Spotlight: Boomslang, Issue 1

=
===================== Reports =================================== Message: 9/91                     Posted        Author Violence in Senegal               Mon Nov 02    BBC -- Violence in Senegal Shows Growing Power of Insurgency

DIOULOULOU, Senegal A separatist movement in southern Senegal has gained political momentum and grown more violent recently, with a series of demonstrations and armed confrontations that have left perhaps fifty people dead and many more injured in the past week.

The unrest prompted an unusual statement of concern from the United States Embassy in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, affirming American support for a unified Senegal and urging all parties to engage in dialogue to identify and address legitimate grievances.

The separatist violence is noteworthy because Senegal, a desperately poor country at the westernmost point of the African continent, has seen for the first time an organized paramilitary advance which threatens to drive government forces out of the Casamance region entirely. All this has led some American officials to renew warnings that Senegal which has struggled with ethnic strife since the 1980s could deteriorate into another Afghanistan.

The area of Senegal called the Casamance is located between The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. Agriculturally one of the potential richest regions in Senegal, the Casamance has suffered from the effects of a decades-long separatist movement. Approximately 60,000 civilians have been displaced, and many have lost their means of livelihood. Land mines have been laid in many formerly productive areas. Villages have been abandoned. Infrastructure has been neglected, and investment has come to a virtual standstill.

The most recent round of violence began last Tuesday, when government troops established an additional checkpoint in the town of Mampalago, along the Trans-Gambia Highway. Angry local men attacked the checkpoint, killing two soldiers and injuring others. Government forces dispatched from Marakissa quickly quelled the fighting, in the process killing six local men and injuring several others. The conflict escalated further when men believed associated with the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques du le Casamance (MFDC) responded from Niorki. Using small arms and what appeared to be ordinary satellite phones popular throughout Africa, the MFDC forces pinned the government force in place until it could be destroyed from the air by cluster munitions deployed from aircraft carrying the markings of the Guinea-Bisseau air force and reported as crossing the Guinea-Bisseau-Senegal border at approximately the time of the incident in Mampalago.

The Government of Senegal claims that twenty-three soldiers were killed in the attack, and issued a strong warning that "adventurism by the confederates of the rebels would not be tolerated." In the days since, demonstrations and violence have broken out in other towns, with three people killed in gun battles on Thursday, and sixteen more killed in a second air attack.

Guinea-Bisseau, Senegal's neighbor to the south and a trading partner of the Casamance region, categorically denies any involvement in the conflict, although a U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) census in January 2031 counted 7,000 Senegalese refugees living in the north of Guinea-Bissau. It is believed that these refugees, fleeing the government forces or displaced by the dispersal of land mines rendering farmland uninhabitable, would be able to return to Casamance if the MFDC insurgency succeeded in achieving independence from Senegal. As of 2030 Secretary-general of the MFDC Augustin Diamacoune Senghor was estimated to have some 2,300 troops under his command. Guinea-Bisseau's claim is lent credence by the belief up to this point that its small air force contained no strike craft, consisting entirely of propeller-driven airplanes and helicopters.

=
=================================================================

The sweet scent of fields gone fallow and overrun with grasses and wild flowers drifts over the wooded expanses of Casamance, the moister southern region of Senegal. The countryside south of the Gambia is surprisingly empty of civilization considering how lush it is by comparison to the rugged and arid north. Farmhouses stand unused, doors and windows hanging open to the cool wind. Perhaps there is a reason for this.

"I'm fairly certain this is the general region those transmissions were coming from," Red Alert reports to his companion, driving into the region along a ruined road, sensors running overtime in a desperate attempt to watch out for local land mines, pick up the encrypted signals, and sort through all the garbage coming over the Autobot frequency. Red Alert is constantly multitasking just beyond the limits of his actual ability, and the current strain is even worst than usual. "Unfortunately, until they transmit again, I won't be able to narrow it down further."

Battlecruiser  continues to fly low over Red Alert and says "Ok well let me know if you detect anything and by the way, I am glad the first mission I am going on is with you. I have always liked your sense of duty and dedication" Scattershot pulls up a bit to get a better view of the area in case anything "strange" happens.

