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Avalon Mining
Chapter 00
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The Cylons were created by Man.
They were created to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies.
And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters.
After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared.
The Cylons left for another world to call their own.
A remote space facility was built...
...where Cylon and Human could meet and maintain diplomatic relations.
Every year, the Colonials send an officer.
The Cylons send no one.
No one has seen or heard from the Cylons in over forty years...
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Until Now…
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Avalon Mining;
Fifteen years before the first Cylon war;
William Avalon stood on the bridge of the mining ship Avalon One, around the ship; twenty more mining ships were deploying their deep mining machines to boar into the giant asteroid called XP272X2 or its general name Valona. The asteroid was twenty-one kilometers long and at its center over seven kilometers. The asteroid had been mined before but not as deeply as William planned to do. The giant hunk of space debris was jammed packed with minerals that were needed in the colonies. This was the biggest venture the William had ever planned. He had saved up for years after learning about the hunk of rock from his grandfather when he was a deep space miner or a Belter as they were called back in the colonies. With the help of his friends, they had assembled fifty-four ships to gut the rock and turn it into a station for them. The fleet consisted of twenty-one mining ships, five tankers, three with fuel and two with water. There were also five agro ships, nine smelters, five large freighters, four tugs and the five remaining Titanic class passenger liners that had been decommissioned. In all, sixty-seven thousand miners and their families were housed in the fifty-four ships ready to go to work.
The next fifteen years would see the center of the hunk of rock hollowed out, and docks built while living accommodations were built inside. Parks, hydroponic backs, living quarters, hangers, repair bays, three space docks for decommissioning ships, shops, assembly lines, restaurants, schools, a pair of hospitals, and many other businesses were built. As well as a pair of outer doors that were eight meters thick made of battle steel and three meters of rock bolted to the clamshell doors. Hidden surveillance cameras covered all aspects of the station along with VR projectors. When the war was started in the colonies, they were glad they never imported the Cylons to Avalon as it was called after it went online. As ships were worn out new ones were purchased and then peace came and the Cylons left the colonies. The station was never attack because of its obscurity and location but when the armistice was signed the Quorum issued orders for the station to shut down and the people to move back to the Zodiac belt instead of the outer belt that the Redline covered. During this time the remaining twenty percent who stayed were the caretakers of Avalon and they also expanded the station. They even built five massive construction docks to build ships that were up the size of a Battlestar or even to repair them if they were damaged.
Jeff Avalon, son and CEO of the company after his father passed away moved eighty percent of the people back to their old stomping grounds and for the next thirty years they played the game of working the inner belt and then rumors started circling about sightings of Cylon ships past the redline so slowly they started improving Avalon. This also included four massive jump drives from the last decommissioned dreadnaughts at Avalon salvage yard. Three years before the attack, the company took possession of their newest ships. Four Ebba Maersk class Super Freighter and six Cornelius Maersk class Medium Freighter which replaced the aging Hyperion class freighters under the command of William Avalon the 2nd. He was recently married and only twenty-seven years old and had a plan for his family and the one hundred and forty-seven thousand people that he considered his family. His original plan was scrapped after he discovered his grandfather's plan that he made up back before the war.
A week before the attack, the last of Avalon Shipping had brought all their people back home to Avalon as the fortieth year of Armistice Day approached. Seventy-six ships filled three quarters of the docks that were inside the station. Eight hundred storage containers were stacked on the docks themselves filled with everything they could strip from the companies various business that had been set up along the Zodiac belt. The station was packed with supplies to the brim. From thousands of rolls of toilet paper to hundreds of chickens to canned goods to spare parts to thousands of rounds of ammo for weapons stripped from ships that had been dismantled at Avalon salvage. A hundred decommissioned Raptors and seventy Mark VI vipers were stored in the dozens of hangers scattered around the inside of the station along with shuttles and heavy lifters. The only thing they didn't have was nuclear missiles which they didn't think they'd need. The plan was to leave the day of the armistice celebration because the monitoring of the red line would be at their lowest as everyone celebrated and find a new home.
Three days before the celebration alarms sounded inside the command center of the asteroid and William rushed to the command center to find out what was going on. He started cursing as he saw nine glowing icons on the low powered Dradis screen. The icons were the Colonial class Mercury Battlestars Athena and Apollo with seven Gunstars as escorts.
William stared at the screen and cursed again, "What the frak are they doing here?"
"Don't know boss, their early," deputy commander Greg Hanson said as he looked at the screen.
