12-09-2015, 08:21 AM
0400hrs
Lt Chmela , head of the Domovoi SPMU team, stood back as his team filed through the armoury. Officer Zinoviya worked dilligently to see each team member kitted out; body armour had been sized well in advance and each member knew fully how to dawn the gear, but she insisted on double-checking each as they filed forward to draw their weapons. Clasps and straps were inspected, velcro straps pulled loose then fastened for a better field. They knew how to wear the body armour, she knew the science behind how it worked. Worn too tight and the armour would compress and break bones. Too loose and it would be blown off by the initial pressure of a blast.
Once the team member's armour was up to her standards, she would walk with her tell-tale thumping stride, her functional-but-obvious prosthetic leg giving her a much heavier left-step then her right. Each member was trained on the whole slew of next-gen non-lethal weaponry the Domovoi Task Force stocked.
Directional sonic weapons, directed energy weapons, even the newest arrival to the inventory; a directional plasma stream emitter. With each non-lethal weapon, the team members drew breachers shotguns or SMGs, sidearms, tools and equipment, all under the careful supervision of Officer Zinoviya. Half an hour later, the full SPMU team was assembled in the main precinct's garage, with the rest of Domovoi loading any final gear into the vehicles.
The preparations were being mirrored in two other precincts closer to The Ministry, the closed night-club serving as Pankratiy Volkov's personal hidey-hole. Their SPMU teams were on stand-by to backup Domovoi if needed, but more importantly their personnel would establish the outer cordon, making sure civilian traffic and presence in the area was kept to a minimum. Timing was everything in an age of near-instantaneous updates to social media.
Officers Konstantinov and Sokolov had already departed, tasked with the again unenviable objective of making sure the target was still on site.
0500hrs
Prospekt Vernadskoho District police established the outer cordon as the Domovoi task force approached The Ministry. Various city services websites were updated quoting a myriad of issues from ruptured water mains to minor car accidents. This information automatically updated social media apps that helped people avoid traffic delays on their drives to or from work.
By the time personnel of Task Force Domovoi arrived in the Prospekt Vernadskoho district, the officers on the cordon were already reporting the rouse had proven, thus far, successful. They hadn't seen much traffic yet, and fewer questions and complaints.
Few complaints other then Officers Konstantinov and Sokolov, who filed yet another report that the heater in their Lada Niva was indeed burned out, and that they were probably freezing to death.
0530hrs
Captain Aleksandrov leaned over the shoulder of Officer Zinoviya, who sat at the console in the SPMU mobile command unit, parked only a few blocks from The Ministry. At first glance, the vehicle might have looked like an armoured bank car, and such an impression wasn't far off. It was the satelite dish, camera mast, and antennas on the roof that gave it away.
That, and the presence of an armoured personnel carrier parked next to it, where the Domovoi SPMU team was going over final kit checks. Cameras and trackers, communications systems, charges on their non-lethal weapon systems, mag checks on their more lethal, conventional, weapons. Two police vans sat in the shadows of the armoured vehicles, where Domovoi officers and detectives went through their own pre-raid drills. They would follow in the wake of Lt Chmela's team.
Detective Favager stood to one side, thumbing one final message into his Wallet. A promise to get his hands on the AAR (after action report) and body-camera footage of the raid, and to get that data to the Atharim. Domovoi would be able to start making a difference in the CCD, but the Atharim worked globally; the United States, Australia, even China would follow suit. But what about the rest of the world? Africa, South America, the rest of uninified Asia? Those places would have only the Atharim to protect them, as had been the case for longer then he could fathom.
Officer Zinoviya had unwittingly arranged much the same thing, promissing to forward the data and tactics to her old professor, Joseph Theiss, Atharim weapons specialist. Which, truthfully, she had no idea about.
