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A particularly good chapter Stuart.

I'd join Mark in querying - why 50 kts. Apart from the artillery shells that Mark referred to, what is reasonably available that won't be so obviously heavy, or am I getting into finger breaking territory there?

Whatever, it does present huge problems for Michael. Yes he's lost a big shipment. But it shows that humans now know of his "needs". Running his op in Heaven just got so much harder given the importance of human sourced "products". And that includes innocuous items like Gatorade.

"Hell had tons of harpies, but harpies were short ranged and too slow to engage fixed wing aircraft effectively. Angels aren't any faster, but they're much longer ranged, which offsets the speed disadvantage somewhat. It also makes close air support of ground formations extremely difficult..."

It has already been postulated that angels are multi-purpose whereas there are different demons for different roles - classic trident armed demons, harpies, naga et al.

"If you pop troops out of a portal right into the middle of the Eternal City, you're stuck in house to house infantry fighting with the local angel population, who are about as tough as the demons that gave 10th Mountain a beating at Hit."

An assault unit now would be better equipped than the 10th Mountain. Eg, .50 longarms, more grenade launchers. And angels, being multi-purpose, may just be jacks of all trades, masters of none. The demons did indeed attack the Eternal City istelf.

You know...

Michael opened the portal and sent the cart back, and almost at the same time our heroic Captain Wong screams in through ANOTHER portal, blasts and Angel, and flies back out.

Michael won't have any way of knowing that was Uriel. And he probably won't know that there WAS a nuke in the cart either. He might just jump to the conclusion that there was some kind of technology inside the cart that triggered when he brought it through, somehow letting Earth 'lock on' to Heaven and generate their own portal in tandem, sending an aircraft or something through to check out the situation.

It doesn't really matter much in the long run as ultimately he DID give Earth the key to Heaven, apparently, by opening the portal with all of that monitoring equipment pointing at him. But he might now not see that portal as Uriel failing to return, and as Earth screwing around.

Chris OFarrell wrote:It doesn't really matter much in the long run as ultimately he DID give Earth the key to Heaven, apparently, by opening the portal with all of that monitoring equipment pointing at him.

Thanks for saying better than I did why fictional Petraeus seems so "callous" about the loss of CPT Madeuce's team.

Very nice chapter. The We Will Rock You moment was enough to mark this as one of the best chapters so far IMHO... and then Wong groin-shots Uriel twice with missiles. I really didn't think it could get better... until Michael demonstrates he's not just a mastermind, he's also good at thinking under pressure.

That's at least three CMoA in my book. Well done.

JBG wrote:"Hell had tons of harpies, but harpies were short ranged and too slow to engage fixed wing aircraft effectively. Angels aren't any faster, but they're much longer ranged, which offsets the speed disadvantage somewhat. It also makes close air support of ground formations extremely difficult..."

It has already been postulated that angels are multi-purpose whereas there are different demons for different roles - classic trident armed demons, harpies, naga et al.

True, but that's not reassuring when you're flying over them. The angels' integral trumpeting ability is actually somewhere close to AAA in its effectiveness, at least over short ranges; like AAA it forces aircraft to operate faster and higher than the ground troops would like. Once they're airborne you can go after them with your own AA weapons; taking them out might actually get easier.

"If you pop troops out of a portal right into the middle of the Eternal City, you're stuck in house to house infantry fighting with the local angel population, who are about as tough as the demons that gave 10th Mountain a beating at Hit."

An assault unit now would be better equipped than the 10th Mountain. Eg, .50 longarms, more grenade launchers. And angels, being multi-purpose, may just be jacks of all trades, masters of none. The demons did indeed attack the Eternal City istelf.

Yes. And they lost, which should give everyone some pause. What I'm trying to get at here is that angels are at least roughly as dangerous in close combat as demons of equal rank... which means you do not want them getting anywhere near your soft, squishy infantrymen. Yes, the infantry can take them down, but it won't be nearly as one-sided as you'd like your battle to be, especially in close quarters where you can't use artillery support because the artillery hasn't been hauled through the portal yet.

I mean, this is just common sense: you're fighting an enemy with swords; you don't want your initial beachhead to be in a place where they can pile in on you. You want it to be out somewhere you can roll a battalion of armored cavalry through the portal to set up a perimeter with nice mile-long lines of sight all around.

Edward Yee wrote:

Chris OFarrell wrote:It doesn't really matter much in the long run as ultimately he DID give Earth the key to Heaven, apparently, by opening the portal with all of that monitoring equipment pointing at him.

Thanks for saying better than I did why fictional Petraeus seems so "callous" about the loss of CPT Madeuce's team.

I don't think he was being callous so much as being a General, and a good one. And just to offer my 10 cents on this topic...

