Disclaimer: The author does not own Battlestar Galactica. All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All of the original characters and such are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise, and does not profit from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Battlestar Night Flight—
Commander Zabat listened solemnly as the reports came in. The Night Flight had taken a lot of damage and would need time before she was back in working order. They'd lost a lot of good people too and were still loosing some. Med bay continued to report losses as people succumbed to their injuries. Gods, even their own chief medic had died in the initial attack. What was left of the med staff were doing everything they could to save the people they still had.
"Weapons are still offline," Colonel Praxis reported with a heavy sigh. "Make that our top priority," she ordered Komma. "We need to be able to defend ourselves." Now more than ever, the Night Flight needed its state of the art weaponry in working condition. They could not afford to be taken by surprise again and powerless to defend themselves should (and Praxis felt that they certainly would) they run into the Cylons again.
"Communications?" Zabat requested.
"Still down," Brison answered.
"So, no guns and no coms," Praxis noted.
"We need information," Zabat decided. "We're sitting ducks right now. We need to know what's going on. Send two raptors. Tell them to stay hidden. If they're spotted they're to return immediately. Let's not loose anyone else."
"Yes, sir."
"Next," Zabat moved on. "Where are we?" he wondered.
Bojay had assembled four raptor teams. Two that we're going to jump back to the Colonies for recon and two that we're headed down to the planet the Night Flight had jumped to. The coordinates the navigations officer had punched in turned out to be the coordinates to an abandoned planet.
"Welcome, kids, to Carillon," Sheba said as she piloted the raptor through the planet's upper atmosphere.
"Carillon?" the ECO asked, a young man called Digger. The pilot he usually flew with had died in the attack.
"Once owned by Carillon Industries," Bojay explained over the com from the other raptor as he flew. "They bought this planet and set up some hotels. It was a popular tourist destination. They also had a contract with the Fleet. Battlestars would stop here to refuel and the crew could go on leave."
"What a perfect place to wind up," Sheba mumbled. Their luck could not have been better. Thanks to a quick thinking officer who had jumped the Night Flight to the planet they'd be able to collect some fuel, maybe strip the place for spare parts, find food—the perfect place to wind up, as Sheba had said.
"Carillon Industries had a brief partnership with Graystone Industries—"
Bojay was cut off. "Graystone Industries? As in Daniel Graystone? The guy who created Cylons?"
"Yes, as in Daniel Graystone, the guy who created Cylons. Anyway, the partnership fell apart after Mrs. Graystone publically announced that their daughter was responsible for the Lev Bombing. Too much bad press. Around twenty years ago though they went out of business and closed this place down. No one has been here for a long time."
The raptors landed smoothly on the pad, located on the roof of one of the hotels. Sheba pulled out a torch. It was night on that side of the planet. The others pulled out their own lights, shining them in different directions as everyone searched for the door into the building.
"Over here!"
The group found and pried open the rooftop door. It was incredibly rusty but still functional. It protested loudly, the metal screeching as the pulled it open. Sheba flashed her light into the entryway, revealing a narrow hallway with a set of stairs that led downward. At the end of the hall was another door. The other door was in much better condition. It didn't take nearly as much effort to get it open.
The hotel had, clearly, once been quite lavish. Expensive looking chandeliers hung from the ceiling, but were now covered in dust and a few cobwebs. The wallpaper was falling off in some areas and the place smelled like a few animals had crawled inside and died over the years. A few windows were broken.
The team made their way through the uppermost floors quickly, stopping only to preform quick preliminary checks of the rooms. Some doors had to be broken open and others had already been left that way. Some couldn't be opened at all. Later, when the team declared the area safe, more teams would come in and they would go through the rooms more throughly.
They found them on the fifth floor.
"Freeze!" Bojay shouted, spotting a figure in the shadows. "Don't move." The team trained their guns and their lights on the figure. The light revealed the figure to be a woman with her hands held in the air.
"I'm unarmed," she said. "Please, don't shoot."
"Search her," Bojay ordered one of the soldiers. As the man patted down the woman, Bojay asked, "How many more are there?"
"Three," she admitted without hesitation. "Three that I know of anyway. It's me, my husband, and this girl named Amanda."
"Where are they?"
