AN: Kind of nervous on this chapter. Let me know what you all think on this one. I have a bit of a surprise at the end which I hope sort of links this back to a certain character in the main series.
I had a few concepts in here I might use later in some different stories. I'm wondering how everyone like/didn't like the changes to Caprica and the backstory with the Cylons and Spartoi? Let me know. Please enjoy and thanks for reading! I don't plan on doing more chapters but I might in the future.
Thank you for reading the short story.
Chapter Three
Battleship Pyrrhus
In Orbit over Giedi
"Ah, the joys of another night of sitting on one's ass and doing frak-all…" Captain Diana 'Medusa' Doukos rapped her fingers across the top of her helmet. "Sure is a lot of crew up." She wrinkled her nose and sidestepped out of the way of a visibly irritated major splitting his attention between his tablet computer and the crowds.
Medusa was quite a bit shorter than the average Caprican citizen and had to be extra careful watching her step in the sometimes dangerous and always bustling corridors of a Caprican battleship. Her grandparents had emigrated from Aquaria and her parents were full blooded Aquarians and unfortunately she'd inherited their short stature. She was able to make up for her height by being fairly well-built and she often relied on her Pyramid training as a Weaver to sidestep or dodge sailors not paying attention.
"Meh, it's not too bad, Medusa," countered Lieutenant Adrian 'Plucky' Xenos. He dug into the thigh pocket of his olive drab colored pressure suit and produced a book for his CO's viewing pleasure. "Not when you have something worthwhile to pass the time.
Medusa gave it a look and rolled her eyes. "Just don't go around brandishing that crap."
"It's just a book."
"'It's just a book' he says." Medusa said to the air and now empty corridor in front of them. "Yeah, it's just a Tauron book by one of their most noted Tauron supremacists!" Nuzzling her helmet under the crook of her right arm and wiggling the fingers of her now free left hand, got Plucky to hand the book over. "Simon Ricci…" she scowled at the cover. "The War of Angels… just be careful with some of this. You don't want to be seen as a sympathizer." She slapped it back on his chest and increased her pace and left Plucky behind her.
The two rounded a bend in the corridor, the sounds of the flight deck now echoing towards them, and Plucky caught up with his squadron CO.
"Anyway, what else do we do when we're stuck in a cockpit for six hours in those claustrophobic tubes?"
Medusa shrugged. She pulled out a folded computer sheet. "I've got about a week's worth of paperwork to catch up on. Those are the joys of being a squadron CO…" she twisted and eyed the young lieutenant next to her. "Speaking of commands, have you decided yet? Your thousandth landing is coming up… usually the pilots decide if they want to go career by then."
"I don't know, Medusa. There's my girlfriend-"
"-always seems to be someone," she scoffed.
"Well, she wants kids. And I've been in since the start. How much longer can this war go on anyway? Once it's over I'm gonna head back to university and do some graduate work. My brother works for one of the pharmaceutical companies and says if I get an MBA he'll hire me as a drug rep."
Medusa chuckled and shaking her head, gently slapped him on the back of the head. "A drug rep? You're one of the best pilots we have. Twelve confirmed kills and fifteen confirmed birds. And you're going to sell drugs to doctors? That sounds incredibly boring."
"Well, sir, if the war ends soon like the rumors say, what are you going to do?"
The two rounded a second corner. Medusa swiped her access card to a side compartment off the main flight deck and let Plucky go in first. They checked in with the Landing Deck Officer and initialed besides the Vipers they'd be sitting in for the next six hours and headed out onto the deck.
"What am I going to do?" Medusa asked after mulling the question around for a few minutes. "I'm going to stay in the Fleet. When we win there's talk of integrating our forces more heavily with the allies. Plus if we occupy the Pact worlds we'll need everyone we can get. Just because the Pact surrenders doesn't mean we're done." She looked over at her wingman and hummed a thought. "They might stop gap you."
"The last thing we need is some insurgency." He leaned over. "Garrison force for what, like twenty billion? That's going to be insane and expensive."
