The Green Union wrote:Nchiyamengi wrote:OOC: She (I'm assuming it is a she) certainly is. Let us engage in this then.
IC: As the trucks rounded yet another blind corner in the seemingly endless jungle several felled trees came into view, blocking the road. The trucks barely had time to screech to a halt before the attack began. RPGs were fired at fairly close range from behind a rock about 20 meters from the road up an embankment. The RPGS were aimed at the drivers of the trucks, aimed to kill them and prevent any manoeuvring. Prepared for the attack well in advance and with the element of surprise, this phase went off without a hitch. The drivers were in pieces and the fronts of the trucks on fire in mere seconds.
The rapid force of the blast from one RPG was so extreme, and the corner that had been taken so sharp that the body of one of the trucks, the one carrying Lt. Nabila al-Rashid, was sharply unbalanced, flipped on its side and crashed to the ground, throwing about its occupants.
Gunfire opened up from the cover of the trees and brush from both sides of the road both ahead and behind the trucks, intended both as suppressing fire and to take out anyone who would dare to fight back. Several of the Nchiyamengian soldiers, those not in the upturned truck disorientated by the fall, were brave or stupid enough to do so.
A force of GI fighters swept in on the trucks to take prisoners, mostly the expendable child soldiers. A six year old carrying an AK47 far too large for him took a bullet to the head from a special forces soldier, and his small body dropped to the ground. A nine year old child soldier fired in return, screaming as he did so, his aim surprisingly good, hitting the soldier in his right arm and his left leg. As the soldier went down another child soldier of about 11 ran up around the truck to take him out, only to fall to a last shot fired by the soldier from his handgun. Attacked from both sides the soldier was dead in mere moments however, along with a number of others. A handful of child soldier bodies and one or two of teenage fighters also dead on the road.
A teenage fighter ran up and threw a tear gas canister stolen from a dead policeman into the overturned truck. The thick foul smelling gas burned the skin, and caused those inside to cough violently and gasp for air. It burnt their eyes and caused them to blindly stagger, eyes watering, out into the open. Rapidly the forces were moving in, aiming to take prisoners. In the violence and chaos, particularly with the trigger happy child soldiers, it was unclear just how many prisoners could actually be gathered amongst the dead.
A handful of the special forces staged a last stand, but severely outgunned from all sides and exposed they died in moments, one of the injured ones shooting himself with a handgun rather than being captured, knowing what fate awaited the rest.
OOC: Right now you can do you side of the story, and document how many of your soldiers remain alive for capture. It can just be Lt. Nabila al-Rashid or it can be more.
Cpl. Jacques Balladur, On the Road:
Oh, the irony.
The First Green Union Archer Regiment, the fruit of over 2,000 years of elite fighting traditions. The result of over 500 years honing of guerrilla fighting tactics. This was the force that an enemy general in 1761 reported “This enemy has the power to turn into the trees themselves. They are harder to hunt than a pack of wolves.” And now it was the force that was being ambushed.
Bullets shredded the canvas of the trucks, dropping more than one soldier before they knew what was happening. The ukulele music quickly ceased, replaced by yells of surprise and screams of pain. Soldiers hit the metal floor, some because they had been killed and some because they did not want to be killed, while others scrambled to dismount the trucks.
Jacques bounded over his fellow soldiers, leaping out the back of the truck and flattening himself against the road behind the cover of the truck all in one motion. The act knocked all the wind out of his lungs, but it was better than the alternative that would surely befall him should he be caught in the open. Then again, once he was down it became obvious the magnitude of the situation.
The GI covering fire kicked up dirt all around Jacques, making it impossible to see where it was coming from. Enemy fighters swarmed the convoy, tossing grenades and Molotov cocktails and just all round slaughtering everyone. The ground was already littered with the dead and dying, a good number of the bodies burning from the fires that were breaking out. Oh, and Jacques had been shot in the torso twice by now, but that seemed like a minor detail at the time.
But there was a fundamental problem with the GI fighters’ tactics. Child soldiers ran straight up to the trucks and the special forces soldiers in the open, in some cases trying to clamber into the backs of the vehicles and drag out the occupants inside. This not only inhibited covering fire for fear of hitting their allies, but also caused the child soldiers and other expendable fighters to suffer close combat with Green Union special forces. For the first time in their lives the totally overkill amounts of bayonet training actually paid off.