It certainly seems quiet. Senegal doesn't even have an air force with which to respond to the visiting Autobots, either positively or negatively. Citizens of the few inhabited farms come out to look out with frightened eyes at the spaceship and the car. They don't, however, remark specifically on it being a lamborghini. Around here, any cars at all are pretty unusual.

Fire Cheif's Lambourghini gives a faint, grudging grunt. "Hmph. Thank you," he answers, partly flattered and partly suspecting that Scattershot is trying to butter him up in preparation to pull a fast one later. "So far, nothing out of the norm, although I can't say I care much for what qualifies as 'norm' around here."

Battlecruiser  continues to fly overhead and says "I always expect the unexpected, nothing is as it ever seems most of the time. I am sure you understand that. So far i have a good view over top and I see nothing strange.......which tells me that something is wrong!"

As the Autobots pass through/over what passes for a town in Casamance, the roadside village of Baila, a small knot of men in camouflage scowl at the interlopers from where they crouch around a pickup truck with a fifty-caliber machinegun mounted in the bed. Their war-hardened faces are deeply seamed in the light of their cigarette butts; there is very little electricity in Casamance, and outside the few large cities this country is still lit mainly by fire and the light of the moon.

Fire Cheif's Lambourghini doesn't slow down, exactly. He's already suspicious enough in appearance, but slowing down would make him more suspicious. But he's not driving particularly fast (compared with his normal speed, anyway) to begin with. What he does start doing, however, is quietly examining every detail he can spy about the men in camouflage as he passes, searching for some indication as to who they are, some sort of identifying marks.

Battlecruiser  continues to fly overhead in a casual manner, trying not to be suspicious himself but, it's difficult to NOT look suspicious when you have as many guns attached to you as Scattershot does. He continues to fly overhead but says nothing and keeps looking for anything suspicious as he eyes the militia below closely.

To most humans they probably look much like the other thousand irregular armies on this continent, but to an experienced eye which misses nothing and has an encyclopedic frame of reference, the men are clearly MFDC, the terrorists/freedom fighters who have been fighting the government for Casamance's independence from Senegal for longer than these particular men have been alive. They keep their rifles close at hand as the car drives by, but they don't pick them up, apart from a young man who is cradling his in his lap. Most of them are busy cooking something over a fire pit.

Fire Cheif's Lambourghini moves just far enough down the road to be out of sight, taking advantage of what's left of the buildings and trees, and then pulls off to the side. Over a quick radio burst, he tells Scattershot, "Pull up higher for awhile. I think I'm on the right track, but we need them to tip their hand."

Battlecruiser  tries his best to quietly pull up but the sound of his large booster engines quickly kills any chance of that happening. "I'll be further up in the sky when you need me" Scattershot says as he pulls up to a safer distance

The militiamen look a bit uneasy about the aircraft circling. One of the older ones, with a grizzled beard and a beret, nudges another who can't be more than ninteen, and they share a few words in one of the many local languages. The younger man shakes his head and looks concerned and the older waves him off, watching the skies.

Fire Cheif's Lambourghini isn't quite in sight of the militiamen, but he is in hearing. Barely. While he can't quite make out the words being said, he gets a general impression.

And he gets an idea.

"Scattershot," he radios. "Fly lower. You're making them nervous... let's keep that up. Maybe we can encourage them to make a mistake!"

Battlecruiser  sounds off "Roger that" Battlecruiser  banks hard to the left as he makes fast descent and makes sure everyone hears his engines flare up like a volcano as he flies much lower.

The older man leaps to his feet and shouts, slapping the young one on the arm and pointing towards the denser part of the village, where people who had been milling around outside curiously are running into houses.

The militiamen scatter, grabbing up their kalashnikovs and dodging for the cover of the flimsy corrugated steel and mud-brick buildings. Two of them scramble up into the back of the truck and hurriedly prepare the machinegun, fifty-caliber tracers thudding up into the sky towards Scattershot.

The young revolutionary sprints away down one of the side streets carrying his rifle in one hand and yelling at the people in his way, waving them into buildings.

"Well, *that* wasn't the sort of mistake I was hoping for," Red Alert grumbles, as his ploy to force them into calling for help... or whatever they were doing... fails. Still, he transforms and crouches. "Keep it up, Scattershot, but don't get yourself shot down," he says over the radio, cautiously approaching the town. "If they're all inside, perhaps I'll be able to get a better look around." One of the first things he does as he approaches the nearest building is take a deep breath while he re-adjusts to having his hearing back to its *proper* levels.