"Here," a new voice called out. A man stepped out of the shadows followed a second later by a teenage girl. They both held up their hands in a show of surrender.
"Stay right there," Bojay ordered as some of the soldiers switched their aim from the first woman to the newcomers. "Carrick, Holtz, search them," he ordered. "How did you get here?" he asked.
"My husband and I are engineers. We were testing out a new engine we had built when the damn thing blew out. We had no choice but to land here," the woman explained.
"And the girl?" Sheba asked.
The woman shrugged. "I don't know. We've only been here three days. We just met her."
"I got left behind," the girl, the one the woman had said was named Amanda, answered for herself.
Sheba frowned. "Left behind when they abandoned the planet? That was twenty years ago!" The girl looked about four or five years short of twenty. "Where are your parents?"
"They died," Amanda stated bluntly. "Why are you here?" she asked. "Colonials haven't come here since the place closed down. Why are you here now? What's happened?" The girl was smart, Sheba would give her that.
When the Marines declared the three clear of any weapons, the team lowered the weapons but did not put them away. "There's been an attack," Bojay revealed.
"Cylons?" Amanda guessed.
"Yes," Bojay confirmed.
The woman and her husband gasped, reaching for each other. "My gods," the woman said. "What do you know?"
"We know the we're going to need supplies. What's in this hotel?" Bojay asked the three.
"Not any military equipment," the man said. "Just normal hotel stuff. Blankets, silverware. What are you looking for?"
"Anything useful."
"There is a military locker back up on the twelfth floor," Amanda admitted. "The hotel required all visiting Colonial soldiers to leave their weapons locked away while on the planet. There might be stuff there."
Bojay nodded. "Alright. Cain, Carrick, and Messon, I want you three to follow her to the twelfth floor and see what you can find. You two," he said, pointing to the couple.
"Clara and Domenic Dewitt," the man supplied.
"Alright, Dewitts, you'll stay with me." He looked up at the unlit chandelier above his head.
Sheba, Messon, and Carrick followed Amanda to the stairs. "The door needs power to open, it's computerized," she said as she lead them back up the stairs while Bojay, the Dewitts, and the rest of the two Raptor teams made their way down to the basement to restore power.
"You and your parents never tried to turn the power back on?" Sheba asked as they moved up the stairs.
"We didn't stay here," she replied. "My father owned a little house not too far away from here. I only came here with the Dewitts. We heard you land." She then asked, hesitantly, "How bad was the Cylon attack?"
"We don't know yet," Sheba sighed.
Colonial One—
Serina woke up abruptly, not sure when exactly she'd gone to sleep. It took her a second to realize that she hadn't gone to sleep at all. She was on the floor and someone was crouched above her, shaking her back to consciousness. She must've passed out. She groaned as the person above her helped her sit up. "What happened?"
Her eyes focused, revealing that the person was Captain Adama. "Cylons," he explained. "We're safe for now. I managed to throw them off of us."
"How?"
"It's a long story."
Captain Adama helped her onto her feet. "What now?"
"Evacuate everyone we can and get the hell out of here."
Carillon—
Sheba, Messon, Carrick, and Amanda reached the twelfth floor and waited outside the door to the military locker, waiting for power to be restored so they could open it. It took five minutes of standing in silence before the lights came on.
"There we go." Sheba turned to the door and looked at the lock. "It looks like we need a key."
"How are we going to find a key in this place?"
Amanda stepped forward. "Here," she said. She punched a few buttons on the keypad and waited. It beeped and turned red. She tried again with the same results.
"What are you doing?" Sheba asked.
"Figuring out the code," Amanda answered. She repeated this process a few times. Sheba and the other two Night Flight officers watched. The process continued for about a minute. Amanda punched in a few numbers, the lock beeped, then turned green and the door opened slightly. She grabbed the handle and pulled it open some more. "There you go."
"How did you do that?" Sheba asked, impressed.
"It's just math," she said simply.
Sheba stared at the girl for a moment. She wasn't a genius when it came to math, but she knew that there must've been thousands of combinations. How the girl managed to figure it out in maybe twenty tries was a mystery. She brushed off her concerns for the moment and entered the locker.
The three officers searched the small space while Amanda stood at the door. The only found a two sidearms and one mag. After radioing Bojay with their results, the four then headed back down towards the fifth floor where Bojay had ordered them to stay until he, the Dewitts, and the rest got there.
