Great Engellex
Established Nation
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OPERATION ORTHRUS
North Thaumantic Liberation
The sound echoed through the amphitheatre, a sonorous drone calling women and men to a realisation of impending climax. The Thaumantic Music Festival 2018 had begun.
Callidora Applebum and Nigellus Ballcocke, two best friends since they were in primary school and now in their twenties, had been waiting in line for alcoholic sustenance, while another friend, Arjuna Agrippa, threw himself at stewards with the desperate hands of a whistling Tom hoping to drag away three golden upgrades to the Pits of Snow. They all stopped short at the noise. Callidora and Nigellus smacked at one another with excitement, then in unison seized whatever bottles were served and started towards the doors. Arjuna was a little slower on the uptake, it took the promise of a night out and the subsequent proof by a tongued kiss, to secure those three tickets. The three of them moved into the vast corridors, everyone moving in the same direction. The three first walked, then jogged, before breaking into sprints, their thumbs tightly holding on the mouths of their glass bottles with a jealousy that should anything happen it was a sure calamity.
They entered the main concourse, which was already thronged with people, mostly between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. It was vast, connecting all other sections of this gargantuan entertainment complex. Its ceiling was domed and constructed of steel and glass, the natural light shone through during the day to irradiate the concrete hive with an industrial glow but at night the strength of the artificial lighting seemed to carry with it it's own climate; it was bright, and it was hot. By rights it should long since have been condemned and torn down to be replaced with something much more agreeable, but there was something charming about a purpose built facility for pleasure of aged concrete, glass and steel. As a result, nearly all men were bare from the waist up, and a noticeable minority of women too, but a majority insisting on some sort of fashionable bra. The three of them were walking side by side in the middle of the crowd, looking expectantly at the video screens hanging overhead. A familiar advert lit up on all the video screens. It was from Dog&Bone, an Engell multinational technology company belonging to the Engell-Himyar Trading Company and based in Henrietta; the company's hardware includes the iBone R10 smartphone. As usual the advertisement was incessantly garish, hammering the senses of tens of thousands as they were marshaled, illuminating the immediate areas around the screens with lurid strobes. The bright tone of the calm, matter-of-fact voice of the female commercial actress rang out from the speakers, announcing the latest features and urging, with a reservation in her forced excitement, all to hurriedly part with their cash, else be left behind.
An enormous stage of black consumed the atmosphere of everything that was within, drawing toward itself both excitement and apprehension, lights flickered without regularity, illuminating not enough of the space. Spectators numbering a few thousands thronged the Pit of Snow, named such after the fifty mechanical dispensers that would rise from the ground at regular intervals with fifty lines prepared with automated precision and the few hundreds of brightly coloured tablets held cupped in the middle; for the hundreds of thousands elsewhere, they had the commercial privilege of having a small, quiet drone deliver what they needed, providing they had and used the app, but it wasn't a requirement to consume in-house stimulants, and most arranged their own at supermarket prices. The show was about to start. Around the amphitheatre, the video screens that had the appearance of hovering above, came alive with some intensity as the presenter, Delphini Abutor, appeared, silencing the hum of the crowd. Good evening, and welcome to the Thaumantic Music Festival Twenty-Eighteen sponsored by Dog&Bone! I am your host, Delphini Abutor! And I will be with you tonight as we celebrate the Thaumantic! The screens abruptly went dark, not unlike an electrical failure throughout, but this was to permit the arrival of the opening act, the Grand Duchess of Elephant & Castle herself - Me-donner. A scene whose vibrant spirit and industrially sleek atmosphere of black-and-white no Gallian-Germanic artist could ever hope to conceive, lit up like a prohibited high mass, not of fictional worship but of the electric human need for pleasure and escape into the modern, progressive heart of Elephant and Castle. A combative display of agility to dispel the playfulness of camp that many unevolved societies throughout Europe are fooled by. The queens of Vogue promenaded down the stage, strutting and posing angular but with a fluid balletic grace, dressed in avant-guarde attire. The stages of SoCRER popular music always displayed a sense of cultural carnivalesque, having race, ethnicity and gender as a stable creative axis around which the persona of her most creative and successful artists revolved. Me-donner was here, and she stunned the hundreds of thousands - the tens of millions across the First Republic. She heralded the glory and magnificence of Europe's marginalised and oppressed, but the Engellexian Republic's celebrated and protected, a subculture that was born in the tenements of Elephant from those who came to the shores of SoCRER seeking relief and a desperate response to the racism, heterofascism, gendernormativity, and conformativity of their birth countries, but also a response to the socioeconomic oppression enforced by the classism of the First Republic.
