NationStates Jolt Archive

Captain Hu'sla sat in the bridge of his craft as it moved towards a faint beacon in the distance. Around them, angry storm winds threw the craft about as if it were a feather, even through it definitely was much larger than such. A ripple of sheet lightning coursed through the boiling clouds around them, lights on the airship flickering as the energy was disappated from the engines. The dim red light illuminating the gondola showed a scene of near chaos as they tried to regain control, and steer them safely from the storm. Banks of red lights shouted out the situation to the sleepy men now called to emergency duties, whilst computer screens flickered.

A few minutes earlier, the CNZ22 had been riding the storm as it was designed, the crew taking the shortcut through the storm to try and make up for lost time earlier. Combined with a sudden crash on the computer systems, the crew had now resorted to the manual banks of gauges as they attempted to control the airship's flight path. The VOR beacon sensors had soon given them an ample guess of where they were by triangulation on the maps: the storm had swept them into a wholly unknown part of Nova, the country of Romandeos only a few kilometres away. The winds had meant they were inexorably drifting into that area, where few details graced the charts.

As the captain retook control of the airship, his hands on the controls slowing the vibrations to mere shivers as he prepared to descend. A computer unit nearby was undergoing some hideous cannabilisation by the engineers, cables hanging from the system as they hitched in a jumper unit to try and restart the mainframe. All the time, the Captain was doing his best to escape from the storm: cutting the altitude down to a few hundred metres was illegal mostly, but in this case would have to be done to get away from the maelstrom of clouds. Light began to build as the airship dropped out into the space below the clouds, the altimeter finally stopping at 300m as the ship regained neutral buoyancy from the release of helium lifting gas into the atmosphere. The Captain had no time to use the pumps to compress the gas in the engine bay cylinders, and had no intention of going back up: he was going to try and make a landing in this strange country, at least until the computers were back.
As the navigation software came back online, a dull warning siren sounded. The flashing light indicated that the device that had come back online, the Terrain Impact Meter, was detecting imminant impact. The captain without thinking cut the ballast units, allowing for 50kg of lead to drop from the cargo gondola. Through the mist, a dark shape emerged ahead: that of a hill crest. The Captain hit the emergancy ship-wide siren, before dropping to the floor and rolling into a ball.

The sound of the airship gondola hitting the hill lasted for a short time to nyone observing from the outside, but in the inside went on for an eternity. The nose of the airship was the first ot hit the hill, angrily glancing upwards as the framework crumpled. The rear of the airship spun down to smash into the hillside, the engine gondola taking the largest hit being on the rear. The tail fins snapped off with a sound like a crack of lightning as the airship end crumpled against the hill, the framework along the airship buckling as aluminium beams sheared at intersections. In the control gondola, the crew were thrown about as the structure they were in disintegrated around them, sparks flying from shredded electrical cables.

After ten seconds, the airship came to rest, a groove trailing behind the crumpled craft of the same length as it: eight hundred metres by a hundred metres, strewn with the airship cargo from a central thrid gondola: plastic airshipping crates sometimes cracked open to reveal assortions of random goods from various manufactureers, from trainers to massive rolls of aerofibre used in airship construction, to even a small(er) airship engine taking up the space of an entire 20mx3mx3m crate. The automated fire supression system came into effect in the remains of the engine gondola, putting out a small methane blaze that had started from a ruptured pipeline. Massive gashes in the fibre where the friction had ripped the envelope off revealed a network of translucent plastic gas cells, rippling in the storm winds or flapping where holes had been ripped in the outer layers. A network of destroyed metal beams stuck at ugly angles through the frame, skewering holes in the side. On the underside, the remains of the control gondola lay underneath the broken gasbag, the roof ripped off by the forces at play. The front had crumpled, the simple carbon-fibre and aluminium structure unable to take such forces. The front window has shattered, shards of glass covering the smashed control units and screens. The armoured flight recorders had been thrown from the mainframe, two yellow units lying amongst the detritus and graoning crew members.

The Captain pulled himself up, feeling the swelling around the fractures in his legs and his right shoulder as he levered himself up on his left leg. A quiet alarm from the flight recorder showed it was broadcasting an SOS signal, relaying their exact position to anyone who could hear the radio signals. Near to it, the radio operator lay with a re-enforcing strut stuck through his arm and pinning him in position. The Captain surveryed the scene of devestation, before dragging himself through a shattered partition that seperated the bridge from the sleeping quarters. Here, the strong smell of the chemical toilet cut across the general smell of destruction and damage, not delaying him as he moved to the emergency stores, where four metal crates lay still locked shut. The locks clicked as they received the emergancy signal, allowing them to be accessed if needed. The Captain opened the crate marked with a cross, revealing extensive medical supplies. Using his leg, he painfully dragged the heavy crate into the bridge, almost screaming with pain in the end. Takinga few seconds to recover, he took out a small roll of morphine shots, using one in his neck to relieve the pain. He waited for the pain to deaden, before looking over the sixteen crew members gathered in the bridge. An engineer had stumbled in, bleeding from underneath his shirt as he checked over the crewmen. In the distance, the Captain thought he could hear sirens as he checked over the area. It being safe enough for now, he shut off the power with the switch on the wall before checking the personnel scattered across the floor. The engineer was vigourously applying cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on the navigations controller.

