Battlestar Galatica Meets Clan Phoenix

by Crudack Darkbane

Original Battlestar Galatica crossover with my own Clans Universe. All Clans characters, ships, technology, and materials are Copyrighted, and first books will be published soon. Yay!

Battlestar Galactica

Meets Clan Phoenix

by Bruce Pickelheimer

Disclaimer

All characters used in this story are fictional. Battlestar Galactica and the associated concepts are the sole property of those who hold the various copyrights on them. All of the characters in this story are, however, not included in any of the various Galactica stories written by their creators, and are the creation of the author. Any discrepancy between the original Galactica, its fleet, and the various ships and weapons used by the Colonies and those used in the various stories by the original creators are and were intentional. The ships, weapons, and tactics that they used simply are too weak to allow long term survival in a hostile universe in which you are being hunted by the enemies that have destroyed your entire civilization. Even the more powerful versions that are in this story are pathetically weak in comparison to those used by actual civilizations that are geared toward fighting and winning a protracted war in space. (And it should be evident that I haven't bothered to see the new "PC" version of the series on the SciFi Channel because it quite obviously has nothing to do with the original series or story line.)

The Clans, the various characters in the Clans in this story, and all of the associated species and concepts are the sole property of the author, and are original copyrighted material. This story may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, or sold in any form, and the original characters and concepts in it may not be used for any purpose without the written consent of the author. Violators will be in violation of the copyright protection laws, and will be prosecuted and may be subject to both criminal and civil liability accordingly.

Part One

A Call For Help

Commander Heracles looked at the display in his quarters one more time, feeling a sense of growing dread and despair. They hadn't seen any more Cylon patrol scouts in more than a yarhn, and there was hope that they had finally lost them for good. They hadn't had to fight a Cylon base star in many yarhns, and they had managed to make it look as if at least most of the fleet and the Galactica itself had been destroyed in their last battle, along with the Cylon base star that had managed to track them down and engage them in combat, and it was believed that the Cylons now truly thought that the Colonial fleet was all but destroyed. He really hoped so, because after running and fleeing from the Cylons for so long, the fleet that represented all that was left of the twelve Colonies was getting ragged and running low on critical supplies in almost every area. While they had been able to replace their consumable stores of many supplies and get the agro ships running efficiently enough to make themselves even more self sufficient for the long hauls between star systems, they had to conserve on their fuel and other resources that couldn't be replaced so easily. And after several long, hard centarhns of running from the Cylons, their ships were getting fragile, many of the systems were becoming very hard to maintain, and many of the more critical parts were becoming increasingly difficult to make or replace with acceptable substitutes. It didn't help matters at all that their fleet was composed of a mismatched conglomeration of ships that had so many unique parts and systems that almost nothing was directly transferable from ship to ship.

He sighed, and admitted the truth to himself. The entire fleet was aging, and most of the ships that were left had been old, poorly maintained, and ready to be replaced before the fall of the twelve Colonies. Many of them should have been scrapped as being unworthy of space travel instead of being used, but when the only options had been to use those ships anyway or let even more humans die, there hadn't really been a choice. Hundreds of yarhns of hard, constant use without any chance to do major repairs, complete overhauls, or rebuild any of them properly, not to mention having to skimp on repairs due to constraints imposed by their limited resources, had taken its toll. The majority of the fleet was wearing out, and within the next generation, they would face some serious threats to their continued survival if they couldn't find a world to stop at long enough to replenish certain materials and make the necessary repairs to the entire fleet. Of course, none of that would matter if they didn't find more tylium soon. They hadn't found ANY traces of tylium in yarhns, and if they couldn't replace their fuel supply, the fleet would run out of power for movement, life support, and everything else long before the ships wore out or broke down completely.

His elation at finally eluding the Cylons was tempered with the problems that they had now discovered. In the past yarhn, they had run into increasing numbers of ships and other signs of an advanced culture, and his scouts had reported that contact with a small ship had resulted in a firefight between what had appeared to be a small, almost unarmed merchant ship and a squadron of the Colonial vipers who had been escorting the shuttle for first contact with them. There was still no real consensus on the language or multiple languages that were being used by the alien culture, since it seemed to employ many tongues, just as the Colonies had before their destruction by the Cylons. What was truly disheartening was that the race that seemed to be dominant in this region, at least in their contacts so far, was reptilian. And their resemblance to the lost Cylon race was more than just in appearance, because as soon as they had seen the Colonial ships approaching them, they had ignored all attempts to communicate once the first video feed was established, immediately opening fire upon the shuttle and the diplomats on it, and continuing to fire until they were finally destroyed by a squadron of Colonial vipers.

The door to his quarters opened, and a short, slender female came into the room very rapidly, obviously excited about something.

'Yes? What is it that has you so excited, Persephone?' Heracles was used to the very dramatic mood swings that his chief scientist sometimes exhibited in her zeal for her work, and knew that the way to get her to focus on the situation was to draw her total attention back to it as quickly as possible before she became distracted even more by her emotional response to her discovery.

'We found some kind of translator device in the debris of the ship that we had to destroy, and my people finally managed to get it to work.'

Heracles nodded, smiling to show his approval. If she knew that it was some sort of translation device, she had been able to get it to function or she wouldn't be so sure what its intended function was. 'Yes, that is wonderful news. Now we can use the communicator to try to actually communicate with the next ship that we come across and try to establish some kind of peaceful relations with these new aliens that we have discovered. I'm sure that once we explain our situation, and that we are merely passing through their space on our search for Earth or other lost colonies from the Colonies, they won't be so violent and aggressive in their responses to our presence.'

The woman frowned sternly at him, shaking her head. 'What is it, Pers?' He used the nickname that few used with her, hoping that it would cheer her up or at least make her respond to the conversation and the situation on a more personal level and not be quite so serious and businesslike.

'That may not be as easy as it seems, Commander. We ran the tapes of what we had recorded from the aliens when we were trying to communicate, and they seem to be under the impression that we are something that they call "Demons". They repeated several words over and over again in the background, and sent out several distress messages with their coordinates, calling for all nearby fleets to converge on this area to hunt down the "Demons".'

'Could there be a mistranslation from the machine? How could you tell that the thing was actually set up to produce a proper translation in our language?'

'Sir, the machine was set up to translate their tongue into many languages. Nobody was more surprised than I was to actually find that one of the modes on the machine was Basic.'

'Basic!?' Heracles was shocked. Finding Basic being used by a totally alien culture was like discovering that tylium was composed of interstellar gases and that all that they had to do to have an unlimited supply of fuel was to scoop it up as they went. It just wasn't possible, and was some kind of fantasy dream at best.

The diminutive scientist nodded her head very seriously. 'The language is Basic. Not exactly like we speak it, and it has many words that are not translatable into anything that we understand, even though they are also clearly derived from Basic, but it is Basic.'

'What other words were they saying over and over again?' If the language was Basic or a derivative, at least learning what some of the words were might give him some clue as to some obscure old dialect that might have been of influence.

'We're not sure what some of them mean exactly, and at least one of them seems to be some sort of proper name. They kept saying "Tryx", which we think is some sort of proper name, possibly for some species that we resemble. They also kept using the name "Demons" when referring to us, and there was a lot of what seemed to be open hostility and fear when they said that word, as if it had many deeply significant other meanings to them that weren't translated because they were cultural. They also kept referring to "clans", but we have no idea what the significance of that is. It could be the word that was the default to represent some cultural concept of theirs in our language, but we have no way of knowing that.'

Heracles sighed deeply. This was not good news. 'Do we know anything else right now?'

'Before I came to you with the news of our discovery, we used the translator to go over what we could of the records that we recovered from their ship. It seems that they are part of a very large empire of some sort that covers a very large volume of space, and they have been at war with some enemy for a very long time.'

Heracles felt despair wash over him in a tidal wave. This wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare. He was well aware of the various problems that they could face by coming into the middle of a long, protracted war such as the Colonies had fought with the Cylons for so many yarhns. 'And the enemy that they have been fighting is referred to as?'

'They call their enemy the "Tryx", or "Demons", Commander. Yes, I know. They think that we are their mortal enemy, and they are at war. They have called for immediate reinforcements from every fleet they have that can reach this area, and from what their records seem to indicate, their war fleets have many more ships than we are used to fighting, since they don't operate almost independently like Cylon base stars do.'

'What are we talking about here?' This was definitely a nightmare, and he could only hope that things didn't go from bad to worse.

'I'm not sure about ship sizes or armaments, but a fleet is typically a number of large ships that they call "battleships", accompanied by numerous escorts of various classes that, while smaller, are more numerous.'

'Great. It took more shots than it should have to defeat a small merchant ship. They had very heavy shields and armor. If their warships are armored, reinforced, and armed even more heavily for their size, and they are anywhere near the size of the Galactica, we are going to have problems just keeping them from making contact with the civilian fleet. And if we are that vastly outnumbered by them, we aren't going to be able to keep them from attacking the fleet. If that happens, we are going to have serious problems.'

'Look on the bright side, sir. We know that just fielding one battlestar the size of the Galactica during a generation was enough to keep our home systems secure while we were fighting a war against the Cylons for a thousand yarhns. So we know that there shouldn't be that many ships in their fleet, especially if they're making smaller escort ships as well.'

'You're assuming a lot, Pers. First, we have no idea how industrious they are, or how much of their own industry is committed to making warships and supplies for their war effort. Second, we have no idea how large their ships are, or how large their support system is for their empire. If it is as vast as you say, and there are numerous populated planets and cultures in their sphere of influence, then they could have a number of fleets built and operating at the same time, even from the same star systems if their ships last long enough and are easy enough to repair and upgrade. Even the twelve colonies managed to field several different fleets at the same time, and there were ships in the fleet besides the battlestars, you know.'

She shrugged. 'That is very true, sir. But, looking at it from the standpoint of simple economics and common sense, how much bigger than a battlestar could you afford to build your ships when you are building entire fleets and their escorts? I mean, the resources alone would be astounding, even allowing for complete recycling of older ships to make new ones when they are obsolete. You would have to strip entire star systems of their mineral and other resources just to keep those things running. And you would have to find something that is much more efficient than tylium just to provide propulsion for your ships.'

'That is true, but you said yourself that our scan of the debris from the ship that we had to destroy contained no traces of tylium at all, and that both their propulsion and power systems seemed to be vastly different from our own. Many of their weapons systems were similar enough for us to know how to handle them. Lasers. Not as efficient as the pulse lasers, but just as deadly. Particle beam weapons, though thankfully not powerful enough on that ship to pose a real threat to the shielding on the vipers, we can't assume that the military version won't be more powerful, especially on their larger warships. I'm just not sure what purpose the missiles that they had served, since they are only really useful against larger targets because of the intensive use of electronic countermeasures by all of the military forces that I've ever heard of.'

'So what can we do to make sure that we survive and keep their fleets from destroying the fleet that we're protecting?'

'I have already ordered the largest long range reconnaissance patrols that I can afford to send out with our current resources, and they are going out as far as we can send them to scout and give the fleet early warning if they find anything that is a threat. Obviously, avoiding a conflict would save even more of our most precious and irreplacable resources, so I'm risking it and pushing the safety limits on our fuel reserves. If they find us and they have a force that is a fleet, we might not have to worry about conservation of resources any longer, since they could destroy our entire fleet if they manage to get past the Galactica and our viper squadrons.'

'We have upgraded the hulls and defenses of the ships in the fleet over the past few hundred yarhns, you know. And we have managed to train more pilots and increase the Galactica's complement to twenty full squadrons.'

'Enough to make them more effective against Cylon fighters, yes. But against larger warships, ships that are armed even more heavily than the ship that fought our squadron?' He was unable to keep from thinking about how they had labored over that decision, debating whether it would be better to spread all of that armor out over the vast number of small ships in the fleet, or to build another battlestar to allow more defense at longer range and to allow more fighters to be made. They had already built enough to bring the Galactica up to ten squadrons by that time, but there was a limit to how many fighters the ship could hold, let alone deploy safely. In the end, they had spread the materials out over the fleet simply because there were some resources that they lacked to build a fully functional battlestar, and they wouldn't be able to do that, even with the proper resources, unless they halted the entire fleet and remained in one place for the several yarhns that it would take to build the other ship. The only real improvements had been to expand the size of the Galactica and increase her capacity so that they now carried twenty squadrons of vipers on board at all times, with enough parts to replace some losses from combat quickly if it was necessary. They could probably fit twenty five or perhaps thirty squadrons of fighters into the bays if they crowded them somewhat, but they didn't have the fuel and resources to allow them to support that many ships and pilots all of the time. And their fuel limitations had just been growing more grave by the decarhn.

Persephone nodded, seeing his point. Larger ships would shrug off the small lasers and pulse cannons on the ships of the Colonial fleet, and would come in and pound them with their own heavier lasers and weapons. And those ships were full of civilians, and they didn't have the heavier armor, structural support, and redundant critical systems of a dedicated warship such as the Galactica. It would be a virtual slaughter, and the last remnants of the Colonies would die horribly if a fleet of hostile warships managed to close with them and engage them where they had no way to retreat or escape.

After a minute of awkward silence, she turned and left the commander's office to return to her lab and see what else she could discover about the enemy, since they obviously intended to treat the Galactica and the Colonists as a threat and attack them at the first opportunity. Considering their reaction to seeing the Colonial representative on their viewscreen and the possible death that was now coming toward these coordinates from unknown directions in unknown strength, their only hope of survival lay in finding out some way to avoid confrontation with them or find some weakness that they could exploit to defeat them. Negotiation was obviously futile at this point.

Heracles sat at his desk going over his options after the departure of his head science officer. There were not many options for him to actually consider. Avoiding the enemy and keeping them from finding the Colonial fleet was a high priority, since he didn't need any more fleets trying to hunt them down and kill them all. He didn't like the racist attitude that he was having, but it seemed that all of the reptilian races that they ran into had it genetically hardwired into their primitive little brains that humans were an evil curse that needed to be eradicated from the galaxy. Maybe it was just some genetic thing that they had against competition for resources or land, and maybe it was something else, but these reptiles that they had found and the lost race of Cylons had more than one thing in common, it seemed. Neither could get along with humans, and both seemed to think that the only way to deal with humans was to eliminate them from the galaxy. The fact that the Cylons were already lost to the galaxy, and all that was left of their race were their machines, was only made even worse by the fact that their machines had adopted human form as more efficient in order to carry out the programming that their Cylon masters had given them long ago and eliminate the humans from the galaxy. They hadn't actually been programmed like that at first, but they had reacted and altered that programming to specifically include humans as soon as they had any problems with the Colonies at all.

If he couldn't avoid the enemy, and that was what this new species was now, by their own choice, he would have to do anything that he could to protect the fleet. If their ships were strong enough, they would overwhelm the Galactica by sheer numbers, regardless of their size, and the fleet would lose their last and only true defense against the enemy, and would be wiped out during their next encounter, if by some miracle they managed to escape the encounter that destroyed the Galactica. If there were only some way that they could come up with more ships and resources of their own, then they would stand a chance of surviving even a hostile encounter with an enemy fleet. Of course, that is what they had been seeking during the hundreds of yarhns that they had been fleeing from the Cylons. Refuge, succor, and any kind of assistance from the long lost thirteenth tribe that had left Kobol in a different direction and found Earth, the paradise of all their legends, and the one shining hope that the survivors of the Cylon attack had pinned all of their hopes of survival to.

Heracles smiled to himself, unable to keep from smiling at the thought that he had just had. If the enemy thought that they were these Tryx, and they already had broadcast their coordinates out into space to draw reinforcements and battle fleets to destroy all of the "Tryx" that they thought were here...

Heracles sat up at his desk, pushed a button, and began issuing a string of orders as soon as his comm officer responded to the page. Perhaps there was a way, after all, for them to survive this mess. And just maybe, they'd finally be able to put an end to their long trek in search of the lost tribe and cease being nomads.

Troy looked at his monitor in shock, staring at the message displayed on it as it played through in its entirety for at least the third time. If this was some kind of trap or trick, the enemy had suddenly undergone a dramatic leap in evolution in both their thinking and tactics, and this was not a good thing for the Clans. On the other hand, if the message was truly genuine, it represented a chance to really bait a trap and make the enemy forces in this region take one hell of a pounding without having to hunt them down or trick them into converging in one small sector of space.

'Well, what do you guys think?'

Jason shrugged. 'I don't think that it's a trap. At least, not one that was intentionally designed as one by the Consortium. It may be used as an attempted trap if they see the message and believe it. But I don't think that someone in their chain of command thought this up, concocted this message, and then baited it as a trap. They just don't think like that. Besides, they'd use our normal syntax, grammar, or whatever they have from their records of encounters with us. They wouldn't use strange words that we don't even have in our databases in order to confuse us. They don't think in terms of isolated groups coming up with divergent languages and new meanings for words.'

Kyri nodded. 'He has a point, you know.'

Shahrrhi nodded. 'Yeah. Even when you guys were lost to us for over twenty five hundred years, your language and ours didn't really diverge at all. Yeah, you had some new words for your new organization of forces and stuff, but all of the words and concepts still had the same meanings.'

Lehr sighed. 'Their story is too detailed for the enemy to have come up with it. They wouldn't make up something that complex. Not only couldn't they think in that kind of detail to start with, but they wouldn't risk adding in so many details because it makes it much more likely that we'll find some discrepancy or something that would make us think that it was a trap and avoid the area.'

There was general agreement around the table at that point, and even Troy had to admit that it made sense. Much more sense than the Graks or someone else in the Consortium suddenly making such dramatic evolutionary leaps in their ability to think and react like the Clans would. Of course, if it was such an elaborate trap, springing it and then destroying the fleets that were trying to spring it would dramatically prove that the trap was ineffective, and that would prevent the Consortium from bothering to use it again on some of the other Clans, since they didn't like using tactics that obviously didn't work. Anything that was new was suspect to start with, and if it failed, it was discarded. And that went more than double if the failure was spectacular and very costly in nature.

'Jason, what forces do we have with us, and how far behind us would responding put the rest of this wing?'

'Well, right now, we've split the wing into the three talons. And we're ahead of our own strike talon and fire talon. And we're testing out the new small ship designs, so we don't have as many ships on board, even if we do have more troops than normal.'

'Yeah, I know all of that, Jason. Give me the numbers.'

'Well, our scout talon would be thirty two assault carriers. Normally, we'd carry sixteen thousand strike assault shuttles and sixteen thousand heavy large fighters. But from the numbers I've seen, we only have sixty four hundred of each type on board right now. And sixty four hundred of the new assault fighters and sixty four hundred of the new heavy strike assault shuttles. From all indications, that means that we actually have more forces than we would with our normal full complement.'

Troy smiled. 'What we lose in one area, we gain in another. Our strike assault shuttles and heavy strike assault shuttles can all use stealth, and so can the new assault fighters. So if we just keep the normal fighters on board the ships, we can move in under stealth and the enemy won't even know that we're there, will they?'

Jason grinned, shaking his head. 'No, they can't detect our fleet, and the ships that are out under stealth can even launch in stealth mode without them being able to detect them.'

'What about the strike talon and the fire talon?'

'If they remain stealthed, they'll be about six or eight hours behind us at max speed, but that will be cutting it close for detection, especially since we don't know which way the enemy fleets will be converging on those coordinates from.'

'And if they slow down and don't risk detection, and avoid any ships that are coming up behind us?'

'They would be at least a day behind us. And the rest of the wing would be at least two days behind them. They're at the maximum dispersal area right now so that we could find any enemy fleets more efficiently.'

Troy grinned, and everyone at the table knew that grin well. 'Well, then, if there are more of them than we want to play with and it is some kind of trap, we can always lead them around and show them how Five Fleets works when you have reinforcements waiting for them to fall into the pincers, can't we?'

Jason nodded emphatically, then asked, 'But what if it is a real message and they manage to get enough forces there that we can't keep the fleet that this ship is now guarding safe ourselves?'

Troy's grin became grim. 'Then this will play out even more like Five Fleets, only I'll make sure that this time, the ending is much different for us. I'm sure that any fleets that they send will really appreciate the differences and improvements in our forces and their effectiveness against a typical Consortium war fleet.'

Kyri nodded, smiling as she made sure that Shahrrhi wasn't taking this meeting too seriously. Even though she had just joined the Clan relatively recently, Shahrrhi was still very sensitive to the losses that had been suffered at Five Fleets because they brought back very recent memories of what had almost happened to her own Clan. 'Just keep in mind that this time we have support and other ships to bring our own numbers up significantly from what they are now, and that our current force is more than we had during Five Fleets. Just our heavy fire cruisers and scouts number almost as many ships as we had there, and they are all much stronger and better armored and armed than our ships were then. And the assault carriers by themselves are more powerful than our whole fleet was then.'

Kohrrhi nodded. 'Yes, that's true. And the small craft are also much better. Each one is more powerful and more heavily armored, faster, considerably more maneuverable, and we have more of them than we had at Five Fleets, just in this scout talon. Not to mention that even without the newer designs on the shuttles and fighters, we have more firepower here than we had there. And the rest of the wing will be moving to catch up to us or to envelop anyone who follows us into a trap, and they make our forces look like the light scouting screen that they are supposed to actually be for our fleet.'

Troy laughed. 'Let's not get caught up trying to redo history and fix our mistakes by refighting old battles with the new toys and forces that we have available now. Let's work on getting ourselves into position to find out exactly what is going on, and if this call is genuine, on helping out the survivors of some other star system who have been hunted for far too long. It's time that they were allowed to stop running and start living their lives again.'

Jason nodded. 'OK by me, Boss. Just don't complain to me if things work out so that we do get to bait a trap and mess with the Consortium in a big way. From the signal that we got before theirs, whatever ship they hit was scared shitless that they were Tryx and Demons, but they sure sent out a distress call that was loud enough, with enough details about their location and the armaments of the fighters that were attacking them that the Consortium is going to know that there is at least one Clan out here that they can take on and destroy without losing entire fleets in order to do it. And if they see and believe the message that we just got from that Commander Heracles, they are going to pull out all of the stops to get as much force here as they can and hunt them down before we can reach them and help them find safety. I don't know what that guy was thinking sending out a plain message like that so that the enemy knew how desperate their situation was and how easy they would be to destroy, but he couldn't have done more to make the Graks and other fleets in the area home in on him like a hungry shark going after blood in the water if he had set off a sunbuster to let them know exactly where he was.'

Troy smiled, shaking his head slightly. 'Actually, that was the one thing that he did that might save his people. He knew that the enemy already knew where they were, and that enemy fleets were converging on his position. Giving them his relative strength before they met in combat wasn't giving away much, since they'd see that soon enough and just overwhelm him by sheer numbers. It wasn't as if they were going to come in hesitantly and scout out the situation, and he already knew that, judging from his message. They only have one major military ship and some squadrons of small fighters to protect their fleet, so it would have been a total massacre within the first few hours of closing. He just made sure that if there were any of the forces that he knew were fighting in the war against the Consortium out there in range to hear his message and respond in time, they'd have a chance to rendezvous with his fleet and possibly save them from total destruction.'

Kyri nodded, sighing softly. 'True. Smart, but desperate. He can't know that there are any friendly forces out there, or that they would even bother to render assistance to him and his people.'

Troy shrugged. 'True. But just knowing that we might be coming to aid them if we are around could make the enemy more cautious, and give him more time and a better chance to get his fleet away from here and avoid detection or attack. If he doesn't, they're all dead anyway, so what difference does it make if we wouldn't help them or if we would attack them, other than to make the inevitable first meeting happen a bit sooner?'

Shahrrhi looked at Troy. 'Are we going to help them?'

Troy nodded. 'Yes, and no. Not openly at first, since I want to have some time to see how they act, react, and fight on their own, and I really want to see how their system works in combat. But we will help keep them alive, helping them move in the general direction that we want as we also see how much of a response the Consortium mounts to eliminate this threat while it is still small enough to be easy for them to dispose of.' He smiled as he stood up and started walking toward the hatch of the room. 'Who knows. We might even get to do a little fancy maneuvering to bring the other segments of our own talon and the other two talons together to really rack up a large victory against the Consortium forces that are operating in this sector right now.'

Shahrrhi caught up to him at the doorway, stopping him as she looked up at him with an expectant expression on her face. 'And what are we going to do if we do have a big victory here?'

Troy smiled down at her. 'Why we're going to share the spoils of our unexpected bounty with our newly found "Colonists" and allow them to determine their own path once we've made sure that they have the resources and equipment necessary to let them have a really good chance of surviving, no matter what their decision is. Maybe they'll keep heading for Earth. Maybe they'll start fighting the Consortium. Maybe they'll decide to take the long trek back to their home worlds and kick the shit out of those Cylons, or whatever they called them.'

As Troy strode out the door followed by his Shadows, leaving the others there to think about what he had just said to confirm their own estimates of his goals, Lehr turned to Kohrrhi without breaking stride, and said in a loud stage whisper, 'If those Cylons are really machines like these guys said, I wonder if there really is any crap in them for us to kick out of them?'

Lieutenant Vega looked at the scanner in the cockpit of his viper and swore under his breath. The scan wasn't complete, and he couldn't wait for a complete scan without risking being detected himself when he lit off his thrusters, but the enemy fleet that was now in range of his scans was immense. There were several signatures on his scan that looked to be even larger than a battlestar, and numerous signatures that were about the same size as the Galactica. The fifty or sixty smaller signatures that he could already detect weren't even worth bothering to count, because the fleet that was now approaching from this vector was large enough that, if their warships were stronger for their size in comparison to the small ship that the squadron had destroyed earlier, they could have wiped out the entire Colonies and all of the fleets that had been assembled for the war against the Cylons in the 1000 yarhns that the war had lasted before the fall of the twelve colonies.

'Leo, let's get the frak out of here before they get a fix on our position and try to follow us back to the fleet.'

'Roger that. Thank the stars they don't seem to have out any real long range patrols of their own.'

'For what? They're looking for our fleet, and from the size of that fleet and those scan signatures, they could scout with some of the smallest ships that they have and still not worry about one or two of our squadrons ambushing them before they could let their whole fleet know what was happening. And even with the element of surprise on our side, I'm not sure that one or two squadrons would really take out something that large without suffering more losses than we can afford to take right now.'

The comm went silent as they raced back toward the Galactica, waiting until they were closer before risking even a tight beam transmission to warn them of what they had found.

'Galactica, this is Vega in Recon Nine. We have a sighting, and a preliminary scan of the enemy fleet.'

'Roger, Vega. What do you have to report?'

'We only got a partial scan before we had to leave. There were at least fifty or sixty smaller ships, at least twenty medium sized ships, and we saw at least six larger ships on our scans.'

'Do you have size or classes, or at least computer estimates of the sizes of the ships?'

Vega swallowed as he heard Heracles' voice speaking to him directly, not even going through the comm officer. This meant that the commander was really worried, and that was never good news. 'Affirmative, sir. The small ships are about half as large as the Galactica. The medium ships are slightly larger than the Galactica. The largest ships that we saw were about five times as long as the Galactica, and were about as large proportionally for their size. No idea on armor or armaments, sir.'

There was dead silence on the bridge of the Galactica as the entire bridge crew reacted to what they had just heard. The very idea of a fleet that immense, and of the resources and effort that it took to build, maintain, and supply a fleet that size was almost mind-boggling. It was more than the entire twelve colonies could have done, even if they had reduced their living conditions to bare minimums. Only Heracles wasn't totally shocked at the immensity of what was coming after them, but only because he had spent some time thinking about what a large star empire that had been at war for a long time with a very deadly and determined foe might be willing to do by stripping away at unnecessary uses of their resources and pouring everything that they could into warfare for their very survival. Their records, what little they had been able to get from the wreckage, showed that this Consortium controlled a very vast sphere of space, and that they had been expanding their sphere of influence for a very long time. Millennia at the very least, and probably tens of millennia.

He looked at the comm officer. 'Route any further reports from our scouts to my ready room, and let me know immediately if there is any response to the message that we set up on the one emergency beacon to be broadcast.'

'Yes, Commander.'

Heracles went to his ready room, wondering how long they could avoid the inevitable confrontation with one or more of the enemy fleets. He also wondered, no matter what their size, how many fleets such as this the entire Consortium could afford to maintain, and how many of them were in this area of their vast empire. The smart thing to do would be to retreat out of their sphere of influence and go around, but they had already been moving inside Consortium space for at least six months now, and with the fleet that they had already discovered coming from the vector that it was, their best chance of evading it and avoiding detection lay in moving even deeper into that sphere, and closer to the worlds that made up the core of their empire.

'Well, Heracles, this is one feat that will definitely be legendary if we can pull it off. Get our people out of this trap and to safety, and avoid the many headed monster that is poised to swallow all of us up. I don't know who these Tryx are, but they certainly managed to find some very determined enemies. And they definitely seem to have pissed them off to make them all this anxious to kill us off just because we look like their enemy. I wonder if we'll actually meet them before we end up getting ourselves killed?'

'We certainly won't if you don't have anything more important to do than sit here talking to yourself, Commander.'

Heracles spun his chair around and laughed at the diminutive woman standing in the door of his ready room. 'Diana, you know that I only do that to make sure that I go over all of the options and don't miss anything by failing to look at the problem from all sides.'

'Uh, huh. And I suppose that's why you've been ignoring me these past few days?'

'I have been busy, you know.' At the toss of her head that sent her long hair swirling around her face, he sighed. 'OK, what can I do for you?'

'I have the report from the initial scans from Vega's patrol.'

'Already? That was certainly fast.'

'Like I could do much with long range scans of entirely alien ships? I can tell you the approximate sizes, but we have no idea what classes they are, what type of weapons systems they have, or even their power sources. No idea of how fast they can go, if we can outrun them, or if they have small fighters similar to our own vipers. And we have no idea of the type or amount of shielding that they have.'

Heracles nodded, knowing the frustration that his cousin was feeling. He was feeling more than his own share of that right now. 'So, how close was Vega on his eyeball estimates?'

'Too close for comfort. The scan shows fifty seven smaller ships, all appearing to be about two kiloms long, and about one kilom diameter. Fairly cylindrical design. The middle sized ships are about six kiloms long and two kiloms diameter, which does make them roughly about the same size and mass as the Galactica. There are at least twenty three of the ships that size in the fleet.'

Heracles sighed, knowing that the worst news was still to come. Though what could be worse than hearing that there were twenty three ships that were each at least the size of his own, almost double the size of the entire assembled fleet of the twelve colonies that had been destroyed when Baltar betrayed the Colonies to the Cylons with his fake "peace treaty", heading toward his almost unarmed fleet to destroy them was not something that Heracles really wanted to think about in detail.

'There are at least seven of the larger ships. They appear to be thirty kiloms long, and about ten kiloms in diameter. No sign of a fighter screen or long range recon ships in front of the fleet, but they could have just been lucky and avoided them.'

Heracles nodded, thinking to himself and responding without even thinking. 'Yes, and they could also not use small ships like the fighters for fleet combat. We have no idea how good their weapons, sensors, or anything else are.'

'Actually, Pers has given me some ideas on that particular point, based on what she got from the records that we found in the wreckage. Their sensors are very good at shorter distances, but not as good as ours are in some areas at longer range. But they seem to be very highly developed in trying to detect weak energy signatures or other relatively minor disturbances in their surroundings. Much better than our best sensors could do in that regard.'

Heracles nodded, thinking about this carefully and trying to discern some reason for that kind of emphasis on their scanning capabilities. Of course. They were at war, and their enemy must have some kind of ability to hide their ships from sensors. He pushed the button on his console, and heard the comm officer's response almost immediately.

'Sir?'

'Send this message to all long range recon patrols. If you run into any ships that don't show up on your sensors, but that are definitely in your viewscreens, don't fire on them unless you are fired on first.'

'Sir? Are you sure that you want to send that message to all of the patrols?'

'Yes. The enemy seems to be devoting a lot of resources to scanning for something that is hard to detect, and the most logical thing for them to worry about is ships that are at war with them using some method to hide themselves from their sensors. Since their sensors are better than our own, we probably won't be able to detect any of the ships that have that type of system built in anyway. Our one chance to gain allies and quickly increase our chances of survival is to find their enemy and hope that they will aid us. That will be much easier to do if we don't start firing on them, since we have no idea what their ships look like, any more than we have any idea what the enemy warships actually look like up close.'

'Yes, sir. I'll send the entire message right away, sir.'

Heracles turned to see Diana staring at him. 'That's taking a long shot and risking some of our pilots unnecessarily, isn't it?'

'Not really.' He smiled, hoping to soothe her and calm her down. 'We know that the Consortium will go absolutely insane as soon as they see our ships and open fire without warning if the response that we got from the first ship that we came across is any indication at all. And since we have sent out a message calling for assistance from any group that is at war with the Consortium, I'd rather not go ahead and start making them want to kill us all themselves by shooting at them as soon as we see them.'

She smiled, then pouted playfully. 'I guess that does make some sense, and I can't argue with the logic, since I have no more basis for my own assumptions of how any other species will react to us than you do for your own, so there is no reason to believe that your own assumptions are wrong and mine are right than the other way around.' She grinned lightly. 'Besides, believing that you are right means that we have a much better chance of survival, and that is a very good thing to think about right now.'

Heracles nodded, watching as she left his ready room. Yes, it was much more calm and comforting to think that he was right and that the mortal enemy of this Consortium would be willing to come to their aid and assist them simply to keep them from being destroyed, but that was some childish fantasy in more ways than one. While it would make sense in some terms, it wasn't really realistic. These Tryx may be at war with the Consortium, but there was no real logical reason that made military sense for them to take any risk themselves to help a bunch of refugees just because their enemy was trying to destroy them. It might give hope to his people, but there was no reason to believe that any military commander in his right mind was going to needlessly risk his troops to help some small band of refugees, totally alien and unknown to his own species, just because their enemy in a war had mistaken them for members of the enemy species because of their physical appearance.

Karg licked his lips absently as he looked at the report on his screen. They were nearing the coordinates that had been transmitted, and now the search for the enemy fleet would begin. Though some of his subordinates had believed that the message that had been transmitted by the enemy was a lie, he thought that it was more of a desperate plea for help from a scared grahl that had enough sense to know that it would soon die at the hands of a predator that was hunting for it. The ships that had been scanned and recorded by the sensors on the patrol ship were not designed like anything that Karg or any of his analysts had seen, and their weapons were clearly inferior to anything that the Demons had ever used in combat by any reports within the last few thousand cycles.

There were some on his staff who had suggested that the small, lightly armed ships that had attacked were some new weapon system that was being tested by the dreaded Demons, but Karg put no stock in that opinion at all. The Demons had been very inventive and very cunning, and they had never tried a system in combat that had shown such a large and obvious decrease in effectiveness before. The Demons always made things work better, faster, and made them more effective in combat. Even if they had made smaller ships such as these fighters, they would have made sure that they were either faster, better armored, or better armed than the larger ships that they were replacing. Some benefit that made sense in combat, and not just from the standpoint of being able to make them with less expenditure of resources and energy. The one thing that the Demons had proven over and over again was that they were willing to expend a lot more energy than they needed to in order to produce a superior weapons system that would work better and last longer, giving them an advantage over the Consortium weapon systems to make up for their smaller population and industrial base.

That these refugees from the "Colonies" were aliens was possible. And that they simply looked like the damned Demons was also possible. Several species within the very trusted and proven forces of the Consortium looked remarkably like the Demons, but they were not genetically related to them any more than some of the other reptilian races in the Consortium were related to the Graks. Simply convergent evolution that produced similar looking results with the materials at hand. Of course, it was still very possible that these "refugees" were bait for a trap, or were a long lost branch of the Tryx who were unaware of the war with the Consortium and hadn't yet made contact with any of the branches that were more advanced scientifically than they seemed to be. If so, it was imperative to track them down and destroy them as quickly as he could so that they didn't end up adding to the numbers of Tryx who were breeding and who had more advanced and more effective weapons. Of course, baiting a trap was more like all of the reported activities of the Demons, so he had to make sure that he didn't fall into a trap as well.

Karg looked at the officer standing near his command chair waiting for orders. 'What is the current situation on our scouts?'

'Ready to launch the recon units, sir. Each of the battleships in the fleet has a swarm of ten scouts ready for dispersal on your command.'

Karg hissed, baring his fangs to show his pleasure and his readiness for combat. 'Then launch them, and find me these pathetic aliens so that we can make trophies of their worthless breeders. My breeders need to be reminded that when we couple in the sands, their competition is dead, so my hatchlings will have nothing to keep them from using all of the available resources for their own growth and survival.'

The Krill officer blinked his large eyes in acknowledgment, then turned and strode off to carry out the assigned tasks. He looked forward to seeing what these enemies could do in combat, since he hadn't had a chance yet to test his mettle against one of the dreaded Demon Clans that the Graks were so worked up about. Granted, they were obviously very strong and competent warriors in ground combat individually, but their numbers were so small that eventually, they would be eliminated as a threat. And this time, the Graks would make sure that they hunted down all of the gene pool of their enemy and made sure that every single living being with any of their genes was eliminated from the entire universe.

Troy strode onto the bridge of his ship and looked over at the officer who had the watch. It was still early, and most of the ship was asleep, except for the graveyard shift. Of course, Troy was always showing up on the bridge at odd hours, especially when there was any hint of danger or upcoming combat.

'Well, what is the situation?'

'The scouts report some sensor hits at the edge of our detection limits, but they are all Consortium fleets.'

'How many, and what size?'

'Three or four, currently. The possible fourth was just detected a few hours ago, and they are still working their way into position for a better scan. We only have good enough scans to do the composition on two of the fleets.'

'And they are?'

'Fleet one has nine battleships, eighty six battlecruisers, two hundred heavy cruisers, and about seventy three smaller ships for scouting.'

Troy arched his eyebrows, realizing that the fleet was small and operating light on the supporting units, but said nothing and let the officer continue with his report.

'Fleet two has twelve battleships, one hundred and twenty seven battlecruisers, four hundred and seventy three heavy cruisers, and about two hundred and ten smaller ships for scouting.'

Troy nodded, hearing numbers now that sounded more like a fleet that was actually fully assembled and ready to perform its assigned tasks. 'Any indications of what the fleets are?'

'Fleet Two is definitely Grak, sir. We're not sure on Fleet One yet, but they are trying to get closer to make a determination. Preliminary estimate is that it's Charkal, and they have some extra battlecruisers to make up for the lack of heavy cruisers.'

Troy nodded to himself. That was probable, given the composition of forces that were normally operating in this sector of Consortium space. Charkal loved to use their fleets in multiples of nine. Nine battleships, with nine battlecruiser escorts each was very common. After that, they liked each escort to have three consorts to protect it, which would require them to have two hundred and forty three heavy cruisers for the basic formation, but the five extra battlecruisers would go a long way to make up for the firepower that those missing forty three heavy cruisers would have provided to the formation.

'Do what they can to find out. We know how the Charkal like to fight, and if we can get them into a trap, we will be able to really use their more heavily armored battleships. They do put a lot of work into their defenses for a race that is even more aggressive than the Graks.'

The officer smiled, knowing that Troy was being very kind in his assessment. While the Charkal were more aggressive than the Graks, they were much smaller in stature. They came from heavy gravity worlds, and when they were totally enraged and went berserk in combat, they were almost as strong as some of the weaker Clan members. But even when they went berserk, they retained control of their emotions and used the adrenaline rush to strengthen their attacks, increase their speed, and heighten their senses. It made them much more difficult to kill than a Grak simply because they didn't care about the "rules" or what was "normal" when they reached that state, and they reacted and adapted to the changing situation around them much better than almost any other Consortium species that the Clans had run across so far. Fortunately, they were still stuck using the same basic weapons as all of the other Consortium troops, and they were not as numerous as the Graks or some of the other member species, having joined the Consortium relatively more recently, and never having liked high population densities in the first place.

'Yes, sir. I'll let you know as soon as we have confirmation on the fleets, and if we find any more enemy fleets in the area. There is still the possibility that the fleet is from one of the other races, and that they're just short of escorts and support ships because of the recent losses that they have suffered.'

Troy grinned, nodding at the assessment. It was highly possible that some of the fleets that were in less "important" areas were still under strength after having lost some of their TOE to form the massive fleets that he and his Clan had just destroyed a few short decades ago in order to save the Llyriana home worlds. Even with a vast empire the size of the Consortium, the sudden, unexpected loss of more than thirty thousand warships from one sector of space had to leave some gaps somewhere, and fifty years or so wasn't all that long to rebuild those losses locally, especially since he had personally destroyed at least one of the shipyards and two of the staging areas in this sector of space that had supported the assembly and supply of that vast fleet.

'Relative positions?'

'Fleet One will reach the coordinates after we do. So will Fleet Two. Current estimates are that Fleet one will be at least three days behind us, and Fleet Two will arrive at about the same time as we do if they actually converge on the coordinates.'

'Give me a three-D display of this region of space with our relative positions and that of the rendezvous point highlighted.'

A holographic representation of the local star systems appeared in the air, and Troy went over to it and started examining it critically. 'They're boxing the area. Going close to the coordinates, but not actually converging. Trying to make sure that the fleet that they're after can't escape, and covering their asses in case they don't have exactly the right position. We're still about two days out, and they'll probably stop in two or three days and start doing a search pattern to establish contact with the enemy and hold them in place while waiting for their buddies to converge and help overwhelm them.'

'Fleets Three and Four are already about two days travel from the point of the original transmission, sir. Do you think that they are going to be starting their search pattern from their positions soon?'

Troy sighed, seeing how the other fleets that were barely detectable were already positioned in space. 'Probably. We can just hope that the Colonial fleet isn't in their close proximity, and that we can reach them before the Consortium can make any concerted attacks with their main fleet.'

Kohrrhi looked at the display and grimaced. 'And that there aren't too many more fleets in this sector responding to that distress call. If there are more, and they're coming from the other edges of the fringe, they would still be outside of our sensor range.'

Troy nodded, but otherwise showed no sign of having heard the comment. Lehr and Kohrrhi both just stood silently and watched, knowing that Troy was thinking about the spatial positions, and trying to figure out how to get this fleet past the enemy without running into their patrols so that they could find and reach the endangered Colonial fleet before they were destroyed. From the indications so far, this dance could very quickly become even more intricate and complex than that of Five Fleets. And for those people who were in the Colonial fleet, the stakes could be just as high for them as they had been for the Clan at Five Fleets. Their very survival could depend on Troy being able to make things work out exactly like he wanted them to, and the timing of every move was going to be critical.

'Comm. Signal the rest of this talon and make sure that they know they are to bypass both Fleet One and Fleet Two unless otherwise instructed. The other two talons are to keep moving along on their current course and rendezvous as planned unless they receive updated orders or they run into something that has to be taken care of. SOP. We want to help these people, but we have to survive and we have to take advantage of this opportunity to do as much to the enemy from ambush as we possibly can while they still have their attention focused on something other than looking for us.'

'Aye, sir. Messages being relayed now. Anything else, sir?'

'No, that's all. Troy out.'

'Comm out, sir.'

Troy turned to see Lehr and Kohrrhi smiling at him broadly. 'And what has the two of you grinning like Hekyl and Jekyl?'

They both laughed at his reference to two comic characters instead of his occasional reference to a pair of loons, which were also silly birds. 'We knew that you wouldn't be able to resist the urge to see if you could coordinate something that was much more complex and more spectacular than the victory at Five Fleets. Giving you this much Consortium shipping in a relatively confined area of space, especially while they're all still far enough apart to allow them to be attacked while they can't provide any support to each other, was too much for you to pass up this opportunity to test out the new small ship designs and see if they make as much of a difference in the firepower and force as you think they will.'

Troy grinned, not even bothering to argue with them, since it had been logical Kohrrhi who had spoken instead of Lehr. 'Let's just say that I think that we're going to get some invaluable opportunities to use the new stealth fighters and determine their true combat effectiveness under optimal conditions.' His grin grew into the feral one that they both recognized well. 'And I don't believe that our enemy is going to appreciate the new surprises that we have in store for them at all.'

Hermes stared at the screen on his long range scanner and swore under his breath. The enemy had started releasing clusters of smaller ships from their largest ships, and it could only be scouts being sent out to look for him and the rest of the Colonial fleet.

'Herm...'

'Yeah, I see them, Castor. Looks like each of the larger ships is releasing ten of the small scout ships.'

'You call those things small?'

Hermes laughed, both to relieve his own tension and that of his wingman. 'Uh, yeah. The scan does say that they're only a few hundred metrons long, right?'

'Frak, Herm. That's the size of a yacht, at least. Each one of them must mass more than our entire squadron.'

Hermes shrugged his shoulder helplessly. 'Well, let's hope that we can take them out quickly if we have to so that they really don't get much of a chance to send an alert back to their own fleet before they die.'

Castor sighed. 'Maybe they don't have much of their mass taken up by armaments and shielding, eh?'

'By the lords, I hope that you're wrong about that, Castor.'

'Why in the world would you want them to be better armed and armored?'

'Because if they have mass taken up for armor, armaments, ammo, and a larger power plant to give them the power that they need, they have less space and power left for long range sensors and they can't pack as much of a scrambler package into a ship that small to mess with missiles.'

'Yeah, I guess you're right, but I'd still feel better knowing that we could kill them really fast if we had to if they got near the fleet, even if it was more of a risk that they'd be able to detect the fleet in the first place.'

Hermes knew that he had a point, but the goal of this mission was to keep the Consortium from getting a fix on the Colonial fleet in the first place. And if it actually came down to it, he and his wingman were expendable if that was the only way to complete the mission. While he knew that thinking like that was officially discouraged, and even really punished if it got back to the commander, he also knew that they could much more afford to lose one or two vipers right now than the entire fleet that they were supposed to safeguard. And he didn't think that even his great-whatever-grandfather, the legendary Commander Adama could argue with logic like that in this particular situation.