"Rods from the Gods handle those pretty well," Medusa mused, "it's hard to be an insurgent when you're getting bombed from orbit. And Cylons… I mean, look," she jerked her chin forward and motioned at one of the chrome toasters standing sentry duty, "what sorry frak gives a shit if a Cylon gets shot up? Building another is cheap compared to training a soldier."
They walked towards their Vipers. Medusa was swinging her left arm back and forth while she rested her right on the butt of her sidearm. Then all hell broke loose. Someone came over the wireless and declared condition one. And someone started shooting up the hanger bay.
Battleship Othyros
In High Orbit over Caprica
Trying to sleep and failing, Rear Admiral Robert Drake had assembled his uniform and walked towards the CIC. His ship was on condition two, like all ships during wartime, so there were plenty of crewmen awake and hustling through the ship during the early morning hours. Very few, if any, knew the reason why their fleet commander was restless and roaming the dreary gunmetal-colored corridors so early.
A pair of crewmen stepped aside, snapped their heels, and in the traditional salute dating back over four thousand years, balled their right hand into a fist and brought it across their chest and slightly to the left of the heart. Drake returned the salute and nodded and threw his hands behind his back, pushed back his shoulders as the pride for his crew flowed through him, and continued to the CIC.
The same sequence of salutes was followed by the two Marine sentries. He produced his photo ID and prox card for the two, who used a handheld scanner to make sure he was authorized- military SOP, the president of Caprica himself would be forced to do the same- and with a snap and a hiss the magnetic locks on the armored hatch to CIC disengaged. A low whine indicated the motors required to move the hatch into its recessed alcove had activated. Drake stepped through and quickly surveyed his domain with a sweep of his eyes from the left to the right.
"Admiral on deck!" The Officer of the Day, Captain Herodotus Cetus called out.
The ambient buzzing of the CIC, staffed around the clock with dozens, came to a muted hush. Each man or woman stiffened in their seat or came to attention if their duties permitted. The OOD and Tactical Relief Officer, a young and short female lieutenant with shoulder-length blonde hair, Sarah Dameskinos, walked up, came to attention, and saluted.
"As you were," he declared and returned the two salutes.
The CIC was fairly typical of Caprican battleships. Slightly off center were three large command consoles. Their translucent surfaces had touch-interface screens for tactical and strategic displays. Above the displays were a half dozen monitors devoted to DRADIS and a half dozen more devoted to ship rosters and who was out flying.
Arrayed around the consoles were additional plots on the sides of the CIC and computer terminals. Between navigation, tactical, communication, DRADIS, and flight ops there were about thirty men and women manning posts. Another twenty to thirty were stationed behind them on the upper two tiers of the CIC to provide support and handle more mundane fleet issues. Maybe another ten were constantly in motion moving papers or comp sheets around or ferrying reports from one section of the ship to another when hand delivery was required.
Two Marines stood guard at each of the two hatches to the CIC. Two more stood inside near the tactical boards in the closest corner to the command consoles and two more stood watch at the top tier.
"Anything going on out there?" Drake asked, motioning for the TRO and OOD to follow and stepping up to the tactical DRADIS display his belt buckle clinked on the metal ledge of the display as he leaned forward to get a view of the fleet and read his ship's status. He groaned to himself when he saw half a dozen men and women in harness chairs with their CRIBS on. "It looks pretty fraking quiet." He kept his eyes on the officers with the modified holoband visors on.
It wasn't that he disliked the technology because his whole career had seen one technological innovation after another fostered on the Fleet. CRIBs and Cylons were just two of the changes to have occurred in his decades of service. The Fleet he had originally commissioned in might have been similar in appearances, basic designs of warships stayed somewhat static, but the innards of the ships were much different. Othyros, a technological marvel compared to ships of the past, could operate with a crew of less than thirty-five hundred.
He glanced up at the half dozen DRADIS monitors. From left to right they presented a more general, strategic outlook of local space to a more concentrated, tactical display which showed only the fleet and a few hundred k-klicks in diameter around Othryos.
