The quiet town of Hollowrock declared secession from the United States of America, having been convinced by both it's Mayor and Local Sheriff that they were being treated as second class citizens in their own state. The claim follows a series of enforced purchase orders from the federal government to house the new Biotrax Laboratory facility, and subsequent claims that the lab was harming the local townsfolk went unheeded by federal authorities.
Shortly after the declaration of secession was delivered, the Mayor was found dead, apparently in a botched robbery, but the townsfolk had already made their minds up that this was no mere coincidence.
Around the same time, The Sheriff was abducted by parties unknown and subjected to a battery of torture and questioning, then, apparently having decided that they had gotten what they wanted from him, dumped naked in a field on the outskirts of town. He later told of how the majority of the questioning was to do with what he knew of the Biotrax facility and what they were doing.
The 142nd Signals Brigade of the National Guard were on station performing pre-deployment training in the local area. Captain Collins, OC of the unit, was ordered to retask and investigate Hollowrock, Their mission contain the town and cut off it's outside communications. A Special Forces team was seconded to his command for the duration of the operation to assist.
Noticing the team, and the re-issuing of live ammunition, Lt S. Cohen , originally born in Hollowrock, and fearing for her family's safety defected, appropriating one of the unit's Humvees to effect her escape.
Further intelligence was presented to Collins that implicated Cohen in a conspiracy to obtain biological material from the Biotrax laboratories to help construct a WMD, for the citizens of Hollowrock this would represent a chance to enforce their sovereignty, but he believed that the town had been manipulated by foreign elements, to provide cover for theft of a bio-agent.
Biotrax quickly became a scapegoat for all of the town's ills, every cough or cold, imagined or not was blamed on the lab, claims of experimentation on the townsfolk spread like wildfire, and It was only a matter of time before a civil militia turned up on the steps of the facility to demand to be let inside.
However, they were not, Biotrax's private security detail opened fire on the crowd, with the massively superior firepower at their disposal, they easily drove back the crowd, killing and maiming dozens of citizens, this only fueled their rage however, and what appeared to be an old captured RPG-7 was fired into the central floor of the facility, causing massive damage. The security detail, now under sniper fire, escaped the building, and have not been heard from since.
Collins had sent the SF team ahead to reconnoitre the area, and report back on the strength an disposition of the local forces, unfortunately, the post they had taken up, stood directly between the labs and the next target of the civilian's ire, the local National Guard outpost, where the militia were heading to gain access to the armoury.
Once both the SF team and the outpost were under assault, Collin's hand was forced, he had to commit entirely to the fight, and started a sweeping advance through the town to relieve the friendly forces. They did not arrive in time and were held back at the armoury by newly armed citizens with automatic weapons and mortar support. They had however managed to capture the local water pumping station, and the radio mast.
Dr. Weisser , the long time town physician, who had been dealing with the various ailments the townsfolk had been coming down with of late, claimed on good authority that the explosion in the lab had released an airbourne contaminent, but, that having been seconded to the Biotrax team for a short time a few years back, he knew that they kept the counter-agent, and the delivery mechanism for it, in the town pump station, for just such an emergency, however, the components of the antigen, were kept seperate from he mixer, and had to be found.
In the meantime, having had intelligence of his own, from a background history of Biotrax and their projects, Captain Collins found out the true purpose behind the mysterious mixing device and it's sinister glowing components. It was an area sterilisation weapon, designed to infect the local population of an area, and after a certain delay, kill them all without any trace. This, was the bio-weapon the insurgents were trying to capture, and they must be stopped.
After managing to reset the timer on
the device on two occassions, the Guard specialists, sadly manged to let the weapon fall into he hands of the miltiia, who promptly, as they believed, detonated it's first stage, the aerosol form of the weapon.
This triggered the towns chemical attack alarms, and both sides retreated from the area fearing contamination.
A CDC investigation team was brought in by Collins to learn of the extent of contamination of the town, and, more to the point, if his men were infected. The answer sadly being yes, he escorted the CDC to the ruined lab, in an attempt to gather intelligence that would help find a cure.
The escort team was ambushed, by a group of civilian Milita, whilst distracted by the lead reserarcher of Biotrax, Dr. James Abrams. who had suffered greatly as a result of being at ground zero when the second floor of the lab blew, in a near animal frenzy, he attracked the escort group, appearing to feel no pain as they shot him. He was finally tracked down and his corpse taken back to the guard field outpost for examination, and searching the body, they found keys and access cards to lab assets.. The CDC scientist, was shot at by the civilian forces, and bled out on the steps, his corpse and his instrumentation, were captured and taken to the sheriff.
