The Crystal Mountains
14-08-2007, 01:25
3 Days Ago...
CS. Pacifica
Ghost Tigers Sound
10 miles North of the city of Northshore.
Captain Jamison didn't have to console Carlson about sending his men out without him this time. Carlson would be heading tonight's mission and- probably wouldn't see the inside of the comfortable Pacifica for some time.
Alpha and Bravo teams were going tonight with a team of Ranger Pathfinders.
Tomorrow night Charlie team would bring in two more teams: Rangers and Army Specialists.
The Pathfinders had won a grudging from the Badgers. What they lacked in skills in the water, they made up for in smarts. Pathfinders, like Badgers, were the elite of an elite force. They were supposed to be the first in: a point they argued endlessly with the Badgers.
The men split into two groups of 16 as the big sub hovered silently just below the thermal layer at 220 meters. They filed up the forward and aft escape trunks and entered the two small ASDS[Advanced Seal Delivery System] subs that the Badgers had affectionately nicknamed "Tuna-cans".
Carlson's Badgers were on the clock and wasted no time getting under way.
The two little subs scooted toward their destination silently at 10 knots on their battery driven propulsion.
It took them a little over an hour to cover the distance to the Northshore harbor and then things got interesting. Nero's had withdrawn the majority of their invasion fleet but it appeared that the ships they did leave were making up the difference by pure hyperactivity. The frigates and destroyers racing around the perimeter of the harbor at 25 knots were looking for an air strike or an invasion. They weren't looking for a "tuna can" full of elite commandos. Not that they stood much of a chance of detecting the "tuna can", they certainly wouldn't at that speed.
The two ASDS's parked itself under a pier near a sewer grate and the thirty-six men went into the water. The mini-subs turned around and headed back to their mother-ship.
The Badgers and the Pathfinders swam the short distance to the sewer grate where a young woman was waiting. She used a key to open the padlock that kept the grate shut. One by one the Commandos climbed up the grate and entered the sewer.
Commander Carlson was the last in. The young woman gave him a warm hug and said, "Welcome home honey. We've got a lot of work to do."
She locked the grate back waved to her husband and disappeared into the darkness.
___________________________________________________
That same night and time, teams from the other five Ohio class converted special warfare subs Atlantis, Indica, Amazonia, Avalonian and Rohirriarn had deposited similar teams at Port Charles, Highland and three deserted rough areas on the North-east side of the island. As soon as the the ASDS minisubs returned to their mother-ships, they went to depth below the thermal layer and made speed runs back to the protected fjord on the North East shore of the New Prussian Empire where a small task force of Crystal Mountain ships was hiding to support the op.
_____________________________________________________
Day 1 Ashore:
Carlson's contact with the Resistance, a former Militia Captain, indicated that Nero's troops took the Crystal Mountains military for a joke when they bugged out to their fall back position in the Emerald Isles. They didn't look too closely or overly provoke the population. The Resistance, after a few incidents by hotheads, had managed to lull Nero's occupation troops into comfortable watchfulness.
Nero's people had missed the vast majority of the secrets of Crystal Isle: the secrets that made it worth fighting for. When they did go nosing around in the caves, they found them so booby trapped that they lost so many men that they had made the caves off limits until demolitions experts could clear them. With the war at full tilt, demolitions experts had their hands full.
Commander Carlson's men found what they were looking for. The three arms caches in the underground of Northshore were in tact. The Ammo dumps were in separate locations, two of three were in tact. One had been hit when bombs hit the building above and one penetrated far enough to collapse the roof.
In any event, there were enough arms ammunitions and even a few vehicles down here arm a couple of divisions. In the hands of smart and skillful insurgents, they would be worth a hell of a lot more than than a couple of divisions.
Day 2:
The next day Pathfinders and Badgers donned plain clothes and went out to Recon the area. Nero's troops were visible but not overwhelming. Carlson made a note that the enemy commander had his occupation troops acting professionally and had kept discipline.
The Resistance had noted early on that they were stories about people disappearing and rapes but since the first days of the invasion, the occupation had been unusually gentle.