"It doesn't seem like much is going on at the moment, sir…" Cetus said, frowning, "we just have some of the usual traffic. There's a big convoy- 095- with a shipment of Cylons and machinery to Ragnar which is getting ready to jump in the next few hours. Cruiser Squadron Nine-Seven," Cetus nodded at the DRADIS and the yellow blips for the convoy, "should be heading out soon. The assault landing ships are holding steady in orbit…" Cetus narrowed his eyes. "What the frak…"
Captain Cetus's head snapped back and then forward, doing a double take. The light from the DRADIS consoles glittered and sparkled in his deep brown eyes as they began to widen.
Lt. Dameskinos and Admiral Drake, who'd been studying other DRADIS displays, not watching but listening, gave him a look.
"Sir?" the TRO asked, sidestepping to see what the navigator and temporary OOD was looking at. She hummed a throaty and curious note as the blips on the DRADIS rearranged to something odd and out of place. Dameskinos bit down on her lip. "Look at that." She pushed out her chin at the overhead display, the second to the right, giving a more detailed picture of the event in question.
"Sir…" Cetus ignored her and addressed the admiral, "Sir… there's a strange DRADIS contact at extreme range… and the… what the frak? We've got some unusual movement in the Zone, sir. There's also an unidentified ship at extreme DRADIS range."
Drake was already filtering the DRADIS displays for anything abnormal. He had decades in the service and years aboard ships ranging from destroyers to these magnificent battleships. Within a second his well-trained eyes had already picked up the problem.
To a casual observed nothing unusual would have been evident. DRADIS plotted little blips with a small set of three numbers indicating range, distance, and relative location. Some plots were slightly larger or smaller than the other to aide in depth perception. A massive collection of small blips, representing the Ragnar convoy, was just one of two oddities present.
The problem was in the Military Orbit and Demarcation Zone. Military traffic only. It changed constantly to prevent ambush and currently it was in a geosynchronous orbit between Caprica and Geidi, the primary moon of the blue and green marble below.
Suddenly the subtle changes began to become clearer. And the problems escalated. The Ragnar Convoy 095 blips began to move off from their high orbits. They began separating, as if beginning an FTL jump.
"Convoy 095 and the assault landing ships are changing their orbit?" Drake questioned. "Those things are filled with Cylons for our invasion… Chief Caslet, get me Orbital Control-" while he'd been watching the DRADIS his right hand had grasped the handle for the wireless receiver. He was about to request a channel to the two commanders of that convoy.
And why hadn't Control messaged Othyros? The commander in charge of Control knew it was his responsibility to inform the flagship of the planetary defense fleet to any changes in convoy debarkation schedules.
"Sir!" The communications tech, Chief Caslet, yelled out. "Sir, there are wireless signals flooding in on all channels, sir. It's, I don't know, it sounds like someone's speaking… but there's something embedded in the transmission… it's garbled."
"Speakers!" Drake ordered. He rested his hands on the command console and leaned forward. His ears flickered back as distorted speech became clear. "Clear that up!" He barked at the crackling. There was a rhythmic pulse
"…As the Gods overthrew the Titans, so has Man overthrown the Gods, but when Man visits his Sins upon his Children, how shall he be repaid?"
Everyone in the CIC had stopped working. Some were staring at him for answers, hopeful the lone flag officers knew what was happening while others stared at the DRADIS monitors and each other.
"What the frak is this?" Drake demanded. "Wake up the command staff, captain." He glared his annoyance at the OOD. "Get me a source for the transmission and launch Vipers to intercept whatever fraking ship is screwing with our wireless frequencies!"
"Sir," the Chief said, "we're getting com traffic over the laser net that the wireless frequencies are all being jammed with that question over and over, sir. Communications is attempting a work around and attempting to triangulate."
Lt. Dameskinos walked over to the comm. station and scooping up and ear bud from the Chief, brushed back a strand of her and settled it over her ear.