"Shit," William said as he glared at the icons and then a new plan formed and he hoped it would work, "Greg I want you to update the jump plan instead of one jump using two of the jump drives set up two from the recons that our raptors had completed. We will power up all four jump drives, use two for the first jump and the remaining two for a jump after we come out. We will then sit in the asteroid field we scouted and let them recharge again and do another two. I want to do this four times in a row then drop down to one jump a day, for six more days then rest and let our scouts find us a new route. We should be able to get away then. Plan to jump when the fleet is at its furthest from us."
Greg rubbed his chin and thought for a second, "That will work."
For the next three days they watched as the colonial fleet drew closer to their location. It was early morning when the Dradis started sounding the alarm and William looked up from his command chair. Seeing two new icons he walked over and compared their power signature and as he was waiting on the analysis of what they were they suddenly burst to life as hundreds of smaller icons appeared and headed for the fleet units which were starting to launch their own fighters.
"What the frak is going on?" William demanded and then noticed as the main monitor burst to life showing two starfish shaped ships.
"Frak me! It's the Cylons!" Greg said as they watched the two forces close on each other and then a strange thing happened as the colonial vipers lost all power and started to tumble.
The Cylons flew past the disabled vipers and closed on the mother ships of the colonial fleet and then it happened. First the point Gunstar stopped firing as its power systems shut down and was quickly followed by the rest of the fleet. It was then the hoard of Cylon fighters started launching missiles. Within seconds six hundred missiles were slamming into the disabled warships which were followed up by a second and third wave. When it was over the Battlestars Athena and Apollo were shattered wrecks. The Athena had her bow completely blown off and the Apollo her spine was broken in half. Of the Gunstars, they were just shattered wrecks with four of them completely obliterated. They watched as the two mother ships recovered their raiders and then they jumped away. They left leaving the survivors to perish in the cold void of space when their oxygen ran out.
"Launch all rescue ships and tugs. I want all those small craft towed into the hangers and the debris of the destroyed ships towed in to be searched for survivors," William ordered as he looked around the shocked CIC and then yelled out, "Come on people. They don't have much time!"
The CIC jumped to action stations and down in the hanger bays, Raptors, Heavy Lifters, and rescue shuttles jumped to it. Within minutes a hoard of small craft were in the air heading for the destroyed and shutdown ships. Within minutes, the Raptors and Lifters were towing the disabled small craft to the station while the tugs latched onto the crippled Athena and Apollo and started towing them to the station. Inside the station the remaining two space dock doors slowly opened so they could take on the wrecked Battlestars while the last two tugs latched onto the larger sections of the Gunstars.
While this was going on they listened to the wireless and paled as they heard the damages mounting up to the fleet and the nuking of the colonies. They heard the last they heard on Admiral Nagala was that he was dead and Commander Adama had assumed command of the fleet at Ragnar while Roslin was made the President of the Colonies, not that they cared.
Three hours after the attack, the last disabled Raptor and Viper had been towed in to the hangers while the wreckage of the destroyed Battlestars had been space docked and search and rescue had boarded the two ships. The remains of the Gunstars were brought in and stored on the Clasp and Edifice. The two repair ships had sent their search and rescue crews in searching for survivors as well. Of the four hundred Vipers and thirty-six Raptors launched from the two Battlestars, three hundred and seventeen Vipers and twenty-one Raptors were recovered.
William checked the movement orders of the colonial fleet that one of his spies had stolen and saw that the nearest Battlegroup was two jumps away so he sent a pair of Raptors to check it out and found shut down Vipers and Raptors and the shattered hulks of the two Valkyrie class Battlestars and eight Gunstars. Dispatching the four tugs, heavy lifters and shuttles to check for survivors they soon had a pair of hangers and a stern section of one of the Battlestars along with tons of debris being ferried back to the ship along with sixty-five disabled Vipers and nine Raptors. Each tug was able to recover eighteen small craft while the small craft searched for escape pods. In all, two thousand four hundred and seventeen survivors are rescued with three quarters of them wounded. A few days after the attack, Raptors had scouted out Ragnar Station and found the station empty of inhabitants but still packed with supplies so William sent groups of cargo shuttles and Heavy Lifters with Raptor escorts to steal what they could. One thing they did was remove all the overhead lights they could to stock up on them along with thousands of cases of food and munitions while other Raptors rescued as many survivors from the colonies that they could. Eventually six thousand four hundred and fifteen survivors were recovered and brought back to the station. Of them two thousand were colonial military.
