TRANSPORT SHIP HELLENIC TRAVELLER
Adrift in space, the wreck of the Hellenic Traveller littered the region with debris that had been ripped from the ship when it was destroyed. It was about half the length of the Hermes and the main section was originally flanked by six rather large circular cargo pods. Three had been destroyed and had heavy scorching along the exterior of the hull.
Suddenly there was a brilliant flash as the Raptor completed its FTL jump and began to glide towards it. Under peacetime circumstances the Raptor would have jumped in a lot further from the wreck than this but this was wartime and the close proximity jump was necessary to fool any DRADIS scanners in the area into thinking that the Raptor was just another piece of debris.
"Jump completed" reported 'Stinger' as he powered down the FTL drive.
"Beginning low frequency DRADIS scans" said Burmeister. "We seem to have jumped in without attracting attention so lets not go shouting that we are here shall we? So far so good. Just scattered debris and the main hulk. Hopefully if anyone's out there then that's all they'll be seeing. Alright! Everybody suit up!"
The two civilians in the rear picked up their helmets and placed them over their heads. The two of them looked equally apprehensive as they struggled with screwing their helmets onto their suits. The civilian sitting behind 'Stinger' was a young man in his early twenties named Lavour. His face shone with nervous perspiration as he seemed to fight to get his helmet on properly. The second civilian, a woman about the same age as Lavour, put on her helmet as if it were second nature and then began to help Lavour with his. With Lavour's helmet on tight he vaguely smiled a nervous thanks to her.
"You look like you've done that before?" said Burmeister to her over the short range personal wireless that allowed them to talk when suited up. "What was your name again?"
"Melissa" she replied before remembering that in the military you rarely addressed anyone by their given name. "Saunders. Melissa Saunders. And yea I have. I used to go space walking from the Aran Space Station above Caprica every summer."
"I see" said Burmeister feigning interest. Burmeister's question was the first time that Melissa had looked out at the wreck floating nearby.
"Oh my Gods!" she gasped gazing out at the carnage. "Is that it?"
"Yep. That's it" said Burmeister as if Melissa were asking is that your pen? "One of our Raptors stumbled across it on a scouting mission about seven hours ago. Much of the superstructure is still intact so we maybe able to salvage some food or possibly even some parts if they're compatible with our own systems."
"What happened to it?" asked Lavour naively.
"Somebody fell asleep with a cigarette in their hand!" snapped Burmeister cynically. "Cylons blew it the frak up!"
"They're not still around are they?" asked Lavour his voice almost bordering on total panic. "The Cylons I mean?"
"Why?" Burmeister asked annoyed. "Forgot to brush your teeth?"
Lavour ignored her remarks, his eyes transfixed on the ship ahead. Melissa felt uneasy but it was not the thought of Cylons that worried her. Burmeister's attitude gave the whole Raptor a distinctly cold feeling which served to magnify her general feeling of misgivings about the military. Everyone had heard about what had happened on the Scylla the day the Battlestar Pegasus appeared and ransacked the ships of anything useful, effectively leaving them to die. If the Hermes hadn't appeared when it did then there was no telling what would have happened. But even then the people aboard those surviving ships were fearful of what life would be like aboard the Battlestar now that their homeworlds were destroyed.
"We're coming up on the hangar bay" said 'Stinger' who activated the Raptor's powerful searchlight. The beam of light slid across the hulk until they rested on the hangar bay doors. Unfortunately they were a tangled mess of debris and thus offered no hope of gaining entry to the derelict vessel.
"Frak!" said Burmeister. "Looks like we're going to have to find our own way in. There's no way we're getting a Raptor through there!"
The Raptor slipped over the hull of the ship with its searchlight scanning for a place they could enter. Suddenly the light glanced over a large gaping hole in one of the surviving cargo holds.
"There!" said Burmeister. "Looks like an internal secondary explosion must have ripped that hole. The metal is warped outwards."
"Hmm! I think I can put us through there but its going to be tight! Sure you don't just want to haul it out?" asked 'Stinger'.
"Well if we put the Raptor inside then it decreases our chances of detection while we load up" explained Burmeister.
"Ok" said 'Stinger'. "Here we go."
