The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Ruadhan2300]

given heaven is supposed to be paved with gold, lined with jewels and filled with light. a heaven camo pattern probably won't stand a chance of resembling anything mankind has ever or will ever use anywhere else XD
think Joseph and his Technicolor Raincoat and you're probably halfway there

truth be told, I'd expect various shades of metallics. though I can't imagine them bothering to use metallics, they'd cost too much. so possibly as has been said, snow camo or similar. but most likely they'll just send what they have. so I'd expect soldiers with hell-camo being the norm.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Some variant of urban cammo is probably the way to go IF we start fighting house-to-house in the Eternal City. I'm hoping that we can force a surrender similar to the way we did in Dis.

[Xenophobe3691]

I want to see what would happen as soon as Yahweh realizes we're chucking nukes around...

[TithonusSyndrome]

RE: the Heaven camo pattern; how much has been said about Heaven's terrain and geography, anyways? We know the sky is blue and they don't live on clouds, but aside from that, surprisingly little has been said about what the area around the Eternal City looks like, if there are mountains or bodies of water around, or even something as simple as whether or not plant life thrives on it's own in a way that wasn't possible in Hell.

[old Infantryman]

You don't need a perfect colour-match in order to be effectively camouflaged, any pattern that disrupts your outline is sufficient - and anyone who knows his business concerning taking proper advantage of cover can move across country without detection, even in a mylar top hat and tails.

The principle purpose of those silly cam patterns worn today is to boost personal morale.

[Nematocyst]

RE: the Heaven camo pattern; how much has been said about Heaven's terrain and geography, anyways? We know the sky is blue and they don't live on clouds, but aside from that, surprisingly little has been said about what the area around the Eternal City looks like, if there are mountains or bodies of water around, or even something as simple as whether or not plant life thrives on it's own in a way that wasn't possible in Hell.

The sky in Heaven is white. Mike Wong notices this during his brief run through.
Plant life seems to thrive in Heaven (or at least Michael's weeds do). There might be native plants not present on Earth, even.

I'm sure we'll have more details on Heaven's geography and terrain when we get there.

Some variant of urban cammo is probably the way to go IF we start fighting house-to-house in the Eternal City. I'm hoping that we can force a surrender similar to the way we did in Dis.

I for one would love to see human infantry fighting angels.
About the surrender, what would the conditions be? Yahweh's head on a plate doesn't sound like enough.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Well, what CAN we do to the angels? It seems like for the most part they've been as duped by Yaweh as most demons were by Satan. Aside from those who have directly participated in the abuse/mistreatment of humans or conducted actual attacks on earth, most of the angels of heaven are just citizens and if they get a leadership which surrenders we won't be able to do much to them.

Remember after Abigor was installed in hell? The Liberation Army was just passing out food and aid and making sure humans and orcs were safe and nobody was actually rising up and killing demons en masse.

[Nematocyst]

Well, what CAN we do to the angels? It seems like for the most part they've been as duped by Yaweh as most demons were by Satan. Aside from those who have directly participated in the abuse/mistreatment of humans or conducted actual attacks on earth, most of the angels of heaven are just citizens and if they get a leadership which surrenders we won't be able to do much to them.

Remember after Abigor was installed in hell? The Liberation Army was just passing out food and aid and making sure humans and orcs were safe and nobody was actually rising up and killing demons en masse.

But there was a lot of 'softening' beforehand.
And I'm sure an Archangel or two will assemble his armies against us, and that's without counting the Angels that do like Yahweh.

Or better: that they simply lie down and die. We replay the Message to them as our condition.
Die in their own terms, or ours.

[TithonusSyndrome]

You don't need a perfect colour-match in order to be effectively camouflaged, any pattern that disrupts your outline is sufficient - and anyone who knows his business concerning taking proper advantage of cover can move across country without detection, even in a mylar top hat and tails.

The principle purpose of those silly cam patterns worn today is to boost personal morale.