Locations and numbers of armor, SAMs, Radar dishes were noted... as were their GPS coordinates.
That night everything that was recorded was encoded and sent up to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit that routed the burst transmission to CM headquarters where a computer decoded it and sent it to General Peterson of the Army who was overall commander of Operation Phoenix.
Pathfinders armed and trained two hundred Resistance members with a number of weapons and explosives. Most had either military or Militia background so small arms weren't an issue. They did need some help with the more complex weapons like anti-tank missiles, 100mm smart mortars and ManPad SAMs.
At one a.m. another group of 36 commandos and specialists arrives: Charlie squad of Carlson's Badger's, 12 more Rangers and a dozen assorted technical specialists. The sewers of Northshore had never been livelier, or more deadly.
_________________________________________________
The six special warfare subs weren't as lucky on night two of Operation Phoenix: A helicopter got a whiff of the Amazonian on the way out. She was badly damaged and nearly sunk by air dropped torpedoes. She arrived back at her temporary base 36 hours late and obviously benched for the duration of the war.
_________________________________________________
Day 3
500 more Resistance members were given the finer points of some of the Commonwealth Army's high tech and low tech weapons. Claymore mines, remote detonators, materials for car bombs and 100 other dirty tricks were distributed.
Special attention was given to the "Constabulary" set up by the Neroians. They were citizens that had been recruited to be a police force after Nero's Commander abolished the Militia. As it turned out, the vast majority of them did it to keep Nero's troops from policing Commonwealth citizens and were no more loyal to the occupation than they might be to a bad case of athletes foot. Senior commanders of the Constabulary were easily recruited and they were soon working passively for the Resistance gathering Intel and passing on info.
The biggest operation so far was the ship coming in- a Roll-on, Roll Off car carrier of "heavy trucks and construction equipment" ordered before the occupation. It had been re routed and reloaded: trucks up front, 7th Armored division and a mech infantry brigade below decks.
The Harbor Master had everything covered. The trick would be getting them offloaded before occupation troops got wise and put their act together.
Things got underway at dusk. Very quietly. A snipped telephone wire here, a jammer there. Power failures- caused and fixed by the Resistance as they had been every night since the occupation began. Explained to the Neroians: its an old system.
The ViZonian flagged car carrier Pacific Traveler docked at Pier 163 at 20:00 right on schedule. A squad of Neroian troops watched in boredom as dock workers offloading Toyota 4W drive trucks into one of the huge adjoining warehouses. Luckily for them they lost interest and wandered off as most of the dock crew were Badgers.
______________________________________________________________
In Northshore things didn't go as smoothly. The British-Londonium flagged Nippon Maru arrived as expected.
What wasn't expected was a overachieving Neroian Lieutenant who insisted on overseeing the ships offloading. After seein 50 4WD Toyotas, he was still on site.
With one hand gesture, the Badger commander signaled that the Neroian LT had worn out his welcome. He never heard the silenced .45 that killed him.
_______________________________________________________________
In both Northshore and Port Charles, tanks and APCs flowed off the car-carriers and ended up in a series of waterfront warehouses. Last to come off were dozens of Apache Longbows and their munitions. They were taken to a secure warehouse where the 203rd army aviation brigade attached their rotors and prepped them for action.
_______________________________________________________________
The Resistance was busy too. Teams had been dispatched to the outskirts of the several air bases that the Neroians were using. They set up 40 100mm morter tubes and networked them together with fiber optic cable. The Ranger that had accompanied them connected his laptop to the array of morter tubes and began programming the fire mission. They covered the morter tubes with camo net, careful not to foul any of the tubes. They buried a fiber cable and pulled it 100 meters back to an abandoned farmhouse.
The Ranger set up his computer, connected to the morter battery and his radio waiting for the order that he expected to recieve at dawn.
The first target were parked aircraft, second were the fuel stres and ammo dump and two guided volleys for targets of oppertunity.
Once they had set off the fire mission and crippled the air base, they had another mission: clear roadblocks. Plain old nitty-gritty infantry fighting which suits a Ranger just fine.