It didn't take long.
The first thing Sheba noticed was the look on Bojay's face.
"What's happened?" she asked, her mind already drafting terrible scenarios. She had wanted to go on the recon mission, but Bojay hadn't let her. Sheba could understand why though. She tended to act before thinking, which could land them in serious trouble.
Looking at his face, seeing the drawn expression and the sad eyes, she wondered just how thankful she should be that he had denied her request.
"They're gone," Bojay announced to the small crowd. "The Twelve Colonies... are gone. The Cylons have nuked them."
Everyone gasped in shock. "What do you mean gone?" Clara Dewitt asked, horrified. "They can't be gone!"
More calm than his wife, Domenic asked, "Are there any survivors?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Not a lot," Bojay guessed. Sheba agreed. Anyone still alive probably had serious injuries and would be dead soon. Sheba was not overly religious, but she said a quick prayer anyway. He turned to his pilots then. "One of the Raptors was destroyed by enemy forces."
"Who?"
Bojay was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, Sheba," he said, breaking from his usual stern, professional attitude. "Jolly's dead."
Sheba felt cold.
She and Jolly might not have known each other long, but they'd become fast friends. The man had earned his callsign by being a jovial presence that you really couldn't ignore. He was warm and welcoming and it broke Sheba's heart to know that he was gone. She supposed that, at the very least, he was probably with his family now, safe from whatever trials and tribulations the rest of the survivors of the Cylon attack would have to go through.
"Damn it," Messon swore.
Sheba took a deep breath. "Okay," she sighed. "Okay. What now, Captain?"
"Commander Zabat has ordered us to return to the ship," Bojay stated. "All of us," he added, glancing at the three strangers they had picked up.
"What about our stuff?" Amanda asked.
"We can come back for it. For now, we have orders."
Colonial One—
Serina watched as the Raptor was unloaded. Their small fleet of survivors had grown a little with the appearance of the military shuttle. She watched as woman asked about Geminon, desperate to find out if her husband was alive. Serina's ex-husband was in the Colonial Fleet, assuming he was still alive somewhere. She wasn't really worried about him. She had some leftover feelings, probably because of their son together, but she was over the man. She'd been young and stupid.
"Captain," the female Raptor pilot said, attracting both Captain Adama's attention and Serina's. The rest of her words became background noise to Serina because that's when she saw him.
A boy, standing next to the female pilot. He had dark hair and was wearing a green shirt. Serina knew that face. She'd forced him into the shirt that morning, kissed his forehead, and promised to be back from work before dinner. She'd left him with her sister and their dog with a wave and a smile.
"Boxey?" she called out, hesitantly. What if it wasn't him? How heartbroken would she be then? She'd tried not to think about the fact that she might never see her son again. She'd tried to bury it by helping onboard Colonial One, doing whatever was necessary. She'd avoided thinking about it, but it had kept creeping back. She stood as the boy turned to look at her. "Oh my gods."
"Mom?" he grinned, hope and joy lighting his eyes.
She ran to him then, dropping to her knees in front of him and pulling him to her chest. "Boxey!" She pulled back and planted kisses across his cheeks and forehead, unaware of the two pilots watching the reunion. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" she asked. She didn't wait for an answer before pulling him back to her, hugging him tight once more. "Oh my gods. I never thought I'd see you again."
"I'm okay," he assured her, hugging her back just as tightly. "I'm fine, mom, really." He pulled back this time and Serina stood, keeping one arm firmly around her child. "This is Boomer," he said, gesturing towards the woman on his left, "She saved me."
"Thank you," Serina said without hesitation. "Thank you so much."
Boomer smiled at Serina. "You're welcome. He's a good kid."
Serina smiled again before leading her son off, back towards the passenger area.
"You were saying, lieutenant?" she heard the voice of Captain Adama ask.
"I've got two communication pods left, sir…" her response faded as Serina and her son moved away.
Battlestar Night Flight—
"Some of you may have already heard the news," Commander Zabat said solemnly, his voice filling the corridors of the Battlestar as he spoke over the PA system. "And some of you may have already decided to give up. Yes, our homes are gone… destroyed by enemy forces. There is no going home now. But there is also no giving up. We have been defeated on one front, but not on all. The may take our homes, but they cannot take this. Look around you. See the faces of the men and women you serve with. See your family. This is what they cannot take away from us. As long as we stick together, we'll make it through this. Together. So say we all."