Northern Romandeos

It had been raining. As the local emergency vehicles raced towards the crash site, puddles in the roads were kicked up by the rapidly spinning wheels. The exact nature of what was happening was not known, only that something big, an airplane, presumably, had crashed in what was thankfully largely open countryside. As the small convoy of vehicles moving in the direction of the crash drew closer smoke could be seen rising up and a new urgency immediately arose. Smoke meant there was likely fire which meant any survivors were in immediate peril. If they weren’t hurrying before, they were now.

Like is often the case, the first word of what exactly was going on came from the newsies in the local media, helicopters from at least three different channels flying out and staying in position above the crash site. From these, word was passed to the emergency personnel in the convoy. At once, there was confusion and even interest. What was an airship doing in Romandeos? What was an airship doing flying? Weren’t they obsolete?

Incredulity aside, the rescue force pressed onward. Within fifteen minutes, they had made it to the downed airship, and fire fighters, paramedics and police were piling out and were in action. A rescue crew, armed with prying equipment found the main gondola hatchway immediately and set about forcing it to open. When that was done fire fighters decked out in full kit moved inside and set about getting everybody they could find outside.

******************************

“Sir,” the paramedic, a slight woman with glasses and short brown hair, looked down at a man she was pretty sure was the captain of the ship.

“Sir,” she repeated. “Sir, do you speak any English?”

A small fire had started in the remains of the crew sleeping area, the fire suppression systems half-heartedly spraying a fine foam onto the affected areas. As the Captain continued counting over the crew, he noted the engineer still trying to resuscitate the controller on the floor, even though he showed no signs of life. Most of the unconscious survivors had started moving, groans of pain as they checked over themselves and tried to move themselves. The acrid smell of burning plastic reached the Captain as he saw a glow towards the rear of the gondola. Now it had taken hold, and with the suppression systems down, it would be a matter of seconds before the fire reached the CFRP underneath the fire-retardant surfaces, and from there engulfed the gondola. The Head engineer, who had been caught in the gondola impact, stumbled over with a foam extinguisher to battle the blaze, squirting a disgusting creamy formulation over the area.

Through the gaping hole of the smashed gondola screen, he could see the emergency services of wherever they were arriving. After a few shouts, there came a loud crash on the side door, followed by a hiss as the gas cylinder ejection system blew the door loose, allowing their rescuers in. The Captain watched as they got to work, as a paramedic approached him. She spoke in a strange accent, his English being passable enough to notice. Thinking a sentence through slowly, he replied.
"Good Evening. I Hu'sla, Captain. This aero freighter of Alfegos is."
Giving up on his English, he used furious sign gestures to point to the two flight recorders, then indicated on himself the broken bones theatrically.
"My English no good. Speak Fegosian, or of Spain?"
He shook the morphine capsule before she moved to her medical bag, allowing her to look at the wounds. He looked at his right leg to realise it was worse than expected: he'd managed to inflict an open fracture on the limb, a dent on the back showing where the computer unit had snapped the bone.

***Paramedic’s POV***

“Spanish…” the young woman muttered as she tried to examine the man. “Crap. Hey, we have anybody here who speaks any Spanish!?”

No reply was forthcoming for a second, but then one of the senior firefighters approached holding a small black object in one hand. It was a UTD, a translating tool. As he neared, a large crowd of firefighters was gathering outside attempting to dowse the flames to stop a huge explosion from occurring. Thus far, it seemed like they were getting it done. Taking her eyes from that, the paramedic grabbed the UTD and activated it. It was the sort which listened to a person speak and then translated it into written text of a selected language on its own small LCD screen.

“Sir,” she began, turning the device on. “This ship is on fire. We need to remove the crew immediately. Is this everybody?”

Meanwhile, a few unmarked black sedans were approaching the scene.

******************************

IRIS Central Office

For the men and women of the Imperial Romandeosian Intelligence Service, news that an immense airship had crashed in Romandeosian territory was more than a little odd. For as long as any currently employed could remember, nothing like that had happened. Aircraft had crashed before, but always planes. Those usually did not require IRIS services, unless it was suspected foul play was involved.

Even so, when the Empress called the Central Office, they set to work quickly, ordering a local office in the area to send out some field workers. They were to remain the indiscreet lookers, hanging out on the periphery. Essentially, if there was a possibility that any thing involved in this crash could benefit, the Imperial Federated States they were to note it and inform the Central Office immediately.

OOC:

Bumpification. My last IC post is edited, as requested.

The Captain looked bemused at the unit the gaggle of paramedics had produced, whilst the rest of his crew ere removed. Hearing her speak into the unit, he looked as he saw a translation appear on the screen in Simplified Fegosian pictograms. He replied back, seeing the Latin alphabet forming on the screen as he spoke.
"There are two people unaccounted for, out of my eighteen crew members: one was in the actual gasbag on the crash and the other was in the crew sleeping area."
He gestured to the collapsed partition behind him, the bunks and locker units collapsing into a small kitchen and recreation area. The fire in the area had died down as the firefighters attacked it, the CFRP in the walls untouched for now. Dragging himself along the wall, he looked in to try and find the man.
_________________________

Up in the gas bag, the engineer quietly moaned from his position. He had been standing on an internal gantry, and the shock of the impact had thrown him forward off the gantry and into the gas cells. His fall through the cells had been stopped by one of the snapped beams, that now trapped his arm almost completely. Along the beam, a bundle of control cables and a snapped helium gas pipe trailed around the outside, bending and ripping around the broken joint, pinning his arm in place. The man had stopped bothering to try call out for help: he knew the sheer size of the gasbag meant that it would take days to find him, and the helium in the air made him sound like a complete idiot.