85 - Dambuster
After dubiously accepting our assistance, Krilak had ordered his four military advisors to hop to, and plan a nice, big, showy attack, to prove that the Judak Nurr were still up and kicking, whilst he and the more peaceful members of his inner circle got to work coordinating the rest of the resistance movement, getting a great deal out of my highly advanced FTL communications systems.
Of the four militant officers, only one was a former officer, an ex-member of the Hegemony's military - the others were veterans of gang and mercenary fighting, and the sum of their strategic planning experience was as members of the Jaduk Nurr.
Luckily, that had apparently taught them something, because they were doing a better job at picking out the suboptimal targets than I was.
Then again, I wasn't really trying, because thanks to a message I'd received from Fusou, I already had a target in mind. I waited for Jarruk, the ex-military veteran, to finish explaining that proximity to a Hegemony airbase made attacking the Jalnor Refinery, and several other critical targets, a proposal far too risky for the Judak Nurr, and butted in.
"Which is why we're not going for any of the targets nearer the cities. Not yet, anyway."
The holographic map of Jalnor, Lorek's capital city, faded away, replaced by another, smaller map. Honestly, the Batarian base we were now looking at reminded me a little of the Amp Stations from Planetside. A single large factory building, surrounded by a number of smaller attendant buildings such as barracks and store rooms, all protected by a huge wall dotted with watchtowers.
"This facility is located in the Kurapp valley - am I pronouncing that right? It's well out of the way of any civilian installations. Unfortunately, being an armour and artillery testing range, it's also surrounded by flat, open plains and bristling with heavy turrets, of both anti-tank and anti-air varieties," I explained, gesturing to points of interest on the map as I spoke.
"So we can't flank it, and a full-on assault is suicide," Kren'thal summed up neatly.
A couple of the other Batarians were nodding. "You have a plan, though, I take it? You wouldn't have brought it to our attention otherwise."
"Amphibious assault. An elite team - and not to diss your own skills, but I'm thinking a Foundation team for this mission, - performs an amphibious assault and rushes in to destroy the anti-air turrets. When those are down, your forces will be able to come in by air and drop into the facility, hopefully whilst they're still disoriented and trying to regroup."
The Judak Nurr commanders seemed relatively happy with that, until one pointed out the obvious flaw. "But the river is almost eighty metres from the edge of the facility, and there's no cover. The only approach angle that would let you build speed would be going against the current. You'll get slaughtered."
"Absolutely right. Except… the river that runs through this particular valley is monitored from here, the Kuvinara Dam, just two kilometres upstream, at the edge of the valley. And according to a quick aerial scouting run, the reservoir is almost full. We ran a simulation of what might happen if the entire reservoir was poured into the valley..."
On the holographic map, the water level began to rise, reaching closer and closer to the base until eventually it intersected the walls. By the time it stopped, almost sixty metres of the Batarian base would be underwater.
"Basically, the Batarians should have built on the other bank." At Kren'thal's questioning look, I continued. "The other bank is more elevated. Because the water will be spreading over the north bank, it might not even reach high enough up to overflow on the southern side."
The ex-mercenary nodded. "I see."
Jarruk, the elder of the four Batarians and the only one with actual experience as a military commander, finally offered his thoughts. "Opening the dam would give them too much warning… we'd have to destroy it all at once. If nothing else, it'll certainly send a message. The Hegemony will certainly hate us after this. Destroying the dam won't have too much of an effect on the civilians in the area - last I checked, Unna was the only town that river serviced, and it's been abandoned since its mines were tapped out."
"If we do go ahead with this attack, what do we gain? Besides reputation."
"Can I answer that question with another question? Pretend for a moment you're the Hegemony. You've just authorised construction of a large, heavily fortified military armour and artillery compound with its own factory and research and development facilities in the middle of nowhere on a relatively unimportant backwater, over six hundred kilometres from the nearest inhabited area. Why?"
"Stupidity," Nukrae offered sarcastically.
Jarruk shot him a glare. "It's a vehicle depot with it's own factory and engineering facilities. The factory would make sense - for providing repairs and the like. But they wouldn't need the engineering facilities unless they wanted to do something new and untested. It's a prototype lab."
I nodded my head. "That's what my sources indicate." Thank
you, Fusou. "Unfortunately, this means there will be a lot of BSA employees around. They're technically military, but they're not
soldiers..."
Kren'thal shrugged. "As long as they don't point guns at us, we generally just tie them up and leave them. Not sure how well that'll work if this isn't a hit-and-run, though. Think there'll be a lot of suit-rats?"
I blinked. "Suit rats? You mean Quarians? Why would they be there?"
"The Hegemony hires them," Nukrae explained, spitting on the ground. "Gives them a nice, well paying job, guaranteed access to old Hegemony resources, and a bit of practical experience for their Pilgrimage, or whatever. They treat the damned vandals better than they treat their own people, mostly."
Well now, that's an interesting tidbit I hadn't known. I made a note to review the other employment records Fusou had dug up - there might have been more information there. And then I got back to the point of the meeting.
"Interesting. But not as interesting as this. Supposedly, two SIU officers, - and, of course, their entourage, - are to visit the facility in four days' time, for a 'routine inspection.' Whether or not you believe that, it's a chance to put the hurt on one of their biggest factories outside their home system, and take out two SIU high-ups to boot."
