The Marketplace, Ketoana, Lagoban
The Marketplace, located directly in front of the Lagobanian capital building, was filled with the usual afternoon bustle of street-peddlers, merchants, and customers. The vendor’s carts, tables, and tents covered nearly every available bit of ground, which forced their customers to walk through narrow, crowded spaces between the vendors. While this was ideal for the vendors, the customers were forced to wander aimlessly through a maze of people shouting at them to buy fruits or other commodities.
This place is the worst, Corporal Hetun Willumring thought to himself. The Hathenian infantryman was posted up on the corner of a street directly across from the marketplace. His fireteam had been tasked with patrolling and securing the area for the routine 1630 drop-off of food, water, and medicine. But there hadn’t been any combat in the capital for nearly a year, which had made the drop-off convoys become less armored and less armed. Complacency had set in amongst the Hathenian and other Flashpoint troops.
The young NCO wasn’t paying attention to his section. He instead found himself kicking a pebble up and down his the street he’d been assigned to watch as he thought of his fiancée back in Arkon, who was probably preparing dinner for their families. He wondered what meal they would be cooking, which members of his family would be there…The thought of life back at home took his eyes away from the marketplace.
He didn’t realize that it was 1647 and the convoy had not arrived and he certainly did not see a van park at the edge of the marketplace nor did he see the group of armed men sprinting away from the abandoned vehicle. He heard their cries of fear and immediately snapped his head towards the sound of chaos erupting, just in time to be blinded by a bright white flash. The blast from the IED hurled him to the ground and knocked the wind out of his lungs, though these were the only injuries he suffered.
His head was spinning and felt as if someone had slammed a sledgehammer against the base of his skull. But he was one of the lucky ones, judging by the horrified screams of the living and the cries of pain from the dying. Rounds began to crack and whizz overhead, which brought him back to the present.
“Contact at 12 o’clock, in the green building 30 meters away!”
A Hathenian machine-gunner cried out before his weapon began to send a hail of lead towards the second story of the target building. Fuck, this was bad, this is so bad, the Corporal thought as he returned fire. He ducked behind a stand to reload, his eyes darting up and down the streets. Where the hell was the convoy?!?
City Streets, Ketoana, Lagoban
“What the hell are standing so damn still for, for fucks sake!?!” Captain Marrin Garreck, the convoy commander, barked into his radio as he leapt out of his truck, firing his pistol wildly towards where he thought the enemy was. The convoy had just been hit from the front and the right flank by enemy small arms and at least two RPGs. A Hathenian scout vehicle lay burning with its deceased crew still stuck inside of its shell.
This whole situation was horrible: there were multiple troops from different nations in the convoy, and communication was growing harder and harder by the minute. Then, there came the issue of the convoy’s armament. The Lagobanian supply trucks were armored but lacked any weapons, while the Hathenians only had either scout vehicles or lightly armored troop transports. The troops were inexperienced as well, which certainly did not help matters.
The Hathenian Captain began to bark orders at the troops in English, telling them to get the hell out of the kill zone and to dump the supplies to increase the trucks speed. The vehicles peeled out of the zone, with the Captain’s scout vehicle flooring it towards the airport across the city. But the gunfire didn’t end at the ambush site: soldiers dressed in civilian clothing would leap out of alleyways and doorways, firing potshots at the international troops as they drove past. The Captain cried out as a round tore through his thigh.
“Command, command, this is Misfit-actual, we’re under attack, in the city! Unknown number of hostiles, they’re everywhere, and we’re-“ A flurry of bullets struck the engine block, spraying coolant on the windshield. “We’re taking heavy losses, headed to the airport. Please respond, for the love of God, we’re getting butchered out here!”
FOB Ryler, Lagoban
Hathenian colonel Erich Mercer, a seasoned officer with greying temples and piercing blue eyes, was hunched over his comm officer’s station, listening in horror to the dozens of incoming reports that were painting a grim picture of the events unfolding in Ketoan. Heavy losses, unknown number of hostiles, and bombs going off across the city. Landlines to the Lagobanian government were destroyed, but the military radio was reporting that the President and other VIPs were being secured in the capital building and awaiting evacuation.
He scanned the reports, grappling with the anguish of being unable to provide immediate relief to the coalition forces that found themselves suddenly engaged in brutal urban combat. Air strikes and artillery support were off the table: too many civilians were in the AO and it was unclear where the enemy were primarily located in the city. He slammed his fist on the desk in frustration before turning to his fellow Flashpoint commanders.
“We need a QRF team, time now, to get to our boys in the city. I can have my helicopters up in the next five minutes for casevacs at the airport, but my ground troops are going to need at least ten to fuel up, check their equipment, and head out.”
