252 - Air Raids

Recommended music - Black Sabbath - Panaroid

Skies over Sin City

Blue Thunder grumbled as he did another lazy circle over the tiny city below. "Must we keep doing this? I'm getting dizzy..."

"Stop your whining!" Airforce Sergeant Stamford snapped. "Keep circling till we get their reply!"

"Look!" One the crew cried out, "They are signaling!"

Stamford and even Blue Thunder craned their necks over to look at the city, seeing flashes of light coming from some spot in the city.

"All... set... ready... for... operation... " their radio operator with the binos glued to his eyes read out the morse code he had memorized by heart. "eleven... tonight... out..."

"Got it!" Dek the radio operator looked up, "Ops to begin tonight at 11 pm!"

"Good!" Stamford replied and smacked the side of Blue Thunder. "Now give them a roar to acknowledge the message!"

Blue Thunder sucked in a large lungful of air and roared out while spewing flames as they flew off towards Orwell's Point, leaving behind a city of bewildered people.

-----

As night fell, the men of Claymore One split into three teams and headed towards the crude sewage system of the city. The men dressed in dark cloaks with weapons and armor hidden under crawled through the sewage tunnels, carefully casting counterspells to hoodwink the detection runes carved into the basic sewage system.

Climbing out of the grates, the men cleaned themselves off as much filth as possible and used spells to remove the odor from their bodies to prevent the enemy from sniffing them out. After which they split off to their own objectives.

-----

Tyrier with Tavel led the newest member of the Team, Wolf towards the most heavily guarded objective of their mission tonight, the Treasury. Rows of braziers lit the perimeter walls of the Treasury building with shadows of patrolling Orcs moving up and down the walls.

They cast Agility Up, Stealth, Grace, and Non Detection spells over themselves before sprinting across the wide expanses that separated the civic building from the other structures in the inner city.

Reaching the walls, they hid in the shadows between two light globes of the lit braziers. Tyrier and Tavel gripped hands to form a step and gestured Wolf who is the lightest among them to jump up the four meters tall walls. Wolf took a short running start and landed one foot on the hand step while the other two tossed him up over the walls.

Landing nimbly on the walls, Wolf checked his surroundings before uncoiling the rope he had over his back and dropped it down to the rest below after securing it to the battlements of the wall.

Shortly, Tyrier and Tavel joined him up on the way. "We got 20 minutes before the guard's patrol here! Drop the package on the roof and get back here before the patrol is back!"

Wolf and Tavel nodded and they disappeared down the wall and into the shadows.

-----

Hitsu and Loke, forming Squad Two, headed towards the main barrack's Armory. They slipped between the paths of patrolling Orcs and the occasional wind wolf, thankful that they have cleansed the odor of the sewers away.

Seeing the large blocky stone structure across the street with several Orc guards milling around the gates, Hitsu and Loke stopped and took a moment to find the best point of entry. They had spent the whole week recceing the place and had identified a few entrances they can use to enter the walled barracks.

One of through the side wall where they could swing a rope across from the roof of a local's residence to the walls of the barracks and crawl their way in.

The other was to scale the walls up by the far end of the barracks as the walls there were built more unevenly, allowing plenty of footholes for anyone who is proficient enough in climbing, could do so.

The last option was to wait till the Orcs guards were changing shifts as there will be a short period where the guards will abandon their posts to go rouse the taking over Orcs awake from their beds.

"Wait or climb?" Tavel asked as he watched the chatting Orcs at the gates.

Hitsu glanced at his watch and frowned. "We got some time still, the Orcs should be changing shift soon!"

Tavel nodded and they settled down to wait.

-----

Altied and Young carefully slipped over the walls of the Factory, bypassing the magic detection runes and guards easily. They kept to the shadows and climbed up the roof from the stack of empty crates and carefully made their way over to the main Factory building and peered into the windows to confirm the location of the fabricator.

They had recced the factory a few times in the past week, getting the feel of the area and making sure the high tech fabricator was in the factory. To their surprise, they actually found one more of the machines beside the original fabricator that was stolen. The new fabricator looked cruder compared to the original and that had alarmed Tyrier who pressed for the Operation to go ahead sooner in case they had replicated more fabricators.

The rest of the time, they spent searching the inner city for more fabricators and weapon stockpiles. It was only these three locations that Claymore One has positively identified to hold the means and results of the weapons that Tyrier finally sent word to begin the bomb raids.

Altied pulled out a slim tube out from his pouch and gave it a twist on the head. The beacon beeped softly and an infra signal invisible to the naked eyes started pulsing. He taped the infra beacon onto the roof of the Factory and nodding to Young, the two Claymore One soldiers proceeded to sneak off the premises to safe ground.

-----

Orwell's Point, Airfield

Airforce pilot Goldan, started flipping switches after he buckled into his seat. He and his co pilot started to run the usual pre flight checklist before taking off. "Batteries okay, checking brakes and hydraulics."

