New Dawn

Those of you who frequented the Fantasy Writers Guild may have seen this, but I'm gonna try and get it moving again. Its a little more serious than most of the stuff I've done of late so we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday 17th January 2009, 6.30am

It was a thing of beauty, the brushed steel box holding one if the most precise pieces of engineering ever crafted, all inside a case the gave no clue as to what was contained within. A thing of such precision, of such power, of such high value that only the most powerful of nations had been able to afford them, until now. The supporting struts ran from the steel casing onto the globe within, made of 32 panels of precision shaped plastic explosives, looking almost like an oversized soccer ball, with small squares attached to each of the pieces, all wired back to a single piece. These were the detonators of a weapon the likes of which had never been used before. Not since 1940’s Japan had man used a weapon that came even close to the power harnessed within. These were the detonators of change, with this blow the global picture would change, the arrogance of the western alliance finally shaken. They would earn the respect their nation deserved.

Within the sphere hung a smaller, metallic sphere, its surfaces precisely milled, giving a mirror like finish. The material was warm to the touch, its permanent state of decay releasing its energy through heat and gamma radiation. Between the two spheres hung small, precise krypton valves, each set to release a quantity of tritium gas, a form of unstable helium gas, which contained 3 neutrons, as opposed to a normal helium atom which contained just 2, into the reaction, providing the necessary neutrons to fully unleash the awesome power contained within the core.

At the given time, the counter reached zero and it began. The krypton valves released the tritium, nanoseconds before the explosive sphere erupted into life, the explosive energy released caving inwards onto the sphere within. The plutonium 238 was compressed by the force of the explosion, shrinking in size until it happened. At first one atom became unstable, releasing some of its neutron load, the free neutrons impacting with the atoms which surrounded it in its compressed state, causing 2 other atoms to split, then 4, then 16, then 256 as the chain reaction gathered pace. In less than the blinking of an eye, this creation of engineering beauty had become a tool of extensive death, the light of a thousand sunrises flashed forth as the box melted inwards, the power of the explosion tearing forth in all directions.

The street corner where the vehicle which carried the box, ironically rented from a company called ‘Trojan rentals’ was obliterated in less than a second, as was all its surrounds for 3 kilometers. All that remained was debris and a choking grey radioactive cloud, towering up to the heavens, the light of dawn emanating from its base. No one within that radius could have possibly survived. Brussels was gone, the centre of the European Union destroyed, and with it the face of human history would be forever changed.

GCHQ, Cheltenham, England.
‘Sir, we have a massive thermal bloom on the screen here from Brussels, all communication lines appear to have gone down. I… Well I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ The young lieutenant had no idea what was going on as she spoke to her CO on the telephone. He walked in, leaning over the young woman, looking at the orange glow on the screen.
‘Replay what you have from 30 seconds before the event lieutenant, on half speed please.’ The screen jumped back to the time stamp requested. 06:29:31 17/01/2009. It clicked forward, slowly scrolling forward, the satellite picture of central Europe completely normal until precisely 06:30:00 when Brussels flashed white, before remaining gradually settling to orange, a black spot at the cities center. ‘OK, ‘he said, ‘play me the last 5 seconds, frame by frame please.’ He picked up the telephone as he spoke, dialling a number which he had not rang for over 20 years.

The Pentagon, Virginia, USA
‘Yes sir, we are showing the same thing here too…
We are also unable to raise them on communications……
No sign of what happened…
Yes sir, it does…
Defcon 2, I’ll forward that to SECDEF sir.’
Nuclear command at the Pentagon was now one of the smallest jobs in the US military machine. At one point the holder of this position had enough power at his finger tips to turn the entire globe into burnt toast within five minutes of placing an order. Now all that he had was a guy sat outside the presidents door 24/7 with a case full of codes and a few tactical missiles and warheads on submarines and aircraft carriers stationed around the globe, plus a small stash of plane launched bombs at Pearl Harbour.

