible for Michael to get blamed for all the clever, savvy, manipulative "use human techniques against them" stuff that's happened since the war began.

The fact that it's mostly, if not all, his fault is just gravy.

[Mayabird]

Also the human goods that had been smuggled in (the drugs and booze), the market bombings with human-made explosives, and Simon and I are probably missing a few. As I've pointed out before, it doesn't fit with the rest of the environment. Everything else fits with "it's like the world a few thousand years ago but more sparkly" and then you have a concentration camp instead of torture pits or outright executions or whatever the heck they did back then, along with the rest. It'll be pretty damn obvious to the humans that someone has been keeping up with history and is well aware of our doings AND is manipulating things. And Michael has been too personally involved in all his work; there are a lot of people (humans and angels) who could potentially sell him out to save their own hides.

[Shroom Man 777]

This is now why Azrael becomes Micheal's fall guy? Azrael's followers all point to Azrael as the honcho of the conspiracy, since Azrael was the actual-factual guy who ordered the sub-nuking. Micheal kills Azrael off before Azrael can in turn squeal to humans (and give Micheal away) and, viola, Micheal comes out squeaky clean. Add in some positive testimonials from the human beings Micheal's sheltered, and he'll come out as heroic as Hans Landa did from Inglourious Basterds, minus forehead swastika-scarring.

[TimothyC]

Everyone tends to forget that humans saw Micheal save Uriel from the attack on San Diego. I would imagine a Creative D.A. Would get Micheal on an Aiding and Abetting charge.

[Edward Yee]

But I wonder how that DA would react to a fortunes-of-war kinda defense? i.e. him only being witnessed committing the equivalent of CSAR.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. I mean, if aiding and abetting becomes a war crime, then it's because we've decided to kill them all anyway. In which case whether we have any actual crime to charge Michael with specifically is irrelevant.

[tim31]

It was probably tongue in cheek, but TimC's aiding and abbeting charge would be a civil matter in the relevant county, not in The Hague.

[Edward Yee]

Yeah. I mean, if aiding and abetting becomes a war crime, then it's because we've decided to kill them all anyway. In which case whether we have any actual crime to charge Michael with specifically is irrelevant.

Plus if we're going over the edge into intentional "kill 'em all" as opposed to simply being lethal as fuck... isn't that called genocide? There goes that can of worms...

[GrayAnderson]

Yeah. I mean, if aiding and abetting becomes a war crime, then it's because we've decided to kill them all anyway. In which case whether we have any actual crime to charge Michael with specifically is irrelevant.

Plus if we're going over the edge into intentional "kill 'em all" as opposed to simply being lethal as fuck... isn't that called genocide? There goes that can of worms...

My suspicion is that, to paraphrase an old line from Parliament, we're quite jingo on this matter. We badly want to kill someone, we're just not sure who. As unpleasant as it is, there are a lot of humans who I suspect will be at least somewhat satisfied with some indiscriminate fire in the general direction of the angels before moving on.

[Stuart]

New York Air Defense Interception Zone Secondary Command Center, La Guardia Airport, New York, United States

"Manhattan is taking a real pounding." Mayor Bloomberg looked across at the blacked-out island, scarred by the fireballs rising from the multiple impact points. The power over there had failed under the repeated ground shocks and that was adding to the chaos that was developing as people tried to flee the ruthless bombardment. "When can we do something about it?"

"We're trying to get the system online now. The original control was by way of the World Trade Center complex but that's gone. We're trying to reroute around the holes knocked in the net." Colonel Mark Gridley was trying to re-assemble the communications net while he spoke. The problem was that the original flurry of rocks had taken down many of the nodes the system depended on and there was no reliable way of finding out which were up other than by 'binging' them. The good news was that each time he found a functional node, it opened up new prospects for routing signals. Also, a side issue now but one that would become important when the attack was over, the destroyed nodes formed a map of the wrecked areas of the city. Why knew how many people were trapped in the wreckage.

