NationStates Jolt Archive


Iced (Attn Questers (closed))

Zepplin Manufacturers
26-05-2007, 12:31
Across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

It begins not with a bang, nore the scream of countless turbines nore even the clink of metal upon metal as a rifles bolt is drawn home. It begins with silence, the total silence of the void.

Orbit

Earthlight streamed upwards illuminating the dull kevlar and titanium sheets of the whipple shield that protected the MAS Very High Resolution array Earth Resource Platform. This was no mere sattalite but an assembly made from multiple launches and hundreds of hours in EVA construction bolting the cooling array of the huge nuclear pile pod to the mass of radiator fins and ducts that fed the great radar. The single huge ground penetrating radar the platform carried like a demented metallic spider trying to move a giant D20 could penetrate almost 2 miles of rock to hungrily seek out the rich seams of ores and hydrocarbons that fuelled the Incorporated State. Upon one be strutted titanium boron outrigger lenses delicately reposition as data flows upward from the Mount Regal orbital command facility buried deep in the snow capped mountains above Aurilias steamy central jungles. Cold gas is spat from numerous thrusters and as it repositions and as delicately as a flower the whipple shield sections unfold to reveal the multi megawatt monstrous transmitter.

Analysing in total silence slowly but surely it begins to draw a picture, first only of interest to geologists but soon for those who in the darker places of the state understand. Decision is already made by the cold numbers arcing through the great mainframes that dominate the choices made by the factions that rule. Now voices begin. Decisions already made arent made in public and still at least for show must require human interaction, this is not the free state it once was and nore is that ever the way such skulduggery is arranged, oligarchs rule here and so quite talks over well made meals that cost more than a week long holiday for an ordinary family go on in discreet locations. These men and women who make up the effective ruling class are money but far from ostentatious in there dress or there views, and spuriously even now they still believe themselves to be the true rulers. Now even in there wizened sense of adventure something worms its way inwards as the reports continue to flow. Something that until now has been at least directly quite bloodless. Greed is beginning to take hold. A terrible black fluid fuelled greed that would be slaked only by blood.

To the outside world it starts simply enough if parties are watching the countless thousands of channels that lance down from the endless opiate like memes this nations networks spew to there relatively happy masses. Talk of tipping points, of resource imparity, and of long term national boundary security in a dozen documentaries. In its cruder form it goes down to intelligentsia cursed day time TV which in the modern age has in this state gained more power than the world shattering works of marx could have ever had in his worse nightmares envisioned. The will of mankind bent to a few words that did not even have the backing of a single degree behind them. Now must come the jingoism. The driving dark illogical heart of war.


Flick
And of course we trust our allies but in the long term is it security we want or free access?
Flick
Happy Fun Fun foods now offers you the chance to visit sunny
Flick
But of course dear how can we expect people who still have
Flick
A garden of peace for the working
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Jimmy you know the Swansons mean well but there just not from around here
Flick
Sarge! its my leg Sarge they done shot it off!
Flick
Who wants fries with thaaat!


And finally on a slip of yellow paper spat out of hundreds of whining line printers.

Milicom Universal Transmission, all departments Northern Theatre
Strategic Action Order B39
Forced acquisition and securing of the Isle of Milton and surrounding waters.

To insure the long term security and organised exploitation of resources found in this location all units of the Northern Command are to take the following actions...


