[u][b]Dubrovnik Station Praetoria [/b][/u] Dubrovnik Station was perhaps the least graceful space station in the entire Commonwealth. The original structure had been constructed as massive civilian traffic terminal, designed to become Praetoria’s primary orbital hub. Over the years, its needs had far eclipsed its as-built parameters, so the central structure had begun receiving addons and extensions some twenty years ago and hadn’t stopped since. Warehouses, freight terminals, shipyards, hotels, shops, restaurants; all clamoured for precious space somewhere in the mess of Dubrovnik station. MSV [i]Rosalind[/i] was just one of hundreds of civilian freighters docking at the massive orbital complex. She was a big old freighter, worn out but well cared for. She slowly inched her way into her designated berth, pulled along solely by the stations tractor beams now, her GDC powered down. Captain Ryan Lydell, a human some 43 years old, was an old hand at space travel. In his lifetime, he’d been practically from one end of the old Imperium to the other, from the tip of the Commonwealth to the depths of Musashi space. He tended not to make such journeys anymore; his runs with the [i]Rosalind[/i] were decidedly more pedestrian. Lydell was not much of an idealist, but he felt there were some things worth fighting for. No sooner was the [i]Rosalind[/i] securely docked than a customs officer and an armed constable came ‘swimming’ down the airlock tube, floating through the gap between Dubrovnik and [i]Rosalind[/i]’s respective gravity systems. The [i]Rosalind[/i] had already encountered customs upon arriving in system, but Lydell knew Praetoria’s customs officers well and he’d timed his arrival so that an old friend was on duty. That old friend had given his cargo the briefest inspection before sending Lydell on his way. Unfortunately that sort of thing wouldn’t fly on Dubrovnik. Customs officers here could feel their superiors breathing down their necks, so they were very thorough. Usually it was nothing more than a time consuming irritation, but today Lydell had other things he needed to do. “Good afternoon officer,” he said amiably enough as the two officials crossed the threshold into Rosalind’s gravity and touched down. “Good afternoon Captain Lydell” the customs officer, an efficious Rhodesian replied. “Manifest?” Lydell had it ready to go. The Rhodesian inspected it thoroughly. “Direct us to the cargo bay please. I’m assuming we’ll find everything in order? You do have a good record with customs.” “Of course, officer. Perfectly in order.” The first inspector had satisfied himself with simply opening the storage containers and glancing inside. This one however was much more thorough, selecting containers at random, opening them, stepping inside, scurrying through their depths to verify that their cargo was legitimate, running a scanner over the containers...a time consuming process all around. It was on the third container he selected that the inspector suspected something was amiss. The industrial equipment at the front of the container seemed to be packed especially densely, to block all view of anything further inside. Not to be dissuaded, the inspector used his small size to squeeze through gaps in the cargo to get a better look at the containers contents. He finally slipped through a final space, and abruptly found himself face to face with a container full of suits of power armour that were most certainly not on the ship’s manifest. “Constable!” he called out, reaching for his comm. One of the suits abruptly reached out an arm and grabbed the Rhodesian by the neck. The armoured fist casually twisted, killing the inspector instantly. Outside, the constable was looking decidedly bored. His attention was pulled to the container by strange noises. He never saw Lydell draw a concealed pistol and place a laser blast square into the back of his head. All over the ship, various cargo containers were opening, and sizeable number of power armoured men emerged, hefting railguns, gattling lasers, and a wide variety of military grade equipment. They quickly assembled at the main airlock, and prepared to board Dubrovnik station. Lydell climbed into his own suit of power armour, then turned to his troops. “Well, we have a job to do. Let’s get to it.” The officials at the first checkpoint barely had time to register what they were seeing before they were gunned down. The armoured contingent didn’t even stop, sprinting past with superhuman speed. They emerged into a primary civilian concourse, and screams began to rise. Still, the soldiers didn’t stop, gunning down anyone in a uniform and anyone who happened to get in the way. An alarm began to sound, and the soldiers were forced to a brief halt at the next checkpoint, which had time to organize a defence. Sadly, the security was meant to deal with civilians, not military equipped commandos, so it was only a brief speedbump for Lydell’s soldiers. They stormed deeper into the station, encountering increasingly heavy yet still inadequate resistance. Finally, an obstacle came up outside main engineering; a massive blast door. Three men got to work with fusion torches, slowly slicing through the thick metal, while the rest assumed defensive positions down the hall By that time, Dubrovnik security’s heavy response unit had begun to deploy, and now Lydell’s soldiers found themselves up against equally well equipped adversaries. The first of Lydell’s men went down, a barrage of lasers cutting through his shields and melting his armour around him. Lydell had a slight advantage over Dubrovnik security in that he had no concern for the integrity of the station, meaning he could use heavier weapons, while security was confined to weapons that wouldn’t cause massive damage to the station. A vicious firefight ensued, and Dubrovnik security began to gain the advantage as more reinforcements arrived. Luckily, the fusion torches were doing their work well, and a hole large enough for one man at a time had been cut through the blast door. Lydell went through