Please note: While this story can be read on its own, it follows directly on from Part 2, having connections to part 1 and 3. Also, the Browncoat militia mentioned later in the peice are not the Browncoats, rather a grass-roots uprising of otherwise untrained civilians, sharing independence ideals.

Part 4

Du-Khang reeled. It took mere minutes to spread the word, flowing like hot blood spilt on ice, a wildfire whipping across the city. The cortex thronged, massing with the stories, images, voices crying in pain, desperate for their own salvation from this most ferocious of melees. Violence, injury, death. A massacre of untold proportions previously understood only as the undertakings of some distant, vague world on the faltering edge of civilization. It could not be here. Not now. Not ever. Not even in the domain of the most fanciful dreams; the most disturbing, grave and grotesque nightmares plaguing ones slumber.

Broadcasters stalled regular viewing programs. The wireless reported on nothing else. City police across Du-Khang were activated. Fed squads on leave were activated. Two Alliance military spacecraft in deep orbital translation activated marine detachments, Gunboats streaking into atmo less than an hour after the violence begun in the cities heart. Missions and objectives were unset, but someone, somewhere felt the best situation was to put alliance boots on the ground.

Violence continued. Gunbattles raged. Rooftop snipers tore apart fleeing Feds. Cars rammed barricades. In the west of the city, a team of masked gunmen stormed the Mayoral offices and shot dead a security guard. Pulling the staff from the building, they set a petrol bomb and ran clear before the fireball engulfed the heritage building, wood splintering with heat, red brick scorched and twisted to an unrecognizable mass. The Mayors two children were upstairs at the time in the official residency, as was the Mayor herself.

Fires burned unattended, fire crews refusing to venture into the fray of the city. Scho