NationStates Jolt Archive

The AAS Intrepid was performing a standard patrol on the morning of May 20th, 2009. Cutting around the Western coast of Weccanfield, the craft was a 450m long N-class Aerofrigate, armed to the eyeballs with anti-ship missiles. THe patrol was part of the Alfegos anti-piracy initiative, using random airship patrols to take out any suspected pirate vessels, alongside coralling rulebreakers into the correct airship and ship lanes. The vessel was a sturdy piece of construction, able to carry many hundreds of tonnes in payload, mainly devoted to missiles. Due to heightened threat levels, the airship also carried a section of navy personnel, to board any suspect ships. Crammed into the crew supply bay alongside crates of ammunition, it was not the most comfortable ride for them.

The ships orders were to follow the airshipping lane all the way around to Katonozag, and then to refuel at one of the major airports there. Pretty straightforward, weather permitting. At around 0900 hours, the pilot of the airship faced a difficult decision. A met-office forcast had pinpointed a massive storm system rolling off the ocean towards Weccanfield, gathering strength as it moved. For most airship pilots, the simple course of action was to hop over the storm, flying through the tops of storm clouds. But in large storm systems where turbulence could snap even the sturdiest of airships in two, the only choice was to go around.

However, the military airship had little in the way of fuel reserves. Even if it jettisoned its ballast and crew, going around such a large storm system would mean that they would run out of fuel, and face winds travelling in the wrong direction to their intended path. It'd take days to get a refuelling or towing unit out to them, a prospect none particularly desired. And cutting across Weccanfield was unthinkable. So, the pilot decided to brave the storm, cutting under the clouds at altitudes where wind speeds should be milder.

At midday, the sky looked more like midnight as the clouds towered above the small craft. Rain battered the sides of the airship, crashing against the glass and rattling around the aluminium hull of the gondola. Every now and again, a warning light would show that a lightning bolt had hit the craft, redirected by a trailed cable towards the sea below. The pilot had diesngaged autopilot, countering the buffeting winds as he tried to keep the airship vaguely on course. For the others, it was business as usual, the thirty-or-so crew members going about sleeping, recreation or their active roles, scanning for threats.

Everything changed at one in the afternoon. The airship had hit a calm patch, and had used that oppertunity to correct itself, ensuring it stayed clear of Weccanfield airspace. When the storm returned though, the battered structure of the airship finally decided it had had enough. As windspeeds reached a savage 140mph, spinning the airship and blowing it towards weccanfield, parts of the internal structure began to succumb to fatigue. The entire airship contingent of engineers were called to inside the airship gasbag, using cable guns and emergency patches to try and keep the skeleton together. Smaller supporting struts snapped, walkways crashing about as holes in the airship envelope let in the full force of the wind.

The true extent of the damage came as the power went offline. Guidance systems and instrument panels died, the emergency generator only producing enough power to allow for the defensive and offensive systems to remain online. By now, the pilot had decided the only chance of survival was to try and weather the storm out, by going against the winds until the storm passed. With the lightning and storm clouds interfering even with the VOR beacon system, the pilot resorted to using maps to try and plot their location, lighthouses now visible on the cliffs in the distance. Whilst the airship scrambling system meant that it was virtually invisible to RADAR in such a storm, that meant it was impossible to call in any help, even if Weccanfield were to provide. And with visibility at an all time low, the pilot had to rely on the altimeter and magnetic compass to try and steer them in the right direction.

The situation was lost when, later in the afternoon, the gondola structure failed. A massive crash came as the main glass windows imploded, ripping away parts of the instrument panels at the front. As the crew frantically tried to bring the airship back under control, the pilot was unable to see the ground coming up below. With the winds behind them, the airship was doing a good 180km/h, well above its structural speed, when it impacted. A good few miles inland, the crew had been too preoccupied to notice the ground coming up. The normal emergency sirens had been ripped out in structural failure, meaning no-one had time to brace for impact.

The gondola of the airship hit the swampland below, cutting through the water before crumpling as it hit a firmer patch. The rest of the airship carried on, ripping the gondolas from the underside and tossing them into the ooze. The gasbag hit the ground a hundred metres from the gondolas, ripping into pieces as the sheer mass was slowed, ending up many hundreds of metres away through the marshland. The missile gondola sat still attached to the underside of the gasbag remains, forced many metres below the surface, whilst the engine gondola sat burning another couple hundred of metres away. In the crew gondola, fire raged as water came into contact with electrics, sparks setting light to gas heating systems as the few surivivors tried to escape.