Three hours after the attack, the last disabled Raptor and Viper had been towed in to the hangers while the wreckage of the destroyed Battlestars had been space docked and search and rescue had boarded the two ships. The remains of the Gunstars were brought in and stored on the Clasp and Edifice. The two repair ships had sent their search and rescue crews in searching for survivors as well. Of the four hundred Vipers and thirty-six Raptors launched from the two Battlestars, three hundred and seventeen Vipers and twenty-one Raptors were recovered.
William checked the movement orders of the colonial fleet that one of his spies had stolen and saw that the nearest Battlegroup was two jumps away so he sent a pair of Raptors to check it out and found shut down Vipers and Raptors and the shattered hulks of the two Valkyrie class Battlestars and eight Gunstars. Dispatching the four tugs, heavy lifters and shuttles to check for survivors they soon had a pair of hangers and a stern section of one of the Battlestars along with tons of debris being ferried back to the ship along with sixty-five disabled Vipers and nine Raptors. Each tug was able to recover eighteen small craft while the small craft searched for escape pods. In all, two thousand four hundred and seventeen survivors are rescued with three quarters of them wounded.
A few days after the attack, Raptors had scouted out Ragnar Station and found the station empty of inhabitants but still packed with supplies so William sent groups of cargo shuttles and Heavy Lifters with Raptor escorts to steal what they could. One thing they did was remove all the overhead lights they could to stock up on them along with thousands of cases of food and munitions while other Raptors rescued as many survivors from the colonies that they could. Eventually six thousand four hundred and fifteen survivors were recovered and brought back to the station. Of them two thousand were colonial military.
With attempting to rescue more survivors getting more dangerous and after the loss of six Raptors William discontinued the search and rescue operations on the planet and continued to scout extended patrol zones and they were able to recover another three hundred and fifty Vipers and sixty-seven Raptors with dead crews. The bodies were laid to rest with the remains of the Battlegroup forty-eight and then the missions stopped as they powered up the asteroids jump drives and jumped away. They appeared in an asteroid belt that they had scouted and the Dradis detected ten ships huddled together flashing Colonial merchant shipping IFF.
Contacting them they found out that their fleet had been stripped of supplies, fuel, water, and ftl drives two hours before. The ships were quickly towed into the cavernous bay and rescue teams went to work helping and repairing the ships. At the same time more housing was being built by the miners inside the station so they would have room for the rescued survivors. What they did not know was they had two Cylons among them, a number six and eight who were aboard the Amber Lights when she was brought to the station. One thing that was good they had no idea where they were because of no windows inside the station to get star coordinates and them not being members of the company they were not allowed into vital areas like the CIC and the telescopes that monitored space around the station. After nine more jumps they took a break inside the edge of a nebula to make checks on the hull and see if anything needed to be repaired. It was at this time they bored several missile silos on the hull and using the surviving nuclear missiles from the Athena and Apollo they now had a large ship to ship response. Inside the space docks the dismantling of the Apollo continued because they could repair her but for the Athena they started repairing the bow of the massive ship.
Commander Benjamin White woke from his coma and assumed command of all the Colonial Military personnel on the station and using the Marines that survived help reinforce the police units of the company while he picked the best of the survivors to man the stored Gunstars to bring them up to full readiness. The only thing he didn't like was the dismantling of the Apollo but when explained that her back was broken in three places and there was no way to replace the damaged sections he understood. The rebuilding of the Athena would take over a year to complete. So with six old Gunstars and one Cutter as defense it was decided that ships would stay inside unless they were mining for Tylium or ore needed for the foundries.
One thing that William did was set up a banking system handed by his company finance office. They then took all the gold and silver they had mined in the last year and were supposed to be used for production and converted them into cubics. It was worked out to twenty silver cubics to one gold. He then gave every survivor five hundred gold cubics to start up their own accounts in the new bank they installed. More would be added as they worked their regular jobs or any job the survivors that were rescued. Taxes were kept real low and for the military they used the base pay of seven hundred cubics for enlisted and twelve hundred for officers per month. All gold and silver mined because the properties of the bank but the miners were paid for the metals just like before.
During this time thirty-nine people committed suicide and two hundred and ninety eight died of wounds with two unexplained deaths, the Cylon infiltrators. They would spend two weeks there working on the station and the mining ships would harvest metals and Tylium from the nearby asteroids before they started their jumps again.
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William Avalon original founder of the Avalon mining, died at the age of seventy-nine
Jeff Avalon sixty-eight years old and retired and has turned the company over to his son.