By broadcasting the TMF2018, the liberalism of the First Republic was permitted the limelight it rightfully deserved, casting the longest shadows over every receiving corner of Europe, and daring the republic's regressive neighbours to have the courage to address their combative language toward it. Similarly, it had felt that neighbourly nudge, as aggressive and hostile as continued peace would allow, to demonstrate the worth of its continued existence, by surrendering to the retardation that had for too long defined the politics of its neighbours.
From the electrical blue glow that permeated the darkness of the Situation Bunker of Meridian One, Southern President Seraphina Underwood observed the positions of the Elephantine and Henriettan warships as they drew closer to midnight. It had become clear from December last year that the North Thaumantic Ocean Area was going to become a reinforced and extended sphere of Serenierre, with established military presence in the islands of Saint Brigida and the colonial State of Al-Kez. Serenierre, Borovanger, and Gallega had all aligned themselves in poise to advance against the economic interests of the Engellexian Republic, and in doing so undermine if not completely dissolve her right to independence. The Engellexian Thaumantic Company and the Engell-Himyar Trading Company, supported and assisted by the Council of the Republic, could perceive no other option that to intervene in a liberation of the North Thaumantic Ocean Area from the strangulation of Serenierre and her vassals. The ETC had been working on a war plan to seize and then integrate the territories of Saint Brigida and Al-Kez as sovereign territories of the Company for some time now. The two Lord Guarantors had exercised their constitutional rights to assume control of the Elephant and Henrietta Admiralties, on behalf of their Companies, mobilising the necessary forces. Orders had been given and received on July 29 2018. Before midnight on August 6 2018, the military forces belonging to the SoCRER, now under the operational command of the ETC and the EHTC, had initiated hostilities against Borovanger with a devastation that was hoped would prove efficiently effective and utterly overwhelming. Those warships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were readied and waiting in their assigned launch positions. In four tracks of surveillance, just west of the Legialle-Al-Kez border, E-3 Sentry - Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft were in the air. Approaching two hundred tankers were already flying, half of them orbiting west of the AWACS in Legialle, all out of range of early warning radar of Borovanger. Aircraft, fixed-wing and rotary, were being readied for the coming assault.
Before the rise of the morning sun, the aggressors of the North Thaumantic, and the people that elected them, would be awakened to the ascendency of the Engellexian Republic Naval Forces and the staggering reach of a truly free and enlightened civilisation. Marines from the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, Killigrew and Pink Mary's, had been concentrated in Northern Legialle, with two Marine Expeditionary Brigades loaded on to two task forces, and compact, fast moving units from the 2nd Light Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion carefully arranged along the Legialle-Al-Kez border and mounted in High Mobility Multi-Wheeled Vehicles. Any attempted offensive thrusts by the Borovangians into Legialle will be quickly identified, and advanced warnings will be signaled by the forward units, no risks were being undertaken with respect to the agreement signed with the Government of Legialle. Task Force Phix was positioned north-west of Al-Kez, and Task Force Nemea just north. The naval forces of the two Admiralties had been organised to ring TFP and TFN in the mid-North Thaumantic - Carrier Strike Groups Two, Five, Three and Six - a fifth, Carrier Strike Group One was just north-east of Hammersmith as a precautionary deployment of the Hammersmith Admiralty. Thirteen submarines had moved to forward positions to begin identifying and then engaging any Borovangian or Serenien surface or submarines ships that may be deployed against the fleets; six frigates, five destroyers and two cruisers had also assumed defence formations in support of the carrier groups, additional to their own escorts. Every airfield of Northern Legialle, all within striking distance of Al-Kez, were crammed full of Marine Corps and Air Corps aircraft. Hundreds of aircraft, fighters, bombers, helicopters, were being readied for the campaign.