After ten minutes of confusion, the passenger gondola had sunk under the mud. On a small grassy island nearby, six of the soldiers and seven of the crew lay exhausted from the struggle against the mud. Of them, eight were only mildy injured, whilst the others were suffering from a range of broken bones and arms. The first priority in an impact, according to doctrine, was to make sure as many people as possible who had got out were alive. Then, they were to secure the crash site.

One of the soldiers swam out to where part of the wreckage lay protruding from a water patch, hefting out the crates (fortunately sealed) designed for survival and attack. Ammunition, flares, food, water and radios were aplenty in six massive crates, which on small liferafts were hauled across to the island. The men had given up on looking for casualties by now - all around the wreckage, drowned bodies lay face down in the mud, blood pooling on the surface.

It took twenty minutes for the group to gather their supplies, before moving to a small forested patch. Deep in hostile territory, their only chance was to try and contact Alfegos once the storm had passed, to get a rescue mission sent. Until then, the cover of a forest was where large ponchos were set up, dry areas created where they could dry off and recloth, whilst setting up a defensive postion. In the distance, they could occasionally see lights - hostile locals? All they could do was dig in, whilst waiting for a break in the clouds to send a distress call.

There might have been a time in which Hwaest was an important little village. Many youngsters are told in the local school that the village was once a major station town, mere miles away from a border beyond which nationalism flourished in the mid-19th century. A respectably sized battle had been fought over this village, and for a while its denizens were treated to the sight of countless men passing through to fight for the nation hundreds and thousands of miles away. Now, the only sight of uniformed men in the village were occasional officals coming in to count people and deal justice. And, of course, men returning from national service.

The storm was not making this easy. Flooding had rendered a large part of the train track to Hwaest innavigable, leaving the only option - bar one - for getting the men to their homes being lorries quickly converted from mortar round carriers (for the next lot of recruits to waste in training). Of course, these refused to start once they stopped in the village, and this left a lot of livid young men clamouring for someone to fix it.

When things proved too much for the entire manpower of the village to shift the lorries, a grainy radio call was made to the local base - the request; several hovercraft to pull the lorries out of the quagmire they were quickly sinking into, and mechanics to get them working again. They got their request.

Just before lunchtime, work was commencing under the 'helpful' insight of Lieutenant Edweardsunu, who was at present tucking into his lunch at the local coaching house. It was a strange lunch to say the least. One thing you certainly don't expect when you tuck into a nice big bacon and egg sandwich was the earth to rumble. The bored officer smelt glory in the air.

Three Amphibious Sections, with constiuent Bullrush hovercraft, were present in the small village, along with several dozen cherries wanting to go home as well as the local populace. The crash turned this mission from a mechanic's mission to a soldier's. Edweardsunu had been waiting for an oppurtunity like this for a long time.

* * *

Edweardsunu didn't for a second consider pressing the cherries back into service, however temporary that would have been - with their houses several yards away it would have just been a waste of equipment to put rifles in their hands. He reasoned that he would not need more than the small platoon he was ordering - after all, this was a simiple search and rescue (and capture). Airship sailors fresh from a crash no doubt fatal to many men would not make good fighters. Or so he thought.

The airship wreck was long and large, large enough to act of cover for the Bullrushes. Edweardsunu was still planning what to do as the airship came closer - he would have to see the situation himself, and ask for a surrender, before he forced them into one.

The leader of the force of thirteen was a Sergeant Xha'so - the highest ranking survivor. Whilst he had cut his leg in the blast, he had bandaged himself up and now lay facing outwards from the trees. In the short space of time they had been there, they had gathered dead and rotten wood to form a fortification of sorts, where the surviving machinegun was. A deadly device, the FN MAG machinegun ran on 7.62mm NATO rounds, each one with power to blow a man's chest out his back. And with the salvaged ammunition, they had a good three thousand rounds to lay down on the enemy.