Pithead, North East Arctic territory, Industrial settlement

Snow and ice and more snow and ice, skree covered slopes occasionally dimpled by the wounds of strip mines and vast rolling icy walls of glaciers, the endless white broken by the ugly cubic primary coloured modular civilian buildings surrounded by embankments made out of skree to try to lower the eternal wind chill in the planets largest ice box. It may as well have been Mars and it was just about as sterile in parts. Pithead was a godless hole of a settlement officially constructed purely to support the copper mines. From the outside it looked like a crazed jumble of giant kids building blocks with the odd massive rebar built ice sheathed tower jutting into the sky like fingers put up against the face of god. Just under 18,000 miners and a smattering of support staff were based in its plastic covered corridors. Release was neccesary and a few neon covered buildings which outwardly looked like any other served that purpose for many while a few fled to the giant greenhouse of a leisure park at the towns concrete centre. Pithead was the only thing on the surface that would without close view give the base away though in its construction and even then it could have been mistaken for the half dozen other vast mines being build the decade before. It had been for a while quite visibile to all the peaking electronic eyes as the artic wind whipped the artificial and soon to be ice vapour clouds the site had been shrouded in. Linked by tunnels only large enough to take the endless conveyors of rubble out or pipe concrete into the half dozen other mines in the area equipment and extraction had gone on to create the airbase. Occasionally a large snow plough would carefully move a large dune of ice for a cargo convoy that "happened" to pass. Who needs concrete when you have ice. Now pretence was gone. It was time for action.

An icy plane 65 miles from Pithead. A line of what where reported to be polar watch aerospace radar domes sat supposedly linked to the state SDI network. Usually silent, now blasting across the ice with inhuman loudness came a woman's slightly distraught voice

"Commence battlestations procedure! Battlestations Battlestations! Sound launch stages! This is a full scale emergency!"

First came the pylons, unfolding up through the ice covered in LADAR emmiters and microwave links and the crazed rainbow covered globes of air defence laser optics at there heights. A veritable antennae farm growing out of the icy rock.

Ice fountained upwards as hydraulics screamed and a set of huge elevators rose in succession with briefly viewed blast doors ripping open the surface and the iris covered mouths of ducts blasted the ice away with nuclear heated steam from the facilities huge reactors. Tracked dumpy vehicles then roared off these elevators and dozens of ramps in a preplanned diesel powered ballet. Along what shortly would be the runways half tracks slammed down linked metal matting before nozzles mounted on there cabs blasted out hundreds of tons of quick setting durable plastic gunk from tanks buried deep below and rollers mounted on the fronts of half a dozen massive air defence modified TR29s tanks which were rolling of the now constantly operating elevators begin insuring the ice around this plastic is formed into taxi ways. Finally the elevators rose with the payload they had been intended for, the massive brutish forms of Type 1000 bombers making there appearance there under wing pods festooned with aerolance AAMs, launch assist solid rocket boosters, ARADs, and the dull forms of half a dozen types of cruise missile. It took minutes for the final checks before the huge aircraft screeched into the sky on there conventional jets, there nuclear thermal RAMs intakes clawing in air desperate to reach self supporting ignition. The procedure would be repeated again and again until over 40 of the huge aircraft were blundering through the air on there way to a point some 600 miles from Miltons coast line.

Defence Tor White Anvil

The screaming of alarms and turbines filled the air of hanger bay 14 and engineer Gary Pool slid the data stick out of the avionics pod below the compressor for the last time before the cruise missile slid away on its belt to join its fellows on the massed munitions carousel as the fortress prepared to unleash its long range might upon every port in Milton. It and its twelve brethren whoms angular reinforced concrete blast door covered countenances stared out into the waters around the Arctic territories would within minutes salvo just over 2000 massive stealthy Scythe ICCMs at the infrastructure, possible airstrips, actual airstrips, piers and identified fuel depots of Milton. Some would be nothing but huge electronic screamers, there payload bay packed with chaff and counter munitions, others were loaded with the dull masses of short range hypersonic penetrators and the final spread with a horrible mix of landmines.

South West shore, Milton

Some people arrive before others. Almost a full day before the action order four of the exotic stealthy and rather expensive Corona stealth bombers had dumped a load of rather odd devices into the icy sea nearly 200 miles from the Isle of Miltons shores. Drag chutes, the dull thud of a ribbon chute and the whine and final clink as the servos which for moments controlled the cables slipped away into the brine had filled there occupants prayer filled moments as the things dropped. The lobsters were conversions of the rhapsody drone minisub. Carrying at most three men they could in theory at least with drop tanks in place of the torpedoes they usually carried cross an ocean. In this case and to the eternal thanks of there inhabitants whos cramped and even with the most expensive equipment available very smelly occupiancy was wished to be short they were carrying supplies instead.