Now he worked largely as an observer, watching a few rogue nations who’s nuclear aspirations hadn’t been dampened by the former presidents war on terror. The North Koreans, one or two African nations and a few small states ending in -stan, still had this back dated idea that Nuclear weapons where the key to global respect.

He watched the tape again, the last time he’d seen anything like this had been when he watched……
‘General, does this remind you of the Chernobyl accident?….
Not within 60 kilometers?…
Terrorism. It has to be terrorists, but how?….’

Argh! Another great story! How am I going to find the time to read all the great stories in the fan fic section lately? LOL.
Very intriguing, Swampy. I'm interested to see what you're going to come up with, here.

Yes, fantastic intro. I can't wait for more.

Its been a while but why not...


GCHQ, Cheltenham, England
He put the phone down to his American counterpart, and swallowed hard before making another call, this one to the home office, the frame by frame replay still flicking through, now tightened down to just the second of the event and the 2 seconds following. One frame nothing, the next a white flash.
‘Sir, this is the Nuclear command and monitoring station at GCHQ, General Michael Tate, service number 218-47951, calling for the Home secretary. I need to speak to him now, it cannot wait.’

The voice on the end of the phone remained composed as she connected him with the office of the secretary, just roused from his slumber and sat drinking coffee.

‘Sorry to wake you sir, there has been an incident in mainland Europe.’
‘What kind of incident, and where?’
‘It looks like a medium sized nuclear reaction in central Brussels’
‘They’ve blown up one of their power stations?’
‘No sir, the nearest reactor is approximately 60 kilometers from the incident. We have been unable to raise anyone in Brussels since he event.
‘So it’s a bomb? Well where the hell did it come from? Who launched it? Why Brussels?’
‘We do not have the answers to these questions as yet sir, but we are working on them. For now I recommend going to a higher state of alert, consider DEFCON 2 a viable proposition.’
‘Thank you General, any more news, keep me informed. I’ve got to call the Prime Minister’
‘Yes Sir, Tate out.’ He put the phone down, severing the connection.

The phone rang again, it was his German counterpart. This was going to be a busy day.

Wednesday 17th January, 08.00
The Press Room, 10 Downing Street, London, England

‘Good Morning. This morning a horrendous event has taken place. At 6.30am, a massive explosion took place in Brussels, Belgium. As yet we do not know what has caused this explosion, but as a safety precaution we are going to place the country on a state of high alert. All none essential services will be closed down until further notice. All police and army reservists are to contact their command posts, medical services are to be run as normal. Please do not panic, we have no idea yet as to what has gone on. We are investigating currently, the Belgian government has been contacted and we have offered our support to the authorities in Belgium. I will keep you updated as we get more information. Thankyou.’

‘Mr Prime minister….”
‘Sir….’

A thousand questions exploded from the assembled journalists as he left the platform, the camera’s remained on as he walked out the press room door. The nation awoken with news of death on a scale not seen since the Asian Tsunami, and they had no more idea of what had caused it. As the door closed behind him the prime minister threw off his navy blue jacket and loosened his tie.

‘Have we heard anything more yet?’
‘No sir, but the Belgians are flying a drone over the area now, they’re going to cross-deck the take to us. It’ll be over the political district, where the epicentre seems to have been.’ The home secretary replied
‘So where the hell did this thing come from?’
‘We aren’t sure yet sir, satellite images are inconclusive. We have no evidence of an inbound track, so our best guess is a ground based delivery system, maybe a truck.’
‘So there is no way this could have been an accident?’
‘We cannot see how this can be anything but an attack, by who though, we have no idea.’
‘Best guess?’ The prime minister asked, looking around at his collected advisors.
‘Our first thoughts point to the usual suspects. Al-Qaeda.
‘Any other potential assailants?’
‘Europe has settled down, the Germans don’t even want to rule the world anymore, we have no other ideas. Etta was mentioned, but this is not according to their M.O. It seems unlikely to be anyone but Muslim extremists, sir’
‘Has anyone claimed credit yet?’
‘No sir’
‘Are we safe here, any chance of a similar attack on the UK?’
‘Sir, 24 hours ago my answer would have been no, but now I’m not certain. I believe that the UK is currently safe, City centres have been locked down, our police forces are scouring the streets to make sure that there is nothing untoward going on. The likelihood is that this is a one-off incident, we have had no reports of any Plutonium thefts, we have as yet no clue about the source of the material for this device, our best guess is that it may be from a former Soviet device. The Russians have always denied that any were missing, but we have always suspected that there may have been some lost during the break up of the Soviet Union, sir….’