The captured keys allowed the guard to reset the timer on the second stage of the weapon, but again they lost control of it, and the keys, after a determined push by the militia were carelessly discarded on a windowsill to be stolen by the militia, who still believed the weapon to be their saviour at the time, the second stage detonated and dumped a massive dose of the contaminant into the local water table, from here on out, everyone was in the same boat.
From a cursory scan of the information, the towns primary school teacher, managed to work out that Weisser had been lying to them all along, he was in fact an agent for Biotrax, and he had persuaded them to set off the device, damning themselves. He was executed in short order, leaving the town woefully short a medic, but all the better for exposing the traitor in their midst.
The National Guard air assets finally came on station at this time but only operated during a limited window while daylight was available. Ugly-50 expended some ammunition in anger, but would accomplish far more in the morning.
During the night, the civilians had arranged a meeting with a libyan arms dealer named Jackal, out of character for small town americans, but Lt. Cohen apparently had contacts on that side of the fence, his offer was simple, his case of gold bars, a significant boost to the town economy, in exchange for the data on the bioweapons. Jackal however was using less than state of the art radio gear, and the National Guard broke up the meeting, causing Jackal to flee the area til later, where he took his revenge by capturing the guard commander and forcing the location of the gold from him.
Lt Cohen was catured by Collin's special ops team later that night and shipped away for court martial, she has not been heard from since. Even by her own brother.
Jackal approached the new de-facto leader of the civilian forces, the sheriff, with a different approach, he offered the use of his lab supercomputers remotely, utilising the old guard outpost radio systems, to send and receive the data, his price was to keep a copy for himself of course. In dire straits now, the militia agreed, they needed the counter agent, and could deal with Jackal later. The data from the CDC instruments was sent, analysed and the civilians, now had information about the weapons counter agent, Cerberus.
The NSA operatives in the area however had not been idle, they had already informed the Guard command of the meeting, and offered their further assistance on intelligence matters, on the proviso that the kill Jackal along with the heads of the town. They were to be disaappointed however, as the Guard forces failed to prevent Jackal decrypting the data and again, eluding capture. In his haste to flee though, he had been careless, and not deleted the transaction logs on the radio gear, using this information the NSA data teams could find out where Jackal's lab was, and shut him down for good. They were again to be dissapointed, as by this time the miltia had heaviliy fortified the old guard outpost, and used thermite charges to completely destroy the communications gear.
Fighting continued throughout the night as the two forces vied for control over the towns assets, and intelligence, finally the guard caught a break, apparently Abrams, the research lead, had a mistress the other side of town, summising that he may have been careless about his personal data, the guard forces covertly entrered the home and, found what they were looking for, Abram's journal , detailing the bio-agent Damocles, and it's counterpart,the antigen Cerberus.
With both sides now knowing that they must now gain control of the cerberus agent. the sun rose on a tense village.
Unbeknownst to the Captain, the SF team assigned to him, were in fact, under orders, that whilst appearing to come from a legitimate chain of command, were in fact, the direct result of NSA intervention. Their mandate was to sanitise the area via use of a nuclear neutron device , shipped into the outskirts of town under cover of night, should the situation devolve, it would kill the occupants and the bio-agent, but leave the infrastructure sound for resettlement. And could be explained poltically as a weapons test, of new EMP weaponry. they had also been tasked with, should the opportunity arrive, to either capture, or liquidate, both the insurgent leader, and.. now Captain Collins. The Sheriff for having too much knowledge of the weapon and too much of a cult of personality to be ignored. and Collins for dereliction of duty, by allowing the bio-weapon not only into the hands of the insurgents, but potentially foreign powers he had upset the global apple cart quite dramatically.
As it happened, they got it exaclty their way when they were asked to serve as bodyguard to a parlay between Collins and the Sheriff, the citizen trying to claim he had the antigen already in exchange for amnesty, not knowing that earlier that morning, a shipment of cerberus, synthesised by another local lab to the specifications leaked to them, arrived in the Guard camp. Capturing them both and shipping them off to who knows where. Damocles by this time was already taking its toll on the poluation, who started dropping the streets, some died instantly, some going through the same agony as Dr. Abrams. It was to become acaademi soon however, as the sky turned a bright, blinding white, and a mushroom cloud that could be seen from miles around was left in the flashes wake.
Between the rapid kill time of Damocles as it apporached the end of its timer, and the neutron weapon that went off, the town was left a desolate ghost town, full of bodies that would not decay, as the neutron weapon had destroyed even the bacteria in their bodies.
A select few citizens had survied the virus and even fewer had already fled the lethal zone of the blast but those who did, and the national guard containment patrols who pursued them, found themselves heading towards the nearby town of Freeport.. a town none of them had ever visited before, but had always been heard about.
