YM778.TV Chapter 113 - Nerve Gas
Del watched the artillery strike the city from afar. The artillery blew up into a thick white cloud of gas. Chlorine or Mustard gas would have a disnctinctive yellow color. However, the smoke coming from the artillery shells were white and it was almost invisible the moment it went out of the shells. Del got the conclusion that the gas was neither, but it was far more worse.
"ANNA! GET HUBERT OUT OF THERE! THAT DAMN GAS IS A NERVE GAS! KILL THE GUARDS IN FRONT OF THE TENTS! QUICKLY!" Del shouted to the radio.
He immediately evacuated Alina back to the MRAP since it was the only place that had an NBC protection. Del put Alina inside of the MRAP and told her to stay inside of the MRAP. He closed the door of the MRAP and lock it tightly. He then dashed back to the Kornet missile to observe where Anna was.
Anna was gone. In front of the medical tent were two dead bodies of the soldiers that kept Anna from entering the tent. All of them died from gunshots to the head. It seemed that Anna followed the instruction well enough.
Multiple whistling came from the sky and it begun to bombard Halivaara. Nerve gas started spreading in Halivaara. People that touched that gas immediately suffered from seizures and immediate suffocation. The gas was effective at killing people, unlike the previous two.
Del was worried that Anna couldn\'t save Hubert in time. If Hubert couldn\'t be saved, he would risk himself and Anna. Cassandra was working with the intelligence agencies and Del feared that they would connect the dots. The gas attack only happened after Del wiped out the upper command of imperial military. The intelligence agencies could be convinced by Cassandra that Del and Anna were behind of the attack.
"Anna, do you find him?" Del shouted to the radio.
"Negative, I\'d keep looking." Gunshots could be heard from the background. It wouldn\'t mean anything good. It was either Anna was shooting her gun or there was someone else. "Don\'t worry, situation is still under control."
"I hope—" Tanks were moving towards Halivaara. Del counted the amount of tank that headed for Halivaara. Six tanks were rolling towards Halivaara. "THERE\'S A TANK UNIT COMING YOUR WAY! HURRY UP!" Del shouted as he aimed the Kornet missile at the tank.
Del pulled the trigger of that anti-tank guided missile launcher and a missile flew to the direction of the tank. The missile flew in circle as Del tried to keep the cross hair of the missile centered at the tank. The missile blew up alongside with the tank.
Del threw the empty tube and replaced it with another fresh ATGM. In the midst of the confusion coming from the tank unit, Del fired another missile at another tank. Del kept his sight centered at the tank and the blew up. "Two tanks are down. Anna, do you find Hubert?" Del asked as he replaced the empty tube with a new one.
"Negative, I\'ll keep looking," Anna replied.
"Hurry up, we don\'t have much time," Del said.
Del fired another missile at the tank. The tank noticed him and fired at his direction. However, too bad for the tank, Del put himself far away from the range of the tank gun. The tank gun wouldn\'t be able to reach him. Del was more than 8,000 meters away from the possible entry location for any imperial military unit. He knew that no tank gun would be able to reach him. Although artillery would be particularly dangerous for him.
"I FOUND HIM!" Anna shouted from the radio.
"Great, but you need to get out of there on your own, I will hold the tank off first," Del said.
Del replaced the empty tube on top of the launcher and fired an ATGM at one of the tanks. The tank blew up again. He kept repeating the same thing until there was only one tank left. Del pulled the trigger while aiming the sight at the center of the tank. The tank blew off. Del sighed in relief as all of the tanks were destroyed.
The gas bombardment continued in Halivaara. The people on that town were no different that moisquitoes when they got gassed with pesticide. All of them just dropped dead in the ground while some were drying. However, in the midst of it all was a girl carrying a man with a gas mask.
From the looks of it, Hubert wasn\'t able to walk anymore so Anna carried him. Still, all that mattered to him was Hubert getting out of the town alive. All of the tanks were dead so Del could drive the MRAP safely into the town.
Del entered the MRAP and closed the door. He wore his gas mask and he went to the backseat. Del put a gas mask to Alina\'s face, but he replaced the filter inside of the gas mask with a hose that was connected to the oxygen tank and opened the valve. Alina was barely able to breathe normally, putting on a gas mask on her face would be an unwise decision.
"Don\'t take off the mask, alright?" Del asked.
Alina just nodded.
Del started driving towards the poisoned town. As he drove, the horror of chemical attack became much more horrifying. The soldiers were holding their neck, trying to breathe from their collapsed lungs. Some had committed suicide by putting shooting themselves in the head using a pistol.
Anna was walking towards the MRAP with Hubert on her back. "Del, open the back of the MRAP, I\'ll be coming in."
Del went to the back of the MRAP and open the backdoor using his hand. Anna was waiting and she immediately put Hubert inside of the vehicle once she arrived at the back of the vehicle. Anna entered the MRAP and closed the back door. Del drove away from that poisoned town as quickly as he could.
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Thirty kilometers east of Halivaara, Del begun the cleanup procedure on Hubert. As usual, he took off all of the exposed clothing and threw it away inside of a sealed plastic bag, underwear included. Anna had injected the antidote for the nerve gas as soon as she found Hubert so he had stabilized. Right now, they were sitting down in the grassland with Hubert wrapped in a heat-retention blanket.
"Thank you, Del, Anna," Hubert said as he drunk the coffee that Del made.
"It\'s a responsibility for us, don\'t think too much about it," Del replied.
"So, I guess that\'s why fiancee kept telling me not to go to Halivaara. I should have listened to her. Now, I have to report that four of my students die. God damn it, I shouldn\'t have brought them here," Hubert said.
Del and Anna were looking at Hubert. They were surprised that Hubert knew about the risk of gas attack. Wait, Cassandra knew about this potential bullshit too? Why didn\'t Cassandra tell him about the risk of gas attack.
"So, you know about the gas attack?" Del asked.
"No, I don\'t know about whatever gas that was. However, I heard about the development of secret weapons that imperial military used in this frontline. I\'m just a doctor. I never delve myself too deeply inside of the military intelligence," Hubert answered.
"So, Aiden is dead?" Alina asked.
"I\'m afraid so," Hubert answered.
Alina sighed. "This is war, we are here to kill and we are here to die. Still, I don\'t know… I need some time alone. Sir, if you excuse me." She stood up and walked away from Del, Anna, and Hubert. She sat down in the grassland while hugging her knees. She immediately sobbed.
Hubert sighed, "This is why I don\'t like the intelligence in the federal military. They either kept everything too secretive that any officer in the field won\'t be able to react to the military situation or they give information too late that it became obsolete for us. This is why we\'re always in a stalemate with the imperial military."
"Did your fiancee keep a secret from you?" Del asked.
"No, she told all that she knew. I know if she kept something from me. He just told me to stay away from Halivaara because of a secretive weaponry that the Imperial military is developing, but I never thought it would be a weapon of mass destruction," Hubert answered.
Del sighed. "Damn, would this mean that the federal military would be under full-retreat from Halivaara?"
"I think so. I think I am the only one that survived that gas attack. The imperial military had known our weakness and they will keep attacking relentlessly without giving the federal military any time to take a break. Del, you and Anna better report to my fiancee about the situation. Hopefully, she could tell her higher-ups about the information."
"We will tell Cassandra about that. Don\'t worry too much about it.. I will assure you that the information will arrive at your fiancee," Del replied.