Of the soldiers, the sergeant had assigned five of them to keep out watch in an all-around defence, using their poncho shelters as camouflaged hiding places, leaf litter and detritus piled atop them to provide camouflage. The other two were deeper in at the centre, tending to the wounded as well as looking after all the supplies. From the wreckage, they had managed to salvage a good fifteen thousand rounds of 5.56mm NATO for their assault rifles, still covered with swamp water and mud. Alongside that, four anti-tank missiles for the AT-87 guided missile launcher completed their main armament. As a backup, they had six fragmentation grenades, along with a distress flare gun.

When in enemy territory, the first call when sighting an enemy was to keep as quiet as possible, to try and avoid the enemy. Shooting at the enemy was the last thing that anybody wanted to do, so they weren't shot back upon. But when men have just survived an airship crash, are in varying degrees of dampness from the incessant rain, and are just starting to remember why Alfegos didn't get on with Weccanfield, the trigger discipline starts to wane. Everyone silenced as they heard the whine of an engine. The sergeant peered through a small monocular from his position by the machinegunner, watching as three hovercraft cruised across the site of the airship wreckage with caution. Each one held huddled on its back eight men, sheltered from the elements by makeshift tarpaulins and ponchos. The main visible armament on each was one of the Weccan machineguns, which they knew would likely make mincemeat of their position. But, as one craft cruised ludicrously close to their hiding place, its wake displacing a floating body in the water, one of the soldiers finally gave in to his urges.

It was difficult to distinguish the gunshot from a rumble of thunder. But the shot, which landed dangerously near to the hovercraft, was enough for the sergeant to believe they had been detected. Giving the order to open fire, the machinegun began chattering from behind the trees it was hidden in, a twenty-round burst of bullets hammering in around the nearest hovercraft. The sergeant himself let rip, ordering for rapid fire on the enemy hovercraft to try and take out its relatively unsheltered occupants.

By now, the airship gas fire had spread up towards the airship emergency fuel reservoir, jutting out of a clump of reeds. Oil and hydrogen meant the air and water surface around the engine gondola flickered with deadly flames, ghostly pale in the low visibilty. At around the time of the first shot, one of the four methane/hydrogen gas canisters reached critical temperature. With the emergency release valve buried in mud, the pressure reached breaking point. When the tank exploded, it did so like an artillery shell detonated. Pieces of burning shrapnel flew out as a massive ball of flame rose from the tank, lighting up the surroundings.

The trip was, as was expected, a loud, wet, if rather smooth ride over muddy water and watery mud - a great slice of the lower Fugol plain was a blured line between sea, river and land. This area was upland a little, with plenty of foliage and even the odd tree about, but was still firmly a wetland. And perfect for hovercraft.

What wasn't expected was fire from a knoll on the other side of the airship. Bursts of fire came upon the foremost hovercraft, with most bulelts either splashing around the hovercraft or harmlessly impacting on the side skirts. Not all, however - four particulary lucky bullets hit four different men, causing one instantly fatal injury, two rather serious ones and one more minor one. The latter was, however, still in no condition to fight.

An entire fire squad felled in one. Not good, thought Edweardsunu.

Knowing where the enemy was, however, quite handy. He decided on a rather uninspired plan, taking advantage of the speed of the Bullrushes and the admittedly volitile debris from the airship - first, have the depleted hovercraft arrive at the middle section of the airship, and drop off all healthy men bar one at the middle section of the airship - after a bit of first aid, the soldier who had been grazed in the left hip was left with the men to operate a LMG while the usual user of that weapon used a GPMG that had been salvaged from the Hovercraft. The idea was to lay down as much fire as possible, in particular on the machine gun, using the machine gun and their battle rifles. The present scout was left on the middle airship section also, to put down some more directed fire, and also to direct the mortar crew. The unarmed hovercraft was to return to Hwaest to drop off wounded.

The other two hovercrafts, with full contingent, were to each circle around the other two sections before converging on the flanks of the enemy, in particular heading for the machine gun. To compensate for the low visibility, and draw fire, a flare was fired above the middle section of the airship.

Edweard himself was to lead the assault from the left flank. He was quite pleased with the plan - in reality, he had not considered how many troops were on the knoll, or on the precise course of action once getting to the knoll. He had, however, realised the perils of friendly fire - for that, he had specially coloured flares, to give the order to the middle section crew to cease fire, board the hovercraft that had hopefully returned by then, and charge on the knoll.