I'm not interested in trying to make a camo pattern that is a one-to-one match for the terrain, I simply bring it up in light of the fact that we know so very little about what kind of a place Heaven is like. Hell is a smouldering wasteland post-supervolcano, but what of Heaven? Is it hilly? Rocky? Arid? Temperate? We've spent more than a few updates there, and yet know so little about anything outside of the Eternal City.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. At a guess, it's got more or less Earthly biomes. May have a really nice climate, assuming that wasn't an outright lie. And I see no reason for it to be: we've got a fiery, ash-choked Hell after all.

[GrayAnderson]

You don't need a perfect colour-match in order to be effectively camouflaged, any pattern that disrupts your outline is sufficient - and anyone who knows his business concerning taking proper advantage of cover can move across country without detection, even in a mylar top hat and tails.

The principle purpose of those silly cam patterns worn today is to boost personal morale.

I'm not interested in trying to make a camo pattern that is a one-to-one match for the terrain, I simply bring it up in light of the fact that we know so very little about what kind of a place Heaven is like. Hell is a smouldering wasteland post-supervolcano, but what of Heaven? Is it hilly? Rocky? Arid? Temperate? We've spent more than a few updates there, and yet know so little about anything outside of the Eternal City.

If I had to guess, the Eternal City is temperate. I'm guessing that in addition, a large portion of the population is centered there, with outlying areas mainly serving to funnel needed resources into it. Somehow, Yahweh in the story doesn't seem to be the type of guy to encourage any development outside of limited local stuff outside of his city.

[Saint_007]

So what's happening with two people? By which I mean Lt. Yitzchak and the Archangel Azrael specifically? Sure, we've heard that the former sang like a canary the moment it turned out Azrael lied to him and he appeared in Hell, but we had an appearance by Kathryn Branch, the traitor from DIMON (even though she is roughed up a bit too much). Even though she is a traitor, the best way to punish her is to show Heaven get blown up - but since that won't happen for a while, we're content to let her rot in jail.

And how is Azrael anyways? Last we saw, he was hurt when it turned out the humans weren't as puny as he thought they were. And how many of his choir/troops survived the blast?

And yeah, Heaven's camo is probably temperate (greens) with a bit of gray for urban combat.

[Hofner1962]

And yeah, Heaven's camo is probably temperate (greens) with a bit of gray for urban combat.

Or wings and a halo for everyone

[Nematocyst]

And yeah, Heaven's camo is probably temperate (greens) with a bit of gray for urban combat.

Or wings and a halo for everyone

I can see a few flaws with that, but it would be awesome.

So what's happening with two people? By which I mean Lt. Yitzchak and the Archangel Azrael specifically? Sure, we've heard that the former sang like a canary the moment it turned out Azrael lied to him and he appeared in Hell, but we had an appearance by Kathryn Branch, the traitor from DIMON (even though she is roughed up a bit too much). Even though she is a traitor, the best way to punish her is to show Heaven get blown up - but since that won't happen for a while, we're content to let her rot in jail.

And how is Azrael anyways? Last we saw, he was hurt when it turned out the humans weren't as puny as he thought they were. And how many of his choir/troops survived the blast?

And yeah, Heaven's camo is probably temperate (greens) with a bit of gray for urban combat.

Yitzchak was fooled by Azrael, Branch betrayed us (because Michael told her to do so) with nothing in exchange.
Azrael is wounded, how heavily is not known, but it sounds like he's still alive. Kinda surprising how much damage a missile that wasn't even designed to deal damage can dish out.

[MondoMage]

Yitzchak was fooled by Azrael, Branch betrayed us (because Michael told her to do so) with nothing in exchange.
Azrael is wounded, how heavily is not known, but it sounds like he's still alive. Kinda surprising how much damage a missile that wasn't even designed to deal damage can dish out.

From the description it sounded like the missile has been altered a bit from the original design. The steel wire-wrapped warhead and such makes me think they made some alterations. Changes that - in addition to closing the portal - are designed to cause as much havoc amongst those near the portal's other side (who would most likely be the ones keeping it open) as possible.

[JBG]

So what's happening with two people? By which I mean Lt. Yitzchak and the Archangel Azrael specifically? Sure, we've heard that the former sang like a canary the moment it turned out Azrael lied to him and he appeared in Hell, but we had an appearance by Kathryn Branch, the traitor from DIMON (even though she is roughed up a bit too much). Even though she is a traitor, the best way to punish her is to show Heaven get blown up - but since that won't happen for a while, we're content to let her rot in jail.