This is a war, and in war, good men die for the sake of the mission. Petraeus risked a squad or so of men for the chance to force a perma-portal into Heaven at best, and hopefully get a lot of impossibly valuable intel about Heaven and how to get to it, at worst. He also clearly looked to risk at least one person there who was going down soon anyway and would probably prefer to just end it in the nanosecond of a fireball...

Remember, this is the guy who coldly put an infintry brigade into a house to house fight against several legions of Baldricks at Hit, well before the US upgraded their PBI kit with rifles capable of doing the damage they needed, and with no organic air support, and even no helicopter support, because he *needed* to see how well infantry could do in such a situation sooner rather then later.

Its easy in a Holywood film to have the Generals break down and rant over the death of 'a few good men' or something, but 5 Star Generals get paid to look at the 'big' picture, not the small one.

Chris OFarrell wrote:
Its easy in a Holywood film to have the Generals break down and rant over the death of 'a few good men' or something, but 5 Star Generals get paid to look at the 'big' picture, not the small one.

The team in question, certainly its leader, was dead anyway, better they go out doing something useful than a heathy team.

drakensis wrote:Very nice chapter. The We Will Rock You moment was enough to mark this as one of the best chapters so far IMHO... and then Wong groin-shots Uriel twice with missiles. I really didn't think it could get better... until Michael demonstrates he's not just a mastermind, he's also good at thinking under pressure.

Honestly? I liked everything but that. It was all nice and dramatic and then the bit with Uriel going down with his eyes crossed from getting his nutsack blown off by AIR-120s was completely SoD breaking for me.

There's an important difference there. Stuart didn't say he went down with his eyes crossed, or even that he was hit in the groin (..I think; that last one may be misremembered); instead, it was mentioned that the pilot was bragging about that for years afterwards.

Pilots will do that. It seems perfectly realistic to me, and funny enough to keep in.

Baughn wrote:There's an important difference there. Stuart didn't say he went down with his eyes crossed, or even that he was hit in the groin (..I think; that last one may be misremembered); instead, it was mentioned that the pilot was bragging about that for years afterwards.

Pilots will do that. It seems perfectly realistic to me, and funny enough to keep in.

Well whatever. It was the line that did it. Maybe I'm just a bore but I wouldn't have written it that way.

Then again, I'm not published, either.

really? I looked on amazon and it wasn't there.

Sweet update, shame the nuke didn't go off in heaven, granted there's a lot of innocents there.

Baughn wrote:Portals do pass electromagnetic radiation.

They're transparent; you can see through them, and there's no reason to think visible light is the exception here. However, since there's a potential energy barrier in the portals, any EM radiation that passes through should be redshifted slightly. This effect will probably not be noticable without special equipment.

Uhm... I dispute your conclusion. Portals do NOT pass electromagnetic radiation, because they had to run wire from the Earth side to the Hell side of the Iraq portal to establish communications. Further, the simple fact that a portal looks like a black ellipse rather than an elliptical "window" to the other side makes it obvious that visible light, at least, does not freely pass through a portal.

Chris OFarrell wrote:

Edward Yee wrote:

Chris OFarrell wrote:It doesn't really matter much in the long run as ultimately he DID give Earth the key to Heaven, apparently, by opening the portal with all of that monitoring equipment pointing at him.

Thanks for saying better than I did why fictional Petraeus seems so "callous" about the loss of CPT Madeuce's team.

I don't think he was being callous so much as being a General, and a good one. And just to offer my 10 cents on this topic...

This is a war, and in war, good men die for the sake of the mission. Petraeus risked a squad or so of men for the chance to force a perma-portal into Heaven at best, and hopefully get a lot of impossibly valuable intel about Heaven and how to get to it, at worst. He also clearly looked to risk at least one person there who was going down soon anyway and would probably prefer to just end it in the nanosecond of a fireball...

Remember, this is the guy who coldly put an infintry brigade into a house to house fight against several legions of Baldricks at Hit, well before the US upgraded their PBI kit with rifles capable of doing the damage they needed, and with no organic air support, and even no helicopter support, because he *needed* to see how well infantry could do in such a situation sooner rather then later.

Its easy in a Holywood film to have the Generals break down and rant over the death of 'a few good men' or something, but 5 Star Generals get paid to look at the 'big' picture, not the small one.

Something that I have read, (I think on this board, actually) is that a good general must love his men, but a great general must be willing to destroy that which he loves.

I think that was mentioned in the Killer Angels by Jeff Shaara, when Lee was talking to Longstreet.

It may well have been, but I didn't read that book, so I'm pretty sure I saw it here.

Yes, thank you, I misremembered that; fortunately, three or four of you quickly popped up to correct me.

Although, it seems very odd to me that wired conduction works, when EM isn't otherwise passed. There's no fundamental difference, and EM radiation is also responsible for things like keeping molecules from flying apart.. hm, though I suppose that could connect to the way electricity misbehaves in hell.