Major Deveroux almost smiled as the cold air outside the lobster hit his grim unshaven blackened face before he slid down the combat information and command visor over his aquiline nose, a feature seemingly out of place on his robust stocky frame. A rocky shore surmounted by cliffs filled his now considerably enhanced view as it borrowed from his troopers gunsights and the small flotilla of lobsters telescopic cameras. Deveroux's lobsters tiny conning towers ring of screens lifted far upwards as the upper hull opened out to reveal the three individual helmeted heads in the twilight and the propulsors ever so silently whined the unit of 25 tech ninja shoreward, and moving almost by instinct there was the dull metallics clicks as the suppressed compact caseless weapons were unsafed.


OOC: Until further notice request entry by TG please.
Questers
27-05-2007, 15:11
Milton Island Defence Headquarters

The Defence Headquarters of Milton Island were ablaze with activity but none of it was related, funnily enough, to war. The defenders of Milton were planning a night out and monitoring incoming RADAR signals where the least of their concerns as they considered all the outlets available in the recently "annexed" - more like handed over - Imperial Mandate Island of Milton. The Island had recently been ceded to Questers by Vetaka and now it was the responsibility of the Empire of the Rising Sun (which coincidentally never set, either) to defend these islands. They had moved in almost instantly and set up the MDHQ in Braithwell in an old hotel which was rapidly being converted to a military headquarters. On the west side of the island Naval Air Station Milton was still under construction, though it housed a squadron of fighters and a bomb group of G4M bombers. The crew in IQNASt Milton hadn't the time to plan a night out - dozens of flights came into the station every day from the mainland bringing supplies and the like with them. Besides, the nearest civilisation was around 90 kilometres away anyway.

"What about that new bar thats opening up?" Alice suggested as she sat down with the tray of tea mugs and crossed her legs over. The group of signals operators each took their mugs, unaware that ZMI bombers where launching from their bases in the ZMI Arctic Territories.

Charles took a sip of his tea and breathed outwards with relief. It was getting colder and colder as the nights drew on and there was no substitute for a good cup of tea. "Yeah, I heard that place was ran by a Questarian couple. Might be worth checking out." His eyes scanned Alice's legs up and down as she folded them over and he momentarily remembered that there wasn't a finer woman to work with in the Navy than Alice, in several senses of the world.

"I dunno." Adachi shrugged. "It looked kinda tacky."

"A five star hotel in downtown Kure would look tacky to you!" Mary giggled as she playfully punched him in the arm. "Cmon, it can't be that bad."

Adachi pretended to mull it over for some time and then agreed. "Fine, when?"

"Friday?" Charles suggested.

"Sure. What time sha-" Adachi couldn't finish before a small alarm klaxon began ringing. There was a mad scatter to their respective consoles as the four RADAR operators quickly mounted their equipment and attended their stations, alerting the Officer On Watch in the Detection Room. At 1,200 kilometres out the advanced RADAR that had been erected only a few days ago outside the city had picked up incoming bogies - and lots of 'em.

"Fucking hell. Charles swore. "I'm at my max targeting." The RADARs installed were old reserves - long ranged, but low tracking abilities.

"Split em up guys" Adachi said, using his laser stylus to mark up on the RADAR screen the incoming bogies that where "his". No other RADAR arrays would have to worry about these since they were all interlinked and he'd marked his off.

"And girls!" Alice reminded him as she took her portion of targets, freeing up more and more. Fortunately for the Questarian defence the RADARs could handle 800 targets per array, so all the targets were allocated fairly equally, but the catch was that Milton Islands Air Defence Network was critically lacking in missiles. Rotary loaded magazine fed VL SAM stocks where only up to eight hundred missiles - nowhere near enough to deal with the some 2,000 missiles now heading towards them, and furthermore they had no way to distinguish which missiles were real and which were chaff-packed. Quickly the data was relayed to the Air Defence Network and to the three Mogami class Air Defence Cruisers in the port, which where now sallying out with the rest of the Haleigh Sea Station.