0600hrs
The approach on The Ministry was quiet. Domovoi officers made use of modern scanning equipment, identifying two simple commerical brand wireless web cameras. Likely the entirety of Volkov's security. Hand-carried equipment were set up outside of view of those cameras, and directional beams were emitted simultaneously, jamming their signals. To the casual observer of whatever feeds those cameras provided, it would seem like they had simply lost their wireless router signal.
The Domovoi SPMU carrier came in next, rounding the corner and into view of where those cameras had been pointed mere seconds after they had been disabled. The vehicle lurched to a halt, the heavy rubber tires chuffing loudly against the ashphalt. The ramp dropped and Lt Chmela's team thundered out and stormed The Ministry entrance.
Thermal imagers had already indicated five people inside the building, three in the main dance floor area, and two others in a back office. All five were asleep, or at least lounging mostly unmoving for the past hour, likely too drunk or high to really be aware of their surroundings. Apparently, according to Officers Konstantinov and Sokolov, there had been a party that night.
In the AAR, there was no obvious answer to how Volkov was alerted to the team's approach. Their entrance was quiet, methodical. No signs of alarms were found, even in the scene analysis in the days that followed.
The first man into the main dance floor was down three steps into the room as a bolt of red lightning arched across the room to strike him in the chest. His gear was made of a super-conductive layer over the ballistic protection. It was designed to carry most of the electric current down to the floor and into the ground, without it coursing through the wearer's body. It helped, but the man's heart still stopped from the shock.
All Captain Aleksandrov saw in the command vehicle was the man's camera flash red then turn to static, and the man's vitals flat-line.
The second man into the room came up firing, so to speak. He stepped over his fallen comrade's smoking body, a directional sonic emitter pressed to his shoulder and leveled on the only man standing in the room.
As luck would have it, the man standing was indeed Volkov. As the weapon was aimed his way, the man clearly did something likely meant to protect himself; a wave of his arm, which was surely meant to ward off bullets or physical projectiles. But there were no such things; only sound waves. They were disrupted for a moment, as the waves carried through the disrupted air between shooter and target. When it reached, Volkov let out a strangled scream of pain, reeling back and grabbing at his ears.
One of his lackeys, a sixteen year old fan-girl, ran towards the SPMU team member before she too collapsed to the floor, screaming and grabbing her ears. The brief disruption of the sonic weapon's line of fire allowed Volkov a moment to recover. He raised his arm towards the door, loosing another bolt of red lightning.
Which struck and walked across the wall, tearing through the wood and drywall, rupturing a gasline. The next team member through the door circled wide and dropped to a knee as she came in, levelling her own non-lethal weapon on Volkov. A coherent beam of plasma connected her weapon and Volkov's chest in an instance, invisible to the naked eye of course. That conduit of charged particles then carried an electric shock to the target. Much like a taser, but over longer distance and with no detectable darts and cables.
Again Volkov was staggered, dropping to the floor in a twitching, soiled mess of bodily fluids. The man was weeping and screaming between pained convulsions, as the Domovoi member simply stood and kept her weapon trained on the target, leaving an opening for the rest of the team to enter.
Lt Chmela was fourth into the room, and directed two of his team members towards the back room where the other two heat signatures had been sighted. The SPMU member with the sonic weapon had already slung it and was cuffing the girl had charged him, while two others stormed Volkov. With all their high-tech equipment, their plan was surprisingly low-tech. A bottle of chloroform and a rag, made of a piece torn off of Officer Sokolov's locker room towel.
The third heat signature in the main room was still unconscious; a middle-aged man, too wasted to have noticed what was going on around him. He was subdued easily enough.
Volkov's screams had awoken the other two though, and as two Domovoi team members booted open the office door they were met with unexpected resistance.
Lt Chmela stood near the door, staring at the wall to his right, his helmet cam focused on the visible rippling of air from the gas leak.
The problem was that the building had been renovated so many times in recent years. And The Ministry's previous owners had done a lot of work under the counter, to avoid taxes and an aversion to doing the proper paper work. The building plans didn't point out that they had illegally tapped into the natural gas line. They saved a ton on their heating bill, but there was no indication on the building's blueprints of the presence of the gas line, which should never have been in an outer wall to begin with, let out that it shouldn't have existed at all. The building's main gas line had been cut and drained hours before the raid.
