Panic! at the Starstone

Chapter 2 - Encounters With Unwelcome Guests

Absalom Station Attacked. Search for Survivors Continues, Along with Search for Answers.

 - Arden Finder
 - Pact Worlds Newswire Service

Mara Preston had just sat down to tea in her apartment 5 levels above the Starstone, when, as she described it "It was like a giant threw me into the floor as hard as it could, and then sat on me." Between 7 and 8 g of acceleration was suddenly pulling Mara, her tea, her table, her floor and her ceiling straight down.

Underneath her, the Starstone had broken, unleashing a tremendous gravity wave pulling everything toward it with the force of a black hole. The pulse only lasted 1.4 seconds, but that was more than long enough to twist and crush everything - including Mara - that happened to be in its path.

The strength of the force fell off as the square of the distance. Those within 15 meters of the blast in any direction were subjected to 30g in an instant, and no survivors are expected to be found within that zone.

But Mara was one of the lucky ones. She was far enough to survive the initial gravity surge, and her apartment sits just over one of the station's main water recycling centers. While her legs were crushed in the implosion, she was mostly shielded by the steel and water between her and the incredible burst of radiation that followed right after. She'll have to be treated for the occasional tumor over the course of the next few years, but she should expect to live out her normal lifespan.

Even after the gravity returned to normal, Mara's ordeal continued over the next 12 hours. Anything with a nanocircuit had been fried to slag in the EM pulse unleashed by the blast. She couldn't call out on her communicator, and her robotic valet couldn't lift the wreckage of what had once been her ceiling off her legs.

She remained trapped in the rubble that used to be her apartment, going in and out of consciousness, becoming dangerously dehydrated, and in total darkness. The rescue team that found her had to navigate masses of warped floor panels and bulkheads, furniture and electronics, plus all the other crushed detritus of modern society, to build the slowly widening tunnels approximating the layout of the residential block where she and over 600 other people had lived before the disaster. Yet she had been saved, which was more than could be said for most victims as close to the explosion as she had been.

For the families of the missing, the ongoing rescue efforts are proceeding at a snail's pace. So far, portions of the station's living and industrial areas surrounding interior junction corridors below level 7 have been breached by emergency workers. Scattered survivors have mostly been evacuated to medical centers, but even among those lucky enough to have survived the crushing gravity surge, many received lethal doses of radiation and aren't expected to recover.

The current number of confirmed dead was 901, as of publication time, but we've been told to expect that number to rise significantly as more areas around the Starstone slowly become accessible.

According to Heinrik Polaski, vice commander with the Knights of Golarion and acting head of the recovery operation, 73% of the imploded volume is still inaccessible, but telepathic scans have identified numerous scattered life signs, and rescue teams have prioritized gaining access to those regions with the greatest numbers of trapped survivors.

Nearly 1400 of the wounded are presently undergoing treatment, and while the other Pact worlds have sent a number of doctors and healers to assist in the effort, along with hospital ships to provide desperately needed patient beds and healing vats, the need still exceeds the available capacity. Patients have had to be treated wherever medical personnel can work on them, be it in a hospital or a repurposed hangar bay.

All told, 5238 people remain unaccounted for. 1390 remain in treatment, with many of them in critical condition. Around 4000 others were discharged following treatment for minor injuries. In all, nearly 12,000 people were hurt, killed, or remain missing. Tens of thousands more have become homeless.