The initial ZMI attack had caught the Questarians by surprise and it was some time before they had completley integrated the islands defence with the Haleigh Sea Station Fleet, the Air Defence Network, and the MDHQ. However the skill and training and coolness under fire of Questarian personnel once again shone through as the ADN and the HSS Fleet split the enemy missiles in two, and at 200km the HSS opened up on their targets from CGEs and DDCs of the fleet, downing 900 of their allotted 1500 missiles, completely emptying their AMM and SAM stocks. The ADN coped well too, but only managed to take out 300 of the 500 missiles slotted to it. The massive missile wave attack had worked perfectly, albeit with some losses, and while the ZMI missiles zoomed over the heads of the Questarian sailors, DP guns and CIWS and RAM tracking and downing some, the missiles careered into the airport, knocking out any hope of using it to relieve the island and also hit hard the port, especially doing damage to the drydocks recently fitted. Imaginably the director who had invested a large sum of money in these docks was quite outraged but that was another matter - the three capital ships of the Questarian fleet could not dock for any kind of real repairs in Milton and as the inexperienced firefighters struggled to control the fuel blaze it was obvious that fuel would have to be shipped in. At least the ships where fully fueled up, otherwise the results could have been absolutely disastrous for the islands defence.

On the far west, the Naval Air Station was undefended apart from some anti air tanks and flak and RAM batteries which put up a brave but utterly useless defence of the airfield. Over half the aircraft were destroyed and most of the aviation fuel set alight with some of the hangars crushed too. Luckily as it happened the takeoff and control systems were virtually unharmed but AMM and SAMs would have to be brought into the island ASAP - only four days away from the mainland through the Allanean canal, it wouldn't be surprising if it was too late by then, given that almost all the anti air measures on the island were expended.

HIQMS Malaya

"Staff officer on deck!"

The crew saluted to the Staff Officer of the 39th Air Fleet, the ultimate commander of all the air operations in Milton. He had flown in from the only carrier operable for a thousand kilometres, the escort carrier Durable. His name was Yamada Minoru. He peaked his Navy cap and saluted Rear Admiral Drake, the commander of the Haleigh Sea Station, who returned the salute.

"Captain Yamada." He shook his hand, dispensing with his cigarette. "Good to see you again."

"You too Admiral." Yamada returned the complement and took a seat to talk to Rear Admiral Drake.

"I'm putting the Station to sea." Drake began. "No sense in keeping us locked in here. Assuming we're under attack from the Zeppers, I want to take the fight to them." Drake began. Yamada nodded a few times, agreeing with his plan.

"We'll dock back and quickly stock up on missiles - that's probably the last we'll have I believe - then immediately set sail. GPS says the Zeppers have a number of battleships and escort carriers. I want to sink them." Drake finished.

"Well, I've no problem with that." Yamada said. "Do you think we can take them on without reinforcements?"

Drake stood up and looked out the window, and poured a brandy from an old bottle. "Captain. I don't think that any of our famous naval commanders weighed up their options. If I truly sat and thought about the odds facing us then perhaps I would call off the operation."

He turned around adn Yamada looked into his eyes. "I don't want to do that, Captain. These buggers think they can attack us for no reason." he finished his brandy. "Well we'll put a stop to that, shan't we?."