For more photos visit www.fragphotos.com all proceeds to Bamako Bampots!
Shortly after the declaration of secession was delivered, the Mayor was found dead, apparently in a botched robbery, but the townsfolk had already made their minds up that this was no mere coincidence.Around the same time, The Sheriff was abducted by parties unknown and subjected to a battery of torture and questioning, then, apparently having decided that they had gotten what they wanted from him, dumped naked in a field on the outskirts of town. He later told of how the majority of the questioning was to do with what he knew of the Biotrax facility and what they were doing.
The 142nd Signals Brigade of the National Guard were on station performing pre-deployment training in the local area. Captain Collins, OC of the unit, was ordered to retask and investigate Hollowrock, Their mission contain the town and cut off it's outside communications. A Special Forces team was seconded to his command for the duration of the operation to assist.Noticing the team, and the re-issuing of live ammunition, Lt S. Cohen , originally born in Hollowrock, and fearing for her family's safety defected, appropriating one of the unit's Humvees to effect her escape.
Further intelligence was presented to Collins that implicated Cohen in a conspiracy to obtain biological material from the Biotrax laboratories to help construct a WMD, for the citizens of Hollowrock this would represent a chance to enforce their sovereignty, but he believed that the town had been manipulated by foreign elements, to provide cover for theft of a bio-agent.
Biotrax quickly became a scapegoat for all of the town's ills, every cough or cold, imagined or not was blamed on the lab, claims of experimentation on the townsfolk spread like wildfire, and It was only a matter of time before a civil militia turned up on the steps of the facility to demand to be let inside.
However, they were not, Biotrax's private security detail opened fire on the crowd, with the massively superior firepower at their disposal, they easily drove back the crowd, killing and maiming dozens of citizens, this only fueled their rage however, and what appeared to be an old captured RPG-7 was fired into the central floor of the facility, causing massive damage. The security detail, now under sniper fire, escaped the building, and have not been heard from since.Collins had sent the SF team ahead to reconnoitre the area, and report back on the strength an disposition of the local forces, unfortunately, the post they had taken up, stood directly between the labs and the next target of the civilian's ire, the local National Guard outpost, where the militia were heading to gain access to the armoury.
Once both the SF team and the outpost were under assault, Collin's hand was forced, he had to commit entirely to the fight, and started a sweeping advance through the town to relieve the friendly forces. They did not arrive in time and were held back at the armoury by newly armed citizens with automatic weapons and mortar support. They had however managed to capture the local water pumping station, and the radio mast.Dr. Weisser , the long time town physician, who had been dealing with the various ailments the townsfolk had been coming down with of late, claimed on good authority that the explosion in the lab had released an airbourne contaminent, but, that having been seconded to the Biotrax team for a short time a few years back, he knew that they kept the counter-agent, and the delivery mechanism for it, in the town pump station, for just such an emergency, however, the components of the antigen, were kept seperate from he mixer, and had to be found.
In the meantime, having had intelligence of his own, from a background history of Biotrax and their projects, Captain Collins found out the true purpose behind the mysterious mixing device and it's sinister glowing components. It was an area sterilisation weapon, designed to infect the local population of an area, and after a certain delay, kill them all without any trace. This, was the bio-weapon the insurgents were trying to capture, and they must be stopped.
After managing to reset the timer on
the device on two occassions, the Guard specialists, sadly manged to let the weapon fall into he hands of the miltiia, who promptly, as they believed, detonated it's first stage, the aerosol form of the weapon.This triggered the towns chemical attack alarms, and both sides retreated from the area fearing contamination.
A CDC investigation team was brought in by Collins to learn of the extent of contamination of the town, and, more to the point, if his men were infected. The answer sadly being yes, he escorted the CDC to the ruined lab, in an attempt to gather intelligence that would help find a cure.
The escort team was ambushed, by a group of civilian Milita, whilst distracted by the lead reserarcher of Biotrax, Dr. James Abrams. who had suffered greatly as a result of being at ground zero when the second floor of the lab blew, in a near animal frenzy, he attracked the escort group, appearing to feel no pain as they shot him. He was finally tracked down and his corpse taken back to the guard field outpost for examination, and searching the body, they found keys and access cards to lab assets.. The CDC scientist, was shot at by the civilian forces, and bled out on the steps, his corpse and his instrumentation, were captured and taken to the sheriff.
