Humanitarian Aid
The wave of 200 missiles streaked through the air towards their
waypoints, as so many of their predecessors had done before,
completing their semi-autonomous, pre-programmed routes to deliver
their payloads. But these missiles were different; they were on a
mission of mercy.
Reichen medicine had been stocked up in anticipation of an
invasion, and they had been used liberally to treat the 30 million
odd victims directly affected by the raid. It had helped, to an
extent.
But the Reichen medical supplies were generally ineffective against
the more heavily affected victims of the gassing. The chemical was
so virulent and resilient that it lingered lodged in the mucus
membranes of the victims, causing extreme inflammation and pain,
along with the swelling and narrowing of the passages. Doctors
tried to treat the symptoms to limited success with the drugs, but
were unable to treat the cause, which was the chemical.
Packed tightly in multiple frozen gel packs within the missiles
were the most powerful chemical neutralizers developed by Xing
Shianan advanced medical technology that should help the victims of
the gassing. They were no complete solution, though they should
reduce the severity of the symptoms by about ten percent, and cause
the chemical to break down about a day earlier then its usual life
span. The missiles approached their release points, major hospitals
all over Reichland.
The missiles screamed in at over eight times the speed of sound,
and released their loads of mercy on a profile that would scatter
them over their targets. Unfortunately, the missiles were still
using the default cluster-bomb release method that released the
frozen gel packs at over eight times the speed of sound, rather
then slowing down to a safe speed to release them. Punching the
munitions out at eight times the speed of sound aided in their
destructive capabilities by imparting massive kinetic energies into
them, but this was no mission of war, it was a medical drop. But
nobody had thought of that, and nobody had reprogrammed the
missiles to drop their loads safely
The frozen gel packs were kicked out of their dispensers and
blasted towards their targets almost as fast as the missiles,
having acquired their momentum from the hypersonic missiles. Air
resistance with their blunt shapes slowed them down radically, but
not enough to be safe. Falling like supersonic hail out of the sky,
they punched into their hospital targets at four times the speed of
sound, blasting through the concrete walls, breaking up as they
penetrated to explode out into the rooms within along with pieces
of concrete spall, which ripped through the hospital wards with the
horrific effect of a gigantic shotgun, ripping patients, nurses and
doctors to shreds before they knew what hit them and scattering the
inside surfaces off the room with gore and viscera. A scene
repeated all over the nations hospital.
The missiles, unaware that their mission had gone horribly wrong,
made another blunder as they screamed over their targets at eight
times the speed of sound, adding the sonic boom to the chaos,
exploding what glass that was left unbroken and causing more
injuries as they went off, single-mindedly to crash into the ocean
beyond, as their programming had dictated.
The missiles for this mission had been selected for their age,
faulty, aging missiles that were no longer reliable for military
use and pressed into service on this mission of mercy. While they
functioned well in general, one missile had a microscopic crack
within its stub wings that was not detected. The pre-launch crews
had not thought to check, having declared the missiles a write off
and hence skimping on vital procedure. As the missile maneuvered
sharply to release the load, the stub wing tore off under the
immense gee forces, sending the missile into a hypersonic corkscrew
into its target hospital, taking out the large portion of a
hospital block and turning the newborn infant and maternity ward
into a morgue. Bodies and parts of bodies of babies and mothers
were scattered for over two hundred yards.
The mission had been a miserable failure. Xing Shiana commanders
were furious. Heads were going to roll.