The ships drooped back into harbour and filled up on their stocks, taking on alot of extra weight. The Haleigh Sea Station was marching to war and it wasn't going to do it lightly.
Zepplin Manufacturers
01-09-2007, 17:48
Task Group North Market Crash class command Battleship County Prize

Admiral Levant Pascal sat panting before guzzling down a good half litre of clear moon bright (Happy Happy foods inc) brand mineral water, the movement activated logo moon going through the phases as he tipped back the bottle before hurling it into his pile of bags and the emergency tac links that were hauled around everywhere with him guarded by his ill fated personnel support. The tread mill behind him clicked as it imprinted his weekly fitness report on his multipass cartridge. The gym was filled with the squeak of trainers and the dull thuds of punch bags. He was grimly fit, hair still salt n pepper, eyes dangerous flashing grey. Non descript, if it were not for the aura of authority that surrounded him you would have easily mistaken him for an office clerk. His voice was lilting

“Report McCarthy where the hell are they? An entire IQN flotilla cannot just disappear! Were supposed to have more eyes in the sky than any other four nations I would care to mention god damn it!”

McCarthy was thin, rakish almost nothing to his long frame.

“Sir the damn weather is stopping everything but the L sat heavies and you know how hard it is to get those things retasked without being a major theatre. Pavonis Trask and Oberth are on deep penetration as we speak but the surface chop is so heavy and the civy traffic so predominant they cant here a damn drive noise”

“What the hell do you mean cant hear a drive noise? What blasted good are the

The tirade went on, to first fleet tech McCarthys relief to castrate the others gathered around Levant’s favorite meeting place. He cursed inwardly, the IQN was good, entirely too damn good to be caught with sloppy engine noise and more than well trained enough to take advantage of the filthy prevalent weather. Levant was a blow hard, and had far too many links to certain oligarch houses and far too little to the navy hierarchy. He had been posted to the artic squadron as to do as little damage as possible, the man hated the now ever present tactical analyses agent programs that more and more ran the ZMNs primary formations. McCarthy grimaced as he looked around him simply endured the mandatory monitored exercise periods was bad enough but to be stuck in this marine filled sweat stink filled room for fleet control meetings seemed ridiculous and grated on bad childhood memories.

Finnaly a plan was hammered out a few ours later and thanks to McCarthys careful intercession it matched almost precisely what the agents had suggested. A line of escorts and destroyers moved out and four of the SSN wolf packs were broken up into roving hunters as around the coast of the artic territories the northern battle group gathered itself together to prepare to lunge south.



Milton
Deveroux grin was erased as the icy northern waters hit his dry suit as he and his squad inflated the assault rafts. Pathetic silent electric motors that would be buried in the plastic bags of the rafts beneath the beachhead drove them inward as the lobsters sealed up and sank behind them to wait for there masters call. The struggle against wet sand and skin slicing shingle as they dragged the sagging self deflating masses of the rafts and unloaded there massive water proof duffel bags and equipment cases. It was an empty landscape they had chosen, a secluded cove with cliffs to make it inaccessible and unaccessed. Stripping of the hated dry suits and sliding on blessedly dry dark dark green ponchos with integrated caps, sliding on the mass of there soup bowl type helmets, and clipping there triple channel goggles to the metal studs inset in the front of the bowls. The smell of synthetic cotton as it rubbed against his nose as balaclavas were pulled tight. Gently sliding the waxy plugs out of the ends of there barrels. Opening two of the cases. The snick noise of plastic clips. Deveroux took out the wee beastie. A tiny battery operated silent helidrone whos sole payload was a multi channel CCD. The cliff face free so far of anything but sheep.

A silent grin and hand wave as the cut down RPGs were loaded. The thud and hiss of the rocket motors. The dull crump as the warheads released four multiheaded pitons each. The burning fire in the back of his calves as he slowly dragged himself and his equipment up the filthy clay cliff and finally the blessed moment of release as he reached the top, broken only by his training forcing his hands and eyes to scan the horizon. The group hugged the shadows and went directly for the nearest telegraph post tree or tallest fence to slide the dull black mass of a scanner relay to it, sliding along to find the nearest mobile phone mast to erstwhile fill that with a number of boxes that just did not belong.