The door opened and a man in the green of the army appeared through the door. ‘Sirs, the drone is passing over Brussels now, and its not pretty. We’re putting it on the main monitors now.’
‘Thank you Major, carry on.’

The plasma screen on the cabinet office wall flickered to life, the image of the suburbs of Brussels drifting under the camera. At first nothing appeared wrong, the houses were all intact, cars on drives, the only signs of any wrong were the upturned garden furniture. As the pictures moved inwards towards the center the image soon changed. Cars were burning, the windows of the properties were broken, houses were on fire. The destruction magnified as it moved towards the city center. The humanity of it all made the scene seem less like the opening sequence of a movie. Lay by the side of the road was a bicycle, with a small badly burnt body carrying a newspaper bag. What had been an inhuman incident now hit home, the small corpse still smoking. The Prime minister spoke ‘How many….’
‘Current worst estimate is 1.5 million .’
‘We need to find out who did this and deal with this, before something else happens.’
‘An emergency teleconference with the security council has been scheduled for 10am, we have the streets being checked, the SAS are on standby, with orders being cut for the Alpha Response team to stand to. We have offered the Belgian government our support and increased our surveillance the areas we still believe to be possible locations of the Al Qaeda high command. The NATO strategic action in times like these is to find and decapitate the organisation which has carried out the attack, Alpha being a Multinational unit, they may be our best tool, we need approval from two of the other security council members before they can be sent into action. That won’t be an issue here though.’

This certainly is the day for fan fics. I had to re-read the 1st part to remember, but this is very good. It reminds me of an episode of 24. Keep up the good work, Swamps, and hopefully we won't have to wait as long for the next installment.

No long waits this time.

Alpha Headquarters, The Peak District, England.
The on duty strike team had just returned from morning exercises. A 10 mile run, followed by 100 rounds at the firing range completed they returned to the barracks to shower and change into fresh uniforms. They headed to the training centre, to be met by a very stern looking company CO.

‘Have a seat Ladies and Gentlemen, it looks like we may be doing a little business soon. This morning at 06:30 a nuclear device was detonated on the outskirts of the political district of Brussels. As yet we have no idea who by, but our first guess is Al-Qaeda. The scientific types are trying to work out how they did this, how they got there and where the nuclear payload came from but that is not our problem. As the on duty team for the Alpha Strike Force it will be our job to find the scum bags who did this and bring them to justice. As of now you are on 60 minute alert. Say goodbye to your families, pack up your kit, check your weapons and get your game face on. It looks like we are going hunting in the Himalaya’s. You are dismissed’

Somewhere in The East
‘Phase One of our plan has succeeded, the device detonated at precisely 6.30 am local time, estimated casualty count stands at almost one million, including, we believe the majority of the European Central Parliament and 90 percent of the Belgian Government.’
‘Indeed, our engineers did well. The devastation is apparently immense. We have people inside the local security and science services on their way to site as we speak. We will have pictures within the hour.’
‘The foreign devils have no idea where this will have come from?’
‘Sir if they had, we would never have been able to carry out the mission.’
‘And what chance of tracing the source of the payload?’
‘They may eventually be able to identify the source, but it will confuse them when they do, after all it comes from their Israeli friends after all.’
‘Ah yes, very good. Proceed with phase 2. Release the aid offer and support we had agreed.’
‘Very good sir, as you wish.’


