NationStates Jolt Archive

The following events take place at unspecified locations, due to the lack of specific locations of platforms known. Try and refrain from metagaming, but I'm sure everyone here has played enough to now what metagaming is and isn't.

SIC:

I, King Sanford, ruler of Bellom, have watched for many ages now as a rougue corporation has run rampant among the world. They have devoured the young and the sickly, bleeding them of their resources, namely oil. For many years, nations as small as mine have sat and done nothing. This day, I vow to avenge that. My fists shall be as cruise missiles, and their deliverers will be my silent hunters. They shall wreak havoc upon the men of Griffencrest, to say nothing of their commanders. United with my allies under the banner of Gholgoth Minor, no harm shall befall the homeland. With this signature, I hereby authorize the release of weaponry against the Griffencrest Corporation. All due force required may be used to curb its power.

Sanford II
King of Bellom

I placed my pen down and looked at the article in full. Its intent was obvious, but it would never reach the light of day. I placed my official seal upon the document, and then placed it in a safe underneath my desk. all intents and purposes, a state of war now existed between the Griffencrest Corporation and my beloved nation. Too bad for them that I was the only one who knew about it. Hopefully no one would learn of the contents of this letter. Either way, the company would suffer.

BSV Silent Spider
Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean
0040 Hours

The Silent Spider slowly crept to the top of the waves. A Virginia class submarine, it had traveled to its final checkpoint where it had been ordered to surface. Breaking the surface of water, the dark sky enveloped the submarine, shrouding it from any prying eyes that might have been in the region. It opened a secure, highly encrypted datalink with a Bellomian satellite passing overhead. Downloading the critical mission information, including the target coordinates took some time, but after a short while they were back underwater. All systems were black, and nothing was to be emmited from the submarine. If anyone tried to illuminate the sub, the passive RADAR would pull a foul trick on the searcher. Now within a fairly close range of the target, the sub was put into silent mode, with the engines making as little sound as possible yet still making decent time.

Sub Commander Edwin Marshall was one of 5 submarines who had just recieved commands on where and when to hit. As his sub cruised towards its destination, he pondered why he did it. What gives me the right to pull the trigger? Why do I never question the motherland desite that they will not provide me a true face for an enemy? Why must we attack civilian targets, and more importantly, why an oil rig isolated in the middle of nowhere? As these things rambled through his head, nothing quite clicked. Out on his submarine, news updates were few and far between, and he had little to no knowledge of the Freekish attack upon a Griffencrest base near Freekish territory. As a matter of fact, he hardly knew who Griffencrest was at all, just that they were a supposedly large oil company. But this was of little matter to him. All that mattered was that the motherland called, and that he would answer. For the King, for Kriegos, for glory. For Kriegos... That reminded him of something. He knelt down beside his bed, for he was in his quarters at the moment. Quickly and quietly he went through his normal procession of prayers to the god. This time, however, he also dropped in a line for Himmelas, that his missiles would fly straight and true. Having wrapped that up, he felt more secure. The doubts were removed from his mind, and he was ready to continue.

He left his quarters and walked into the command room. All else were already present, but he checked over the faces one by one out of habit. He slowly described to them what was about to occur. The Bellomian sub would pull up into range of the oil platform, which thanks to the Juumanstrian made M-GLS-56 Hipshot cruise missile should be in the range of 2,500 km. From there, they would fire the cruise missiles from the torpedo tubes while still submerged. The platform would never know what hit them, and even more so, where it came from. For now, they would remain silent. After firing the missiles, they would leave all systems off and bottom out. After reaching a designated depth, they would move back to their last uplink coordiantes to get more instructions. This may not be the case every time, but it certainly was this time. In actuality, they would not be launching more than two M-GLS-56 Hipshot missiles due to their high price. However, paired with three BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles, it should end the platform nicely. While the Hipshot were close to three times the price, they were also much more advanced. But for now, they just had to wait.

BSV Silent Spider
circa 2400 Kilometers off a Griffencrest Oil Platform
0400 Hours

Commander Marshall slowly raised his hand up, signaling the crew to bring the sub to a stop. Silently, they prepared to fire, loading the GPS coordinates of the platform into the missiles. This would get them into range for their other guidance systems to kick in. The call came to fire, and that they did. With any luck, the missiles were now on their way to a successful strike. Marshall did not have time to see the results for himself however. Griffencrest was sure to learn of the attac, and this area would be swarming with enemy forces before too long. He ordered the sub to dive, and then relayed the next uplink coordinates to the navigators. Hopefully the other subs had had a similar experience...

I may add more background later, but I have to go for now. All missiles are TTL.