Pithead, North East Arctic territory, Strategic Airbase,

Robot Road. That’s how the logistics division staff of whoms domain, a non descript series of storage silos and warehouses had begun to call it as it and its Tech Command staff intruded into there world of dusty crates and barcodes. Installed over just a few days a bare year ago a long line of containers bestriding a long assembly line like travelator. Stacked at one end of the warehouse neat rows of the things sat looking out with inhuman accuracy with insectile armored lourves covered compound telescopic cameras in the dull zombie like regularity of regularly scheduled system checks. There forms unbroken save for the dull ever present gleam of gunmetal protruding from there steel DU honeycomb bodies which now supported angular charcoal black carbon Kevlar weave fiber body panels.

They rolled in neat lines powered just by there internal batteries one by one linking onto the assembly line like armory system much like the one they had been constructed upon. Ammunition fed by servos into waiting hoppers, checked by probing fibrous bundles of LADAR pods and xrayed for flaws, endless strings of 20mm grenade belts being carefully fed into the things internal and external magazines, the dull hiss as larger 80mm mission grenades and counter munitions were slid into external brackets after a probe swung in and checked the FCS links. Some of the things met with a whine as servo arms the size of there entire chassis bolted and welded and clipped the mass of mortars or chain guns to there hard points. Finally they were fueled, not by external means but by a drill equipped compressed air driven tentacle like proboscis which linked with a sequence of dull clicks to a reservoir of refined hydrocarbons and there own internal fuel pumps. These things were scavengers able to burn on half a dozen different fuel sources and able to drive there drill bi. At last a line of human hands got in on the act, double and triple checking magazine feeds fuel pumps ,compressors and combustion engine power packs.

They were packaged. Enshrouded by a swirl of robotic arms almost too fast moving for the human eye to see, locked into layers of plastic, canisters of gas generators, ribbon and parasail and the servo motors to move there web like control cables. Moved again on trailers towed by airport luggage style electric tractors before being consigned to there final fates.

The MAS TX5 “Backflip” lifting body heavy cruise missile was a beast. A full 23 meters long with twin turbojets deep set into its angular stealthy sub sonic form, its blunt nose cone covered in lenses and twin prongs of TERCOM, its belly holding the oddly angular shape of a single massive telescopic system. Designed not to deliver a simple single warhead but an entire suite of munitions pods the Backflip had originally been intended to engage masses of enemy amour from high altitude and had even been equipped with landing skids and mid air refueling capacity in trials. Not quite a true UCAV Backflip was old, reconditioned upgraded from stocks that had once stood in endless lines weather shrouds and launch rails in the deep desert. It had been and was one of MAS’s largest cruise body air frames and by far the easiest to transform into its present role. The spheres were loaded. 4 of them packing the Backflips airframes to there limit. Upon the stubby wings the simple form of solid rocket boosters would replace the single use explosive rams that would have originally hurled them down there launch ramps.

Ice. Wonderful building material at -15. Wrapped in quick setting plastic, and forced into ramps. Checked by laser to match its shape and sound for its consistency. Overlaid with the metal mass of a launch ramp of nylon shrouded aluminum and the gleam of the bare metal launch rails themselves. It would of course degrade over a month or two of steady surface shift. But for today it was perfect.

Massive MULE units towed the Backflips into position. There were now hundreds of personnel up on the ice maneuvering the things onto the long lines of ramps still being thrown up.

There was a roar of jet engines being tested. Then slowly but surely one by one over a period of eight long hours the missiles were finally ready to launch. Over 400 of the behemoths lunged into the air assisting by the ammonia stink of the pechlorate fueled solid rocket boosters filled the air as they lumbered ever upwards, the black kerosene clouds of there exhausts filling the clear artic air with a mass of smoggy clouds that were ripped apart by the harsh artic winds as there 30 year old engine designs filthy nature was revealed to mar there flash white painted bodies with carbon. On there undersides the bright blue logo could be seen a simple stenciled series of letters. M.A.C.E .

The mechanised invasion of the contested Island of Milton was on a full week before marines could reach shore and hopefully a full week before anybody dreamed about it.