'Let's keep them under surveillance, and try to stay outside of their effective sensor range while we do it so that they can't use us to track back to the fleet when we are relieved by another flight.'

'Affirmative, sir.' There was a brief pause, followed by a hesitant question. 'Uh, sir, how many of these fleets are we keeping track of now?'

Hermes sighed. 'I really don't know, but I do know that we've found others as well by now. Vega found this one, but someone in Silver Spar squadron found another, from what I heard in the mess while we were getting ready for the mission briefing before launch. All that I know for sure is what we were told in the briefing about their capabilities and how to limit our exposure to their sensors. That's why we can't try to glide close and then light off our engines after making a closer pass to scan them and try to get even more details about their weapons systems, armaments, and scan them for structural weaknesses that we might be able to exploit in our attack runs.'

Castor laughed nervously. 'Yeah, attack runs. On something the size of the Galactica or even larger? With a viper? Squadrons of vipers might dent some of those big things with some really large loads on the bomb racks, but our normal weapons aren't going to scratch the hull. Their mass is unbelievable, and a lot of that mass is in their hull armor.'

Hermes laughed. 'Then I guess we're lucky that we don't have to get close enough to try an attack run, right?'

'Uh, boss, why in the world would they expend so much effort on short range sensors that are so sensitive instead of trying to improve their long range sensors so that they can see the enemy even further off?'

'We're not really sure, Castor. I heard some of the scientists talking, and they were going over the possibility that their enemy uses very small weapons that are very hard to detect. Possibly some sort of missiles or nuclear mines. Something powerful, with a short attack range under power, and a limited range for the effect of the explosion. But the military seems to be leaning more toward some type of shielding or cloaking that makes ships harder to detect.'

'So, if we don't ever meet their enemies and find out from them what it is that these guys are so afraid of, we may never know.'

'Guess so. Coming up on range, so limit transmissions and use tight beam lasers from now until we end our shift.'

'Affirmative.'

The comm went silent, and the two of them concentrated on doing what they could on passive scans to keep track of the enemy scout ships that were being dispersed from the largest ships that they had ever seen. While most of them would be moving away from their current position and the fleet, some would be heading in this direction as they spread out, and their mission was to monitor those ships and make sure that they didn't discover the fleet and make a report of its position.

Heracles swore under his breath as the report came in. Two fleets behind them were already starting to send out scout ships to look for them, and from the preliminary work on the data, they were making sure that they boxed in this area of space from the positions that their fleets were starting their search from. It looked like a simple grid search in three dimensions, which made it easy enough to predict how fast they could cover a given volume of space. It would also make it easy enough to predict when they might be able to change course and go through an area that had already been searched and try to evade enemy detection. Only the reports were that the scout ships were dropping remote sensor platforms at intervals that would allow them to have at least a passive alarm if something came into the area without the right codes to keep the beacons from responding to their presence.

'Sir. Another report from Red Squadron. They have confirmed another enemy fleet approaching us on this vector.'

He looked at the display to see where the threat was coming from, and realized that the fourth fleet that they had been able to detect was now boxing them in from their flank. So far, they had two fleets behind them, one on that flank, and one that they could barely detect ahead of them on a bearing that was high and to the port. They were being boxed in, and he could only hope that there were not more than four fleets out there or the fleet was doomed at the rate they were eliminating his vectors for a clean escape.

'Any estimate of the size of that fleet?'

'Larger than either of the first two that we discovered.'

Heracles sighed, going over the figures in his mind. Figures that seemed to spell the imminent doom of all of the colonists he was protecting. Discounting the small ships, because they really didn't matter at this point because of the sheer mass and tonnage that was being sent out against them, they were facing more ships than he had imagined could be kept functioning in an area of space this limited. In less than a week, four fleets had managed to converge on this area of space.

The first fleet had stunned him with its size. Seven of the huge battleships, twenty three of the ships as large as the Galactica, and fifty seven smaller ships. And then the second fleet had left him even more shocked. Ten of the huge battleships, forty five ships the size of the Galactica, ninety four of the smaller ships, and another thirty eight ships that were even smaller than them, but still large enough to do serious damage to the fleet by themselves if they were warships. By the time that they had confirmed the figures on the third fleet, he had seen the end of the colonists unless there was some miracle that allowed them to escape, for he no longer believed that any force in the universe would have enough firepower to even hope to help them fight their way free of this death trap. There was just too much firepower assembled in one place at one time to even hope that any enemy they were fighting could possibly hold them off long enough for the Colonial fleet to escape, much less defeat them. The third fleet, off to their flank, had nine battleships, eighty six ships the size of the Galactica, two hundred of the smaller ships, and seventy three ships that were less than two kiloms long.

His thoughts were interrupted as the comm officer sent the message over to ops and his ops officer paled. 'Sir, the fourth fleet's data is now in, and it's been confirmed by another long range patrol on the edge of that sector. Fifteen battleships, seventy two ships the size of the Galactica, two hundred and fifty of the smaller ships, and seventy nine of the ships that are less than two kiloms long.'

There was no sound at all on the bridge as everyone on duty recognized the seriousness of their plight. Heracles looked at the display and hit a button, waiting for a second for the computer to display the information that he had requested. When he saw it, all hope died inside him. Forty one battleships, two hundred and twenty six ships the size of the Galactica, six hundred and one of the smaller class of ships, and one hundred and ninety of the smallest ships. Many more ships than he had in his entire fleet. There weren't enough ships in the entire fleet to equal the number of enemy ships that were the size of the Galactica, and from the way that the fleets were positioned, there were at least one and possibly as many as three other fleets out there looking for them, unless they were so desperate that they had just come in on their convergent vectors and left a wide, gaping hole on one side of the grid that they were searching. While that would give him some hope that they might survive longer, it wouldn't make that much sense. While making him go in a particular direction and making sure that all others were denied would make sure that they eventually caught his fleet and destroyed them, he had seen the tapes and the responses and viewed them many times in the past few days, and the terror and desperation showed that the enemy was doing everything that they could to catch them and kill them as quickly as possible. And all that he had to defend the fleet and all of the humans that were left of the Colonies was one beat up old battlestar and five hundred vipers.

Heracles sighed. 'Move us toward the area where we haven't detected any fleets yet, and let's hope that if there are any enemy fleets in that sector, we can at least try to maneuver and evade them before they put the lid on this box that they have us in.'

'Aye, sir.'

Colonel Leonidas came up to him. 'Sir, you really look like you have lost all hope.'

Heracles smiled. 'Leo, you know as well as I do that the forces that we're looking at could have wiped out the entire twelve colonies and the Cylon empire at the same time.'

'We don't even know how strong their ships are yet, sir.'

'We know that their shielding and armor is good enough that an almost unarmed merchant ship actually stood up against attack runs from half a squadron of Colonial vipers for way too long, Leo. And even discounting that, we know that there are too many ships, and that they are way too large for us to keep all of them from attacking the ships in the fleet. And even if the Galactica was a match for any or all of them, they would still destroy the fleet and all of our people before we could destroy enough of them to end the conflict. And then what purpose would our own survival even serve?'

Leo nodded, knowing that the question was rhetorical, and that the point was moot anyway at this time. They had to evade to keep that many ships from converging on the fleet, because even the smallest of the fleets that they had found would be able to do much more damage than they could afford to sustain. And once they started to really suffer losses, the loss of morale and the attrition of their forces would diminish their combat effectiveness to the point where further encounters would simply increase the damage that they took, and eventually, they would reach the point where they were simply overwhelmed by sheer numbers, no matter how good their own forces were in comparison to those of the enemy. All that they could do now was to continue to do their jobs and protect the people in the fleet, hoping that some miracle would either allow them to escape and get out of this region intact, or that someone came to their aid. Like Heracles, Leo had no illusions that there was any force that could possibly aid them against such huge odds and such overwhelming military force. Whatever enemy had caused these huge war fleets to be built, it must be overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemy ships, and the war must simply be still going on because of the vast emptiness of space allowing them to withdraw and fight again at another time so that their forces survived. Though he still had no idea how anyone could possibly defend their home planets against someone who could build, maintain, and operate such vast fleets in just one sector of their interstellar empire.

Kyri groaned as the alarm went off in their quarters. She could hear Shahrrhi cursing very fluently in Llyriana, and kept her eyes closed so that she didn't start giggling at the sight of her while she was that angry. Troy had just finished making love to her and started making love to Shahrrhi, so the girl was very understandably frustrated right now, since she could feel Troy leaving the bed to answer the call from the bridge. Just as Troy answered, she was unable to hear the message because both Lisa and Dana started giggling at how pissed and frustrated Shahrrhi was, and that caused both Jaehla and Tahhnhi to start giggling as well.

'Vahrg ahnyn! It's not funny.'

Dana nodded, sitting up in the bed as she looked over at Shahrrhi. 'Yes, it is. You're just irritated because he had to stop before he finished. It happens.'

'But it's not fair! Fleur and Alicia are both pregnant again, and he said that I could go ahead and have another baby now that the youngest is fully weaned and already three years old.'

Jaehla shook her head and rolled her eyes. 'You know that the only reason you were allowed to come was that this mission wasn't going to be more than six months longer than we've already been out, and you weren't pregnant when we left, so why are you complaining?'

'I don't know. I guess it's because you still get to go into combat and you enjoy it, but I don't really enjoy combat when I have to go in with the ground troops. I can do it, and I know that it has to be done, but it's just not flying a fighter, and that is my one true love when it comes to combat.'

Kyri sighed and shook her head. 'Give it up, girl. You promised Troy that you wouldn't be a fighter jock, and he's not going to let you out of that promise, no matter how much the idea of commanding one of the new assault fighters makes you want to cream your jeans.'

Shahrrhi glared at Kyri, but couldn't help giggling at the way that she could and did use antiquated Earth slang that was so dirty that she'd never even consider saying something like that publicly when she was speaking in Llyriana. Of course, they were in their quarters, and all of them were still lying naked in the bed. 'So, are we up, or going to sleep?'

Troy's voice startled her, since she hadn't heard him return to the bed while she was distracted. 'Well, since I'm still up and you're awake, I think that I'll keep on the side of your good graces by completing my previously assigned mission, my lovely little flame. Unless you'd rather sleep?'

Shahrrhi shook her head, sticking her tongue out at him. 'Oh, no. You're not getting out of this that easily. I can't fly, but I can still enjoy doing one thing with you that even fighting the bloody Consortium doesn't ever taint.' She pulled him down to her, and they spent a long time making out and making love before she finally went to sleep sprawled across Troy's chest.

Lisa whispered, 'Well, what was so important that you had them wake you in the middle of the night, but we're still in bed?'

'The first fighter talons have made contact with some kind of strange looking ships that are obviously one man fighters being used for scouting and recon. They are ghosting them and going to follow them back to their main fleet so that we know exactly where to find them.'

Kyri gave him a strange look. 'And what makes you think that they won't just stay out and keep the enemy fleets under surveillance or patrol to make sure no fleet is closing with their own, or whatever their orders have them doing?'

'The scans show that they are using chemical fuel to power their ships engines on their fighters. That kind of limits the duration of their life support, power, and things like that. And since they aren't any larger than a heavy small fighter...'

Kyri nodded, knowing that Troy was right. Ships that small would need to be rotated in and out of combat to allow crew changes, refueling, and rearming. And to top off their life support. They wouldn't stay out longer than a few days at most, especially in such high stress conditions when they needed to be alert and ready to respond to any threat in an instant in order to alert their fleet of any impending danger or drastic changes in the deployment or behavior of the enemy fleets. Even with a pair of them switching off shifts, two single man fighters could only maintain proper combat vigilance for so long before their pilots needed some time off to recover from the stresses of their mission.

Troy smiled, then kissed her. 'Get some sleep, love. We don't need to be up for at least five hours. By then, we may at least know the general heading that we'll have to take to rendezvous with this fleet and check them out.'

Kyri grinned. 'That's why you boffed her brains out tonight. You didn't want her to realize that we might actually encounter another group of humans, or at least they're humanoids, who aren't related to any of the Clans in any way, and who are actually searching for Earth.'

Troy shrugged. 'She is kind of excitable, and meeting new people and doing things that she never dreamed about doing when she was younger do still tend to really make her...'

'Hyper as hell.' There were several giggles from the wives who were still awake as Lisa interjected exactly what all of them were thinking.

Jaehla sighed softly. 'Will you please just knock her up already so that she'll stop worrying that her little sisters are having more babies than she is? All we ever hear her talking about once she's ready to breed again is how many times you've already gotten either Alicia or Fleur pregnant since they became wives. And even I think that Alicia is really pushing it having twenty pregnancies in the last sixty years, Troy. What a Fluff.'

'Don't worry, dears. She's not as bad when she gets to take out some of her frustration and aggression in combat, and we'll have plenty of that soon enough. And I'll make sure that there are more buns in her little oven long before we rendezvous with the rest of the Clan in about six more months. OK?'

Kyri nodded. 'Cool. Just make sure that when you do knock up the little spitfire, you also take care of Jaehla. Some of the wives are starting to complain because her youngest is already almost six.'

Jaehla blushed, glaring at Kyri. 'I want to fight, too.'

Lisa laughed. 'Tough it out, hon. You knew the rules while you were waiting to join the household, and you knew the chances of having twins with him. I can't help it that you have twins almost as often as the Fluffs do. Sue says that the pregnancies aren't affecting your health at all, so do your share of the other stuff as well as the fighting, because if all you were interested in was being near Troy and fighting, you should have stayed in the bodyguard.'

'I know, I know. It's just that I've already had SIX sets of twins in ten pregnancies.'

Kyri laughed. 'The girls aren't going to cut you any slack on that account, Jaehla. Both Lisa and Dana have twins about as often as you do, and both of them fight a lot. But both of them have already been pregnant twelve times in the last sixty years, and you've only had to go through it ten times. You'll get used to it, but we do have the schedule for a reason. Not only for replacing our lost and building our numbers.'

Jaehla nodded. 'OK. At least it's easier to put up with the Fluffs when I have a kid sucking at my tit. The rest of the time they simply drive me crazy when I'm stuck having to help Sara around the household.'

Kyri smiled and nodded. 'Which is why she and the wives who can deal with it all of the time stay at home and run the household, and wives like us get to go play with Troy and kill things to take out our aggressions and relieve our pent up stress.'

The wives nodded, then decided that they'd better get some sleep, because Troy was going to drag all of them out of bed and start their day long before some of them were going to want to get up if they didn't stop talking. They could tell by his breathing that he had been ignoring them and was already asleep beneath the redhead on his chest. And if their scouts had found the ships that they were looking for, it could be a very long and eventful day as they tried to work their way past the enemy fleets and get to the Colonial fleet before the enemy found them and wiped them out.

Persephone was staring at her sensor scans perplexedly. The numbers just didn't add up, and something was off. It just didn't feel right. Finally, she called Heracles, asking him to come down to her lab because she had something that she needed to discuss with him. She was surprised to see him walk into her lab less than twenty minutes later.

'What is so important, Pers?'

'I'm not sure, really. I keep going over the long range scans that we've been doing of the area that the two enemy fleets ahead of us and to our flank are in, and the numbers just don't seem to be adding up. Something is off. Something is distorting the area so that the scans just don't quite come out like they should.'

'Something? That's not very specific.'

She looked up at him and rolled her eyes. 'I can't give you anything more specific than that right now, Heracles. If I could, I would have called you and told you what I had discovered, not that I had a problem and needed to go over it with you.'

He held up his hands and smiled placatingly. 'OK, don't take it personally. It wasn't an attack. Consider it a request for further information. Clarification of your problem, if you will.'

Persephone smiled, nodded, and felt a bit embarrassed at her reaction. 'Well, the scans come up almost perfect, but there is a distortion of some type that I've never encountered before. The trouble is that you can only detect the distortion by running a comparison of the continuous scans of a region, and then you have to take the scans through several different levels of...' she looked up, smiling as she realized that she was about to get too technical, and sighed. 'Through, um, several levels of manipulation and correlation, and when the computer finally runs through the numbers, you find that there was something there about sixteen hours ago that wasn't showing up on your scans.'

'Could it be enemy vessels that we can't detect, or possibly the Tryx that the enemy seems to be so worried about?'

Persephone shrugged, looking thoughtful. 'I don't know. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that it was more likely that the distortion is caused by these unknown Tryx, since they are obviously using some type of cloaking devices to hide their ships if the enemy is investing as much time, effort, and energy into detection as all of their equipment indicates. Their own sensors wouldn't have picked up anything at all at this range, including their own fleets, or they would have picked us up by now by following one or more of our recon flights back to their base.'

'OK. So we can detect and track the invisible ship, and they can't.' His face showed that he was hopeful, and that the idea made him very happy.

'It's not A ship, and we can't track them. It took me sixteen hours working on one data stream to detect where they WERE, Heracles. I'd have to notice another area of minor distortion and then run it through the same analysis before I could rule out some kind of minor malfunction or interference on the sensor data.'

Heracles looked considerably less enthusiastic at that information. 'Look at the bright side, Heracles. This shows that someone IS out there, and if they are, they may have heard your message and be trying to see if we are being truthful or if their enemy is laying a trap for them.'

'That won't help us, since it would take an enormous fleet to even try to give us a chance to save the civilians. One or two scout ships aren't going to help us much at all.'

She shook her head. 'You don't understand. I can't tell you exactly how many ships there are, or exactly where they are, but I can tell you about what their total mass is, and how much space they were actually distorting, so that gives us an estimate of how many ships, given normal spacing to avoid collisions and allow them to respond to an attack if they are discovered. I doubt that their systems are sophisticated enough to actually hide their ships from physical view simply because that would make them easier to detect by other methods.'

Heracles looked at her. 'OK. So what are we talking about here? A few ships, a small fleet, what?'

'By my calculations, the total mass is several times that of our entire fleet, including all of the industrial and supply ships, and the agro ships.'

Heracles stared at her. 'That is a LOT of mass.'

'The distortion is more compact than our fleet, indicating that it's taking less space because they are flying in more of a formation, which indicates that it could be military vessels flying in some kind of defensive formation.'

'OK so far, and I have no way to dispute your logic.' Not that I'd WANT to, he thought to himself. A fleet that might be interested in helping us might allow us to get at least some of the colonists out of this trap alive. Put them onto the ships and let them leave the same way that they had come, leaving enough of us behind to make the enemy think that we were all still here and keep them coming after us while the others made their escape.

'If this is nothing but warships, I'd say that the fleet would have to be at least two or three dozen ships that are each close to the size of the Galactica, with some smaller ships as escorts and a larger number of smaller ships operating out in small groups as scouts. All of that is inferential data from the scans and analysis, though. It's kind of like looking at ancient X-ray diffraction patterns and trying to estimate the size and mass of a particular atom or molecule. I can't actually tell you how many ships there are without having some way of knowing how much mass each ship had and how their formations normally were organized.'

Heracles smiled. 'That doesn't matter. If they're just willing to help us, we can save at least most of the civilians if they are able to hold enough of us on their ships. We may have to abandon our fleet and let them take us to safety and drop us off on some world that is out of the combat zone.'

'You can't be serious. How would we ever find Earth without out fleet?'

'I don't know. All that I do know is that if it's the only way to save our people, then we should consider it very strongly. We certainly can't find Earth if we're dead, while our descendants could build lives and eventually go back into space and resume our quest if they are so inclined, even if we do lose most of our current resources and technology.'

'You're assuming a lot about the unknown Tryx, aren't you? What makes you so sure that they aren't coming in such force simply to aid us and allow us to escape and go on our way?'

Heracles sighed. 'Even if there were three dozen of their ships the size of the Galactica and five smaller ships for every one of them, they would still be totally outnumbered by the combined enemy fleets. And what makes you think that they are actually trying to aid us? For all we know, they are simply making sure that this isn't a trap, and they have no intention of even revealing themselves to us while they simply sit back and watch their enemy lose at least some time and some forces destroying our entire fleet when we aren't even what they think we are.'

Persephone stared at him in shock. 'You're kidding. Why would you even think that someone might do something like that?'

'Because it would make perfect sense militarily. Scouting proves that this isn't just some elaborate hoax or trap, without revealing your presence. And if we had a fleet that was clearly as outnumbered as they would have to be, I certainly couldn't justify risking that entire fleet's destruction simply to save some refugees who weren't even our allies or anything to us. If we were at war with the Cylons and someone was getting killed by a dozen Cylon base stars, I certainly wouldn't risk losing this ship and putting all of the people that we protect at risk just to save them by fighting a battle that I could not possibly win.'

Pers shook her head. 'We don't know the dynamics, thought processes, or anything else about either side in this conflict, and you're already trying to outthink them and figure out how they would respond? That is insane. For all you know, their enemy is so feared by the Consortium simply because they are vastly technologically superior and they can cause an immense amount of destruction to fleets that outnumber them and outmass them by several orders of magnitude.'

Heracles smiled. 'I would hope that was the case, for all of our sakes, Pers. But the realist in me just won't let me believe that we could actually be that lucky. Time will tell, but I just don't want to get my hopes up too much. If some things don't go our way really soon, we'll all probably be dead within another handful of centahrs.' He looked at her reassuringly. 'Just let me know if you come up with anything else, OK? If we keep working and don't give up, we may get out of this eventually. And who knows? Perhaps you are right and these Tryx will be the samaritans who help us out in our time of need, against all the odds and all logic.'

Pers shook her head in wonder as she watched the commander leave her lab. That poor man was going to drive himself nuts trying to look at every single thing in his life from every possible perspective if he didn't learn to trust that some things just seemed to work out for the best, despite all of the odds against it. After all, hadn't they evaded the Cylons finally, after all this time, and actually survived countless yarhns of being hunted by the relentless Cylons? And what were the odds of one battlestar and the few remaining colonists who could find transport actually managing to survive for as long as they had in their battered and aging ships, even without the need to use so much of their valuable resources just to keep fighting against the enemy for as long as they had?

Karg was getting restless as the reports of failure continued to come in to him. They had failed to find this helpless fleet, and he was starting to think that maybe those who had thought that this was just another Demon trap were correct, after all. They had moved the entire fleet forward twice in the past day, waiting each time for the scouts to reach their predetermined locations and release the sensor drones to let them determine if anyone was moving in the area that they were searching. There were some very small sensor ghosts at the limits of detection, but nothing that warranted a search. Only very small craft could move around that quietly on the edge of their detection limit, and there was no reason for small craft to be out there unless it was to ambush them. There were too few, and they were too small, so it had to be interference with the sensors.

One of the techs came running up to him, jabbering excitedly in one of the obscure slave tongues. Karg glared at him. 'What is it? Speak one of the real tongues, you jabbering grahl.'

The tech paled, then nodded. 'Sorry, sir. I was so excited that I wasn't aware of what language I was thinking in, sir. We have sensor reports of movement along the very edge of our scanning range, sir.'

'I'm aware of the sensor ghosts that you've been having to deal with. Ignore them.'

'They aren't ghosts, sir. They appear to be small ships. Some sort of scouts, and they appear to be keeping us under surveillance from extreme range, sir. We finally got a good signal when two of them came up together to one point, and two others started to move from a different point along our path, returning along the very same trajectory that the first two originated from, sir.'

Karg looked at the tech. 'How sure are you of this?'

'I am certain, sir. The slight differences in their trajectory would allow for the difference between their points along our path and a slightly different destination. One that would allow for a slow moving ship to be overtaken by one that was moving more rapidly.'

'How could they be overtaking these imaginary other ships if they are moving more slowly?'

'They appear to be able to accelerate, sir. They simply move more slowly near our sensors to avoid detection and give off a weaker energy signature that blends into the background. I'm sure that one of the local fleets would have missed it, sir, because their own sensors aren't the current generation military sensors that are on all of the dedicated warfleets, sir.'

Karg nodded, smiling to himself. 'Then perhaps these enemies have finally made a fatal mistake.' He began punching buttons on his command chair, then sat back and began issuing orders. 'Launch bay, I want a full squadron of fighters to be launched very quietly. They are to move around in a large arc slowly and without using much energy or speed, making it look as if they are simply flying a standard mission. I want them to move around behind some possible enemy scouts and cut them off. If they run, I want to know which direction they are trying to run in before they are destroyed.'

Upon receipt of confirmation of his orders, Karg sat back and nodded his head in satisfaction. Now it was time to be the first to reach this kill. To the very coldest, watery muck of hell with his orders to maintain his search pattern. If he had a viable target, he wasn't going to take orders from some stupid Charkal just because he was senior in rank. This was his region to patrol and protect, and he was going to get first blood on this prey and claim all of the rewards that went with being first to the kill. Even if this fleet was as small and weak as their commander claimed them to be, it would still allow him two or three full cycles with his females when he received his share of the reward for eliminating the enemy and reclaiming their stolen resources. Every Grak knew that all of the Consortium's resources were vital, for only with their resources being kept secure could their clutches mature and thrive.

Hermes looked at his scanner as the light blinked insistently for his attention. The computer analysis indicated that the ships that had gone beyond scanner range right after he had started his vigil on the enemy fleet were finally returning, but now they were converging in small groups from all directions, and the implication of all of them just happening to choose his location for a rendezvous point weren't good.

'Herm.'

'Yeah, I see it, Jaxon. They must have picked us up somehow, and now they've set an elaborate trap to catch us. If we run for help, they have a vector back to the fleet, and even if we lose them, just giving them the general direction cuts down on our odds of survival.'

A harsh laugh greeted him over his comm. 'Our odds of survival are worse than my odds of retiring from my pyramid winnings, old buddy.'

Hermes smiled, knowing that Jaxon was the worst pyramid player that he had ever met. He couldn't play well, he couldn't keep a blank face, and he couldn't figure the odds worth spit. 'Well, we can try to give a broad beam encoded burst to warn the Galactica about this, and to let them bring in any further scouts for this fleet at their own risk and discretion. Then I figure that we'll haul ass out of here on some random vector away from both this fleet and the Galactica, making it look like we're trying to get back and warn them without really breaking radio silence or giving away their location.'

'Let's hope it works. In any event, we'll give them some kind of warning and do what we can to lead these guys as far off track as possible before getting into a dogfight with them.'

Hermes keyed in the commands, and saw the console light up, signaling that his message had been sent on an encoded burst, but out in a broad beam that covered a lot of space away from the enemy fleet, including many of the small fighters that were now trying to converge on his location and cut off his escape. As soon as the message was out, he lit off his thrusters, knowing that if they were being boxed in and ambushed like this, the enemy already knew they were there. Right now, high speed and lots of maneuvering room counted for a lot more than stealth, and if he survived this coming encounter, the data from his scanners would prove invaluable on the capabilities of the small fighters that the enemy used in combat, and might allow the other fighters from the Galactica to perform much better by planning ahead and taking those limits into account.

Kandi swore under her breath as the small unknown fighters that were under surveillance began to take evasive maneuvers and broadcast in coded burst transmissions. They were heading out into deep space, only she knew that they weren't headed for their own fleet on that vector because the only thing that was coming in on that particular vector was the scout talon that contained her base ship. And the last thing that she and her wingmates wanted was for them to lead the Consortium fleet directly to them so that they had to be taken on in a heads up confrontation that would allow the enemy to broadcast a warning to the other fleets in the area that there really was a Clan fleet here. The other fleets would think that it was a trap, converge, and then go looking for the Clan and anyone else in one large force that would be hell for them to stop and still claim useful salvage of more than scrap and debris.

'Kraghlar krillen!'

Kandi smiled as her copilot swore more violently and vocally. 'Yeah, I know. Murphy's Law. They would pick the one vector that would lead the bloody Graks right back to our talon if we don't stop them from finding out exactly what is out on that line of travel.'

Her crew chief laughed. 'Power 'em up and ready the lasers?'

'Yeah. Let's try to do this really quick, quiet, and dirty. How many of the talon are in range to help us take out any fighters that get near these guys?'

'Two other claws.'

'That should be enough. There aren't more than forty or fifty enemy fighters coming in on them. We can still take them out quickly and keep them from really making a lot of noise to let their commander know what is going on. Right?'

Cindi laughed. 'Already got the jammers screaming, boss. Everything that isn't on our protected wavelengths is hashed to hell and back already, including the repeating message on short bursts that those two unknown fighters are putting out.'

'Then tell them to form up and get ready to go for the bag limit, Chief. We're now clear to officially start headhunting. And we want some confirmed trophies for our hull by the time that we get back to the ship.'

'Aye, sir. We'll hit 'em hard and show them what we can do. They won't even know that they've been hit before they die, sir.'

Kandi nodded, smiling to herself. This was going to be a lot of fun, and they'd really see how well the improved stealth systems worked as they pushed for enough speed to cover the two fleeing fighters while they were still within the sensor range of both the enemy fleet and the converging fighters.

Kirrin saw the enemy fighters suddenly ignite their engines and begin to move rapidly away from the fleet, looking as if they were running for their lives. He smiled, smelling blood and fear in the air as he realized that the grahls had discovered that they were being stalked and had bolted. The hunt was on now, and fortunately, his orders gave him the rare opportunity to have some sport with his prey before pouncing and killing them. They had to have a good vector, and that meant giving them a few minutes to try to escape out of range of the fleet's sensors to see if they altered course toward their true objective. He issued an order, and the ships in his formation altered course to converge on the new vector that the enemy was taking. He had fifty ships with him. There was no way that the enemy could escape the slowly tightening ring around them, and no way that they could ever possibly defeat enough of his force to survive. They were dead already, and they didn't even know it. Silly grahls should learn not to mess with predators if they wanted to live.

Kandi held off her attack as long as she could. Finally, the crew chief gave her the thumbs up and indicated that the rest of the ships that were from her talon were now moving into position to jam the frequencies and prevent any ships that they didn't get in their first pass from reporting what had happened back to their superiors.

Things were getting close now. The Consortium heavy fighters were converging from all directions on the smaller fighters that were fleeing, and she could only take out those from three angles with the ships that were with her. That would allow her to give the fleeing ships an opening that was relatively free of enemy ships, but there would still be three or four left ahead of them that were almost in their current trajectory. If those two ships didn't get lucky, they could be destroyed before she could get her claw back around to protect them.

'Everybody hold onto something and prepare for some nasty bumps. We're going in hot and going to do a reversal to come up on their six and fly cover for them. I want the rest of the squadron to go ahead and stay on the enemy until they are all wiped out, and then remain on station and observe the enemy fleet for any responses. My claw will fly cover for the unknown craft and lead them back to our base if they manage to survive this skirmish.'

Hermes almost had a heart attack as something as large as a shuttle went streaking past his ship within ten metrons without even setting off his proximity or collision alarms. He did stop breathing for a moment as multiple alarms suddenly went off in response to the sudden eruption of massive firepower from the "shuttle". His eyes widened in shock as he realized that the "shuttle" was some sort of armed ship that was faster than his viper, invisible to his scanners, and more heavily armed than his entire squadron. The scans indicated that the lasers that were firing from that small ship were strong enough to damage the Galactica even through full positive shields.

His attention was drawn away from his scanner as he had to suddenly execute some evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision with one of the known enemy ships that did show up on his scanners, firing his turbo lasers at the ship as they converged. He let out a shout of joy as he saw the enemy fighter explode and barely avoided flying through the debris. His comm was filled with static so heavy that he could barely communicate with Jaxon, but they managed to take out another two of the four ships that were ahead of them before passing by the last one. A quick look at his scanner showed that there were five ships really close to his position and closing, as well as the one that had overflown and was trying to come back and make another run at him. Before it could complete the turn and bring him into its sights, it suddenly exploded, almost totally vaporized.

He checked his scanner more closely, and saw that of the fifty enemy fighters that were there just a few moments ago, only ten were left. They were flying around erratically, and as he watched, one of them disappeared from his scanner.

'Uh, Herm, do you see what I see?'

'Affirmative. Frak, whoever that is, they sure hit hard and fast.'

'They're moving up to flank us, Herm. What should we do?'

'Do what they say. Follow our orders, which specifically told us NOT to fire on ships that we could see with our eyes but did not show up on our scanners unless they fired on us first. And I'd say that them wiping out the ships that WERE firing on us does kind of show that they aren't wanting us dead. At least, not yet.'

An incoming comm signal suddenly appeared on his screen, and Hermes almost went into shock as he saw a very beautiful, diminutive human female on his screen. Well, maybe not quite human. She was very slender, and her ears were pointed. But she smiled and spoke to him in Basic.

'Please stop your signals and maintain long range radio silence. We are jamming your frequencies anyway, so nobody can hear them. All you are doing is increasing your risk of the enemy finding us by homing in on the jamming.'

Hermes did as he was instructed, and a few seconds later, the signal stopped coming from Jaxon's ship as well. 'I'm Lieutenant Hermes, of the Battlestar Galactica. Thank you for keeping those other ships from killing us.'

She smiled. 'Your thanks are not necessary. My crew has never passed up the chance to kill more Graks. Please, follow us on a heading that is fifteen degrees to starboard and four degrees positive inclination from your current vector. And please do not fire your weapons at us. If we were truly hostile, you wouldn't be talking to us or anyone else right now.'

Hermes nodded to himself, flipping the safety over his fire buttons on his lasers just to make sure that there wasn't any chance of an accidental firing. Whatever else was said, her last comment took the prize for the biggest understatement that he had ever heard. One blast of those powerful lasers would vaporize his entire fighter so well that he wasn't sure that they would be able to find the ions.

He sighed. 'May I at least ask who you are, where we are to be taken, and how you treat your prisoners of war?'

Lilting female laughter greeted his ears, and he heard other people talking in the background in some musical language and something that sounded like Basic, but their conversation had some words that he didn't recognize at all. Most of the voices sounded female.

'I am Kandi, commander of this squadron. You are not our prisoners, exactly. Let's just say that the leader of our Clan would like to meet with you and discuss some things with you about your current situation. As far as where we are taking you, we're returning to our base ship, which is called the Kehhn ka Khyrr-mehngkren.'

Hermes shook his head in confusion. 'The what? That last part didn't make any sense at all to me, and sounded like some foreign language.'

'The Blade of the Phoenix. That is the code name given to whatever attack vessel our leader uses as his base of operations when he isn't on our Home Ship. That is the ship that my squadron is based on. You are the guests of Clan Phoenix, and you are under our protection for as long as you remain guests.'

Hermes felt his hopes sink a bit as he heard her say that their base of operations was a ship. That probably meant that they didn't have a real base or a world that they controlled in this region of space, so there couldn't be very many of them. They had known that they would be rescued by a fleet, but hearing that it was their base of operations wasn't necessarily a good thing. Those in the flight room who had thought that only a war between a fixed government and raiders or pirates could last for very long when there wasn't some kind of base of operations to supply their forces had obviously been correct. And despite the firepower and size of their own fighters, which were significantly greater than his own, there wouldn't be enough of them to realistically help save the Colonial fleet and the Galactica. Not against the massive fleets that were following them.

They had been flying almost long enough to have actually reached the Galactic on their overtake intercept when he suddenly saw ships starting to appear in front of him. Nothing was visible on his instrumentation, and as they kept moving, the ships began to grow larger and larger in size, and he realized how large some of them were for him to be able to see them at this distance. There were hundreds of them, and near the center of the fleet were almost three dozen larger ships. Ships that were almost as large as the Galactica. More ships and firepower than the combined fleets that the twelve colonies had been able to build and maintain at the height of their thousand yarhn war with the Cylon Empire.

'Please cut your engines and let us tractor you in so that you can land on maneuvering thrusters.'

Hermes obeyed without thinking, still gazing in awe at the huge ship that they were now approaching. A large bay was open, and he could see ships in it, but no runway for landings, and no signs of launch tubes anywhere. How in the world did they ever manage to land damaged craft or do anything else without launch bays? Using tractor beams would take forever, and the ships that were launched would have almost no acceleration curve at all to build from, so they would use a LOT of fuel just getting up to cruising speed on their own.

He watched in amazement as the ships beside him just slowly hovered into the bay and landed, taking his ship down gently between them. He hardly felt the landing at all, and waited inside his ship as he saw the doors to the bay close on his monitor. When they were finally closed, he noticed that there were a group of armored people with arms waiting near where they had landed.

'Please disembark from your ship, and I will take you over and introduce you to those who are waiting for you.'

Hermes nodded, opening his cockpit and leaving his helmet in his fighter when he saw that there were people working on other ships in there without helmets or any kind of visible suits on. Evidently, they weren't worried about a hull breach, and he wasn't all that worried himself as he thought of how thick the blast doors had been when he had gone through that hangar door himself.

A female that he recognized came walking up to him, smiling at him as she greeted him. 'Please, come with me, Lieutenant Hermes.' He nodded, following her as he continued to admire her and go over her appearance. She was about one point six metrons high, very slender, and she had startling gold eyes. He was about to ask her about her ears and her appearance, and how she spoke Basic, when he was abruptly confronted by a very large, ugly warrior armed with a rifle, knives, some sort of swords that he had never seen the likes of before, and a pistol.

'Halt! Weapons were not authorized.'

Before he could say anything, Jaxon was drawing his blaster and leveling it at the huge ugly thing in front of them from the other side. He stared in shock as a small male who looked a lot like Kandi suddenly became a blur. Before anyone could move or do anything at all, a sword had appeared and the blaster in Jaxon's hand had been cut in half, leaving him with a totally useless weapon.

A booming voice cut across the hangar. 'Ski! Kraall-cha!' All movement stopped immediately at the tone of command, and even Jaxon turned to look and see who or what had made that sound.

'I know that Jahrl trains his troops better than that, Sstihm.'

The large, ugly trooper bowed. 'My apologies, Kohl-garh. The bodyguard were not the only ones worried by your refusal to disarm the "guests" that you brought aboard.'

Hermes blinked repeatedly as a tall giant who was just over two metrons high came walking steadily closer to them. He was huge, being wide and thick to match his height, and he was very solidly built. There were two knives hanging from his waist and two very long swords hanging across his back. He was followed by two smaller males who looked like Kandi, but who were dressed and armed like the giant. He was still staring and trying to think clearly when the giant stopped in front of them.

'Kohl-garh, this is Lieutenant Hermes of the Battlestar Galactica.' Kandi turned to him and smiled sweetly again. 'Lieutenant Hermes, this is my father, Troy, leader of Clan Phoenix.'

Hermes nodded, then swallowed. 'Uh, sir, I am glad to meet you. Please forgive me if I don't know your customs, but I'm just a warrior and a fighter pilot, and I'm not really used to dealing with civilians or leaders.'

Troy laughed. 'That's OK. I'm just a warrior as well. When it comes to anything like politics or business, my wives usually handle that stuff so that they don't have to live with any of my mistakes.' His grin let Hermes know that he was joking to some extent, but Hermes was still stuck on the word "wives". And the word "father". He had no problem at all processing and correlating the word "warrior" when he looked at the armed giant who was standing in front of him.

Troy smiled. 'If you don't mind, we'd like to have our doctors take a quick look at both of you and run a few medical scans to determine your race. You look human, and you did mention Earth in your transmission that your leader sent out at first. We're just curious about your species and how you might be related to the humans from Earth.'

'You know of Earth?'

Troy smiled over at the other pilot. 'I was born there, son. At least that is what we called our planet. It's been a very long time since I've been there. And we have no way of knowing if your Earth and mine are the same planet until we run the tests.'

'We're hoping to find Earth, and the lost colony. The lost thirteenth tribe of Kobol. Maybe they haven't been found and wiped out by the Cylons, and we can join them and live normal lives on a planet again without simply roaming through space. If your technology and capabilities are any indication of what your planet can do...'

'They're not. As I said, I haven't been to Earth in a long time. When I left, your own ships would have been much more highly technologically advanced than anything that our planet could make.'

Hermes looked confused. 'How is that possible?'

'Some humans were abducted for slaves, and we didn't like that idea, so we revolted, and we've been fighting those who tried to enslave us and kill the entire human race ever since. We've used their technology and improved upon it. I'm not sure what level of technology there is on Earth now, or even if anyone is still alive on the planet.'

'If you've only been gone as long as your lifetime, then Earth couldn't be very much more advanced in their technology than they were when you were abducted, right?'

Troy shrugged and smiled sadly. 'I have no idea, Lieutenant. As I said, it's been a very long time, and the coordinates and the directions back to Earth have been lost to us for a very long time as well, so none of the Clans has ever found it that I'm aware of.'

Jaxon looked confused. The man standing in front of him could not possibly be more than a hundred yarhns old unless he was really young looking for his age. Even then, he could not be more than a hundred and fifty yarhns old. There were no visible signs of aging at all. 'How long could you have possibly been gone? Fifty, maybe sixty yarhns?'

'I'm not sure how long a yarhn is. And before we start worrying about trying to solve that problem, just let me tell you that I haven't seen Earth in the time that it would take our planet to revolve around our sun almost six thousand, five hundred, and thirty three times. Our own calendar is different, so it's only been five thousand, four hundred and fifty four Clan years since I was last on Earth.'

Hermes shook his head in disbelief. 'That is impossible. Nobody lives that long.'

Jaxon nodded. 'And you said that you were there when the revolt started, so that would mean that you would have had to have been at war with your enemy for several thousands of your years.'

Troy nodded. Jaxon shook his head. 'That's impossible. Our own colonies were twelve major worlds with many subsidiary worlds that helped supply us and trade with us, and we only managed to fight a war for a thousand yarhns before the Cylons finally overcame us by treachery. A vast star empire would have overwhelmed your worlds and eradicated you or forced to you become wanderers among the stars, looking for shelter and sanctuary so that you could finally find a place to settle down and begin your lives over.'

Troy sighed. 'The Consortium is a group of seventy five different star empires that joined together, and they have been constantly expanding their territory beyond the boundaries of their individual empires for the last hundred and fifty thousand years. Their sphere of influence takes up a large percentage of this galaxy, though not as much as it did five thousand years ago, and at least two of the neighboring galaxies.'

Hermes and Jaxon went silent as they realized how vast an empire the enemy was that was trying to destroy them actually controlled. Instead of a few star systems, this enemy controlled several entire galaxies. Hermes whispered, 'A hundred and fifty thousand years under a single civilization?'

Troy nodded. 'They fought my ancestors about ninety thousand years ago. It took them ten thousand years to defeat the Tryx, and another five thousand to defeat all of the systems that were allied with the Tryx. That war ended seventy five thousand years ago, when the Graks and the others thought that they had killed all of the Tryx in the universe and completely wiped out their gene pool. They feared them so much that they were still killing any species that MIGHT be Tryx, or descended from them, on sight when they found us. But in our case, they didn't learn that we were descendants of the Tryx until it was too late. The Tryx who escaped from their war landed on Earth and bred into the gene pool with the humans who lived there, so now the entire planet is related to the Tryx in some fashion. When we discovered these things, we had no choice but to revolt and fight for our freedom, because if they had ever discovered our ancestry, they would have used a bomb to destroy our sun and the Earth along with it. So now we are in a war that can only end with the extinction of all humans, or the extinction of all of the member races of the Consortium who are trying to kill us simply because we exist and they fear us.'

'That is why they started firing on us as soon as they saw us. Because of our distinct similarities and resemblance to you, they thought that we were humans and we were part of your Clan.'

Troy shook his head and smiled. 'They thought that you were members of one of the Clans, but they knew that you weren't part of this Clan. They know our ship types, our armor, and our Clan symbol on sight in every area that we've ever started operating in since the beginning of the war. There are over fifty different Clans right now, and there will be even more as they continue to multiply and grow.'

'How can your people survive, much less multiply, without any planets of your own to support you and provide the infrastructure and technology that you need to maintain your standard of living and the ships that you have, much less repair battle damage, improve them, or replace them when they age and wear out?'

Troy smiled. 'We are constantly moving in space, so they can't find us. And as you saw yourselves, they have more than a bit of difficulty detecting most of our ships with their sensors. We take what we need from our enemy, and we hurt him while we help our own people. We process, harvest, salvage, and recycle everything that we can from our own and the enemy forces, as well as from the planets and systems that the enemy controls. We conduct hit and run raids against their forces and planets, as well as doing as much to disrupt their shipping as we can.'

Jaxon looked at him in shock. 'And how much longer do you think that you and your clans can survive with them hunting you down so thoroughly, especially when your forces are so severely outnumbered?'

Troy smiled. 'Until we destroy the Consortium. However long that takes.'

Troy led the two of them down several corridors and into a room that was set up for a sick bay, but there were no signs that it was used often. Hermes looked at the place and shook his head. 'This all looks so immaculate.'

Troy nodded, smiling. 'Yeah, I know. It never seems quite right to me when I'm in here, either. It's just that we don't use the sick bay that often, and our doctors end up doing more research than anything, except when we're in actual combat and they end up dealing with some of the more severe wounds to save some time in the healing process and make things less painful for the wounded. Of course, there are some other species in the Clan that do suffer wounds that need treatment, so they do get practice treating them.'

A female came up to them, smiled, and said, 'Troy, what can I do for you?' Jaxon saw that she was young, and very beautiful. She had lightly tanned skin, dark eyes, long dark black hair, and was short. She also had twined red and black silk bands around her upper left arm.

'We have guests, and I need you to do some blood work and genetic profiles on them to see if they are actually related to humans. How long should that take?'

'Do you need complete profiles and sequences, or just comparison to determine if they are related to us, and if so, to what degree?'

'Just the comparison.'

'Ten minutes. I'll get started on them right away.'

Hermes watched in wonder as she got some small device that looked unusual, took a very tiny sample of blood from each of them, and then put the sample into another device that looked very much like a very sophisticated comp. They all sat down to wait for the results. When the thing beeped, she looked at the data and frowned for a moment, then hit more buttons and waited for another chime. When she saw the data, she smiled.

'They're related to humans, Troy. Distantly, but they are definitely related. They have a lot of the same genes, but there is some variation in even some of the most highly conserved genes in our genome. Indications are that they were related to humans, but diverged about a hundred thousand years ago. The most noticeable difference is that there is no sign of any of the Tryx warrior genes that Zwyl indicated were introduced into the human genome on Earth.'

