Beautancus
Well-Known Member
Drugenai, Arrety Autonomous Okrug
Sovereignty of Chernovy
Precious little ever amounted to what it seemed at first, when it came to matters most military. Which is exactly what the brutal and methodically precise armored assault of the Arrety Petrol facility on the outskirts of Drugenai - a military matter, despite the veneer of somehow more civilian uniformed law enforcement. When the term law enforcement was invoked directly to the men of OTSN, it often seemed, and sometimes was intended as a joke. Despite their status as the Special Tactical Response team for the Sovereignty's 'state law enforcement and intelligence office,' their arrival via what were very nearly tanks indicated quite the contrary.
Which was another thing that was not what it seemed. In any other circumstances, when a dozen armored, heavy and light wheeled vehicles - all of which are designed to and will likelihood very soon be disgorging a corresponding number of some of the best equipped, trained and motivated fighting men the Sovereignty had to offer - it was typically the most serious problem facing the party or parties on the receiving end of the armored assault.
Tonight, as the majority of the 'hostage takers' were preoccupied with the incredible noise of the APCs advance, enormously powerful and loud diesel engines clamoring, a flight of 'Hummingbird' Tactical Recon/Transport Helicopters were coming to the end of one of the most recklessly low (altitude) and high-speed insertions any of the men aboard had ever been involved with.
The advantages provided by the envelope of accurate and immediate, real-time reconnaissance available to these insertion teams magnified the already tremendous edge that the night vision and thermal imaging devices available to the OTSN operators and pilots, respectively. Their vector of approach had been chosen with the utmost care, and only confirmed out of a possible half-dozen others, little more than twenty minutes before. Even so, they'd been spotted and fire upon by at least three pairs of sentries - to no effect.
The helicopters were simply going too fast for the so-called hostage takers to be able to land a significant enough blow with the weapons systems available to them for it to matter, which had been a large factor of consideration in selecting the 'Hummingbird' for this mission instead of a more traditionally bigger, more brutish and thickly skinned attack-transport helicopter. They were also a fair bit more quiet than what most helicopters of their general class and size would be expected to be, further distorting the already amplified and mis/redirected storm of sound of every stripe and variety of mayhem.
Within seconds of coming under fire, the first two helicopters in the formation peeled away in a reductive orbit of the evening's target - the largest of the production warehouse and storage facilities on the impressively massive 6,500 acre(s) facility. It had been the location where the main body of the original Arrety strikers and later hostage takers had forted up, as well as the site at which they had now for so long secured the corporate, managerial and much of the security staff of the facility. The accuracy of those assessments would soon be determined beyond doubt - something that had become desperately necessary with developments in the Crisis Management Command a few miles away, in Drugenai proper.
It was not at all that the Arrety in the facility had failed to make contact with CMC for more than 72 hours, it was that they hadn't for 130 hours - and even more, that body language and facial recognition analysis indicated that at least 80% of the men now involved in armed patrols of the facility were not the same men that had been conducting them, before that period of broken down communication began. Within 38 seconds of the first boots on the ground, or mezzanine, from the lead pair of Hummingbirds that had been confirmed.
Though a portion of the individuals face had been obscured, or lost, by damage inflicted from the OTSN operator's carbine - he was very clearly not Arrety. Which was to say, not a tall - almost exclusively fair or russet haired, light complected people of Northwestern Steppe Extraction. Which was also to say, not in the least bit Touyouan, as the individual now cooling on the catwalk clearly was - or so the one eye he still had left belied.
Pace doubled, nearly frantic, two more nearly gut to gut encounters produced the same result, though with far more clarity. These men weren't Xinhaiese, as the growing fear in Radagora had become. They were Qissarim. With their characteristic features and Manichean occultic tattoos covering most of the left side of their faces, it was clear that while these men were of much farther Eastern origin that most Chernovans, they will still Chernovans after a fashion.
