-----Two hours later, Task Force 52's HQ, Chekhovsk Industrial District outskirts-----
Every room's monitors displayed the same four figures split into four quadrants on the screen. The GDW Admiral Vencencio, the man who the Lancers met personally, was seen standing in the
Fjord's bridge. It was a large room, a standard command table in the center where the captain stood, allowing them to have a 360 degree view of the entire bridge around them, monitors made a malleable plastic material lining the walls and rotating crash couches where personnel sat. Typically, even for a
cruiser, there were a dozen people on the bridge but today it seemed it was more crowded. The crew were dutifully performing their tasks, most of their backs turned away from the camera towards their monitors. The admiral himself carried a stern and calm look, his uniform jumpsuit straight, with not a single speck of dust out of place on his entire body. It was as if nothing transpired, yet the reality of the situation betrayed itself. On his belt was an emergency oxygen mask and a tank, and what looked to be two armed marines in Lancaster-Class
IVAS' could be seen hiding on the edges of the frame.
"... At 50-12, 10-04-2320 Standard Time, the GDWS
Fjord was attacked by several missiles in Low
Kitezh Orbit." The Admiral reported emotionlessly. "Initial reports suggest they carry stealth capabilities that bypassed the cruiser's defense grid. Commonwealth munitions have been fired in
Soyuz space. One of the
Fjord's drive cones have been damaged and the habitation module struck, resulting in five dead and ten wounded. As the admiral overseeing of this diplomatic expedition, I place no fault on the Soyuz space command. They came to the
Fjord's aid as soon as the missiles were detected, and have been aiding in repairs and casualty assessment since. I repeat, the Soyuz bears no responsibility for this attack on GDW assets. This is the act of a rogue, third party."
In the other quadrants were one of the surviving GDW diplomats on the ground, the Kitezh governor, and the Kitezh orbital defense commander. They mostly repeated the same points, describing the incident on the ground, the damage endured, the immediate steps taken to reduce the impact, and reiteration of zero faults of either the Commonwealth or the Soyuz. It seemed the detonations in Chekhovsk were designed to cause as much chaos as possible. With skyscrapers this tall, local engineers tried to ensure that any structural failure resulted in collapse inwards, minimizing the area of destruction, but the explosives purposefully flung material outward, down onto the streets and smaller buildings, resulting in a brief, but highly deadly rain of steel and concrete that struck the ground with the force of military grade munitions. For the targets themselves, the diplomat teams of both sides, the casualties were relatively low, but current estimates of civilian casualties measured over a hundred and climbing.
Eberhard's eyebrows were knit as he watched the address in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in his hand. "Let's hope this message gets to the rest of
human space, before something else does." He muttered to himself. A quick calculation in his head told him it'd be seven hours before the beam of light reaches the SLE in the
system, travels through the truncated space-time it created, before reaching Sol, finding itself captured by a deep space communication array then amplified and beamed to the rest of the system. Seven hours to report to the rest of humanity that all hell broke loose, but please don't panic.
He tried not to think about it, yet his mind wandered there anyways. Miscommunication and time lag contributed to the Hawking Rebellion. What was going to happen here?
Eberhard shook his head, instead focusing on the matter at hand. Their mission objective stayed the same: find out who was responsible for the terrorist attack months before, and why. Now, it was simply that a new attack was added to the list of questions. He looked at his datapad, which displayed three separate cells, each for an armed employee of Omnigrow they captured. Before then, he'd let the Lancers take a 24 hour break, allowing them to cool down and treat their wounds first.