The sergeant watched as the nearest craft broke off, screaming away across the marshland as the machinegunner continued firing. He paused briefly to change the gun barrel, dropping the hot piece of metal onto the wet ground and replacing it with another. Taking aim, he watched through the murk as the hovercraft disappeared. He could still hear the engines, reckoning there to be as many as three still out there. Finally, as a flare arched into the air, he opened fire again, aiming beneath the flare in the general direction of where it had been fired. The sergeant next to him crawled from their shelter, sprinting up the knoll to where the wounded were. Another man had died from his injuries, a blanket covering his head as he was left outside the poncho shelters.

A couple seconds later, he was back with the AAT-87, this time at one of the flank positions. If he knew they had sense, they would try flanking, to divert the machinegun fire. Hitting the ground at where one man was already firing with his rifle, at the shape of one of the distant vehicles in the murk, he flicked up the sights of the weapon before aiming. On the screen, a dot told him where the designator LASER was aiming. Waiting for the vehicle to line itself up, he tweaked the power settings, ensuring the missile would lock on initially, but then use the heat signature of the hovercraft to carry on. Fire and forget, so to speak. When it was close enough, he squeezed the double triggers, a jet of flame and smoke heating his legs and the ground behind him as a missile streaked off into the sky, before arching down towards the enemy hovercraft. Satisfied, he patted the man on the back, before sprinting through cover to another firing point. He left the missile launcher there, as he helped lay down fire on the airship.

From Edweard's Hovercraft, all that could be see was the faint glare of the missile being fired. Much more could be learned from sound - and the Lieutenant certainly didn't like what he heard.

Judging himself to be within a hundred yards of the knoll he reluctantly elected to end the desant and disembark within 50 yards of the knoll. The Bullrush was then to draw whatever fire there was to come elsewhere. And then, it was a risky, slow trek to the island - there was some cover in the form of various mounds of earth, but the soldiers had to reluctantly trudge through groin deep water - despite their waders, not aparticularly comfortable arrangement. Hopefully the combined effect of their appropriately coloured uniforms and the low visibility would mask their movement.

Back at the airship, it was business as usual - there had been no casualties as of yet, and though it was a constant concern ammunition was still at a good level. The hovercraft, by this time, was at the village, and the squad mortar had just fired its first shot.

The hit hovercraft was not worth mentioning - all on board had been killed almost instantaneously.

At one of the soldier's firing points, he heard the hovercraft pass close by, before slowing alongside numerous splashes. It then sped off again, taking a full magazine from the soldier's assault rifle as it moved off, giving him time to reload as he ducked a burst of fire.

He was just able to see through the gloom from his hidden position a shape silhouetted against the rain protruding from the marsh, perhaps a good eighty yards from him. The man seemed to be a demon from the marshland, coloured like his surroundings and covered with clumps of mud. The soldier had forgotten one of the rules of camouflage, which was why he was the first to die - that was, his upper body was silhouetted against the murk, offering a prize target. A volley of shots came his way, before he rolled out of his shelter into a ditch. Cursing at the water, which trickled in through his boots, he took aim again, before shouting out in Fegosian.
"The enemy's in the drink, about fifty yards from me!"
One of the soldiers at the knoll mound came up from the cover offered to him, throwing a hand grenade with great force out into the marsh, near where the body now floated. There came a dull sound, not so much a splash as a flop, as it hit the quagmire, before exploding. The nearest Alfegan ducked bag into his hidey hole, as a pieces of shrapnel flew past. Peering back over, he let rip a couple bursts at shapes in the murk, noting a lot more shouting now.

In the marsh in front of him, there came a whistling followed by a much larger blast. Waves rippled from the water as mud came falling down.
"They've got a bloody mortar! We need to get the hell out of here!"
The sergeant swore as he made up his mind. The place they were one was likely to get hit anytime soon, and staying there would act as a magnet for the enemy. And still, they had no radio signal. The airship would provide the best cover, and probably still had a working radio somewhere. To reach it though was to wade out whilst one the receiving end of every rifle this side of Weccanfield.
"Machinegunner, continue to engage airship wreckage. Left half, move over to fire at the people in the marsh. Right half, get as much fire down on that hovercraft - I want it ASAP. Get the wounded to shoot it if they can - I need it to get us out of here."
There came the cracks of more assault rifles firing, as the Sergeant looked around to try and command the movement. Every now and again, a burst of gunfire came hurtling over their position, forcing him to duck again.