"So say we all," the crew echoed back from their various locations around the ship.
Ending the transmission, Zabat turned to look at the CIC officers. "How soon can we get out of here?"
"Our FTL is fine," reported Komma, "But our weapons systems are still down. Repair crews have only just managed to get our computer systems back up."
"They need to unlink them," Lieutenant Munroe, one of the pilots from the recon mission declared as she entered the CIC. "Separate them and give them each independent firewalls." She approached the commander. "Sir, the Cylons found a way into our systems. That's how they took out half the Fleet before anyone could so much as blink. That's what happened to the other Raptor. It was like they flipped a switch."
Brison nodded slowly, remembering the transmissions the Night Flight had received from other ships before leaving the shipyard. "Sir, the com traffic was frantic, but what she says matches what people were saying. Their systems weren't working and their Vipers just shut down."
Colonel Praxis fumed. "A mole. Someone gave them access."
"Not necessarily," Munroe countered. "There's more."
"More?"
She took a deep breath. "The Cylons, sir… they look like us now."
Gasps filled the CIC.
"What the frak do you mean like us?" Praxis asked with a deep frown. This was not good news. Not by a long shot. If the Cylons looked human... she shuddered just thinking about what that could mean for them. "They've got skin—bodies that look human?"
"Exactly," Munroe confirmed.
"That means anybody could be a Cylon," Praxis pointed out, though from the look on everyone's face she hardly needed to. "There could be Cylons on this ship!"
Commander Zabat shook his head, despite being just as disturbed by the news as his XO. "Let's not start down that path just now," he said. They couldn't afford to start unraveling, to start panicking. "Before we start pointing guns at each other, let's make sure we're secure." He turned to Praxis. "Let's get some teams down on the planet. We'll strip it of anything and everything that could have any possible use. Then let's get the hell out of here before the Cylons find us."
Carillon—
Sheba returned to the hotel, now bathed in daylight, with a new team. Four raptors had descended to the planet this time. The Dewitts and Amanda had returned with the teams in order to collect any thing they had brought with them. They had until night fell to collect what they could and return back to the ship. Any longer and they risked being found by the Cylons.
Carillon wasn't exactly off the maps. The planet was, no doubt, known to the Cylons, but since it was known to be abandoned no enemy forces had appeared there yet. However, the Night Flight could not risk being discovered by the Cylons, especially with repair crews now having to disable all the computer networks and get the weapons back online.
"Alright, Holtz, Messon, you two go with the Dewitts, help them gather their things and see what else you can find—"
"Captain," Amanda interrupted. "My house is just over there." She pointed off the roof of the building and into the trees just to the left of where they were standing on the pad.
Bojay nodded and continued, "Fine. Munroe, Carrick, go with her. Fafford, Cain, Bowdoin, and I will search the hotel. Raptor's Three and Four will search the surrounding buildings. Keep your coms channel open. Radio if you run into any trouble. Understood?" The group nodded. "Let's move out."
The group broke into their assigned factions and began to make their way towards their objectives. The Dewitts headed towards wherever it was they had stowed their things, followed by Holtz and Messon, and Amanda led the group assigned to her into the hotel, down to the ground floor, then out into the woods towards where her family's home was.
Sheba, Fafford, Bowdoin, and Bojay started searching the rooms on the uppermost floor.
Most rooms only had sheets and a few articles of clothing let inside. The bathrooms had spare toiletries, which they collected and stowed in the duffle bags they had been given to carry their findings back. They took whatever towels, sheets, pillows, and blankets they could find that had been left behind.
The four made it quickly through the first floors without finding much more than that worth taking.
The staff quarters were just as bare.
Sheba pulled open a drawer and was greeted with the sight of stacks of paper. Curious, she picked up one and flipped through the pages. There were dates and names on each page. It took only a second to figure out that it was a log, dating back only a few months before the hotel had closed down.
She searched for the name Amanda Daniels and didn't find it. She did, however, find one Amanda and one Daniel that had checked in together with one other unnamed guest.
Amanda and Daniel Graystone.