CS. Pacifica
Ghost Tigers Sound
10 miles North of the city of Northshore.
Captain Jamison didn't have to console Carlson about sending his men out without him this time. Carlson would be heading tonight's mission and- probably wouldn't see the inside of the comfortable Pacifica for some time.
Alpha and Bravo teams were going tonight with a team of Ranger Pathfinders.
Tomorrow night Charlie team would bring in two more teams: Rangers and Army Specialists.
The Pathfinders had won a grudging from the Badgers. What they lacked in skills in the water, they made up for in smarts. Pathfinders, like Badgers, were the elite of an elite force. They were supposed to be the first in: a point they argued endlessly with the Badgers.
The men split into two groups of 16 as the big sub hovered silently just below the thermal layer at 220 meters. They filed up the forward and aft escape trunks and entered the two small ASDS[Advanced Seal Delivery System] subs that the Badgers had affectionately nicknamed "Tuna-cans".
Carlson's Badgers were on the clock and wasted no time getting under way.
The two little subs scooted toward their destination silently at 10 knots on their battery driven propulsion.
It took them a little over an hour to cover the distance to the Northshore harbor and then things got interesting. Nero's had withdrawn the majority of their invasion fleet but it appeared that the ships they did leave were making up the difference by pure hyperactivity. The frigates and destroyers racing around the perimeter of the harbor at 25 knots were looking for an air strike or an invasion. They weren't looking for a "tuna can" full of elite commandos. Not that they stood much of a chance of detecting the "tuna can", they certainly wouldn't at that speed.
The two ASDS's parked itself under a pier near a sewer grate and the thirty-six men went into the water. The mini-subs turned around and headed back to their mother-ship.
The Badgers and the Pathfinders swam the short distance to the sewer grate where a young woman was waiting. She used a key to open the padlock that kept the grate shut. One by one the Commandos climbed up the grate and entered the sewer.
Commander Carlson was the last in. The young woman gave him a warm hug and said, "Welcome home honey. We've got a lot of work to do."
She locked the grate back waved to her husband and disappeared into the darkness.
___________________________________________________
That same night and time, teams from the other five Ohio class converted special warfare subs Atlantis, Indica, Amazonia, Avalonian and Rohirriarn had deposited similar teams at Port Charles, Highland and three deserted rough areas on the North-east side of the island. As soon as the the ASDS minisubs returned to their mother-ships, they went to depth below the thermal layer and made speed runs back to the protected fjord on the North East shore of the New Prussian Empire where a small task force of Crystal Mountain ships was hiding to support the op.
_____________________________________________________
Day 1 Ashore:
Carlson's contact with the Resistance, a former Militia Captain, indicated that Nero's troops took the Crystal Mountains military for a joke when they bugged out to their fall back position in the Emerald Isles. They didn't look too closely or overly provoke the population. The Resistance, after a few incidents by hotheads, had managed to lull Nero's occupation troops into comfortable watchfulness.
Nero's people had missed the vast majority of the secrets of Crystal Isle: the secrets that made it worth fighting for. When they did go nosing around in the caves, they found them so booby trapped that they lost so many men that they had made the caves off limits until demolitions experts could clear them. With the war at full tilt, demolitions experts had their hands full.
Commander Carlson's men found what they were looking for. The three arms caches in the underground of Northshore were in tact. The Ammo dumps were in separate locations, two of three were in tact. One had been hit when bombs hit the building above and one penetrated far enough to collapse the roof.
In any event, there were enough arms ammunitions and even a few vehicles down here arm a couple of divisions. In the hands of smart and skillful insurgents, they would be worth a hell of a lot more than than a couple of divisions.
Day 2:
The next day Pathfinders and Badgers donned plain clothes and went out to Recon the area. Nero's troops were visible but not overwhelming. Carlson made a note that the enemy commander had his occupation troops acting professionally and had kept discipline.
The Resistance had noted early on that they were stories about people disappearing and rapes but since the first days of the invasion, the occupation had been unusually gentle.