Stomach lurching at a screeching distortion over comms, the lead element now penetrating the warehouse were confirming another horrific suspicion. None of the hostages, or hostage takers were alive. Nor had they been for some time.
Many of the OTSN operators were now converging on the location, all dumbfounded by the violent revelations of the past few minutes. The armored assault had begun at 0259, and it was now only 0315 - approaching the final resolution of a crisis that had torn apart the lives of hundreds of families and cost now untold billions of blocks and pounds sterling to investors in the Sovereignty, League and Republic. The distortion to comms had quickly become a complete break-down and failure thereof.
And then came a final shout, from the entrance to the largest portion of the warehouse building - the actual storage bay itself. Leading into the underground portion of the complex, the raw acreage at involved was something that few people ever beheld with their own eyes. Far worse when that space was stacked very nearly full, from floor to ceiling with fertilizer, pressurized canisters of oxygen acetelyne and very nearly every kind of refinement of petroleum possible. As it was, not a soul would know this for some weeks, until the lab report came back.
The detonation was triggered remotely, from several miles away even. The explosion began from floor to ceiling and rapidly expanded outward. In fractions of a second, the entirety of the OTSN operator force was vaporized - as was everything else out to a distance of .9 miles, due to collateral detonation of petrol reserves.
The vultures would have been circling, had CMC not cleared the airspace around the Petrol facility at the end of the previous evening. As it was, jackals were well represented afoot, cameras rolling and horrified expression forever immortalized on screen in the instant before they too were vaporized and converted into so much expanding gas and energy. Within a radius of a mile and a half, most died from burns of internal injuries due to the shock-wave. Within five miles, every window on the north-facing side of nearly every building in Drugenai was shattered. The face, as it happened, so often ravaged by the wind funneled into the city by the unforgiving steppe winter - and that would carry unspeakably toxic and foul smelling petrochemical fumes for some days and weeks to come.
The first guesses, cautiously and meekly, hazarded on Sovereignty television as to the yield of the explosion involved are "at the very least 1 kt."
Sovereignty of Chernovy
Precious little ever amounted to what it seemed at first, when it came to matters most military. Which is exactly what the brutal and methodically precise armored assault of the Arrety Petrol facility on the outskirts of Drugenai - a military matter, despite the veneer of somehow more civilian uniformed law enforcement. When the term law enforcement was invoked directly to the men of OTSN, it often seemed, and sometimes was intended as a joke. Despite their status as the Special Tactical Response team for the Sovereignty's 'state law enforcement and intelligence office,' their arrival via what were very nearly tanks indicated quite the contrary.
Which was another thing that was not what it seemed. In any other circumstances, when a dozen armored, heavy and light wheeled vehicles - all of which are designed to and will likelihood very soon be disgorging a corresponding number of some of the best equipped, trained and motivated fighting men the Sovereignty had to offer - it was typically the most serious problem facing the party or parties on the receiving end of the armored assault.
Tonight, as the majority of the 'hostage takers' were preoccupied with the incredible noise of the APCs advance, enormously powerful and loud diesel engines clamoring, a flight of 'Hummingbird' Tactical Recon/Transport Helicopters were coming to the end of one of the most recklessly low (altitude) and high-speed insertions any of the men aboard had ever been involved with.
The advantages provided by the envelope of accurate and immediate, real-time reconnaissance available to these insertion teams magnified the already tremendous edge that the night vision and thermal imaging devices available to the OTSN operators and pilots, respectively. Their vector of approach had been chosen with the utmost care, and only confirmed out of a possible half-dozen others, little more than twenty minutes before. Even so, they'd been spotted and fire upon by at least three pairs of sentries - to no effect.
The helicopters were simply going too fast for the so-called hostage takers to be able to land a significant enough blow with the weapons systems available to them for it to matter, which had been a large factor of consideration in selecting the 'Hummingbird' for this mission instead of a more traditionally bigger, more brutish and thickly skinned attack-transport helicopter. They were also a fair bit more quiet than what most helicopters of their general class and size would be expected to be, further distorting the already amplified and mis/redirected storm of sound of every stripe and variety of mayhem.