And how is Azrael anyways? Last we saw, he was hurt when it turned out the humans weren't as puny as he thought they were. And how many of his choir/troops survived the blast?

And yeah, Heaven's camo is probably temperate (greens) with a bit of gray for urban combat.

What is happening to those two is obviously a matter for future chapters but the detail and the timing are matters for the author. Anything else is pure speculation and Stuart has a long established habit/pattern of throwing in curve balls. I'd suggest you just flow with the story.

The moment Kathryn Bush committed her treason her life was forfeit. Simpliciter. Plus, being nice goes out the window when the threat is so existential to humanity. She is a candidate for the ninth circle and deserves absolutely no sympathy.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd be totally on board with that approach if I thought Ms. Branch had, at any step in the process that led her to treason against humanity, made a rational decision based on some remote semblance of self-interest.

As it is, part of me thinks of her as on par with, say, Raymond Shaw from The Manchurian Candidate- only worse. She was literally born and bred to think of her own species as an inferior chew-toy in the hands of malevolent alien gods, and to consider this the natural order of the universe, to the point where it neither needed to be questioned nor even could be questioned. She was never sane, and she was molded quite carefully to become exactly what she is and do exactly what she did. To treat her as a rational agent capable of making moral decisions (and who therefore "deserves" certain treatment when they make immoral decisions) makes no sense under any ethical system I can think of.

And yes, I know that it's unrealistic to expect that to matter in practice. In practice, the straight pragmatic argument of "shot to encourage the others" tends to dominate everything else.

I still don't like it.

[Ruadhan2300]

I have to agree with Simon to an extent.
after all, to raise a child is essentially benevolent brainwashing, we give them our ideals, our knowledge, our "moral Compass" and so on. the expectation is never ever that they will pick up their own. so when someone raises their child with wildly different ideals than our own, say for example "to think of her own species as an inferior chew-toy in the hands of malevolent alien gods, and to consider this the natural order of the universe, to the point where it neither needed to be questioned nor even could be questioned" then what can we do?
this is a person working with fundamentally different ground-rules than a so-called normal person. and should be treated as such. based on those rules, everything she did was quite clear and rational. there is no rational punishment for a person who is following the rules. the only real solutions I can see are 're-education' or death.

as simon says, (o.0) it'd be unrealistic to expect any of that to make a difference in the decisions. she's living in a world which works to -our- rules. and in order for the justice system to be fair it must treat all as equals. she'll be either bunged into hell, killed and bunged into hell or sent to quantanamo, die (eventually) and be bunged into hell.

[Stuart]

Conference Room, The Senate, New Rome, New Roman Republic, Hell

"Every time we tried to change the design, they beat us with canes." The head of the sales delegation from Bombardier Aviation spoke with emphasized ruefulness.

"I did not think your companies treated people like that." Gaius Julius Caesar was confused by the statement which didn’t seem to match anything he'd learned recently.

"Gaius, every so often an expression enters the language and becomes widely used for a while until everybody gets bored with it. This was one, I believe it started in the Air Force and has spread everywhere. It means that a certain course of action or idea is strongly discouraged by those in authority. They don’t really get beaten with canes." Jade Kim turned her attention to the man from Bombardier. "What changes did you want to make?"

"The ones we had to make were mostly in the air intake system. The original Hawker Hunter had narrow wing-root intakes. By the time we had installed the air filters, the air flow to the engine was so reduced that it caused the Avon to be running on the verge of stalling. So we had to enlarge the air intakes to compensate. It helped that the original intakes were very inefficient by modern standards and our computer design facilities were able to clean them up a lot. All in all, even with the filters in place, we are getting good air flow to the engine and the performance penalty is much less than aircraft that had the filters added on afterwards. So, we thought by going to a thinner wing, we would get better performance. That's when they beat us.