At 01:01 on August 6, twenty-four Avro Vulcans from the 301st Bomb Wing commenced take offs from several isolated airfields in the vast interior of Northern Legialle. The iconic high-altitude strategic bomber of the Engellexian Republic, would lead an air offensive into the heart of the colonial backwater of Al-Kez. Two-hundred-eighty additional attack aircraft were beginning their departures from aircraft carriers and airbases that were across Northern Legialle, within the hour. To be refueled and stacked up west of the Legialle border, these jets were alike those on approach to a congested airport. At exactly 02:40 the ERN Gubernatrix and ERN Obscurion both began their launching of four Tomahawk cruise missiles each from the North Thaumantic; the first to penetrate Borovangian airspace, they were to be flying under the radar and darting toward their targets at an altitude of fifty to one-hundred feet above the terrain. The precise timing of the launches was to enable the missiles to reach their targets simultaneously with the remainder of the initial attack. From an airbase in an isolated region of Northern Legialle, two striker teams, each one consisting of five Westland Apache helicopters and two Pave Low helicopters, took off at approximately 02:00. Each Apache was armed with four Hellfire missiles, two 2.75 inch rocket pods containing Hydra 70 fleshettes and one-thousand-one-hundred rounds of 30mm ammunition. The Pave Low helicopters accompanied the Apaches to provide the GPS navigation required for their mission, alongside additional Electronic Countermeasure and rescue capabilities. At 03:15, the two striker teams intruded upon the border into Al-Kez at separate locations. Their objectives being Early Warning RADAR facilities in Western Al-Kez. At high speed the Apaches made the approach against their targets, acquired them at the maximum range of their night-vision sensors, locked on with their lasers, made sudden descents to only a few feet above the ground, and continued their advance on the objectives low and slow. When the Apaches entered sufficient range they ripple-launched their Hellfire missiles. At exactly 03:38, the first missile struck its target like a thunderous flash of lightning from above. Several missiles launched had taken aim to completely destroy the facilities' electric power generators. The Apaches, firing twenty-seven Hellfire missiles, looked to obliterate radar antennas, operations centres, generators, and barracks. When the Apaches depleted their missiles, they lacerated the area with rockets and thousands of rounds of 30-mm cannon fire. Both facilities were intended to be removed from permanent operation within thirty seconds and completely destroyed in less than five minutes.
Eight ERN Marine Corps F/A Tempest 18s, from Marine Attack Squadron 210, charged into Al-Kez behind the Apaches and Pave Lows to attack and eliminate the local air defence command and control centre. These three attacks were intended for the creation of a very wide blackened radar corridor for the attack planes of the First Republic to enter Al-Kez. Within minutes, Avro Vulcans bombed a radar control centre south-east of Rouadi, a radar facility in Western Al-Kez, and an air defence site near Rouadi to extend the corridor from the border of Legialle all the way across the northern half of Al-Kez to its eastern shores, including the capital. Swarms of waiting attack aircraft then surged in a massive sweep west through the corridor and fanned out toward their targets. EF-111 Arrows, EA-6 Prowlers, and EC-130 Compass Call Aircraft led the charge through the black sky. These electronic marvels of the night assaulted Al-Kez's surveillance and communications equipment with billions of electrons. The Compass Call aircraft attacked the communications airwaves, looking to disrupt military radio traffic. The Arrows and Prowlers targeted surveillance and air defence radars. F/A 18 Tempests and F-16 Bloody Robins raced into Al-Kez to their assigned Combat Air Patrol areas. Their mission was to fly cover at high altitudes for the other Engell aircraft and engage to eliminate any approaching Borovangian aircraft as quickly as possible.
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