| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Glider Insertion, Maxim Raid part 2 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 17:02:33 -0700 (MST) |
>>>>>[Well, I just wanted to tell you what happened with my part of the
team
before we connected with the HALO team. We didn't have anywhere near as much
trouble as they did, what with all of us wearin some heavy-duty sneaksuits
and coming in below the standard radar, but we did have some problems too.
I'll let the simsense that Trideo Pirate got access to talk most of the stuff
that it can, but add stuff that the woman didn't see as we go into more
detail later.
We, the Nightglider team, got ourselves to our stagin position well out of
range of the fraggin assassin drones Maxim was using to randomly patrol the
klick or so of jungle immediately around the facility. We were there about
2 hours early, but this was intentional because we wanted time to relocate
if we had to and to set up our disassembled Nightgliders. I'm glad we got
there early too, since Griffyn and Buzz weren't as familiar with the finer
points of Nightglider construction, so DD and I had to help them out some.
We didn't have any problems, I'm happy to say, until well after we got off
the ground. With zero-hour as 22.05 local time, we lifted off at 21:45,
which gave us all some time to circle if necessary as well as the time to
weave our way around and disorient Maxim in case we had been seen already.
We were keepin to the upper canopy level, flyin around the trees stickin up
through the canopy ceiling, hopin that all the trees would create the same
effect as ground clutter. Even with the sneaksuits and Nightgliders, we
wanted to minimize detection possibilities. As we got closer to the
facility, we started to circle toward the west corner, over by the armory
where we waited for the distractions to hit.
And hit they did, right on time, too. At precisely 22:00, the first shells
that Tigger was firin fell into the center of the facility, nearly strikin
the hardened vertical missile launcher. Too bad he missed, but he didn't
have much of a chance to do more than that, because before the first shell
even hit the ground, the DG-4 Templar was liftin off it's pad on it's fraggin
near instantly active VT engines and turnin toward where he had fired from.
About this time, we cought sight of the locals firin the first salvos of the
missiles from the north.
You should have heard the noise. All of a sudden the streets begin to empty
except for the hard core troops and guards, who begin to pour out of their
bunkers, fully armed. It didn't look like they had already known that the
raid was going to happen, just that they'd gone through this particular drill
so many times that one more time, this time for real, wasn't a big deal. Two
MRD-7 rotodrones lifted off from the helipads and the engines of the
Collussus as well as one of the S-MArt ACV rocket artillery kicked in. With
the landin of the first shell, the DG-4 did somethin that no other artillery
piece I know of can do: it fired both railguns simultaneously. The DG
stands for "Double-Gun" and it's designed to alternate fire from the guns to
double the standard ROF of an artillery piece. Well, this fraggin gun spat
two shells at the same time. My latest data said that the capacitors weren't
capable of doing that. Obviously, Maxim's improved their railgun caps
somethin fierce. The recoil from the shells being fired threw the Templar
back several meters before it arrested itself.
Then the first salvo of missiles hit the perimeter of the facility, but were
repulsed. The first salvo never even hit the ground because of the air and
fire spirits that suddenly manifested and literally threw them all over the
place. I think that maybe two or three out of 18 hit the airfield, which
was the target area, and actually did damage. Maxim, on the other hand,
fired a salvo of over 20 missiles from the S-MArt artillery and the damn
things streaked right over us. We fraggin near lost DD and his glider
because the heat of one of the missile's passage fused a strut. Luckily for
all of us, he dove at the right time and the glider took the heat that would
have cooked him instead.
About this time the last two shells from the artillery hit the facility,
almost simultaneous with the strike of the second, and last, salvo of incomin
missiles. The two shells pounded the main motorpool's garage and the last
detonated almost in the center of the airstrip. The second salvo of
missiles had a little better success than the first, but not much. It was
similarly dispersed by the spirits, with the extras striking one of the
helipads, the tarmac, and the airstrip as planned. The second had several
WP warheads that struck the tarmac and made visibility really fragged up for
a while there. The impacts did throw one of the Apache 3 choppers around a
little, but not enough that it couldn't get off the ground, and the damage
to the airstrip didn't phase Maxim's fighters one bit, which just lifted off
vertically on their VT engines, like the fraggin F-B Eagle does. Next thing
you know, the sky is fillin with aircraft of one kind or another.
We didn't get a chance to see how the outgoin artillery fared and how our
distraction team would likely stand up to the bombardment, but Maxim sure
reacted a lot faster than we had expected. We found out later that....well,
I'll leave that for the other team to talk about. We began our approach as
Maxim was openin their vertical missile bunkers to fire more missiles at our
team in the jungle, but then we realized that they were also firing five
SAMs vertically. It seemed that our deckers either missed the Radar system
or somethin, because the HALO plane was the only thing that could have been
overhead at the time.
We had to time our approach perfectly to coincide with the guards on several
towers so we didn't get nailed with crossfire. Our original plan had been
to rise up enough to go over the towers rather than through them, but about
at this point, the anti-air towers started firing into the air, killin that
idea quick. The rest of the team had named me leader since I had the most
experience with Nightgliders, so I dove low over the perimeter and hugged
the ground, just barely over the level of the fences, at about 15 meters.
Unfortunately, this was also almost exactly the level of some of the towers
and didn't leave much clearance for the perimeter fences either. And it also
put us at about the level that the watchers liked to patrol the perimeter
fences too. Griffyn later told us that he had had to kill two watchers
before they reported to their magical masters. Yep, this mean that the
mages in the facility knew that their perimeter was being assaulted
somewhere. Luckily for us, just destroyin the watchers didn't give Maxim
any clue as to where along the perimeter we were, only that we were there.
Things seemed to be goin so well, too.....
Looking inside the armory perimeter, we saw the HALO team scattered around
both ends of the nuke bunker, a regular bunker nearby, and one outside the
armory even. That's when DD noticed the guard sneakin around to catch the
team nearest the entrance to the bunker off guard. He even broke radio
silence to tell Griffyn since the guard was out of range of all his weapons,
and mine too. Griffyn felled him with a pretty powerful mana spell of some
kind, but he was too late to save one of the team. Already, after seeing a
HALO body bounce, we were down to 9 total to destroy the nukes rather than
the original 11, and we'd not even all gotten onto the ground, never mind
into the bunker. And we almost had a few problems too, because we flew right
over a paracritter patrol that I just couldn't avoid. Luckily, it was only
a Hell Hound patrol rather than a barghest or, worse yet, basilisk patrol.
Somehow, probably with it's hearing, it knew we were there, but the guards
didn't seem to catch on. Fraggin good thing too.
The next shock was Buzz's glider. When Griffyn blasted the Maxim guard, his
deathgrip fired off his Tower rifle and the autofire ripped through Buzz's
glider, shreadin the wing, wounding Buzz in his left shoulder, and totally
wipin out the motor and powersupply. We were lucky that Buzz was the first
to land anyway, since he had to ditch and he landed hard. He said later
that the only thing that kept him from breaking his ankle on landin was the
boots he was wearing. Buzz was lucky, too, considerin that the bullet was
APEx ammo, Maxim's armor peircin explosive ammo. This round didn't explode,
and if it had, Buzz would have required immediate healin or he would have
bled to death from the wound. As it was, we bound it up and staunched the
bleedin.
The remaining three Nightgliders we set to hover/circle mode so we'd have our
escape route ready as soon as we had planted the charges in the bunker. But
it was not to be, I'm afraid. I'll let the lady's simsense speak for me in
this regard, however, because you'll get it first-hand that way, and I could
easily remember stuff wrong if I'm not careful.]<<<<<
-- Slash <17:02:25/03-10-57>