"Once we lost that battle, we changed the underwing hard points as well. We were lucky, there were 48 Hunters in flying condition and the RAF stood up an entire wing equipped with them. So, we have plenty of flying specimens to work with and a lot of the tooling was available. Here in Canada, Bombardier got the job of setting up a production line for them. The Avon was available, Rolls-Royce was selling them for power generation until 2006 so all the equipment for the engines was available. We took the Swiss-modified Hunter FGA.9 as a baseline. That gave us two fuselage hard points, we recommend they be used for drop tanks, and six wing hardpoints. The inner pair are stressed for 2,000 pounds, the outer four are rigged for 1,000 pounds each. Total warload, 8,000 pounds plus the four 30mm cannon in the nose."

"Boeing want us to buy the A-45. What do you say about that?" Caesar was watching carefully and learning.

"The A-45 is a very good aircraft. Of course, it costs three times as much as the Bombardier Hunter, has a long waiting list of clients and doesn’t carry the warload our aircraft does. It has five hardpoints, we have eight and it has only a single 20mm gun. It's 70 miles per hour slower and only has half the rate of climb of the Hunter. What is more, as a non-American company, we can offer incentives that Boeing cannot equal. For example, we can take payment in kind. Oil for example, or minerals. Our bid includes a number of counter-trade scenarios that may interest you. Finally, Hunter spares are made in a lot of countries, you won't be tied to us as suppliers. I believe you are having trouble getting spare parts from the Americans already?"

"Spares and personnel. It's becoming much harder to recruit skilled second-life people for our armed forces." Kim paused for a second. "What's the order backlog on the Bombardier Hunter like? You're not one of the big aircraft companies."

"We're building for the Canadian Air Force only at the moment. If you sign up now, a letter of intent will do, we'll allocate you places on the production line, alternating with RCAF aircraft. First aircraft to be delivered six months after we receive the order. That's assuming you want the same avionics fit of course. A letter of intent commits you to nothing until the terms and conditions of the contract are finalized."

Caesar looked at Kim who nodded almost imperceptibly. "Very well Mr Clarkson. The New Roman Republic will issue you with a letter of intent for 42 Bombardier Hunters, 36 single-seaters and 6 twin-seat aircraft. Payment via negotiated counter-trade. Also, of course, retirement here when you die if that is your wish."

A very happy Bombardier sales team left the conference room. After they had left, there was silence for a couple of minutes before Kim broke it. "Well Gaius, which one of us is going to tell Boeing they can take their A-45 and stuff it?"

Training Camp, 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Demonic), Dis, Hell

"Now that is more like it." Sergeant Anderson watched the daemonic infantry raking the "enemy position" with rifle fire while the human-crewed support weapons hammered it with their mortars and cannon. Although he didn’t realize it, he was watching almost exactly the same display as had been given to Caesar a day earlier. Beside him, Aeneas and Ori watched the attack going home. The daemon infantry rose from their positions and charged while the humans continued to support them. They overran the target position and the exercise ended.

"It works." Ori seemed slightly surprised at the demonstration. "I was expecting the daemons to run into our supporting fire."

"They will." Anderson was uncompromising. "We'll get them to work on a rolling barrage next. That's when we drop a line of artillery rounds across the target area and advance it towards the enemy in small increments. The infantry go in directly behind that barrage. We'll know if they're following the shells closely enough when we start to take casualties from our own artillery fire."

"That's harsh." Aeneas didn’t like what he was hearing very much.

"Do it right and we take fewer casualties from our own fire than we would have done if there's a greater distance between the artillery and the infantry. The one thing we don’t want is the enemy recovering from the barrage before the infantry are on top of them. That happened at the Somme and it cost us 60,000 casualties.
Aeneas whistled softly. "Sixty thousand casualties in a single battle. We never had anything like that."

"No, sixty thousand on the first day of the battle. It went on for months."

There was a grim silence at that number, highlighted by the roar of diesels in the background as the armored personnel carriers picked up their infantry. Eventually, Anderson picked up the conversation. "We're running out of time as well. The Army will be moving soon and I hear we'll be attached to the Commonwealth Army as a reserve unit. Along with Caesar's Third Legion."

"We know a way into Heaven?" Ori was surprised.

"Not yet, but we've been hit by the Seven Bowls of Wrath. The next step is the invasion. As soon as they open a portal from Heaven to Earth, we'll have our way in."

The Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven.