In seconds the special forces were rallying. The Nchiyamengian GI hunting ‘Death Heads,’ the LAF First Green Union Archer Regiment, even the Sevevillian Atlas operatives that were with them were dismounting the trucks. The child soldiers were driven back from the trucks, and grenades shredded the undergrowth from where the GI fighters were firing. ”Perhaps,” Jacques thought, ”some of us will even survive this.”
But such things were wishful thinking. The GI had every advantage. They had the cover, the flank, the numbers, and the surprise. In seconds any shooting back at the insurgents had all but ceased, it being all Jacques could do to drag himself off the road and into the undergrowth during the last moments of the confusion. If he wasn’t spotted, or killed by stray fire, if he wasn’t forced to return to the fight to try to save prisoners, if he didn’t bleed out before help arrived . . . he might make it.
Best odds he’d had all day.
Lt. Nabila al-Rashid, On the Road:
Nabila awoke, coughing and spluttering, her eyes and lungs seemingly on fire. Gunfire snapped off like a hailstorm just outside, only adding to the confusion. A mass of bodies was moving over and under Nabila; shouting, coughing, and clawing towards an exit.
Lt. al-Rashid tried to look around, but her eyes may as well have been gouged out of her head. There were screams, some of which may have been hers, and she desperately scrambled for her canteen, dumping the contents over her face and into her mouth to douse some of the pain. Her vision began to clear, if only for a moment, and Nabila noticed that the right of her vision was obscured by a single rebellious lock of dark hair that must have come free during the rollover. She instinctively tucked the hair back into her hijab, without thinking running her hand over the cloth to ensure her headwear was still intact.
It was only then that the world started to take on some kind of focus. She was still in the truck, which had overturned in the initial onslaught by unseen insurgents. That much she remembered, and looking around it seemed like the roll bars had kept the passengers, including herself, from being flattened. Now the survivors were trying to clamber out of the vehicle, which was rapidly filling with noxious fumes. ’Tear gas,’ Nabila noted, ’the bastards are using tear gas on us.’
This in itself wasn’t a huge problem. After all, most of the LAF war games involve full open combat between teams fully equipped for crowd control, including full riot gear, water cannons, rubber bullets, flash grenades . . . and of course, tear gas. That didn’t mean Lt. al-Rashid was less effected of course, but at least she knew what to expect. Being hit with the stuff at unawares, however, while probably suffering from a concussion and broken bones, was far from ‘knowing what to expect.’
The Loyalist Lieutenant crawled to the canvas top (now, through the magic of gravity, the side) of the truck, her eyes beginning once again to tear up and her lungs burn all the more. There she managed to keep enough of a mind to draw her survival knife and begin hacking desperately at the thin covering. Anything would be better than being stuck in this gas filled box, surrounded by the dead and dying and tortured souls.
Or, well, almost anything. As Nabila dragged herself out of the burning and gas filled wreck of the truck, flopping onto the ground to suck in the sweet smell of smoke and less saturated with tear gas air, she became aware of bodies moving around her. She looked up just as rough hands seized her, her handgun knocked from her hands. One of the insurgents struck her in the head with the butt of a rifle, and the world went black.
OOC: Seeing as how there are soldiers from Sevevill here, I think it's fair to let Sevevill write something too before proceeding.
Also, I would prefer if only Lt. al-Rashid is taken captive, but I can't allow my other three primary characters (Balladur, McTavish, Brayfield) to just up and die. I also am going to be making another character that will survive so that I can focus on the story of those four in Nchiyamengi. Maybe they hide. Maybe they are taken captive but escape . . . we'll soon decide. But I just want it known that I can't have those characters dying just yet.
OOC: I'm happy for for three other characters and a handful of other Nchiyamengian forces to escape. Given that, as we had discussed earlier, this is essentially their return towards these locations in the present (after having returned to Puertazul during your elections to be redirected from there afterward), after the Sevillian forces have almost all left, they wouldn't be part of that convoy that was ambushed. I'd suggest those three get away now, rather than having them escape later and complicate things further. The attackers only really want one Green Union prisoner and to possibly try kill a few more, as well as seizing the weapons and generally killing special forces.