The Scout, while directing the mortar crew by some sort of sign language, had been scaling the middle airship section, hoping to get a clear view of what was going on. He had reached a point which while not entirely stable was able to hold his weight, and gave him a clear, unabated view of the enemy mound.

The rain still kept things mostly hidden, and the thunderous noise of the rain hitting what remained of the gas bag almost covered up the noise of the guns below and in front of him. But he could see faint forms, and muzzle flashes. That was all he needed. The boy was a farmer before his national service, and thus had been drilled by his father in hunting. It was in these very conditions he shot all sorts of animals. He wasn't a sniper. But he was as good as one. Even if his rifle wasn't.

Visibility made it impossible to tell officer from grunt, so he just looked for a important looking person, one who would be staying around from it all and possibly throwing his arms around a lot. He saw a number of people running about, but no obvious commanders. So instead, he went for the next best thing - themachine-gunner.

He remembered back when he first took down a deer in the forest. He thought it oddly appropriate - this would be his first human kill.

Below him, the commander of the fire squad, a certain Godwinesunu who thought himself Acting-Lieutenant after certain sightings led him to believe his superior was dead, was just sending the hovercraft back to the village with a message and an order for more ammo - a dispatch was to be sent to company HQ using whatever the Quartermasters in Hwaest were able to commandeer from the villagers.

"Dear Sir.

Emy. engaged outside Hwaest. Need rein., bring whole comp.. Lieu. presumed KIA. Be fast."

That, along with some embellishment from its carrier, was to be taken 20 miles over swampy territory. Depending on the facilities of the train station, or failing that vehicle, it could either take no time at all, or a really long time. Possibly, it could be done in under half an hour, but that was with a hovercraft. And it was unlikely the villagers had a spare lying around.

The other surviving squad had just suffered from Sod's law. Instinct told them to duck behind whatever they could find when a soldier was hit, keeping their valuable rifles high in the air. The grenade claimed no-one - most of them had ample time to either find a mound of solid earth or bite the bullet and dive into the mud, holding the rifles in the air as high as they dared. The radioman, however, did have the rather disturbing experience of having shrapnel ricochet over his helmet. Andinevitably , two soldier s found their rifles refusing to fire, forcing one to rather awkwardly attempt to unjam it at shoulder height while keeping up with his fireteam, and the other to simply give up and temporarily become a dedicated grenadier. The whole section proceeded as normal - the dead soldier was a rifleman from the fireteam, causing little damage beyond the prerequisite anger of his comrades. The tactic was the usual suppress, advance, repeat. It was a slow cautious advance for the first 25 yards, delayed by the fire the Alfegans were laying. It seemed to lessen as they went - whenever the picked up, the grenadier just threw another grenade, and was very liberal with them - he was cadging them off his squad-mates, and had borrowed the officer's pistol after a pedestrian telling off for not holding his rifle high enough. By 25 yards, when the assault team swapped positions briefly to let the fire team advance, he had already let loose four grenades, one of which had landed harmlessly on the wrong side of the enemy fortifications without a bang.

The hovercraft crew was skittish, fearing a missile at every moment. Mutual fear of ostracising from the other crewman kept them from breaking and routing, but in particular the driver was reluctant to provide his compatriot any ability to fire on the knoll, with the restricted arc the machine gun had preventing broadside firing.

When the Alfegans started firing, they soon hit the gunner rather messily in the neck, sending the driver into a panic. Caring not where he ended up, so long as it was away from the knoll, he accelerated the hovercraft as much as he could while ducked down. He missed the debris poking out from the swamp, but the Bullrush didn't. The hovercraft was nearly flipped over from the impact which occurred as the driver changed gear, knocking the gearbox into neutral and nearly causing the hovercraft to flip. While the gunner languished near death, the driver was thrown into the swamp as the hovercraft slowly came to a stop.

The fall and successive tumble caused the miraculously unscratched driver to regain his composure. He could still see the hovercraft, but it was a good distance away, closer to the knoll now. Grabbing his unscathed pistol for comfort, he lurched through the swamp as fast as he could to get to the hovercraft, cursing himself all the while for his cowardice.

