NationStates Jolt Archive

Over the Atlantic Ocean

Flight 1224 from Tarana to Lutherstadt was proceeding on schedule. The passengers included very few tourists among them. Marlund was not a popular spot for holidays. Instead, the plane carried what the pilots and flight attendants who normally handled this flight had come to call the usual crowd. They consisted of social workers, volunteers for charitable organizations, clergy, employees of corporations with reconstruction contracts, and Marlunders returning from their holidays. Not that many Marlunders could afford holidays abroad.

Adal Pajonk looked dourly out the window. This trip was very important to him but not in a particularly pleasant way. He had left Marlund for the Resurgent Dream years ago, seeking to escape the oppression of the old regime. He had never once been back until now. But now he'd been told that his mother was on her deathbed. Pajonk felt he had to see her one last time before she passed away.

Samuel Palen, on the other hand, was nervous but excited about his trip home. He felt like a new man. Several years ago, he had felt he had no future with his wife. He had left her and his two children and travelled overseas. He hadn't even talked to her in months. However, when he'd heard last week that his family had nearly been killed and their home destroyed during fighting between the government and the insurgency, he'd realized for the first time how much he loved them. His wife didn't even know he was coming but Samuel Palen was determined to make up for what he'd done, determined to make things work this time.

Peter Kringzley knew exactly what he was doing. He had it planned well over several months. Next to him sat his accomplice, and another one was part of the flight crew – it would be easier for the flight crew to sneak through the checks. The plane to Marlund was perfect for their task – tired, middle-class people, unarmed, of course, and not expecting what was about to happen.

What did happen was that when the flight attendant - to go down in history as Linda Brown – passed by their seats, she handed them a small package. It was to the amazement of the other passengers that they drew two small handguns from it.

"Freehold!" – shouted Peter as he fired the handgun twice for dramatic effect – "Freehold, Allanea, Liberty!"

Another two accomplices rushed in from the business section, with weapons that the flight attendant has hidden in the lining of their seats. "Everybody stay calm!" – shouted Linda Brown, drawing an Allanean Arms Ingram clone and waving it vaguely at the seated passengers. "Everybody stay calm and nobody will ever get hurt!"

The passengers were obviously ill at ease – when someone says these words, people are almost bound to get hurt, regardless of the intent. But as long as the passengers remained relatively – relatively calm – the Freeholders didn't really care much about their discomfort so far.

Their aim was to make it into the pilots cabin and to announce their demands.

"Captain!" – screamed Peter as he forced the cabin's door in – "Take us to Tarana!"

"Tarana? Are you f*ck*ng nuts?" the captain snapped back almost instinctively, turning to blink slightly at the weapon. A lot of people were going to get fired for not doing their jobs. It would have been almost impossible for something like that to get through even the lighter security given to flight vrews, a one in a million chance if that. He wondered if the Allaneans realized how incredibly lucky they'd been even as he kept the plane on course.

It was around then that the passengers could first hear the effects of Peter's desire for dramatic effect. Air was rapidly leaking out of the two holes which had been punched into the side of the cabin as the cabin itself depressurized. A stewardess hit a button and oxygen masks dropped in front of the passengers, pilot, and co-pilot. They quickly put them to use. Oxygen masks also dropped in the back for the flight attendants. Those of them who were the genuine article began moving rapidly in that direction.

OOC:

Eh... I'm confused now. I thought this kind of stuffis not supposed to happen. (http://www.thegunzone.com/091101/goldfinger.html)

OOC: I hadn't wanted to weigh the thread down with OOC bickering but, if we're going down that road, my failure to know the details of exactly how the tech on airplanes works is a lot less objectionable than your godmodding guns past security without RPing it or even mentioning it or asking OOC.

OOC: Well... my thought was that you agreed (as we discussed OOCly) to have an RP about an aircraft hijacking. I didn't know it mattered so much how precisely it was done, guns or no guns, since you consented to the actual act of hijacking. :o

IC:

The Allanean cursed and screamed as the pressure dropped, then poked the pilot with his clenched fist:


"Whatever man! Just land the plane in the nearest city! DO IT!"

The plane was designed for high altitudes and, correspondingly, the cabin pressure was much more sensitive and the air circulation mechanisms much more delicate than on some other airplanes. Still, it was hardly explosive decompression. No one was flying about. Certainly no one had been sucked through a tiny hole. The plane was just slowly but surely depressurizing. The air was gradually thinning and the pressure was decreasing. People without oxygen were likely to get some pain in their ears until they managed to "pop" them.

"Alright. Alright." the captain said grudgingly. "It'll still be over an hour before we arrive. I'm going to try to take us down in Solomon. Do you want me to radio anything ahead?"

The passengers, meanwhile, had become quite docile. The rather heavy doses of oxygen they were taking in were causing their breathing to become slower and heavier.:sniper:

OOC:

Eh... I'm confused now. I thought this kind of stuffis not supposed to happen. (http://www.thegunzone.com/091101/goldfinger.html)
OOC: TRD didn't post an explosive decompression anyway, just a loss of oxygen (hence the masks).

The pilot and the co-pilot adjusted their instruments, redirecting the plane to Solomon International Airport while they waited for the hijacker to respond.