Over on the horizon another series of fireballs rose over Roosevelt Island. The fall of the rocks was intermittent, there would be a flurry of hits and then a pause while there were only a few scattered hits. Almost as if work gangs were rolling the 100-ton rocks through. Which, Gridley thought. was probably exactly what was happening. "Mayor, the damage I'm plotting suggests the portal is drifting up the west side of Manhattan. If it continues on its present course, it'll cross over the Hudson between Hoboken and Union City. We'd better get warnings out to New Jersey."

"I think they're probably better informed than we are at this point." Bloomberg spoke drily, disguising the fact he was horrified by how quickly the city's defense systems had become unglued. It had been almost a year since Sheffield and Detroit had been attacked and, during that time, New York had installed a system that was supposed to stop such attacks in their tracks. Yet, faced with its first assault, the new system had collapsed almost completely.

"Sir, radio message from the Intrepid." Bloomberg knew that the ship was acting as a forward observation point. During the Mobilization she had been considered for restoration to the active fleet but the old lady was too far gone. Still, she had her radios and with the data communications net shot full of holes, she was performing admirably. "She reports a new group of rocks falling just south of her, working their way north west. She says. . . . I'm sorry sir, she's gone off the air. Very suddenly."

Bloomberg's lips twisted. That almost certainly meant the museum ship had taken at least one rock. She might survive it but if she did, she would be a dreadful sight afterwards.

"Sir, I'm through to the portal intercept missiles at Secaucus. They have a firing solution on the portal." Gridley listened for a few seconds. "They can fire as soon as the current rock flurry tapers off. They warn us though, if there's a problem, the missiles will come down in Harlem."

Bloomberg didn’t hesitate. "They may fire when ready, Mister Gridley."

USS Intrepid. New York]

If the 'Evil Eye' hadn't already been firmly aground, she would have been sinking fast. The rock had hit two thirds down the length of her hull, ripping straight through he flight and hangar decks before expending its energy blowing a hole in her bottom and excavating a crater in the soft mud underneath. Looking at her, Norman Orwell thought the ship was putting up a hell of a fight but losing anyway. It was the crater more than anything else, it had stripped the support out from under her. By the way her bow and stern were rising, her back was already broken. She was burning as well, the fires from her hangar deck blazing uncontrolled. The city fire brigades had as much as they could do coping with the damage in the main part of Manhattan. The fires there also out of control and people had to be rescued. The Intrepid could cope on her own.

"Everybody ready?" Orwell looked around at his emergency rescue team. They weren't professional firefighters or emergency medical personnel. They were museum researchers, restorers, administrators, few of them less than fifty and none of them with anything more than rudimentary rescue training. Most of their equipment dated from the Second World War and much of it had seen service when Intrepid had been hit by Kamikaze aircraft off Japan. How well it would work now was an open question. Yet, the people around him nodded and gave thumb's up signs. "Team One, forward, try and get the people there to safety. Team two, with me, we'll go amidships and get the people out of the radio room."

"How many Norman?"

"There should be twelve up front and ten in the radio room." The fact that forty people were about to run onto a burning, wrecked aircraft carrier to rescue twenty two didn’t register with anybody. Rescuing those in danger almost regardless of cost was an ingrained human reaction. The same reaction that would cause half a dozen men to risk – and sometimes lose – their lives to rescue one person from a sinking car in a flooded river or trapped on the ice in a frozen winter. In the final analysis, it was why humans were winning The Salvation War.

Orwell led his group up the gangway that led to the hangar deck abreast of the island. The blast of heat from the fires further aft seemed to engulf him as he entered the hangar and he saw the displays that he had been so proud of were already shattered and broken. That hurt him more than the damage to the ship. As a naval historian, seeing all that history literally going up in smoke was something that cut deep into his heart. "Follow me, we have to get into the island. The radio room is on the second deck. Birkenhead Drill."

He stumbled across the deck, feeling his way through the increasingly-dense smoke. For all its age, his protective gear seemed to be working, he could breath at least. Behind him, members of his team were unreeling safety lines so that they could find their way out of the ship once they had the survivors secured. In front of him was the hatch that led to the island over their heads. The dogs unfastened smoothly, one piece of luck in a night where New York's had run out. He and his team had to get one deck up before they would join the route through the ship that had been cleared for tourists. That would lead them straight up to the radio room. If it was still there.