Fire Cheif's Lambourghini transforms into his Red Alert mode.

Battlecruiser  dodges the 50cal bullets with ease as he moves in a bit closer then pulls up and moves in closer again, trying to scare the beejezus out of these guys.

The young MFDC soldier gets to one of the larger houses, throws open the fence and runs up the walk to the house, but the man he's there to see is already there. He's got binoculars trained on the lights in the sky, and after a few words traded in Bandial, he reaches to his back pocket and pulls out a cellular phone, putting in a call.

Red Alert crouches again, tilts his head, and GRINS wide as he 'hears' something that most can't. He looks up at Scattershot and sends one final quick message over the radio. "Expect trouble shortly, Scattershot, but stick around until it shows. This is exactly what we're looking for!" He is standing near the edge of the village that Scattershot is antagonizing, attempting to stay unnoticed.

Battlecruiser  continues to do his best to scare the locals as he now arms his weapons and prepares for the worst. He keeps banking, and ascending and descending like before but he is now getting close to the houses.

The revolutionary captain goes back into his house, and the MFDC keep shooting at Scattershot in a completely ineffectual but very noisy way. Rattling Kalashnikovs are more of a danger to anyone standing outside as the bullets fall back down than they are to Scattershot himself, and although the fifty caliber lands a few shots from time to time, it's not enough to crack Cybertronian armor. As Red Alert had expected, however, it isn't long before the distant searing sound of jet engines can be heard from the south, in the direction of Guinea-Bisseau.

Red Alert looks up, straightening (perhaps enough to be spotted - he's not exactly in a subtle color scheme!) and peers in the direction of the noise. "Approaching, Scattershot," he radios, searching carefully and listening even more carefully, as he tries to pinpoint what the craft might be.

Battlecruiser  arms his weapons and prepares to attack whatever is coming "I have you covered Red, just give me the word and I will unleash hell on whatever shows up!"

"Don't attack until I can identify them!" Red Alert exclaims over the radio, voice going high pitched as he frets. "It may just be humans in there, and we don't want to get in the middle of a human civil war!" He pauses and frowns. "Either way, they know we're here, and... Boeing? Why would a Boeing craft be involved?"

Battlecruiser  still with his guns ready to fire simply replied to red Alert "I know the rules of engagement Red"

Before the incoming aircraft even becomes visible, its missiles appear as tiny bright spots streaking rapidly and silently towards the target, outpacing their own sonic booms. More missiles arrive shortly thereafter as the fighter is still closing in. Much larger missiles the second time, cruise missiles launched from a high-altitude platform.

Combat: F/A-18 Super Hornet  strikes Battlecruiser  with his AIM-120 AMRAAM attack! Combat: Used up 1 Missiles. 3 remain.

The lead fighter- the ONLY fighter, apparently, has closed enough that it's visible on long-range visual sensors. It has virtually no radar cross-section but it's an F-18 or F-15 painted in the colors of the Guinea-Bisseau Air Force livery.

However, at almost the same time that it comes into view, it wheels hard and pulls back south, pointing its nose towards Guinea-Bisseau and dropping to the deck. Its afterburners open up with a boom as it rips over the sparse forests, fleeing South as fast as it can.

You send a radio message to Fusillade: It's not 'a jet bomber,' it's Scattershot! I've got him on the radar, guide your missiles to the target I'm transmitting.

Loitering nearly a hundred miles to the south, Fusillade hmms?! to herself as she gets a signal. The Lancer had been loitering in distant airspace, but at a cheerful chirp on her comm, she rouses from daydreaming about thunderstorms, and swiings back around to face the direction of the call. Something moving... aerial. That's going to be difficult. She climbs to 30,000 feet, and launches a pair of cruise missiles -- yes those mentioned earlier -- at the painted target. Oh, huh, there are some explosions to help mark the target. How thoughtful!

Combat: Space-Going B-1R Lancer strikes Battlecruiser  with her JASSM Cruise Missile From Nowhere! attack!

You send a radio message to Fusillade: You got it! I'm RTB. We'll rendezvous at Point D.

You receive a radio message from Fusillade: That's it? Awwwww. Okay, see you there!

