Allanea wrote:Operation Justice StormThe Allaneans had spent days compiling lists of suspected rebel camps from their satellite readings and drone overflights, and stockpiling bombs and missiles. Now it would be time for them to strike.
It would be in the frozen dark of the Candabaumian night that the first bombers approached their target. The craft did not descend below twenty thousand feet, to avoid being targeted with rebel MANPAD – but the tactic that the Allaneans had chosen would not require such hazardous tactics. Nor would it require the use of expensive precision munitions. There would not be a need.
The targeting computers on strategic bombers allowed them to drop a bomb within a hundred-foot circle from level flight, and the bombs they would use were cheap and plentiful enough that a few misses, or even malfunctions, in the bombs, would not matter.
At 12:43 local time, the first bombs detached from the wings of a B-22 Zeus bomber. Written on the bombs were messages from the ground crews – some obscene, others patriotic – in any event, since most of the bombs would explode, the messages would largely go unread.
A half-ton bomb, with the words For the Crown and Liberty on its side, came screaming down into the treetops, detonating overhead as it smashed into a tree crown, showering everything beneath it in shrapnel. Another one, marked with Death to the slaver!, missed a rebel camp by a few dozen yards, and instantly started a fire as it splashed the forest around it with napalm. Yet a third, with a series of expletives written on it in several languages, came down screaming onto a campground.
The bombers turned in a broad semi-circle in the skies, untouchable, chariots of wrath laying down flame and death. Their tail guns, intended to be a last-ditch weapon against enemy planes and AA missiles, came alive in short bursts, autocannon shells arcing out towards unfortunate rebel positions.
The bombers had plenty of fuel and plenty of bombs, and were quite capable for circling in the skies for a long while before flying back to base. When they left, they were replaced by other craft – fighters from the carrier fleet, helicopters from the ground army. Men and women who had until that point believed themselves to be secure in deep forest camps now found themselves woken up into a nightmarish reality, in which the forest that was meant to be their protector turned to be a trap, with forest fires set by napalm strikes surrounding their camps and painting the skies a brutal red, bombs shrieking down from the skies, the smell of smoke and napalm on their nostrils.
As the bombings seemed to cease momentarily, long-range rockets were the next chord in the symphony of judgement and death that Allaneans were now performing. They arced out from the landing ground, reaching deep into the forest, detonating with a loud clap far overhead – only to shower vast swaths of forest in submunitions, setting hundreds of fires, scything through unfortunates caught in the open with shrapnel.
Only with the light of dawn would the violence end. Far overhead, the engines of aircraft were heard, and then, in the silence, fluttering, almost inaudible, like butterfly wings beating.
They fell towards the ground slowly – sheets of thin paper, printed in color on one side and in black and white on the other. The black and white was a drawing – showing Candabaumian rebels, in disheveled clothes, huddling in the snow around a tiny bonfire. This was marked with THE FRUITS OF SLAVERY. The other side was a photograph, showing Allaneans and Candabaumian loyalists enjoying a pleasant meal around a fireplace, with a large green New Year's tree decorated with gleaming toys and with gifts underneath it, with glasses of what appeared to be mulled wine in their hands. This was captioned THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY. In smaller letters, the leaflet said.
Do you truly wish to continue fighting, in the snow, for a cause that is both unjust and lost? Even now, when your leaders have refused multiple times our offers of liberty, peace, and friendship, the common soldier and rebel has nothing to fear from us. We respect your bravery. We promise that those of you not found guilty of crimes against humanity will receive not only warm food, shelter, and medical attention, but also job training classes and education to help you adapt to a free, post slavery economy. You have seen already our promises are true.
We come to you with warm food, shelter, education, liberty and opportunity in our hands. Will you choose humiliating death in the cold from starvation, gunfire, and hypothermia, with your bodies going unburied and your cause condemned by all? Will your families truly want you to perish in this way?
We do not want you to perish. Come over. We have warm food.
Many troops accept. Leaders of the rebellion asks that if they turn themselves in they can be exiled or in prison instead of killed