Under his feet, he could feel the deck still angling as the broken ship settled further into the mud. That mud had almost spelled her doom once, it had been a hell of a job to get her clear of it when she had been towed away for renovation. Orwell scrambled upwards, his feet turning on bits of wreckage that had fallen when the ship had first been hit. Another hatch this one hard to open. The dogs took repeated blows from sledgehammers before they finally sprung open and the hatch was cleared. The good news was, they were level with the flight deck and the way up was easy.

The radio room was a disaster. Parts of the overhead had caved in and the men and women working on the equipment were down, trapped under the beams and debris. Orwell led the way in and started to check the people. One woman, her blonde hair caked and matted with blood groaned as he touched her. She was a priority, the Birkenhead Drill applied here, women and children first. Two of the rescue team came to his aid and they lifted a fallen equipment locker off her. Once they had her free, she was passed down the line to the people waiting to get her off the ship. It wasn't the way the emergency drills said things should be done but this was a special case. A t the rate the fires were spreading, the island would be engulfed soon.

The casualties were being passed out, the three remaining women first, then the men as they were freed from the entangling wreckage that had tried to kill them. By the time the last one was on his way out, the smoke in the radio room was so thick Orwell could hardly breathe even with the aid of his mask and oxygen bottle. He grabbed the line and started to follow it out, feeling the heat of the fires on him as he did so. Down the steps, through the hatches, back on to the hangar deck. The way they had come in was impassible, the fire had already spread to block it, so he, his team and the people from the radio room made their way forward until the way down the forward gangplank was clear.

At least there were some doctors down there now, first aiders anyway. Orwell stood on the top of the gangplank, calling out the names of his team and checking their names off the list as they answered. All twenty accounted for. To his amazement they had been in the ship for less than ten minutes. It had seemed much, much longer. Then, he made his own progress down the brow to the relative safety of the dockside. The men and women from the ship were laid out on the concrete, some sitting up and looking for their rescuers, others laying on the concrete while the first-aiders worked on them. Three were already covered by cloths, for them the rescue had come too late. Orwell looked at the survivors and saw that the blonde woman he had first pulled out of the wrecked radio room was one of those who was able to sit up. She saw him as well, and grabbed his hand. "Thank you. Just, thank you."

It was all she needed to say. Orwell walked down the quay to where his people were reassembling. Even as he did so, he felt the ground trembling under his feet as more rocks slammed into Manhattan. He stopped suddenly, feeling desperately short of breath, his chest hurt and his left arm was alternately numb and cramping. Then his vision blacked out and he crumpled to the ground.

Central Park, New York

The park was filling up as people from the lower half of Manhattan found refuge from the hail of rocks that were slowly battering the city into submission. The police were trying to shepherd people into the park and then keep order while they were there but both tasks would have been beyond their ability individually. Together, they were impossible. Inside the park, it was the mounted police who were most successful at preventing panic from causing an even greater disaster. From the backs of their horses, they had a viewpoint that allowed them to spot trouble-makers and get to the scene before they got out of hand. One man who'd tried to start a fight had been picked up by two officers, turned upside down and had his head pounded on the ground. "Testing the road surface," they'd explained to appreciative onlookers.

Officer Sharon Grimble urged her horse forward and used its weight to push into a knot of people gathered around a woman laying on the grass. "Everything all right here?"

"Fine officer, she just fainted."

"And you are?"

"Her husband, we were in The Sheep Meadow when the rocks started falling. " The man handed up two driving licenses and Grimble used her Maglite to check them against the people she was speaking to. They checked out, husband and wife.

"Do you need a doctor? I can put a call out but it's likely to be a long time before anybody comes."

"It's fine Officer, We'll be fine."

"Officer, its it true the Empire State has been hit?" The voice had a German accent, a tourist? There were such things even with the war on.

"No. All the damage is on the west side of the Island. The last four or five hits went into the Hudson so I think we've seen the worst of things here. Just stay calm and everything will be all right."