On another note, water often worsens the burning of tear gas, especially if it gets in your eyes. Milk, vaseline and coconut oil are the best counters, milk being the best counter for the eyes and coconut oil being the best counter for the skin. It obviously seems fairly odd that soldiers here would have milk, vaseline or coconut oil with them, but in desperate times the vaseline in / on a condom and in a condom package can be used on the skin. The fact that I know all that based on experience makes me a little sad.
IC: A small handful of Nchiyamengian special forces were able to fight their way out of the ambush, laying down enough fire while pushing on a weak spot in the GI lines to escape to the cover of the jungle and from there begin to flee. The move cost them greatly, and several fell or stumbled away severely injured, collapsing due to their injuries and dying slowly amongst the trees. The special forces sent off a distress signal, and planes were being sent from Puertazul along with a military force to recover them and drive off the terrorists, as well as treat the wounded. It would be a good 15 minutes before air support arrived however, and at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half, before land reinforcements arrived to back them up. The GI fighters knew this however, and so planned to vanish back into the jungle before air support could arrive, and use the trees as cover to mask their escape and the removal of their prisoners. In the chaos of the attack some of the Green Union forces would also have a route to escape and try hold out until backup could arrive.
The GI fighters gave no care about hitting their own expendable child soldiers, and several of them who fell down dead died from 'friendly fire', although the term seemed to take on a whole new level of irony. Dead and dying Nchiyamengian soldiers and child soldiers littered the road. With the small group of special forces having broken away, and knowing that air support would likely be arriving soon, the GI fighters rapidly moved in to seize up the weapons that lay on the ground, to quickly kill the severely injured, including they own to ensure they did not talk if they were captured, and pick up some prisoners.
The unconscious Lt. al-Rashid was dragged away into the cover of the jungle by the side of the road and clapped in a pair of handcuffs taken off the body of a policeman the group had killed a while back. A rough cloth gag was shoved in her mouth and tied in place to prevent her yelling and giving away their location when the planes can over. Three unfortunate drivers, who had been able to bail out of their vehicles when the firing began, had also been dragged away, along with two special forces soldiers, who had crawled out of the tear gas smoked truck blinded and choking for air and had then been seized. They were all similarly slapped in cuffs, gagged and were marched off rapidly into the cover of the jungle.
A fighter checked Lt. al-Rashid for a pulse and found it, seeing that the woman had clearly been knocked out, the fighter ordered three young teenage fighters to pick her up and carry her, at least until she regained consciousness. The three young strong boys picked up the dead weight of the unconscious Lt. al-Rashid and carried her away into the jungle swiftly. The fighters would now try get as far away from the attack site and as close to their base, a tertiary one rather than the main ever moving headquarters, as possible to avoid detection. It would be at least a 4 day walk however with the prisoners.
OOC: For the sake of the story let us just say Lt. al-Rashid only regains consciousness after they finally stop to make camp for the night, due to the blow and the general exhaustion caused by the ambush, and I'll briefly describe them setting up camp here.
IC: After about 7 or 8 hours of swift walking, the GI fighters halted in a small relatively flat part of the jungle. Still hidden by the trees they lay the unconscious Lt. al-Rashid sitting against a tree and tied her around the tree by her torso, before tying her elbows together so that her arms and hands were bound together and in front of her. The fighters did similarly with the other prisoners. They did no dare make a fire, such could detect watchful eyes, but instead removed their rations of stolen raw corn and biltong.
One fighter, a tall Busetsu man dressed in a stolen black leather jacket, a black undershirt and the stolen camouflaged trousers and boots of a Nchiyamengian soldier he had killed, went over and poured some water from a nearby stream on Lt. al-Rashid to wake her up. The water on the skin scoured by tear gas would still burn after so many hours due to the extent of it and the way it had been contained in the constricted truck.
OOC: I'm going to take it she has dog tags be which she can be identified with? I'll assume yes and carry on from there.
IC: The man checked Lt. al-Rashid's Dog tag. "Lt. Nabila al-Rashid" he read out calmly, feeling the metal tags between his fingers. "And a Muslim huh? They send so called Muslims to kill true servants of Allah now? That is a sin if I have every heard one."
Pulling the rag out of his mouth the man said "tell me, Nabila al-Rashid, why are you here in Nchiyamengi?"
OOC: Now you can have the other three picked up by the Nchiyamengian reinforcements and follow that story and also have Lt. al-Rashid coming to, as well as responding to the initial question.
