NationStates Jolt Archive

Gray Clouds

It was a beautiful, cool spring afternoon in Tieshan, in the Republic of Jeuna. The sky was gray, but there was plenty of daylight coming through to illuminate the city. While it was windy, sending spray from waves crashing against the pylons up onto the docks, it was comfortable. Seagulls circled and shrieked overhead, keenly spying out unguarded morsels of fish flesh from the trawlers and whalers that almost perpetually inhabited the docks. Their cries came down in a cacophonous orchestra from on high. A few stray cats and dogs spied out the fish-packers just a short walk away. The asphalt was damp, partly from the ocean and partly from lingering morning dew, and patches of shining, green-purple oil were splashed around the whole area. All around, people bustled on their private errands, like ants in a colony.
+++Tieshan, apart from Rongzhu in the south, was the busiest deep-water port in Jeuna, and for good reason. It had always been a center of commerce, even from the founding days of the colony, where businessmen and moneylenders went to set up shop, away from the wild center of the country. It served as Jeuna's port of service for the Asian continent, and the West's "Yellow Gate". The French and British had used it as a stopover port for a long while, on their way to their colonies in Indochina and the larger Southeast Asian region, before both of them had backed out of the empire-building game, and so the ironic joke went that there was more yellow in California than Tieshan, as a result of the mingling of bloodlines. It was, quite possibly, as multicultural as Jeuna could get, and it was no surprise to see ships of many nationalities in the harbor.
+++One such ship was registered to a Hutiandi company, and it was just finishing docking in Pier 7, between an oil tanker on the left and bulk freighter on the right. The head of the docking team, identifiable by his white, rather than yellow, hard hat, walked up the pier's length as his crew lashed the ship to the moorings beside him. A squad of severe-looking men with clipboards, pens and flashlights followed in his footsteps: the inspection team. The white-hat held out a clipboard with several papers on it, bottom toward the captain of the ship. Both were standing near the gangplank. "Papehrwo' make eh worr' geu 'raun'," commented the man in the white hat wryly, in a strange accent halfway between French and Chinese. As soon as the captain had logged his ship, the man waved his team forward with a gesture, and waited outside. He didn't expect anything problematic, and so relaxed and leaned against the railing on his elbows, watching another ship come in, several piers down. The gantry crane far above them on the next pier made a racket as it unloaded containers full of auto parts.
+++The white-hat frowned, and crossed his arms as he watched an anvil-topped cloud move in over the sea with no small dislike. "Stohm's rollin' ehn," he chuntered sourly, and gave the offending warm front the evil eye. The threatening clouds grumbled deeply in reply, and kept on trundling forward.

[Some time before, remote island in Nan xi Territory]
The separists group in HuTianDi was nearing extinction. Numerous plots has been foiled by the HuTianDi government and their expasion was now severely limited by the actions of the HuTianDi government. Yet, they needed to spread their ideas.

General Wei was the current leader of the separatist group that once made up the official HuTianDi government before the civil war. His hair was now greying and his offices were no longer lavish government buildings. Instead he stood in a tent on a remote island. He looked over a set of plans with his officers one more time before saying, "Comense operation Broken Back"

[Ship in Jeuna]
"We have the order" Yelled the captain, "Delay those inspectors at all costs it will take somewhere around 30 minutes to get these chemicals ready."

"Yes sir," said several people who then left the bridge. Behind them were people, bound and gagged, the previous crew of the ship.

The captain then turned around and said, "For the preservation of HuTianDi." quietly to himself. He knew that his mission, failed or not, would soon plunge HuTianDi into a war and grant his organization the influence to declare independence and keep it.

((bah bad post))

The inspection team made its way up the gangplank, and stood on the deck. The man in charge gestured as he spoke, instructing the men to cover certain areas. Three men would take the cargo compartment [ed. note: or whatever's equivalent] and nose around there. Hopefully, this would be an in-and-out sort of deal: it was close to the end of the shift, and everyone was eager to get home to their evening meal.

[ Not much else I can write about. ]

[In the cargo hold]
"Those inspectors are coming over!" said one of the people in the small room with the chemical bomb. "Detonate the bomb early!" The man inside began the sequence and the armed man moved out with his rifle. The walked out infront of the inspectors and began to fire blindly. He wouldn't hit anything, he knew that but he had to keep them away for a few more seconds. Behind him a slow beeping began. Soon it became a continuous tone and with it it exploded sending the ship to the ocean and spreading a quickly dissapating could of gas. It wouldn't do much dissipating to quickly but it would still be able to cause the cacus bali for a war.

((bad post.. sorry, still horribly busy))

As the three workmen made their way to the stairway that would take them below-decks, the remaining two began work on the upper deck. The lead man going down the narrow stairs lifted his hand in a wave, seeing a crewman emerge from a side room in the hold. The friendly smile died on his lips, however, and he recoiled into the other inspectors when he saw the rifle. The two men behind him looked confused for a moment, but quickly understood when they, too, saw the gun, and scrambled up the way they had come. In the confusion, the lead man took a bullet in his back, which punched through his ribcage and tumbled into his heart. He stumbled and fell face-first onto the steps. The second man stopped, and attempted to pull him up after him, but took a ricocheting bullet in the arm and dropped the rapidly-fading man and tripped his way up to the main deck.
+++The two men above had heard the shots, and stood watching the two men running toward them, confused. After a moment of breathless shouting and wild gesturing, the lead inspector began speaking in rapid-fire Chinese over his headset to what was presumably the harbormaster, while he and the others took cover behind the port capstan. The city police were quickly notified, but just as they were scrambling to leave their department garages, the timer on the bomb terminated.
+++The explosion and flying debris turned most of the piers into rapidly-sinking wreckage, and the waterfront looked as if it were a warzone.

[ Apologies, work and administrating my Scouts drove this out of mind for a bit. ]