She urged her horse forward and moved along the path, watching out for any signs of trouble. Some people faded away into the shadows when they saw her approach but she had neither the time nor the ability to chase after them. Overhead, there was another streak across the sky as a rock hurtled over their heads. A few seconds later, there was the orange glow of a hit on land. It looked like New Jersey was about to get its baptism of fire.

Or was it? The orange streak of the falling rock was immediately answered by two brilliant white streaks form the ground. They screamed overhead, the supersonic bang from their passing causing another wave of panic to start forming in the crowds of refugees. The white flashes ended as quickly as they had formed, vanishing through the portal high over New York.

Plain of Mapheloistamitos, Hell

Azrael knew that the attack was running into its final stages. His work teams were having to bring the great rounded 100-ton rocks in from further away and that meant an ever-increasing delay between the strikes. Soon, he would have to close down this site and evacuate the area. Still, it had been a highly successful attack, almost a hundred rocks had been dumped on the city the other side of the portal. The seventh Bowl of Wrath had been well and truly poured on the humans below. Now, all that was left was to invade them with the Angelic Host and all would be well. Normality would be restored and the divine order of things returned to its rightful place. What, therefore, happened next was the cause of a very brief episode of cognitive dissonance on his part.

The Ares missile was a kludge. Basically it took the airframe and engine of the GMD interceptor and armed it with an EBU-6 warhead. This was simply a larger and more powerful version of the weapon used to close down Belial's Sky Volcanos Everything non-essential had been stripped out of the system to get the greatest possible payload and that included the guidance system. It was, therefore, good shooting that put both missiles through the portal over Manhattan island.

The fuzing system was also lightweight, a simple timer that had been pre-set to explode the warhead a few seconds after launch. The ground computers had known to a millisecond how long it would take for the missiles to reach the portal. They'd added a few milliseconds on top of that to let the missile get some height above the portal and that had been that. Both EBU-6 warheads had exploded in the same millisecond. It was as near to simultaneous as could be managed.

The explosions shut down the portal instantly. They also devastated the arrays of copper rods that had made the portal system possible. The explosions also tore apart the pre-notched steel coil that surrounded the warhead and turned it into a hail of deadly spinning steel fragments that scythed through the work teams that were still gathered around the portal site. Finally, as the metal fragments tore into him, Azrael realized that Michael had been right, it was extremely unwise to underestimate humans. It was a lesson he would need to remember.

News Studio, KOCO Television, Oklahoma City

"And the latest news is that missiles fired by the New York Defense System have closed the portal. A total of 98 rocks each weighing an estimated 100 tons have landed on Manhattan and New Jersey, inflicting catastrophic damage on the west side of Manhattan Island. Known casualties are already in the thousands and we will be getting more accurate figures as the dead start arriving in Hell. Already questions are being asked, why did it take so long to fire the missiles that ended the attack? What went wrong with the system that kept the portal from being closed until after this catastrophic damage had been suffered? This is Brandon Breyer reporting from the Bronx in stricken New York City."

"Thank you Brandon. Well, there is no doubt that this is the long-awaited Seventh Bowl of Wrath, supposedly Heaven's knock-out blow against us. Well, we're still standing Yahweh. The hero of the attack was Norman Orwell, Curator of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space museum in New York. After the carrier was hit by one of the rocks, he led an emergency team of museum staff into the wreckage to pull out the survivors from the destroyed ship. Thanks to his efforts, and those of his colleagues of course, nineteen of the twenty two people known to be on board the Intrepid were rescued alive. Sadly, just after completing this daring rescue, Doctor Orwell suffered a heart attack and died from his exertions. We will be broadcasting an interview with him shortly.

"The surviving senior managerial staff of the Goldman-Sachs bank have just released a press statement. It states that their headquarters building was totally destroyed by a direct hit from a rock with heavy casualties to the partners and senior staff. Due to the resulting reduction in their pension commitments for the next thirty years, the profitability of the bank will be significantly improved this year. As a result, the surviving partners have awarded themselves a special bonus to reflect the improved financial standing of Goldman-Sachs."

