Several nautical miles off the coast of The Stretch, Promethean regional waters
Aboard the XNS Fanfu
0230 Hours
Task Force Atlas
Disc 1, Track 01 - Desperate Situation
As the minutes ticked by on board the carrier, foreign operators found it a bit of a change of pace from a usual hurry up and wait scenario. Barely leaving a half hour for them to get chow or shower at the courtesy of the Xingese staff, as time was short enough as it was. With Operation Blind Knife concluded, they had launched Operation Red Lily right after. Contact was once again made to Task Force Atlas, who graciously accepted the contract at such short notice. As the Donnish, GAmetopian, and Dutch operators found their seats, they were not alone. Two women already occupied the briefing room. One woman was sitting in the back of the small room with her hands behind her head and her feet kicked up on the back of the chair in front of her. Clearly, she wasn't very interested in what was going on, but she wore absolutely no identifying patches, or even any real gear. All she had were two knife sheaths on a TAC belt with some small pouches. Her black patrol cap was tilted over her face as she appeared to be sleeping.
Up in the front, a tall and slender figure was overlooking a few files as the projector displayed a small map of the 2 mile island. She seemed to be indifferent to the fact that the room was slowly filling up, but she was counting how many arrivals there were. After the final operative had arrived, she sat up off the the table she'd been leaning against and turned to face the SOF unit she had requested by airmail that had been taken here by way of Froxian air forces.
"I'll keep this brief, since time is short." The woman said, her voice as chilling as it was demanding. "Over the past months, an insurrection against the nations of this region has sprouted up and gathered men and materials to wage a war of terror and destruction on anyone they want. Part of this attack was the surprise occupation of the regional capitol: a man-made island 2 square-miles wide with a conference building at the center known as The Stretch. Hostages number from thirty to forty. This is your mission. From here, you will depart in 6 Combat Rubber Raiding Craft and make landfall on the island. A Froxian pathfinder has been sent in ahead of time to designate a safe LZ with Infrared Strobes. Once you land, you will infiltrate the conference building, locate the hostages, and extract them via the CRRCs. We are doing this tonight, at night, to make sure that the local insurgent presence isn't entirely at it's strength."
The woman hit a button on the podium, and the map changed from an up-close illustration of The Stretch to a zoomed out version with a circle around a group of ship symbols near the island.
"However, our friends of the Empire of Democratic Germania have decided to park en entire coastal fleet in range of the island. To my knowledge, the Field Marshal advised the Kaiser against such an action, but I guess politicians will be politicians. As much as it pains me to say this, killing the enemy should be a last resort. We cannot risk the lives of the hostages. One more thing: One of our sleeper agents is present with the hostages. She can help your efforts. I am General Volkova and I will be your Commanding Officer for this operation. I will be in direct contact with you from here as the mission proceeds. If there are no questions, you are dismissed and to report to the lower hangar at the rear of the ship."
Volkova crossed her arms under her chest and looked on with a slightly pretentious expression as she eyed each of the soldiers sitting in front of her. Certainly not one to be so quick to call upon foreigners to do a job that she thought Froxians could easily do as well; orders were orders though, and these orders came down right from the top. Disobeying them was not anywhere in her mind.