The four Batarians fell silent, weighing possibilities in their heads.
"Four days is not a lot of time to prepare," Kren'thal pointed out, after extended consideration.
"Never said it would be easy," I replied with a shrug. "Not saying we have to do it, but the potential benefits…"
Jarruk snorted and turned to his fellows. "The potential benefits are great. Worst case success, we knock off two SIU elites and destroy a major factory. Best case, we can take the factory, or at least its databanks, for ourselves.This isn't the kind of opportunity we can afford to pass up."
Apparently, having their senior militarist on side was enough to convince the others, as they all began nodding earnestly. "Alright, then," I said to the suddenly very eager officers. "Let's get to work."
---
The first stage of the plan was easy. A force of twelve Faith Foundation assault troopers, and twenty Judak Nurr specialists, were dropped into the fields a few kilometres downstream from the dam. We knew it didn't have any military presence, but we didn't rule out private security - hence the caution.
After spending the better part of an our trekking along the riverbank, our fears were confirmed. The dam was protected by a very frail, and largely useless, fence, a number of cameras, IR trackers, and motion sensors, and routine patrols by very bored looking Batarians with SMGs.
Hacking into the systems was easy enough - once we'd figured out where the cameras were transmitting
too, I teleported a nanite-bomb down to infiltrate the systems, handily disabling the cameras and feeding the attached monitors an endless loop of 'nothing to see here'.
Then, we actually broke in.
With just six guards on site - four on patrol, in pairs, and two more in the security office, it was trivially easy to access the compound, and without the cameras, the latter two were useless, meaning we were almost entirely free to roam, save for the areas patrolled.
Due to the wide open spaces and long sight lines, however, the assault troopers were able to stealthily take out the patrolling guards with Hope's new tranquilizers, giving us access to everywhere in the facility save the one, still occupied command room.
Another teleported bomb, this time a gas grenade, was more than sufficient to incapacitate those two unfortunate guards.
I hoped the Hegemony didn't blame these people for what was about to happen. Not like we gave them a chance to resist us, or anything.
Once we'd totally secured the compound, we moved on to stage two. Six incredibly ballsy Batarian demolitionists, lead by a former mining engineer who'd claimed to have experience with 'something similar', - presumably cliff face blasting, - rappelled down the face of the dam with bandoliers full of Foundation explosives, mounting them periodically as they worked their way along the structure. Once each Batarian had exhausted their bandolier of explosives, they were hauled back up by two comrades, clambering to the top of the dam once more.
Once everyone had climbed back up and packed up their gear, we moved off the dam, no one particularly wanting to stick around and wait for it to explode.
The twenty Batarian rebels, plus my own squad of twelve, regrouped on the grassy verge near the edge of the embankment, loitering near the water as they waited for the dropship to arrive.
Once the dropship arrived, then we could launch the assault - we didn't want to start until absolutely everyone was ready to join in.
The Batarian demolitionist who'd lead the rappel teams approached my commandeered AeroAvatar, the currently idling squad leader of the present group of Foundation troopers.
"Sergeant Noon. We're all packed and ready to go, and the charges are set. On your signal, we will activate the detonation sequence."
I nodded. "Great. Dropship should be here any second now. Sort your men and wait for pickup. We'll get ourselves set up."
Giving an entirely unnecessary hand signal to the other Aeros, I sent them the order to prepare for the operation. They nodded, signaled their acknowledgement, and started getting set up, sealing helmets, checking weapons, and powering up their flight kits.
The low whine of engines drawing closer dragged both of our eyes to the skies as an older model Batarian-made
Skyhauler, flying low over the trees, finally arrived at the site, swinging out over the reservoir before coming in slowly to deploy boarding ramps onto the bank.
"Alright, the shuttle is here. Everyone ready?"
The Aeros provided a number of basic thumbs-up responses. The Batarians mumbled their agreement, slinging their thus-far-unneeded weapons onto their backs and clustering together near the dropship.
"Excellent. Time to light the fuse."
Bakkra nodded his head grimly and tapped a key on his OmniTool, six bombs simultaneously detonating across the front surface of the dam. The superstructure held for just a couple of seconds, metal groaning in protest, before finally splitting apart. The water began to push, ripping huge chunks of concrete from the dam and flinging it downstream.
The Aeros, still standing on the bank, opened up one last lockbox of equipment, retrieving from within a number of thin, narrow planks.
Hope's Avatar grabbed two, bringing one over to me.
Bakkra's questioning glance was too much for me to resist.
"It's an amphibious assault raft. You may have seen some of the troops training with them, back on Miranda."
I just happened to know that 'may have' was the incorrect term - Bakkra was one of the Batarians who had spent a great deal of time exploring New Bondi, and I'd definitely seen him at the beach.
The Batarian blinked, and after a moment's consideration started looking between our 'amphibious assault rafts' and the water rushing over the edge of the dam, as if trying to comprehend the kind of madness we'd been cursed with to determine this was a logical course of action.
Eventually, he managed to spare the brainpower to speak. "You're insane. Twice insane."
I flashed him a cheeky grin before slipping my helmet on.
"Nah, mate. I'm an
Australian."
Turning my back on the dumbstruck Batarian, I grabbed the offered surfboard and stepped into the rushing water.