William Avalon the 2nd thirty years old and newly appointed CEO of the companies. He has thought up of a plan to get his people out from under the crushing power of the Colonial government.
Greg Hanson, deputy commander of Avalon. He is fifty-nine years old, severed ten years in the colonial fleet and then returned home after mustering out.
Commander Benjamin White of the Battlestar Apollo is the sole surviving command officer of two Battlegroup. Forty-three years of age. He is in a coma in the medical facility.
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Ships
Ranger class Cutters
Varna Crew 150
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Bard class Gunstars
Rolfing Crew 150
Black Star Crew 150
Brianna Crew 150
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Babenhausen Gunstars
Beaver Crew 200
Lion Crew 200
Wind Runner Crew 200
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Harvester Class Military MK2 Agroships
Harvester III Crew 900
Thresher IX Crew 900
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Tantalus construction platform
Edifice Crew 1160
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Ebba Maersk class Super Freighter
Avalon Crew 700
Cinder Crew 700
Reliant Crew 700
Avalon II Crew 700
Under construction
William Avalon the 1st 87% complete
Large Tylium Tanker
Pyramid Crew 150
Shine Crew 150
Cornelius Maersk class Medium Freighter
Avalon III, Crew 400
Avalon IV Crew 400
Avalon V Crew 400
Belter Crew 400
Belter II Crew 400
Belter III Crew 400
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Grapple class Salvage ship
Clasp Crew 3500
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Mobile repair fabrication ship
Restoration, Crew 1000
Builder Crew 1000
Replicate Crew 1000
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Lighter Bulk Freighter
Melina, Crew 123
Strokes, Crew 120
Canary Crew 110
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Modified Prometheus class mining ship
Bore Crew 816
Pulse Crew 900
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Celestra class multipurpose ship
Hydro mining ship Crew 1200
Helium mining ship Crew 1300
Vapor mining ship Crew 1200
Blaster mining ship Crew 1275
Andrew mining ship Crew 1300
Exile mining ship Crew 1300
Home One mining ship Crew 1220
Home Two mining ship Crew 1350
Zanier mining ship Crew 1400
Gold Nugget mining ship Crew 1202
Platinum Vapor mining ship Crew 1444
Ancient mining ship Crew 1253
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Flattop Repair ship
Overhaul I Crew 790
Overhaul II Crew 790
Overhaul III Crew 790
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Derbyshire class foundry ship
Forge Crew 755
Furnace Crew 799
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Botanical ship
Garden Three Crew 2049
Harvester Crew 2003
Gathering Crew 2002
Harvest Crew 2000
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Fork class freighter
Rocket Crew 10
Mayhem Crew 10
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Octopus tug
Squid Crew 650
Opal Crew 650
Ruby Red Crew 650
Diamond Dust Crew 650
Under construction
Warrington 63% complete
Wishsong 89% complete
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836 class liners
*Radiant Sun, Crew 313 passengers 1900
*Rim Runner Crew 330 passengers 1700
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826 class liners
*Amber Lights Crew 250 passengers 1500
**Miller's Dream Crew 250 Passengers 1527
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Mule class freighter
Packer Crew 350
Ripken Crew 350
**Reduction Crew 350
**Baytown Crew 350
**Corydon Crew 350
Refinery ships
Screamer Crew 864
Hampton Crew 910
Electronics ships
Power Crew 430
Electric Crew 543
Prometheus class freighters
Devils Dog Crew 355
Arleen's Crew 355
**Comair Crew 340
**Helium Crew 337
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Cybele class light freighters
Apollo Crew 240
Zeus Crew 244
**Mystify Crew 250 Passengers 540
**Murfree Crew 250 Passengers 508
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Light Water Tanker
Waterborne Crew 90
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Scylla class freighters
**Scylla
**Belington
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Non-FTL ships docked in larger ships bays
Barges x12 Crew 20 each
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Typhoon class small freighters
Typhoon XVI Crew 88
Typhoon XVI Crew 89
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Scheck class small tanker
Scheck Crew 122
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Orion class small mining freighters
Orion III Crew 123
Resolute Crew 150
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Renovatur class Police boats
Bonaventure Crew 45 Police 70
Sender Crew 55 Police 67
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Ships with a * denounce ships rescued
Scylla fleet designated by **
Crew and Passengers 147635
Colonial personnel Battlegroup forty-eight rescued 2417
Survivors rescued 17419
Deaths in the chapter -339
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Subtotal
Total Survivors 167132
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Edited By