first, gunning down the engineers with impunity so they wouldn’t interfere. Dubrovnik was powered by a relatively simple but large antimatter reactor; no need for gravitons and a Wronski-Birks reactor with no GDC hogging up energy. Lydell quickly clambered up to the reactor’s antimatter storage pods, its most vulnerable point. He had to hurry, from the sound of it his men were dying increasingly fast. Lydell placed some explosives, then found a comms terminal. He loaded up a program that would give him full access to the stations communications systems. This was the last and perhaps most vital part of his mission. The program completed its work as the last of Lydell’s soldiers fell, and Dubrovnik security began coming through the gap into main engineering. Lydell opened the comms system across all channels, as a Dubrovnik soldier yelled up at him. “It’s over!” Some things were worth fighting for. Some things were even worth dying for. “FREEDOM FOR HUMANITY!” Lydell yelled, and pressed the detonator. 500 000 people died instantly as an explosion seemed to leap out of the heart of the station. Secondary explosions killed even more as the destruction spread across Dubrovniks sprawling extensions and additions. Civilian ships of all kinds were caught up in the explosions, while more distant compatriots looked on in horror. Then, the remnants of Dubrovnik station began to fall towards Praetoria below. A quick thinking tug captain likely saved several million lives when he steered his vessel into the maelstrom of debris and set his tractors to halt the descent of a particularly large piece of debris. The Imperial Palace defences--activated the moment word came of trouble on Dubrovnik--blasted everything larger than a fist out of the sky over Vitrograd, limiting the damage to the capital city and the Old Quarter in particular. An arcology downtown took a hit from debris, the impact killing 40 people and setting the building ablaze. Small chunks of burning metal, too small to be targeted by the Palace defences, rained down over the capital, killing and injuring a handful of people out on the streets and causing superficial damage to a number of structures. But not every city on Praetoria had its skies guarded like Vitrograd’s. A large piece of debris came crashing down into one of the world’s oceans, the ensuing tsunami devastating a number of coastal communities. Another struck the downtown core of Novobinsk, blasting the city off the face of the planet and snuffing out 9 million lives. For the rest of the day, Praetoria’s skies rained fire, but the worst was already done. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- They were calling it the Dubrovnik strike. Accurate, to the point, not too sensationalized; Martuf was vaguely impressed with the media’s restraint. Some few shards of debris were still reentering the atmosphere, appearing as shooting stars in Vitrograd’s night sky. Martuf had been summoned to the Winter Palace. Not officially of course, that would be entirely too obvious, but he had been summoned nonetheless, so he made his way through the Palace grounds, having entered the compound by a secret entrance, flanked by two Su’urtugal. The Palace’s own Su’urtugal chafed at his armed escorts, but his people’s constitution required Lord Captain Commanders to have armed guards at all times, even when visiting the Imperial Queen. The Winter Palace was the section of the Palace complex reserved solely for the day to day living of the Royal Family. Judging the danger had passed, the Imperskiy Vichnesk had returned the Queen to the Winter Palace from her emergency bunker far below. It was highly unusual for the Queen to summon guests to the Winter Palace; such a summons was generally reserved for close friends or discrete visitors. Martuf was something of both. He slipped through the gardens, and let himself into the Winter Palace via a sunroom close to the Queen’s quarters. Her Imperial Majesty, Catherine Romanov, was waiting for him, dressed in full mourning. Martuf raised an eyebrow. “A little much don’t you think?” The Queen gave him a frosty glare. “Eleven million of my citizens died today, Martuf. Nothing is ‘too much’.” “My apologies, your majesty. You know how my tongue gets the best of me sometimes.” “See that you keep it under control in future.” She was hurting, that much was obvious. Catherine took her devotion to her citizens very seriously. She had to be reeling from such a blow so close to home. They were silent for a moment, before Catherine spoke. “What do we know so far.” “What we do comes from CID; my work is only just beginning but I’ll go over their findings anyways. Captain Ryan Lydell; by all accounts an upstanding and respectable citizen. Experienced merchant commander, pays his taxes, plays by the rules. Exactly zero indication he would ever do something like this.” “And his soldiers?” “Very little on them I’m afraid. Copies of Dubrovnik security footage are transmitted to offsite locations, so while we do have footage of the soldiers, their armour makes it impossible to get any facial recognition. Their equipment and their actions tell us a great deal however. Their equipment was high end military--some Commonwealth, some not--certainly difficult to obtain, and very expensive. They were well trained too, very well trained. Possibly ex-military, excellent coordination, they’d rehearsed this, and that means somewhere out there is a camp or a facility training more of them. This group, we don’t have a name for them yet, went from absolutely nothing to the most dangerous group in the Commonwealth in a single attack.” “I think I see where this is going. You think they had outside help.” “Absolutely. It’s possible whoever supplied them comes from within the Commonwealth, but more than likely a foreign power is at work here.” There was another silence. Martuf was the one to break it this time. “I’m putting Javelin on this one. Its jumped to the very top of my priority list.” “Yes, good...Martuf?” “Your majesty?” “Find them. Find them and kill them. Kill them all.”