As the pair moved to enter through the door, an almost pitiful bolt of flame flashed out. A 20-something young man stood naked over the drug-ruined body of a girl in the office. Alerted to the raid by Volkov's screams, the man was in a fear-induced panic, the only time he could seem to make use of his powers.
The bolt of flame missed both the Domovoi agents, and then the young man dropped to the ground with a brief scream of pain. Another charged plasma stream, another body-crippling jolt of electricity.
And an explosion, as the gas leak caught flame. The gas in the room already burned off in a split second, creating a brief vacuum.
Lt Chmela was killed instantly. Where simple CPR might have saved the team-member dropped by Volkov, the ensuing fire prevented any such resuscitation. Of the five other team members in the main room, two were killed, as were Volkov and the unconscious middle-aged man. Once the fire got into the gas line, it spread; investigations after the fact indicated that the illegal gas line had been leaking for some time, creating pockets of gas in the floor.
The second magic user though, whom had inadvertently started the fire, was taken alive. Shocked by the flames and the pain of the Domovoi weaponry, he was rendered unconscious and was successfully arrested.
In the aftermath, Domovoi reconvened at the precinct, most of the SPMU team either at the coroners or the hospital, their perp dead, and three unknowns unconscious in the department stockade. It was a small miracle none had been injured, aside from smoke inhalation, but until it could be determined which ones, if any, could use magic, they couldn't be safely checked into a hospital. Of the three, one was known to be a magic user though, and that one held the interest of Captain Aleksandrov. He had lost good people trying to catch Volkov, to try and get a lead on the group's mastermind, Theo Andlain.
His team had done everything right. Their weapons and tactics had proven effective. It had been little more then bad luck that had led to the disaster. He tried to focus on that, and the task at hand. How do you question someone, if you can't safely leave them coherent enough to think, and thus kill you with their magic?
Lt Chmela , head of the Domovoi SPMU team, stood back as his team filed through the armoury. Officer Zinoviya worked dilligently to see each team member kitted out; body armour had been sized well in advance and each member knew fully how to dawn the gear, but she insisted on double-checking each as they filed forward to draw their weapons. Clasps and straps were inspected, velcro straps pulled loose then fastened for a better field. They knew how to wear the body armour, she knew the science behind how it worked. Worn too tight and the armour would compress and break bones. Too loose and it would be blown off by the initial pressure of a blast.
Once the team member's armour was up to her standards, she would walk with her tell-tale thumping stride, her functional-but-obvious prosthetic leg giving her a much heavier left-step then her right. Each member was trained on the whole slew of next-gen non-lethal weaponry the Domovoi Task Force stocked.
Directional sonic weapons, directed energy weapons, even the newest arrival to the inventory; a directional plasma stream emitter. With each non-lethal weapon, the team members drew breachers shotguns or SMGs, sidearms, tools and equipment, all under the careful supervision of Officer Zinoviya. Half an hour later, the full SPMU team was assembled in the main precinct's garage, with the rest of Domovoi loading any final gear into the vehicles.
The preparations were being mirrored in two other precincts closer to The Ministry, the closed night-club serving as Pankratiy Volkov's personal hidey-hole. Their SPMU teams were on stand-by to backup Domovoi if needed, but more importantly their personnel would establish the outer cordon, making sure civilian traffic and presence in the area was kept to a minimum. Timing was everything in an age of near-instantaneous updates to social media.
Officers Konstantinov and Sokolov had already departed, tasked with the again unenviable objective of making sure the target was still on site.
0500hrs
Prospekt Vernadskoho District police established the outer cordon as the Domovoi task force approached The Ministry. Various city services websites were updated quoting a myriad of issues from ruptured water mains to minor car accidents. This information automatically updated social media apps that helped people avoid traffic delays on their drives to or from work.