"Check!"

"Fuel tanks? Tanks one, two, three and four?"

"Check! All good!"

"Okay, signal to start number one!" Goldan ordered.

His co pilot leaned out of the side of the cockpit and gestured the ground crew that they were starting the number one engine. Goldan pushed down on the starter switch for the number one engine and held it down for about fifteen seconds, while he set the hand primer with his other hand and gave it a few good pumps to get the air out of the primer lines.

Once he was done, his co pilot unlocked the fuel mixture controls while Goldan pressed down on the mesh switch. The co pilot immediately pulled the engine one fuel mixture lever all the way back to full rich mixture when the engine coughed and started up.

Goldan checked the oil pressure gauge that slowly rose up and hovered around the 70 mark before testing the RPM of the engine by adjusting the throttles to one thousand. Once satisfied he nodded and said, "Signal the guys we are starting Number Two!"

The whole process was repeated for the other engine and soon the flying boat was ready to take off. "Omega Tower, this is Seagull One, request taxi instructions for Seagull Flight over."

"Seagull One you are cleared for runaway zero one to the southwest, over."

"Seagull One, roger, requesting wind information." Goldan continued asking.

"Omega Tower, wind at North north East, speed, one five klicks, over."

"Seagull One, roger, out!" Goldan ended the radio comms and said to his co pilot. "Let's go!"

His co pilot gestured the ground crew and they rushed over to remove the wheel chocks and other equipment before giving the pilots the all clear signal. Goldan returned the salute of the crew ground as he taxied the plane to the runway.

One by one, the Mariner flying boats eased out of the hangars behind them and lined up for their turn on the runway.

"Alright! Let's go!"

-----

Sin City, Inner City

The men of Claymore One had gathered at the rendezvous point nearby the gate that led into the so called Palace of the City. They hide among the shadows while waiting nervously for the planes to arrived to kick start the whole operation, constantly checking their watches and fidgetting around.

Tyrier glanced at his watch, seeing the seconds counted down away to 2300 hours and peered out to the dark skies. "Any time now boys!"

-----

On approach to Sin City

The FB 1 Mariners had all of its onboard weapons and crew removed, only leaving behind the pilot, co pilot cum bomber, and a navigator cum radio operator onboard.

The extra weight removed allowed it to carry more ordinance and fuel for the trip to the city and back as the travel time was roughly three hours to the target and another three hours back.

Hardpoints on the wings carried extra fuel tanks to give the planes more flight time and internally, they carried a mixture of napalm canisters and 250 kg high explosive cast iron bombs.

The three bombers each held a six napalm canisters and twelve 250 kg bombs internally and each was assigned to a specific target that they had all been briefed and tasked on before beginning the mission.

The pilots all wore night vision goggles inside the cockpit and they easily saw the glow of the city as they approached at an altitude of 1,200 m above ground level. The planes slowly dropped their attitude till they reached roughly 500 m above ground level and the bomb bays cranked out.

-----

"What is that?" Tyrier suddenly jerked up as bells started ringing in the city. "Did they found us?"

"No..." Loke said as he peeked out of their hiding spot. "I.. I think they spotted the bombers!"

"But how?" Tyrier frowned. "Damn it!"

They could see dozens and dozens of Orcs rushing out from the barracks and other dwellings as they ran to manned their defensive posts. Globes of light floated up into the air as Orc shamans and slave mages cast illumination spells into the skies.

The ringing of the bells grew in intensity as more of the city were roused awake and from the illumination of the floating light spells, Tyrier finally saw what that had made him feel uneasy about all this time.

The covered up and tightly guarded weapons turned out to be some sort of an anti air gun! An Orc gleeful sat on the crude seat and pulled the gun mounts to rest against his shoulders. Two long and thick pock holed barrels poke out pointing to the skies while other Orcs slapped thick boxes of shells on to the gravity loaded bolt mechanism of the AA guns.

"Oh shit," The men of Claymore One cursed as they stood up from their hiding spot and stared at the closest AA gun on the roof of a building. The gun roared and spat bolts of yellowish beams towards the sky at some unseen target which the men knew it must be their bombers!

-----

Goldan frowned when suddenly he noticed his night vision appeared to be glowing brighter and brighter as he approached the city. He pulled his goggles up and cursed as he saw the city had globes of floating illumination spells over them and suddenly, what seemed to be streaks of light flickered towards his plane.

"Shit! We are under fire!" His co pilot screamed out as a couple of holes appeared next to him on the hull of the plane. "They got anti air guns!"

"Seagull One to Omega Point! We are under AA fire! Repeat under heavy AA fire!" Goldan yelled into the radio as he pulled the bomber up. "FARK!"

"We are in bombing range!" His co pilot yelled as he poked his eye on the bombsight, seeing the infra beacons blinking away on the ground beneath him. "What do we do?"

"Fark!" Goldan cursed as the AA fire has knocked him off course.

"We line up again and complete the damn mission!"