[MM/RP] ND vs. UIW - ToP for Obvious Lie - Kowloon (1312) [Complete]

[Dave Baughman]

Command Deck, Sword of Glory
16 August 3091

Precentor Eloise Nakamura curled into something just a little short of a fetal ball in her command couch. The uncontrollable shaking, the screaming urge for suicide, that had faded after the first few days, but after that a deep depression had set in. She had never quite noticed her addiction to Eremiel's mental dialogue setting in over the years of preparation over Jardine... but now that the voice of command was gone, the silence stabbed at Nakamura's mind with unrelenting vigor.

"Precentor," spoke her executive officer in a calming tone, "we are approaching the safe jump zone."

Nakamura uncoiled sharply, snapped back to reality by the man's words, "Navigation!" she called out, "plot a course for..."

She stopped and then looked to Demi Harrison, "To Jardine, and Apollyon's judgement? Or to Revelation, and exile?"

Harrison shrugged, "Obedience is no sin, you are sure to be judged guiltless."

"Obedience," she mouthed the word, "no. But pride. Pride is a sin I am guilty of. I was so drunk with the power we were about to unleash on the infidel that I do not question Eremiel's folly."

"Folly?"

"I saw it, Luther," she started to sob as the said the words, "I saw the flaw in Eremiel's plan. I saw the threat, but I dismissed it. Had Puriel stayed close, those marines never would have been able to approach McEvedy. I had a chance to save Eremiel, and I failed because of hubris and because of pride. That is the sin I am guilty of."

Harrison shook his head, "the choice is yours, Delta. To this crew, you are our Dominus, and we will follow you anywhere."

Nakamura sucked in a long sniffle and then laughed, "Oh, you faithful fools," she said with a cracked smile, "Blake eleison! Helm, set course for..."

[Cannonshop]

Camp John Complex, 0415 Hours local time...

Most of the wells had been capped, the refineries pumped their product out as fast as they could clear them, to substations buried in the Minsky's Folly canyon complex nearly a thousand kilometers south.  Civilian employees had sent their families on rapidtrains into the southernmost reaches of the continent, or north into the rugged protection of the deep hills in preparation. They'd HAD days, and more, they had generations of preparation against this eventual inevitability.

It wasn't enough.

The orbital strikes hit every refinery, wellhead, and breeder reactor in the Camp John complex, shattering and igniting, setting the dry desert basin into the furnace of gehenna.

Then, the orbital weapons, having shattered the works of man, tried their hands at the Iron Hills themselves-only to be thwarted by bedrock that had already defied the efforts of mankind's most potent tools-the hills are rich in deposits of dense, heavy, and most importantly, Refractive metals-metals that, in salts form, probably explain more about Kowloonese short lifespans and infant mortality rates than any other factor.  Tungsten, Iridium, Osmium in metallic form, naturally occurring boron nitrate, and trace Germanium reflected and absorbed the energies of man's second-most-horrific non-biological weapons.

Death Toll: 153,971
Trapped/wounded: 25
Pre-Evacuation: 250,000
Pre-Bombardment: 153,996
(for aftermath, see HERE)

Ia Drang watershed, eastern, feeding the Little Yangtze...

Terraced and stepped dams had been built to control flooding in the Hue valley plain, along the Powder River.  The current from the highlands was particularly strong, and spring runoffs reached dangerous velocities until Rim Worlds engineers, constructing a replacement administration centre after crushing the Kowloonese revolt of 2729, built a complex of dams and water-diversion routes maintained to this day by the natives this sign of 'hydraulic empire' had been built to oppress.

Fires reached down from the skies, and the last functional remnant of Kowloon's period under Amaris Domination was shattered by massive steam explosions as the Naval Lasers and Naval missiles and Naval particle beams came down, drove the pressures up, and shattered each and every dam and spillway along the 750 km² flood control complex.

The last stroke was, ironically, the furthest east-the Cho Huk Causeway along Highway 2, the only above-sea-level roadway into Hue itself.

heat and thermal bloom, earthquake and superheated rock, conspired to melt the meters upon meters of ice and snow in the Powder River basin.  The flood washed into the valley, dragging trees, houses, bodies and automobiles along at more than 70 miles per hour.

Death Toll, Hue/Powder River Valley: 46,000
Pre Bombardment population: 1,500,000
Isolated and without electricity, running water, or a route out: 1, 461,000
Projected casualties from dysentary, hypothermia and drowning: Unknown.  Predicted to be in the range of 40-=60 percent of survivors.

[Cannonshop]

Vin Drin Lap, 0331 Hours...

Highway 5 was teh route of hte bombardment here-lacking concentrated targets, the bombardment tried to make it up with frequency-in the process, demonstrating just how little the Terran intelligence services cared about the oldest region of the planet.  Most of the ranches had evacuated to winter quarters months ago, but this was the 'greenbelt', and the Blakists were, if nothing else, devoted to obeying their orders.

Until it reached the biggest city in the Golden Lake sector.  HERE, finally, was a target that could be fired with maximum efficiency.  Vin Drin Lap was the home of the Coast Guard, a port, and a network hub for highways.  It was THE place in the western district.