OOC so you are attacking BC Griffencrest Corporation, this be fun to see what happens to you

Bump for Blackhelm Confederacy. TG sent.

tag

International Merchant Lanes
GPS Coordinates ****90
12 Miles From Nearest Griffencrest Oil Platform


As Shakespeare once described the slow, undeniable approach of a dark Death, so did the trio of Praetonian-made, Lupus-class SSKNs glide like harbingers of an abrupt death through the undercurrents of the ocean. Each was under tight communication black out. Their hulls had been scraped clean of any and all identifying sigils and their crew had removed all personal items and even their usual uniforms. They wore simple P.T. fatigues, which was a poor comparison to the usual black, fresh uniforms they usually wore. But then when sent on a classified mission the line-and-order sailors knew not to question their captain.

“Master Chief, bring us about right twelve degrees,” said the captain of the lead attack submarine. “Make sure the trim is correct.”

“Aye Captain,” replied the petty officer standing next to him. He turned to the row of men sitting upright and alert at their stations. Beads of sweat fell down their faces in rivulets, the only sign of the stress on their shoulders.

“Helm, about starboard twelve degrees; watch the trim.”

“Yes sir Chief.”

The captain looked over his maps again, checking over the calculations in his head and then checking the GPS. It was risky using it, as some modern navies had ways of detecting a GPS signal. But their prey was less inclined to have the necessary detection capabilities to even know the signal, let alone his ship, was there. He checked the crystal wristwatch on his arm. Time was important to their mission.

“Increase speed by five knots,” ordered the captain.

“Increase speed aye sir,” nodded the master chief. He turned around. “Helm, speed increase by five knots.”

“Speed increased to 20 knots by 5, aye chief.”

The operator sitting nearly as silently and still as a stone with a pair of thick headphones over his ears looked up with a slight shock of recognition. With measured movements that spoke of long familiarity of the controls at his fingers, the sailor turned on his passive radar, to help add to his passive sonar scans. He listened and looked. Two blots appeared on his screen. Two engines played their predictable ballad in his sonar-amplified ears.

“Captain, we’ve got two marks. Eighteen hundred meters and moving perpendicular to our present course…west-by-north-west, speed of both at a smooth eighteen knots,” the man reported.

“Chief, bring us to periscope depth,” the captain grinned wolfishly.

“Periscope depth aye, sir.”

“Send confirmation signal to the others,” the captain added.”

The attack submarine smoothly rose like a serpent from the near-bottom of the ocean and came up towards the surface. The two other submarines mirrored its movements. The periscope stuck up out from the blue swirling waves of the ocean like a thin reed in a river bed. A hawk-eyed man however stared through its eye piece.

“Flag designation…Griffencrest. Names…‘St. Marie’ and ‘Lunar Lady’. Intel, check the list that NHC gave us,” said the captain.

The master chief checked the print readout that Naval Intelligence had given to all respective Thrashian attack submarine groups, a list of known major oil tankers under Griffencrest colors. If the names matched then they were crewed by Griffencrest men and not simply an allied power bearing the Griffencrest flag.

“Intel list confirmation sir. Both ships.”

“Sir, ships closing at a distance of 1000 meters; speed still 18 knots,” pitched in the sonar specialist.

“Load and arm four Broadsword torpedoes,” ordered the captain. Further up the ship in the torpedo room, burly men wrestled the large submersible killers into their tubes. Red lights flashed on next to the, and on the captain’s control board.

“Distance to first target, 800 meters. Second target 900,” relayed the Master Chief.

“Flood all tubes. Have the Martanius take the second. Poseidon is to move starboard and intercept if we miss,” ordered the captain, a feverish light in his eyes.

“Target solution and lock confirmed,” the weapons petty officer announced. “Target at 670 meters and closing.”

For that moment the captain stood still. It was a feeling that only a few men ever felt, one shared between submarine captains and army snipers; that undeniably awe-inspiring feeling of knowing that in that one moment when your enemy is in your sights you have achieved a small moment of ascendancy with God, to decide whether or not to kill that which unknowingly hangs in the balance between it and Life.

“Fire tubes One through Four.”

With a ‘whoosh’ of compressed air and the hum of torpedo sharks come to life, the four finned devices sped forward like bats out of Hell. Almost simultaneously the second submarine, the Martanius also loosed its dogs of war too. The crews of both submarines sat with gritted teeth and clenched hands. What if we missed? What if we’re discovered?

The torpedoes from the first submarine took the foremost tanker amidst ship, two contacting against its hull directly at its epicenter. The other two hit the ship closer to its large turbines and the rear of it. The same can be said for the second tanker. Explosions ripped through their hulls, metal ripping apart seemingly as easily as a hand through paper. Like a rock dropped into water, both tankers sank within a matter of minutes; their crews given hardly enough time to do little than cry out a garbled distress signal.