Within seconds of coming under fire, the first two helicopters in the formation peeled away in a reductive orbit of the evening's target - the largest of the production warehouse and storage facilities on the impressively massive 6,500 acre(s) facility. It had been the location where the main body of the original Arrety strikers and later hostage takers had forted up, as well as the site at which they had now for so long secured the corporate, managerial and much of the security staff of the facility. The accuracy of those assessments would soon be determined beyond doubt - something that had become desperately necessary with developments in the Crisis Management Command a few miles away, in Drugenai proper.
It was not at all that the Arrety in the facility had failed to make contact with CMC for more than 72 hours, it was that they hadn't for 130 hours - and even more, that body language and facial recognition analysis indicated that at least 80% of the men now involved in armed patrols of the facility were not the same men that had been conducting them, before that period of broken down communication began. Within 38 seconds of the first boots on the ground, or mezzanine, from the lead pair of Hummingbirds that had been confirmed.
Though a portion of the individuals face had been obscured, or lost, by damage inflicted from the OTSN operator's carbine - he was very clearly not Arrety. Which was to say, not a tall - almost exclusively fair or russet haired, light complected people of Northwestern Steppe Extraction. Which was also to say, not in the least bit Touyouan, as the individual now cooling on the catwalk clearly was - or so the one eye he still had left belied.
Pace doubled, nearly frantic, two more nearly gut to gut encounters produced the same result, though with far more clarity. These men weren't Xinhaiese, as the growing fear in Radagora had become. They were Qissarim. With their characteristic features and Manichean occultic tattoos covering most of the left side of their faces, it was clear that while these men were of much farther Eastern origin that most Chernovans, they will still Chernovans after a fashion.
Stomach lurching at a screeching distortion over comms, the lead element now penetrating the warehouse were confirming another horrific suspicion. None of the hostages, or hostage takers were alive. Nor had they been for some time.
Many of the OTSN operators were now converging on the location, all dumbfounded by the violent revelations of the past few minutes. The armored assault had begun at 0259, and it was now only 0315 - approaching the final resolution of a crisis that had torn apart the lives of hundreds of families and cost now untold billions of blocks and pounds sterling to investors in the Sovereignty, League and Republic. The distortion to comms had quickly become a complete break-down and failure thereof.
And then came a final shout, from the entrance to the largest portion of the warehouse building - the actual storage bay itself. Leading into the underground portion of the complex, the raw acreage at involved was something that few people ever beheld with their own eyes. Far worse when that space was stacked very nearly full, from floor to ceiling with fertilizer, pressurized canisters of oxygen acetelyne and very nearly every kind of refinement of petroleum possible. As it was, not a soul would know this for some weeks, until the lab report came back.
The detonation was triggered remotely, from several miles away even. The explosion began from floor to ceiling and rapidly expanded outward. In fractions of a second, the entirety of the OTSN operator force was vaporized - as was everything else out to a distance of .9 miles, due to collateral detonation of petrol reserves.
The vultures would have been circling, had CMC not cleared the airspace around the Petrol facility at the end of the previous evening. As it was, jackals were well represented afoot, cameras rolling and horrified expression forever immortalized on screen in the instant before they too were vaporized and converted into so much expanding gas and energy. Within a radius of a mile and a half, most died from burns of internal injuries due to the shock-wave. Within five miles, every window on the north-facing side of nearly every building in Drugenai was shattered. The face, as it happened, so often ravaged by the wind funneled into the city by the unforgiving steppe winter - and that would carry unspeakably toxic and foul smelling petrochemical fumes for some days and weeks to come.
The first guesses, cautiously and meekly, hazarded on Sovereignty television as to the yield of the explosion involved are "at the very least 1 kt."