Locations and numbers of armor, SAMs, Radar dishes were noted... as were their GPS coordinates.
That night everything that was recorded was encoded and sent up to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit that routed the burst transmission to CM headquarters where a computer decoded it and sent it to General Peterson of the Army who was overall commander of Operation Phoenix.
Pathfinders armed and trained two hundred Resistance members with a number of weapons and explosives. Most had either military or Militia background so small arms weren't an issue. They did need some help with the more complex weapons like anti-tank missiles, 100mm smart mortars and ManPad SAMs.
At one a.m. another group of 36 commandos and specialists arrives: Charlie squad of Carlson's Badger's, 12 more Rangers and a dozen assorted technical specialists. The sewers of Northshore had never been livelier, or more deadly.
_________________________________________________
The six special warfare subs weren't as lucky on night two of Operation Phoenix: A helicopter got a whiff of the Amazonian on the way out. She was badly damaged and nearly sunk by air dropped torpedoes. She arrived back at her temporary base 36 hours late and obviously benched for the duration of the war.
_________________________________________________
Day 3
500 more Resistance members were given the finer points of some of the Commonwealth Army's high tech and low tech weapons. Claymore mines, remote detonators, materials for car bombs and 100 other dirty tricks were distributed.
Special attention was given to the "Constabulary" set up by the Neroians. They were citizens that had been recruited to be a police force after Nero's Commander abolished the Militia. As it turned out, the vast majority of them did it to keep Nero's troops from policing Commonwealth citizens and were no more loyal to the occupation than they might be to a bad case of athletes foot. Senior commanders of the Constabulary were easily recruited and they were soon working passively for the Resistance gathering Intel and passing on info.
The biggest operation so far was the ship coming in- a Roll-on, Roll Off car carrier of "heavy trucks and construction equipment" ordered before the occupation. It had been re routed and reloaded: trucks up front, 7th Armored division and a mech infantry brigade below decks.
The Harbor Master had everything covered. The trick would be getting them offloaded before occupation troops got wise and put their act together.
Things got underway at dusk. Very quietly. A snipped telephone wire here, a jammer there. Power failures- caused and fixed by the Resistance as they had been every night since the occupation began. Explained to the Neroians: its an old system.
The ViZonian flagged car carrier Pacific Traveler docked at Pier 163 at 20:00 right on schedule. A squad of Neroian troops watched in boredom as dock workers offloading Toyota 4W drive trucks into one of the huge adjoining warehouses. Luckily for them they lost interest and wandered off as most of the dock crew were Badgers.
______________________________________________________________
In Northshore things didn't go as smoothly. The British-Londonium flagged Nippon Maru arrived as expected.
What wasn't expected was a overachieving Neroian Lieutenant who insisted on overseeing the ships offloading. After seein 50 4WD Toyotas, he was still on site.
With one hand gesture, the Badger commander signaled that the Neroian LT had worn out his welcome. He never heard the silenced .45 that killed him.
_______________________________________________________________
In both Northshore and Port Charles, tanks and APCs flowed off the car-carriers and ended up in a series of waterfront warehouses. Last to come off were dozens of Apache Longbows and their munitions. They were taken to a secure warehouse where the 203rd army aviation brigade attached their rotors and prepped them for action.
_______________________________________________________________
The Resistance was busy too. Teams had been dispatched to the outskirts of the several air bases that the Neroians were using. They set up 40 100mm morter tubes and networked them together with fiber optic cable. The Ranger that had accompanied them connected his laptop to the array of morter tubes and began programming the fire mission. They covered the morter tubes with camo net, careful not to foul any of the tubes. They buried a fiber cable and pulled it 100 meters back to an abandoned farmhouse.
The Ranger set up his computer, connected to the morter battery and his radio waiting for the order that he expected to recieve at dawn.
The first target were parked aircraft, second were the fuel stres and ammo dump and two guided volleys for targets of oppertunity.
Once they had set off the fire mission and crippled the air base, they had another mission: clear roadblocks. Plain old nitty-gritty infantry fighting which suits a Ranger just fine.