"Is everybody clear on what they have to do?" Michael-Lan looked around the room where the ringleaders in his conspiracy had assembled. They were nodding cautiously, all too aware of the dreadful chance they were taking.

Leilah-Lan raised one hand. "Is there any particular music the bands need to play?"

"Something bouncing and martial. Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries will be good, or Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War. But, let Glenn, Benny and the rest make their pick. They're the experts. We need to get every one of us thinking in harmony, completely synchronized so I can pull in the power. You know that Yah-yah outclasses all of us individually. We have to stand together in harmony and isolate him from any support if we are going to pull this off."

"When do we go? Will they get time to practice?" Leilah was worried, badly so.

"I honestly don’t know. This is the frightening bit, the timing is out of our control. We can set the ball rolling as soon as the pieces are in place but the timing from that point onwards? I have no idea how fast the humans will react, how quickly they can get here or how they will arrive. Yet it's those factors that determine when the coup will take place. Get the bands started now on their rehearsals, tell them it's for a battle of the bands. Say the last one was so popular we're going to make it a regular feature."

"Should we tell them what is really up when we start the coup?"

Michael thought carefully. "Yes. They have a right to know. They don’t have much of a choice in going along but Yah-yah won’t see it that way. If this all goes wrong, they'll be torn apart with the rest of us. So, yeah, tell them what we're doing and why. But only when we're starting, no need to give them time to think."

The group looked nervously at each other. This coup had been in the planning and preparation stage for centuries but now, what had once seemed an abstract and distant possibility, stared them in the face.

"Once the humans arrive, Jesus takes Yah-yah's personal guard into the attack right? What about the human levies." Rafael-Lan was trying to match Michael in running through the available permutations of events.

Michael smiled wryly. "I slipped up there, thankfully Yah-yah didn’t notice. I ordered the preparation of the human levies almost by instinct. I forgot that doing so was telling Yah-yah that the fighting would take place here in Heaven. The human levies can't fight on Earth. That was a bad mistake, but he missed it, I think. Jesus will take the Guard and the levies in. This attack has got to look good. I just hope the humans bring their artillery and aircraft in with them. We need one of their clean sweeps badly. Jesus has to die and I want that guard torn apart. The defeat of the Guard and its levies has got to be stunning and we need the humans to fatten our casualty list."

"What if the humans lose?" Rafael-Lan was right, Michael reflected, this was one of the key turning points in the plan. So much depended on the humans winning this battle, winning it decisively and in the right place.

"Then we're all dead. All of us, the whole Angelic Host. The humans will pull out all the stops and use every weapon they have. Believe me on this, they have some doozies they've only just started to deploy. But, it's unlikely they will lose, very unlikely indeed. Raffie, part of your job is to make sure Jesus is really beautifully misinformed. He's got to go in dumb. Don't let him be clever."

Rafael-Lan nodded. Michael looked around the room again. "Anything else?"

Charmeine-Lan hesitantly put her hand up. "Maion, she told me that she will be going out to Lemuel's tomorrow night."

"Then we have our starting point. I'll make sure I'm over at Lemuel's palace tomorrow. I can find some League of Holy Court business that will keep me there."

"You will move quickly for her?" Charmeine-Lan was upset at her part in this, She knew it was necessary but she didn't like it at all. "She's a nice girl underneath it all. Don’t leave her longer than you have to."

Michael-Lan nodded. "I'll get it sorted as fast as possible. Until then. . . . ."

DIMO(N) Briefing Room, Pentagon, Arlington V.A.

"The invasion is coming?" The question from Defense Secretary Warner was dead neutral, without inflexion. The long-awaited invasion from Heaven had to be due soon and when it came it would be a perfect example of the cliched mixture of problems and opportunities. It would mean a major battle on Earth but would also be the way the route into Heaven could be opened.

"Oh yes, its coming." Norman Baines was firm on that point. In some ways, this would be the culmination of his life's work. The end of days, the final battle. The millennium. It had lots of names and he'd studied all of them for years. Now, he was going to see them. A truly unexpected privilege. "We've had all seven bowls, we've seen off the Leopard Beast and the Scarlet Beast. Now, it’s the Lamb Beast, the Dragon and the invasion. Not necessarily in that order."

