A hundred thousand shards of glass and steel danced slowly through the air, followed by gore, cloth, and bone.
The old man stood, stone faced, in the path of the carnage, blood and debris floated sluggishly towards him - the explosion radiating glacially from what used to be a ground-shuttle, through a mass of broken flesh that had been nine people just moments before.
An omniscient voice boomed from everywhere at once.
"Fourteen fatalities. Nine died instantly during the initial blast, five more en route to the hospital. There are currently another nineteen being treated at Hamburg University Hospital, three for superficial lacerations and burns, the remaining sixteen in critical condition."
Siegfried walked around the destruction, his eyes narrowing to capture any details the initial forensics team had missed.
"What do we know about the methods that could tell us who did this?"
"The labs are still running for trace analysis for molecular fingerprints - but we are 80% confident that the payload was a delayed fuse airburst round with a radial shaped charge of DXT, made to look like a planted explosive."
"Made to look like?"
"Blast reconstruction shows that the distal side of the cabin suffered noticably less structural damage, and footage shows this-"
The old man walked to the far side of the shuttle - as the spray of glass and metal halted its advance, and slowly began to retreat. Before his eyes, the shuttle doors re-assembled out of the cloud of debris - stopping the instant before the explosion, revealing a hole the size of a large grape in the sheet metal chassis.
Siegfried reached out to trace the outline of the jagged tear with his finger.
"Solid canister ordinance. An antique."
"Fifteen different groups, a mixture of known Bundeschuh and Unioner cells, have come forward claiming responsibility. We are investigating all leads, but do not expect the true culprit has revealed themselves in this manner."
"Do we know who the intended target was?"
"The party consisted of Senator Scmhidt entertaining several prominent members of the committee on Weimar Security, as well as the chairman of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce. Three served in the Imperial Military, and four in the Federalist fleet during the war. All of them were points of interest to someone."
"I've seen enough. End program."
The world went white and faded into a fuzzy haze of static - as Siegfried unplugged the jack from the base of his skull.
Blinking several times as definition and color returned to his surroundings, he sat up and looked across the table to see a Angela, a rigid woman in her early thirties, gingerly rubbing the site of the port behind her ear as she continued to speak, in her normal voice.
"The four other attacks happened simultaneously and were similar to what you just witnessed."
The old man stood up.
"Prepare a list of the dead, with all possible connections between them. There must be a commonality that would indicate a motive."
The woman nodded, straightening her blouse as she rose up to give a salute.
Siegfried walked towards the back of his office, to the viewport that overlooked the AESIR facility dry-docks. Steady streams of ships, large and small, converged and departed like lines of ants from a hive.
He felt the all too familiar feeling something big had been set in motion - it was a race against time to find out what.
Monday blinked repeatedly, the dull roar of buzzing around him slowly turning to a softer monotonous droning hum, and the thick soup of grey static that enveloped his peripheral vision glacially gained clarity with each passing blink.
The familiar soft spoken voice of an old man rang out from all directions, and from nowhere in particular.
"You're early, Magpie. We are still waiting on Crow, Jackdaw, and Jay. Feel free to take some time to collect yourself, I'm told that the upgraded rig has not arrived to you yet."
Monday looked around, Raven sat to his left at a large round oaken table - the old man's eyes peered at him through a mask in the shape of the head of a black bird. 'RAVEN' floated ethereally over his head, a godsend as Monday had never seen any birds in the flesh - much less enough to discern between ravens, crows, jackdaws, jays, and even magpies. A single large chandelier suspended from a ceiling he could not see, illuminating the vicinity in an omnipresent warm light that cast no shadows, and anything beyond in an impenetrable grey haze.
One after another, three masked figures materialized in the remaining three seats.
"Thank you for joining me on such short notice," boomed Raven, "Five simultaneous attacks across New Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt have killed at least one hundred and fifty two - including sixty three persons of interest and thirty two personnel key to maintaining economic and security readiness in Rheinland."
Raven stretched his open hand foward - files materialized in front of everyone.
"These are being transmitted to your secure terminals - look them over. Each of you are to investigate for potential involved parties in this incident within your respective houses. Any trail of evidence remaining grows fainter by the hour, disregard the traditional route of communications on this matter - we will allocate stellar relay bandwidth time to maintain this channel indefinitely until further notice."
The Hofvarpnir was over ten days late for the scheduled supply drop to Barrier Gate - and the anxiety of the staybehind operators still on Barrier Gate was palpable.
With the increased scrutiny from the Coronado natives, and the recent attacks in Rheinland, Büro assets abroad were ordered to go to ground, safehouses and shell offices were put on maintenance and protective detail.
Monday sat up from his central bridge chair and walked up to the active viewport. The Aristophanes was moored in the perfect overview point for all ships entering and leaving Section C drydocks - ships of all shapes and sizes formed orderly cues, going about like ants on a particularly busy anthill - to the backdrop of the thick, rocky fog of the nebula.
An unsettling stillness lingered in the air, broken only by the rhythmic tapping of Monday's shoes on the grating of the floor as he paced about - the crew were on shoreleave while they waited on the now late supply run, and the usual rumbling of the engines were quiet as the mooring umbilicals supplied all the power and air to the ship from the station.
1d20 1
Lost in thought, Monday didn't notice one of the ants in the distance break from the queue, a bright crimson plume of engine exhaust wreathing the mote in a firey halo as it zoomed towards the bridge. It wasn't until the proximity alerts sounded that Monday snapped to attention - but by then, the mote had grown substantially larger on the viewport, far too close for the point defenses to intercept. It was all that Monday could do to sprint to the escape pod.
"SHIT"
1d20 11
Monday leapt headfirst into the liferaft, thrown hard against the inertial dampening field by the fire that engulfed the bridge behind him - the deafening roar of the explosion and the decompression cut abruptly as the field closed around - nothing but a shimmering hardlight barrier between him and the fire and hard vacuum that had once been the bridge of his ship. As the pod launched from the remains of the Aristophanes, the bridge was a smouldering wreck, bits of torn steel and rivulets of molten metal formed a small cloud around the wound. Monday felt nothing except shock as station rescue shuttles closed in on the lifeboat and wreck.
---
Fifteen minutes later, at Mimi's Diner
1d20 5
The stonefaced bartender placed a fizzy red drink with a maraschino cherry on the counter and slid it deliberately towards Monday.
"We have lost contact with Jackdaw and Jay in Bretonia and Gallia. No doubt, to similar incidents that you have just experienced."
Monday took a long sip. A cocktail napkin pressed against his bloody brow with one hand, the other held a pad playing footage of the 'incident' from station cameras.
An unmanned mining probe from a DSE affiliated mineral extraction contractor en route to the drone hangar broke formation and made for the Aristophanes on full burn. Damage to the bridge was catastrophic, but thankfully, no one else had been on board. Station security was calling this an 'unfortunate drone malfunction,' but Monday was not convinced - the timing was exactly the same as a narrowly escaped attempt on Crow's life, and what he was guessing was the reason for Jackdaw and Jay's simultaneous disappearance.
The people that had known that the Aristophanes was moored on that particular berth at the time while undergoing a full reset cycle of the shielding system and that Monday would be on the bridge was a very small circle - one which could have just as easily put a bullet in his brain while he was on the toilet or in bed - or drinking a delicious Shirley Temple right this moment.
The straw made a loud gurgling noise as Monday drank the last of his beverage.
"Barkeep, I'm going to need another drink - and also a ride."