Anita Blanton brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Well, nothing to be surprised at there I suppose." She looked away for a moment and her eyes widened. With a level of relish in her voice, she then resumed. "A late breaking piece of news. The deceased partners and senior staff of Goldmans-Sachs Bank have applied for a restraining order against the living partners and senior staff, requesting that they be restrained from awarding themselves a bonus using the assets of the bank pension fund. The deceased members of staff claim that the terms of their contracts do not stipulate that they will lose rights to their pensions by dying and that they are entitled to continuance of their normal pension payments. They also claim that they are being discriminated against simply because they are dead and that they are fully entitled to any bonus payments that are made to living bank members. They are requesting the ACLU take up this case on their behalf.

"Attorneys for the deceased members of Goldmans-Sachs, the law firm of Bleedum, Grabbit and Runne, have also filed suit before the Federal Court asking for an injunction against the Securities Exchange Commission prohibiting the SEC from cancelling the trading licenses of the deceased Goldman-Sachs employees. Filing the action, attorney William Crook said 'Being dead is no reason why somebody should not be a good banker.' The case is expected to go to the Supreme Court before any resolution is reached."

"Yes, Anita, but whose Supreme Court? There's a lot of dead Justices in Hell. They could end up claiming jurisdiction."

"Don't ask me Brandon. I just read the news. On to our next item. With the first oil supplies arriving from Hell, the civilian oil price dropped below three hundred dollars a barrel today for the first time in almost two years. . . . . "

[Burak Gazan]

What, Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe weren't available?

Great chapter

[Simon_Jester]

Good.

Though I'm still a little ambiguous about the effect of those rocks. They're very likely to start secondary fires, but there shouldn't be any primary fire from the impact itself. That leads to my question:

It was the crater more than anything else, it had stripped the support out from under her. By the way her bow and stern were rising, her back was already broken. She was burning as well, the fires from her hangar deck blazing uncontrolled.

What set the fires?

Bloomberg didn’t hesitate. "They may fire when ready, Mister Gridley."

[groans]
Good reference... but, well, groan.

"Attorneys for the deceased members of Goldmans-Sachs, the law firm of Bleedum, Grabbit and Runne,

[groans again, with greater vigor]

[JN1]

Nice work, Stu, shame about the Intrepid though and a good reference to the loss of the Birkenhead, never seen it mentioned in fiction below.
According to the ex-OIC of Greater Manchester Police's Mounted Division one officer on horseback is worth ten on foot. Even the most hardened football hooligan tends to be pretty terrified of half a ton of horse and they are great for pinning a suspect against something. I do remember seeing a pair of NYPD mounted officers many years ago and my abiding memory of them is that their horses are about a hand, or two smaller than the average police horse over here.
I've got a mounted police truncheon from circa 1910 and it is a pretty fearsome looking weapon.

[Flameblade]

Not trying to be a jerk, just pointing out a few things.

The problem was that the original flurry of rocks had taken down many of the nodes the system depended on and there was no reliable way of finding out which were up other than by 'binging' them.

Wouldn't that be "pinging", or was that to illustrate a lack of technological know-how?

Why knew how many people were trapped in the wreckage.

I believe you meant "who" there.

"Attorneys for the deceased members of Goldmans-Sachs, the law firm of Bleedum, Grabbit and Runne, have also filed suit before the Federal Court asking for an injunction against the Securities Exchange Commission prohibiting the SEC from cancelling the trading licenses of the deceased Goldman-Sachs employees.

And here would be "canceling".


Okay, now that my nitpicking has been satisfied, I just want to say this is quite possibly my favorite story online these days. So few stories are about humanity taking on the supernatural and winning.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Jesus Christ, oil was trading at $300 a barrel?! That's almost double its' highest in 2008!

Also...

Sadly, just after completing this daring rescue, Doctor Orwell suffered a heart attack and died from his exertions. We will be broadcasting an interview with him shortly.

That sort of thing is still gonna take some getting used to.

[Simon_Jester]

Jesus Christ, oil was trading at $300 a barrel?! That's almost double its' highest in 2008!

Bidding war; if you can't afford to compete with the prices offered by the military-industrial complex, you don't get to buy oil at all.

As I understand it, that's a big part of what ran prices up so high in '08 in real life. in the Salvation War it would be far, far worse.

[Darth Yan]

how frequent are updates gonna be.