"I don't suppose the ancient mythologies say where?" Warner thought that was probably too much to hope for.

"Well, Sir, yes they do. The plains of Megiddo, Armageddon. But, Abigor's host tried that and they walked into the best army we had fielded. they may try somehwere else as a result. But, all these prophecies are centered around the Middle East. If it isn’t one part, it'll be another."

"Doesn't matter anyway. Dave Petraeus has the HEA waiting in Hell. As soon as the Heavenly Host portals in, he's going to portal three army groups in all around it. It's going to be a slaughterhouse." General Bannistre was as non-committal as everybody else.

"General, Sir, I must warn you. The Heavenly Host is a lot more powerful than Abigor's Army was." Baines cranked some numbers quickly in his head. It's likely to have more than twenty million angels in its combat formations."

General Bannistre grinned sympathetically. "Don’t sweat it son. Dave blasted his way into Hell and stormed it with 30 divisions. We're landing three hundred and eighty divisions around the Angelic Host. We'll only be outnumbered four to one. And there'll be no holding back this time, we'll be hitting them with nukes, gas, whatever floats our boat. We weren't ready for Abigor, but we've had a year, 18 months nearly, to get ready for the Host."

"And they'll pay for lying to us, deceiving us, betraying us." President Obama's voice from the end of the briefing table was calm and measured. "Our ammunition stocks are adequate?"

"They are indeed Mister President. We're back to where we were in 2007 at last. Adequate, not over-generous but the production lines are rolling fast. We won’t need so long to replace this lot after we've fired it all off."

The laughter than ran around the room had a vicious edge to it. "And so we should, with a 1.6 trillion dollar defense budget." That put a sad note into Obama's voice, There was so much he had wanted to do, so many changes he wanted to make. Instead, he was presiding over the biggest defense budget in American history, one that was likely to cripple the economy for decades to come. All his plans had come to nothing and he was all too sure he would go down in American history as a wartime leader only.

"Why haven't we seen the Lamb Beast or the Dragon yet Baines?" General Bannistre was worried about that.

"I don’t know Sir. But I have an odd theory. We've been assuming that they were giant monsters like the Scarlet Beast and the Leopard Beast. But suppose they're not. Suppose, just for one, Revelation is allegorical on this one point. The Lamb Beast speaks like a lamb but breathes fire when it has to. Doesn't that sound like Jesus? The lamb of God and all that. And the Dragon Beast, of omnipotent power, could well be Yahweh himself. It's only a theory of course but it would explain why they haven't turned up yet."

"What happens if Yahweh doesn’t invade? Do we have a plan B?" Secretary of State Clinton put the question that was on the back of everybody's mind.

"We do Madam Secretary but we don't like it. It involves punching portals at random until we get lucky. Of course, we could run into something we can't handle very easily that way. That's why we've avoided doing so up to now."

Hillary Clinton nodded. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

Norman Baines made a comic play of going faint and grabbing a chair for support. "Madam Secretary don't ever say that. HE might hear you."

[Guardsman Bass]

Oh, Cthulu - what isn't he involved in these days?

More seriously, though, I'm glad things are finally moving to a head. I'm especially waiting for the point when Michael's grand, elaborate coup plan comes crashing down.

[GrayAnderson]

Hillary Clinton nodded. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

ROFL!!!!! That just made my day!

[JN1]

Yea, the Hawker Hunter lives again! I would hope that the RAF might consider some new ones, perhaps as an alternative to single sea Hawks.
The original FGA.9 and the Swiss modernised version were excellent ground-attack aircraft and they should be simple for a new air force. That said the New Roman Republic will probably be able to attract a lot of ex-air force personnel.

RCAF, have you split the CF, or has the Bombardier representative made a mistake?

[d'Artagnan]

Hillary Clinton nodded. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

That's it. I take back everything bad I said about her during the 2008 Primaries.

[JonB]

Hillary Clinton nodded. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

Yes, yes, YES! That line alone is awesome.

Now, did she already know that before Armageddeon, or did she pick that up later on a 'just in case' basis?

[Saint_007]

...wait, so the Angelic Host will be walking in *blind*? And possibly over an area the humans can bomb with impunity?

Am I hoping for too much at the moment?