RN-274 Sealynx helicopter, Outskirts of Brussels, 10:00
‘Command, this is Delta 4.’
‘We got you Delta 4’
‘We’re just flying over the area now. All instruments are engaged, readings should be coming back to you now, we are preparing to over fly the area.’
‘Signals are coming through, we are getting a lot of interference suspect that’s from the fallout. You have permission to over fly the area at 15,000 feet. Any lower, you’ll be at risk of over exposure within minutes’
‘Roger that, Delta 4 out’

GCHQ, Cheltenham, England
The readings streamed across his screen, the Geiger counter readings off the scale, with infrared temperature readings reflected off the ground, plus all manner of other facts that meant nothing to General Tate, but to the science weenies being pulled in from Oxford, these figures would reveal much. He turned to his workstation, looking for maps of Brussels, demographics, population, anything. 1.5 million people, not since Auschwitz had Europe seen death on this scale in one place. The helicopter flew over the centre of the explosion, a massive crater now replaced the European parliament building. The seat of power for the whole of Europe was now gone. The fallout from this one act was going to redefine the whole of Europe.

His mind made a leap, Fallout, where would the fallout reach. He pulled the phone to his ear, dialling the number for the Met Office. At 48 years old, he worked hard to maintain the physique he’d had before he’d become a Desk jockey. His dark hair was close cropped, as it had been since the day he’d joined up, and his piercing dark eyes had a look of worry, the danger of the situation now occurring to him. His homeland may not have been attacked, but it was in danger from the fallout from the blast. He stood up to his full height, 6 feet dead, the phone still in his large hand as spoke to the woman on the other end of his telephone. The winds over Europe were currently very still, so the immediate risk was still limited to Brussels but he knew it may not stay that way. From now on someone was to watch the weather at all times and any change in the wind conditions were to be notified immediately.

RN-274 Sealynx helicopter,
‘This is Delta 4, we are now over what looks like the epicentre, the place is a wreck. We’re lowering the drone now to take a debris sample for analysis, then its back to the nest, over.’
A static laden reply was heard over the radio. ‘Roger that Delta 4, good work, over and out.’

The small self powered droid affectionately known as growler due to the tone of its small diesel engine, touched the ground and opened its collection scoop, scraping around 3 kilo’s of debris from the floor, before being pulled back up to the craft on the hoist. The Helicopter started to fly away back to the coast, for decontamination and debrief and, for the 2 pilots, a long and painful death from radiation poisoning.

Wednesday 17th January, 11.00,
The Cabinet Office, 10 Downing Street, London England.

‘You all know why you are here, General Tate from the Nuclear Command and Monitoring station will brief us as to exactly what happened at 12.00, but for now we have a request for assistance from what remains of the Belgian government. We have samples from the scene on our way to the laboratories at Cambridge, so we can locate the source of the payload. Estimated casualty count we expect to be around 1.4 million, with radiation related after effects quite possibly bringing the number up to almost 2 million. Aid offers have come in from all the G8 countries, along with a number of the emerging economies, plus we have been asked to deploy military engineers to the clean up as soon as it is safe to and investigations have been completed.’

The defence minister came in, a piece of paper in his hands. The Prime minister stopped speaking. ‘Alpha has a green light, now we just need to know where to send them. The Americans recommend northern Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border, at least that way we have them in theatre for when we have further intelligence as to the where about of our Saudi friend and his minions.’

The Home Secretary spoke. ‘Are we sure that it is them? We have no intelligence suggesting they were planning an attack, the Belgians have never been a part of the Muslim Extremist Agenda, why now?’
Defence nodded, ‘I agree, but who else could it be? The Soviets? They are the only likely perpetrators, we have to start here.’
‘Agreed’ The Prime Minister said, ‘Get them moving.’

Wednesday 17th January, 11.30,
Alpha Headquarters, The Peak District, England

Major Dan Clark took the short few steps from his office to the company common room, where the team were sat. He’d spent 10 years in 42 Commando, the SAS, before being selected to head up one of the 2 squads here at Alpha. He was 5’11’’, with broad muscled forearms, hair which was slightly longer than the norm for a soldier. His blue eyes showed steel running through his veins, and the scars around his right eye, gained whilst a prisoner of war during Desert Storm, added to the image of a man you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley late at night.