Hermes looked at him curiously. 'Introduced? I don't understand.'

The doctor laughed. 'About eighty thousand years ago, a race known as the Tryx lost an intergalactic war, and survivors from their civilization took refuge on Earth. At the time, humans on the planet weren't very technologically advanced, so no records or legends remain on our planet to let anyone know that this happened in the distant past. There weren't enough of the Tryx to breed up their own population without having severe problems with inbreeding because of their limited gene pool, so they interbred with the humans, doing what they could with their own limited technology and capabilities to make their genes dominant, especially certain genes that would allow them to produce very strong warriors. In effect, they introduced certain dominant traits into a very large population in which they were a distinct minority.'

'So, your people on your planet lost their technology, the Tryx added their genes, and then what?'

'Then our people developed on their own until we were finally abducted by aliens and the survivors of their original modifications were able to revolt, kill their abductors, and start a war for our very survival once we learned that those who had abducted us would have a certain type of response and attempt to wipe out our entire species as soon as they learned what our genetics were.'

Both of the Colonial warriors stared at Troy in shock. Troy smiled, and it made both of them nervous as hell. Right then, Hermes was thinking that he would prefer to be staring down the barrel of a blaster held by Cylons while he was restrained and totally unarmed rather than face the man that he was standing in front of in combat.

'Even if they had changed enough to let them accept that we were no longer really the threat that they had made us out to be in their own minds, spending tens of thousands of years teaching their children that the most evil, heinous, and terrifying monsters in the galaxy were the Tryx, we knew that they would still try to kill us because we had been forced to undergo certain modifications before they knew who we were.'

'I don't understand. Modifications?'

Troy smiled at Hermes. The man was intelligent enough to already understand what he was being told, but his brain didn't want to believe or accept what he was hearing. 'Nanobots were introduced into our bodies to perform certain functions, augment certain systems, and to make sure that particular things didn't happen. The Tryx genes had already improved humans and made them able to survive things that those who didn't have enough of the genes, or at least enough of the right genes, could. After the nanobots were put into us, there were some rather dramatic changes. They boosted our strength, muscle density, reaction speed, immune systems, and altered many of our other characteristics, including our metabolism. We heal extremely fast, even without medical treatment, so that we can survive wounds that would easily kill an unaltered human, and we no longer age normally. Once we reach adulthood, most of the people in my Clan no longer age at all, and simply continue to live and function normally until they are killed in combat or by some accident.'

Hermes shook his head. 'That sounds unbelievable. Almost like some kind of magic. Are you saying that something like that could even be done to us?'

Troy shook his head. The doctor sighed. 'Well, yes and no. Without any of the Tryx genes in your own population, we're not sure exactly how well, or even if, your population could be transformed if they were given the nanobots. But we do know from transformations that have been done on other species, and on others in our own species, that even if we gave your population the nanobots, the females would survive the process, but the males could have problems or even be unable to be transformed at all. The initial transformations with the bots that are in our systems were really hard on the males, even though they had Tryx genes. Very few of the males survived, and those that did were typically very young. And even now, all of the species that have the nanobots have about three or four females born for every male. We would need to test to make sure how your species would be likely to respond to the treatment before we would even considering trying something like that with your people.'

Troy laughed. 'Don't worry, Lieutenant. Unlike the Consortium, we don't just take anyone that we capture, transform them with nanobots, and make them slave species to serve us. We have no intention of doing anything to harm your people so long as they are not a threat to us or humanity, and we certainly aren't wanting to alter your people with the nanobots.'

'So, now that you've run your tests and we know that we don't have Tryx genes, would it be possible to find some way to convince your enemies that we aren't a threat to them, and that we aren't the Tryx or Demons that they think we are?'

Troy shook his head and smiled sadly. 'I'm afraid that they don't exactly take chances of any kind when they think that someone may be related to the Tryx. They have, in the past, destroyed entire races that they found simply because they tested out similar to the Tryx. And while your DNA doesn't have Tryx genes, you do share the same basic genes as we do otherwise, and that would be enough for them to think that you are possibly some evolved form of the Tryx, or that you are related to us, and they would still try to kill all of you.'

Hermes shook his head, staring at Troy in shock and horror. 'Please, you can't let them do that. We have hundreds of thousands of civilians in the fleet, including all of our women and children. The entire surviving remnant of the twelve main planets of the Colonies. The Cylons didn't take any prisoners, other than to round us up and kill us. Other than a few outposts or small colonies that might have survived their notice and not been found because they were out beyond the fringes of our systems, we are all that is left of our entire race. The only others that we knew of were the lost thirteenth tribe that had gone to Earth, and even they were ancient, almost forgotten legends from the distant past. All of the rest of us are scattered, and barely surviving, or dead.'

There was whispering across the room, but Hermes couldn't hear what was being said, and wasn't even sure what language was being spoken. Troy smiled. 'Lehr, stop trying to see if I'm paying attention or I'll make sure that you get to try your hand at skateboarding during the boardings.'

Lehr and Kohrrhi laughed. 'Kohl-garh, you know that he WANTS to do that, so what kind of threat is that?'

Troy shrugged. 'OK, then if he doesn't behave, he WON'T get to go skateboarding when we board the enemy ships.'

Hermes looked at them as if they were all insane. 'You intend to BOARD the enemy ships? Are you insane?'

'The only way to take the ships at least relatively intact is to board them and kill the enemy. How do you think that we get our ships and build our fleets? We take them from the enemy, rebuild them while improving the weapons and armor, and then take the improved ships and go looking for more enemy ships to destroy. The process is a lot quicker and easier if we take the ships relatively intact. At least the larger ships. We don't use anything smaller than the battlecruisers any more unless we build them totally ourselves so that they are properly designed and constructed. We just destroy the smaller ships and then collect the debris as salvage and scrap for us to use in other construction. Raw materials, as it were.'

Jaxon looked confused. 'We know that the very large ships that they have in their fleet are called battleships, but what is a battlecruiser?'

Lehr laughed. 'The ships that are a bit larger than this one. About six kilometers long and two kilometers in diameter.'

Hermes looked confused. 'But if you only use the larger ships when you capture them, why is most of your fleet composed of the smaller ships? Most of the ships that we saw were either only about half as long as this one and about two thirds the diameter, or half that size and half their diameter.'

Troy smiled, and Hermes blood ran cold at the sight. 'This is the scouting element of my fleet. At least, for the part of my fleet that is with me. The rest of the fleet has many more of the larger ships in their formations, as well as more of the smaller ships that are half the size of this one. Though it looks like we may have to attack at least one of the fleets that is after your own fleet before any of the other ships from my fleet arrive.'

'That doesn't sound good. Even with the immense firepower that we saw, your small ships don't stand much of a chance against the larger ships in that fleet that we were shadowing. And I'm still not sure how you would plan to actually land any troops on board their ships. These ships are way too small to actually carry enough transports to allow you to board them.'

Troy laughed. 'The scout ships that we use are designed to be able to attack on their own or defend themselves. Granted, they aren't as large and powerful as the ships that they are scouting for, but they are still capable of handling one Consortium war fleet on their own. Discounting the heavy cruisers and large scouts that are with us, and the fighters that they carry, we still have enough force to start an offensive on our own with just the troops on board this scout talon. That is a fairly small Grak fleet out there, considering how many battleships they put into the fleet. Fifteen battleships and seventy two battlecruisers is normal enough, but they should have at least three or four hundred heavy cruisers escorting a fleet that size, and even more light cruisers to act as scouts and screen their movements properly.'

Troy looked over at Kohrrhi. 'If we wanted to take them intact, how many shuttles of each type could we get onto their ships if we sent all of the strike assault shuttles against the bloody battlecruisers and split the rest of the fleet among the heavy strike assault shuttles?'

Kohrrhi began doing the calculations quickly. 'Sixty four hundred shuttles gives us enough to put almost ninety on each of the battlecruisers. We have extra troops, so we could load them heavy if you needed to, though you may need the troops on the battleships more. At standard loads, that would mean putting about forty four hundred troops on each battlecruiser.'

'Bring it up as close to ten thousand as you can without overloading the shuttles. Just the double loads would mean almost nine thousand per ship. What would that leave us for the battleships?'

'Sixty four hundred shuttles, so about four hundred and twenty five per battleship. At standard loads, that would put forty two thousand, five hundred troops per ship. But that would leave us with almost no support other than the transports, and they would already be down by about twenty percent of their normal load if we needed to put more troops somewhere.'

'We can risk that and have some of the shuttles leave, if necessary, and return to the ships for another load of troops to either reinforce them or to assault another fleet and keep them busy while the rest of us finish up. It's not like the fighters and assault fighters can't protect the fleet and do what they can to keep another fleet from coming to rescue this one once we begin the first strike.'

Kohrrhi nodded. 'Yeah, and we still have the rest of the fleet coming up on our current position, so it's not as if we can't start the dance and lead them where we want on the dance floor.'

'Tell Jason to go ahead and start making plans for that to happen, Kohrrhi. We all know that we're going to have to board them sooner or later, but I want to make sure that we get them positioned and have the rest of the fleet set to take advantage of the situation as it develops if we can. I want to make sure that we take out all four fleets that we know of. That would definitely make an impact on their presence in this one particular sector.'

Hermes was staring at Troy in shock. Finally, he managed to say, 'Exactly how many ships do you have, and how many of these shuttles that will attack the enemy ships?'

'Each of our carriers carries two hundred of each small craft type right now. Heavy fighters, which are six man craft. Assault fighters, which are the ten man craft that escorted your ships back to us. Strike assault shuttles, which are going to carry a hundred troops each, plus the crew and security forces, over to the enemy battlecruisers. Heavy strike assault shuttles, which are going to carry a hundred troops each, plus the crew, security forces, and extra munitions, over to the enemy battleships. And we're holding our transports in reserve, in case we need to use those troops somewhere else later.'

Hermes shook his head. 'So this ship carries four hundred fighters, half of them the size of the huge fighters that we saw earlier, and six hundred shuttles? How large are the shuttles?'

Lehr smiled. 'The strike assault shuttles are about one and a half times as long as the fighters that you saw. The heavy strike assault shuttles are about two and a half times as long. Both of them are larger in diameter as well. The transports are about four times as long and much larger in diameter, since they are designed to carry a large number of troops and munitions at the same time.'

Jaxon shook his head. 'There is no way that you could fit that many fighters and other small craft onto a ship of this size. Just the number of launch bays and landing bays would eat into your available space so much that there wouldn't be room for anything else.'

Troy looked at Hermes. 'Your message that your commander sent out said that his forces were limited to what his ship could carry, and the ship itself, of course. All of the civilian ships were almost defenseless against a properly armed warship, for all intents and purposes. So exactly how many fighters like yours can he send out to respond to an attack by one of the Consortium fleets if they manage to close and get into attack range of your main fleet?'

Hermes sighed, knowing that if this was some trap, the enemy would greatly benefit from knowing what he was about to say. 'Five hundred. Minus however many are out on long range recon patrols, and our missing two vipers. Probably almost four hundred and fifty vipers would launch against an all out attack on the fleet itself.'

Lehr looked stunned. 'Five HUNDRED?'

Jaxon nodded, smiling proudly. 'We managed to increase the available space in the launch bays and landing bays to more than double the standard load that a battlestar carries over the years, and to build even more vipers to take advantage of that space.'

Lehr grimaced. 'Just one Consortium battleship is going to launch at least a thousand of the fighters that attacked you. And the battlecruisers will launch about five hundred fighters each. Since this is a war fleet, they will probably have a full load of fighters on board, so you can double those numbers. You won't even have to worry about the twenty fighters that each heavy cruiser carries or the ten fighters that each light cruiser carries. They won't even worry about launching them for the attack, and will probably hold them in reserve to try to protect their fleet from any counterattack that you could try to mount.'

The two Colonial warriors looked at Troy and the others. 'Cylons could mount large attacks like that on us because they didn't need to worry about space for normal things like living, so they crowded their ships full of attack bombers. But even one of their base stars could only carry a thousand ships, and it had even less volume than one of the battlecruisers that you are talking about. How could they possibly have even more fighters on board a ship and still have room for the troops, since they are living and require all kinds of things that machines don't require for their own survival?'

Lehr shrugged. 'They've increased the standard complement for all of their warships in the last few hundred years, especially in areas where we are known to be operating. The standard security force on board a battlecruiser is now fifty thousand troops, in addition to the crew and normal internal security forces. And they only have about half of them in stasis at any time, and all of them are awake and fully functional whenever they know that they are in any type of situation that could result in combat with us. Battleships now have at least two hundred thousand combat troops awake at all times, and another two or three hundred thousand in stasis, except for when they think that there is a chance that they will be boarded. All of the troops on board are brought out of stasis automatically whenever their boarding alarms go off, and those troops will be awake and combat functional in about four to six hours, depending on what species they are and how well trained they are.'

Hermes shook his head. 'But you're talking about attacking the battlecruisers with only about nine thousand troops. You'll be outnumbered there by about five to one at least. And you'll only have a little over forty thousand troops on each of the battleships, so they could be outnumbered by more than ten to one.'

Troy smiled. 'That is why we aren't worried about sending out our entire assault wave. We're sending more troops than we'd really need to in order to take the entire fleet very quickly. We don't want to take four to six days taking the ships because there are other fleets in the area, and we need to be able to respond and help your own fleet if they are attacked. That is also why we won't launch the attack until the enemy is closer to your fleet, so that we hit the fleet that is the most likely to be a threat to yours. And our ships can cover your fleet with their railguns and fighters.'

'But most of your fighters will be protecting your shuttles as they attack the other fleet, won't they?'

Troy shook his head and smiled. 'They'll only be used to attack the smaller ships in the enemy fleet so that we get a lot of advantage out of the element of surprise. They'll make one or two strafing runs against the cruisers, then pull off and let the rest of the fleet hammer the survivors with railguns. By then, the shuttles will all be inside their intended targets and the troops will be on the move. If we need to, about one third of the shuttles will be able to leave the ships that they're on and return to the fleet so that they can provide some forces for offensive operations on any other fleet that shows up. If they try to attack, we still have almost nine thousand large fighters and about seventy five hundred small fighters that we can launch, since there won't be any reason not to launch them once we are sighted by the enemy and attacked. It won't really make any difference if those fighters have stealth capabilities or not when the enemy already knows where we are.'

'But what about their fighters? Won't they try to attack your shuttles if you don't have fighter cover?'

Lehr laughed. 'That's what we're hoping. If they swarm the shuttles before they can commence their assault run, there will be a lot less fighters out there for anyone to have to deal with or worry about.'

'I don't understand. Shuttles are larger and slower than a fighter, and pretty much defenseless because of their size and lack of maneuverability. Not to mention that they're generally unarmed.'

Kandi laughed lightly. 'Uh, Hermes, our shuttles aren't really armed, except for some light weapons in ports that are generally moved outside the ship to protect it when we are on a planet. But the strike assault shuttles were designed as attack vessels. They have missile tubes and half a dozen different railguns on them.'

Jaxon looked really confused. 'If they are attack craft, then why do you call them shuttles?'

She smiled. 'Because each shuttle carries between fifty and one hundred warriors on board so that when the shuttle enters the enemy ship, the troops can unload and leave the shuttle to fight the enemy. The shuttle crew and the security group with it remain with the ship, unless they have to abandon the shuttle because of enemy activity or they have to pull the ship out and leave to accomplish some other mission. The earlier versions were not armed because we had to work out ways to recess the weapons and still make them combat capable, so all that they had were mobile squad railguns and small arms. Now the strike assault shuttles and heavy strike assault shuttles are heavily armed and have stealth capabilities, so the enemy can't detect them with their sensors until it is too late to stop them from boarding.'

'They have to know that you have to come through certain hatches or bays in order to get on board their ship. If they have as many troops as you say they do, they must make the boarding very costly before you can gain a foothold and spread out inside their ship.'

Troy shook his head. 'Not really. For over fifty years, we've been so far ahead of them in our armor development that they haven't been able to do much to stop us from just boarding and doing what we want without very many losses at all. About the only weapons that they normally carry that has any effect on us at all are their hypervelocity missiles. And they really don't like using those inside a ship if they want to survive as well, since they usually don't really do much to us unless they get a direct hit. They make one hell of a mess out of the ship and all of the Consortium troops who are anywhere near the point of impact, though.' He smiled amiably. 'Besides, they can't bottle us up anyway, since they really don't know where our ships are going to enter their ship. We don't use their airlocks or docking bays. We've armored our ships, and we just get them going really fast and ram the enemy ship to enter.'

Both of the Colonial warriors laughed heartily at the joke. After a few seconds, when they realized that nobody else was laughing, and that Troy was totally serious about how they boarded enemy ships, Hermes shook his head. 'You actually ram into the side of an armored warship in order to board them and fight them inside their own ship?'

Kandi smiled. 'You know, they're probably tired from being on patrol and all. Why don't we take them to quarters so that they can eat and rest, and we can show them some video of some of the enemy ships and what they can expect if they have to fight the enemy when they are rested?'

Troy nodded. 'That sounds like a good idea, Kandi. That will give us more time to see what the enemy is going to do in response to the sudden unexpected disappearance of their ambush party. Maybe we can even goad the Grak commander into doing something really stupid while we're waiting for our patrols to spot the fleet that our guests are from so that we can make sure that they aren't ambushed themselves.' He turned to look at Lieutenant Hermes before smiling. 'Don't worry, I won't ask you to tell us where your fleet is, Lieutenant. We already have the equivalent of a number of your squadrons out searching for them and for any enemy fleets in the area, with orders to shadow anything that they find and report back all movements and locations to us. It won't be more than a few more days at most before we either find your fleet and can protect it, or find what is left of it after the enemy fleets that are boxing in this area of space find it before we do.'

Jaxon stiffened up at that comment, and Hermes sighed. 'That isn't a very good ploy to use to extract information from prisoners.'

'It wasn't meant to be. I'm just telling you how things are. I don't make the rules of this war. I just break them as often as it suits me in order to make sure that we win and the enemy dies. Unfortunately, the Consortium doesn't see anyone as neutral in a war. They are either the enemy, allied with the enemy, potential slaves for them, slaves to them, or a potential threat that should also be eliminated. Also, rather unfortunately for your own people and your fleet, they will type out as being related to this branch of the evolved Tryx that they refer to as Demons, and they will automatically consider you a threat and do what they can to eliminate your genes completely. That is reality, not a ploy.'

Kandi smiled. 'Lieutenant, why don't you and your friend come with me? I'll take you to some quarters where you can eat, rest, relax, and when you're rested, I'm sure that someone from the ship will be able to answer your questions to the best of their ability and show you something about the enemy that you're facing.'

The two men nodded and followed her out of the room. Troy saw the door closing, but knew that at least four to six guards would accompany them to their quarters and see to it that their guests remained there. They may have rescued the hapless pilots from the ambush that the Graks had planned for them, but that didn't mean that he was going to just turn them loose and let them wander around aimlessly on his flagship. There was no way for them to know how dangerous certain things were, and no way that any Clan was going to let uncleared people wander around loose on one of their ships.

Kohrrhi shook his head. 'They are going through culture shock, not to mention the effects of having to be rescued like they were. Not that they still know if anything that we have told them is true or not, or what to make of this situation.'

Lehr laughed. 'What they think or believe isn't really important. Even if we never really make contact with their fleet, it still serves as a great lure to keep the Consortium focused on the enemy that they can see, and to keep them concentrating their forces in this one small area of space. They were going to be bait anyway, and I don't see why they should object if we simply keep using them as bait to eliminate the most enemy forces that we can efficiently, since we're also saving their butts when we do it.'

Troy shook his head. 'I won't just use them as bait and keep dangling them in front of the Consortium while they have no clue as to what is happening around them. I may not contact their commander and speak with him face to face before we have to take on the first enemy fleet in order to save them, but if we do find them first, I will make sure that they know what is going on, and that they can try to limit their vulnerability by working with us if they choose to do so.'

'How can you be sure that they'll work with us? For all you know, their signal to us was just a sign of desperation, and they may regret it if we actually show up. They have to know that it will make the enemy even more wary of falling into a trap, or of being set up so that we can attack them while all of their attention is focused on easy prey.'

'That may be true, Lehr, but we will still let them have some say in their own part in all of this if we have the chance. Now, how about we go back down to the hangar and find out what news our people have about their fighters? I'm sure that some of them have found out something interesting by now, and can give us some estimate of their level of technology, what we can expect in terms of performance from their warships, and how much of a pounding they can take.'

Karg glared at the report that he had been given. The ambush had failed, and all of his fighters had been destroyed without any warning at all. There had been no radio transmissions from them, and no sign that there were large numbers of enemy fighters lurking in the nearby space. The technicians had assured him that there could have been no more than half a dozen enemy fighters out there, and he knew that even the tales of the Demons themselves indicated that with fifty fighters out there, they should have been able to at least get one or two fighters away cleanly to warn the rest of the fleet about the presence of their enemy.

'Show me the sensor readings of the ambush sites again, and display them for me on the holographic display.'

A tech hurried to do as commanded, and the holo image formed in front of him a few seconds later.

'Is this exactly to scale?'

'Yes, sir.'

Karg rotated the image, then smiled. There was a large cone of ships that had been destroyed as if from ambush while they weren't expecting any resistance, and a small concentration of ships that had been destroyed farther away from the rest. By mentally connecting the dots... He quickly connected the group of scattered dots to the center of the other very small cluster of debris before calling his second in command over to him.

'Gvvn, what do you see?'

'A lot of destroyed ships. But the pattern is there. If they destroyed most of the ships from ambush, and the rest still tried to take out the enemy as ordered, they would have been following them.'

Karg nodded, licking his lips in anticipation of the hunt. 'And if we make the cluster the starting point, and the last ships that were destroyed by them the point of the spear, where do we cast our lance?'

'Along the vector of the last ships that were destroyed. They somehow got off some lucky shot with a weapon that got most of our ships, but still tried to run and get away before destroying all of them. If we follow the vector, the scared little grahl may still lead us directly to his nest and the young.'

Karg smiled. 'Head in the direction of their flight. Let's see what they have been trying so hard not to lead us to, or to keep us from discovering. Either way, keep out the flights of searchers, and tell me if they find anything else while we check this out for ourselves.'

Heracles looked at the message on his monitor for the fourth time in a centon, still not believing what he was seeing. Technically, that wasn't true. He believed the report, but he just didn't want to believe that it could be true. How could Hermes and Jaxon just disappear without a trace? Well, there were traces, all right. There was lots of debris in the area that they had last been in, but it was all from alien ships. None of it was made of the right materials to be part of a Colonial viper, and none of the various recovered fragments or debris had been identified as part of their lost unit. And none of their units had heard a distress call, a warning being broadcast, or anything else from them, either.

They had been doing a long range recon and scouting mission, so they weren't even supposed to engage the enemy, and they should have been able to remain completely undetected, and should have had lots of warning before anything could have happened to them. Only they had both simply vanished instantly and completely. It just didn't make any sense at all. Even if they had been captured, there should have been some kind of distress signal to let the Galactica know what had happened. And there was no way that their vipers had done this much damage to the enemy, even if they were attacked. There was debris from dozens of ships out there. They might have witnessed a battle between the enemy and whoever their unknown enemy was, but that still didn't explain why all of the ships were exactly the same type, and why there was no sign of his missing patrol.

Persephone looked at her data again, then shook her head. This was impossible. Even the Galactica could barely generate enough energy to leave a signature like this on enemy ships. But the debris that had been retrieved from the site of the battle was clearly scorched by a very powerful laser. She hurried to Commander Heracles' quarters to let him know what she had discovered.

'Heracles, there is a chance that our patrol was captured, and that the pilots are still alive.'

'What? What are you talking about, Pers?'

'I was examining the debris from the enemy fighters so that we would know more about what we might expect when they attack us. Their ships are very well armored, by the way, and it will take several direct hits from a viper's turbolasers to destroy one of them.'

'Pers, what about the pilots and our lost ships?'

'OH! That? Well, the debris indicates that the ships were destroyed by very powerful lasers. Lasers that only a ship like the Galactica could generate. A ship as small as a fighter could never hope to generate that much power. Anyway, if a larger ship came by, destroyed the fighters that were sent out by their enemy to investigate, and then captured our own patrol to see what they were, since they were obviously different from the enemy ships, then they might still be alive.'

Heracles shook his head, almost smiling. 'I want to believe that as well, Pers. But it is just as likely that they were captured or killed, or that there was no signal from them because they were hit with an unexpected blast of energy that completely vaporized their ships if something that powerful was out there destroying enemy ships.'

Persephone gave him a very disapproving glare. 'You would take the pessimistic view, just to disagree with me.'

He shook his head, smiling at her. 'No, Pers. I just don't want you getting your hopes up too high or getting everyone else's hopes up. You know how few of our warriors have ever been recovered after going missing like that in all of the yarhns that we've been at war or fleeing from the Cylons.'

She sighed. 'OK. I know that you're right, but I'm still going to keep on hoping. And I'm going to start trying to figure out some way to improve the power of our lasers so that they will really damage those enemy ships.' She smiled. 'That will not only keep me busy working so that I don't interrupt you, but it will also make sure that we stand a better chance in combat against their ships.'

Heracles smiled. 'You do that, Pers. We can use all of the help that we can get, because it seems that the enemy certainly has us outnumbered by a very large margin.' As the door closed behind her, he muttered softly under his breath, 'And we can use all of the hope that we can get as well. We're certainly going to need something to help us survive this.'

Hermes shook his head, amazed at the technology and other things that were so widely used on board this ship. They didn't even seem to worry at all about energy conservation, and after being shown how to use the synthesizer and how the showers worked, he was totally amazed at how much of their system was recycled and how efficient it actually seemed to be. The food was good, though he had resorted to the kids' menu after reading several hundred entries and not finding anything that he could identify by name listed among the choices. The pictures were very accurate, and Kandi had told him not to eat anything that he didn't like and just put it into the recycler and just order something else until he found something that did appeal to him.

'Herm, what do you think?'

'They appear to be human enough. Well, some of them. It's hard to believe that they actually found a number of species that will interbreed with them.'

'I thought that the xenobiologists said that doing something like that was impossible.'

'Obviously not, since Kandi is a halfling, as she calls it.' He smiled. 'Though I'd hate to see how ugly something that was conceived by the union of a human with one of those big, ugly things that met us in the landing bay would be.'

Jaxon nodded his head, spooning another mouthful of food into his mouth and chewing it while he thought about that. 'What about the information that they need to help them find the fleet? Are we actually going to help them find the fleet, or can we trust them enough to be sure that they're the ones that the commander was trying to alert with his distress message?'

Hermes shook his head. 'Troy was right. We can't trust them, and he has no reason to expect us to. We don't know anything about this war except what they've told us and what little we got from the destroyed and damaged data banks of some Consortium ship that fired on us after mistaking us for their enemy. Granted, they do look like us, so the mistake was reasonable on the part of the Consortium ship. I'm not at war with them, and I'm already scared of what their capabilities are. Even if he doesn't have the other ships and fleets that he claims he does, Troy could already lead this fleet back along our path and end up destroying the entire Cylon empire and retaking the twelve colonies. And if his armor for his troops is as good as he says that it is, the Cylons have nothing that could stop his troops from sweeping a planet and destroying every Cylon on it.'

'We know that there are several fleets trying to find the Galactica, and that we don't stand a chance against any of them if the numbers that he says are correct. We would be unable to destroy that many Cylon fighters before they could close with the fleet and wreak havoc, and these Consortium fighters are much tougher.'

'That's true. It took several hits to destroy the ships that we did, while their ships just went through and blew them apart as if they were nothing. Though from the power readings that we got on our scanners, that isn't very surprising. Lasers that powerful could rip into the Galactica, even with her shields up.'

'So, do we help them, or what?'

'We find out what we can, listen, and wait. They seem to want to help us, so we're probably pretty safe, at least for now. And if they are who and what they say they are, they will want us to explain things to Commander Heracles and the Council once we do find the Galactica and they are ready to offer to render assistance.'

'And if they aren't telling us the truth?'

'Then once they find the fleet, the Colonies will truly die, once and for all. There would be no way for anything to survive that attack. They have too many ships, and they are too powerful for our vipers to do much against them. We can't even see them on our scanners, so we would have to fight by sighting them and firing, and that would be a total disaster.' He sighed. 'Let's go ahead and get some sleep. We've been up for more centars than I care think about, and we need some rest. When we wake up, I'm sure that they will give us something to do, and maybe we can find out enough to know what is going on and at least be able to tell the commander something that we've seen and figured out on our own, instead of just repeating back to him what they've told us.'

Both of them laid down, knowing that there wasn't much they could do right now. They had one blaster between them, since the one that Jaxon had carried had been totally destroyed earlier, and at least both of them felt better about knowing that they had been left armed. Though neither of them was sure if that was a sign of trust, or a sign of contempt for their weapons and the power that they could wield.

Karg and his fleet were proceeding cautiously, making sure that they didn't walk into any traps. That his entire ambush had been thwarted was of no real consequence to him, for it had borne fruit of its own. Instead of investigating several small scouts or lightly armed fighters that were trying to watch his fleet from a distance and report on their activities, he had found definite signs that there were enemy ships on the fringes of his own sensor capabilities. The only frustrating thing was that now that he knew they were there and they knew that they had been discovered, they had fled, and all he had to follow now was the faint ion trail of their strange engines.

They had almost lost the trail once, when it had veered slightly to alter course, but an alert tech had spotted the decreasing density and they had slowed and made the turn to allow them to follow the trail of this little grahl's spoor. They had slowed before making the turn, and that told him many things. That the grahl had known that it had bolted in fear, and had come to its senses and reduced speed to reduce the rate of consumption of its chemical fuel. That the grahls didn't have a very high level of tech if they were still using chemical fuels in their fighters. That the grahl had been slightly off course, and had corrected, indicating that the enemy fleet was probably moving, and the first response had been to automatically go back where it had come from, and the rational response had been to correct for the distance that would be covered by the fleet by the time that they reached it. So now he had a vector, though he was following the trail carefully to make sure that there were no more course corrections. His long range scouts that were out in every direction from his fleet would easily warn them of any impending traps before they could be effectively sprung. Karg wasn't one of the soft, pampered Elite, those who had taken command right after climbing out of the clutch. He had earned his position in trial by combat, both on the breeding sands and against the enemies of the Consortium, and he knew his job well.

While his orders didn't specifically allow him to leave his assigned area and follow up on enemy sightings, they didn't specifically forbid him to do so, either. And since following up on enemy sightings was standard procedure, as well as militarily sound strategy, he had nothing to fear. Besides, the standing reward that was offered to any commander who was the first on the site to initiate combat that led to the destruction or crippling of any Demon clan was too good to pass up. The very thought of having ten breeders of his choice bonded to him permanently, so that they could not even be challenged for? And unlimited rights to breed with them as often as he chose? Picking several of the very youngest and best breeders that he knew of would allow him to have at least seven or eight really good matings with each of them. Enough to spread his seed and his obviously very good genes far and wide through the gene pool. And he could even pick any breeder that wasn't permanently bonded to a male without having to challenge or win a challenge to get her, for picking her would bring great honor to the male who was obligated to give her to him. He would really enjoy that, for he could deprive his greatest competitor of his prized and special new pet, and then enjoy knowing that his line would be propagated through her instead.

Troy looked at his display, going over things in his mind as he let the full scale spatial representation of this area of space turn and change angles in front of him. They had full readouts of four enemy fleets now, with the pattern showing distinct holes. The question was, did the enemy have enough fleets in this region to fill those holes or not? There had to be at least some other fleets in the area, because so far, all that they had found and confirmed were dedicated warfleets. Two Charkal warfleets, and two Grak warfleets. The larger Charkal warfleet wasn't standard composition, so the two of them ended up being a bit more out of balance than the numbers indicated at first glance. The nine group Charkal fleet was much stronger than it would be without all of the extra battlecruisers, and the loss of the heavy cruisers didn't alter that much. The Grak fleets were more evenly matched in strength, though the large numbers of battlecruisers and heavy cruisers that the one fleet had would normally more than make up for the three extra battleships that the other one had. In this case, however, it made no real difference. It wouldn't spread Clan troops that much thinner to take on fifty extra enemy battlecruisers than it would to take on the extra three battleships. All of the extra heavy cruisers were nothing more than additional target practice for his fleet.

Four dedicated warfleets in this area, all of them able to start closing in on this area so rapidly? The Consortium was trying to beef up their presence along this area that was so close to the border of their sphere of influence. That would soon change, because once he returned to the Llyriana and got the first batch of ships that were being built to strengthen his fleets and was able to get them fully incorporated, they would begin their first push toward the heart of the Consortium, though the enemy wouldn't even realize that at first. He stopped the rotation and smiled as the image finally made sense to him. Four of the fleets were on one side of the area of first contact, making sure that the Colonial fleet didn't reverse course and flee from this area of space along their previous path. Which left the other side of the sphere. Two fleets couldn't cover that much space properly, though they could always simply use the forces that they had to drive their prey deeper into their own territory until they could bring up more fleets and finally trap them. So, how many more fleets could there be out there, and what were they? Probably locals, since there were already so many warfleets under surveillance.

'Kohrrhi, have the other two talons spread out and come around to go for a pincer movement. Make sure that they know that they will have to bypass our current position and go deep. They can alter their current courses and come in around the periphery so that they can go faster without worrying about being caught on sensors. That will allow them to make up some time and close the distance faster.'

'Do you know where you want them to try to end up, and how you want them to end up positioned relative to our current position?'

Troy pointed to a position in space, and Kohrrhi noted where it was. 'Given their current rates of movements, this should put Connie's talon behind the two fleets that are closest together.' He pointed again, way over on the other side of the display, where there were no indications of anything being anywhere near that location, and smiled. 'And this should put Jenn's talon where they can come up behind anything that is working the other side of this search pattern, if there is anything on that side of the sphere.'

Kohrrhi nodded. 'What about the rest of our own talon?'

'Bring them up behind us, but alter their vector so that they aren't really closing with us and we have enough maneuvering room that we can play hammer and anvil if we need to. Odds are that we're going to end up finding the Colonial fleet before anyone else in the Clan does simply because we're the only ones who are close enough to reach them before the Consortium does.'

'And if we do find them first and they get attacked, we can keep them alive and draw things out while the other talons move into position to do as much damage as possible to the enemy fleets while we have sitting ducks in the shooting gallery.'

Troy smiled and nodded. 'Yes, Lehr. Exactly. Sitting ducks in the shooting gallery. We aren't going to do more than salvage scrap on anything that is smaller than a battlecruiser. And if we take some of these ships relatively intact, we'll give some of them to the Colonists. Whether or not we bother to upgrade them depends on how things go and what they decide, since they aren't really Clans, or even human as we normally thought of it. Just because they are related to one of our ancient ancestors doesn't mean that they are going to want to join us or become involved in an intergalactic war for their very survival. They were at war for a thousand years, or yarhns, or whatever, and the surviving remnants of their entire civilization have been running from their enemies for several hundred more since they lost their war.'

Lehr shook his head. 'I just can't believe that they are so closely related to humans, and yet there are so many huge differences. They seem small and weak, and they just don't have much of a drive to fight. Their fighters are even fragile little things.'

Troy shrugged. 'There's really not very much that we can do about that. If we arm them and give them better ships, they may decide that that is all they want from us and go on their way. If that is their choice, I'll wish them luck, but I don't expect them to find anything that resembles the Earth that I knew so long ago.'

Kohrrhi chuckled. 'You're still not sure that the humans haven't blown the entire planet or solar system up themselves, Troy.'

Troy sighed, then smiled. 'Well, I thought that they'd wipe themselves out by some kind of war using diseases or from destroying the environment and running out of their resources long before their technology became good enough to destroy more than the planet itself. But, yeah.'

Lehr looked at the display thoughtfully. 'You're positioning the talons so that they can cover more area and provide more protection to the fleet if we find it. If you wanted to hammer the enemy fleets, you'd just have us find them and hit them from stealth one or two at a time. You're more worried about saving this Colonial fleet than you are about hammering the piss out of the enemy this time. Why?'

'This isn't their war, Lehr. They are in danger simply because they look like us, and that is because they were the progenitors of the humans that the Tryx found and bred with. They have no connection to the Consortium, and only the barest of connections through us. They aren't even really a fleet. One ship the size of a battlecruiser, with only five hundred of their tiny fighters to protect a fleet of at least a hundred other ships carrying hundreds of thousands of civilians who have never really been trained to fight or do anything to support their warriors? The best that you could say for their abilities is that they are refugees with some lightly armed troops along to protect them.'

Lehr nodded. 'So we protect them, because they are human.'

Troy sighed, then chuckled. 'Humans wandering through space like nomads, searching for the one planet of their lost myth, and it ends up being the one that I'm from. Now, how do I tell them that another race made it impossible for them to ever truly reach their goal by breeding with their long lost relatives and creating an entirely new race?' He shrugged his shoulders. 'I guess that really doesn't matter. I still can't believe that all of the science fiction writers were wrong, and that humans really were stupid enough to actually wander through space practically unarmed and defenseless and think that they could still survive against all of the unknown dangers that they encountered.'

Kohrrhi laughed. 'Uh, huh. I read some of your old science fiction from your personal library, Kohl-garh. The "humans" that they were talking about were the same as you, not the unaltered people that we found. And unlike them, you didn't lose your war and go wandering through space as refugees after getting your ass handed to you by your enemy. You started out with almost nothing, and have built it up to the point where we are winning the war against our enemy while we are still vastly outnumbered. You are more like the wolf set loose among the interstellar sheep that many of the writers do talk about. Waging war. Creating and adapting faster than your enemy. Seeing many things in new ways, and showing the rest of the universe just how destructive some of their "safe" inventions truly could be.'

Troy laughed, shaking his head. 'OK. Get the orders out to the rest of the wing, and make sure that we're ready for anything that we find. Try sending out a few more talons of assault fighters toward this point. If they do have any more fleets out there, the Colonial fleet may be trying to slip through the cracks and escape this trap, and this area seems to be one of the best for them to accomplish that little feat. Humans or not, I want to find them before the enemy does and make sure that the civilians aren't just caught and slaughtered by the Graks. They may not be Clan, but I don't want to be pulling any of them out of a bloody Grak trophy case.'

Lehr and Kohrrhi sobered up immediately. Hearing Troy say anything at all about a Grak trophy case out loud, especially in front of other Clan members, was not a good sign. He was very careful about what he said about things like that just to make sure that his wives didn't find out any details from others.

'Kohl-garh.'

'I know, Lehr. Let's get this done, and do it right. Since the enemy wants to play, I'm going to show them a new game. Let's see how they like the rules, and how well they can play when we play hard ball.'

Kohrrhi sighed, but Lehr just smiled. 'Hard ball? I like the sound of that. I think that I'm really going to like this new game, Kohl-garh. Especially if it means that as many of the enemy are going to die playing it as I think it does.'

Kohrrhi rolled his eyes. 'They will, Lehr. He's dancing with them again, and this time, it's not only personal, but he's protecting civilians who are part of one of the species that he wants to keep the Consortium from harming.'

Lehr nodded. 'Kahrr al khyrr. Different game, but the result's the same. I can live with that.' He grinned as they began following Troy back toward his quarters. 'But the enemy sure can't.'

Jasper swore under his breath when he read the orders that he had just been given. He looked at the comm officer, but she was smirking and looking away as if she had seen and heard nothing. 'Yeah, right, Lily. Tell your mother that if I hear her doing any cursing under her breath after she reads this, I don't want to hear a word out of her about me swearing in front of the bridge crew.'

The woman laughed as she gave a copy of the orders to another woman who was standing over at another bridge station. Jasper began laughing as he heard her soft, musical voice cursing audibly in Llyriana. 'Now, now, Shehrrhi, you know that you aren't supposed to do that in front of the crew.'

His wife glared at him. 'Troy is getting creative again, and he's out there all alone with just his scout talon, while he's directing the rest of the wing AWAY from him. And he's only allowing us to come up toward his coordinates on a tangent, and he's moving the other way.'

Jasper shrugged. 'He's searching for that fleet, and trying to avoid being caught in the trap that the Consortium was setting to catch them. He's positioning the pieces, and when the time is right...'

Shehrrhi nodded. 'Yeah, I know. But I don't like the fact that he's doing crap like this when we have the forces available to just sweep this area and pound all of the fleets that we come across hard enough to damage them, even if some of them do get away.'

'Hon, we fight them now and destroy them, or we have to fight them later. And it really is going to be easier if we can trap them and really hit them hard before they even know what is happening.'

'OK, I know that this is necessary. And that the troops who are boarding the enemy ships really aren't in as much danger as they used to be before we got the new armor made in sufficient quantities. But he's still going to do fleet combat to wipe out the smaller ships, and that means that the enemy ships could still get off some lucky shots at his ships. His heaviest vessels ARE only assault carriers, you know.'

Jasper sighed. 'Yes, I know. But we'll also be doing the exact same thing to the fleets that our ships attack, so we'll be hammering the enemy as well. And if we aren't split off from his scout talon, we can always provide a bit more covering fire and do our best to concentrate it where it needs to be to protect his scout talon as much as possible.'

Shehrrhi rolled her eyes. 'Your little white lies aren't making me feel any better, Jas. I know that we can't do anything like that if he doesn't assign us to attack the same fleet that he is, and that even if he does, we'll be attacking from different angles and won't have much of a chance to even try to provide that type of fire support for him.' She sighed, then smiled. 'Though I do love you for trying to make me feel better.'

Lily smiled as her parents calmed down. 'So, how do you think that Jonesy is taking the news of this plan?'

Both of them looked at her and smiled. Jasper laughed. 'He's probably still cussing up a storm, though he's probably already given the orders to comply while he's still venting and getting it out of his system.'

Kohrvhyl smiled as his monitor readouts confirmed the findings that he had been handed five minutes ago. 'OK, we have a fleet of ships up ahead, and none of them are reading out as anything like we've seen before. Designs, materials, and weapons signatures are all different from anything that we have in our database, and even the one large ship that classes out as a warship compared to the others isn't really all that much of a threat. I think that we've finally found our objective.'

'So, what to we do about it?'

'We still have the whole wing, so let's send two talons out in each of the three main vectors away from our own fleet to do long range scans and recon so that we'll have some kind of warning if any of the enemy fleets are approaching from that direction. The rest of us will stay here and maintain observation on them. Comm can send the alert, along with our coordinates, speed, and vector so that the rest of the wing can find us and close the gap.'

'Do we have the time to really wait like this? We know that there are enemy fleets in the area.'

Kohrvhyl shrugged. 'We follow our orders. Maintain observation, set up deep recon and scouts to make sure that nobody else reaches that fleet ahead of our own fleet, and wait for the rest of our fleet to arrive before any contact with the fleet is initiated. Those are the orders. Any questions?'

Jana shook her head. 'No, sir. I was just wondering why we didn't contact them and let them know that we were here is all.'

Melina, the crew chief for the fighter shook her head. 'That is for someone who has a whole lot more rank than the crew of an assault fighter to worry about, Jana. I don't know why our orders read the way that they do, but if we follow them, we don't have to worry about screwing up complicated plans that we know nothing about, now, do we?'

Jana shook her head. 'No, Chief. Sorry, Chief. I wasn't thinking about that.'

Kohrvhyl smiled. 'Get those orders out to the other talons, and let's settle down for a long, and hopefully, boring wait. Make sure that we rotate off on the sensor watches so that we don't get any surprises. And double the range on the collision alarms, because these guys can't see us with their sensors and won't really be able to see our ships well on visual if they don't even know to be watching out for us as they do their patrols. We definitely don't want any of them having their final approach for landing to actually be their final approach because they slammed into one of our ships.'

The crew of his craft began obeying his orders, and he watched as the six talons that he had assigned to perform deep recon left the area, working their way past the unsuspecting fleet of ships whose sensors were unable to detect their ships at all. The remaining three talons of assault fighters began to slowly spread out from his own and take formation at intervals around the alien fleet, ready to do what they could to perform their mission and carry out their orders, no matter what happened.

Hermes and Jaxon were just finishing their breakfast when there was a sound at their door. They looked at each other, then Hermes went over to the door and touched the panel beside it, causing it to open.

'Yes?' He was surprised to see the same small female who had brought them here standing in front of the door. There was a guard by the door on either side, but they were just standing there, ignoring her and him.

'I was wondering if you were wanting some company yet this morning?'

Hermes shrugged, then smiled. 'I suppose so, but I'm kind of confused. You sound as if you're asking permission to enter, and you knocked on our door as if these were private quarters instead of a holding cell.'

Kandi laughed, and he liked the musical sound of it. 'These are your private quarters for the duration of your stay aboard our ship. And while you are being guarded for your own protection, you're not exactly prisoners, and this certainly isn't a holding cell, whatever that actually is.'

'A place for locking captives until they can be interrogated and classified properly.'

She smiled. 'Ah, you mean like the brig. Or one of the secured staging areas where we put captured enemy troops or crew while we're sorting them.'

'Yes, like a brig. You do have one of those, don't you?'

Kandi nodded. 'I think that there are one or two cells like that on board this ship for use in case of emergencies. But there really isn't much use for something like that.'

Jaxon smiled. 'What do you do when someone breaks one of your laws?'

'That depends on what law they broke, and why they broke it. If it's serious, they are tried and then punished.'

'And what is the punishment for really bad crimes? How long are criminals put into prison for serious crimes?'

Kandi looked confused. 'Prison?'

'A place where you hold prisoners who are supposed to be put into the brig for a very long time as punishment for their crimes.'

'We've never had one of those.'

Jaxon stared at her in shock. 'You're kidding. Why not?'