The Raptor moved forward under the power of its thrusters, slowly approaching the hole. The cockpit began to ring with a proximity alarm that Burmeister quickly silenced. The searchlight continued to sway back and forth to help 'Stinger' judge the distance on either side of the Raptor as it entered the carcass. The interior was darkened black from the devastation that had taken place. Fortunately the explosion had ripped a hole through a wall into an adjacent corridor thus allowing the Raptor crew to gain access to the rest of the ship without having to cut their way through thus saving precious time.
"Perfect!" said Burmeister as the Raptor came to rest on a relatively clear bit of the deck. 'Stinger' engaged the magnetic landing skids and like a parasite the Raptor clung to the deck. 'Stinger' powered down the engines and the Raptor came to rest.
"Okay" said Burmeister turning to the rest of her team. "Listen up. We are going to make our way to the cargo hold and assess what they were carrying. Now we can only take crates that we can man handle and fit in here okay? Anything bigger and we report it to Hermes for a future mission. Now the crates will have a tag on the side specifying what's inside. If it's organic, which is what we're looking for then, it will have a green tag on the side. These are the ones that will most likely contain food stuffs. They have priority on this run. Now we are due back to Hermes in three hours. Let me make one thing clear. We have to be back by then or Hermes will make the assumption we're dead and they WILL move on! There will be no rescue. No point wasting the lives. Now we stay together and no one goes wandering off without an I-SAY-SO. Any questions?" The three others stayed silent. "Alright then. 'Stinger!' Begin decompression!"
'Stinger' began to release the oxygen from the cabin now that they were all inside their suits. Within a few moments the Raptor was drained of oxygen and the door opened into the gutted spacecraft. Burmeister took the lead and stood in the door to the Raptor staring out into the Hellenic Traveller cargo hold, her hand held torch shining a brilliant beam of light out into the darkness. It cast a light out toward the corridor and she turned to the others and said "Ok let's go! Stay close and keep your eye on each other!"
The three of them made their way out of the hatch and kicked their way toward the corridor while 'Stinger' stayed with the Raptor. Both Burmeister and Melissa managed their way through the gravity-less wreck quite comfortably but Lavour struggled. His arms and legs waved around in a similar fashion to a man drowning in the sea. After several hundred yards, with Burmeister leading, Lavour was getting worse and after floating into Melissa for the third time she turned and grabbed hold of him. His face was in a state of panic and his breathing rapid.
"Okay" she said. "Look at me! You're overcompensating. Just relax. Try not to move about so much!"
"O-Okay!" he replied almost out of breath. Burmeister just watched as Melissa wrestled with controlling Levour. Once they were ready they continued toward one of the surviving cargo modules and soon found themselves inside No.3. With the artificial gravity gone the crates floated around the immense cargo module.
"Okay" said Burmeister. "Remember we are looking for green labels."
The three of them began their search, each of them knowing how important this mission was. It was painstaking work and after 25 minutes they had produced no results. Every other coloured label could be found except green. Suddenly, however, Levour began to call out at the top of his voice even though the wireless in each suit had meant that no matter how far away they were they could hear each other.
"Gods!" screamed Burmeister. "We can hear you!"
"Sorry" said Levour "but I found one!"
Melissa and Burmeister both moved toward Levour's position. Sure enough he had found a cargo container with a green label. It was quite a large box that was two metres long and a metre wide and high. Burmeister examined it thoroughly. It was intact.
"Alright…Alright" said Burmeister. "This looks good. It's still sealed up so whatever is inside should still be good. Ok let's get it back to the Raptor."
The three of them floated the container back toward the Raptor. Several times it got away from them and hit the sides of the charred corridors. After several minutes the three of them and the container finally made it back to the Raptor. Despite its size they managed to squeeze it inside their small vessel but it had cost them. The effort had used up quite a hefty portion of their oxygen supply. After checking Levours and Melissa's oxygen supply and then comparing them to her own Burmeister turned to face her team.
