Disclosure
by
Chaoseternus
The Truth Is Out At Last, Are You Ready For It?
Fifty-oneThe FAE, or Fuel Air Explosive was a simple, though deadly device, one that some say was born when World War II pilots noticed the effects their abandoned external fuel tanks had when they hit the ground, some say it was born of the grain silo explosion, either way, it was a tool much feared and respected.
It also had explosive power second only to a thermonuclear device, indeed, for use in confined spaces, a good argument could be made that the FAE was superior. The space certainly wouldn't be confined for long.
Its principles were simple, the power of any explosive is proportional to its surface area, a minor increase in the area of the explosive exposed to the air would lead to large increase in the force of the detonation, and like dust in a grain silo, the explosives used in the FAE were all surface area, indeed, they were a gas.
"Do you think it took?" Helga asked, groaning, her body leaden as she slipped towards the ground, blood streaming from her nose.
Cery's whimpered, but forced herself to her feet, quickly casting, her face agonised as she tried to force more power through her body then it was willing to take. A spell she could have done in her sleep made almost deadly difficult by the strain the last spell had placed upon her ability to channel the energies of the earth. The corrupted energies of the hellmouth didn't help either.
Around them, a glowing mist appeared, quickly being blown, distorted and moved by the myriad drafts of the complex and Helga chuckled as she recognised a spell once used by Ripper, a spell still talked about… as the day as radioactive cloud settled over London.
The unnatural mist touched the glowing, malevolent force of the mystically enhanced Goa'uld shield, shied away from it for just a moment, then passed through, swirling around the bloody, shattered, mindless forms of Iblis's mages as they chanted, foul, hateful words spilling from their mouths, corrupting their bodies.
"It's done," Helga shouted, then yelped as she was grabbed, swiftly thrown over the shoulder of the tall, dark solider who had been standing at her side as her guard. Her stomach rebelled, forcing her to carefully control the urge to throw up as she was taken from the room, the soldier not sparing his cargo as he ran with desperate speed away from the central room of the Goa'uld complex and back into the blood splattered mess of the final battlezone.
The outer walls of the room gaped, large sections missing, quite a few burning, torn, destroyed but if Helga could have looked up close, she would have seen the signs of hasty, frantic removal around the gaping holes of many removed segments.
Helga frowned as she spotted the missing segments, she couldn't understand why they had been laid up against the wall, almost forming a ramp, with the lowest end pointing towards the walls of the central, final chamber of the Goa'uld encampment and the devices set within.
She blinked as the soldier ran up the ramp, jumping swiftly down as he reached the edge where he tossed her against the wall, throwing himself protectively over her body.
She blinked again, her mind considering the ramp, the form of the soldier above her and the hastily set devices in the room beyond, devices which had been lowered by helicopter through holes blasted through the roof.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding"
A grain silo explosion occurs because grain burns. If grain was inert, if it required special conditions such as high temperatures to ignite, a grain silo would most likely never go up, but grain burns.
And like all places, grain silos collect dust.
Worse, grain gives off dust, dust which collects on the floor, amongst the grain, and collects in the air, dust which burns….
All it takes is a spark.
At the moment of that spark, the air itself appears to ignite as the dust flowing through it ignites.
The result is catastrophic, an explosion of such power as to level buildings in the immediate area and damage others for several miles around the silo.
Now, imagine that the explosive in question is not merely a flammable solid but a gas, specially designed for maximum effect?
The FAE is simply a delivery system for such a gas, when activated, values open, allowing the highly pressured and explosive gas to vent into the air, the high pressure of the gas meaning it moves rapidly to fill the surrounding spaces.
The bomb then generates a simple spark…
The Earth moved.
That had happened before for Helga, but unfortunately not recently.
Never did the Earth move quite like this before either…
The ground beneath her she could feel jolt, enough so as to bounce her and her shield into the air for just a moment. There was sound, pure, unholy, furious and loud, sensations, the air being torn from her lungs, heat burning across her face, her legs, any part of her not huddled under the protective embrace of her guardian, there was taste, hot, black, oily, burnt, there was sight, bright, brilliant even through her closed eyelids.
It was a moment of pure sensation, and then it was over.
It was followed by brief merciful silence, just a moment of calm.
Then the screams began.