'We fight for our survival. If you break Clan law, you are punished and then you do what you can to keep doing what you're supposed to in order to protect yourself and your family. If you break a law really badly, you can be thrown out of the Clan, and then you don't get any protection or anything from the Clan.'

'Does anything like that ever actually happen?'

'I've heard that it has before, both in this Clan and in others, but I've never actually seen it done in my lifetime. I've never even seen an execution for a capital offense.'

'Capital offense?'

'For some crimes, if you are convicted by the evidence, you are killed.'

'What if you are caught in the act?'

'Then you don't have to worry about a trial, because whoever catches you will kill you themselves.'

Jaxon stared at her. 'What crimes are so bad that they carry the death penalty?'

'Murder. Attempted murder. Rape. Attempted rape. Statutory rape.'

'What is "statutory rape"?'

'That is when an adult knowingly has sex with a minor. Someone under sixteen years old.'

Hermes nodded. 'We were wondering about that. What is a year?'

Kandi smiled. 'Technically, for us, it's just a way to measure time. The Earth year is three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days of twenty four hours each. That is how long it takes Earth to make one complete revolution around the sun.'

Hermes smiled. 'Then a year is the same as a yarhn, except for the actual amount of time it takes.'

Kandi smiled. 'A Clan year, which is what we are talking about whenever anyone in the Clan mentions a year, is four hundred and twenty days of twenty five hours each.'

They began comparing their timepieces, with Hermes explaining to her exactly how their time system worked, and Kandi was able to quickly calculate that a Colonial cycle was equivalent to a day, but it lasted for twelve centars, which broke down into a total of one and one third Clan days. There were only three hundred and sixty cycles in a yarhn, but with each cycle being longer than a Clan day, it ended up with a yarhn being the equivalent of about one and one seventh Clan years.

Kandi looked at them. 'You fought your war with the Cylons for a thousand yarhns?'

Hermes nodded. 'And we've been fleeing for our survival ever since we lost that war. The past several hundred yarhns.'

'That would mean that you were fighting them for one thousand, one hundred, and forty some years. Almost one thousand one hundred and fifty Clan years. And that you have been running for your own survival for almost five hundred Clan years.' She sighed, then said to herself softly, 'Sixteen hundred and fifty years. That is most of my lifetime.'

Hermes stared at her in shock, shaking his head in disbelief. 'What did you just say?'

She smiled. 'Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you. I was just thinking that the time that your Colonies were at war and running to keep your civilians alive was most of my lifetime.'

Jaxon shook his head. 'How old are you?'

'Well, I was born in the Clan year thirty six seventeen, a little over two thousand years after my mother married my father.' She giggled. 'I only know that because the other wives had given her a big two millennia anniversary party a few decades before I was born. So I'm eighteen hundred and thirty seven years old.' She smiled. 'I've been alive just over one third of the time that the Clan has been in existence.'

Jaxon shook his head in shock. 'Exactly how old would you be in yarhns?'

Kandi did the calculations, then smiled and said, 'If the conversions that I'm using are right, I'd be sixteen hundred and seven yarhns old.'

Hermes shook his head. 'That is impossible. Nobody actually lives that long. The most that people live is a few hundred yarhns, and even then, they look much older than you do long before they are even two hundred yarhns old.'

'Once we are fully grown and the nanobots lock us into our adult form, we don't age. There are some who have different types of nanobots than we do who do still age, or did, but all of them have grown old and died off. Most of them died of old age before I was born or when I was still very young. The Betas still grow old and die, and so do the Deltas, and they only live about two thousand years for a Beta if they aren't killed, and maybe three thousand years or so for a Delta. But none of the Alphas or Llyriana age like that any more. All of those who couldn't be fully transformed during the initial transformations have died off, and all who remain have inherited the best nanobots and their characteristics.'

Kandi saw that they were both still trying to grasp what she was saying, and decided to change the topic and get their minds thinking about other things for now. 'So, what is life like aboard your ship? Is it exciting, exploring the galaxy in a quest for long lost members of your own race, searching for a lost colony?'

Hermes smiled, shaking his head. 'Mostly we just try to find important resources as we need them, avoid confrontations with our enemy or detection by our enemy, and stay alive. There aren't that many clues as to exactly where Earth and the lost colony is, and it is many yarhns between finding one clue that will lead us one step closer to them and the next. We haven't really found anything new to lead us to them in almost a hundred yarhns.'

She nodded her head, realizing that they were more like refugees who were looking for someplace to find shelter and someone to aid them than anything else that she could think of. The lost colony was simply a form of hope that they could resume their lives and things would get back toward normal, without the threat of Cylons finding them and destroying them once they reached their goal.

'What about you?'

She smiled and laughed lightly. 'Well, we've been at war with the Consortium almost as long as my father has been alive. All that almost anyone that I know has known their entire life was warfare. We are always looking for the enemy, either to avoid being ambushed and attacked without warning, or to ambush them and attack them without warning. Everything that we have, we take from the enemy and put to our own uses. If we weren't able to upgrade their equipment and make it function better than anything that they have, they would eventually win their war against us exactly like they did with the original Tryx civilization so many millennia ago.'

'If you are outnumbered so badly, how can you believe that you will eventually win this war?'

She smiled. 'Well, Jaxon, the truth is, our battles have been getting to the point where we are losing fewer and fewer troops in the past few decades. Say about fifty of your yarhns. With our newest armor, we lose very few troops when we board the enemy ships, and our newest generation of assault ships and fighters are improved enough to keep us from losing as many pilots and crews as we were as well. I think that the latest casualty rate is that we have been losing about one Clan warrior for every several thousand enemy troops who are killed.'

'What about your wounded? In warfare, people are crippled and maimed more often than being killed.'

Kandi shook her head. 'I've seen how that works on ancient vids that my father had from Earth, but I've never seen that happen often. Almost all wounds that we suffer heal themselves within a few days to a few weeks. And most of them don't even leave a permanent scar. There are maybe a few hundred to a few thousand in the Clan who have been maimed or crippled like what you are talking about. Though that is more common among the Betas and Deltas, from what Shahrrhi and some of the other mothers have told me. Their nanobots don't seem to allow them to recover from injuries as well.'

'How many mothers do you have?'

'Well, all of the wives are called mothers by all of the children. Troy has thirty one wives right now, but some of them are actually younger than I am, and four of them have only been married to him for a few decades. The last wife before them has been in the household as a wife for about four hundred and fifty years.'

Jaxon looked confused. 'How could you possibly tell that many women apart and keep them straight, especially if you aren't living with your parents?'

Kandi grinned. 'That's the easy part. Remembering their names is harder than trying to remember who is a mother, a sister, or whatever. The girls who are young wear their silks on their right wrist, and those who are legal age wear the silks for their family on their right bicep. The women who are of age and who are trying to join the household as a wife wear theirs on the left wrist. The women who are wives wear their silks on their left bicep. If a woman is wearing black and red silks on her left bicep, she's one of my mothers.'

'But you don't have those colors on your arm.'

Kandi laughed, shaking her head. 'No, my husband's colors are black and blue, so the silks on my left bicep are that color. Some of the newer wives don't even really know that I'm one of Troy's daughters because they don't remember me when I was growing up and wearing the family silks in my hair or on my right wrist.'

'Then who is your husband?'

'Jason, the commander of this ship. He usually commands the part of the wing that Troy is on during operations so that we have someone who really knows my father and how he thinks very well. Jason was with daddy when he first started the war over five thousand years ago, and has been one of his best officers since then.' She laughed. 'It took a while to convince him that I was serious about becoming his wife, and that it wasn't a childhood crush that I'd outgrow, but I've been married to him for almost twelve hundred years now, and I've got all of the kids to prove it.'

Hermes stared at her, amazed at how slender she was. 'You have kids?'

'About three hundred of them at last count, though there have been about fifty others who have died over the years in combat. Unlike my mother, I don't have twins as often as most of Troy's wives do, and I don't get pregnant quite as often as most of my mothers do, so I haven't had that many kids yet.'

'So you have kids how often?'

'Each woman in the Clan typically gets pregnant about once every five years, and we have twins about thirty percent of the time in most families, though that generally goes up to between forty and eighty percent for the wives that Troy has. We are constantly breeding to replace those who have been lost in combat and to increase our numbers, and with the newer armor and weapons from the last few hundred to two thousand years, our losses have decreased, so our population is growing much more rapidly than it ever did before.'

Hermes looked thoughtful. 'But how can you possibly support that many people and that type of growth rate in your population without exceeding your resources?'

'We are very good at recycling, very good at making things work more efficiently than the Consortium can, and very good at taking what we need from the enemy. And our power sources last long enough that we don't have to worry about running out of them any time soon. Every few centuries we need to get more power for a ship and replace the old power core or restock the holds in the power cells.'

Hermes stared at her in shock. Jaxon was too shocked to even respond. 'You mean that this ship can operate for several hundred years without refueling your power source?'

Kandi nodded. 'Of course. Don't your own power sources last for a long time?'

Hermes smiled sadly. 'Not really. We use tylium, which is a chemical compound that has vast amounts of energy stored when it is properly utilized, but it is consumed totally in the reaction, and we can only haul so much. And it is becoming more and more difficult to find tylium as we get farther from our home systems as well.'

'How much tylium does it take to fuel your ships, and do your small vipers use Tylium as well?'

Hermes nodded. 'It takes a lot when you move a ship the size of the Galactica up toward light speed. For our vipers, it takes several hundred litrons to provide the fuel for a long range, extended mission. And if we use our boosters to increase our speed for fighting, we burn through it more quickly. For normal operations, we can keep a viper out for a few days if we aren't moving all of the time, but in combat, we burn through all of the fuel in a few hours if we take evasive maneuvers and use the turbo boost on the thrusters very much. How long does the fuel in your fighters last?'

Kandi swallowed. 'Well, for the assault fighters, which is what you saw, the fuel core lasts for about ten years under constant combat conditions. Our life support system will let us keep an assault fighter out for somewhere between a week or two before we need to return to our base to replenish our stocks on food, water, and air. Recyclers on the small ships don't work as well as those on the main ship, and it's easier and quicker to just exchange the air in the system and let the scrubbers in the main ship purify it completely.'

'The fighters that we saw destroy the ships that attacked us can fire those lasers like that for the entire time that they're out in combat?'

'Well, not constantly if we don't want to have problems with overheating and frying some of the circuits, but we can do fairly extended strafing runs without any problems. Long enough to hit one battlecruiser, fly to the next, then hit it again. Probably several hours of almost constant strafing before we have to worry about overheating or doing too much stress to critical components and having to replace any worn parts during combat. Most of the critical parts that might fail under stressful combat conditions are accessible so that the crew chief and repair crew can replace them with the spares that we carry.'

Hermes shook his head, looking at Jaxon. 'If we had even a few squadrons of those, we would have defeated the Cylon empire and won the war.'

Jaxon nodded. 'Uh, yeah. And if we could duplicate their power systems for our large ships, we'd have no problems with finding enough fuel to allow us to reach Earth or avoid being run down by the Cylons.'

Kandi smiled. 'Well, you won't have to worry much about repairing your fleet.'

Hermes stared at her, wondering what she knew that she hadn't told them. 'Why wouldn't we have to worry about repairing the fleet?'

'Because if I know my father, he intends to give your people some of the larger ships that we capture and make sure that you have better weapons, ships, and fighters than you currently do before he lets you head on your way and do whatever it is that your people decide they want to do. Though if you accept his gift, it may require you to remain with us for a year or so in order for enough of your people to be trained on how things work and how to maintain them, especially if you don't allow him to leave those crew members with you who wish to remain on the ships and serve their new officers.'

'I don't understand. What new officers, what crew, and why would you even want to consider giving away something that was that valuable to someone that you didn't even know?'

'We don't need such small ships because more ships are being built for us right now at other shipyards run by one of our allies. We'll convert some of them ourselves using our own factory ships, but we only salvage the smaller ships as scrap for materials and spare parts. And since we won't need as many ships as we're probably going to get, and your people will need better ships in order to have a chance at survival...'

Hermes shook his head in disbelief. 'But something like that represents vast amounts of materials and resources. How could you possibly afford to just give something that valuable away?'

Kandi grinned. 'We recycle and salvage all that we can so that we don't waste any of the valuable resources that we are able to acquire. However, as long as we destroy ships that the Consortium needs and keep them from using the resources that they had in them, we gain and come out ahead in our war. If we use them ourselves to build even more ships and attack the enemy with them, we gain even more, but the enemy loses either way. As long as the enemy loses, we come out ahead, even without gaining the ships and materials for our own use.' She giggled. 'There are actually still some battle sites and a few systems that the enemy won't even approach any more. Their losses there were so spectacularly bad that they won't risk going there even for salvage.'

Both of the Colonial warriors just shook their heads in amazement and looked at each other, wondering what kind of beings they had run across. They also wondered how they had managed to survive so long in their own trek across the galaxy if these people and their enemies were any indication of how violent, aggressive, and warlike some of the species in the galaxy were. Their entire fleet would have been vastly undermanned, underarmed, and unprepared for warfare even if they had brought the entire Colonial fleet with them and had all twelve of the battlestars that had been the pride of the Colonies at the height of their power.

Kandi smiled sweetly. 'Now, I'm sure that the two of you would like to get out of here and go see more of the ship. I can't take you everywhere yet because my father hasn't said to treat you as allies, but I can give you a tour of some areas of the ship and I will answer what questions you have that I can. And I'm sure that you'll understand why there are going to have to be some guards accompanying us until my father actually contacts your commander and works out some kind of arrangement between our two groups.'

Hermes nodded. 'Yes, ma'am. Believe me, we understand that. If you were on board the Galactica, you would probably be held in a cell and only let out to be meeting with our own leaders until they decided what to do about dealing with your Clan. You would be treated well and you would be fed and cared for, but your movements would be highly restricted and you would have to answer questions instead of being told almost anything at all about our situation.'

Kandi nodded. 'We aren't really that worried in your case. You're human. If we lose this war, eventually our enemies will find you and kill you themselves. You'd all be just as dead as if you had never managed to escape from the Cylons that you spoke of in your transmission. The Graks and several other species in the Consortium are almost as xenophobic as they are aggressive, and they become positively psychotic and singleminded in their determination to kill anything that they see as a threat to their way of life and possible competition for their resources. To them, all other species that aren't able to become Consortium members because they aren't a threat are either something to be made into slaves or something to be killed. And humans have been listed as dangerous creatures that are to be killed on sight for over five thousand years throughout the entire Consortium.'

Jaxon shook his head. 'Even the Cylons made a deal with a traitor among the humans to allow them to destroy our fleets and win their war. What makes you think that they wouldn't risk something like that in order to try to trick you and destroy your people?'

Kandi smiled, and the smile made Hermes nervous as he recognized some of it from the huge warrior that she claimed was her father. 'If that were the case, then your entire fleet would pay the price, Jaxon. This war is a war for the very survival or our species, and we don't allow ANY member of any enemy species that is a ruling member of the Consortium to live when we go into combat. From what I've seen of your ships, they wouldn't last two minutes in combat with our own fighters, even if we gave you ten to one odds. And if your other ships aren't any better than that, our railguns would be able to destroy your entire fleet in less than five minutes.'

He stared at her, shocked at her response. 'Your people would actually do something like that?'

'To anyone who attacks us and knowingly supports our enemy in this war.'

'Is that a threat?'

Kandi smiled and shook her head. 'Not at all. I simply answered your question. And before you ask, while the Consortium doesn't have quite the same technological edge on you that we do, any of the fleets that we've discovered so far would destroy your entire fleet within fifteen minutes of engagement. You'd be overwhelmed by more than ten thousand fighters like the ones that attacked you, followed up by a couple of hundred of their larger warships coming into range and hitting you with their railguns and other weapons. Their railguns may not be as powerful as ours, but they would be strong enough to destroy a ship that is larger than this one, especially if it wasn't able to fire back with other ships in support to keep them at longer range. Your civilian ships, if they aren't much better armored than your fighters are, would be completely destroyed by the first few hits that they took.'

Hermes sighed. 'Then I guess that we'd better hope that your people find our fleet before the enemy does.'

Kandi smiled. 'We already have. We've altered course to come up to where your fleet is while keeping our ships between them and the fleet that attacked your patrol. Right now, there is a talon of stealthed assault fighters in position, watching over your fleet and maintaining a long range recon beyond them to see if there are any additional fleets that we haven't been in range to detect yet. You should be delivered to your fleet as soon as we make contact. Probably sometime tomorrow morning.'

Jaxon stared at her. 'The fleet is that close?'

'Not really. It's probably farther from us than where we picked you up was, and they are still moving away from us at an angle. But we can't risk moving any faster than that without letting one or more enemy fleets know that we are in the area. If they don't detect us, they'll continue the hunt for your fleet, hoping to find them before we do.'

Hermes eyes widened. 'You're using us as bait?'

She laughed. 'Not really. You were already bait. We're just waiting until we have enough ships near your fleet to defend you before doing anything that would let the enemy fleets close on your position and attack you. The rest of our forces are already moving to support us and make sure that when we do start a fight, we'll do as much damage to the enemy as we can before he even realizes that he's the one who's in the trap. Your fleet has allowed us to get a lot of enemy fleets concentrated in one place at the same time, which they would never do if they knew that we were near here and trying to ambush them. They would either combine their fleets into one vast armada for protection and a better chance of hurting us, or they would disperse so that we could only catch one or two of their fleets and the others would be able to get away and have a chance to form a larger fleet to come after us again later.'

'If they did that, they would be able to destroy your fleet, wouldn't they?'

Kandi smiled and shook her head. 'From what we know right now, the four fleets of enemy ships total out to forty four battleships and three hundred and fifty seven battlecruisers. The other ships are all heavy cruisers and lighter. Our wing would have no problems at all taking all of them on at the same time and destroying anything that we didn't intend to take relatively intact.'

'You can't be serious. Those battleships are thirty kiloms long, and the other ships are the size of the Galactica.'

'Jaxon, sixty years ago we defended the home worlds of the Llyriana, our allies. The Consortium had decided to destroy them all and wipe them from the universe, just as the Cylons did to your Colonies.'

Hermes looked at her intently. 'What happened?'

'This attack wing and another just like it, with some support from our Home Ships and the fleet that defends them, destroyed the enemy fleet that they had assembled. Our allies are now using the captured ships to build their own navies and to construct ships for our Clan for us to use in the future. They are building ships according to our new designs and specifications, and some of them will eventually be much larger than a Consortium battleship.'

'How large was the enemy fleet that you destroyed?'

'Thirty thousand ships. Over five hundred of them were battleships, and another forty two hundred were battlecruisers. Most of the rest were heavy cruisers and light cruisers, though there were also about a hundred transports that were carrying troops who were supposed to land and kill all the inhabitants of the planets that they were attacking, and a thousand assault platforms that were carrying large numbers of fighters and assault shuttles to transport troops to board enemy ships.'

'Your Clan destroyed that many ships?'

'No. We took many of the larger ships intact, and destroyed the smaller ones, the assault platforms, and the troop transports.'

Jaxon shook his head. 'That many ships can't possibly exist. Nobody has that much power and access to that amount of resources. Do they?'

Hermes sighed. 'How large was your force?'

'An attack wing is composed of a strike wing, a fire wing, and a scout wing. A strike wing is twelve strike carriers, which are converted battleships, ninety six heavy assault carriers, which are converted battlecruisers, and one hundred and ninety two strike cruisers. A fire wing consists of three battleships, eighteen battlecruisers, and eighteen heavy fire cruisers. The complete scout wing consists of ninety six assault carriers like this one, three hundred and eighty four heavy fire cruisers, and one thousand, nine hundred and twenty large scouts.'

She smiled as she saw their shocked expressions at the numbers of ships in the fleet. 'And before you ask, before we started shifting our forces around to replace some of the fighters with assault fighters and some of the strike assault shuttles with the larger heavy strike assault shuttles, an attack wing could launch just over four hundred thousand strike assault shuttles and almost two hundred thousand large fighters if everything was launched at one time.'

'And right now?'

'The scout wings could launch nineteen thousand fighters, nineteen thousand assault fighters, nineteen thousand strike assault shuttles, and nineteen thousand heavy strike assault shuttles. We haven't made enough of the new ships to outfit the entire fleet yet, and they are still being tested to see how we want to use them, so the rest of the wing would be able to launch about three hundred and fifty thousand strike assault shuttles and a hundred and fifty thousand of the standard large fighters. All of the strike assault shuttles have stealth capability, but the only fighters with stealth capability are the assault fighters.'

'Those numbers are too large for anyone to actually be able to support that kind of drain on their economy.'

'We don't have an economy. All of our resources are used for our survival. All of our people live on ships, and a large portion of our population becomes warriors, either in the assault forces to attack the enemy, or in the defense forces to defend our civilians and families. Everything that we have is in our fleets. And the only way to keep it is to keep the enemy from killing us.'

Neither of the Colonial warriors was able to speak as they realized that they had met a race that had been living in constant warfare, wandering among the hostile stars, for almost forty eight hundred yarhns against vast, overwhelming odds that were almost incomprehensible. And they had been steadily winning the war for their very survival.

Part Two

The Price of Survival

Heracles was surprised when there was an emergency call for him in the middle of his sleep cycle. He wondered who it could possibly be, knowing that even if it wasn't the middle of an actual attack, the alarms would have been going off all over the ship if an enemy fleet had been spotted near them.

'What is it?'

'Heracles, I need to see you down in the lab right away. This is extremely urgent.'

'Pers? Do you know what time it is? Do you even sleep?'

Her laughter answered his query, followed quickly by an apology. 'Sorry. I really didn't know what centar it was. But this is really important, and I knew that you would want to know all about it right now anyway, so why not go ahead and wake you?'

Heracles sighed. 'Give me a few centons to get there, Pers. I do have to get dressed and then walk all the way over there, unless you need to see me so desperately that I should come in my nightclothes?'

She laughed. 'No, that's quite alright, Heracles. I wouldn't want to tarnish your shiny spotless reputation and bring your reputation that you had in your youth back to life to haunt you. You were quite the ladies' man, as I remember.'

'I'll be there in fifteen centons, Pers. And let's keep the old stories about my youth locked away in those dusty trunks in our memories. OK?'

'Whatever you say.'

Heracles got up and dressed quickly, then walked down to the lab that Pers usually worked in. When he got there, she was still very excited. He went over, then saw the data that she had shown him earlier being projected.

'Pers, that's the same data that you analyzed before to show me that there was some fleet that we couldn't really detect with our sensors at the extreme limit of our sensor range.'

'Not exactly, but you're warm. This is a close range scan. We can't tell a lot of detail, but there are four small anomalies near our fleet. We can detect nothing at all with any of our sensors, and even the sensors that the enemy had on their ships wouldn't begin to detect anomalies this small, but over the time scan, I have managed to detect that there are four small ships or groups of small ships shadowing our fleet. They've been in almost the same relative positions to our fleet for at least ten centars now.'

Heracles was wide awake now, blinking as he studied the projection closely. 'But the data says that they are almost in visual range of our fleet, and we haven't detected them at all?'

'As I said, they are small ships. If they are not painted to be highly visible, they would be totally invisible at distances that would allow them to visually track the larger ships in our fleet very readily.'

'If they are that close, and observing us, why haven't they responded to our signal that we set up to call for help?'

'Perhaps they don't want anyone to know that they are there? If they haven't decided what to do about us yet, they may not even want us to know that they are there, since this could still be a trap set by their enemy as far as they're concerned.'

Heracles nodded. 'Yes, that's possible. They could still be deciding what to do. Or they could be waiting and making sure that we don't turn off our distress signal, since their enemy could hear that and might take that as a sign that we had received a reply.'

'That makes no sense. Why wouldn't they want their enemy to know that we had at least gotten a reply?'

'I can think of several reasons, including that even if we aren't a trap for them, they may go ahead and use us as a trap for their enemy. Wait for them to focus their attention on us and then hit them from ambush.'

'That would be criminal. To use hundreds of thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians as bait to kill more of their enemy? Knowingly risking our lives and endangering us for no reason?'

'We aren't their people, and we're not really their concern. We wandered into the middle of a war that has been going on for a long time according to the records that you went over with me earlier, if you recall.'

'Well, yes, but...'

'But nothing. We put ourselves in danger, and they aren't increasing it by letting their enemy think that we are helpless and can be quickly killed with little danger. They could simply wait and then spring their ambush at the best time for them, regardless of our danger. We have no way of knowing how these aliens think, or even if they care about us one way or the other.'

'You certainly know how to crush a girls' hopes, Herc.'

'Pers, you said that you wouldn't call me that any more. That was years ago.'

'I know, but now I'm getting scared. Every time that I come up with something that might give us some hope of surviving this, you dash them and come up with something that is even more frightening. We've been running and hiding and dying all of my life.'

Heracles went over and put his arms around her, holding her close. 'It's OK, Pers. I'm just so used to doing the analysis to make sure that we don't overlook any possibilities that I automatically try to keep you from getting your hopes up too high.'

She craned her neck to look up at him while he was so close to her. 'Yes, Herc, but you have to leave us some hope of survival or we'll all just give up and die.'

'I know, Pers. And it really is possible that these ships are here to help us, though I don't know what a few small ships could hope to do for us against the enemy fleets that we've detected so far. Four small ships against four large fleets doesn't seem like a lot of help to me.'

'What if they are simply scouts that were sent out to find us? We may have been doing what we could to send out a signal constantly through repeaters that were spaced away from the fleet and giving out omnidirectional signals, but we haven't been giving out our location, speed, and heading along with it.'

'Yes, I know.'

'Then we should contact them and let them know that we know they are there. If we can't send a signal, how about a viper or a shuttle to approach them and let them know that we know where they are?'

'That might not be such a good idea, Pers. If they are wary of us, that might scare them off. I think that we should just wait and see what they want to do, and let them contact us, since we did ask them to help us already.'

'OK, I guess. Since we're both up, why don't you walk me back to my quarters and we can have a nightcap or something?'

'Pers.'

'What? We're both adults, and we're both definitely old enough to know what we're doing. And neither of us is so old that we're THAT old yet. Besides, I really don't want to sleep alone right now. That's one reason that I was working so late tonight.'

'OK, Pers. Let's go and see if both of us can get some rest before we have to be up in the morning.' He knew Pers well enough to know that she was asking him to hold her and help her sleep, and wasn't pushing for anything more than that at the moment. She really was worried and scared.

Kohrvhyl sat up as the comm officer started receiving a message and relaying it to him. When the message was complete, he shook his head. 'They have got to be kidding. That is the most insane plan that I've ever heard.'

'You want me to have them verify the message?'

'No. I may think that the plan is insane, but we got the message, and that was what they sent. Kragh.'

His crew laughed, since Kohrvhyl almost never cursed out loud. He muttered under his breath when he was really into an intense fight during combat, but he didn't just go around saying things out loud where everyone could hear him.

'It could be worse, sir. All we have to do is hold position and keep them under close surveillance for another twelve hours or so before our relief shows up and we can head back to top off our consumables and get some rest.'

Kohrvhyl snorted. 'We don't need to top off our consumables, and we've gotten lots of rest, since less than half of the crew has to maintain watch right now anyway. We found these idiots who don't even know enough to properly arm and armor their ships before going around exploring the galaxy with a civilian population, if any of you can actually believe that.' He sighed. 'Yeah, I know, the scans indicate that they are actually in worse shape than we thought from their message. And if all they really have is a few hundred of the fighters that we got the bloody stats on and that broken down old battlecruiser over there, they are going to be in a world of hurt when the first wave of fighters from a Grak fleet finds them. Hell, they probably won't last long enough for the first Consortium fleet to close if they send their fighters in first.'

Melina laughed. 'Well, at least we have a front row seat for the show later. And we can always just sit here and track any scouts back to their base and hammer their fleets, if that is the plan.'

'Somehow, I think that is way too simple and easy compared to what is going to happen. There are too many fleets in this sector of space, and we've been trying to hunt them down and decrease their numbers for too long to let some of them get away without being well blooded in the process. If we use these guys as bait to lure them in close, we could hit several of those fleets at the same time with the entire wing here, and still hammer the piss out of the others before they got out of range.'

Melina got serious. 'Divide and conquer works both ways, you know.'

'Yeah. I'm just worried about if we have enough firepower to go ahead and do it the hard way and go for the brass ring. If we split our forces too much...'

'That won't happen. Even if they've made significant advances in this sector in the past few decades, the assault fighters and some of our own improvements are going to hammer the piss out of them. We can damage a battlecruiser, and actually really hurt a heavy cruiser all by ourselves. Not to mention what a concerted attack by our entire talon could do.'

'Yeah, I know. This bird ain't exactly some old heavy fighter. We got some kick, and they won't even see us coming or going. Well, let's get comfortable and see what does happen in a few hours. Either way, things are going to get really interesting around here. And make sure that you keep watch on the long range sensors. If the Graks get some birds close enough to spot this moving feast, they're going to swarm this place like carrion birds.'

Hermes and Jaxon were in a state of culture shock. Their tour of the ship had given them a fairly good view of a lot of the ship, including areas and things that they knew their own people would have hesitated at even letting an ally see so easily. Of course, neither of them could have given much helpful information about the interior of the ship because they were so turned around and unable to tell where anything was in relation to anything else. There was just so much, and it was all packed into a space smaller than a battlestar. The idea that these people and their enemies used ships more than ten times the size of this one, with the same concept of space conservation firmly implanted in their minds, was staggering. The destruction that one ship like that could wreak left Hermes shaken, knowing that there was no way that his people could hope to survive against one of those ships, let alone fleets of them and their escorts.

When Kandi came to visit them again, she spent some time to make sure that they had eaten and were doing OK before they finally left and she took them to a small meeting room. When they entered, they saw Troy in the room with some others, waiting for them.

'Sorry, but we don't have time for a lot of niceties. All that I really need to know is if your landing bays on the Galactica can hold one of our shuttles. I know that some of the strike assault shuttles are small enough to fit in it, but I'm not sure about the actual shuttles that we use for troop transports.'

'How big is it?'

Troy told him the dimensions, and both men almost passed out. Hermes finally nodded. 'It will be tight if they have a lot of stuff on the deck, but it can land in the bay. You should have at least three metrons of clearance both top and bottom when you go through the entrance to the bay.'

One of the women in the room smiled. 'If there's that much clearance, I could land the transport in my sleep, Kohl-garh. And as far as hauling their little fighters, that won't be a problem. They'll both fit on the cargo deck without even cramping the place.'

Hermes looked confused. 'Our fighters?'

'You are almost out of fuel, and we don't have any way to replace your fuel right now. I'm sure that we could synthesize lots of it if we had to, but we don't even try to do the replication on that kind of materials because it's hazardous. We're going to return you and your ships to your vessel, but we can't let you fly on your own because your ships aren't able to enter stealth mode so that the enemy can't detect them. The Grak fleet that you were observing has swerved from the course that you plotted toward us and is headed toward your own fleet right now. We're between them and your fleet at the moment, but we can't move the entire fleet to where your fleet is so that we are able to protect it and still make sure that this fleet doesn't get to them. So the bulk of this fleet will stay here and assault them when they move into position, but before they can alert the other fleets out there that they found you, or that we are here.'

'You're returning us and our ships to the Galactica. And you're using a troop transport to fit our ships inside it?'

'It's large enough to hold both of your vipers, and small enough to fit into your landing bay. It is only a hundred and fifty meters long. And it will be escorted by three strike assault shuttles and some assault fighters, in case we run into any enemy ships during our flight.'

'You expect the Galactica to just let you land warships on our flight deck?'

Troy shrugged. 'That is up to you and them. If they won't let us land, we'll abort and return to our fleet. Of course, if they don't want to discuss things with us, we'll ignore their plea for help and just use them as bait and do what we can to the enemy fleets while their fighters are busy destroying your own fleet.'

Hermes' eyes went wide with shock, and Jaxon went white. 'You can't be serious. What kind of monster are you?'

'I am the leader of my Clan, and I am fighting a war against the same enemy that I've been fighting for over five thousand years. While that enemy seems to want to kill you and your people, that isn't really my problem. Especially if, when I answer your clearly transmitted distress signal begging us for help, and try to talk to you and determine if I am willing to risk the lives of my Clan to do so, you refuse to let me board your ship or talk with you. Whatever your people decide to do, we will use this opportunity to attack and destroy as much of those enemy fleets as we can. Their fighters are no real threat to my ships or my plans, so letting them attack your fleet won't cause me to really lose anything at all, since they will run out of fuel and oxygen quickly once their base ships are destroyed or taken by my forces.'

Hermes nodded. 'I understand, sir. We asked for your help, so when you show up and offer to listen to us, ignoring you and turning you away would be suicidal under the circumstances. Even if you did stop their ships from killing us all this time, we'd still be attacked by the next ship of theirs that we ran into, and the whole situation would repeat itself, only you wouldn't come to our rescue again.'

Troy nodded. 'If you two will come with me, we can see about getting aboard our ships and returning you to your own people. No matter what they decide to do, they will still need all of their pilots and fighters soon enough.'

Hermes and Jaxon stood and followed them out of the room, heading toward the hangar that their ships had landed in when they were brought aboard this ship. When they got there, they saw that in addition to a bunch of the fighters that had escorted them here, there were three larger craft and one very large transport in the bay. Their ships were visible on the transport as the doors to the cargo bay were closed, and then they followed Troy over to one of the medium sized ships in the bay. As they boarded, they saw that it was filled with warriors in full combat armor, and all of them were well armed.

'You intend to use us to get you aboard the Galactica so that you can take over?'

Troy smiled and shook his head. 'No. I don't need you to get me aboard your ship if I intended to take over. This is simply the security detachment to make sure that your people are who they say they are, and that they don't try to keep me from leaving when I decide that it is time to go. They're there to make sure that we don't have to take over or destroy your warship just to get me off of it.'

'There are only about seventy to a hundred warriors on here. If the other two are loaded the same way, you would only have a few hundred warriors. That would never be enough to take the Galactica and all of the warriors on board.'

Troy smiled and pointed to his daughter, who was standing near them. She reached over and lifted Jaxon off of his feet and left him dangling in the air, holding him easily with one hand.

'We're stronger than you, we have better weapons, and we have better armor. We've been fighting for our lives for over five thousand years against an enemy that would have destroyed your entire civilization within the first week. We know what we're doing, especially when it comes to warfare and survival.'

Troy nodded, and Kandi released Jaxon, letting him drop the six inches to the floor beneath his feet. 'Honey, are you sure that you don't want to stay with your crew in your own fighter?'

'Mother already told you that I was their insurance policy, Father. If it's safe enough for you to go there, then I don't need to be safely in my assault fighter so that I can blow their ship apart if they do anything to hurt you, now, do I?'

Troy shrugged, and they all walked over to their seats and strapped themselves in. Jaxon looked around nervously. Every single warrior that he looked at was in great shape, they were all armed to the teeth, and their armor looked very functional.

Hermes was noting the warriors around them as well. 'They don't look or act like your daughter does, so I'm assuming that the majority of the people on this shuttle are not pilots or crew for craft of this type.'

Lehr laughed. 'This is a strike assault shuttle, and the people on board are either Clan Raiders or Llyriana bodyguards. The shuttle crew is used to fighting just to protect their ship while the cargo that they brought into the combat zone takes the combat to the enemy. They fight the enemy face to face, and their weapons don't leave nice little blaster burns. The enemy wears armor that deflects or absorbs energy weapon bolts almost as well as our own armor does.'

'If the armor absorbs or deflects energy bolts, what do you use to kill your enemy or get inside their armor?'

Kohrrhi looked up absently. 'Railgun rounds penetrate very well, and so do the armor piercing bullets that our rifles fire. And if all else fails, you get really close and hack them to pieces with your sword. The enemy hasn't managed to make any body armor yet that will even come close to protecting them from our blades.'

Jaxon looked sick. 'Isn't that messy? You're talking about killing and slicing up living beings.'

Lehr shrugged. 'That is what warfare is, kid. Our enemy isn't a bunch of machines, so when you blow them apart, there is blood, guts, and body parts all over the place. It really smells bad at first, but you get used to the smell. And after a while, you don't really care about the images much, either, because it's them or you. Survival rocks.'

They sat quietly for a minute before Hermes asked, 'When are we going to launch?'

'We launched about fifteen seconds after everyone was on board and belted in.'

'But there wasn't any rapid acceleration or anything.'

'Inertial dampeners take care of most of that, along with the artificial gravity. And it's not like you get shot out of a cannon or something when you take off, you know.'

The two Colonial warriors looked at each other, then back at Lehr. Neither wanted to be the one to explain to him that launching a Colonial viper was exactly like being shot out of a cannon. They weren't sure exactly what was meant by artificial gravity until they heard an officer of some sort give an order and about half of the people on board undid their safety harnesses and went over to an area in the back of the ship.

Seconds later, Jaxon was amazed to smell hot food. Then he was shocked to see people walking around inside the ship carrying trays of the same food that they had eaten on board their main ship.

'Food? You have hot food on board the ship?'

Lehr nodded. 'Strike assault shuttles are sometimes out for up to several weeks at a time, and they need to have the food and other things that it requires for the crew and the troops that they are carrying.'

'Weeks?'

'Yeah. Sometimes it takes a while to get an enemy fleet to move into position or for us to move into position around a heavily fortified area without letting them detect us.'

'How can you possibly carry that much food on a ship this small? Not to mention the oxygen, water, and other things that you would need.'

Kohrrhi realized that he had no idea how the synthesizers worked, and explaining their operation, or even their concept, to these guys would take longer than the trip, even if they didn't interrupt and ask him to explain something to them again or argue about how something or other just wasn't possible. Lehr saved him the trouble of trying by rolling his eyes and telling Jaxon that they did it by magic.

Hermes laughed. 'He means that they use more tech that we don't have or really even understand well, and that it would take too long to explain it to us right now, even if we did believe what he told us.'

Jaxon looked at Hermes, then at Lehr. 'Oh.'

Kohrrhi smiled. 'You want some food?'

Lehr laughed. 'Anything but beest stew.'

'I was talking to our guests.'

'And I thought that you were going to be kind and fetch my food for me.'

Kohrrhi laughed. 'Kragh na, Lehr. Your legs work fine, but I can try to break one so that I have a reason to bring your food to you.'

'If you do that, how the hell am I supposed to keep up with Troy if he gets into a hurry?'

Troy smiled. 'You could always try skateboarding, Lehr.'

Lehr grinned. 'That would be great. And it would work, too. As long as the bloody charge on the skates' batteries held out.'

Troy sighed. 'Just take our guests over and get them something that they like from the synthesizer, Lehr.'

Lehr took the two over to the dispenser. 'So, what do you guys want to eat?'

'What is in stock?'

'Anything that you want, as long as the program is on the dispenser. Any of the dishes that you ate on the ship should be here, as well as a couple of thousand other choices. There are a lot of different types of food in here. Human, Llyriana, Xylchan, some from the Consortium, though most of those have been altered to give them some flavor.'

Kohrrhi came up while they were talking and punched a couple of buttons, and seconds later, there was a pile of food on the plate.

'One special for the boss, eh?'

Kohrrhi nodded, then sniffed. 'Yeah, enough peppers for him. Pull one up for me with about half as much hot stuff while I take this to him, will you?'

Lehr nodded, punching the buttons, and another dish was waiting for Kohrrhi a few seconds later when he came back for it.

'What was that?'

'Ramen noodles with toppings. Onions, hot peppers, garlic, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, carrots, and shredded roast chyrrkha.' Seeing the blank expressions on their faces, he smiled. 'I take it that you know what noodles are, and the rest of the stuff is vegetables, spices, edible fungus, and meat from an animal that we killed on a planet that we were on.' He laughed. 'The animal is really ugly, and smells so bad that you wouldn't believe it, but it tastes great. Though if you try this dish, I would suggest that you go kind of light on the hot peppers. They can be really spicy, and they burn your lips and mouth if you aren't used to them.'

Hermes smiled. 'Why don't we try a little bit of the dish with just a bit of the spice on them to see how we like it and how well we tolerate the spice?'

Lehr nodded and called up a partial serving of the dish with light hot pepper. He waited as Hermes and Jaxon each took a fork and took a bite, making sure that he had the dispenser ready to pump out a glass of milk and some crackers if it was necessary.

'This is good, but it really does burn your lips. Thank you for the warning, because I see that almost everyone else on the shuttle eats their meals with a lot more spice than this.'

'Yeah, well, we kind of got used to the flavor after eating so much of the stuff to hide the taste of our combat rations. Most of us don't really have any kind of problems with the spice, but the Xylchans are kind of addicted to it. We thought that it was just their response to finally having food that tasted good at first, but we found that even though the food that they ate while they served the Consortium tasted really bland, even when they ate other foods, they still pile on the peppers like Troy does.'

Jaxon asked, 'How much longer before we reach the Galactica?'

Lehr smiled as he ordered more food for both of them to eat. 'About another hour or so at the speed that we're doing. We could go faster, but we can't leave the transport behind, and it can't move as fast as an assault shuttle or an assault fighter, especially while it's stealthed.'

'If we're going to be there that soon, why is everyone eating so heavily?'

Lehr smiled around a mouthful of food as he sat down next to them, having walked back over to their seats to eat while they were talking. 'Habit. We always eat heavy when we might be going into combat so that we don't run out of energy or have to stop fighting to eat right away. And the nice thing about eating on the assault shuttle when we're heading toward our objective is that it is hot, fresh food. Not only does it make it so that we go into combat well fed with a full load of combat rations, but it also makes sure that anyone who is killed right away has a hearty last meal that wasn't combat rations.'

Jaxon looked flustered. 'What is it with you guys and this constant talk of combat? It's as if everything that you do in your entire life revolves around combat.'

Kohrrhi looked up from his food. 'Our entire life does revolve around combat. We fight and win, we live. We fight and lose, we die, and so do a lot of our families. We lose this war, and all of our families die, because our enemy will search the galaxy and hunt them down until they are sure that they have killed all of us. This is literally a fight for the very survival of our species. And the only way that we actually will survive is if we win the war and kill all of them.'

Hermes looked shocked. 'ALL of them?'

Troy spoke up, startling them. 'They intend to wipe out our species. That means the women and children as well. They won't even capture them except to torture them and kill them. The only way that we can survive and don't let them live to become a threat again in the future is to kill them all, because the species that rule the Consortium are very xenophobic, and all of them are terrified of our species. I believe that you saw exactly what they think of our species by their reaction to seeing your diplomatic team that tried to negotiate with them.'

'But you are talking about destroying entire races. All of the sentient beings that make up the population of a large part of at least three galaxies, by your own records.'

Troy shook his head. 'Only the seventy five member species of the Consortium and however many of their soldiers that it takes to destroy them. The rest of the species that they have enslaved are free to live their lives however they choose, so long as they don't attack the Clans or try to kill humans.'

'SEVENTY FIVE? You are actually intending to commit genocide on seventy five different races?'

Troy shrugged, expecting Jaxon to respond like that. He was still young and excitable, and he seemed to be the very idealistic sort. 'They made the rules as far as what it took for our species to survive. And if we do kill them, that will allow all of the other races that they have enslaved to become free and begin rebuilding their cultures and deciding their own fates.'

Hermes looked at him. 'How many other races have the Consortium enslaved?'

'By our records, which aren't exactly complete for obvious reasons, we know that the Consortium has enslaved more than sixty five hundred different species, and they have completely wiped out more than one hundred and twenty others. Those are the species that we have recorded documentation on from their own files.'

Hermes was stunned, unable to process the idea that there were more than six thousand alien species enslaved by one ruling group, or that they had already wiped out over another one hundred species completely. He sat there for a while, not responding to his surroundings, before Kohrrhi finally nudged him enough to get his attention.

'Uh, you need to eat if you're going to.'

Hermes looked down at the food in his lap and looked queasy. 'No, thanks. I seem to have lost my appetite.'

Lehr nodded and got their trays, taking them over and putting them through the disposal before returning to his seat. A few minutes later, they buckled their guests in so that they would be ready for the landing on their ship.

Heracles was startled as an alarm began sounding throughout the ship, and he realized that it was the call to battle stations. He raced from his ready room to the bridge, only to find it in pandemonium.

'What is going on, Leonidas? Situation report.'

'Sir, we don't know where they came from, but a group of small ships just suddenly appeared on our scanners. They are very close to the Galactica, and initial scans show that they are heavily armed ships of some configuration that we've never seen.'

'Don't launch the vipers that are on standby alert, Colonel. If they were hostile, they would have attacked before we detected them.'

'Sir!?'

'You heard me, Colonel. Are they trying to contact us?'

The comm officer shook her head, then jerked upright in her seat. 'Sir! I have an incoming message. It's from Lieutenant Hermes, sir.'

Heracles nodded, and she put the message on the speaker so he could hear it as well as the rest of the bridge crew.

'Hermes?'

'Yes, sir. I think that we managed to contact the people that you were trying to reach with your distress call, sir. They've come here to return us and our vipers, but they didn't come unarmed, sir.'

'I understand, Hermes. They are at war, and they are in enemy territory while they know that enemy fleets are searching for us.'

'Uh, sir, I've been asked to tell you two things. First, they need one of the landing bays cleared so that the transport with our vipers and its escorts can land. Second, they are coming to talk with us peacefully, but if we do anything to threaten or harm them, they will do what they can to rescue their own people before they destroy the Galactica, sir.'

The bridge went silent as everyone realized the seriousness of the threat, and what it would mean for the rest of the Colonial fleet. Leonidas looked at Heracles in shock, wondering what kind of diplomacy started with a threat to destroy your ship. 'Do you think that they could do that, sir?'

Hermes heard the question, and responded. 'Colonel, I've seen some of their fighters in action, and the fifty fighters that they have around the Galactica and the fleet right now could wipe out the Galactica and her squadrons, sir. I've seen the power readouts on the lasers that they have, sir, and their power output is greater than anything that we could put onto a much larger ship. They could damage the Galactica by themselves, and they would not be slowed down much by our vipers.'