By the time personnel of Task Force Domovoi arrived in the Prospekt Vernadskoho district, the officers on the cordon were already reporting the rouse had proven, thus far, successful. They hadn't seen much traffic yet, and fewer questions and complaints.
Few complaints other then Officers Konstantinov and Sokolov, who filed yet another report that the heater in their Lada Niva was indeed burned out, and that they were probably freezing to death.
0530hrs
Captain Aleksandrov leaned over the shoulder of Officer Zinoviya, who sat at the console in the SPMU mobile command unit, parked only a few blocks from The Ministry. At first glance, the vehicle might have looked like an armoured bank car, and such an impression wasn't far off. It was the satelite dish, camera mast, and antennas on the roof that gave it away.
That, and the presence of an armoured personnel carrier parked next to it, where the Domovoi SPMU team was going over final kit checks. Cameras and trackers, communications systems, charges on their non-lethal weapon systems, mag checks on their more lethal, conventional, weapons. Two police vans sat in the shadows of the armoured vehicles, where Domovoi officers and detectives went through their own pre-raid drills. They would follow in the wake of Lt Chmela's team.
Detective Favager stood to one side, thumbing one final message into his Wallet. A promise to get his hands on the AAR (after action report) and body-camera footage of the raid, and to get that data to the Atharim. Domovoi would be able to start making a difference in the CCD, but the Atharim worked globally; the United States, Australia, even China would follow suit. But what about the rest of the world? Africa, South America, the rest of uninified Asia? Those places would have only the Atharim to protect them, as had been the case for longer then he could fathom.
Officer Zinoviya had unwittingly arranged much the same thing, promissing to forward the data and tactics to her old professor, Joseph Theiss, Atharim weapons specialist. Which, truthfully, she had no idea about.
0600hrs
The approach on The Ministry was quiet. Domovoi officers made use of modern scanning equipment, identifying two simple commerical brand wireless web cameras. Likely the entirety of Volkov's security. Hand-carried equipment were set up outside of view of those cameras, and directional beams were emitted simultaneously, jamming their signals. To the casual observer of whatever feeds those cameras provided, it would seem like they had simply lost their wireless router signal.
The Domovoi SPMU carrier came in next, rounding the corner and into view of where those cameras had been pointed mere seconds after they had been disabled. The vehicle lurched to a halt, the heavy rubber tires chuffing loudly against the ashphalt. The ramp dropped and Lt Chmela's team thundered out and stormed The Ministry entrance.
Thermal imagers had already indicated five people inside the building, three in the main dance floor area, and two others in a back office. All five were asleep, or at least lounging mostly unmoving for the past hour, likely too drunk or high to really be aware of their surroundings. Apparently, according to Officers Konstantinov and Sokolov, there had been a party that night.
In the AAR, there was no obvious answer to how Volkov was alerted to the team's approach. Their entrance was quiet, methodical. No signs of alarms were found, even in the scene analysis in the days that followed.
The first man into the main dance floor was down three steps into the room as a bolt of red lightning arched across the room to strike him in the chest. His gear was made of a super-conductive layer over the ballistic protection. It was designed to carry most of the electric current down to the floor and into the ground, without it coursing through the wearer's body. It helped, but the man's heart still stopped from the shock.
All Captain Aleksandrov saw in the command vehicle was the man's camera flash red then turn to static, and the man's vitals flat-line.
The second man into the room came up firing, so to speak. He stepped over his fallen comrade's smoking body, a directional sonic emitter pressed to his shoulder and leveled on the only man standing in the room.
As luck would have it, the man standing was indeed Volkov. As the weapon was aimed his way, the man clearly did something likely meant to protect himself; a wave of his arm, which was surely meant to ward off bullets or physical projectiles. But there were no such things; only sound waves. They were disrupted for a moment, as the waves carried through the disrupted air between shooter and target. When it reached, Volkov let out a strangled scream of pain, reeling back and grabbing at his ears.