He opened the common room door and looked at his troops. 3 Brits, 4 Americans, an Israeli, a South African, a German, 2 Australians and a Canadian. 12 men and 3 women, all at least Sergeants in their own nations armed services. All had seen active service of some sort, from Bosnia to the Second Gulf war. All had lost colleagues on duty and all were of the highest calibre.

It was now up to him to lead them into another danger zone, potentially for Alpha’s first combat deployment. They were trained and ready for this, but training and war were not quite the same and they were now going to wage war on whoever had attacked their ally. ‘We have a green light people, we fly in 7 hours, Alpha is now officially in active service.’

At the end of 2008, the American military, and its allies, including the British, Australian and various other military forces withdrew from a now semi stabilised Iraq. Democracy was taking a successful root and the Iraq people now were finally settling to self governing. After much analysis, the combined intelligence services decided that whole scale invasion was not going to be the answer to the war of the future. ‘Black bag’ operations had played a vital part in stabilising Iraq, with key trouble causers being made to ‘disappear’, both inside Iraq and else where.

A Special, multinational unit was agreed to be the way forward, operating from a central location, to deal with terrorists, drug barons and the trouble causers of the future, national squabbles would still be dealt with on a national scale, but those were becoming a rarity. Brigadier Samuel L Jackson was given the task of selecting the troops, choosing a location and finding a way to fund the operation, which the accounts weenies would be unable to trace, as well as having oversight of the organisation.

Alpha was set up outside Edale, in Derbyshire, England, at the base of the Pennine hills, a business arm to fund it and a legal department to deny it ever existed. There were a total of 10 people outside the organisation who knew it existed, and the organisation itself, a total of no more than 60 people. The 2 squadron commanders, one for the ‘Day’ team, one for the ‘Night’ team were hand picked by the Brigadier, both had served him in Iraq, and proven to be soldiers of some skill. They then chose their own shooters, each invited to join the crack unit before being made to disappear from their home services payroll and records, their wages now coming from the Alpha Security Company.

They had their own intelligence section, again selected from the top intelligence services, headed by an ex-Mossad agent by the name of Benjamin Abrahams. When the Israelis had recommended him for the position, it was decided in seconds. The Israelis were still the varsity when it came to intelligence gathering, and within hours of his arrival he’d found a way to tap inot the various governments home intelligence services. Alpha was the best informed intelligence agency the world had seen, but as with all intelligence, it was only as good as the use that was made of it. That was where Alpha did struggle. The CIA, for instance employed over 2,500 people to analyse the information that they gathered alone. He had 20 people to analyse the information collected by CIA, MI5, Mossad, the RVS(it would always be KGB to him but that was what the Russians wanted to call themselves now.) and various others, As such he had to rely largely on the analysis of un known others, a situation he was unhappy with, but resigned to live with.

The latest weapons and comm systems had been aquired for the shooters, along with V.R sim sets for training purposes and a special arrangement had been made with all the major airlines. As such Alpha Force: Night team, were currently headed to meet an Emirates flight via Dubai to India, before taking a smaller commercial flight for the short hop to Afghanistan. They would be landing in Afghanistan within 24 hours of the incident taking place, a situation that would have been repeated, where ever in the globe they had to head.

Wow Swamps. Just read it in one breath I couldn't stop. this is going goooood...

Movie time hahaha. I really see movie possibles for this. maybe send a script to the Wach Bro's?

Cheers X.

Wednesday 17th January, 15:00
Cambridge University, England

The helicopter landed on the pad outside St Martins College. The small, lead lined container was hand carried to the nuclear physics laboratory, and placed into the hot box airlock by a gloved, NBC suit wearing technician. Here, with 2 Royal Marine guards for company, and an agent from MI6 or the secret service as they preferred to be known, the UK’s top nuclear physicists placed their hands into the thick rubber gloves which, with the air locks sealed, were the only way to access the boxes contents through the 40mm thick multi-laminated glass. They carefully opened the container, emptying its contents onto a small glass tray. 1.5kg of highly radioactive debris. The digital Geiger counter on the display screen above the box spun through the numbers, neither scientist had seen readings like this on anything other than pure uranium.