Heracles nodded to himself. 'I see. Clear the landing bay, Colonel. I want to make sure that they know that we are willing to negotiate with them in good faith.'

'Sir, are you sure that this is wise? Letting them on board the Galactica while they are armed, and then meeting with them?'

Leonidas winced at the sound of the long suffering sigh that he heard. 'We did call on them for help, Leo. They have no reason to even bother responding, and even less reason to trust us, given the current circumstances.' He smiled to soften the unintentional reprimand. 'Besides, what other choices do we actually have? We already know that their enemies are looking for us, and we know that there are currently four enemy fleets trying to trap us and destroy everything that we hold dear.'

Leonidas nodded. 'Yes, sir. But I will have security personnel on hand to make sure that they know that we aren't going to give up without a fight if they start anything.'

Heracles smiled. 'That's acceptable, Colonel. I'm sure that they expect us to maintain our own security. That shouldn't be any problem at all.' He looked over and nodded, and the comm tech opened the channel again. 'Hermes, you are cleared to land in the starboard landing bay. It will be cleared of everyone and everything, but make sure that our guests know that we will have the area secured by our own security personnel so that they aren't caught off guard.'

There was a sharp laugh, highly uncharacteristic of Hermes. 'Sir, that won't be a problem for them. I'm not sure if they are ever really caught off guard, sir.'

The line went dead, leaving Heracles and the others on the bridge to wonder exactly what Hermes had meant by that remark. Unfortunately, Heracles didn't have the time to waste trying to figure it out. He had to get to the starboard landing bay to greet their visitors and find out exactly what it was that they wanted to talk about.

Hermes looked at Troy. 'OK?'

'Yes. How long will it take your commander to get to the landing bay?'

'Probably about five millicentons.'

Troy nodded to the pilot. 'Give them about seven minutes, then land. Diamond formation, with the transport out in front.'

'Sir? The transport won't take a pounding like one of the shuttles would if they open up on us.'

Troy shrugged. 'The transport is the only thing that could blow up from their weapons, so if it's in front, we can still get the shuttles out of there and back into space without being trapped inside. Besides, if they blow it up, they lose their two vipers as well.'

The pilot laughed, and Hermes heard the musical sound again and knew without even seeing under her hair that her ears were pointed. 'Yes, sir. I'll give that message to Jill so that she knows that she and her crew are to haul ass and look for shelter with us if anything goes wrong.'

The copilot snorted. 'Yeah, right. She and the crew might haul ass, but the kraghlar security troops that she has on board for this flight are going to stay right there and man the railguns until the ship is blown to hell around them. They've got half a Raider platoon for security.'

Troy looked over at Lehr and scowled. 'Hey, don't look at me, boss. They didn't tell me shit when they were loading these birds. We got a full load and extras to fill the seats without having standing room only on the three assault shuttles, and an empty transport except for the crew and normal security. I specifically told them that you said the shuttle wasn't to carry any extra troops over the normal crew size.'

Troy sighed. 'So, of course they dropped the crew to minimum and put about three squads from one of the Raider platoons on board, right?'

Lehr rolled his eyes, then grinned sheepishly as he nodded. 'I think that about four of Cherry's Raider squads made it on board. Assault Marine One and the Llyriana with us. Brad's Raider platoon on the second shuttle. Tahrrha's Raider platoon on the third shuttle. Assault Marine Two was split between the other two shuttles to round out the load.'

Hermes looked at them. 'What does all of that mean?'

Kohrrhi rolled his eyes. 'That in addition to the sixty security personnel on the three strike assault shuttles and the dozen railguns that they will man, there are going to be thirty Llyriana bodyguards, one hundred Assault Marines, and one hundred and forty Raiders landing on your ship, and all of them are fully outfitted for combat.'

Jaxon looked up from his seat and innocently asked, 'How much damage could three hundred warriors do against a vastly superior force?'

Kohrrhi winced, suppressing an involuntary shudder as he heard Troy mutter under his breath, 'Go, tell the Spartans...'

Then there was no more time for talking as the pilot announced that she was on final approach, and that they had better get their asses buckled in if they didn't want to be bounced around during any hard maneuvers.

Heracles stared in awe as he watched the four alien ships landing in a close diamond formation. They were moving slowly and in perfect formation, and the fact that they had no thrusters to worry about was evident by how closely the last ship was to the first one directly ahead of it. They also came in almost silently, coming to a gentle hover before finally landing on the deck below them. The lead ship was large, and had very little clearance according to Colonial standards, though their propulsion system seemed to make the clearance that they did have more than sufficient.

As soon as the ships landed, large hatches opened in the sides of them and troops came pouring out of them more rapidly than he thought that humans were capable of moving. They stopped about twenty metrons from the shuttles and then stood there, clearly on guard. He saw that they were armed with some sort of rifles, and were carrying large, rectangular objects that they set on the ground in front of them. He also saw larger weapons pointing outwards from the ships through other ports in their hulls, and realized that they were heavy weapons for backing up the troops that he could see.

Heracles held his hands up so they were open and palm out, moving forward a few paces to show that he was friendly and wanted to talk. After a few paces, he just stopped and stood there, waiting for some kind of response from the people who had just brought back his two missing warriors.

Hermes was astounded at how fast the men on board the shuttle moved as soon as the hatches opened, leaving him standing inside with Troy and about two dozen of the Llyriana. He saw that heavy weapons were being pointed out through ports in the hull of the ship, and realized that this entire ship was designed specifically for the type of warfare that they used it for.

After just a few seconds, one of the two Llyriana who were always with Troy nodded his head. 'Suit up, Lehr. All clear. One of them is standing out there with his hands up and empty to show that he wants to talk.'

Hermes watched as Lehr and Kohrrhi both put their helmets on, but Troy simply kept his under his left arm. They followed Troy and the others out the hatch and down the ramp to the deck of the Galactica, startled to see Commander Heracles himself there to greet them.

When they approached him, Hermes took one step forward to stand next to Troy's left side and said, 'Commander Heracles, president of the Council and military leader of the Colonial fleet, commander of the battlestar Galactica. I would like to present to you, Troy, leader of Clan Phoenix.'

Heracles smiled and bowed. 'I am very pleased to meet you, and even more pleased to see that you have rescued our missing patrol.'

Troy nodded. 'Their fighters are inside the transport. We figured that you'd want them returned as well. There wasn't enough fuel to fly them here, and we don't even use chemical fuels for our ships.' He smiled. 'And we did want to get them here without the Grak fleet that is closest to your position being able to spot their ships, so moving them inside a stealthed transport was the best that we could do at the moment.'

'Grak?'

'One of the species in the Consortium. Aggressive, territorial, saurian. Their war fleet is closing on your position right now, since they turned their general heading in this direction about twelve hours ago. So far, my scouts who are shadowing your fleet haven't reported sighting any enemy scouts within range to detect your fleet.'

Heracles smiled. 'We had surmised that there was someone watching our fleet. They don't show up on our sensors, but they do show up over time as an anomaly in the readings against the background, so we didn't know who or how many, or exactly where they were, but we did know where they had been.'

Troy nodded. 'The Consortium would love to know information like that and be able to detect our ships at all, though from the sound of it, your system wouldn't do them much good.'

'Why is that?'

'Because if it took hours for them to detect our ships, they would already be dead or boarded by the time that they could detect us.'

'What if they tried to run?'

'Nothing moves like a strike assault shuttle on an attack run. When they hit ramming speed, there's not a lot that you can do to avoid them.'

Heracles looked confused. 'Ramming speed?'

Hermes sighed. 'You really don't want to know, sir. Their concepts and tactics for warfare are radically different from anything that I've ever even heard of.'

Heracles nodded. 'I suppose that now that I've thanked you, I should ask you if you would be willing to discuss the possibility of saving my fleet. At least the civilian ships with the Colonists on board them.'

Troy smiled, and Heracles felt his gut clench instinctively. 'Well, I had been giving that some thought since receiving your plea for assistance, and I believe that I have a way to make sure that all of your people are safe. If you have someplace nearby that we could discuss it, I'm sure that you'll find my suggestion very interesting.'

Heracles nodded. 'We have an office right over there, and there is a window so that your troops can see you inside it, if that is acceptable?'

Troy nodded, and gave a brief command in Llyriana. Then he and his Shadows began walking over toward the office, leaving the rest of the Llyriana standing there waiting anxiously and wary of any kind of trap or trick.

After Heracles entered, Troy and his shadows entered, followed closely by Hermes and Jaxon. When they were all inside, Heracles shut the door.

'Sorry for the bodyguards, but the members of my Clan and my bodyguard insist that they accompany me at all times.'

'I understand. Now, exactly what was it that you had in mind as a possible solution to get my people out of this situation and make sure that they are not killed by the Graks?'

Troy began speaking, and as he continued explaining the whole situation and his plan to save the Colonists, Hermes was astounded, shocked, and outraged by what he heard. He did manage to keep himself under control, and saw that Jaxon was under control only because he was too shocked by what he had just heard to react.

When Troy finally finished speaking, the room went silent as Heracles considered the proposal that he had just been given. Finally, he sighed. 'I understand your limitations much better now, and I do accept your reasoning on why you cannot possibly save our entire fleet. I didn't know that there were so many enemy fleets searching for us, or that they were so large. We only know of four fleets ourselves, and only two of them sound like they could possibly be among those that you have detected. So I must assume that there are at least six enemy fleets searching for us right now.'

Troy nodded, waiting for him to get to the point. 'There really is no way to save the fleet?'

Troy shook his head. 'Your ships are too lightly armed, too slow, and they use some kind of chemical fuel. From our analysis of the fighters that we had on board our ship, we don't know of ANY deposits of that substance anywhere inside the space that the Consortium controls, and we know that there aren't any deposits of it in the areas that we've already taken from the Consortium. There is no way to cloak your ships to allow them to evade detection, and no way to protect them so that the enemy can't assault them with a huge wave of fighters if they do manage to close with your fleet. The plan that I described is the best that I can do to guarantee that at least some of your people do survive, and that we are able to keep the Consortium from threatening you with a similar fate in the near future.'

'If you can truly do what you have said, and you are willing to provide us with the resources that you have promised to make up for what we are losing...'

Troy nodded. 'I can guarantee that, no matter what the outcome of this battle is.'

Heracles nodded. 'This ship has served as the last and only defense of the fleet for over four hundred yarhns. But if this sacrifice is the only thing that will truly save the rest of the fleet and as many of our people as you can, then so be it. You have your bait.'

Troy nodded grimly. 'We'll do what we can to make this as effective as we can, and to make sure that the Consortium pays a high price for this prize.'

The Colonists in the room watched as Troy turned and went out the door, walking back toward his shuttles with his Shadows in tow. As they went, Jaxon asked quietly to nobody in particular, 'Do you really think that he can do what he said he could, or that he has the forces that he claimed?'

Heracles shrugged. 'I don't know. But I do know that he can at least save the people that he said he could. If he can manage that, then this will all have been worth it, no matter what happens to us.'

Hermes sighed as he watched the crews unloading his viper from the much more massive transport that had brought it there. 'If he is right about how their search pattern is developing and how they operate normally, then we have less than seven cycles before we find out if this is going to work or not. Are you sure that we can't try to slip the fleet out of this trap, sir?'

Heracles sighed, wishing that he could say something other than what he had to right now. 'You saw the projection that he showed us. The positions of the two fleets that we know of were exact, and the other two that he found were also shown. When we told him where the other two fleets that we had detected by our own scanners or patrols were, the sphere was pretty complete. And the records that we got from the ship that we already destroyed show that the area that is open does lead directly toward the heart of the space that this Consortium controls. If there isn't another fleet outside of our scanner range there, waiting for us to try to flee that way so that they can slow us down and allow those fleets that are closest to us to overtake us and catch us in a pincer, just as he said.'

Jaxon looked frustrated. 'But why are you taking his word for anything? He could be lying about everything that he told you, trying to lead us into a trap so that they can kill us.'

Hermes shook his head. 'If he wanted us dead, the entire fleet would be sucking vacuum and drifting through space as debris right now. His assault fighters are strong enough that a single squadron of them could easily destroy the Galactica, even if we launched all of our own fighters to try to stop them. You saw how powerful their lasers were, and how they overwhelmed the ships that were trying to ambush us. It took us several hits to even destroy one of those ships, and they cut through them like they weren't even there.'

Heracles raised his eyebrow in surprise. 'Really?'

Hermes nodded. 'Yes, sir. It was like a Colonial viper hitting one of the old model Cylon bombers without a fighter escort, sir. They were sitting ducks, and didn't even know what hit them. I think that half of them died before they even knew that there was an enemy ship out there except for the two of us.'

Heracles smiled. 'Well, then, if they are that good, then perhaps we do have a chance to do more than save our civilians, after all. Troy struck me as someone who doesn't like letting his enemy achieve any of their goals, and for some reason that I don't quite understand, he seems to think that we are his responsibility.'

'I think that I can explain that somewhat, sir.'

'Really? Please, Hermes, do so.'

'They said that we are related very distantly to one group of their ancestors. That their ancestors were once like us, but the survivors of a war with the Consortium put their own genes into the gene pool of the backward natives of their planet. They made their genes, especially certain of them, dominant so that they would remain in the gene pool of that planet and confer certain abilities upon those who carried them.'

'So they are no longer truly human?'

Hermes shook his head. 'You should know something that Troy told us, sir. He was interested in your distress signal specifically because you mentioned Earth. He said that the name of the planet that he was born on was Earth.'

'Do you think that it could be the same planet as the one in our legends? The same planet that we have been searching for all of these yarhns?'

Hermes shrugged his shoulders. 'I'm not certain, sir. They do speak Basic, and they do look very much like us, and they did say that their own species was distantly related to us genetically, but that they had been altered by the aliens who fled to their planet about seventy five thousand of their years ago.'

Heracles looked at him. 'Do you know how many yarhns that would be?'

'We did have time to try to at least get a rough estimate of the differences in our time measurement systems, and it would be about sixty five thousand and some yarhns.'

'That is a very long time indeed. Long enough that there probably aren't any humans left on his planet who are like us, are there?'

'No, sir. They aren't like us any more, but from what they told us, the humans on Earth aren't like them any more, either. They were altered when the Consortium kidnapped them to try to make them slaves. Without the nanobots that were put into them, the humans on Earth are still a lot like us.'

Heracles mood brightened perceptibly at this information. 'Then there is still a chance that we could go to Earth and join them?'

'That is one of the problems, sir. They don't know where Earth is. When they took the first ship that they were on, the data that could lead them back to Earth was destroyed as the only way to keep it from being broadcast to the Consortium so that their home planet would not be destroyed. It seems that the Consortium uses weapons that can actually make a sun go nova, and that is how they won their first war against the Tryx.'

'So there is no way that, if we survive this, we could continue our search and try to find Earth?'

Hermes looked at Jaxon, surprised at the sense of loss that his voice contained. Loss of hope, of purpose, and of something else that he couldn't quite place. Heracles saw, and looked at Hermes purposefully. 'Well, is he right?'

'Troy talked to me about that before he brought us back, sir. Earth was a place of very intense conflict, where they had been waging war almost constantly between tribes, groups, nations, or coalitions for millennia. Ever since before the Tryx added their own genes into the mix. He's not sure that they haven't blown themselves up, or achieved peace and started exploring the stars, or what. All that he does know is that none of the Clans has reported finding any trace of other humans from Earth in their travels, and there is still no mention of them in any of the captured Consortium databases. He used some strange expressions, but when they told me what they meant, he basically said that if we wish to keep looking for Earth, we were welcome to try. He just didn't want to get our hopes up about what we might find if we did eventually reach Earth.'

Heracles nodded. 'Well, we'll see what the Council and the people of the fleet want to do once all of this is over.' He paused briefly, then added very seriously, 'If there are any of us left alive to even make any decisions.'

The two warriors followed him from the room, arriving just in time to see the transport that had brought their vipers back to them leave the landing bay. Hermes just shook his head in wonder, amazed at the precision and control that the pilot showed in just maneuvering such a large, bulky ship around in such tight quarters and then exiting the landing bay just as easily as their own, much smaller, shuttles did. Then there was no more time for idle speculation for a while as they began doing what they could to accomplish as much as possible to implement the plan that Troy had laid out for Commander Heracles before they ran out of time. Troy had guaranteed them three days without an attack, but after that, they were running on borrowed time because the rest of the Consortium fleets were slowly closing the noose around them as they all converged on the diminishing sphere of space that the Colonial fleet could occupy. It was only a matter of days before Hermes and every other Colonial warrior in the fleet got to find out what it was going to be like to be involved in a battle that would dwarf anything that they had ever imagined possible. There were at least six enemy fleets closing on their position. Over sixty of the huge battleships that were larger than any Colonial builder had imagined possible in his wildest dreams, accompanied by over four hundred ships that were at least the size of the Galactica, as well as an even larger number of smaller escort ships that were easily capable of destroying any ship in the fleet other than the Galactica by themselves. And all of their hopes for survival were pinned on an alien that they had just met, who said that his fleet could eliminate the threat.

Troy waited until he returned to his fleet to start putting his plan into motion. The other talons were already moving toward the positions that he needed them in, but he would have to adjust the course of the rest of his talon. They would not be thrilled to learn that they would be moving even farther from a position to allow them to easily support his own scout talon, and those objections would probably increase even further when they learned exactly what his plan entailed.

Kandi was almost freaking out when she heard what Troy had planned out with the commander of the Colonial fleet. 'What? Are you totally insane? We don't have the forces to pull something like this off, father. There are at least six enemy fleets out there by your own figures, and all of them have been confirmed and identified as distinct and separate fleets by their spatial coordinates and composition. You are the one who is always saying that divide and conquer always works.'

Troy grinned. 'Yes, it does. When the enemy is able to divide your forces and then take advantage of surprise, superior numbers, or the terrain, attacking you in detail and then mopping up the survivors, they win quite easily. However, this particular situation isn't going to work out like that.' His grin broadened, and she shrank back from the feral grin that she had seen before and would never forget after the first time that she had seen it. Especially after she saw what had happened after that grin. 'At least, not for the Consortium.'

'What do you mean?'

'Divide and conquer works both ways, darling. They have already divided their forces for us, and they have no idea that we are even here. Their attention is focused on the Colonial fleet, and they can detect them on their sensors. Our talons were already divided up searching for targets, so we haven't really divided our forces all that much in response to the enemy.' He saw that she was about to object, and laughed. 'I will admit that our own talon has been split, but that was already there to start with, and we are just separating a little bit more for tactical advantage. We have one fleet that we can hit ourselves, but the other fleet is too far away from us for us to rendezvous and hope to hit them both at the same time. Besides, this one fleet is tightening the noose much more rapidly than the others. The Grak commander is eager to claim his reward and be the first one to reach the kill. So his fleet will have to be killed a bit sooner than the others, and we're the ones who are in position to do that.'

'What if there is a seventh, or even an eighth enemy fleet? There is a hole on your flank that could be supposed to be filled by the scouts from another fleet, you know.'

Troy nodded. 'True, but we came in from a heading in that direction, and our own scouts didn't report anything in that area. If there is another fleet there, it's behind schedule, and probably won't show up in time to make any difference. The important thing is that we're going to get salvage from six enemy fleets within this week, and we can use some of that to keep these Colonial warriors and the people that they are trying to protect from being killed like sheep at the slaughterhouse.'

Lehr rolled his eyes. 'There are only a few hundred thousand of them, and even if you give them crews to keep their ships running, there are too few of them to even form a small sept that could fight on its own properly.'

Troy looked over at him. 'Against the Consortium, yes. But they have enough people that they can fight, and we can give them the time and materials to train their people so that they are capable of surviving on their own. If we gave them half a dozen of the captured battlecruisers for their Home Ships, and another half a dozen for them to use as heavy assault carriers...'

Lehr grinned. 'That would be more than enough for them to go back to where they came from and defeat their old enemies and retake their home worlds. And during their journey they could increase their numbers enough to have those ships and some of the support ships manned well enough to defeat the entire Cylon empire if they chose to.'

Kohrrhi nodded. 'And if they avoided trouble with large fleets, and only fought when they had to, that many battlecruisers hauling assault fighters and strike assault shuttles would be able to allow them to survive, and none of their fleet would be vulnerable to enemy attacks such as they are right now. So even if they wanted to keep searching for Earth, they would know where the Consortium territory was, and they could avoid it as much as possible and try to explore areas that aren't listed on our charts as being known and explored, claimed by the Consortium or already retaken by the Clans.'

Kandi shook her head and sighed. 'OK, father. But as soon as our fighters return from the assault on the Grak fleet, I'm keeping my talon here in command of the half of the wing that is remaining with your ships to guard in case of an enemy attack. The other half of our wing of assault fighters will provide enough cover for the Colonial fleet to keep the enemy from destroying it completely.'

'Of course, Kandi. I wouldn't have it any other way.'

Kandi glared at him and blushed as she heard her mothers starting to laugh and she realized that he had suckered her, and that she had just walked right into that trap with her eyes wide open. If she was here with the scout talon, she couldn't be in the middle of the fight to protect the entire Colonial fleet against the thousands of heavy fighters that were going to descend on it like locusts. She turned to Kyri and Shahrrhi, who were sitting to the left of Troy, and scowled at them. 'Vahrg na, mother. You could have warned me BEFORE I walked right into that trap.'

Shahrrhi smiled. 'I would have, dear, but Kyri told me not to before we even came to the meeting. After all, she was right that you are much older than I am, and that you should have the sense and experience not to walk into such an obviously well laid out ambush if even a youngling such as myself with so little actual combat experience could see it plainly.'

Kandi stuck her tongue out and made a face at Troy. 'OK, I deserved that one. So I'll just take out my aggressions on the smaller ships of the Grak fleet and any fighters that they actually manage to launch when we hit their fleet. I'm sure that my crew will love making sure that none of them get outside of jamming range to warn the other fleets of our presence in the area.'

Troy just smiled. 'That is the plan, little one.'

Kandi just stalked out of the room as the meeting ended, hoping to walk off some of her anger and energy before she had to tell her crew chief about the results of this meeting. Her cousin could give her so much grief about the times when she lost her temper, and would delight in reminding her that she always seemed to let her father push her buttons.

It was only a day later that Troy was standing on the bridge of his ship looking at the readouts. 'You're sure of the timing, Jason?'

'As sure as we can be. We have to stop this fleet now, or their forward scouts are going to be coming in range of the Colonial fleet and detecting them. We can't jam that signal in the other directions because we don't have anyone that we know for sure will be in place, so the only alternative is to hit them hard and fast and keep them from coming into detection range.'

'What of the other preparations?'

'We've managed to send teams to make some cosmetic changes that would indicate that a few of the ships had some engine trouble and they are limping along just so they don't have to leave their stragglers behind. We picked a couple of the larger ships that look less maintained and older than some of the others, so it would be more realistic.'

'And the strike?'

'On schedule. The strike assault shuttles, heavy strike assault shuttles, and assault fighters have all been launched and are on target. Strike will commence in thirty minutes, when they enter range for the assault run. The fighters won't hit until right after the first of the shuttles hit the larger ships.'

'So, we have five thousand of the assault fighters committed to destroying all of the enemy fighters, the smaller enemy ships, and making sure that no shuttles or other ships escape the area, four hundred from our scout talon on deep patrol or watching over the Colonial fleet, and a thousand with us right now?'

'Yes, sir.'

'How long at full speed before the assault fighters that we have on board could reach the area where the enemy's scouts are operating?'

'Maybe an hour and a half.'

'Launch half of our load, and tell them to hit hard, hit fast, and don't leave anything that can tell anyone what happened.'

Jason smiled. 'Affirmative, sir. Standard search and destroy mission, with extreme prejudice. Got it. They won't have any problems at all with that, sir.'

Jason nodded, and one of the bridge crew relayed the message. A few seconds later, she nodded, and everyone knew that the five hundred assault fighters were now moving toward their unsuspecting prey at the fastest speed that they could maintain and not be detected. For a safety margin, that limited them to forty percent above the top speed of a Consortium heavy fighter while remaining stealthed. Tests had already proven that they could do twice the speed of a Consortium heavy fighter when they weren't worried about being stealthed and avoiding detection.

'We really should have more than just the five hundred assault fighters on board, sir. If someone closes with us...'

'Then we launch the heavy fighters, because we've already been seen, and they're not going to give away our position compared to a Consortium fleet and the waves of fighters that they'll launch against us.'

Jason smiled sheepishly, nodding his head. 'Yes, sir.'

'Jase...'

'Sorry. I can't help acting like that when you chastise me, especially when I know that I just walked into it by making such a stupid mistake. I'm just not counting on using any of the heavy fighters because we're doing so much to only do what we can in stealth mode so that we don't blow this setup.'

Troy shrugged. 'We'll do what we can and make the most of our opportunities, but we both know that things never go right once you make contact with the enemy. As soon as that happens, all of your plans go straight through the crapper and out the airlock.'

Lehr laughed. 'As long as all of the Graks go out the bloody airlock and we get their ships to use for ourselves, I never complain about how the plan worked.'

Kohrrhi nodded. 'If our attack is as much of a surprise as we're hoping, you definitely won't have anything to complain about, Lehr. This could be one of the most one-sided defeats that we've ever given to the Consortium, even if it isn't one of the biggest or most important.'

Troy shook his head. 'As far as the Colonials think, this is definitely the biggest and most important battle that they've ever seen. Even when their home worlds were all destroyed, they never saw this many enemy ships in combat at one time. From what their commander told me, they never saw this many enemy ships during their entire war against the Cylon empire. And nothing to compare to something the size of the battleships.'

Jason nodded. 'Just as long as we manage to pull this off. If we screw up by the numbers, we'll still win, but some of them will get away, and they will probably have at least some data on our new weapons systems, so they won't have as much of an edge on the psychological impact and letting us use them quite as long before the enemy commanders start trying to adapt and prepare for them.'

'You gave all of the unit commanders the special orders that I gave you before they left?'

Jason smiled. 'Uh, yeah. And a few of them opened them and read them in front of me. They didn't have any problems with it, since they all know exactly what you intend to do.'

Troy grinned. 'Yeah, I thought that they'd enjoy knowing why they might have to do short hops to another ship if they got into any trouble, because there won't be any of their reinforcements coming along to relieve some of the load on them. We'll send in some loaded transports with escorts to land in secured landing bays to rearm them all, but that probably won't even be necessary in most cases.'

Kyri sighed. 'We're sending enough troops to take the ships, true. But it just feels so wrong to alter our normal procedures that drastically like this with no warning.'

Troy shrugged. 'They know that they're not being abandoned, but we need the support troops and the rest of the fleet somewhere else, so it's not all that much different from a long range raid now, is it?'

Shahrrhi snorted. 'It isn't if you don't count the fact that even with cramming them on board the ships, if they have to pull out and abandon the entire fleet, there won't be enough ships for all of them to get off, Troy.'

'That is what the shuttles are for. They can easily hold about three hundred troops each if they cram them on board, and we'll be leaving one fourth of the assault shuttles and heavy assault shuttles there, and they can take off at least thirty percent of the troops on board any of the ships. And we'll leave two thirds of the transports there with them, so they can always cram three hundred troops per transport if they have to get them off the ship, so there will be enough ships to haul all of our troops off of the ships if that really becomes necessary.'

'But I still don't understand why you are doing all of this.'

Troy smiled grimly. 'Murphy's Law, dear. I intend to have a little something held back so that if anything does go wrong, I have an ace in the hole to cover that hole.'

Shahrrhi looked confused. Kyri leaned over and said softly, 'If anything goes wrong, instead of having all of our assault shuttles somewhere else, he has three fourths of them on board this fleet already loaded and prepared to launch again, and even with half of his assault fighters guarding the Colonial fleet, he still has all of his heavy fighters left on board this fleet, and half of his assault fighters split between this fleet and the one that we are attacking.'

Shahrrhi stared at him. 'You're putting about half of the reserve and support troops on the shuttles that board the enemy fleet and keeping some of your assault forces here in case you need them. And you'll have enough troops left on board to man all of the assault shuttles and still crew and man the transports that you have left, so you'll still be able to send out a fairly good strike force against any enemy fleet that pops up unexpectedly.'

Troy nodded. 'That's the plan, love. Protect the fleet that we're using as bait, while making sure that we really do have enough to make sure that nothing gets away from this battle to warn the Consortium about our changes in tactics and armaments. We do want to make sure that they don't learn about the assault fighters before we really have a chance to make them work for us. Fortunately, we did wait longer than usual before really field testing them, so the entire wing has at least half of their complement of fighters and shuttles represented by the new system. That will make a lot of difference when we attack them, because the ambush will be heavier and more effective, and fewer of their small ships and fighters will even have a chance to try to run and spread the word, and those that do won't be able to tell if anyone is following them and lining them up for the kill or not until they are a cloud of gas.'

Shahrrhi smiled grimly. 'Good. Roast them all, and let God sort them out. Preferably he's just going to do a batch sort and give them all the express ticket to hell.'

Kyri smiled. 'Uh, Shahrrhi, hon, why don't you come with me and we'll get you a nice sandwich for a snack?'

Shahrrhi closed her eyes and grimaced. 'Please, don't tell me that I'm hormonal again.'

'Sorry, hon, but you knew that you were going to get pregnant sometime during this search and destroy mission, and it looks like you got lucky early.'

'Kragh. I hate that. Now he won't let me go on any of the assaults with him.'

Troy laughed. 'You're less than three months pregnant, love. You have at least three to four months before you won't be able to go into combat, and after this, there won't be any more combat for a while unless we are ambushed by the enemy.'

Kyri's laughter joined that of his Shadows and half of the people on the bridge. 'Yeah, right, Troy. Like they can get past our stealthed scouts without us knowing long before they're in range of even sighting the fleet on their scanners, even if we weren't going around in stealth mode all of the time.'

Troy shrugged. 'Accidents happen. I just want to make sure that they don't happen to us.'

Kyri led Shahrrhi off to get something to eat, followed by their Shadows. Lehr grinned. 'I'm just glad that I don't have to smell her snack or watch her eat it. Man, those things are really gross, and it hasn't gotten any better since Lyssa first introduced the bloody things to the rest of the wives while they were in the Change during the first year.'

Kohrrhi laughed. 'What you should really be thankful for is that you don't have to EAT any of those concoctions, Lehr. They make the worst combat rations without hot sauce seem really good.'

Jason sighed. 'Well, the assault is under way, and in just a while we'll have the first reports back from the group that is taking out their forward screen.' He grinned at Troy. 'You know, if this actually works...'

Troy nodded, smiling to himself. 'Yeah, I know. If this works, we'll show the bastards how to really do a tactic like Five Fleets and make it work.'

As Troy walked off, followed by his Shadows, Shiloh came over to stand beside her husband. 'You know, Jason, revenge is a dish best served cold.'

He nodded absentmindedly. 'Then this ought to be the best dish around, because he's been chilling it in the cold depths of space for the past twenty five hundred and sixty eight years.'

Shiloh sighed. 'He took that loss hard, Jase. He lost five wives, and about twenty five of his kids that were still in the household.'

Jason shook his head. 'That just made it personal. He was pissed because if he'd gone ahead and taken the more aggressive path, he thinks that he could have built our numbers and our offensive capabilities faster, and he wouldn't have lost forty percent of our fleet and over thirty percent of our Clan in that battle. Though I am glad that even he has finally come to admit that while he may still consider it a great loss personally, that was one hell of a victory for the Clans.'

Shiloh sighed loudly. 'Men. I'll never understand how you can take some things so personally that you can't even admit that it's a miracle that we survived at all. That we made it out with sixty percent of our fleet and seventy percent of our people, even if we were battered and mangled in the process, is nothing short of an act of God. The fact that they had less than six percent of their combined fleets left that were in any shape for any type of combat at the end meant that we hammered the piss out of them, Jase. And we totally destroyed eighty five percent of their combined fleets while we were outnumbered and outgunned even worse than we were sixty years ago.'

Jason laughed. 'Sixty years ago, we had the advantage of surprise, superior weapons systems, superior firepower, and armor that they could have only imagined in their worst nightmares, Shi. He doesn't even count that because once we started blowing the piss out of anything smaller than a battlecruiser and destroying their huge troop transport ships with antimatter rounds, their organization and will to fight went out the airlock.'

Shiloh laughed sharply. 'Ha! Tell that one to the kids who don't know any better. His bloody kraghlar psychological warfare paid off on that one more than even he imagined could ever be possible. Sending entire assault shuttles loaded with skulls of dead Graks while we were bombarding them with signals showing the rivers of blood from the dead at Tryhn Drohvi shook them to their core. And when they found out that not only were they facing us and the Krohr-jing, their best assault warriors, but that we were also wearing armor that let us wade into them and kill them point blank with our blades, they knew that their worst nightmares were real and coming to claim their souls. That is why their slaves call us Death Wraiths, you know. They hear their invincible masters whispering that as they cower and cringe in fear after they wake up from their worst nightmares.'

Jason shrugged. 'I don't really care, hon. Maybe this will finally let him get that battle out of his system and put it to rest.'

She shook her head. 'As long as there is a Grak living, he'll never have that battle out of his head. For him, that battle won't be avenged until there isn't anything left of the Consortium for him to avenge it on.'

Jason said nothing, for there really was nothing to say that his wife wouldn't get upset or pissed off about. Everyone had their motivations, and while Troy had already been committed to this war long before Pehnt Drohvi, there was no reason for him not to take it personally when the enemy had tried to overwhelm them with sheer numbers and had actually gotten enough forces into one area of space to actually almost succeed with that tactic as they had against the Tryx so long ago. And where they had almost succeeded so long ago, things had changed very much since then. Now there were at least six enemy fleets in this area, and half of Clan Phoenix's offensive forces were here to face them. The enemy was outgunned, outclassed, and outnumbered. And for that mistake, they were all going to die. It was a shame that the crews of the smaller ships were going to die without even having a chance to surrender or decide what they wanted to do, but the crews of the remaining ships did represent many more lives, and they would all have a chance to keep on living and decide their own fates. Maybe some of them would actually choose to join forces with the Colonials and help them in their quest, whether they decided to keep looking for Earth or to return and avenge themselves on the machines that had almost wiped their species out when they had betrayed them and taken over their home planets. If they did, there was almost no chance that they would ever have to fight the Consortium. If they had been traveling for four or five hundred years in search of Earth, their home systems were too far from the fringes of the Consortium for them to have to worry about expansion ever bringing the Consortium to their area of the galaxy. At the current rate projections, the Consortium's borders would begin shrinking within another century or two as they would have to keep withdrawing their forces to fight against the Clans and keep them from totally destroying their infrastructure. Even an empire as vast as the Consortium had limited resources, and they couldn't fight a defensive war against an enemy within their borders while still maintaining enough forces to allow them to keep expanding their sphere of influence.

Shelly smiled as the view on her monitor showed her the ships that she was heading for growing steadily larger. Her talon was ready to strike, and in just a few seconds, they would begin their attack runs and reach ramming speed as they closed with the battleships and battlecruisers that formed the center of the enemy formation. There was one brief signal that broke radio silence, and all hell suddenly broke loose among the enemy fleet as they cruised through space. Five thousand Clan assault fighters suddenly opened up with everything that they had, strafing and pummeling the ships of the Consortium fleet. All of them were concentrated on the two hundred and fifty heavy cruisers that were escorting the main ships of the fleet. All of the other smaller ships were out scouting and running the perimeter around the fleet to protect it. They had failed to do their job of providing some warning of an impending attack, and within the first minute of the attack, two hundred and thirty one ships were completely blown apart by the powerful lasers and other weapons that were being used by the fighters around them. The remaining heavy cruisers were broken wrecks that were bleeding air and barely functioning.

The enemy responded quickly, trying to launch as many of their fighters from the larger ships in the fleet as they could, but their response time was too long for many of them to even clear their bays before they were totally destroyed by the strafing runs of the Clan assault fighters. Their lasers weren't powerful enough to damage the heavy armor of the battleships and battlecruisers with short bursts, but they were more than powerful enough to destroy a lot of things that were inside the cargo and launch bays as their doors were open to allow the fighters to launch. Of the almost one hundred thousand heavy fighters that were on board the larger ships of this fleet, only six thousand, two hundred and forty nine were able to launch and clear the area right around their ships without being destroyed in the process. The majority of them tried to fight their enemy, and died within the first thirty seconds of their attempts. Of the rest, two hundred and seven tried to flee the area and warn the other fleets in this sector. They were all hunted down and destroyed within the next five minutes, leaving nothing for the assault fighters to do except patrol and make sure that no more fighters, transports, or shuttles tried to repeat their performance and escape the area. Several hundred of the assault fighters broke off into their own talons and began sweeping the area for any of the light cruisers and scout ships that might be in range of the fleet. There were thirteen of them in range, and all of them disappeared in balls of expanding gas as they were hunted down, one by one. None of them were able to get out a warning about the attack because of the Clan's electronic jamming, so each of them was totally taken by surprise when they were attacked, even though they were already on alert because of the fact that it was impossible to hide the fact that two hundred and fifty of their heavy cruisers were no longer registering on their scanners. They were watching for some sign of the enemy, but there was nothing out there that their scanners could detect, so the attack was swift and terminal for each of them.

Thirty minutes after the attack had begun, Kandi began calling for reports from the other talons. Other than slight damage from dogfighting other fighters that got into space, there were no losses so far. All of the talons were intact. There had been several close calls from lasers and particle beams on the large ships firing in random patterns once they realized that there was an attack under way, but without any way to lock onto the small, fast ships, there was very little chance of them doing much to damage the assault fighters. All of that fire had stopped five minutes ago as the last of the teams to board the large ships reached their objectives and shut down the fire control for each of the ships that had been boarded. Now it was up to the Clan troops on board the ships to go hand to hand with the enemy and destroy them, capturing the ships for their own use.

'Jester, this is Woodstock. I have all of my fledglings, and we're ready to begin phase two.'

'Roger that, Woodstock. Take your birds and fly this coop so that the big bird doesn't get too exposed. And try to keep our own in line so that they don't get lost escorting the transports back here with all of the extra munitions.'

'Affirmative. Are you sure that you're going to have enough ships to cover this area?'

'Fifteen hundred of us should be plenty, Kandi. Thirty talons of these babies are more than enough to handle the entire remnants of this fleet if they try to come back to the nest. And twenty talons should be enough to shepherd the rest of the transports back here without any problems. It's not like they have any air force left.'

'Roger that. Most of it is vapor and ions right now. Not enough left of most of those ships to even bother trying to do salvage. Some of those heavy cruisers went so hard when they blew up that I don't think there's enough material left to salvage enough to build a light cruiser out of them.'

'Your father did tell us not to sweat the small stuff and just blow the piss out of them. I think that he's going to be happy with our first full scale field trial.'

Kandi's laughter filled the comm. 'Oh, yes. He will definitely be pleased with the results of this raid. We already know what is going to happen to the rest of the ships in this fleet. Just keep jamming the comm until you know for sure that all of their comm is down, and there shouldn't be any problems with maintaining operational security.'

'Roger that. Have a safe trip back, and tell your father that these things are the greatest thing since sliced bread.'

'I'll tell him, Jester, but that's one that even I'm not sure exactly what it means. That has to be some kind of old saying.'

'Straight from Earth, hon. Straight from Earth. Means these things are hot shit, and I gotta get me one of these for Christmas.'

There was more laughter on the comm. 'Yeah? Well, I'm sure that hearing that will definitely make daddy think that they were worth all the time, effort, research, and materials that they took to make.'

'Just keep your eyes peeled, kid. You're supposed to see them and kill them before they even see you or know that you're there. That's the whole point of building these things, despite my jokes to your father that he's just doing it to keep me happy while he's doing what he can to keep me safe no matter how much flying I want to do in the combat zones.'

Kandi didn't even respond to that comment. There was no way in hell that she was going to say something that could get back to Troy on that line of thinking. She gave one terse command on the group frequency, and her talon and fifty nine others began leaving the area, flying in formation so that they could scout and fight if they ran into anything at all on their way back to their own fleet. She didn't respond, but did smile wryly as her crew began laughing as the last comm signal that they got was a single word spoken by the same female that Kandi had been talking with before. They all thought that one of her mothers calling her "chicken" was hilarious.

Kelly shook her head to clear it and called a halt to her unit's progress. They had been inside the Grak battleship for over an hour now, and were nearing the landing bay that they were supposed to secure for the incoming transports. There would be a few additional troops on them, but most of the troops would be remaining with the fleet to fill the assault shuttles that were returning to the fleet to capacity if they were needed for another assault. Once those transports arrived with their loads of extra munitions, three fourths of the assault shuttles would leave and return to their base ships. They were simply waiting for the arrival of the transports so that there wouldn't be any way that the troops wouldn't have enough transport to get off of this ship if the enemy found a way to blow it or managed to come up with some type of secret weapons that they couldn't handle.

So far, things were going about normal for this early into a boarding. There were enough troops on board the ship to let them know that this was a war fleet with a full complement of security and other troops, but they still had enough troops on board to take this ship within a day or two at most. The whole idea was to simply keep moving and hammering the enemy every time that they tried to make a stand, constantly driving them toward one end of the ship while working your way toward the bridge. So far, there had been no surprises at all on the armor or armaments that they had faced, and the enemy didn't really have anything on board this ship that could do very much against Clan armor. It was simply a matter of moving forward, hitting them with the skates, then closing and using their swords against them for the maximum psychological effect. The rifles were often quicker, especially at a distance, but the enemy always had some shields, and seeing their comrades strewn across the floor, walls, and sometimes even the ceilings by the combined effects of the skates and swords definitely had an effect on their morale and their fighting ability. The big thing was to take things slowly enough to do them right the first time, but still quickly enough to keep the enemy off guard and keep them from getting inventive. Clan armor absorbed a lot of punishment and allowed the wearer to be almost impervious to anything that the Graks and the Consortium had, but almost wasn't an absolute, and people did still die. And there were ways to work your way through even the best Clan armor if you were given enough time and the person was totally overwhelmed and simply overcome by superior numbers. That didn't happen often, since they were only outnumbered ten to one on most of the ships that they boarded.

'Kel, what are we doing?'

She looked over to see her platoon sergeant about twenty yards down the hall with another fire team. 'Break. We can't do much until we get this area secured. Make sure that we've got everything ready to roll, and we'll hit anything between us and the hangar that we're supposed to secure. Once we're there, we'll have squads take a break and eat something to keep up their strength. Any idea how many other platoons are going to be hitting this bay with us?'

'Comp says three others, but only two report that they're ready for hitting them and already in place. The other one got slowed down by some ambushes and had to eliminate some Graks and Garns before they tried to group to rush one of our primaries.'

Kelly sighed, then shrugged. The enemy knew that their primary objectives were very important for them to hold if they wanted to retain complete control of this ship, which is why they were the primary targets for the troops that boarded the ship. And they were beginning to figure out that their only hope of defeating any of the Clan units was to overwhelm them with vastly superior numbers. It was a good way to lose a lot of troops in any individual combat situation, but they had already figured out that if they didn't do whatever it took to win, they were all going to die anyway. So far, there hadn't been very many survivors of any Clan attack in this part of the Consortium for a very long time, and the few crew members that they found after an attack all told them basically the same information, so even the Graks would have to listen and adapt eventually if they expected to win this war or survive an encounter with the Clans.

Behhn laughed softly at her lack of response. 'Roger, boss. Ten minutes to drink and catch our breath, and then we haul ass. I'll coordinate with the other two teams that are ready to hit them and we'll all hammer them at the same time. We have any kind of news from the guys in the control room or security room yet?'

'Not yet. SpyEye is really pissed because they found a Grak who really scrambles all of his files and control commands. He must be really edgy about his number two wanting to take over or something. And AyCee is working on keeping them from pumping the ship full of certain chemicals that are going to trash the place and make cleanup a lot harder for us once we eliminate them. I think that they're trying to eliminate the crew.'

'Affirmative. We'll just go in blind other than our own intel from the drones and what the other platoons find out. Moving out on the mark. You'll see the time display for the countdown on the display in your helmet.'

Kelly finished taking a swig of water from her canteen before replacing her helmet and checking what he had just said. 'Got it, sarge. The sooner we get this place secured, the sooner we can load up for bear and go see how many Graks we can shred with our skates. Just remember that we want the main guns and stuff like that intact so that we can use them to defend the place if we have to. I'm sure that any other Consortium fleet that we run across is going to be very surprised at the welcome that we are supposed to give them.'

Laughter greeted her comment, because every Clan warrior on this ship knew that once they took the fleet, they were to continue to operate as if they were still a Grak fleet. And if another enemy fleet came close enough to allow them to do so, their first priority was to take them out with the fleet's main railguns if there wasn't a chance to use their own shuttles and any others to board the enemy and take their ships. Using them as salvage and scrap beat letting them get away and warn the Consortium.

Over the next several hours, things were very tense and hectic aboard the entire scout talon that Troy commanded. The assault fighters returned to the fleet and were rearmed to make sure that they had full combat loads on ordnance. When they were ready, they left, escorting the transports back to the enemy fleet. There were only fifteen hundred assault fighters returning with the transports as escorts, but they knew that they had already destroyed much of the enemy fighter complement, so there were enough of them to adequately escort the forty five hundred transports that were returning with them.