The bombardments broke the ice in the harbor-a task that the natives had been largely unable to do, and shattered the VDL reactor complex 20 meters deep on the 'shelf'.  In the process, it broke the shelf itself-the debris did not boil to the surface, it slid down...down...into the abyssal depths, depths heated by continuous volcanic and tectonic action.

the city lost its electrictiy, but that hardly matters, because its surface strucutral integrity went next.  A town built on a bald patch, turned into a 'balder' patch-and over one hundered thousand died in the first salvo.

The orbital warship walked her fire slightly east and north again, following the roads, to Da Nang (population 52,000 est.)

Da Nang was the last remnant of Dinh Diep, a town built on a refugee camp, by people who'd seen the horrors of orbital bombardment in person, and whose descendents often visited the 'graveyard' of the Dinh Diep valley 150KM to the north.

The bombardment only breached a handfull of newer, less sturdy bunkers, killing mostly offworlders visiting the Holocaust Museum in Da Nang, or recent immigrants whose compliance with local building codes was merely perfunctory.

The Mosovich Ranch was the last target on the programme.  Nobody was home.

Golden Lake sector bombardment targets Death toll: 194,201 dead
Trapped/isolated/wounded: 233,000
Pre-Bombardment total: 3.1 Million

[Cannonshop]

Ia Drang Plateau, southeast side, 97KM from Tel Aviv, 0005AM

Terran Hegemony intelligence and Comstar's archives kept information that even the grudge-holding, past-obsessed Kowloonese did not retain.  The tales of the fall of An Loc are legends, a few substation sites are known, but too dangerous to enter-and are considered locally to BE the An Loc orbital control and missile base.

Sometimes information overload is a bad thing.

The pre-Star League base had been overrun, and buried, by House Amaris before the end of the Reunification War, with Terran Hegemony help...but it was still in the archives, and the Blood knew it was here, even when the natives did not.

Orbital fire finally erased the last strongpoint of Kowloonese resistance to the Rim Worlds Republic in Old Star League times.

Casualties: 41 (from pressure wash and wildfires triggered by the bombardment)
Trapped/isolated: 941 families trapped by the heavy snowfall and ice storms this winter, got a present from the Word of Blake, in the form of enough residual heat to clear most of the roads into Tel Aviv, bringing an end to the local famine.

[Cannonshop]

 Dominion Wreck, Aegis Class, 41 hours after the engagement...

"...pretty wasted, but I'm getting power readings from some of the sealed areas."  CPO Belinda Ortiz was a bit of a 'magister Slicer', she'd spent a wasted youth on the cargo runs, as a Merchanter with the Jennings CoOp doing routes as far as Donegal and Ender's Cluster-an excellent cover for a criminal slicer, she'd ended her crewing career with only a single arrest, and the Coast Guard picked up her Indenture as an engineering rate-that was five standard years ago.  Now, she was CoPlugged into the wrecked bridge of a Clan warship, looking for the trace readings that would direct the rest of the Rescue Service team to those who'd been trapped when their ship went down.

The idea being, to get people out of danger.

"Engineering sublevel four." she said.  The bridge looked pretty good-for being opened to hard vacuum and peeled back.  There was, at least, no stink here, inside her helmet, but her own.  "I'm reading full pressure and increasing CO₂ levels, so either there's a minor fire, or there are people.  Careful, there's only one pressure door active there."

Through-deck passage, Engineering levels...

PO2 Chi Howan spread the pressure-curtain's adhesive side around the heat-welded hatchway, then hit the press-release.  an improvised airlock formed, capable of holding air pressure and allowing anyone on the other side of that door, to get out and into either a suit (if they had one) or one of the Rescue-service's 'beach balls'.

Then, she tapped on the doorway in simple, common morse code, asking if anyone was there, and in a condition to answer.  'C-A-N-Y-O-U-H-E-A-R-C-A-N-Y-O-U-A-N-S-E-R'

She waited..."Chen, get that hullbore over here, Vu, is the portable scrubber ready?"

"motion detector's showing something in there, but it's moving kinda slow..."

Chen set the hullbore-basically a portable drill-press designed to cut through ship's armor, on the door, and locked it down with the magnetics.  A dose of endothermic armor softener hit the patch where the bore would cut, and it was activated, cutting a 6 cm hole in the hatch, where anything from a demo charge, to the portable 'airscrubber', could be connected.

"Hang on in there, we're going to get you out-but first, we're going to scrub some of that CO₂ so you can breathe."

[Cannonshop]

Salvageable check for the Whirlwind Class Sign of Revelation

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6 : 2, 6, total 8[/blockquote]

[Cannonshop]

Salvage check for the Aegis Class Blue Lancer

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6 : 1, 5, total 6[/blockquote]

[Cannonshop]

Salvage Check: UIS Obvious Lie

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6+2 : 3, 6 + 2, total 11[/blockquote]

[Cannonshop]

Salvage Check: UIS Fateshaper

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6+2 : 2, 5 + 2, total 9[/blockquote]

[Cannonshop]

Standard salvage check (2d6+15%)

(fingers crossed)

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6 : 6, 1, total 7[/blockquote]

[Cannonshop]

Salvage Pool:
189.75

22% of that is...

41.745 total salvage

Round up to 41.75