[Starhawk]

2420.6
Tyson Babcock dropped wearily into the big comfortable chair he had brought aboard Conquest when she became his flagship, with tired hands he unbuckled his tunic and unhooked the button that held his collar. Sighing deeply, he started to think about the past few year.. His fleet had conquered 2 systems, no wait 3, yet they still had so long a way to go ahead of them before he could finally return to Icara and see his home by the western ocean: he thought to himself as the burden of the day finally started to lift from his shoulders, yeah they had a long way to go but his troops could handle it, no matter what he would return to Icara one day, he didn’t care whether it was as a war hero or just another soldier who did his duty, he just wanted to go home again after all even now his ship was in orbit of the most recent conquest MunjumbIX. The tired Admiral started to slip off to sleep when the com unit chimed, he ignored I at first but the chime became an irritating whistle. “Accept the call, audio only!” he groaned irritably and cussed to himself.

“Admiral Babcock Colonel Drago on the com for you from the surface.” The com officer paged Babcock in his quarters, much to his irritation, that com officer had a bloody bad habit of paging him at bad times in awkward places, Last week the young man paged him with a needless message while he was in his quarters with Countess Dorothy Rallins. The tired Admiral buckled his tunic again and dragged himself out of his chair and walked over to the com unit.
“Alright put him through Ensign.”
The old grizzled Colonel’s face appeared on screen, Tyson shrank back a moment when he saw the expression on the colonel’s face.
“My Lord Drago what’s wrong?”
“Admiral, there’s been an incident down here, there are a lot of our people dead here sir and a lot of Phong as well.” his voice was calm but Tyson could tell that the man was worried more then he had ever been before.
“What kind of incident?” Babcock demanded
“An explosion sir, an entire Phong Factory was blown to hell….and sir.. It was, it was with a compressed nuke sir.”
Tyson went white, with shock, a compressed nuke was only used by Icaran Royal soldiers, the Phong didn’t possess it.
“Sir, it wasn’t an Icaran nuke, the bLast pattern was totally different, but we know the Phong don’t have that kind of tech as you know, which only leaves one other option, someone else triggered the nuke, I need tech teams brought down though sir, I’ll keep a squad of my troops on site to prevent anyone from getting involved in this until they arrive.” Drago frowned deeply as someone of screen handed him a flexi.
“Admiral, I’ve got a confirmed list of casualties, 82 Icaran engineers and marines dead, 1,025 Phong dead on scene and 32 killed elsewhere by shrapnel, Admiral when can I expect those teams?”
“In one hour Colonel.” Tyson paused a moment to collect himself “I want you to get to the bottom of this, if there is someone out there that thinks they can get away with deploying a nuke on an Icaran facility they’re wrong, and I intend to show them that.” He cut the com circuit and left his quarters to get to the bridge, he had a good idea who might be behind the attack but until he could prove it he wasn’t about to say anything to anybody.