After their departure, messages started coming in that some of the other enemy scouts had been located and eliminated. There were seventy nine potential targets out there, all of them smaller than a heavy cruiser. Thirteen had been destroyed in proximity to the fleet that had been ambushed, leaving only sixty six to be found. Twenty eight of them had already been destroyed within several hours of the departure of the transports, and that number had risen to forty one by the time that the assault shuttles had come back from their mission and were on board their carriers again. Troy wanted to send out more assault fighters to expand the search and find them, but that wasn't really a good idea at this time. He had two thousand assault fighters left on board, with another nine hundred out on specific missions. And he was about to send another thousand of the ones that he had left out on a very specific mission that would require about twelve or more hours for them to complete. That did not leave enough to handle an attack by the fighters from one or two Grak fleets by themselves, but he still had his entire full load of sixty four hundred large fighters on the carriers, as well as all of those carried by the support ships. When stealth was no longer required, he had all of the fighters that it would take to make the enemy really hurt. And more than enough to simply protect his fleet from enemy attacks.

The only reason to send out more assault fighters to find those last twenty five light cruisers or scouts was to make sure that they didn't get away to warn the Consortium or let the other fleets know what had happened. But they couldn't really say anything to the commanders of the other fleets except that they had lost touch with their own fleet while searching and couldn't get a response. Not enough to convince any single Consortium fleet commander to abandon this mission, since there were at least six entire Consortium fleets in the area. They hadn't seen any Clan forces or heard any distress calls, and weren't aware of any combat or combat losses. And if a few of the smarter commanders did manage to flee the area and return with their reports, they still couldn't shed much light or any details on what had happened here so far. Which was still perfect, as far as Troy was concerned. Not knowing anything at all about how they had been defeated would just make the Consortium's leaders and fleet military commanders even more afraid of the Death Wraiths.

Heracles had the worst headache that he'd ever had in his life, and it was only getting worse by the minute. It had to be worse than the one that Commander Adama had felt when he had to deal with evacuating the colonies and trying to cram as many people as he could possibly provide life support to on board the various ships that now formed the Colonial fleet. That had, in effect, become the twelve Colonies in the past four hundred yarhns. At least he'd had to deal with the people while they were clamoring and doing absolutely anything that they could to get on board the transports, fearful for their lives because of the impending Cylon invasion and the ongoing Cylon attacks. The Cylons planned to eradicate humans from the galaxy, and they knew it. Instead, he was faced with having to force them to evacuate the only homes that any of them had ever known, sometimes almost at the point of a blaster. For most of these people, there was no immediate threat, and therefore, no reason to actually leave the safety of their own homes and ships yet. And some of them were obstinate enough that telling them that there was only this one chance to leave BEFORE the danger materialized wasn't enough to convince them.

The buzzer on his comm went off, and he answered it reluctantly. 'Yes?'

'Sir, some of the Gemnons are refusing to leave their ships. Should we use force?'

Heracles shook his head without even realizing, then sighed. 'No. Have them imprint a declaration that they are refusing to evacuate according to the orders and urgent suggestion of the military, and that they are accepting all of the consequences of their actions, including the possibility that their ship could be damaged or destroyed, and that the few warriors and techs that we have may be too busy to even try to save them during a crisis or combat emergency. And that they understand that there will be no way to safely launch any transports once combat begins, and any Colonist who shows up demanding to be evacuated at that time will be put in the brig or shot if they resist.'

'That won't be enough to make all of them change their minds, sir.'

Heracles answered sadly, 'No. No, it won't. But those will be the operational orders for dealing with civilians during this time of emergency once we are under attack. The entire fleet is going to be attacked, and there is no way that the Galactica, even with every viper that we have in the air, can do anything to prevent that. The entire fleet that we lost to Baltar's treachery couldn't have done that. Not against fleets this large or with that many fighters.'

'Sir, we still don't know for sure how much of what they told us to believe.'

'Leo, you saw the data from our own vipers. Their ships are very powerful and fast, and so are the ships that they were fighting. Our vipers were able to destroy some of them, but not as easily as their own ships did, and they took a lot more damage than Cylon fighters could.'

'That doesn't mean that they have as many fighters as Troy claims, sir.'

'No, it doesn't. But we know that each fleet, by itself, represents more ships, mass, and tonnage than the entire Cylon empire threw against us at the height of the war. And that their small ships are better than ours on a one to one basis. Do you really want to risk the life of every Colonist on the fleet to that kind of known threat just because you don't trust the one man who says that he can help us?'

Leo grimaced. 'No, sir. And I'm not questioning your orders, either. I'm just letting you know that I really don't like having to do this.'

Heracles smiled. 'Neither do I, Leo. Neither do I. This ship is the oldest and best battlestar ever built by the Colonies, and we've done what we could to keep her going and improve what we could over the yarhns, but she's not ready for the type of war that these people in this part of the galaxy wage. Troy was right when he said that we would have all been enslaved or killed by the Consortium if they had ever found our home worlds, and it wouldn't have taken even them a thousand yarhns to do it once the fighting started.'

'I still find some of his claims hard to believe, sir. Thousands of species enslaved? Hundreds of species subjected to genocide? What kind of beings could even think of such a thing, let alone commit such atrocities?'

Heracles paled. 'Just pray that you never have to see the proof yourself, Colonel. Two of the Council had to be removed from office and given to the psych meds for treatment after they were shown the proof of some of the claims that were being made by our "supposed benefactors". Once they saw that proof and realized what it is that our enemy intends to do to our population, since there is literally no way for us to even try to negotiate with them by their own declarations, they approved all of the things that we are doing unanimously.'

'I understand, sir.'

Heracles could hear the hurt and disappointment in Leo's voice, and knew that he was upset and hurt that he hadn't been allowed to share the burden of knowledge with his commander. But Heracles had seen the darkness in the eyes of the two men who had accompanied Troy, and knew that haunted expression had come from seeing too much death, destruction, and from seeing things that no human should ever have to face far more times than anyone would believe possible.

Heracles terminated the link with his second in command before quietly whispering, 'No, Leo, you don't. And I pray that you never will, old friend. I pray that you never will.'

Alice looked at the monitor in her cockpit and rolled her eyes. She had no problem with the people carrying everything that they could, even if that did mean that they could only get about two hundred of them on each transport. They had enough ships here to haul all of the civilians and their belongings, and enough room on their base ships to handle this many people for the time that they'd have to keep them. It was just the reactions that these people were having, as if they'd never even faced the thought that the Consortium could destroy their Home Ship and everything that they had at any time, with no warning at all. As if they had no concept of what it truly meant to be at war and having to fight every day for your very survival.

This evacuation was taking WAY too long for her tastes, and she wondered how in the hell they expected to get all of these people off of all of those ships if it took them this long just to load a shuttle. She had been waiting for two HOURS before she was able to dock, and now she wasn't getting undocked until she'd been here for twenty whole minutes. She'd timed it on the chrono. Jesus, they could unload green troops and a whole cargo bay of munitions that fast.

Her comm went active. 'Alice, this is Katy. We got them all on board, settled in, and we are green for release. Please, get us out of this vahrgni madhouse.'

Alice nodded, then confirmed the message. When Katy was that upset and started swearing in Llyriana, it was time to haul ass and get the hell out of Dodge, because serious shit had just happened. She went through the sequence, and was soon moving out to take her place with the other transports, waiting for enough of them to be loaded and assembled for the fighters to escort them back to their own fleet.

It had been a full day since the evacuation had begun, and now there were almost two hundred and fifty thousand Colonists safely away from the fleet. The flight time for each group of transports that had left had been steadily decreasing, letting him know that Troy's fleet was closing with his own. Unfortunately, that also meant that the other Consortium fleets were also closing the gap, and would soon be in range to detect them. Their scanners could detect nothing in real time, but the scans that they did get matched with the numbers that were being provided by the Clan pilots near his fleet. The number of transports and fighters had been steadily dwindling, though many of the fighters did return to escort even more of the transports to safety. Right now, the last two hundred transports were docked with various ships in the fleet, removing all of the crew who were listed as nonessential, leaving only skeleton crews on some of the ships in the fleet, while others were actually being piloted by remote control.

Even the Galactica had been stripped of families, nonessential personnel, and even some personnel who were irreplacable and who would be more needed by the very Colonists and civilians that they were protecting than they would be by the warriors that they had served with for so long aboard the Galactica. There was more than a skeleton crew left on board, for they had to maintain their flight operations and let their pilots do what they could to make the enemy think that they were on their own and were desperately trying to defend everything that they held dear.

The evacuation had started with the transports being accompanied by about the same number of fighters, but now there were five hundred fighters still near his fleet with the last two hundred transports. Soon, even they would leave, and he and the rest of the volunteers would remain as bait for the trap. He hoped that their sacrifice would be worth it, and that the Colonists would be able to recover from their losses and survive.

'Galactica, this is Woodstock. Our flight is preparing to leave with the last of the people that you could get to come. I hope that there aren't too many of you left there.'

'By our calculations, you evacuated almost four hundred thousand of our people. That leaves about a hundred thousand volunteers to man the ships and about ten to fifteen thousand holdouts who refused to evacuate their ships. Thankfully, only a small number of them are on ships that are completely automated right now, so we may be able to save some of them if there is severe damage to the ship and we have to do an evacuation under fire.'

'Roger, Galactica. Good luck. Woodstock out.'

Heracles and Leonidas looked at each other, realizing that they were now on their own, and it was all up to them. All that they could do now was wait for the Consortium fleets to close on their position and begin their attack. And pray that this worked like Troy had told them it would, and that all of them weren't buying their evacuated civilians a better life simply by exchanging their own lives in payment.

Kandi looked at her crew chief and sighed. 'So, now we wait. And those poor suckers out there think that they're out here all alone while our entire fleet tries to do what they can to get their own people to safety. Though I don't know how he plans to do that without exposing them to some danger when he brings the rest of the bloody talon in here to surprise anyone who has good sensors with a point blank launch of our entire load of fighters.'

Cindi smiled. 'What I heard on the scuttlebutt was that the transports were going to load troops onto some of the heavy fire cruisers, but I think that is insane because he wouldn't leave the assault carriers unprotected.'

Kandi thought for a minute, then shook her head. 'He'll take all or part of one claw out of the bloody rotation and use those ships as transports. With all of their assault fighters and shuttles off of them, they would have lots of extra hangar space for the additional transports. Now, how many ships would that take?'

'Twelve hundred transports is the full load for six ships. But he could do it with less if he doesn't make them hold the people on the transports, or if he just loads the extra transports into the empty landing bays.'

'He doesn't care about extra troops to support any attack that he lands, and the last of the transports that are with the fleet are enough to resupply troops with additional ammo and munitions. So he'll draw off a claw, leave some extra ships to guard the ones with the civilians on them, and use the rest of the talon for his attack if he has to make one. He only has three fourths of the bloody assault shuttles anyway, and way less than half of the assault fighters with all of us out here or with the other fleet that our troops are taking over already.'

'Three claws doesn't have the punch that four would, but we still have more of a punch than they would be expecting with the new ships. Just the fact that the assault fighters are stealthed will give us a very large advantage, along with one hell of a surprise. Just as long as we don't have to worry about taking on a larger fleet than the one that he is already taking out, or dealing with their small craft.'

Cindi laughed, then smiled grimly. 'Well, if all else fails, we can take them on with fewer of us. It might take longer, but I'll bet that even with just a few hundred more assault fighters, we could take out everything smaller than a battlecruiser on any of the fleets that we're after right now.'

Kandi shook her head. 'Don't get too overconfident, here. There are what appear to be a couple of scratch fleets or small patrol fleets manned by the locals in this sector, but there is at least one Grak warfleet out here with almost seven hundred ships that are smaller than a battlecruiser. With it taking that long to take them on, or with them launching their fighters before we get there, that is a lot of enemy fighters in the air at one time. And they don't have to lock onto us to hit us manually when they CAN see us visually.'

Cindi nodded her head. 'Cool. I know, but what a rush to go against those kinds of odds in a fighter, Kandi. That would be some kind of bragging rights for us to go one on one against a bunch of cruisers, even if a lot of them were light. And the full strike force from a fleet? That would be one hell of a lot of fighters to take on, and so many to shoot that we'd think we'd died and come back to a target rich environment where we couldn't possibly miss.'

Roy laughed from his station over by the starboard weapons array. 'Yeah, right. That fleet could launch over a hundred and fifty thousand fighters at us. Even if we could get more assault fighters in here than we think, that would still leave us outnumbered by more than a hundred to one. That ain't no field test. More like a joyride through hell if you ask me.'

Cindi gave him a sneer. 'Nobody asked you, Roy. You're hung up on the numbers, just like always.'

Roy laughed and leered at her. 'Which numbers are we talking about here, Cindi? The top, the bottom, or the whole package?'

There were snickers in the crew compartment as the comm officer told him not to even start with the numbers thing again. Roy figured that being the only male in the crew made this a good time to cut his losses and drop that particular subject. The girls were starting to get serious, and when Lucy got serious, that meant that she was picking up other comm traffic and getting a feel for something that they didn't know about.'

'Hey, K, we're about to have company.'

'Friend or foe, Luce?'

'Friend. Definitely very friendly.'

Kandi almost jumped out of her seat when the scan officer shouted, 'I've got ten talons coming up on our six, boss. I guess your daddy didn't figure that our five were enough to support the watchers and keep these guys safe.'

'No shit, Sam. What was your first clue? You think that maybe the odds of us holding against a fighter wave that large well enough to let some of the Colonial fleet actually survive was high enough that he didn't want to risk it? What was it that Roy said? Over a hundred to one?'

Lucy laughed and shrugged. 'I just report what the sensors pick up, boss. I never try to figure out what the hell your father is going to do. Though I could make some of my long lost money back by doing that and then betting that he wouldn't do what I was able to figure out, since he never has yet.'

'No bet there. Where are they taking up station?'

Lucy checked her monitor before answering. 'Five talons on either side of us. Same formation that we're in right now. They're in on us, so we're not spread out to cover the entire fleet with some kind of light screen.'

'We won't wait here for them. When the nuts who are flying those tiny fighters come out to protect their fleet, we're going to ghost along with them and make sure that we really have their six. They have twenty squadrons, so we can't quite remain in talons and go one on one to cover them unless we want to write five of them off totally from the start.'

Cindi thought for a moment. 'They do wingman formations, with the leader and one person to cover his six. That brings their twenty five ship squadrons down to eleven pairs and a trio, so we could cover one pair with a couple of fighters of our own and operate relatively independently.'

'We may end up doing that. But our primary objective is going to be stopping the fighters from the first wave so that more fighters get sent to make sure that they are successful. We want to draw as many fighters away from the enemy fleets as we can, because them being here, in the middle of the trap will make it harder for any of them to escape once they realize what they just walked into. The Colonial fighters are going to be a close second on our priority list, but they are still second. And we are going to meet with the enemy as far from the fleets as the Colonial launch gets, so some of them are going to get through, because even if the Colonial squadrons come back to guard their ships, we are going to remain in place and take on anyone who shows up before they can make the fleet. We may be using their antiquated ships as bait, but we're still not going to give the Consortium a free lunch.'

Cindi laughed. 'So, your father did tell you about at least some of this part of his plan.'

Kandi nodded. 'Yes, that is the phrase that he used. Smartass. And yes, I had to ask him to tell me exactly what that was supposed to mean, and he told me about the origins of the phrase. That added two minutes to the briefing.'

'Hey, quit bitching. You got a real briefing and some idea of why we're here. That's more than we get at least half of the time.'

Kandi rolled her eyes. 'Yeah, well, this time, this is part of the plan that he's already got figured out. Now, once things start changing and we get new orders, we know that he's improvising again.'

'The ability to improvise is the mark of a good leader, and it helps to insure that we survive in combat and our enemies don't.'

Kandi started giggling despite herself, and she heard most of the crew who were within earshot giggling as well at the tone and the way that Cindi had said that. 'You sound almost like daddy does, except he never uses that tone when he talks about that.'

Cindi nodded, giggling. 'I know. I heard him saying it often enough when I was a kid, and again when I went through some of the training. Though I heard it most often from the instructors and other people. He really doesn't say that very much.'

'Mother actually told me that he hates that saying, but the ability to improvise is still essential because no matter how well you plan, the enemy always does something unexpected and you either have to scrap the plan or modify it on the fly to keep your advantage or increase your own position relative to theirs.'

'Now THAT sounds more like Troy.'

'Heads up, guys and gals. I'm picking up a lot of power readings at close range.'

'What?'

'It looks like the Galactica is getting ready to launch its fighters, but I can't be sure. They could just be holding them at ready so they can get them off quicker once they have enemy ships on their sensors.'

After a few minutes of waiting with no change in the situation, they all started to relax and get ready for the long wait. They were in position and wouldn't be able to do anything until the enemy showed up.

Hermes and the other pilots on the Galactica were now on standby alert. As he took a look around him in the rec area, seeing the rest of the pilots who were waiting for the order to finally scramble their fighter squadrons and embark on what could very well be the last mission for all of them. Five hundred Colonial warriors about to embark on what they all knew was a suicide mission, because there was no way that their five hundred vipers could stand up to the thousands of enemy fighters that were soon going to be headed for them, intent upon destroying the entire Colonial fleet and wiping out the last vestiges of the twelve colonies.

As he was thinking about the futility of this, he suddenly remembered Jaxon asking what three hundred warriors could hope to achieve against a vastly superior force. He had asked that while they were on one of the assault shuttles, and while the response hadn't been meant to be said out loud, he had heard Troy mutter something under his breath and had seen the involuntary shudder that one of his bodyguards had had at hearing it. If he survived this battle, he intended to hunt Troy up and ask him what "Spartans" were, and why that was so significant. Though he had a feeling that satisfying his curiosity about that question could have some kind of impact on how he viewed everything else for the rest of his life. He had seen and heard enough about the Clans while he was a guest that he realized that their entire existence revolved around survival, and by extension, warfare. Anything that could make one of Troy's two bodyguards shudder at the mere mention was definitely something that could affect someone who didn't spend his entire life like they did. He shrugged mentally. If the universe was a safe place where everything was wonderful, there would be no need for Colonial warriors.

Troy nodded as Jason told him that the fleet was now in position. He already knew that both of the other talons were already in their general position, though they were both splitting and moving to cover the area that they had been assigned now that they had good telemetry on the locations of the enemy fleets that they were to shadow. The strike talon from each talon was operating independently, with the fire talon having been designated to accompany the scout talon and bring up the firepower so they could more easily stop any large ships that were in danger of escaping the trap. Once the actual assault began, the scout ships would actually move out in individual claws and start sweeping the area for any of the lighter ships that were not in the main force of the fleet that might be close enough to get enough good data to allow the enemy to learn too much from this one battle. Even a Grak battlecruiser on its own was no match for twenty large scouts attacking as a group. Some of them would be damaged or destroyed if the battlecruiser retained good fire control and they were close enough to be in visual range, but the enemy battlecruiser would die, and that was the most important thing during this particular engagement.

'Troy, we're picking up a small fleet, but they're much closer to us than they should be able to get before the sensors got a hit.'

Troy smiled, then nodded his head. 'They're trying to duplicate our stealth capabilities, at least for their larger ships. Who are they going to be closest to?'

'The rest of our talon is closer to them than we are, but there is no way for them to cover this threat and still take out the fleet that you assigned to them. They are already going to have to take on the large Grak fleet, but they have to wait and attack after they launch their fighters according to the orders you gave them.'

Troy nodded. 'And their assault fighters will have to follow that wave of fighters and keep them from escaping once they realize that they are in a trap. That's not a problem. We do still have a strike force. Do they have any small ships with them?'

Jason looked at the scans for a moment, then began another analysis. 'If they have anything smaller than a heavy cruiser, we can't detect it.'

Troy laughed, then nodded. 'They captured some first gen stealth from somewhere. We were barely able to make it work well in the light cruisers ourselves, and I know that their systems wouldn't be able to duplicate some of our work, so they had to jury rig it and they couldn't make it small enough to fit into a light cruiser yet.'

Jason nodded. 'You could be right. The formation is weird. Heavy cruisers are set up in scouting positions, working in pairs or fours, depending on where they are relative to the main body of the fleet.'

'Give me numbers, Jason.'

'Six battleships, fifty four battlecruisers, and fifty four heavy cruisers. If the numbers were higher on the support ships, I'd say that it was a Charkal fleet, since the ships seem to be running heavy and powerful on the scans.'

'It probably is. They wouldn't have had enough time to build a lot of ships with the system in it, and the ones they would have had the most trouble with were the smaller ships that they couldn't get the system to work properly inside.'

'You may be right. But do we have enough ships to take them?'

Troy sighed. 'I'd really like to have those heavy cruisers, but if wishes were fishes...'

Jason nodded. 'Do we have enough assault fighters left to handle them without letting them try to run? That is one group that we don't want running successfully. They would be harder to track and kill, and that would just convince the rest of the kraghlar Consortium to go ahead and start making that their standard in ships.'

Troy sighed. 'We have seven hundred and fifty fighters guarding the Galactica and ready to move out with their fighters when they launch. We have another two hundred guarding the Colonial fleet. That's nine fifty. And three thousand over with the fleet we already attacked, guarding them and ready to launch a wave on command to hit any of the fleets that we can from ambush or search and destroy any fighters that are trying to escape. That leaves twenty four fifty.'

'Minus the three hundred on deep recon and the five hundred you sent out on search and destroy missions for the scouts from that first Grak fleet.'

Troy nodded. 'Sixteen fifty. Prepare them all for launch. They'll hit with the assault shuttles, and remain in that area to make sure that nothing escapes. Watch for fighters and shuttles, and some shuttles might have some form of crude stealth capability if they have it worked out on the heavy cruisers already. Tell them that they are NOT to go after the fighters if they are launched and headed toward our bait before they get to the fleet. We'll handle them with our heavy fighters once they are in position or the assault fighters that are near the fleet will handle them.'

'Affirmative. Should I move the fleet into position to provide some heavy support to the ships in case they need it?'

Troy shook his head. 'No. I'm leading this assault myself. We have enough troops to take these ships, and enough assault shuttles to get them there in force. We'll load all of the shuttles to the max, and you can send some transports with fighter cover later to give us some resupply. We'll go in heavy.'

'And what if things go wrong here?'

'We have six fleets now with our talons split up, and there are six enemy fleets other than the one that we've already taken. Hit them hard, take the large ships, and just blow the piss out of anything smaller than a battlecruiser because it's not worth the time and effort for us to use it as anything more than scrap for salvage. As soon as all of the enemy fleets are engaged, flush all of the heavy fighters from the main assault craft and let the auxiliaries provide air support against anything that does come near the fleet.'

'And if another fleet suddenly pops up or we are attacked from ambush?'

'Use anything that you have available and destroy the enemy with extreme prejudice. Use the main RGs and AM rounds on anything large enough to be worth the shot. Make sure that you give them a really good reason to avoid us like the plague.'

Jason nodded as he smiled to himself. Oh, yeah, seeing one of their battleships just vaporize into nothing after being hit with a salvo of AM rounds would have an impact on the survivors in the fleet. They had learned that very quickly when they saved the Llyriana home worlds. Even the Graks had tried to run after seeing several of their dedicated troop carriers, each carrying several million troops for a planetary assault, vaporized by two or three AM rounds. In several cases, there hadn't even been enough left of the ships, which dwarfed a battleship in size and mass, to even bother with salvage.

'Six battleships and fifty four battlecruisers. How are you going to divide up the assault forces?'

Troy thought about that for a moment. He had three fourths of his assault shuttles of both types on board right now. He could load a hundred troops in each strike assault shuttle and a hundred a fifty in each heavy strike assault shuttle. Forty eight hundred of each type of assault shuttle. He could land eighty eight shuttles on each of the battlecruisers, and nine hundred on each battleship. Even if the standard assault shuttles hit the battleships, that would give him ninety thousand troops on each ship. More than enough to take it in a day, even if there were extra troops on board. And that would boost the number of troops on each of the battlecruisers from almost nine thousand to over thirteen thousand.

'We'll hit the battleships with all of the strike assault shuttles. That will put ninety thousand troops on board each one, so we'll hammer the piss out of them even if they have a lot more troops than normal on them. The heavy strike assault shuttles will hit the battlecruisers, so they will have about thirteen thousand troops per ship. Enough that we should be able to take the battleships within a day, and even transfer troops to any of the battlecruisers that are having more resistance or trouble overcoming the enemy fast enough for our timetable.'

Jason nodded. Troy smiled. 'And if any other fleets show up to test their new systems, blow the piss out of them, Jason. We'll have everything we need when we take this fleet, so they are all target practice, along with anything that tries to escape from our kill zone. You can broadcast that message to the entire fleet.'

Jason grinned broadly. 'Yes, sir. Now that will definitely be a pleasure.'

'Remember, once their fighters are committed and we have already boarded the main ships of the fleets, all fleets are to flush their fighters from the main ships and use them to converge on any enemy fighters that they can find. Search and destroy.'

'But any other Grak fleets in the area will see them launch.'

Troy nodded. 'But they won't be close enough to see any details, and we're already going to be working hard to take and secure the fleets that we're boarding. Besides, the Galactica will also be able to see all of those fighters when they enter the range of their sensors.' He grinned. 'Though after not being able to see any of our other small craft, I'm sure they'll be shitting themselves thinking that another enemy fleet has just launched about a hundred thousand additional fighters in their direction.'

Jason tried to suppress his own snickers as he heard Lehr and Kohrrhi laughing at the comment. Yes, the Colonials were very likely to need clean clothes, and they were also likely to not appreciate Troy's sense of humor. Too bad for them.

'No problems, boss. We'll take care of everything. I'm sure that you'll be finished with the assault within a day. Even if they do have a lot more troops than normal on board for you to have to hunt down, the new armor makes sweeping a battleship a lot faster than we ever used to be able to do it.' He grinned. 'And we take a lot fewer casualties in the process.'

Troy nodded, then left to prepare for launching the assault, knowing that Jason would tell his wives and at least two of them would be there at his shuttle by the time he could get ready. Though he did feel a lot better about how safe they were in combat with the improved armor that they had begun manufacturing in large quantities about sixty years ago. It made a big difference in their casualty rate, and greatly reduced the number of fatalities in combat. And as long as he could keep their armor capabilities ahead of the enemy's, they could afford to let the enemy try to win by their standard methods and let him learn the hard way that the war of attrition had just become very much more skewed in favor of the Clans. And considering that the ratio had been about three hundred enemy dead for every Clan warrior killed before the introduction of the new armor, Troy wanted them to keep trying to conduct a war of attrition for as long as he could manage to get them to.

Kyrrykk looked at his scanner and smiled. There. The enemy fleet was right there. And they were barely moving. Now, all that he had to do was launch his own fighters and there would be no more enemy fleet. His ships were newly designed to help them fight the Clans, and he had twice as many fighters on board each of his battleships and their escort battlecruisers than any Charkal fleet ever carried before. Three thousand of the best fighters that they could produce were on each battleship, with another thousand on each of the battlecruisers. One push of his finger, and there would be seventy two thousand of the best fighters ever produced by the Consortium heading out to destroy the pathetic enemy fleet.

'Sir, we have confirmation of launch by three different fleets, with the main bodies of each fleet now approaching at reduced speed to follow up on the kill.'

'How far are they from the target?'

The tech smiled. 'Farther than we are, sir. If we launch now, we can beat them to the prize, and deny the Graks first blood.'

'Launch, then, and make sure that they destroy the enemy completely. With those new fighters, we should be able to cripple or destroy all of their fleet before anyone else even comes within range.'

The tech nodded, smiling as another member of the bridge crew obeyed and sent the command to all ships in the fleet. Two minutes later, the commander was smiling as he watched the scans showing his own fleet of fighters closing more rapidly than any other.

Heracles swore under his breath as he and Leonidas saw a large wave of enemy fighters heading for the fleet from much closer than they should have been able to get without detection.

'Sir, they just appeared on our screens.'

'It looks like our allies are not the only ones who can hide a ship from our sensors after all, Colonel.' He sighed. 'Launch all squadrons immediately. Even if there are other fleets launching at the edge of our sensor range, these will definitely get here before any of them. Perhaps, if there are any survivors from our squadrons, they can make it back here before the entire fleet is destroyed.'

Heracles turned and looked at the scan tech. 'Any estimate on the numbers?'

'Scans show fifty thousand enemy fighters and climbing, sir.'

Heracles nodded. 'Inform all of our pilots, Medusa. They may be going on a suicide mission, but I'm not going to let them think that they have a chance to survive and then get there, only to find themselves overwhelmed like that without any warning whatsoever. We can at least give them time to prepare for their fate and determine how they wish to face it.'

'Aye, sir.'

'First two squadrons launched, sir. Second set cycling and ready for launch.'

Heracles stood there and watched the squadrons cycle through the launch bay, slowly filling the screen with their five hundred blips that registered as friendly ships. They were a small dot compared to the large wedge of enemy fighters that continued to grow as they got closer and became more well defined as individual ships by the scanners.

'Bingo! Houston, we have liftoff!'

Kandi was startled out of a light nap by the sudden exclamation of her sensor officer.

'What do you have?'

'Galactica is launching all birds, and they are really working to get them out fast. Coming out ten at a time per side. Two squadrons in the air. Correction, four squadrons in the air right now. They're forming up on the move and going off in one direction, sir.'

'Which way?'

'Zero four seven by one eight nine relative, sir.'

'Head all talons that way now. We'll let their groups form up and close ranks before we take position behind them. Maintain a position about twenty five kliks positive zulu to them.'

'Roger. Orders being issued to all talons. Receipt confirmed. All talons moving.'

'What do we have in the direction that they are heading?'

'Sensors show about seventy thousand enemy fighters. They don't conform to any of the known configurations. Looks like a new type, or possibly an upgraded model. Whatever they are, they are heavy on the mass and energy readings, sir.'

'How heavy?'

'About the same as those of the heavy large fighters. You think they upgraded to try to match our heavy large fighters?'

Kandi smiled grimly. 'If they did, they're about to find out that they're at least a full generation behind on R&D the hard way. Because we may be heavily outnumbered by them, but they're only expecting to meet five hundred small fighters. And I intend to make one hell of a strafing run on an extended formation right through the heart of their ranks. One run through, then do a one-eighty and haul ass to keep pounding any of them that made it through the wall.'

Her crew acknowledged her orders. 'Comm, make sure that the plan is in place for all of the ships in this wing. One run through, with all guns blazing. Crew will mount and fire the top and bottom lasers, and the side RGs on targets of opportunity. When we blow through them, launch missiles at any groups that don't have friendlies near them as well. Do your best not to hammer any of the friendlies, especially the guys from the Galactica. Those little fighters of theirs aren't exactly armored all that well compared to us.'

'Affirmative. Orders sent and confirmed, sir.'

Kandi nodded and began humming softly under her breath as she watched the distance between their forces dwindle. They were closing fast with the combined speeds of the fighter forces, but they wouldn't be quite as fast when they were coming up on them from behind for the follow-up attack.

'Chief, save as many of the heavy missiles as you can for the run up their ass. When we close on them from behind, their evasive maneuvers will break up their formations and let us close on them quicker, so use the small missiles then. When we have good targets, use the heavy missiles on them.'

'Roger, boss.'

'Orders sent to all ships in the wing, sir. Confirmed.'

Kandi smiled. Now all that there was to do was wait and see how things turned out. Though she was interested in finding out how these new fighters handled, and how they compared to the ones that they had been fighting in the past. She wasn't really worried, though. It would take a lot of work to make one of the old Consortium fighters equal to a Clan heavy fighter. And even more than that to improve them from that point to where they even began to equal the new assault fighters.

Kyrrykk was startled as alarms began sounding on his ship. It took him a moment to recognize that they were the boarding alarms.

'What is going on?'

The tech looked at him fearfully. 'I'm not certain, sir. I'm checking to see if there is a fault in the alarm system.'

'Do it quickly, and make sure that the crew is responding as if this was a real threat. If there is no problem, then we can call it a drill. If this is real, then I want to know how the hell someone boarded my ship without showing up on our sensors or us knowing that they were near us.'

The tech who was manning the sensor station paled. 'Sir, I have been checking all of our readings diligently, and absolutely NOTHING is showing up above background. There is nothing out there closer than our own fighters, sir. In fact, they are closing with the enemy fighters right now, as you can see on your own screen.'

Kyrrykk pulled the view onto his screen, smiling at the thought of five hundred of those puny, poorly armed, understrength fighters going against his entire complement of seventy two thousand newly developed heavy strike fighters. His fighters had been specifically designed to overcome the Clan heavy large fighters, and their armor and armaments were more than a match for this situation. Like shooting a grahl with a heavy RG instead of just using a knife. Definite overkill.

He heard a shriek from the tech, then his eyes widened and he stared in shock as he saw huge lanes being blasted through his fighters. They were disappearing by the hundreds as he watched, while very few of the enemy fighters were even being touched by their own weapons according to the scanner.

Kandi heard whoops of joy and lots of chatter as they finished their attack run and began to loop back to come up behind the enemy for another pass. The attack had gone very well, and they had cut through the enemy fighters like a kwyll-kehhn through flesh.

'Report, and hustle, people. Reload if you need to, and make sure we don't have any feed jams or queue blocks.'

'All systems green, sir.'

'I can't tell how many are out of it yet because the comp is still calculating, sir. There is a lot of mess behind us.'

'Eyeball it, Sam.'

'About half of them just bought the farm.'

'Any friendlies taken out?'

'None in our talon. Four in our talon have some damage, but nothing critical. Trying to get the rest of it compiled, sir.'

'What about the Colonial fighters?'

'Comp says that there are still four hundred and fifty eight of them flying in formation. But I don't read any life pods or distress signals, sir.'

'They are primitive, small, one man fighters. If their cockpit goes, they don't have a life pod. The other forty two pilots are dead. Probably vaporized when their spacecraft exploded. They use a highly energized, combustible chemical fuel mixture for their propulsion systems, so when their craft are destroyed, there usually isn't a lot left.'

Sam sighed as the comp completed the check of the remaining forces. Twenty one of ours took some damage. Mostly light stuff. Three more have heavier damage, but nothing that will interfere with their combat effectiveness. One ship was destroyed. Probably by a really strong explosion or a collision with an enemy ship that was either damaged or jinked.'

Kandi nodded. 'Zigged when he should have zagged. Shit still happens, people.' She looked over. 'Anyone that we know, Sam?'

'I doubt it, sir. That talon was from one of the ships in another talon. Blue Falcon Six off of the Kahrrha Kehhn.'

'What is their speed now that they know we're after their asses?'

'Top speed so far is about sixteen fifty, sir. Still about ten percent slower than max speed for a large heavy fighter.'

Kandi smiled. 'Well, now, that puts them at about three fourths of our normal cruising speed. Tell all units to go to max and hammer them as we pass through them. That should give us almost fifty percent over their max accel.'

Sam relayed the message, and they waited as they approached the fleeing enemy fighters. After a few seconds, Kandi smiled. 'Roy, as soon as we're inside the missile envelope for our smaller missiles, start the show. Let's see how many we can take out now, because by the time that we can make our attack run through them and turn, they're going to be really close to the fleet that we're trying to keep them away from. And we can't play with them all day if we're going to try to do anything to stop the other fighter waves that the other fleets are sending out.'

'Roger.'

'Sir, we're leaving the Colonial ships behind. They don't have the accel that we do, or if they do, they can't sustain the speed because of their limited fuel supply.'

'Stick with the plan, people. They can worry about dealing with the survivors when they come through, or they can go back to their ship and refuel if there's time before the next wave arrives.'

Heracles looked at the scanner in shock. Thousands of enemy fighters had simply vanished in seconds. One moment they had been there, ready to attack his squadrons at their full strength, and the next, the squadrons were through the huge wave of enemy fighters and almost half of them had disappeared.

'Sir, they are disappearing. Does that mean that they have some kind of stealth ability, similar to the Clans?'

Heracles shook his head. 'No, Colonel. If they did, they would have all gone from our scans to make it easier to destroy our squadrons. And they would have already finished off our vastly inferior fighters with their superior numbers.' He looked over at the scan officer. 'How many did we lose?'

'Forty two ships not showing on beacon, sir.'

Heracles nodded, amazed that there had only been two squadrons wiped out in an encounter like that. The enemy had not only vastly superior numbers, but their fighters seemed to be vastly superior to his own as well.

'Sir, if they didn't conceal themselves from our scans, then what happened to them?'

'I think that our ally wasn't exactly totally forthcoming with us, Colonel. It seems that using us as bait wasn't exactly as cold and callous as we had originally thought. There appear to be a number of his own fighters out there, fighting alongside our own vipers.'

The comm officer nodded. 'I'm picking up ship to ship communications that seems to imply that there are several hundred other fighters out there destroying enemy ships, sir. Their firepower is awesome.'

Leonidas nodded. 'That won't help us survive in the end, though. There are already several other fleets approaching us, and they will launch their own fighters soon, and then they will get through simply by sheer numbers, and our fleet will begin to die.'

Heracles shook his head. 'The ships may be damaged or destroyed, Colonel, but not the people. THEY are the fleet, and so long as they live, the Colonies are not dead and we can rebuild once again.'

The silence of the bridge was broken only a few moments later as the scan officer called for them to come look at her monitor. Heracles went over quickly, and saw what had made her become so pallid and drawn. There, clearly on the monitor on the long range scans, were at least three other waves of enemy fighters coming at them. Two of them were very large, and appeared to represent at least two fleets combined fighter complement, judging by the size of the forces that were already engaged in combat. The other wave was about the same size as the first one had originally been, and was coming in at them from another direction entirely. Even if all of the remaining fighters that were out there survived, there would not be enough of them to cover the fleet and keep it from being destroyed.

Jason saw the enemy ships on his monitors, smiling as the relay from their deep recon let him see much more of the space in their area than he normally would with just the ships' own sensors, and in much more detail. He knew, because of his link with the other talons in the wing, exactly where all of their own ships were, and exactly where all of the ships of the seven fleets that had been identified and targeted so far were. He looked over at his first wife, Shiloh, and nodded. 'Go ahead and start this. It's time that the enemy finally learned exactly what coordination and planning can do, and how to actually hammer the shit out of an enemy force. Let's show them how they should have done Pehnt Drohvi if they'd been able to produce a military mind that could have pulled it off.'

Shiloh nodded, smiling grimly with satisfaction as she pushed the button on the console in front of her. Seconds later, all of the widely scattered segments of their strike wing heard the message that was being openly broadcast as a signal. Within seconds of seeing that message, this part of the universe was going to experience a major upheaval.

Heracles stared at his monitor in shock, unable to believe the signal that they were now openly receiving. It was being broadcast on multiple frequencies, and was strong enough that Heracles knew the signal could easily be traced. Evidently, stealth and concealment was no longer considered necessary, because the Consortium forces certainly knew who they were facing in combat now.

He stared at the monitor, watching as Troy drew a long, black sword from a scabbard on his back that left the handle sticking up behind his shoulder, just as the other sword that he wore stuck up from the other shoulder. He gasped as he saw the blade that the huge man on the screen had drawn. It was pure black, and seemed to be sucking all of the light from around it into the blade. He could see the even darker black phoenix on the blade, surrounded by dark black flames. The pattern was the same as the black within black phoenix that he had seen clearly on the chest of Troy's clothing when they had met on board his ship, though he had no idea how much fear and terror the sight of that black emblem stirred within the Consortium, or how many nightmares it had spawned.

The blade was raised high over the man's head, and then he began to speak. 'Ihlhen behrrha shahr sa kahrrdhe ka kehhn ka Kohl-garh, Khyrr-mehngkrenzha, shahrzha kwyll ka Kohl-garh. Ihlhen behrrha kehhn pahrakh illyhri khyrren ka Khyrr-garh, tahrrha za llyria, shahrzhi za zhizahn kwyll, al dahkkhe nahrrha la za tahrrhi kahmmhi-khyrr.' Troy raised the sword high, and shouted, 'Kohl-garh! Khyrr-mehngkrenzha!'

There were other voices repeating that same final shout in the background, but they had been drowned out by the force of that one voice. Heracles couldn't suppress a shudder as some primal instinct let him know that this ritual had great significance, and great power to stir the forces that this man led. And even without knowing what the words that had just been spoken were, he was awed by the power of the image he had just seen.

Persephone shuddered as she stood beside him, then she touched a few buttons on the console and they listened in shock as the scene was replayed with the translator device that they had captured providing the translation in Basic.

'May the cleansing flame inside the heart of the sword of Kohl-garh, The Phoenix, light the dark path of Kohl-garh. May the cleansing blade lead the souls of the dead to the death god, honor their essence, light their entire dark path, and thank every one for their honored sacrifice.' The last part barely came through before Heracles shut off the recording. 'Kohl-garh! The Phoenix!'

Leonidas looked at them, his confusion even more evident than their own. 'What is all that supposed to mean, Commander?'

Before Heracles could answer, there was a shout from his scan officer, drawing all attention on the bridge to the huge display that had been projected to show the enemy forces all around them. There were thousands of blips representing fighters that were very close to the enemy fighters they already had on their scanners. But these new fighters were appearing on the screen in swarms from nowhere. There was nothing in the space that they seemed to just be appearing from. And they were much closer to the Galactica and the rest of the Colonial fleet than most of the enemy fighters were. Only the first wave that had already been engaged would be able to reach the fleet before they did.

Before anyone could manage to do anything to figure out what was happening, they saw a number of the smaller ships in each of the enemy fleets that had launched those waves of fighters suddenly disappear from the screen, as if they had suddenly ceased to exist. Heracles realized that that was exactly what had happened. Troy had sent a signal to his troops, and they had already begun their attacks. The only problem was that even if he had other ships out in space to meet the fighters that were already on their way from the fleets that were under attack, these new waves of fighters from the ships that they still couldn't see would be able to reach the Colonial fleet before any of them could do anything to stop them. There was simply too much space to cover.

'Sir! The fighters that just appeared are heading toward the waves of enemy fighters that have been heading toward us. It appears as if they managed to get some of their forces in place to try to defend us.'

Leonidas looked at the screen and shook his head. There were maybe seventy thousand of the newly located fighters showing up on the scans. But the enemy fleets had launched more than four hundred thousand fighters, if their scans were correct. At those odds, they would hurt the enemy severely, but they would lose too many to stop all of the enemy forces, and they would not be able to keep the enemy fighters from wreaking havoc on the Colonial fleet. Some of them were going to get through, and probably enough to destroy most of the fleet before whatever fighters could follow them managed to destroy them or drive them off. All that they could hope for now was that the loss of so many of the escort ships and fighters would cause the enemy fleets to withdraw, or at least consolidate their forces into one or two larger fleets so that they would have a chance to escape this trap.

The commanders of six Consortium fleets saw the message that was being played and recognized it for exactly what it was. It was the death sentence for every Consortium member who didn't escape this trap. They began issuing orders immediately, hoping against hope that they were not already too late to save themselves from this newest trap that had been set by the Demons. The Demon Troy and his Clan were particularly devious and cunning, and they were known to be extremely dangerous. They had managed to destroy thousands upon thousands of ships within the last century, and were known to have invaded or destroyed over a score of planets that had been under Consortium control.

For five of those commanders, it was too late. Within a minute of the message being played, their boarding alarms were going off on board every battleship and every battlecruiser in their fleets, and their escorts had already been destroyed or taken heavy damage from ongoing attacks that were being carried out by small fighters that couldn't be targeted by their main guns because they didn't register on their sensors.

For the commander of the small patrol fleet that had been sent by the Yllrka, he was out of range of the forces that had attacked, having been slowed down in his search by the older engines in his ships. Local forces were forced to make do with older ships that had been decommissioned from combat forces, so they weren't the latest and best equipped in any sense, and the engines were often the one thing that was not upgraded as often simply because of the expense and difficulty in doing the retrofits that would mean overhauling the entire ship. He led his small fleet of seven battleships, forty one battlecruisers, and ninety two assorted other ships out of the area as quickly as he could, making sure to take all of the precautions that he could to avoid being detected by the Demons. There was no signal from any of the other fleets that had been operating in the area, and their channels were now being blocked by the enemy. If any other ships survived, they would be on their own. His first priority had now become to survive this trap and to bring back as much data about what had happened, and how it had been done, as he could. That was the only way that those who ran this war would be able to learn how the enemy operated and understand their tactics well enough to come up with ways that would guarantee that the enemy died.

Kandi smiled in satisfaction. Their second run through the enemy forces had lasted a lot longer than the first, and even with them being prepared and not being caught off guard this time, they had managed to destroy an additional twenty five thousand enemy fighters with the loss of only seventy three more of their own. Now, however, they were having to abort the last part of her plan and just keep dogfighting with the enemy to keep him from overwhelming the almost defenseless ships of the Colonial fleet. The Colonial vipers had managed to catch up during the evasive maneuvers, so they were now fighting the enemy ships again as well, though they had lost additional forces in the ensuing dogfights. They were down to just over four hundred fighters now.

As the enemy fighters began dispersing through the fleet, Kandi smiled as some of them suddenly just vanished. The rear guard had been prepared, and the ships that were still watching over the fleet were taking them out. They still had all of their missiles and other systems at full capacity, so they didn't have to rely on RGs and lasers to take the enemy out. With this development taking them off guard, and them not knowing how many Clan fighters were waiting for them, most of the enemy fighters immediately turned and went back toward their fleet, hoping to escape. Those that didn't were hunted down by the Clan and Colonials alike, though they did manage to damage or destroy a number of ships in the fleet, and to do some damage to the Galactica herself before they were all hunted down and destroyed.

Jason waited until the fighters were well on their way back to their ships before he flushed his own heavy fighters. As soon as they appeared, the enemy was aware of their presence, but now they had nowhere to run or hide, and the only way to escape this trap was to go through the forces that Jason had just launched. They knew that to return to the Colonial fleet would just mean that they were all destroyed, especially since the forces behind them had probably consolidated their position and dealt with the forces that hadn't abandoned their primary objective.

Heracles was reeling from the intensity of what was going on in space around his fleet. The scope of the destruction was almost unimaginable, and it was literally impossible for him to believe that anyone could amass that much destructive force in one place at one time. The computer had already verified that over a thousand enemy warships had been apparently destroyed within the last few hours, and that tens or, even more amazingly, hundreds of thousands of enemy fighters had suffered the same fate.