The sonar operator listened carefully. “All targets hit. They’re sinking sir.”

A muted cheer rose from the crew, the captain enjoying the feeling of energy that coursed through him whenever he made a kill. Sighing he turned to his deputy. “Bring us full about Master Chief. Set a course for home. Tight transmission on decryption code B to NHC of mission success. Alert the others as well. We’re going home.”

Over the course of two weeks, scattered incidents such as these happened across the sea board. Small groups of silent, faceless wolf packs prowled the seas bringing down thousands of tons of Griffencrest oil shipping.

OOC: Sorry for taking so long to respond to this, spring break and school interrupted. Thrashia, that is a godmod if I've ever seen one and it is being ignored. Griffincrest contracts a large number of its shipping, thus giving the ships flags of nations other than Griffincrest, and those that do sail under the Griffincrest banner travel in very heavily armed convoys.

IC:

Unfortunately for the Bellomites, each and every Griffincrest oil platform was in actuality a small military base, and due to the constant threat of Rosdivanian and Hurtian privateers, the RADAR rooms were always on their guard. Each rig was equipped with four S-400's launchers, and four C-802 launchers, placed one in between each S-400.

Mercenary John Wilkins, a foreigner from the nation known as Colorado and Texas, was sitting in the RADAR room sipping coffee and thinking about home when the first sign of the missile appeared on the screen in front of him.The RADAR system on the rig had a range of seven hundred miles, and picked up the Juumanistraan made machine as soon as it came into its range. Wikins immediately sounded the alarm, and men scrambled into their positions as the anti-missile batteries sprang to life.

It would be several minutes before the missile would make impact with the rig, and that was more than enough time to unleash a dozen S-400 missiles to strike the enemy warhead from the sky. Just in case these missiles had failed in their objective, a second salvo was prepared to be launched, and flares and chaff were readied on the deck, hoping to distract the enemy munition should it make it through the missile gauntlet.

At the same time as the counter-missiles were being launched, two seperate calls were being made from the rig. One was sent to the nearest task force, the 33rd Sealane Protection Group. The small flotilla was centered around a pocket battleship, and consisted of four Neptune class cruisers and six Charon class destroyers. They were diverted from their usual anti-pirate patrols and called in to hunt for the origin of the new threat.

The second call went out to Griffincrest Headquarters in Paradise City. The call informed the executives of that an attack was underway, but the rig was expected to survive. The headquarters responded by ordering the tiny Um al Maradim assault ship to head to the waters in search of the downed missile, abd to use its CIWS weapons if necessary. In seconds, the tiny boat was in the water, preparing to lend its guns to help protect the rig if necessary, and waiting for the missile to arrive on its RADAR screen.

OOC: That's so sad, that you can't take the loss of a couple tankers...

OOC: BTW, would protecting each and every GC ship via "heavily armed" convoys be logistically and financially feasible, and would it be strategically sound? I'm not criticizing you or saying you couldn't do it, I'm just wondering if lumping enough tankers together in one convoy to turn a profit from each voyage (fuel gained vs. fuel spent) wouldn't be like the single best target you could ever give your enemies? I mean, the more ships you add to defend the convoy sufficiently, the more fuel you spend on each voyage, and so the more tankers you need to have per convoy to turn a profit, so the more ships you need to protect them, etc, ad infinitum. Eventually, you either run out of tankers, warships, or oil. The only way out of it I can see is by either:

a) Building some REALLY BIG tankers, which make even better targets.
or
b) Contracting ALL oil shipping to other entities, thus protecting yourself by secrecy but forfeiting all actual protection and leaving those ships open to unhindered (but unlikely) attack by anyone who figures out which ships are headed where. You could try protecting those ships, but then everyone knows exactly who they are working for, and you have the infinitely-upwards spiraling costs mentioned before, on an even more unmanageable scale.

OOC: Damn, I guess this is dead. I really wanted him to answer my post.

[OOC: What about nuclear engines? Before the Haven War, virtually every ship in my navy of frigate size or larger was nuclear powered, and I only started the process of switching back to fuel-burning when I had a weakened, smaller navy that has little need for power projection beyond occasionally patrolling shipping lanes. Also, given the threat of enemy depredation I still equip my merchant shipping with CIWS, RAM, and light armament, usually two 75mm or one 155mm gun, a small VLS battery and a couple of torp tubes. About warfare, I prefer not to RP actually hitting a target, and if someone RP's hitting, or God forbid, destroying, a target of mine I am more than willing to quietly ignore that part of the post in order to respond to the threat. That said, the loss of a couple of tankers wouldn't be a crippling blow to Griffincrest.]

OOC: Ah yes, nuclear ships. I hadn't accounted for that, though it would make the tankers and warships much larger than ordinary ones.