‘How close to the centre of the explosion was this sample taken from?’
‘Within 500m, the very centre was still too hot even for the Growler bots to access.’
‘Understandable, 4 hours after the event, I’m surprised we managed to get that close. OK, lets pull a sample in for content analysis, see if we can work out where this little beast came from.’

Plutonium, in its natural form, was a very rare element. Instances of raw plutonium, or compounds containing plutonium, were very scarcely pulled from the ground. Instead, uranium atoms were manipulated and reformed in huge nuclear reactors to give energy and, if set appropriately, plutonium. Each reactor left the radioactive material with a slightly different chemical makeup, with other radioactive elements almost always contained within the metallic mass of plutonium, such as cobalt 15, radon gas and a variety of others. These were logged in a database which could be downloaded from various places on the internet, allowing someone who knew what they were looking for to trace any piece of plutonium back to the specific reactor where it was processed.

‘What do we have here then, 85 percent plutonium, 9 percent uranium, 4 percent cobalt 15 and 2 percent copper….hmm, I recognise this makeup. Pull me up the file for Transfynnd, reactor 3.’ The VDU changed, displaying the file requested:

Transfynnd Nuclear Power Station,
North Wales
Reactor 3
1960-1969
Chemical Makeup, Plutonium Output

Plutonium 238: 85%
Uranium 235: 9%
Cobalt 15: 4%
Copper: 2%

‘I thought so, my time in Wales was not a waste after all. I was a part of the team that set the reactor up, the local water in the coolant system had an unusual copper content from its trip through the mountain. OK, we need to contact the Home Office, find out where the out put from that reactor went.’

The MI6 agent placed a call.

June 9th 1967, 21:00
Israel-Egypt Border.

The conflict was not going well, the 2 armoured regiments set to guard the Israeli border was only just holding out, aerial operations were grinding to a halt as they waited for more munitions and reinforcements were not due until morning, at which point the line may have been breached. The Jewish nation was on the verge of being crushed, 18 years after its rebirth. The Knesset had met, desperate times called for desperate measures and a flight of F4 Phantoms had been armed with N10 nuclear warheads, supplied, along with the planes themselves by their American allies as part of the commitment to maintaining the integrity and security of modern Israel. These had taken off 15 minutes earlier and were just crossing the border, as the land armour regrouped to counter attack. The command and control bunkers of the Egyptian army were the targets, with earlier heavy bombing having punched a hole in the enemy air-to-air cover on the border.

They were circling at 25,000 feet over the first enemy command post, beyond the range of any remaining Anti Aircraft batteries, awaiting a strike order from the command centre. Below the counter attack by the Israeli armour was going well, except for one column of Egyptian artillery. The order came from one trigger happy General to hit the column with one of the bombs. Flight Lieutenant ‘Lobo’ Lebowitsch descended to 10,000 feet and begun his assault run.

The guidance package attached to the ordnance he was using required him to ‘toss’ the bomb. A low altitude approach was taken, until 2 seconds before the moment of release, when a steep climb was begun, effectively lobbing the payload onto target.

Lobo continued his run, dropping down to 1000 feet, the wind patterns on the sand dunes now clear to him as he approached his target area. The approach was clear, although his plane had been locked onto a few times, no missiles had been launched. He accelerated to just below mach 1 and programmed his autopilot so he could concentrate on the bomb release. The terrain whizzed by, the release was less than 3 seconds away, when it happened. His exhaust vent exploded behind him, the plane torn to pieces by a shoulder launched heat seeker missile. The bomb attached to the bottom of his plane dropped, tearing into the sand, not to be seen again for 40 years.

Y'know, you're almost getting to that Michael Crichton level of detail in your research of content...Very VERY nice my friend.

wow dude this really is good...
I am loving it swamps

Well, spank my ass and make me like it. I do believe you are onto something here Swamps old boy. Great work. I am very proud of you. You seem to have found some great creativity lately. Keep up the great work.