One of his lackeys, a sixteen year old fan-girl, ran towards the SPMU team member before she too collapsed to the floor, screaming and grabbing her ears. The brief disruption of the sonic weapon's line of fire allowed Volkov a moment to recover. He raised his arm towards the door, loosing another bolt of red lightning.
Which struck and walked across the wall, tearing through the wood and drywall, rupturing a gasline. The next team member through the door circled wide and dropped to a knee as she came in, levelling her own non-lethal weapon on Volkov. A coherent beam of plasma connected her weapon and Volkov's chest in an instance, invisible to the naked eye of course. That conduit of charged particles then carried an electric shock to the target. Much like a taser, but over longer distance and with no detectable darts and cables.
Again Volkov was staggered, dropping to the floor in a twitching, soiled mess of bodily fluids. The man was weeping and screaming between pained convulsions, as the Domovoi member simply stood and kept her weapon trained on the target, leaving an opening for the rest of the team to enter.
Lt Chmela was fourth into the room, and directed two of his team members towards the back room where the other two heat signatures had been sighted. The SPMU member with the sonic weapon had already slung it and was cuffing the girl had charged him, while two others stormed Volkov. With all their high-tech equipment, their plan was surprisingly low-tech. A bottle of chloroform and a rag, made of a piece torn off of Officer Sokolov's locker room towel.
The third heat signature in the main room was still unconscious; a middle-aged man, too wasted to have noticed what was going on around him. He was subdued easily enough.
Volkov's screams had awoken the other two though, and as two Domovoi team members booted open the office door they were met with unexpected resistance.
Lt Chmela stood near the door, staring at the wall to his right, his helmet cam focused on the visible rippling of air from the gas leak.
The problem was that the building had been renovated so many times in recent years. And The Ministry's previous owners had done a lot of work under the counter, to avoid taxes and an aversion to doing the proper paper work. The building plans didn't point out that they had illegally tapped into the natural gas line. They saved a ton on their heating bill, but there was no indication on the building's blueprints of the presence of the gas line, which should never have been in an outer wall to begin with, let out that it shouldn't have existed at all. The building's main gas line had been cut and drained hours before the raid.
As the pair moved to enter through the door, an almost pitiful bolt of flame flashed out. A 20-something young man stood naked over the drug-ruined body of a girl in the office. Alerted to the raid by Volkov's screams, the man was in a fear-induced panic, the only time he could seem to make use of his powers.
The bolt of flame missed both the Domovoi agents, and then the young man dropped to the ground with a brief scream of pain. Another charged plasma stream, another body-crippling jolt of electricity.
And an explosion, as the gas leak caught flame. The gas in the room already burned off in a split second, creating a brief vacuum.
Lt Chmela was killed instantly. Where simple CPR might have saved the team-member dropped by Volkov, the ensuing fire prevented any such resuscitation. Of the five other team members in the main room, two were killed, as were Volkov and the unconscious middle-aged man. Once the fire got into the gas line, it spread; investigations after the fact indicated that the illegal gas line had been leaking for some time, creating pockets of gas in the floor.
The second magic user though, whom had inadvertently started the fire, was taken alive. Shocked by the flames and the pain of the Domovoi weaponry, he was rendered unconscious and was successfully arrested.
In the aftermath, Domovoi reconvened at the precinct, most of the SPMU team either at the coroners or the hospital, their perp dead, and three unknowns unconscious in the department stockade. It was a small miracle none had been injured, aside from smoke inhalation, but until it could be determined which ones, if any, could use magic, they couldn't be safely checked into a hospital. Of the three, one was known to be a magic user though, and that one held the interest of Captain Aleksandrov. He had lost good people trying to catch Volkov, to try and get a lead on the group's mastermind, Theo Andlain.
His team had done everything right. Their weapons and tactics had proven effective. It had been little more then bad luck that had led to the disaster. He tried to focus on that, and the task at hand. How do you question someone, if you can't safely leave them coherent enough to think, and thus kill you with their magic?