Calamity Mitigation
Calamity Mitigation (CMI) is a military department of Raven intended to defend against incursions from hostile realities and other catastrophic scenarios. The department is directly supported by other Raven assets such as Black Research and Dimensional Investigation, Reconnaissance, and Enforcement (DIRE). Its operations are managed by its OPSCOM (Operations Command) division, and it is headquartered at Black Mountain.
| Department overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 18 June 2101 |
| Headquarters | Descent Sector D, Black Mountain, Dunwich City, Northern European International Zone |
| Department executives |
|
| Parent Organisation |  Raven |
| Child Department | |
The department is split into several elite operational teams, known as Terminus units. Outfitted with the absolute pinnacle of technology Raven has to offer, they are some of humanity’s best equipped personnel to deal with existential threats. They are also some of the most controversial, due to their use of exophysical weapons with a chance of destabilising local dimensional manifolds, something that has been seen as “fighting fire with fire”.
Arsenal
For protection, Calamity Mitigation operatives wear exosuits with integrated forcefields and fractal armour plates as standard. Some may also be outfitted with phase arrays. Helmets are outfitted with image intensification night vision, visual IR, RF, and ionising radiation sensors, and instead of being transparent act as a camera combination with a wide-view screen on the interior of the helmet, allowing for digital filtering of infohazards and exterior vision without compromising the integrity of the armour.
Offensively, operatives carry reconfigurable nanoweapons, and may additionally carry exophysical weaponry such as Excision or high-power energy or kinetic weapons like Oblivion, Guided-Ray Irradiator (GRID), or a relativistic railgun. Exosuit palms are outfitted with graviton projection systems, allowing the creation of directional gravity fields. In general, fireteam arsenals are tailored to each operation, reflecting the diversity of threats.
Security
For safety and operational security reasons, members of the public are prohibited from seeing or interacting with Calamity Mitigation teams. This is due to their use of classified exophysical weaponry and other sensitive capabilities. Aerial photography satellites black out engagement zones, and remote killswitches are activated on most pieces of personal recording equipment in order to prevent photos or videos from being taken.
This has not completely prevented their appearance, and CMI operations have many times been captured and uploaded to popular social media sites. Critics of Raven reject the censorship CMI puts in place and call for greater transparency.
Transport
Like Raven’s general-purpose Armed Services, Calamity Mitigation operatives have access to a wide range of deployment options. However, as CMI generally requires rapid deployment, the most common method of transportation is via airborne vehicle (AV) or ground shuttle. Portal frames are an increasingly utilised method of transportation for operatives due to their near-instant speed.
Tactics
Calamity Mitigation fireteams are fluid and tailored to each operation, but most often consist of seven individuals: one commander, three operators, one heavy gunner, one combat engineer, and one combat physicist, who handles the deployment and operation of machines such as manifold anchors and grid control arrays.
The tactical approach a fireteam takes is usually planned at short notice, taking into consideration all intelligence concerning the threat. Agents are trained to expect limited information and adapt in the field where reality differs from expectations.
Doctrine
Calamity Mitigation teams acting directly in defense of reality are granted powers under the Dimensional Security Accords afforded to no other military branch of Raven. Namely, during the course of an operation, they are allowed to summarily destroy anything considered a direct threat to reality; this includes information, property, and even people. Their doctrine is essentially “destroy first, ask questions later”; eliminating the risk as quickly as possible before assessing whether the action was proportionate.
CMI teams also cannot legally be held liable for collateral damage in the course of their duties, even though effort is made to minimise such. Understandably, these powers are extremely controversial and there is a not-insignificant minority of people who have lost friends or family members to CMI collateral damage during a calamity.
Uniform
The standard combat uniform for Calamity Mitigation operatives is the exosuit, a suit of protective power armour. CMI exosuits are black, with red lights and black accents. No identifying information about the wearer, such as their name, is given. All CMI exosuits incorporate active camouflage systems which allow their colour to automatically adapt to surroundings. Rank insignia is displayed on the left shoulder; this is often the only visual distinction between standard troops and officers in the field.
When not in exosuit, such as at a garrison, operatives wear a uniform similar to that of other military divisions of Raven, known as the CMI Field Uniform. This uniform consists of a dark grey and black camo pattern, and features a signature red belt, red breast pocket accents, and red-accented beret. The camo pattern is less functional (as CMI operatives do not fight in their combat uniforms) and more to preserve consistency with the rest of the Raven military's field uniforms, which utilise the same pattern in different colour schemes. The uniform affords a certain level of reverence from other Raven military personnel, who understand that CMI operatives have seen and experienced things they may never understand.
Cleanup
Due to Calamity Mitigation's use of exophysical weaponry like Excision, operational activity often inflicts damage on a localised area of reality so severely that the area often must be placed under grid control until the affected manifold(s) heal. This comes with a huge cost: personnel from Field Operations must be deployed to guard the area while technicians maintain the array; a perimeter must be set up, and individuals inside must be evacuated.
Cutting through reality with weapons such as Excision is indiscriminate, and leaves manifold "scars" even after the underlying substratic grid has repaired itself. This in turn makes the manifold more vulnerable to destabilisation in the future, and more easily damaged. Heavily scarred manifolds may not be able to tolerate any damage, resulting in areas that remain in a perpetually unstable state or need to be under constant grid control.
Recruitment & Training
Calamity Mitigation operatives are most often recruited from the elite special forces of Coalition militaries via partnerships established through the Dimensional Security Accords. They undergo up to three months of highly rigorous testing before a decision is made to select them for the program, and must attain at minimum Gamma clearance.
Successful candidates are put through a year-long training program designed to place them up against every manner of exophysical threat. Both organics and synthetics are also augmented with combat implants or modifications, and undergo extensive psychological reconditioning to harden against infohazards and to reduce the risk of hesitation.
Flaws
A significant vulnerability of Calamity Mitigation is the human factor. Personnel, both organic and synthetic, lack the reflexes to engage certain high-class anomalies effectively, even with exosuits, and body/frame augmentations. Additionally, despite personal morals being drilled out of operatives and the subjection of operatives to regular Full Depth Memory Screening (FDMS) scans, the risk of hesitation still persists. Raven has attempted to solve this issue several times in the past, including the failed Vertex (ADG) project that intended to supplement Calamity Mitigation with a globally networked adaptive AI system, the Project Alderon initiative that was designed to augment CMI operatives with adaptive nanotechnology, and the Archangel Program, designed to build specifically augmented sapient synthetic operatives. All except the Archangel Program have failed catastrophically.