Sicron Incident

The Sicron incident, sometimes called the Sicron unrest or the Sicron disturbance, was a riot that took place in October 2685 within the city of Lugerville on the colony world of Sicron. The motivations behind the riot are still a matter of debate, with details classified under national security law. However, a public inquiry into State Security's handling of the incident led to some organizational changes, and the release of some documents to the public regarding the government response to the riot.
Sicron was a small colony world with very little infrastructure and habitation, consisting of one major city and a few military outposts spread throughout the planet. In total, at the time of the riots, it had a population of just under 700,000 people. For unclear reasons, riots broke out in the city of Lugerville in early October. Throughout the month, the riots escalated into widespread street violence, looting, arson, and murder. Several major buildings were destroyed in the rioting, and police struggled to maintain order in several districts. In the midst of this, Colonial Affairs inspector and bureaucrat George Rinaldi went missing while investigating the situation. Federal response was authorized in the form of police intervention by the Silver Team. Subsequent to the rescue of Rinaldi, and the team's inability to quell the riots, State Security command authorized a lethal quarantine protocol that fired an orbital kinetic weapon at the city. The weapon annihilated the colony, in the first instance of orbital bombardment being used in peacetime to quell a domestic disturbance.
A public inquiry into the incident ensued, which entailed a Congressional investigation into State Security's management of colonial security operations.
== Background ==
The planet Sicron is a Type IV Pluvial world located in the Vosges system in the Terran Periphery, some 11,300 lightyears from Earth. It was surveyed in the early 2500s, with a mining colony being founded in 2550. However, this first colony failed to thrive due to low metallicity in the system resulting in poor yields in rare earths and precious metals, and the colony became a proverbial "ghost town" by 2600. The planet seemed doomed to be a backwater, with only a small military outpost hosting a light infantry brigade and radio telemetry equipment throughout much of the 27th century. However, in 2677, a second colony was founded as the city of Lugerville; this colonization effort was initially much more successful, reaching a size of 700,000 people by 2685 through state-supported recruitment drives. The new colony's economy was primarily service sector; several companies offloaded aspects of business to various third-party service providers, who operated a series of contact centers, data analysis facilities, and shipping and distribution facilities out of Sicron. The city came to include a detachment of Security Forces troopers alongside the colonial police; the Army airfield and outpost was located several dozen kilometers outside of the main settlement.
== Riots ==
In late September, the colony saw an unexplained increase in reports of mental illness and hospitalizations. Not long after, acts of violence increased in some districts of the city, stretching the colonial police thin. According to declassified reports, colonists assembled outside of the administrator's building and police precincts, protesting police handling of the recent crime wave. Librarian Stephen Stanley filed a formal complaint regarding the involuntary detention of people with mental illness symptoms, as well as the shooting of criminal suspects. Stanley was arrested on 5 October and charged with multiple homicides; he was imprisoned pending trial. Meanwhile, riots broke out as the protests escalated, coupled with increasing acts of random violence between colonists, including arson, murder, mutilations, and savage assaults. These lasted in waves throughout the month. On 14 October, the Bureau of Colonial Affairs dispatched a high-level bureaucrat, the Assistant Secretary for Inspection George Rinaldi, to personally handle the investigation into the events. Rinaldi, as public documents have revealed, was at the time secretly a Colonel in the State Security Forces and their liaison in the Bureau. He went missing on 25 October, but not before sending a distress call, prompting further intervention by the Silver Team. By the time of their arrival, chaos had engulfed most of the city, with several thousand people killed or injured.
Operations group Kaleidoscope of the Silver Team landed early on 31 October and began their investigation into the riots and missing bureaucrat. Publicized documents indicate they interviewed Stephen Stanley, city administrator Richard Johnson, and city's chief engineer Fred Luger in the course of the investigation. While administrator Johnson committed suicide after being interviewed, the later public inquiry found no misconduct by Silver Team's investigators which could have led to his death. Other aspects of Silver Team's investigation are still classified, but at some point later that evening, they departed by emergency shuttle from the military hangar on the outskirts of the city. The summary of their report submitted to the ICPC indicated some escalation in the riot that compelled their rapid departure after successfully rescuing Rinaldi and several students.
The Security Forces battalion in the city evacuated after the rioters seized control of the administrative building, engineering building, and powerplant. Upon confirming this information, Rinaldi authorized a quarantine protocol by the orbital defense station, targeting the city with a kinetic impact weapon in order to contain the citywide violence. This was the first instance in peacetime of an orbital strike to suppress a riot.
== Aftermath ==
The orbital weapon was deliberately broken up 5 kilometers above the city, with the effect of a meteor airburst. The initial explosion, equivalent to a 450-kiloton nuclear bomb, killed over 182,700 people; blast effects, mainly overpressure from the kinetic explosion, immediately injured over 200,000 people. The blast effects, covering some 2,000 square kilometers, flattened smaller buildings, shattered windows, and caused larger buildings to weaken and crumble, as well as other effects that started fires. The city's fusion powerplant, having been seized and damaged in the riots, was further destroyed by the blast effects and underwent an emergency shutdown, knocking out power across the city.
Survivors of the orbital strike stumbled through the ruins of Lugerville; groups of injured survivors were easy prey for remaining rioter groups, with several incidents of violence continuing in the aftermath of the explosion. However, as most of the rioters had been killed, these incidents were sporadic and disorganized, and armed survivors came to fend off roving bands of killers. The lack of functional medical facilities, however, turned the mass-casualty event into a humanitarian disaster; hundreds of thousands died of injuries, including burns, blunt trauma, glass lacerations, broken limbs, and organ damage, and other severe injuries. Many who were already sick or injured perished from lack of adequate treatment or nutrition; pockets of survivors starved to death over the next several days. It wouldn't be until November 8th that help arrived.
Following Silver Team's evacuation from the planet, a task force of the Central Galactic Navy was mobilized on a humanitarian aid mission. Upon arrival, they cooperated with the Security Forces and Army garrisons to fully secure the situation. The survivors were evacuated to a pair of hospital ships in orbit, where they received medical treatment.