The machinegunner continued laying down gunfire as the attacks continued on the men in the swamp, and on their solitary hovercraft. Every now and then, he could see the occasional muzzleflash in the distance, where the airship wreckage loomed, centring his sights in on that. He finished up another belt, popping up the top cover as the hot metal casings underneath hissed. Sweeping the feed tray clean, he loaded up the next belt, slamming down the lid before moving back into position to fire. That was when the solitary shot came. An intense pain shot through his system as a bullet slammed into his left shoulder, taking away a large segment and leaving a bloody crater. He yelled out load, writhing in pain as he reached for his morphine pen.
"I'm hit! The bastard hit me!"
He slammed the pen into a vein in his leg, gritting his teeth as he snapped off the needle, hanging the empty vial around his neck. It'd take a few seconds for it to start kicking in, in which time he was still in pain. One of the men ran over to him from the top of the mound, trying to calm down the gunner. Ripping open a combat first-aid pack, he pulled out a sterile cloth and started trying to wipe away the blood. The bullet had thankfully passed straight though, missing any arteries and leaving the wound. He quickly poured in a coagulant pouch, hearing a hiss as the crystals formed clots to stop any more bleeding, before cleaning it.
"You're going to be alright mate. Just calm down for me."
The man was not intent on calming down, pinned down by the medic as his shoulder was tied up. Nearby, there came another shout.

"Contact in the marsh, twenty yards from drop-off site. Retreat to secondary positions!"
The gunfire intensified, rounds whistling past from the top of the mound, as the men began to fall back. Taking their supplies with them, they left only the poncho shelters as they moved to the other side of the mound, using the mass of the sheer earth as cover.
"Fix bayonets!"
The machinegunner stood up, still in considerable pain, before dragging the machinegun out of the shelter they had built. Along with it, the medic took out the spare barrels and the ammunition tin, leaving only a mountain of warm brass casings. He stumbled across to the top of the mound, where the wounded were being armed as best they could, before taking up position. He was in no fit state to fight, but knew he still could - he was still just able to use his left arm. Taking the machinegun up into his shoulder, he began firing down at the men advancing out of the marsh.

Behind him, there came a shriek of success as the hovercraft came to a halt near the mound, a mere thirty yards out in the murk. The sergeant pointed to three men, indicating them to go out into the marsh.
"Take the hovercraft, and bring it back over here. Then load up the supplies and the wounded, and get ready to move!"
The men quickly paced down the slope, peering at the marsh near the hovercraft. Was it possible, or was there... someone still alive in the marsh? There came a burst of fire at the form in the marsh, before they rushed forwards. Ill-equipped for such terrain, they tried leaping across to firmer islands of grass, before finding themselves sinking as they moved through the murk. It took a minute for them to wade out to the craft, keeping rifles aloft with bayonets mounted. Even if there was risk of mucking up the rifles, they would take no time in skewering an opponent.

Finally on the craft, one man took to the controls, jerking the craft forwards as he moved it into gear. With two men sitting on the back, he brought the craft alongside the mound, before letting the two other men disembark. Letting the engine idle, he saw them coming down the side of the mound with casualties, as the gunfire intensified. Lying them down on the shoreline, or letting them take their most comfortable pose, they then came down with the supplies. The best place to take refuge in was the airship, but only if they were able to secure it - knowing the Weccanfield lot, they would already be swarming over it. Since gunfire was coming from the middle section, they decided it was best to move over to the front section, far detached from the rest of the wreckage, where they could also try commandeering any remaining electronics to try and contact their homeland. One of them went through the Weccan supplies already on the hovercraft, noting the rounds as incompatible with any of their weapons. Still, they were compatible with the mounted machinegun, which one mounted as the craft roared off to scout the forward airship section.

Behind, the advancing Weccans appeared to have finally reached land, even amongst the barrage of gunfire.
"Firing group, switch to full automatic, and prepare for close combat."
Instead of firing off controlled bursts, the gunfire reached a high point, as men emptied their magazines. With the wounded machinegunner still providing some firepower, the other men ensured bayonets were in place, before taking out a range of other close combat weapons. Knives, fire axes and shovels were in evidence in their positions, as they prepared to contact the enemy face to face.