Battlecruiser  gets caught off guard by the missle barrage dodging most of them but still getting his with two of them. A piece of armor flies off of his side as he yells "Red alert, I have just been attacked! and fires off a barrage of fireshells at the first target that had attacked him.

Combat: Battlecruiser  misses F/A-18 Super Hornet  with its Side-Mounted Thermal Shell attack!

Space-Going B-1R Lancer, at distance, rather leisurely drops in altitude, and begins meandering south by southwest.

Red Alert's optics flash. "Those are *both* American make," he murmurs as exposition, then over the radio, as he sees Scattershot coming in for an attack run, shouts, "Wait, Scattershot, don-" and then Scattershot counterattacks, and Red Alert sighs. As he searches the sky, his optics settle on the bomber. That is a rather familiar color scheme.

Even at that distance!

The interloper hauls on his rudder and ailerons and rolls away from the raking bursts of thermal shells which leave a brief grass fire smoldering in their wake and set off several antipersonnel mines in a fortunately fallow field. The fighter drops into a valley and screams southwards towards Guinea-Bisseau, almost out of range. The pilot must be really something to dare that speed at that altitude. Obviously a far cry from Guinea-Bisseau's two lightly-armed helicopters.

Combat: F/A-18 Super Hornet <Boomslang> begins retreating, leaving himself vulnerable to parting shots from Battlecruiser <Scattershot> and Space-Going B-1R Lancer

Red Alert balls his hand into a fist, starts to swing it towards the edge of the building he'd been crouching behind, and stops. He'd probably just hurt his hand, anyway! "Damn it!" he curses over a tight beam to Scattershot. "That was Fusillade, I'm sure. I'm not 100% positive on the other jet, but I don't know if it's enough."

Battlecruiser <Scattershot> banks over as half his armor plating seems to have come off as he transforms into robot mode and lands. He looks over at Red Alert with a sort of snarl "I was attacked from two angles, I didnt know what was exactly going on but I know I nailed the first jet but I didn;t even see the second attack coming so I thought both of us were under attack, and since I was your cover I was TRYING to protect you. Sorry but protecting you was my priority."

Battlecruiser <Scattershot> transforms into its Scattershot mode.

Space-Going B-1R Lancer is a big enough jerk to throw rocks and run away, it was probably just coincidental. Right? RIGHT?

Baila is very quiet now; when the explosions started and shrapnel and burning fuel and chunks of space robot were pattering down onto the village it didn't take long for the villagers and the militiamen both to scatter into the woods, where they will no doubt hide until the danger has passed.

Dogs barking and a cow lowing in alarm are about the only sounds to be heard from the village itself.

Red Alert sighs and nods his head. "I know, I know, and I apologize." He reviews the files recorded in his head, and smiles. "Actually, I got enough. Thank you, Scattershot. Let's get out of here." With that, he transforms and starts to head out.

But NOT by going back through town.

=
===================== Autobot =================================== Message: 3/160                    Posted        Author Sengal                            Mon Nov 02    Red Alert -- Voice only.

"Autobots, we have a problem. It turns out the Decepticons are connected to the recent uprise in violence in Sengal, and are connected with the MFDC in some way."

"I had noted some signals in their satellite communications that used Decepticon encryption codes. While that's suspicious, it's not hard proof - over the years, there could be some humans who've figured out the codes and adopted them for their own, after all. I decided to investigate, choosing Scattershot as my backup." Primus only knows why. "In the town of Baila, we discovered a group of insurgents. I had Scattershot provide a distraction, while I hid nearby to observe. It didn't take long for the insurgents to become agitated enough to open fire, and shortly there-after they put through a cell-phone call using Decepticon encryption codes. It wasn't long before an F/A-18 arrived on-scene from the direction of Guinea-Bisseau. Again, suspicious to have an American aircraft, but it wasn't until *Boomslang* made his call for back-up, letting me overhear his voice on the radio, and a B-1R Lancer that was obviously *Fusillade* arrived that I got the evidence I needed."

"Anyway, they fired on Scattershot, he engaged, they retreated. They didn't seem serious about fighting. Once they were gone, we left so I could get this report in. I have no idea if those two were working independently or on behalf of the whole Decepticon Empire, but either one spells bad news in Sengal!"

=
=================================================================