Cascade

4 - News

4 - News

It was just as Claire had predicted. Exactly sixteen minutes later, the officer’s comm-band chirped. He tapped the screen open.

“…from Vertex have not been heard from yet.” The woman on the holo-display stated. “Multiple Nexus response units have been deployed from emergency moon bases, but attempts at rescue and aid have been all too chaotic since there’s no real destination to go to. Witnesses on Vertex’s moon base claim that they simply saw the planet vanish from the sky without warning, or apparent means of transportation. Officials and members of the scientific community at Amicus base are still unsure of where the planet itself has actually gone, though some astronomers claim to have seen strange activity from the sun. Currently, it is believed that the entire planet of Vertex underwent a slip to somewhere beyond its standardized orbit. Scientists say that gravimetric variations at Vertex’s previous location are consistent with a slip signature, but no other known slip arrays are large enough to accept an entire planet. As of yet, the location of the capital planet is still a mystery.”

“Distress calls and SOS beacon signals are being sorted through as quickly as possible by Nexus officials throughout the system, but resources are frighteningly low due to the multiple attacks across the colonies. It may be possible that the population of Vertex is indeed calling out for help, but current conditions disallow for Nexus officials to properly handle the sheer volume of signals being relayed. While Nexus has contingency plans for planet wide disasters, Mercuth, the primary relay hub for intra-system communications, has been subject to the massive scale terrorist attack at hand.”

Images of devastation flashed across the screen.

“These are the last of the images transmitted from Mercuth before the planet went radio-silent.” The anchor woman said. As she watched the images, she fell completely silent. Raising her hand to her mouth, she could think of nothing to say.

A looping video of billowing mushroom clouds filled the screen. Multiple images of shockwaves tore through cities, with each image’s location labeled underneath it. Claire watched as videos from every major city across Mercuth were vaporized from expanding clouds of plasma. Concussive waves of hyper-pressure, and searing beams of lethal radiation vaporized entire continents as if they were made of tissue paper. Whole regions were flattened, and in the blink of an eye, a pillar of human colonization vanished like smoke.

“It is still unclear whether the strike on Mercuth was instigated by the terrorist faction, which still remains unidentified, or if the destruction of the planet was a retaliation by Imperium. All that is known so far is that 95% of Mercuth’s surface seems to be in a molten state, heavily irradiated.”

“Investigations are ongoing to discover how and why this massive nuclear strike occurred, but no further news has been relayed from Imperium.

“The military capital may still be functioning, yet with Mercuth destroyed, no intra-system communications have come from any of the six planets in The Ring. Moon bases around both Mercuth and Imperium have sent emergency signals, but without the relaying power of Mercuth’s communication arrays, experts say it is difficult to decipher what is left of the signal by the time it reaches any other colony.

“Though no transmissions from Imperium have been received, it is known that the military capitol has suffered a massive collision event. Whether this was the event that initiated the strike on Mercuth, or if this was part of a terrorist attack on Imperium itself, we can’t say. Political investigators say that such an attack reaching across every colonial planet could be motivated by homeland extremists believing that Earth is the only suitable place for human habitation. Many specialists are still not convinced of this, saying that such an organization would need massive resources and no homeland faction is known to be so large or influential.