Ted C wrote:Uhm... I dispute your conclusion. Portals do NOT pass electromagnetic radiation, because they had to run wire from the Earth side to the Hell side of the Iraq portal to establish communications. Further, the simple fact that a portal looks like a black ellipse rather than an elliptical "window" to the other side makes it obvious that visible light, at least, does not freely pass through a portal.

Actually, the first thing to go into Hell was a Predator drone. Since the drone was able to send images out, and the controller was able to send signals in, radio waves could obviously pass through the portal.

Baughn wrote:Although, it seems very odd to me that wired conduction works, when EM isn't otherwise passed. There's no fundamental difference, and EM radiation is also responsible for things like keeping molecules from flying apart.. hm, though I suppose that could connect to the way electricity misbehaves in hell.

Even though EM radiation may not be passed, wired conduction through a portal would not depend upon this, seeing as it is governed by the physical movement of electrons first and foremost. Individual electrons would be moving across the portal barrier at their drift velocity, and then normal operation would resume on the other side of the portal. I don't think the delay would be very large, seeing as although the electron drift velocity is quite slow, this would only matter at the portal interface itself, which is very thin.

Well, you still have to explain why the wire doesn't fall apart, with the near-field electrostatic effect meant to keep its distinct molecules connected apparently (not) blocked.

Jamesfirecat wrote:

Michael may rationalize the nuclear strike as Bowl 4; he did in fact deliver an awful lot of fire there.

The only problem with this idea is that the blast clearly went up and at no point did it fall down, so that's more like fire shooting out of the ground than fire falling from the sky.

That said oh yeah I think a guy like Michael could sell that to a guy like Yah-Yah as Bowl 4.

It just dawned on me that there's going to be a lot of explaining needing to be done in heaven. Not only has Uriel failed his mission again, his attempt to escape allowed a human aircraft into heaven, albeit briefly - and an angel was turned into red rain as a result. If nothing else, word of this is going to spread amongst the masses - it was most likely witnessed by a lot of people/angels.

And if Michael was smart enough to figure out that there was something nasty in the cart, then he's also going to realize that humans might have also been using it as a beacon into heaven. I imagine that he's going to have to advance whatever timetable he's operating on, and being forced to do so may very well wreck his plans.

Ted C wrote: Uhm... I dispute your conclusion. Portals do NOT pass electromagnetic radiation, because they had to run wire from the Earth side to the Hell side of the Iraq portal to establish communications. Further, the simple fact that a portal looks like a black ellipse rather than an elliptical "window" to the other side makes it obvious that visible light, at least, does not freely pass through a portal.

Visible light might not pass, but radio waves sure as shit do. This was explicitly demonstrated by the fact that the first human weapon to pass through the portal ever back in Armageddon was a radio controlled Predator drone. It flew through, employed weapons under constant human control with a steaming video feed no less, and then flew back.

Chris OFarrell wrote:Remember, this is the guy who coldly put an infintry brigade into a house to house fight against several legions of Baldricks at Hit, well before the US upgraded their PBI kit with rifles capable of doing the damage they needed, and with no organic air support, and even no helicopter support, because he *needed* to see how well infantry could do in such a situation sooner rather then later.

This is actually the very first thing I thought about when Darth Wong (to differentiate from the fictional Squid pilot) asked about GEN Petraeus. I think many of us have forgotten that Tucker McElroy -- who we've followed from the resistance with Aeneas and Oro all the way through the attack on Palelabor and beyond -- was one of those in "Mango-Four" KIA in Hit. In fairness, in the general's view the armored vehicles that did so well out in the open would have been hampered by the urban terrain, but he approved the brigade's temporarily cutting off its own retreat, and he did think what you just described.

So long as the telemetry was received and actionable, strategically the "sting" operation was a success.

Baughn wrote:Well, you still have to explain why the wire doesn't fall apart, with the near-field electrostatic effect meant to keep its distinct molecules connected apparently (not) blocked.

The portal might have frequency-dependent permittivity and/or permeability, in which case its ability to pass EM radiation would likewise be frequency-dependent. Above some cutoff frequency, the portal would be either opaque or reflective (depending on details).

Real materials have this property, which is why three meter FM radio waves can pass through the walls of your house but 600 nm visible light can't.

Electrostatic and magnetostatic forces would be unaffected; you'd only have problems when you tried to run very high frequency oscillations through the portal. If the critical frequency is in the THz range or higher, you'd wind up with a portal that doesn't interfere with electrostatic forces or radio waves but is completely opaque to visible light... unless I'm missing something.

Sea Skimmer wrote:It flew through, employed weapons under constant human control with a steaming video feed no less, and then flew back.

I don't recall any Predators broadcasting demon porn from Hell... ever.