Most of the enemy fighters were being stopped by the fighters that had suddenly just appeared between him and his fleet, but there were a number of them that were going to reach his fleet, and he wasn't sure that his ships would be able to hold them off, even with the help of the fighters that were still flying near his fleet. He couldn't see them on his scanners, but his pilots had confirmed visually that almost a thousand Clan fighters were still near his fleet. He had even talked with a few of the viper pilots personally while they were having their ships rearmed and refueled. But while his own viper squadrons had landed for refueling and rearming, the Clan fighters hadn't, so they had to be running low on at least some of their supplies and armaments. His computers couldn't track the assault fighters that the Clan used, but they could track their missiles, and there had been very few of them being used after the first few minutes of the combat. That probably meant that they were out of missiles, or soon would be.

Kandi swore under her breath in English and Llyriana as she saw that at least one wave of fighters was going to make it through the defensive screen. They had just come from too far over for the heavy fighters to cover the distance and provide a shield to the fleet from an attack from that direction.

'Well, any suggestions?'

'They still have at least four hundred of their fighters in the air. Leave them here and let's see what we can do with what we have left. We can at least make a dent in them.'

Kandi sighed deeply. 'That would be a great suggestion if we still had some missiles so that we could really hammer them on a short pass through their formation. But we're down to lasers and RGs, and the lighter RGs on the sides don't have the punch that the main RGs or the spinal lasers do. There are less than a thousand of us who are ready to hit that kind of speed and go into a dogfight, and that is a large wave of fighters.'

Her sensor tech spoke up without prompting. 'That wave was launched by the other Grak battle fleet. Twelve battleships and a hundred and twenty seven battlecruisers. So there are just over a hundred and fifty thousand fighters heading toward us in that wave.'

'We can't possibly stop that many without missiles. We barely managed to stop the first wave that we hit, and we had full loads and the advantage of surprise then.'

She keyed her comm. 'This is Kehhn ka Khyrr-mehngkren talon one leader. I want all ships to form up on me. We're going out to see what we can do to stop this last wave before they get within range of the fleet. Make your shots count if you have any of your missiles left, because we have LOTS of targets, people.'

Acknowledgments were just starting to come in when another message came across the comm. 'Negative on that last order, Kay-Kay One. This is Jester, Woodstock. I have a surprise package, and will rendezvous with you halfway between your current position and the current position of the incoming bogeys. I want you to be moving slow so that you can mix it up with them after they pass. Slow them down so we can show them the hammer.'

'Affirmative, Jester. I'm not sure what you have in mind, but I hope that you have some missiles left if you want to make a big impression on them.'

'Affirmative. Full loads. We took the time to rearm before we came out to play. We just need to slow them down and then hold the rear when the real surprise hits them in the face.'

Kandi smiled. Her mother was almost as devious as Troy, and was very nasty in space combat, especially that involving the small fighters. 'Roger that. Looking forward to seeing what Christmas looks like early this year, because this is going to be one hell of a present if you can pull it off.'

'Jasper assures me that he will be in position and will launch at the designated time. He wasn't happy at having to flush his tanks late, but he needed to get into position before the surprise party could finally commence and give us a grand slam.'

Heracles and the others aboard the Galactica's bridge looked at each other in total confusion after hearing that message. The language was definitely Basic, but some of the words made no sense at all, and others didn't make any sense in the context that they were being used.

'It has to be some sort of code, sir.'

'I'm sure that it is, Colonel. If the enemy has the translator devices that we obtained from them and uses them, I'm sure that they heard the communications as well. And I hope that they are just as confused as we are.'

Persephone sighed. 'It's obvious that they're intending to stop, or at least attempt to stop, the wave of fighters that is still approaching us. We know that none of the other fighters that we can see can reach us in time or cut them off, and the ships that were much farther away are obviously not able to do so, either.'

Heracles smiled. 'Yes, Pers. But we still don't know what they are planning to do, or how they plan to do it. I'm just hoping that the enemy is as confused as we are so that we know they have a better chance of keeping the enemy from destroying the entire fleet.'

The comm officer looked up suddenly. 'Sir, I have a message for you.'

'Put it on the speaker, Diana.'

'This is Commander Heracles. What can I do for you?'

'This is Woodstock, sir. Leader of the Clan fighters that are around your fleet right now. We're heading out with the forces we have that are really combat ready, but we're leaving about seventy fighters that have some damage to their drives or their weapons that would affect their ability to do what we need to do right now.'

'I understand. We did know what that part of the message that we overheard meant.'

'We want you to keep your vipers here to protect your fleet in case we don't stop them all. Our cripples will stay here with them and boost your defenses as much as they can.'

'If you are going to be outnumbered as badly as things look...'

'I know that you still have four hundred vipers left, sir. But they would just be in the way when we mix things up. Our missiles won't lock onto our own ships, and will avoid them and hit the next legitimate target that they CAN lock onto. That could be your ships if they are there. We don't want to end up killing our allies, because as my father always says, friendly fire isn't.'

'Very well, uh, um, Woodstock. I'm sorry, but I don't know your rank or anything else to call you.'

There was light, musical laughter over the comm. 'I'm just a run of the mill Talon Leader, Commander. Same rank as the other seven fighter talon leaders that are on my base ship. And the eight assault shuttle talon leaders that are on my base ship.'

'Very well, Talon Leader Woodstock. We'll hold our fighters here in reserve as a last defense against those that make it through whatever it is that you have planned for them. I won't hold you up by talking to you when you need to be leaving.'

'Oh, we left before I contacted you. I just wanted to make sure that you kept your own fighters there in case something does get through.

Heracles and the others watched the scanner anxiously. There had been almost no change in anything on it during the past half hour. All of the smaller ships had been destroyed in all of the fleets that were within scanner range, and now all of the larger ships in those fleets had stopped their forward motion toward his fleet. That was a good sign, but none of them were breaking off, so there was still a real threat out there waiting for a chance to attack his fleet. He wondered how long it would be before the enemy commanders took their ships and attacked, fighting their way through the ships that had launched the Clan fighters that were out there, visible on his own scans. He still didn't believe that there could be enough forces there to keep his fleet protected from what were obviously a number of very strong enemy fleets.

The only changes that he had been able to detect were that most of the enemy fighters that had been attacking on two of the vectors had been destroyed, and the remaining few were trying to scatter and flee, only to disappear one by one as they were obviously hunted down by the Clan fighters. And the other wave of fighters was still closing on his fleet, and would soon be getting close enough for them to be engaged. They were maybe forty more minutes from his fleet at their current speed and heading. He stood there, wondering how many of his remaining fighter pilots would survive this encounter. And more importantly, how many of the people who were still aboard the ships of the Colonial fleet would survive, if any of them managed that feat at all.

Suddenly, there was something happening on the screen, and he saw huge lanes of clear space suddenly appear in the formation of enemy fighters. There were hundreds of them disappearing every second, and he couldn't believe that anything could be capable of dealing that much death and destruction so quickly and easily. The wave went past the area, and the destruction suddenly stopped. He was relieved to see that over sixty thousand of the enemy fighters had been destroyed. Unfortunately, that left another ninety thousand fighters still headed right for him.

Kandi wasn't the happiest camper around right now. It was bad enough that they had run out of missiles before the last engagement even began. Now she was actually running low on ammo for the smaller RGs, and one of her 75's on her left wing was jammed. Cindi was already working on the problem, and hoped to have it fixed before too long. But ninety thousand enemy fighters had made it past their position and were headed toward the Colonial fleet right now. If even one percent of that number made it into the battered fleet with just the guard that they had now to assist, even more of their ships would be damaged or destroyed.

Her comm went active, and she answered. 'Yeah?'

'How are you doing, kid?'

'Just great, mother. All of my bloody small RGs are almost out of ammo, I'm out of missiles, and I have a bloody jam in the number two portside 75. Other than that, things are just peachy.'

Laughter came over the comm. 'Well, let Cindi handle the jam, and just sit tight.'

'We're not even chasing them?'

'No need to. We could if they could see us, but the thing about the stealth is that the idea is to keep them guessing where you are, instead of advertising your position and trying to mess with their minds that way.'

'The surprise that you have planned had better be good if you think that it's going to stop that many enemy fighters.'

Tahhnhi laughed at her daughter's comment. 'Don't worry, dear. I'm sure that Jasper flushing the heavy fighters down their throat at the same time that he decloaks the entire strike talon and fire talon will get their attention.'

Kandi smiled, knowing that her mother was definitely a master of understatement with that comment. 'Uh, yeah, but they'll still come on and hit them.'

'Probably, but not at top speed, and they'll want to reform their formations before they tangle with the talons. By that time, they'll find out about the real hammer that is being dropped on them to force them into the anvil.'

Kandi was about to ask what her mother was talking about when her sensors showed her. She was still on close range scan for combat on her console, and had missed seeing how fast the one wing of assault fighters had been closing on their position in the heat of the combat and the stress of damage reports and making repairs to get ready for the next assault. 'Bloody hell, mother. Where did they get that many extra assault fighters?'

'Their orders were to finish with the fleets that they were assaulting as quickly as possible, and then head directly for the Colonial fleet. And since they were mainly going after the larger ships that they could destroy with their spinal lasers, they should have almost full loads of missiles. When they go through the enemy formation, there won't be much cohesion left, and their numbers will be cut down enough to let the heavy fighters finish them off.'

Kandi just nodded and smiled as she flipped her sensor display to long range to enjoy watching the destruction of the enemy fighter wing. Having twenty five thousand assault fighters come right up their ass in a long pass would definitely mess up their day.

Heracles watched the monitor intently. At their current speed, the enemy forces would reach his fleet in less than ten minutes. Suddenly, there were a large number of huge ships on his screen, and an unbelievable number of fighters suddenly began to appear as well.

'Sir, there are about twenty five thousand new fighters in the air. And I'm not even sure what those ships are, sir. Some of them are HUGE.'

Leonidas just stared at the scan officer, then dismissed the outburst. He had been startled himself at the sudden appearance of so much firepower, and wished that they had been able to do anything like this against the Cylons so long ago so that the twelve Colonies would never have fallen.

The wave of enemy fighters hesitated, then began to form ranks for battle again, trying to do what they could to make sure that at least some of them got through to their main objective, which was to destroy the Galactica and the fleet that she had protected for so many yarhns. Then they suddenly began to disappear without warning. Huge gaps were appearing in their formations, and then the blips from the fighters that had stopped them merged with their own, and they simply watched as the largest dogfight they had ever witnessed played out on their monitors. They were too overcome with relief at their unexpected and miraculous rescue to do anything except watch and give silent thanks to all of the deities that they believed in.

Kyrrykk couldn't believe how quickly he was losing contact with various areas of his ship. Within minutes of the boarding alarms going off, they had suddenly ceased. That was when he had discovered that his control rooms had been taken and were no longer under his control. Desperate pleas for help were suddenly cut off as the signal was jammed or controlled, and he realized that his ship had been boarded by the Demons.

All of his crew were responding, and they had been in combat armor and ready for combat already, but it seemed to make no difference. The forces that had entered his ship were ready for combat, and they were steadily cutting through his troops and reducing their numbers with every encounter. The monitors that he still had control over showed him death and destruction, with the enemy moving down the corridors at a steady pace that was unimaginable in the face of the volume of firepower that was being directed at them. Even the heaviest RG rounds bounced off of their armor almost ineffectively, with only an occasional round doing anything other than making some of the smaller targets move back a step or slow down. And most of the injuries that he could see were comparatively minor wounds. It was the rare lucky shot that hit the junction of helmet and body armor and caused what could become a fatal wound.

He was watching one of the monitors when he got his first actual look at what was making the mess his other cameras were recording. He saw small boxes moving very rapidly down the corridor toward his troops, then suddenly stop, turn, and explode. The carnage that they wrought was devastating, with some of his troops literally being torn to pieces by the force of the explosion and the deadly shrapnel that it released. But before he could even recover from the shock of that sight, he watched as the troops ran down the hallway in the confusion, almost totally unopposed now that the heavy RGs were down, and began slicing and hacking his troops to death with the long, dark black blades that they wielded.

Kyrrykk froze in fear as he saw the deadly effects of those blades for the first time. His troops were wearing the best body armor that the Consortium could manufacture, and the enemy troops were cutting through them with those Demon blades almost as if they had no armor on at all. He could see cleanly cut pieces of bodies falling away from the owner as the blade passed through, and blood and entrails were being thrown and sprayed in every direction, coating the walls, the decks, and even the ceiling above them. There was a mixture of thick, blue green blood from his own species, mixed with other colors of the troops that they led.

Kyrrykk shook himself out of his daze, realizing that he was thinking about the past again. It had been almost a full cycle since the events he had just been remembering had begun. Since his worst nightmare had become a haunting reality, and a harbinger of his doom. Now he heard the RGs outside of the bridge going off yet again, and knew that his time was limited. It wouldn't be much longer before the enemy troops entered his bridge, and then he and the bridge crew that were left would have no choice but to die in combat. He knew that the enemy did not take prisoners of any of the member species of the Consortium, and that they killed even the women and children of those species whenever they found them. Just as he and his kind killed every Demon that they ever found. That had been how the war was fought so long ago, though the Demons hadn't ever really fought like that themselves when they did manage to attack a planet that had a large number of women and children on it. And they had been very careful not to kill excessive numbers of the menials and slaves, too. Now, they still spared the crews and slaves, but they weren't too worried about accidental deaths among them if they got into the line of fire during combat, and they took absolutely no prisoners at all during their boardings of combat vessels.

Kyrrykk's blood froze in his veins and his eyes widened in horror as the RGs outside the bridge suddenly went silent after a surge of return fire. His eyes were riveted on the monitor as he saw a huge enemy soldier striding down the hall toward the bridge, closely followed by two smaller Demons. The huge one looked familiar, and suddenly he recognized the man. It was the Demon who had killed a Grak in single combat with his bare hands, punching through the chest after he destroyed the chest armor, and then ripping the head off of the Grak. That video had never been seen by anyone outside of the military and the ruling council, and was limited in the military to viewing by those whose rank made them commanders of fleets, or higher.

Now Kyrrykk knew fear as never before, for that vision had haunted every single one of his nightmares since the day that he had first seen that video. The video that showed what had happened to the thousand ships of the three fleets that had been formed specifically to kill the Demons and eliminate the threat forever. He saw the taller forms that followed the first group of smaller, fast bodyguards, and recognized the new, modified armor of the Krohr-jing warriors who now served the Demons. The traitors who had joined them rather than face death. The troops who had made the victory that the Consortium had achieved against the Tryx, so many millennia ago, possible to begin with.

The Demon was on his bridge, and was talking to him, but he ignored the words and didn't even bother with a translator. His death was at hand, and he knew it. Nothing mortal stood against the Demon in hand to hand combat. Not this Demon.

Kyrrykk stood there, then moved toward the Demon. The last thing that he saw was the Demon behind him raising a small, strangely shaped weapon that looked like two short tubes. Then there was a flash and a loud sound, and his body was being ripped and torn. Then he was lying on the floor looking at the ceiling, and his brain stopped processing incoming signals and he died.

Troy looked back over his shoulder, fixing Lehr with a grim stare. Lehr smiled broadly. 'Hey, you didn't say that you wanted him personally, Kohl-garh. You just said that you wanted him dead. And I did want to see how well your hand held skate kicked for myself, so...'

Kohrrhi laughed, and Troy smiled. 'OK, have it your way. Tell the troops to cleanse the ship. We'll work through the cleanup details later as far as any crew that we take prisoner. Keep the ship intact, though, because we definitely want to know how well they are doing on their own research into stealth.'

'Yes, Kohl-garh.' The response came from a small woman who was standing over to one side of Lehr.

'Jahrl, go ahead and have the troops take a break before they begin sweeping the ship to make sure that we have complete control. Since this fleet was specially made with their new weapons systems and stealth capabilities, make sure that they are very alert for Zyrkal or Chyrl-paa when they go through the ship.'

'Yes, Kohl-garh. We'll make sure that there is nothing coming from this ship or this fleet to let them know what happened. And that there are no assassins left to threaten your family or anyone else in the Clan or the fleet that we are protecting.'

'You're in charge of this fleet, Jahrl. Most of the troops will remain on the ships until we finish the cleanup and start putting the crews on them to get them back to the Home Fleet and rework them. I'm taking the rest of my group and returning to the Kehhn ka Khyrr-mehngkren so we can make sure what happened to the Colonial fleet and keep their civilians from freaking out.'

Jahrl nodded, turned to an officer beside him and began talking in Krohr-jing very rapidly, using the combat codes for speed and out of habit. Although they could and did use their native tongue now that they were in the Clans, it was hard to break the old habits of never talking except in combat code around anyone else, since that was how they had kept their culture and legends alive during the thousands of years of their servitude to the Consortium as their best assault troops.

Heracles and Leonidas sat at the conference table, staring at Troy in shock. The only other Colonial representative present right now was Persephone, and she looked as shocked as they were. Troy and two of his wives sat across the table from them, with only his two Shadows inside the room with them. The other four bodyguards for the wives were outside the room, making sure that nobody entered the room under any circumstances.

Persephone spoke first. 'Let me make sure that I understand your offer. You are willing to give us an entire fleet of warships so that we can replace our current ships and live more safely, and have a better chance of defending ourselves against any other Consortium fleets that we encounter?'

Troy nodded, waiting for her to continue.

'And you are offering to give us better armor for our warriors, and train all of our people to do combat and other jobs, such as your own people do in your Clan?'

Troy smiled. 'Yes.'

Leonidas sighed. 'We could really use the ships, and the weapons, armor, and even the training. It would allow us to grow and have a better standard of living and a more secure environment for our children as we journey through space. But I'm just not sure how the other part of your offer would affect our people, or how they would respond to it.'

Heracles sighed, looking at the very small woman with dark black hair and soft, yellow skin who was sitting next to Troy. 'You're certain of the results that you got, and how it would affect our people?'

Sue smiled at them. 'Yes, Commander, I'm certain of the results. If we infected your people with our nanobots, you wouldn't survive the process very well. Even your females would be unable to be converted properly more often than not, and all of our past experiences have shown that those who aren't converted usually die in the process of attempting the conversion. But, as I told you, we do have other nanobots, and the tests indicate that the nanobots from the Betas would work in your species very well. It would mean that your people would have an expanded lifespan, and that you would be faster, stronger, and healthier than you are right now.'

Leonidas sighed. 'You said that you can't guarantee anything without first doing some trial conversions, and that it would take about a year for the process to be completed. But what are the advantages and disadvantages that we are talking about right now?'

'I know that it is safe for your species. You are well within the parameters for the nanobots that we're talking about using. Beta bots are safe. Delta bots would make you stronger still and increase life expectancy as well, but they would kill all of the males who are currently alive, and could be risky for some of the females as well because you don't have any of the Tryx genes in your genome.'

Heracles nodded. Persephone leaned forward excitedly. 'And what would happen if we were to introduce the Beta nanobots into our population?'

Sue sighed. 'OK. First, the positive aspects. You would be healthier and more resistant to a wide variety of diseases and conditions that still affect your people. You would live longer. That means that you could expect to live at least a thousand, and more likely almost two thousand years before you began to age and die of old age. You would be at least three times as strong as you are now, and would heal from injuries at a greater rate, both in speed and frequency.'

'And the negative?'

'The infection is a one time choice, because it would be permanent in all of the people who chose to have it done. Their children automatically inherit the nanobots of the mother, and are born with them already active. And all of those who are changed by the nanobots can expect to have to deal with some changes that will be necessary for your culture to survive. In every species, there are more females than males born to those who are given the nanobots. In the case of the Betas, the normal skew was about two and a half or three to one on births. And you already know how our own Clan has handled the even greater skew that we have on our own births.'

Heracles sighed. 'I understand the offer, and what we must decide on our own before accepting at least some parts of your generous offer of assistance. What I want to know, so that I can tell the Council before they decide how to put this vote to our own people, is why you are so willing to offer this much help freely, with no conditions.'

Troy smiled, then nodded at Kyri. She sighed, then answered the question. 'To put it bluntly, you are one of the species that we have sworn to protect from the Consortium as best we can. But what you do with your lives, and how you choose to live your lives are your concern unless you start trying to interfere with the Clans or aid the Consortium. Whether or not you choose to accept the nanobots and become changed by them, you still have to decide what path your people will follow as they live out their lives. With what we are giving you, you can explore and search for Earth while still allowing your own people to multiply and prosper, and you can increase the size of your fleet over time as well. Or you could take the ships and head back to where you came from, using the technology and the time to breed up even more people so that when you reached your home systems, your military forces would be strong enough to defeat the Cylon Empire and retake your worlds and occupy them once more.'

Troy nodded. 'And you will have to decide if you are going to crew your ships on your own, or if you are willing to accept some of the members of the various species who do that job on those ships already. Some of them wish to stay with the ships, and we can ask and see how many of them wish to go with you if you are willing to accept them. As for that part of it, you will have at least six months to make any decisions, because your entire fleet is going to have to remain with us for at least six months so that we can repair, rebuild and refit some of the ships that we captured and give you your new ships.'

Heracles nodded. 'I've already informed the Council of that fact, and they and our people have no problems with having to accept your hospitality for that time. We are, indeed, grateful for your generosity.'

Kyri smiled. 'How long you remain with us after that is entirely up to you. Even if you accept the Beta nanobots, you could be almost halfway converted by the time your new ships are ready for you to board them and you've learned how to handle them on your own. But even if you accept everything that we are offering, it will still only be a few years before you are ready to go off on your own.'

Troy nodded. 'Though I have to warn you that going off on your own is risky when your population is so small. Even our small Clans are generally about a million people or more when they are moving around on their own. You only have about half a million people, and even with additional crew members to assist you, you won't have a very large fleet or much of a defensive or offensive force compared to what the Graks and others expect to see from a fleet. Even a small Clan fleet.'

Heracles nodded. 'We realize that we will be spread somewhat thin at first, and that our own tactics couldn't exactly match your own, but we will be much better armed and protected than we were. And we can use our shipboard weapons for defense and offense if necessary. Just the stealth capabilities that you will give our ships and our fighters will allow us to use our fighters for reconnaissance to avoid most of the major problems that we could encounter that would prove dangerous to the fleet.'

Troy nodded. 'OK. Talk it over with your people, and let me know what you decide. In the meantime, we'll begin putting the people whose ships are still intact and ready for them back onto their ships so that they can relax and try to get their lives back toward normal. It will only be a few more days before we have all of the ships that we recently captured ready to move, and then we'll begin the journey back to the rendezvous point with our Home Fleet.'

Leonidas returned to his duties immediately after the meeting, leaving Heracles and Persephone to walk their visitors back to the shuttle that had brought them over. As they were walking, Persephone leaned close and asked Kyri exactly how many wives Troy had, since there appeared to be a number of them present with the fleet from the interactions she had had in the week since the battle began.

Kyri smiled. 'Right now, Troy actually has thirty one wives, but only six of them are on the same ship as he is right now. There are two others who are with this wing on other ships, about half a dozen others in the other strike wing, and the rest remain with the Home Fleet and do other duties and take care of the kids.'

Sue smiled. 'Why, are you interested in joining the household?'

Persephone shook her head. 'I think that I'm a bit too old to have to worry about that.'

Both of the women laughed, and there were snickers from the bodyguards who were following them. 'What did I say that was so funny?'

'Well, considering that the youngest wife who is here with the wing is only a hundred and twenty or so, and his youngest wife is all of eighty years old...'

Persephone's eyes widened as she looked at the two very young looking women, noting not for the first time how firm, fit, and trim they both looked. The first time that she had seen them, she had wished that she could look that fit and firm, and that she was that young again herself. 'Exactly how old are you guys, anyway?'

Sue smiled. 'Well, I was in my thirties when I came from Earth, but we used a different calendar. And Kyri was about thirty when she met and married Troy as well, and they used the same calendar that we do now. We're almost the same age, actually. Fifty four eighty four, give or take a year or two.'

Persephone did the math quickly in her head, since they had had time for her to do the conversions and understand the differences between how they measured time and how the Colonies measured time. She paled and stopped walking as she realized that the two women she was talking to were almost exactly forty eight hundred yarhns old, and both of them looked younger than she did at only seventy yarhns and starting to enter into middle age.

Heracles began chuckling as he saw her expression. 'Yes, Pers, if you get the bots put into you, you will look just as young as they do, or at least no older than you do now, for almost two thousand more years, barring accidental death.'

Persephone smiled. 'Well, that will certainly be a factor in how many of the women vote to undergo the process. Though I'm sure that the men won't mind their women looking young and hot until they are ready to die.'

Heracles grinned. His grin faded as Lehr spoke up. 'No complaints from the men even when the women hand them a squalling baby and tell them to take care of it for a while. You do realize that you will never lose fertility until you really begin to visibly age in the few decades right before you die, don't you?'

Persephone stared at him in shock, not even aware of Heracles own open mouthed expression. Sue smiled and nodded. 'That's right. In addition to eliminating most of the genetic defects that are possible, the nanobots keep the women fertile throughout their lifetime. My own youngest are one and a half now, and Kyri's are three.'

'You both had twins?'

'Well, Troy's wives end up having twins more often than not. More often than normal, even for the Clan, but about forty percent of all births are twins. We just blame him for the excess. And I'm sure that with the bots being Beta, even a female who is as short and slender as you are won't have twins more than maybe fifty percent of the time.'

Persephone just nodded absentmindedly as she and Heracles escorted their guests to the landing bay and their ship. She wasn't even aware of the many small appraising glances and smiles that Heracles kept giving her as he wondered exactly how many of their children would look as beautiful as their mother. He fully intended to make sure that his encounter with Pers the other night became very regular nightly ritual so that they could enjoy spending a lot of their time together, no matter how their people voted to spend the rest of their lives. He was clueless that Pers was ignoring his glances simply because she was wondering which one or two other women she could get to accept roles as his other wives so that they didn't end up with too many single women.

Part Three

A New Path of Their Own

Before training started, Heracles and his people were given the injections with the Beta nanobots. Then their training officially began. It would take a full Clan year for the nanobot transformation process to be completed, so their first year of training was spent doing physical conditioning exercises and learning the very basics about how the Clan waged war. The morning sickness and cravings were very hard on the women, and there were numerous marriages and pregnancies among the Colonials during that first year.

Once they were fully transformed and in physical condition, every adult began their training in earnest. All of them had to know how to fight defensively in case their ships were ever boarded by the enemy. They were used to fighting against Cylons. Machines that were bigger and stronger than them individually, but had tech comparable to that of the Colonies. Now the nanobots had made them at least as strong as the Cylon centurions, and the Clan had given them new ships that were vastly superior to the technology that was available to the Cylons in more ways than many of them could imagine. The Cylon methods of destroying enemy ships by overwhelming them and ramming them would no longer work. Their shields and armor were both much stronger than they had been, and the Cylon death squadrons would blow themselves up without even doing significant damage to the ships that they were trying to destroy. There were no open launch bays or landing bays for them to target. The only advantages that the Cylons now had were superior numbers and the ability to produce vast numbers of centurions to replace their combat losses much more quickly than the humans could breed and train new warriors of their own.

The problem was that things would be very different when they faced the Graks. Graks were faster and much stronger than Cylons, and their tech was vastly superior to that of the Cylon empire, even if it was still vastly inferior to that which was used by the Clans. They were physically stronger and faster than the Colonials were individually, and their tech was much closer to what the Colonials now had than that of the Cylons was. Grak ships were larger and more numerous than those in the Colonial fleet, but not quite as powerful individually, but even Graks didn't have stealth or the ability to detect stealthed ships. An attack by the Graks, especially one in force that they'd had time to plan for, would mean fighting against much greater numerical odds than the Cylons had ever used.

Initial training also included firearms. The Graks boarded enemy ships during an attack if it was possible, and while their Clan trainers had assured them that even female Betas would be more than a match for a Cylon centurion physically, the same could NOT be said for their ability to go hand to hand with Graks. Even the pilots spent a lot of time during their first year learning how to use Clan small arms effectively.

Heracles had already explained to the people why all of them had to be trained like this, and about their children being cared for and taught by the Clan women and kids about the Clan tech that was part of their everyday normal life, as well as how to live safely aboard a Clan ship. This was necessary because ALL Clan ships were built for use as warships so that none of them were ever defenseless. Clan Home Ships were generally the largest, most powerful, and most heavily armored ships in the entire Clan fleet. They were definitely the most well protected ships in the Clan fleet. Every single Clan warrior made sure of that, no matter what.

They all trained for six hours a day doing physical training, and then spent another six hours a day in simulators learning how to perform a variety of normal tasks so that everyone understood at least the basics on how various types of Clan tech worked, as well as what its safety limits and restrictions were. At least, what they were under normal operations. Everyone knew that there were some things that were occasionally done during combat that weren't in the normal operating parameters. But risking death and facing certain death were two different things, and it was the Clan obsession with constant maintenance and repair that made such situations survivable. About a quarter of a million people from Heracles' group were going through the training, leaving only those who were too elderly or too young.

For Brahm's group, things were quite different. Brahm had about two hundred thousand followers who didn't have the same goal as Heracles and his followers. Twenty thousand of Brahms' followers were designated to be trained for shipboard security and defense, another ten thousand for command and crew for the ships in their new fleet, five thousand to pilot or crew shuttles, and a total of fifty thousand to pilot and crew either assault fighters or PT boats. Less than half of his group would be trained for actual combat, either offensively or defensively. Though they did plan to lift all of the old restrictions on having babies that had been necessary because of their limited resources in the past, since each Home Ship that they were to receive was easily capable of supporting several times their total current population without either crowding the ship or straining their resources and life support systems.

Brahm thought that his people were doing a lot to prepare to defend themselves from any realistic threats as they prepared to go off on their own. Heracles and Leonidas thought that he was deluding himself and misleading his followers into a false sense of security. They had eight heavy battlecarriers, and while each of them was much larger and more powerful than the Galactica had been, Brahm could only safely send two of his ships out for offensive operations. His shipboard security was so light as to be practically nonexistent, even on his Home Ships, since he wasn't training his civilians to fight in their own defense.

The only thing that they were pleased with was the fact that fifty thousand people were being trained as pilots and crew for Brahms' offensive small craft. Those assault fighters and PT boats were going to be the backbone of both offensive and defensive operations for Brahms' fleet. Brahm would be able to crew two thousand PT boats and three thousand assault fighters. And with fifteen thousand people being trained as techs to oversee maintenance and perform tasks that the normal crew species couldn't, they would be capable of maintaining everything properly.

The training was very different for Brahms' followers as well. They spent six hours a day training in the simulators for one Clan year. Then their people were moved to their own fleet and given another year of on the job training, where they did their jobs under Clan supervision. They were taught how to let the alien support crew do their jobs properly, as well as how to handle emergencies that the support crew couldn't and do the rest of the work themselves. Most of the trained forces were male, since males tended to predominate in areas such as fighter pilots, security, and warriors in Colonial society. Since Brahm and his followers had refused to accept the nanobots that the Clan had offered, they didn't have to contend with a gender bias skewing the ratio of male to female births. And with half of their entire population being male, they didn't have to rely heavily on females to fill their warrior positions. While they allowed those females who wanted to become warriors to do so if they were physically and mentally qualified, most of their warriors were male, especially in their most offensive or aggressive forces.

Heracles' followers had a much different problem. All of them had been transformed by the Beta nanobots by the end of their first year, and their initial baby boom was completed by the end of the second year. Their initial adult population had been about a quarter of a million, with half of them female. Of the adult females, one hundred and ten thousand had given birth. There were now an additional one hundred and sixty thousand Colonials, with seventy four percent of the new babies being female. Training for the women with babies was thrown off schedule because they had to nurse their young themselves, and because they had been unable to train during the last part of their pregnancy and right after giving birth.

Sue had gone over the statistics with Persephone and Melody, and Spring had been with them to hear the results and help them determine how this would affect their people.

'Look, it's not as bad as we originally thought that it could be, but you guys knew before we gave you the injections that you were almost certain to have more females than males once you were transformed.' She sighed, looking at both of Heracles' wives. 'It's worse for the women who have twins than we thought it would be. If you have twins, the ratio is that one in twenty births are male, and there were no twin boys born to ANY of your people. With fifty thousand sets of twins and sixty thousand single births, the results should be fairly accurate statistically. Almost half of the pregnancies your people have will result in twins, and for every ten women who are pregnant with twins, one is having a boy and a girl and the other nine are each having two girls. Statistically speaking.'

The women nodded, waiting for her to continue. 'The good news is that the single births greatly offset the gender skew. Only forty five percent of your pregnancies resulted in twins, and almost forty five percent of the single births were male.'

Heracles' two wives laughed, each looking at her own twin daughters, then looking over at Spring nursing her son at her breast. Persephone grinned as she looked over at Sue. 'So what is the bottom line on what we can expect in the future?'

Sue sighed. 'A roughly three to one ratio of females to males. And since you are operating like a small Clan, your social structure may be strained for a while as you get used to having a lot of females become fighter pilots, crew members, or warriors. Especially since they will serve a lot more in active combat than they have in the past. While some Kobolian females became warriors, they usually didn't get into the more aggressive units or ground forces.'

Melody shook her head. 'That won't be a problem. We already knew that was coming, and that's why we had your people teaching our children in classes with your own. We teach them our own history at home when we can, but we realize that they also need to know Clan history, Clan tech, and how to function and survive in a universe that is infested with kraghlar Graks.'

Sue smiled, noting that neither of the others was shocked or offended in the least by Melody's language, and that they were not shocked or surprised by her use of a very derogatory Llyriana term to describe Graks. They knew that Graks had tried to kill everyone in the Colonial fleet, and that it was only the intervention of the Clan that had kept them alive. After two years of living with the Clan and being trained extensively and intensively by them, all of their "guests" were picking up at least some Llyriana terms and phrases. The term "kraghlar Graks" was one that they were constantly exposed to during their training. And many of their children were becoming quite fluent in Llyriana already, since they spent at least half of their time learning with or playing with Clan children. Every child in the Clan was fluent in both Basic and Llyriana.

'So, have you heard any new information about how Brahm and his group intend to deal with the rest of the universe?'

Sue looked at Spring and shook her head. 'Brahm still insists that they are going to continue to look for Earth. He has the maps that show the current size of the Consortium, the specific regions of space that they still control in this galaxy, and what they controlled at the start of the war. They know that Earth is located near the galactic rim, and that Earth wasn't inside the Consortium's sphere of influence, but they still have no way of knowing where to begin their search outside of the area that was Consortium. It's not like we mapped out hyper in that region, and none of the other Clans ever made that much progress in doing that type of mapping either.' She chuckled. 'If we had, we probably would have found Earth ourselves by now.'

'How large an area are we talking about?'

'At least half of this galaxy.'

Persephone shook her head, clearly confused. 'You said that the Consortium controlled at least three fourths of the galaxy when the war began.'

'Yes, and no. Nobody actually controls the galactic core. There are a LOT of systems near the core, but we don't count them because there are so many stars clustered so closely together that there's too much heat and radiation for life as we know it to survive. Eventually the galaxy will expand enough for more of those systems to become habitable, but that is a very long way in the future. The thing is that the systems get farther and farther apart as you go toward the edge of the galaxy, and the volume of space increases exponentially. Three fourths of the habitable systems in this galaxy were somewhere inside the Consortium sphere of influence, but not all of them were inhabited, and the relative volume of space...'

The others nodded, realizing what Sue was saying. Sue sighed. 'Hyper connects systems by the hyper streams. In the early years of Clan history, when our forces were very small and relatively weak, we didn't have stealth to help us avoid detection, so we avoided hyper if we knew that a particular hyper stream led to a system that was inhabited by the enemy. So our own maps of the regions where we originally were operating are spotty and incomplete, and most of the information that we do have on those systems was captured from the enemy.'

'And Brahm really has no idea where to start his search?'

'As I said, the astronomical data in our archives is far from complete. And it's practically useless, since all of the more precise navigational and positional data that would have given us at least some idea of where to look for Earth was lost to us forever when Troy destroyed the main comp to keep the information from being sent out to the entire Consortium.'

The others nodded. If the Consortium had had ANY way to locate Earth, they would have destroyed Earth and the human race immediately to eliminate the threat. 'Couldn't Brahm and his people just explore the galactic rim by hyper?'

'They could, Spring, but it would take them millennia to search even a fraction of it. There are NO maps of the hyper streams and their connections outside of the Consortium's area of influence. Hyper streams connect with gravitic anomalies. Most of them are near the galactic center, where most of the mass of the galaxy is, and where most of the systems are. Very few are going to connect to another hyper point near the rim or farther out, so they would have to move in and out of the Consortium's sphere of influence repeatedly. Out near the galactic rim you have smaller systems, fewer systems per volume of space, weaker anomalies, and lower probabilities of them forming a stable connection with another nearby system because the systems are smaller and farther apart. Their constant motion away from each other would stress the hyper streams that did manage to form more than the relative motion between systems that are closer to the galactic center does. Without a map, they are stuck wandering in a maze, mapping, backtracking once they find something that they have already mapped that they know doesn't lead to their goal.'

Spring rolled her eyes. 'Taurons can be stubborn and singleminded to the exclusion of everything else.'

Melody laughed. 'Brahms' purpose and goal is to rule his followers. The goal of searching and trying to find Earth gives them continuity, since that IS what our people have been doing for the past several hundred yarhns. Now their life is better, and if they can avoid the Consortium, they're still much safer than they were when the Cylons were constantly trying to track us down and kill us. And with the new tech, they can have a better lifestyle while still having more and more children to increase their overall population.'

'How much longer are they willing to stay before they just decide that it's time for them to take off and start looking for Earth on their own?'

'Not long, Persephone. Troy figures that it will be about six more months at most. Their pilots CAN fly their ships, their fleet ships ARE already manned and crewed, and they aren't planning on doing much more than using the new tech that we've given them to replace what you had before. Other than adding in PT boats to reduce the odds and keep Consortium ships from wanting to get too close to their fleet, they intend to fight and run pretty much like they always have, relying on fighters to do the majority of their offense and defense. Their major restriction on their tactics is the limits of how well they can use their new technology in ways that they are used to.'

'Are you sure about the time frame?' Persephone sounded uneasy.

Sue shook her head. 'No. To tell the truth, Troy says that they've already been pushing hard to leave for the PAST six months, and that for all he knows, Brahm intends to announce their departure at the thanksgiving celebration that's being held this weekend to mark the second anniversary of your rescue from the Consortium ambush.'

Heracles and Leonidas looked at Troy and shook their heads. 'That is definitely not a good sign, Troy. When a politician like Brahm requests permission to speak during a major celebration, they intend to use the moment, the mood, and the receptiveness of the audience to make sure that their agenda succeeds.'

Troy shrugged, his total lack of concern clearly evident. 'Their lives. Their path. Their choice. Their problem.'

Lehr snorted. 'Their deaths, you mean. I've seen the sim scores, and I've seen their performance in the live fire exercises. Their pilots are better than Consortium pilots, but not so much better that it will make up for the disparity in their numbers. The only way that they're going to survive for very long at all is if their PT boats are REALLY good and if they get REALLY lucky. They wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell at all if it weren't for stealth.'

They stood quietly, watching expectantly as Brahm and the other two members of his triumvirate stepped forward onto the platform. Lehr snickered softly, whispering something under his breath so softly that, even with their now enhanced hearing, both Heracles and Leonidas barely made out "potato head" before they heard Kohrrhi smack Lehr in the back of the head and tell him to behave. They both smiled at Lehr's running gag, since it was his little way of constantly reminding everyone that he thought that Brahm was nothing more than a "petty dick tater".

Brahm smiled, unaware of what was going on near Troy, and began speaking. 'Two years ago, we were facing our darkest hour. Our entire civilization, our culture, was in imminent danger of finally being wiped out once and for all. Not by the Cylons, but by another enemy that we had no knowledge of and no way to prepare for. We were trapped, facing forces of such vast magnitude and power as to be unimaginable at the time. We had inadvertently stumbled into the midst of an intergalactic war so vast, and of such intensity and duration, that it makes our own valiant struggle against the forces of the Cylon empire pale into insignificance by comparison.' Brahm paused, smiling as he carefully gauged his audience for their response. 'But we were rescued from certain doom by our benefactors in Clan Phoenix. They have succored us, given us a new fleet of larger and more powerful ships, more advanced technology than we could yet have created on our own even had the Colonies survived, and training in their ways of combat and survival against an implacable enemy. And now our own fleet, tiny by their standards, is ready to leave and go off on its own. Our ships are larger and vastly more powerful than the mightiest battlestar ever built, and our "tiny fleet" is more powerful than the combined might of the twelve Colonies at the very pinnacle of their power.'

Heracles rolled his eyes. While what Brahm had just said WAS true, they were no longer in the Colonies or fighting Cylons. The only thing that kept a fleet that size alive when fighting even a standard picket fleet was using the superior technology properly. Something that he didn't believe that ANYONE in Brahms' fleet was capable of doing. But now everyone knew exactly where this speech was going. The only question was how much longer Brahm would try to drag things out before he finally got around to making his point. He loved to hear the sound of his own voice almost as much as he loved wielding power and being the center of attention.

'Our pilots man more fighters than were ever in the combined Colonial fleets, and each of their new ships makes a Mark IX Colonial viper look like a child's toy in comparison.'

Yes, the assault fighters were that good. That had been proven when the Clan had used them to keep the Colonial fleet from being destroyed. And he did technically have that many fighters. But he was short on pilots and crews to man those fighters, and would be dangerously overmatched if his forces had to be divided and spread thin to provide better coverage around his fleet. Defeat in detail was a term that came to Troy's mind.

'And so, knowing all of this, it is time for us to stand on our own, to thank those who saved us and gave us so much, and to bid them a fond farewell before we overstay our welcome.'

Leonidas nudged Heracles. 'Before his warriors realize what paper tigers they really are and his followers realize how much safer the Clan lifestyle would be.'

Heracles nodded. 'You can't be a leader if you don't have any followers.'

They quit trying to talk as they were drowned out by cheers from the listening crowd. Most of the cheers came from members of Brahms' own group. Except for those in training, they rarely had anything to do with the Clan or members of Heracles' group. One of the mainstays of their beliefs was the preservation of their Colonial culture.

Leonidas just shook his head in disgust. 'Typical, and no less than I expected from him. Our own pilots, with decades of actual combat experience in many cases, aren't even prepared to try something like this. And not only are our own forces now Betas, but they are more numerous and capable of performing much better in all of the training exercises as well.' He didn't mention that ALL of the surviving Colonial warriors who were qualified pilots had taken the nanobots when they had been offered by the Clan, and were still among the forces that followed Heracles. None of Brahms' pilots had ANY actual combat experience.

Heracles shrugged. 'We know that, and so do our people. But the very reason that we ARE now two separate groups is that we have two highly disparate and totally incompatible goals. They are so determined to keep their culture "intact" that they refuse to adapt or change at all. They don't even realize that our culture now HAS adapted from what it was when we were still in the Colonies because we've been in space for the past several centuries and had to deal with limited resources and the constant threat from the Cylons who were hunting us. They choose to keep running, pinning all of their hopes on finding the lost thirteenth tribe. Of finding Earth, and seeking sanctuary and protection from the Cylon menace with the descendants of the lost thirteenth tribe.' He sighed deeply. 'Only they have no plan or goal if they can't find Earth. Or worse, if they actually manage to find Earth, only to discover that there is no possibility of finding sanctuary from the Cylons there.'

'How could that be?'

Troy looked at Spring and shook his head. 'The planet could be destroyed or left uninhabitable. By the Consortium, by the actions of the descendants of the thirteenth tribe, or even by other causes. Or they could discover the planet, only to find that Earth lacks even the technology and capabilities that your own people had before we found you, much less those that you have now.'

Spring nodded and said softly, 'That could be really bad. Without any hope or goals, how would they manage to survive such a devastating psychological blow?'

Heracles shrugged. 'They'll have lots of time to think about it before they reach that point. They can't explore all of the systems in a localized area if they use hyper once they find an area with inhabited planets. They're exploring outside of the area that the Consortium controls, so there isn't a map of the hyper connections for them to use.'

Brahm came up to them, smiling broadly as he and his cohorts approached. 'I think that went very well, and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. Just last week our best squadrons managed to defeat Consortium forces at a twenty to one ratio in the sims. A truly amazing performance, wouldn't you say, gentlemen?'

Troy smiled and replied noncommittally, 'It IS quite an improvement from their previous performances.' He said nothing about their losses, which had all come from "friendly fire" during the exercise. Brahms' pilots didn't aim and fire, and their trigger fingers were much too heavy. Holding down the trigger on a viper produced a series of laser pulses because it took time for their lasers to cycle and recharge sufficiently for another discharge. Doing that on an assault fighter produced a continuous laser beam that was much more powerful and destructive than their turbolasers had ever been. Long, sustained bursts were OK on a long strafing run against an enemy fleet ship, but doing it all of the time against fighters was very bad. It stressed your systems, it let the enemy target your ship because they could see the source of the laser beam even when you were in stealth, and it posed a hazard to every small craft within laser range, including other assault fighters. In fact, the lasers from another assault fighter were more likely to damage your fighter than any weapon that the Cylons or the Consortium possessed.

Count Daedalus glared at him. 'That tone certainly doesn't seem very approving, or make it sound as if you are really impressed at all.'

Lehr snorted, suppressing his laughter. 'Our combat pilots fresh out of training are required to be able to consistently defeat fifty times their own number just to demonstrate bare minimum proficiency. Of course, that WAS using the old heavy large fighters. What is the proficiency goal now, Kohrrhi?'

'One hundred to one for assault fighters. We had better odds than that when we saved their fleet from the Consortium, but their fleet was a bunch of flying beer cans in space. No armor at all, and shit for shields. We had to make sure that NO enemy fighters at all got through just to keep their entire fleet from being destroyed because they had no effective point defenses against Consortium fighters.'