The captured keys allowed the guard to reset the timer on the second stage of the weapon, but again they lost control of it, and the keys, after a determined push by the militia were carelessly discarded on a windowsill to be stolen by the militia, who still believed the weapon to be their saviour at the time, the second stage detonated and dumped a massive dose of the contaminant into the local water table, from here on out, everyone was in the same boat.From a cursory scan of the information, the towns primary school teacher, managed to work out that Weisser had been lying to them all along, he was in fact an agent for Biotrax, and he had persuaded them to set off the device, damning themselves. He was executed in short order, leaving the town woefully short a medic, but all the better for exposing the traitor in their midst.
The National Guard air assets finally came on station at this time but only operated during a limited window while daylight was available. Ugly-50 expended some ammunition in anger, but would accomplish far more in the morning.
During the night, the civilians had arranged a meeting with a libyan arms dealer named Jackal, out of character for small town americans, but Lt. Cohen apparently had contacts on that side of the fence, his offer was simple, his case of gold bars, a significant boost to the town economy, in exchange for the data on the bioweapons. Jackal however was using less than state of the art radio gear, and the National Guard broke up the meeting, causing Jackal to flee the area til later, where he took his revenge by capturing the guard commander and forcing the location of the gold from him.
Lt Cohen was catured by Collin's special ops team later that night and shipped away for court martial, she has not been heard from since. Even by her own brother.
Jackal approached the new de-facto leader of the civilian forces, the sheriff, with a different approach, he offered the use of his lab supercomputers remotely, utilising the old guard outpost radio systems, to send and receive the data, his price was to keep a copy for himself of course. In dire straits now, the militia agreed, they needed the counter agent, and could deal with Jackal later. The data from the CDC instruments was sent, analysed and the civilians, now had information about the weapons counter agent, Cerberus.The NSA operatives in the area however had not been idle, they had already informed the Guard command of the meeting, and offered their further assistance on intelligence matters, on the proviso that the kill Jackal along with the heads of the town. They were to be disaappointed however, as the Guard forces failed to prevent Jackal decrypting the data and again, eluding capture. In his haste to flee though, he had been careless, and not deleted the transaction logs on the radio gear, using this information the NSA data teams could find out where Jackal's lab was, and shut him down for good. They were again to be dissapointed, as by this time the miltia had heaviliy fortified the old guard outpost, and used thermite charges to completely destroy the communications gear.
Fighting continued throughout the night as the two forces vied for control over the towns assets, and intelligence, finally the guard caught a break, apparently Abrams, the research lead, had a mistress the other side of town, summising that he may have been careless about his personal data, the guard forces covertly entrered the home and, found what they were looking for, Abram's journal , detailing the bio-agent Damocles, and it's counterpart,the antigen Cerberus.With both sides now knowing that they must now gain control of the cerberus agent. the sun rose on a tense village.
Unbeknownst to the Captain, the SF team assigned to him, were in fact, under orders, that whilst appearing to come from a legitimate chain of command, were in fact, the direct result of NSA intervention. Their mandate was to sanitise the area via use of a nuclear neutron device , shipped into the outskirts of town under cover of night, should the situation devolve, it would kill the occupants and the bio-agent, but leave the infrastructure sound for resettlement. And could be explained poltically as a weapons test, of new EMP weaponry. they had also been tasked with, should the opportunity arrive, to either capture, or liquidate, both the insurgent leader, and.. now Captain Collins. The Sheriff for having too much knowledge of the weapon and too much of a cult of personality to be ignored. and Collins for dereliction of duty, by allowing the bio-weapon not only into the hands of the insurgents, but potentially foreign powers he had upset the global apple cart quite dramatically.As it happened, they got it exaclty their way when they were asked to serve as bodyguard to a parlay between Collins and the Sheriff, the citizen trying to claim he had the antigen already in exchange for amnesty, not knowing that earlier that morning, a shipment of cerberus, synthesised by another local lab to the specifications leaked to them, arrived in the Guard camp. Capturing them both and shipping them off to who knows where. Damocles by this time was already taking its toll on the poluation, who started dropping the streets, some died instantly, some going through the same agony as Dr. Abrams. It was to become acaademi soon however, as the sky turned a bright, blinding white, and a mushroom cloud that could be seen from miles around was left in the flashes wake.Between the rapid kill time of Damocles as it apporached the end of its timer, and the neutron weapon that went off, the town was left a desolate ghost town, full of bodies that would not decay, as the neutron weapon had destroyed even the bacteria in their bodies.
A select few citizens had survied the virus and even fewer had already fled the lethal zone of the blast but those who did, and the national guard containment patrols who pursued them, found themselves heading towards the nearby town of Freeport.. a town none of them had ever visited before, but had always been heard about.For more photos visit www.fragphotos.com all proceeds to Bamako Bampots!