"Okay" she said. "We got a problem. I don't think our oxygen supply will last us another trip so we're going to take what we got and be on our way." She closed the hatch to the Raptor and made her way back to the cockpit. "'Stinger!' Begin recompression and take us…Home." She had called Hermes 'Home' several times before but this was the first time she really meant it and it caught her completely off guard. She felt her chin ripple a little as her mind momentarily fathomed her predicament before she quickly put it to the back of her thoughts. "Let's get the frak off this ghost ship!"
"Yes ma'am!" said 'Stinger' as he reignited the engines. "The Raptor began to come alive again and pulled away from the hulk. After the environmental controls read that it was safe to do so they took off their helmets.
"Ah that's better" said Levours in a tone of genuine gratitude. He looked down at the container they had salvaged. "What do you think is in there?" he said to Melissa sitting opposite him.
"I don't know" she replied truthfully.
The Raptor began to move out of the hulk and back into the debris field.
"I don't know about you guys" said 'Stinger' joyfully as he worked the controls "But I could really go for some steak right about now. Maybe a bit of garnish? Some potatoes. Perhaps even a dollup of gr-. Frak!"
As the Raptor left the ship a Cylon Raider darted past the cockpit just a few yards away!
"Oh my Gods!" screamed Levours. "Those are fraking Cylons! We're dead!"
"Shut up!" screamed Burmeister. "'Stinger' spool up the FTL!"
"What do you think I'm trying to do?" screamed 'Stinger' working the controls.
"Oh Gods!" gasped Melissa looking ahead as two Raiders were now coming towards them. Even in the low light of space Burmeister could see the weapon bay doors opening on the lead Raider.
"'Stinger!'" wailed Burmeister.
"Just fifteen seconds!" yelled 'Stinger'.
Suddenly two missiles appeared underneath the lead Raider and started hurtling towards them.
"'Stinger!'"
"Just a few more seconds!"
Levours was cowering in the back of the Raptor. He held his hands together and began to chant "Lords of Kobol! Hear my prayer! Please deliver us from this evil?" He repeated this again and again as Burmeister and 'Stinger' watched the FTL gauge rising until finally it reached the green mark.
"That's it! Get us the frak out of here!" yelled Burmeister.
In an instant the Raptor disappeared in a flash. The missiles darted past the empty space left by it and exploded on the hull of the wreck with a brilliant white flash.
BATTLESTAR HERMES PORT HANGAR DECK
The Raptor rested on the hangar deck as the deckhands gathered around it to help unload whatever was inside. After the crate was removed from the Raptor Levours seemed to fall out of the doorway and dropped to his knees on the deck thanking the Gods for having spared them.
The deckhands pulled the box aside and began to work at getting it open. Burmeister met Melissa on the hangar deck just a few moments after they landed. They both looked at the pitiful sight of Levours kneeling next to the Raptor.
"You did good out there" said Burmeister to Melissa. "Better than that crap!" she then said signalling to Levours. Burmeister went away towards the crate as it was suddenly pryed open by the deckgang. There was a loud shriek from a female deckhand named Gorseinon. Bowman had just arrived on the deck and quickly made his way towards the container as the commotion increased.
"Get out of the way! Make a hole!" he ordered. The deckhands cleared a path for Bowman, some of them with the look of horror on their faces and when he reached the container he peered in. It didn't take him long to figure out what was causing the commotion. Inside was a blond woman in a red dress. Her eyes were wide open and in the middle of her forehead was a bullet hole. "Oh Gods!" he gasped. The body had been perfectly preserved in the container that was designed to store organic material for long journeys in space.
Burmeister stood beside him and peered in at the body. Just a few weeks ago this sight would have horrified her but now it was just another body.
"Ooh!" she said. "Well that was a waste of time. Can't eat that!" The joke failed to raise even a smirk from anyone including herself. "What do you think sir? Maybe the crew killed her and put her in this box to hide her?"
"Maybe?" said Bowman.
Bowman felt a little bit guilty. The truth was that he was devastated there were no supplies inside. The fact that this was once a life held no substance to him because millions had died in the passed few weeks and now the most important thing was survival. The discovery of this body symbolised the reality that death was lingering on this ship either from the Cylons or from starvation.
But what none of them knew yet was that they were looking down at the dead face of their enemy. For the body in the container was a Cylon. A Number Six.