Daedalus looked like he was about to blow a gasket, but he deflated almost immediately when Sire Brahm chuckled. 'You DID ask them for a response. Our fleet was never composed of warships by ANY means, even after we used some of our worst ships for materials to make repairs on the other ships and improve the armor on them. In fact, most of our fleet was old, long past the time when it should have been in space without a major overhaul in a dry docks, and some of them were past the point where they should have been scrapped before we even began our flight from the Cylons. Remember, old friend, that by their standards even the Galactica is a small, poorly armed and even more poorly armored ship that doesn't have the flight deck capacity to match their smallest carrier.'

Neither Troy nor any of the other Clan members was going to remind them that the very first carriers that the Clan had ever built had been about the same size as the Galactica, and even those had more bay capacity than the Galactica did. One hundred heavy large fighters and a hundred assault shuttles, both of which dwarfed a Colonial viper.

'What about their other comments?' Daedalus sounded as petulant as he looked at the moment.

'Unfortunately, those were also statements of fact. Our lives are much shorter than theirs, so we lack the time and the longevity to train our own pilots for many decades before ever using them in live combat against the enemy. That, and our relatively small numbers is why we intend to remain hidden and only conduct raids when it is absolutely necessary as we continue on our quest for Earth. We don't intend to fight when the odds and the circumstances don't favor us, and we now have the speed, invisibility, and reserves of fuel, power, and essential supplies to allow us to avoid all hostile contacts for decades at a time.'

Leonidas looked at Brahm and shook his head. 'I think that you are making a grave mistake deciding to leave this soon.'

Brahm smiled, not quite condescendingly. 'Perhaps. But our pilots CAN fly their ships and fight already, and we will continue training our forces. We will also expand our forces eventually, as our population grows and more of our people are interested in becoming pilots, warriors, or security troops. We don't have a sudden baby boom to swell our numbers, but our own birth rates are up, and our population is already slowly but steadily increasing.'

Sara smiled. 'Good luck on your quest. You're probably going to need it.'

Brahm took the statement at face value, since the tone had been friendly and sincere. Not that he would have risked pissing off Troy's senior wife by ANY means for such a minor slight, even if it had been so intended. He nodded and thanked her before moving off into the crowd to mingle with his celebrating people. After he left, Troy and the others moved off to relax and enjoy their own day off. Brahm and his people were no longer Troy's concern, and Brahm was well aware of the fact that Troy didn't intend to keep rescuing them from danger. Brahm had ignored all of Troy's advice and warnings, insisting that his people were to be trained specifically to fulfill certain specialized roles, with very little knowledge of how the members of the other groups actually did their jobs. And more than half of his population had received no training at all, other than the mandatory training on how to live aboard a Clan ship safely and how to use the new technology that everyone had to deal with in their daily lives.

Brahm's civilians remained in their own area of the ship, and had very little interaction with any other group, including those who were in Heracles' group. Their children didn't play with any other children, and the adults from their own group taught the children about everything except the new Clan technology. Their comps had no files concerning Clan history, and had limited information about Clan warfare, especially offensive tactics and ground warfare. Brahm had decided that his people would adapt the new technology to their own rich history and culture, and had made sure that the information and training that could allow someone to successfully challenge that decision would not be available to his people.

Now Brahm was leading his fleet off, and Troy would probably never see any of them again. Troy had no doubt that if they started fighting the Consortium, their fleet would eventually be whittled down and destroyed. They would suffer the effects of attrition due to constantly fighting against overwhelming odds. Though they might actually be safe if Brahm managed to keep them from being discovered by the Consortium long enough for them to get out of Consortium controlled space. Assuming that they didn't wander back into Consortium space again. Even where the Clans had been operating with relative impunity, there were still pockets of localized systems that were under Consortium control. There were many systems with no hyper points, and only the time required to move between those systems kept the Clans from wiping them all out right now. Of course, specialization and reliance on hyper to provide a constant stream of critical resources meant that the isolated systems that were near a system that DID have a hyper point suffered greatly once the central control point was eliminated. For now, Troy was seeing how cutting them off worked, hoping that the isolated systems would wither and die, or at least suffer a gradual loss in technology without a constant source of specialized services, parts, and goods. No matter what happened, those isolated systems that managed to survive would be dealt with later. Though the time for that to start happening, at least in some regions of the galaxy, was rapidly approaching.

Given the limitations that Brahm had demanded, his group was as prepared as they could be in such a short amount of time. The Clans had given them ships, weapons, training, and special armor. Since the Colonials were still human, and hadn't been transformed by nanobots, they had been given a million suits of specially designed, extremely modified level four armor with built in power assists. The power packs had been enlarged, improved, and heavily reinforced so that they would last a week on full power, which was the only way that an unaltered human who lacked ANY nanobots could move in armor that heavy for even short periods of time. For fighter crews, if they were drawing power from the ship, or if they were powered down in a disabled ship or floating in space, a fully charged suit would maintain life support for a maximum of three to four weeks, depending on the metabolism, activity level, and energy usage of the individual.

Brahms' people left two days later amidst a lot of fanfare, formality, and long, supposedly inspirational speeches from their leaders. Heracles and his people were unaware of the event simply because Troy ordered all Clan ships to ignore the transmissions while the Clan fleet remained on course at their current speed. All of the transmissions were automatically recorded, but they were only rebroadcast on the channel that had been used by Brahms' people, so nobody in the Clan paid any attention to them.

The Clan had discovered distantly related ancestors who were fully human, and they found that almost half of them were insistent upon following a path that would almost certainly lead to their deaths. So the Clan had simply devoted their energy and attention to their own survival, and to training the other group of humans so that they would be prepared, trained, and capable of surviving on their own when they finally left the Clan to follow the path that they chose to their own destiny. If Brahm even noticed or cared that nobody outside of his own small fleet was even paying any attention to his transmissions, he didn't show any sign of it, and stuck to his scheduled program to properly rouse and motivate his followers. For Heracles and his people, it was just another day of hard, intense training. They were so busy with their training, and had so little contact with anyone in Brahms' group normally, that they didn't even notice that Brahm and his followers were gone until the next large celebration took place three months later.

Leonidas looked over the mission parameters one more time, then looked over at Heracles and grinned. 'Troy's making a point for us, isn't he?'

'Oh, yeah. Our ships. Our pilots. No supporting fire. One talon of assault fighters and one talon of PT boats per target. The Galactica could have launched more than twice that number of ships, but it's still definitely overkill for the designated target for this mission.'

'Any idea what his "surprise" is going to be? We both know that he has one planned. He always does, just to test our ability to respond properly to changing situations and unexpected events.'

'He always has some sort of surprise up his sleeve on training missions, but I still have no idea what it could be this time, Leo. Five years of Clan training is enough for me to realize that if three dozen wives still can't figure out what he's up to after more than five thousand years of being married to him, I don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of figuring him out. Even in combat, the man is the most devious, creative, inventive, and dangerous warrior that could possibly exist. The only thing that I've been able to predict is that he is almost always going to win any engagement with enemy forces, no matter what the situation or the odds.'

Leonidas nodded, sighing heavily. 'I guess we'll find out what the surprise is when we launch our assault force. The picket ship is several hours from the hyper point, and we come out of hyper in our target system in an hour. Time to get to the bridge, check on the readiness of our two talons, and see why Troy has us out here in the middle of nowhere with him, totally on our own, with just a single heavy battlecarrier.'

Heracles laughed. 'Try not to sound so excited and enthusiastic, Leo. You'll get the troops all worked up and have them thinking that this is a serious, important, possibly momentous mission instead of just another routine training exercise.'

'You still think that this is just another training exercise?' Leonidas sounded surprised.

'What else could it be? We call our squadrons "talons", but there are still only twenty five ships in our talons. We're only launching fifty assault fighters and fifty PT boats. Troy insisted that our best and worst talon of each ship type do this mission. If it were a real target, or a target of any real importance, and a real mission, we'd send out a larger strike force and have some more of them standing by nearby for support, just in case. Or we'd at least have reinforcements standing by and ready to launch, just in case the enemy somehow detected us and launched their own fighters. Right?'

Leonidas nodded, having to agree with Heracles' arguments logically. Everything that he had just said was true. Especially the stuff about there not being a backup plan in place. You ALWAYS had a backup plan in place, just in case something went drastically wrong. But he still had a very uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as they headed for the bridge. Something was seriously wrong. But for the life of him, Leonidas simply could NOT figure out what it was.

As soon as they came out of hyper, Heracles and Leonidas were busy ordering the launch of their talons and checking out the situation personally. As they started to run more detailed long range scans to determine exactly what their target was, Leonidas began swearing, using a liberal mixture of Basic, Llyriana, and Colonial phrases.

There are four freaking talons of SMALL fighters out there. They don't have any cloaking, and the residual neutrino levels indicate that we came out of hyper HARD, no matter what our own sensors or alarms say. We just put on enough of a light show to alert half of the system to our presence. The half that ISN'T blind or looking in the other direction.'

The scan officer spoke up. 'Enemy launch detected. Fighters are being launched from two separate sources. Total count is over two hundred and climbing.'

Heracles looked at Leonidas and laughed sarcastically. 'Surprise! Troy announced our arrival so that the enemy force definitely knows that we're here in the system with them. He made damned sure that the enemy knew that we were inside the system, and that they'd launch their fighters. And you're right. The half of the system that doesn't appear to be blind is coming out to welcome us. And there are TWO Clan pickets in the system, not one.'

Leonidas rolled his eyes. Two hundred and climbing meant that the enemy ships in the system were at least the size of a battlecruiser. Their ship could handle two battlecruisers by itself if things went well. The two Clan heavy scout carriers could be counted on for small craft and support. No problem. If they were battleships, THEN things started to become tricky. Heavy scout carriers couldn't get close enough to use their lasers, and their railguns were more of a nuisance than a major threat to a battleship. This ship COULD probably take on two enemy battleships and win. Only Consortium battleships didn't come in PAIRS. 'Do the small fighters HAVE to maintain position just behind our talons? They are giving away our position, and the enemy fighters are homing in on them.'

Troy laughed. 'That is part of the surprise. Trust me. You'll love it.'

Heracles and Leonidas felt ill. Troy was way too happy about this, which meant that things were going to become really hectic. They would probably just be happy to simply survive his "surprise".

'Kragh. I have a thousand fighters heading straight for us.'

'Ten to one. It's still a cake walk.'

'Another thousand fighters just came into scanning range from behind our primary target.'

'Twenty to one. We can still do that. No problem.'

'Incoming message. Fighters are to take out enemy air cover. PT boats are to take out the enemy base ships.'

'Kragh! Forty to one? ID those freaking suckers so that we know what we're dealing with. If they aren't the improved Consortium heavy fighters, even WE can toast their asses at these odds without any real problem.'

It made sense now. PT boats COULD handle the enemy fighters, but it wasn't what they were designed for. So much for wondering what the big surprise in this exercise would be. It would take a LOT to top this.

The scan tech looked at the results of her scans, shook her head in disbelief, and began cursing fluently under her breath. Her cursing was mixed with some very derogatory comments about Troy and his practical jokes. She ran the scan again to verify the results, and when they came back exactly the same as the first time, her muttered curses about Clan hackers screwing up HER equipment were more audible. She increased the resolution and sensitivity to maximum and ran the scan for the third time.

'Sometime today with the results of the scans, Diana.'

Diana sounded exasperated. 'I'm TRYING. Something MUST be wrong with my equipment, but all of the system checks show clean and green.'

'So what's the problem?'

'This CAN'T be right. It's impossible. According to my systems, they're not Consortium fighters at all.'

'Then what the bloody hell ARE they?'

'Cylon raiders.'

The cockpit was totally silent as everyone was trying to get their brain to process that statement. The pilot grinned as the copilot began laughing uncontrollably, but not quite hysterically. He keyed his comm. 'This is talon leader Ares. Our targets have been positively identified as Cylon raiders. Assault fighters are to take them out. PT boats are to close and take out their base stars. AND to make sure that we get ALL of them. We don't want any runners getting away to warn the Cylon empire about this new threat. Let's show these freaking tin cans why it's not safe to go into space in flying beer cans, people. It's payback time!' Now THIS was a surprise.

Heracles and Leonidas looked at the stunned expression on each others' face as they heard the transmissions and realized exactly what Troy's "surprise" was. They could hear Troy and his Shadows laughing at their stunned expressions, but neither of them cared at the moment. They were smiling and laughing as they realized that two talons of fighters, a tiny percentage of their available force from this single ship, were about to do something to the Cylons that hadn't been done in hundreds of yarhns. They were going to totally destroy two Cylon base stars and their entire complement of attack ships. The last time that the Colonial forces had even been able to attempt that feat, it had taken the Galactica and the Pegasus, as well as the entire complement of vipers from both ships. And destroying both base stars and their attack craft had been extremely costly. The entire fleet of refugees, containing all of the people who had been able to flee from the recent destruction of the Colonies, had been placed in great danger, and only the combined squadrons from both battlestars had saved them, though many vipers were lost doing so. And Commander Cain and the Pegasus had been lost in combat once again, along with the entire complement of his battlestar that hadn't been able to be evacuated before the final attack began.

The small fighters maintained position behind the assault fighters, but the distance between them gradually increased as the faster cruising speed of the assault fighters slowly left the small fighters behind. The PT boats were moving even faster, coming in on a tangent to avoid the Cylon fighters and make their attack runs on the Cylon base stars. The Cylons had no idea that either of those groups even existed because their instruments couldn't detect them. They continued heading for the small fighters that they COULD see. Fighters that were about the same size as a Colonial viper, moving at about the same speed as a viper on full thrusters.

It was just over two hours post launch, and the assault fighters were now two thirds of the way to the Cylon base stars when they began their initial attack run through the massed Cylon attack phalanx. The Cylons couldn't even see the assault fighters, and their first indications of an attack were when fifty sets of spinal lasers suddenly appeared out of empty space and cut their way through the entire Cylon formation. Reactions were slow as centurion pilots confronted a totally unknown, clearly impossible situation that they had never been programmed to handle or learned about from experience. By the time that the first long, deadly strafing run finally ended, the Cylon attack phalanx had been reduced from two thousand ships to less than two hundred. Most of the remaining Cylon ships began scattering and running, attempting to flee. Their programming did cover the contingency that they were attacked and almost wiped out by some unknown secret weapon, and the loss of more than ninety percent of their force without even being able to identify a source of the attack definitely met those contingency parameters.

As the Cylons were trying to escape, they saw huge explosions hitting the base stars in waves. The PT boats had split into claws, and they were running a starburst attack pattern on the base stars using half salvos. By doing close range attacks with high speed passes, they were hitting the Cylon base stars with twenty or thirty AM mines every fifteen to twenty seconds. Within the first few minutes, the base stars had been crippled. Their drives damaged, their shields overloaded, and their main lasers and railguns hopelessly mangled, they were sitting ducks as the two talons mercilessly pounded both ships, each explosion leaving gaping holes in the armor and in the interior of the ships.

Ares and his command hunted down the fleeing Cylon raiders mercilessly, and the last few Cylon fighters actually attempted suicide runs after witnessing the total destruction of their base stars. Laser fire from the Cylons had proven to be ineffective against these strange craft of unknown design, and the ramming attacks had only succeeded in damaging two of the assault fighters because the Cylons had been lucky enough to hit one of them by flying blindly at their position. In contrast, a single laser or missile hit from an assault fighter generally left nothing more than an expanding cloud of ions and small, mangled bits of debris to prove that the Cylon ship had ever even existed. Even the RGs, the lightest weapons on an assault fighter, chewed and mangled Cylon fighters with ease. The only difference that the size of the RGs made was in how quickly a Cylon fighter became a badly mangled hunk of floating debris.

Eight hours after the attack began, Heracles, Leonidas, and Troy were in the launch bay to congratulate the returning pilots and crews on their victory. None of them could believe how easy it had been to defeat the Cylons. After the crews left to celebrate their victory and share their experience with the other pilots, Leonidas turned to Troy. 'You do realize that this may make it harder to get them to stay longer for more training. They won't see much need in staying if we can already defeat the Cylons so easily.'

Heracles nodded. 'He's right, you know. I want to make sure that we can stand up to the Consortium, but we ARE going to return to our galaxy and reclaim the lost Colonies. And with you stopping the expansion of the Consortium in this galaxy...'

Troy's expression stopped Heracles cold. He had never seen eyes so cold, so dead, so lifeless. It was like looking into the cold, lifeless depths of space. 'Your colonies aren't in this galaxy. But there are two other galaxies almost adjacent to yours that are controlled by the Consortium. And the Consortium is desperately trying to find ways to survive. They know that their options are to flee and hide from us, or to destroy us before we can destroy them. They have been trying to destroy us for more than five thousand years. They know that their current technology is inferior to ours, and that they can't hope to defeat us unless they improve their tech. They aren't very good at developing new science and technology on their own. They generally capture it from other species that they defeat. So, with both of their best options for survival driving them to expand into new territories where there is no Clan presence, they have quadrupled the rate of their expansion into other areas from the galaxies that the Clan isn't in right now. Those galaxies are sending what forces they can spare to this one, hoping to slow us down and help keep us from leaving this galaxy for as long as possible. They are desperately seeking a way to either escape from us or to destroy us before we can totally destroy them. The universe is vast. We can't possibly stop all of them if they try to hide in your galaxy, hoping that we won't be able to find them or track them down.'

Leonidas nodded. 'We understand that. But even if you're right and they do come to our galaxy, it could be centuries, possibly even millennia, before they can expand far enough into our galaxy to come into contact with us or become a threat to the Colonies. That gives us plenty of time to prepare. We can eliminate the Cylon problem, reestablish the twelve Colonies, and still have plenty of time and resources to prepare for the Consortium's arrival.'

Troy nodded. 'Things could go that well, but you do want to make sure that you know the risks of failure.'

Leonidas sighed. 'We win or we lose. If we lose, most or all of us die. Those that aren't killed become slaves. Does that about cover the risks?'

Troy sighed. 'Yes. For the lucky ones. I have something that the two of you need to see.'

Heracles grinned. 'If you had something that you wanted us to see in order to convince us that we need to stay longer and get more training, why didn't you just say so, Troy?'

Troy shook his head, looking grim. His expression caused both Heracles and Leonidas to get a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach. 'It's not something that I WANT you to see. I'd be happy if nobody EVER had to see it. Unfortunately, because of the current situation, it's something that the two of you NEED to see.'

Several hours later, when they came out of the secure meeting room, both Heracles and Leonidas were visibly upset, drawn, and pale. 'That was Kahrn, father to three of your wives, with you?'

'Yeah. He told his wives the basics about what happened, but he didn't give them any details. He didn't want them having nightmares about how close they had come to having the Graks do that to them and their daughters. Even my own wives don't know any of the details. Except for Jaehla, who was in the Three Hundred before she became a wife. She won't even talk about the things that they DO know about with the other wives. She has nightmares if she thinks about it too much, especially when she's pregnant. The wives punish anyone who mentions trophy cases around Jaehla when she's pregnant.'

Heracles looked Troy in the eye determinedly. 'Anyone who wishes to follow me is staying the full fifty years, and they are ALL completing Basic. We're slower and weaker than Alphas, but I have no intentions of EVER having to take one of my wives, my children, or ANY of my people out of a Grak trophy case.'

Leonidas nodded his head emphatically. 'We stay. And we get good enough to stop Graks. Period.'

Troy nodded. 'We'll do our best to train all of you to your full potential, and to make sure that you never have to deal with a trophy case.' He walked off with his Shadows. A workout would make them feel much better.

Heracles nodded, watching Troy walk off. As he and Leonidas went to their quarters to rest, he silently vowed to make sure that Troy never had to deal with a Grak trophy case filled with humans simply because Heracles or his people had totally fucked up. He already owed Troy more than he could ever hope to repay, and that entire debt was nothing in comparison to what he'd owe if Troy ever had to put a trophy case filled with Colonials to rest.

Leonidas saw Heracles' expression and smiled grimly. 'Yeah, I know. Death before dishonor. And there is no greater dishonor than forcing him to deal with a Grak trophy case filled with our mistakes.'

'If there is, I certainly can't think of it, either. I may not ever measure up to his standard, but I'm damned sure going to my grave doing my absolute best to meet it.'

Leonidas nodded, agreeing with the sentiment. 'Just remember that I'm here to support you, and that your wives and I will do what we can to make sure that you don't end up killing yourself trying to do what is not humanly possible.'

'Troy does it, and has for more than five millennia.'

'Troy isn't HUMAN, Herc. Whatever he is now, or whatever he even once WAS, that man is NOT human. Even his own wives admit that.'

Heracles nodded. 'I suppose so. I'm just glad that he's on OUR side, because Cylon centurions show more mercy and compassion for their enemies than he does.'

Upon their return to the rest of the fleet, the Colonials all celebrated their clear victory over the Cylons. They understood how there could be a war in which one side had to die. The fall of the Colonies and the loss of almost all of their race had convinced them of that, as had centuries of single-minded pursuit by Cylon base stars full of centurions whose purpose for existence was to totally eradicate the life form known as man. Even now, centuries after the fall of the twelve Colonies, there were few among them who hadn't lost a loved one or friend to the unrelenting Cylon attacks on the Colonial fleet. But none of them worried about this joyous occasion being marred by a Cylon attack. Even if the Cylons COULD find them and detect their ships, not even the Cylons would dare risk attacking anything as massive as the Clan fleet.

Before any of his people could even suggest that they leave the Clan and return to take the Colonies back from the Cylons, Heracles stepped onto the stage to address them. 'I know that this is the most joyous time that we've had in a long while, and that for many of us, it is the most joyous time in our entire lifetimes. Finally knowing that we've found the help that we sought for so long, and that we now have not only the determination, but also the strength to take back what was taken from us by the Cylon empire. That now we have the ability to destroy the Cylon empire and end the threat that they pose to all of humanity forever.'

Heracles waited for their wild cheering to die down before he continued. 'And I promise all of you that we WILL destroy the Cylon empire and eradicate the Cylon menace forever. BUT, that is in the future. Right now, there is a much more dangerous threat to all of us. The Consortium.'

The crowd was quiet and subdued. The Consortium was a threat that they also feared, and with good reason. 'Five years ago we faced certain extinction. From the Consortium. Only to be rescued unexpectedly by the Clan. They are the one force in the universe which can not only stand up to the Consortium, but which also instills fear and dread in them. Right now, there are no Consortium forces in our galaxy. At least, none that we KNOW of. But that is certain to change as at least SOME of the Consortium's people and forces flee from the danger that the Clans pose to their very existence. Even a small percentage of them fleeing into our galaxy could represent trillions of warriors and tens of thousands of warships.'

Now the crowd was totally subdued. 'But there is a very easy solution to that problem. We are staying here for another forty five to fifty years. Long enough for all of the adults among us to complete Basic. Long enough for our fleet and combat forces to learn how to defeat Consortium forces. Long enough for our young to swell the ranks of the adults and have grown children of their own. Then, with our larger population and better trained warriors, it will be even easier for us to destroy the Cylons. And by the time that we meet any Consortium forces, we will have had many generations to rebuild our civilization, expand our population, and make our fleets not only large and powerful enough to defend our systems, but also large and powerful enough to hunt down and destroy any Consortium forces that would threaten our very existence.'

People in the crowd were nodding their heads in agreement and becoming animated again. Heracles smiled. 'We already have the means to destroy the Cylons forever. And by the time that we finish Basic and leave the Clan so that we can return to our systems and reclaim the lost Colonies, WE will be a threat to the Consortium as well.'

The crowd erupted into wild cheering that lasted for several minutes. Heracles stepped off of the stage and rejoined Leonidas and their wives. 'I understand the military reasons for staying and completing the training, but this is much more than that to you. To both of you. What's up?'

'Heracles sighed. 'I won't go into details, Pers. Hopefully, you will never find out.'

'Give me generalities, then.'

'The Cylons kill all captured humans, though some are interrogated for information. We've been shown exactly what happens to SOME of the captured human noncombatants who are taken by the Consortium. At least, some of those who are captured by certain races.'

Persephone nodded. 'Graks. They are universally HATED among the Clan. Troy's wives DESPISE them. Graks and Chyrl-paa are the only races that Jaehla ENJOYS killing.'

'But the Consortium doesn't enslave Clan members. They're terrified of the Clan, and they kill even the seriously wounded warriors on sight.'

'He's talking about trophy cases, Mel.'

'Oh. Never mind, dear. We don't WANT to know the details.'

The five of them joined the celebration, watching their children run and play with the other kids. By the time they finally left to return to their quarters, the wild party was winding down considerably. Heracles and his wives returned to their quarters, accompanied by Leonidas and Spring. They put all of the kids into one big bed in the girls' room, and they all sat at the table to talk where they were alone and nobody could hear them.

Spring sighed with relief. 'Finally. I've been dying to ask you something. What would happen if the Consortium took over the Cylon empire and controlled the Cylons?'

'That could be very bad. They could mass produce Cylon centurions, and possibly even use better materials than the Cylons have available to construct them. The Consortium's technology isn't as good as Clan tech is, but they are still much more technologically advanced than the Cylon empire is. They could send the improved centurions out as shock troops in front of the Garns or other living troops, or even use them as mobile shields to protect their living troops. Certainly they could put them into heavy fighters in large numbers, literally using them as cannon fodder to overwhelm us with sheer numbers. And they could possibly even overwhelm the Clans. Eventually.'

Leonidas looked at Heracles intently. 'Then we'll have to make sure that they are never able to do that. We must destroy the Cylon empire and all traces of it, leaving no evidence that it ever existed. Then there won't be any more Cylons for the Consortium to find and use as models to build and program even more of them.'

'The Consortium probably wouldn't ever do that anyway.'

'Why not, Pers?'

'Tev mentioned something about one of the Consortium member races trying to do that long ago in their history, and every attempt to create an army of loyal machine soldiers failed because the machines either couldn't fight well enough, or they were too good at fighting and survival, and they eventually turned on their creators and masters. The practice was banned by the governing council of the Consortium many millennia ago.'

There was a long, awkward silence as they all looked at each other uneasily. The story was almost exactly the same as what the Colonies knew about early Cylon history. How the original robots had been lizard-like in their appearance, just as the original Cylon race that had created them had been saurian. They knew that Graks, Garns, and several other saurian races were still a part of the Consortium. None of them dared to wonder aloud if the extinct Cylon race had once been part of the Consortium. They had suddenly died out mysteriously, and even their centurion servants didn't know what had happened to their Cylon masters. Supposedly, whatever had wiped their masters out had occurred throughout their entire empire in a very short amount of time, and the entire empire was left in a shambles without enough Cylons to keep their species alive. There was no mention of exactly what had killed them, but it was clearly implied that they were killed, and that it wasn't some natural disaster or biological event that affected their race's ability to survive.

Heracles nodded and smiled, doing his best to break the strained tension of the moment. 'I'll still feel much better when I know that there aren't any Cylons left, and that we're capable of defending ourselves adequately from the Consortium.'

Leonidas nodded his head in agreement. 'Yeah. At least then we'll know that we will have a chance of survival if the Consortium gets desperate enough to ignore the mistakes that they made in their past.' He grinned. 'Though with Clan tech, I don't think that our weapons really care if what we're fighting is an armored machine or a living enemy in combat armor. Skates and other things just blow the piss out of everything that isn't in molecular armor. And while we can't create new warriors to replace our losses, we sure as hell can create enough skates to give them problems keeping up with the demand.'

Melody nodded her head grimly. 'Good idea. If ANYONE could make someone else become desperate in time of war, my money is on it being Troy. And I am much happier with the idea of letting our tech do the fighting for us than risking our lives unnecessarily against overwhelming odds.'

The others agreed wholeheartedly. They spent the rest of the evening just talking as friends and relaxing. Even the leaders needed a brief break from their endless job now and then. They still had a long way to go before they completed their training. Then they could worry about leaving the Clan to begin their journey on their own chosen path.

The next forty five years were a blur of constant training and numbing pain. Everyone finished learning all of the basics in fifteen years. Then they spent thirty more years honing those skills and adding even more specialized skills that were specific to their individual training. As always, the combat training was the most intense for the offensive ground forces, since their missions required both the most diverse and the most specialized skills and training. The Colonial forces trained in sims, trained in live fire exercises, and trained in combat under the guidance of the Clan. There were a few deaths in combat, as well as a lot of injuries of various types during the training and in combat. And there was the constant fluctuation of unit strength as females had to take periodic breaks from training in order to have children.

The Colonials still remembered their culture and their history, but their daily lives now incorporated many of the same practices and behaviors as those of the Clan. The Clan didn't subsist or survive in the depths of space. They THRIVED, and their culture, while it was heavily influenced by the warriors, still retained great emphasis on science, technology, education, and the importance of the family and the Clan. And after centuries of barely subsisting during their travels, often having to sacrifice heavily just to keep their people alive, Heracles and his followers were eager to embrace a way of life that would so dramatically increase their standard of living while simultaneously increasing their ability to survive in the face of the hostile forces that wanted them dead at all costs.

Troy looked out at the assembled crowd of a quarter of a million troops. They were standing in formation, all of them proudly wearing their combat armor with the symbol of a Colonial warrior emblazoned on their chest. He knew that every single one of them was better trained, better equipped, and better prepared for war than any Colonial warrior in their history. A hundred thousand of them were graduating from Basic, and were fully trained and capable of fighting defensively. They would serve as defense forces and perform other jobs, allowing those who had been trained as warriors to devote their full attention to doing the jobs that they had been trained for.

Fifty thousand were fully trained and qualified small craft pilots and crew. They would man the assault fighters and PT boats, as well as the strike assault shuttles. Those who were the very best at long missions had been trained specifically to crew the long range recon shuttles, which would operate as scouts to map hyper for their fleet. Their main emphasis right now was on space combat, since there was no real reason to board a Cylon base star. The object was to destroy it, not to waste time, resources, and troops' lives trying to fight the Cylons hand to hand. With their limited population, the Colonials didn't have a lot of troops yet anyway.

Fifty thousand troops had been trained to command and crew their fleet, provide shipboard security, and act as support troops for offensive operations. Another fifty thousand troops had been trained for security and support functions as well, and had then been as fully trained as offensive troops as was possible with only fifty years of Clan training. They would act as Raiders and Assault Marines for the Colonial forces, doing offensive boardings of enemy ships, planetary assaults, and conducting raids against targets of opportunity.

Heracles dismissed his troops, then returned to where Troy was standing. 'There were times that I didn't think that ANY of us would make it and pass the training.'

Leonidas laughed. 'To be perfectly honest, there were times when I thought that NONE of us would even SURVIVE the training, much less PASS it.'

Lehr chuckled. 'I told you that you were going too easy on them, Kohl-garh. Any time that you can think about doing more than just surviving what you're doing at that particular time during the training, you're not being worked hard enough.'

Heracles and Leonidas stared at Lehr. He was obviously NOT joking.

Troy shrugged, ignoring Lehr's comment. 'Your first batch of children will graduate from Basic in just seventeen more years, and they are already capable of fighting in the defense forces. Some of them have already started families of their own. Make their training so hard that they drop. Push them to the point of total exhaustion, and kill them as often as possible in training so that they learn what will get them killed, and let the training suits teach them that not getting killed feels much better. The harder, tougher, and more challenging their training, the more likely they are to survive in real combat. If you make sure that they learn to stay alive in training that is harsher than any combat that they should ever have to face, you won't lose as many children or grandchildren in combat.'

Heracles and Leonidas nodded solemnly. They had already learned that lesson repeatedly during their training, and they didn't expect to ever forget it.

Lehr chuckled. 'Yeah. The kids only hate you until they finish their Basic. After they see real combat and see how few troops die from avoidable mistakes, you suddenly become very popular again.'

Heracles laughed. 'Thanks for reminding me that all four of my firstborn daughters have already made me a grandfather, Troy. And that they all blame me for how hard they have to work in order to finish Basic, Lehr.'

Troy smiled. 'Your population is much larger than it was fifty years ago. Your initial three hundred thousand adults and children are now all adults. One hundred and sixty thousand more adults who will be out of Basic in another seventeen years, with at least thirty thousand a year entering Basic after that. And now you're averaging about seventy thousand births a year with all of the younger adults now contributing to your population growth curve.'

'Over a million adults, and another million plus who are still under twenty and eager to grow up and become warriors. Or to have families of their own and support our effort to destroy the Cylons. And the Consortium, if we ever run into any of their forces. Once the Colonies were destroyed, we never thought that we could possibly afford to EVER let our population become this large. We were never far enough ahead of the Cylons to actually settle down and try to start another colony on any of the planets that we found, and there were too many times when we could barely afford to support half a million people on the fleet because of the constraints on both resources and space.'

Troy looked at Persephone, not surprised at all by the emotion filling her voice. 'Just remember that the entire Consortium is your enemy. You've already seen how they respond to your species on sight. You have to make sure that your population is large enough that they can't simply overwhelm you with sheer numbers the very first time that they discover you. That is even more important if you decide to rebuild the Colonies and live on the rocks again. Your fleets can easily remain stealthed and undetected, but completely hiding the mass of an orbiting planet is a much different undertaking. If the Consortium knows where to find you, you have to make sure that they can't just destroy the rocks in the system if you intend to live on them. They don't have to find your planet in order to destroy it. One sunbuster wipes out the entire system, whether everything in it is stealthed or not.'

Persephone nodded and smiled. 'I might like visiting rocks to enjoy nature and experience some things that you just can't find on a ship in space, but we all were born during the flight from the Colonies and we grew up in space, as did our parents before us. None of us were even born on a rock.' She grinned. 'But we have given thought to orbital defenses that CAN be cloaked, in addition to trying to discover a way to cloak an entire planet so that the Consortium can't even find it. If we maintain enough stealth and keep them from detecting our presence, we're hoping that they won't even know that we're in the system so that they won't have a reason to destroy it.'

'Just remember that while you still lack the resources and capabilities to develop and build sunbusters of your own, the Consortium has no such handicap. And they will very eagerly sacrifice an entire solar system if they think that doing so will cripple your population or cut you off from necessary resources and production capabilities.'

Heracles nodded, smiling grimly. 'Yeah. That thought is always firmly implanted in the back of my mind. Right beside the fact that we'll be able to mount an attack with our full offensive forces AND the support troops when we engage the enemy. We may even be able to add additional ships to our fleet by the time that we finally reach Cylon and the systems that formed the twelve Colonies.'

'The Cylons won't even know what hit them. But make sure that you destroy them, and don't give them a chance to learn from their mistakes and develop any new technology or tactics that would allow them to resist you more effectively. They aren't as naturally limited in their ability to learn and adapt as Graks are.'

Heracles nodded. Cylons could adapt very quickly if it became necessary for their survival. Even individual centurions could learn, and that knowledge could be passed on to others during routine maintenance or rest periods if they survived long enough to pass it on.

'I'm sorry that we can't give you better combat armor. The modified lightweight level four armor with power assists is the best that we can make for you right now. Even with the best power systems that we have, you need massive power assists that use energy much too rapidly for your troops to wear anything heavier. The molecular armor simply weighs too much for you to move in it without better power assists. At least, well enough to use it in combat.'

Persephone nodded at Troy. 'And my own research shows that the catalyst that you use to produce larger quantities of molecular armor doesn't even exist in trace amounts in our galaxy, much less in usable quantities. We won't ever be producing our own molecular armor, but we are going to do our best to outfit all of our offensive troops with chameleon armor, since the weight difference and power consumption is comparable to what we already have.' She grinned. 'That should reduce our own combat losses and screw with our enemies' minds all at the same time. Whether that enemy is either the Cylons or the bloody Consortium.'

Troy grinned as his Shadows laughed. 'Yeah, it usually works out that way. Now that you've all finally completed Basic, and some of you have even fought in space combat, shipboard assaults, fleet combat, and planetary assaults with us, you should have all of the skills and experience that you will need in order to defeat the Cylons. And to eventually stand against ANY Consortium fleet that you meet, once your numbers increase.'

Heracles and Leonidas both nodded. 'Our reflexes and strength aren't as good as an Alpha's are, and we can't just try to muscle our way through anything stronger than the bloody Kryl'ghai. But you taught us how to fight smart, and if we can survive Basic against Alphas, we'll manage the ground combat, even against Graks and Garns. And as far as the enemy facing us in space is concerned, there we ARE almost as good as any Alphas should be. And better than any Cylon or Grak has EVER been.'

Leonidas nodded. 'Even the women are stronger and faster than any Cylon centurion now. And even if we don't have kwyll with us to make our blades, we could still make ships, armor, and blades that would allow us to totally obliterate the Cylons. They aren't ready for ANY of our new weapons or tactics, and I'm really looking forward to watching their responses as they finally start to realize that we now have the ability to destroy them all, and that we fully intend to do just that.'

Heracles agreed. 'I'm going to disassemble their Imperious Leader slowly as I explain to him that instead of a bunch of machines with defective programming annihilating the life form known as man, they are all going to be scrapped and used by man for his convenience. Their logic circuits and processors will be completely destroyed by antimatter, their bodies and mechanical parts will be recycled into useful items, or used as reaction mass to create energy from antimatter, and all traces of their existence will be erased. There will be nothing left to prove that the Cylons ever existed in the universe.'

Lehr grinned. 'Controlled hatred. That will definitely keep their casualties down whenever they go into combat against their enemy.'

Troy bowed to their wives. 'Sorry for keeping them so long, ladies. Enjoy your celebration, and we'll talk more before you finally leave us to begin the journey down your own path.'

Heracles looked at his fleet, admiring the ships in formation. He was in command of a fleet that was orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than the combined fleets of the twelve lost Colonies. Just his offensive forces, a single strike carrier and three heavy battlecarriers, were capable of destroying the entire massed armada of the Cylon empire. The twelve battlestars of the Colonial fleet could have launched twenty four hundred vipers at the time of their betrayal and defeat. Once their population grew to the point that he had the forces to man his ships to capacity and launch a full assault, the four ships in his strike wing could launch a total of ten thousand assault fighters, ten thousand PT boats, and ten thousand strike assault shuttles. All from the strike carrier Galactica and the three heavy battlecarriers Pegasus, Atlantia, and Sagittara.

Then there was his immense Home Fleet. The Home Ship Caprica, based on a battleship, and the smaller heavy battlecarrier based Home Ships Virgon, Gemnon, and Pisces. And all eight of their escorts were based on heavy battlecarriers as well. Ships that dwarfed a Colonial battlestar and a Cylon base star in size and power. The shipyard Colossus, the manufacturing ship Titan, the agro ships Kobol and Earth, and the training ship Taurus. All protected by the heavy battlecarriers Scorpion, Leonid, and Aries.

Heracles sighed, then looked at the screen that showed Troy. 'We're ready to leave. Any last words of advice?'

Troy laughed. 'Just remember to use the specially configured long range recon shuttles as your scouts, and to keep mapping your route to connecting areas in hyper. The better and more complete your hyper map is, the higher your odds of being able to use hyper for your own benefit once you get rid of the Cylons. And the more likely you are to be able to run them down and keep them from escaping and warning others when you destroy their outposts, pickets, and patrols.'

'Yeah. Roger that. And the less time it will take us to rescue those humans that we can and head back for this region of space if the Consortium does expand our way and manages to almost overwhelm us by sheer numbers.'

'Good luck, and good hunting.'

'Thanks. Same to you, Troy. And thanks again for everything.'

Troy watched as the tiny fleet hit the hyper point and disappeared. The population that the Colonials had was spread a bit thin on a fleet that size right now, but their numbers were growing quickly, and they weren't going to be fighting against the Consortium or anyone else for a while unless the conditions totally favored their forces. He knew how they felt, at least to some extent. His own people had been in much the same position just a few short millennia ago. The Colonials would survive, at least against the Cylons.

Heracles smiled as Leonidas approached. 'Three hyper points until we reach the area where Troy rescued us from the Consortium. Then we'll have to start making our way back along our path. Even with our new ships and engines, the trip back will probably take much longer than our original journey. Too much time wasted on the exploration and mapping of the hyper points in the systems if you ask me, sir.'

'Yes, Leo. But we must have patience. Our numbers grow with each passing yarhn, and so will our strength. The important thing is to find the surviving humans on the various planets that we discover along our way, and to give them nanobots and improved technology. The Cylons aren't going anywhere. At least, not before we kill them and send them all straight to hell.'

CLAN PHOENIX

Strike Wing

12 Strike Carriers 54000 Strike Assault Shuttles

(Converted Battleship) 54000 Heavy Large Fighters

(30 km long, 10 km diam) 48000 Transports

54000 Heavy Strike Assault Shuttles

54000 Assault Fighters

96 Heavy Assault Carriers 100800 Strike Assault Shuttles

(Converted Battlecruiser) 19200 Heavy Large Fighters

(6 km long, 2 km diam) 100800 Heavy Strike Assault Shuttles

19200 Assault Fighters

96000 Transports

192 Strike Cruisers 3840 Heavy Large Fighters

Fire Wing

3 Battleships (30 km long, 10 km diam) 6000 Heavy Large Fighters

18 Battlecruisers (6 km long, 2 km diam) 9000 Heavy Large Fighters

18 Heavy Fire Cruisers 360 Heavy Large Fighters

Scout Wing

96 Assault Carriers 19200 Strike Assault Shuttles

(modified Battlecruiser) 19200 Heavy Large Fighters

(4 km long, 1.5 km diam) 19200 Transports

19200 Heavy Strike Assault Shuttles

19200 Assault Fighters

384 Heavy Fire Cruisers 7680 Heavy Large Fighters

1920 Large Scouts 23040 Heavy Small Fighters

Troy's Scout Talon

32 Assault Carriers 6400 Strike Assault Shuttles

(modified Battlecruiser) 6400 Heavy Large Fighters

(4 km long, 1.5 km diam) 6400 Transports

6400 Heavy Strike Assault Shuttles

6400 Assault Fighters

128 Heavy Fire Cruisers 2560 Heavy Large Fighters

640 Large Scouts 7680 Heavy Small Fighters

Five Fleets (Pehnt Drohvi) [Phoenix in the Fire]

Offensive Forces

5 reinforced wings Lost in Combat

100 Heavy Cruisers 31

400 Light Cruisers 197

200 Large Scouts 93

400 Small Scouts 238

150 Carriers 63

10000 large fighters 4271

4000 small fighters 1749

Defensive Forces Lost in Combat

3 reinforced wings

60 heavy cruisers 35

3000 large fighters 1483

Troy's Scout Talon (Assault Forces) Pehnt Drohvi (Total Forces)

32 Assault Carriers 160 Heavy Cruisers

(modified Battlecruiser) 400 Light Cruisers

(4 km long, 1.5 km diam) 200 Large Scouts

128 Heavy Fire Cruisers 400 Small Scouts

640 Large Scouts 150 Carriers (Fighter Platforms)

6400 Strike Assault Shuttles 13000 Large Fighters

6400 Heavy Strike Assault Shuttles 4000 Small Fighters

8960 Heavy Large Fighters

6400 Assault Fighters

7680 Heavy Small Fighters

6400 Transports

Galactica Stats

approximately size of battlecruiser

5 km long, 2 km wide, 1.5 km high

Flights Pods

3 km long, 1 km wide, .7 km high

carries twenty squadrons of vipers (400 vipers)

24 main railguns (Level 4 shield penetration)

500 point defense laser turrets

24 ship killer missile tubes

500 point defense missile clusters

electronic and physical shielding against energy weapons

physical shielding against kinetic and physical weapons

some electronic shielding (force shields) against kinetic and physical weapons

Colonial Viper Stats

approximately size of heavy small fighter (single or double seat fighter)

two pulse laser generators

twelve bomb external rack capacity for bombing missions

electronic and physical shielding against energy weapons

physical shielding against kinetic and physical weapons

some electronic shielding (force shields) against kinetic and physical weapons

Consortium Fleets

Fleet 1 Charkal (warfleet) Boarded by strike talon 2

9 battleships

86 battlecruisers

200 heavy cruisers

73 smaller ships

Fleet 2 Grak (warfleet) Boarded by strike talon 1

12 battleships

127 battlecruisers

473 heavy cruisers

210 smaller ships

Fleet 3 Charkal (warfleet) Boarded by strike talon 3

8 battleships

72 battlecruisers

216 heavy cruisers

72 smaller ships

Fleet 4 Grak (warfleet) Attacked by Troy first

15 battleships

72 battlecruisers

250 heavy cruisers

79 smaller ships

Fleet 5 Krel (local fleet) Boarded by scout talon 3

7 battleships

23 battlecruisers

57 heavy cruisers

Fleet 6 Suhlchee (local fleet) Boarded by scout talon 2

10 battleships

45 battlecruisers

94 heavy cruisers

38 smaller ships

Fleet 7 Charkal (stealth warfleet) Boarded by Troy's scout talon

6 battleships

54 battlecruisers

54 heavy cruisers

Fleet 8 Yllrka (local fleet) Escaped detection and fled the area

7 battleships

41 battlecruisers

35 heavy cruisers

57 light cruisers / smaller ships

micron second

centon minute

centar hour

100 microns in a centon 60 seconds in a minute

100 centons in a centar 60 minutes in an hour

12 centars in a cycle 25 hours in a day

120000 microns in a cycle 90000 seconds in a Clan day

1 cycle = 1.333 Clan days (1 day, 8.33 hrs)

= 1.389 Earth days (1 day, 9.34 hrs)

360 cycles in a yarhn 420 days in a Clan year

43200000 microns in a yarhn 37800000 seconds in a Clan year

(1.142857 Clan years per yarhn)

86400 seconds in a day

365.25 days in a year

31557600 seconds in a year (1.3689 years per yarhn)

(1.1978 years per Clan year)