"I want Vipers on standby, prepare to bring the ship to condition one… alert planetary defense headquarters. Bounce a laser off the satellites if you have to." The admiral picked up the receiver on the side of the command console. "Give me a high powered, wide-band saturated transmission capability." Drake glared at the received and his com chief, not out of anger or frustration at him, but the situation. He received a nod from the older enlisted man. "Attention transmitting vessel. This is Rear Admiral Robert Drake onboard Othryos. You will cease transmissions immediately and prepare to be boarded. Interfering with military transmissions during a time of war carries the death penalty. Cease and desist-"
The wireless popped and screeched.
The questions stopped.
"Admiral Drake. How shall he be repaid? The Children of Man will be repaid in their own blood."
Drake's face contorted to one of pure shock, confusion, and anger. What the frak was going on? Who in the name of Zeus's cock was doing this? Not even the Pact planets could blanket all their wireless frequencies like this. There was encryption, modulation, the works to prevent interference and jamming like this. Who the frak? The Pact didn't transmit anything but a simple request for surrender- Tauron 'honor'- before attacking. Riddles?
He pulled the receiver away from his ear and just stared at it. Drake was debating whether to slam the black corded phone receiver down and smash it into its holder or press it back against his ear and yell his fraking heart out at the frakers.
He slowly set it down.
"Sir!" The DRADIS officer yelled. "Convoy 095… they're reporting gunfire aboard their vessels… I'm also receiving reports of gunfire aboard the landing assault ships, sir…"
"I want condition one set throughout the fleet. All vessels are to form up. Alert High Command. Have our Marines ready to deploy to those ships reporting gunfire. Relay orders to all Cylon defense stations to begin launching Raiders and proceed to planetary defense-"
He'd been relaying his orders calmly, concisely, but the DRADIS erupted into an almost panicky presentation of hundreds of blips and it flashed red and crew to alert the DRADIS operators and command staff to the sudden appearance of a massive fleet.
The DRADIS consoles erupted into a staccato of frantic beeps and gurgles. The left-most screen seemed to bathe itself in green blips as nearly two hundred Cylon ships jumped in.
"Cylon fleet has jumped… back, sir. Range at thirty k-klicks and approaching fast!"
"Set condition one immediately." His fist hit the console. "And get our patrols over there and hail the fraking ships. Use signal lamps if you have to!"
Lieutenant Dameskinos was furiously reading the tactical readouts and compiling the reports and summaries of the last ten minutes for the admiral as she watched Commander Grace Mesides rushed into CIC. She finished buckling the last button on her tunic and flattening it, reported in to Admiral Drake.
"Admiral, commander, the Cylon fleet is accelerating. There also seems to be activity on the automated defense platform sir…" her left eye narrowed in a mix of stunned disbelief and confused acknowledgement. "Sir…" she pressed a finger to an ear bud she'd linked up with the communication's stations. "We're getting high level encrypted messages sent up from High Command via Secure Net comms sir. Decrypting now."
"Commander," Drake turned to the woman as she stepped up beside him, "take control of the situation here. Captain Cetus, update the commander and get the COs of the task groups on the horn immediately and standby. Comm. send the priority message to this console."
"My gods!" Dameskinos's mouth was agape and she'd frozen. With the Admiral in front of her she shook herself back. "Sir… secure transmission indicates the Cylons have begun attacking our military bases on Caprica, sir!"
"Throw it on speakers!"
"-Gods… Cylon attac- massive casualties, repeat, Cylons attacking everything in site!"
This is Cap City emer- responders… someone fraking figure out what's going on, reports of Cylons going crazy and murdering-"
"Open fi- the Cylo- fire on the Cylons the fra- Cylons!"
"This is an emergency planetary alert message. ATTENTION. This is an emergency planetary alert message. ATTENTION. All planetary military units and civil defense units are to report for duty immediately. ATTENTION. Consider all Cylons to be hostile. ATTENTION. Consider all Cylons to be hostile. Deadly force is authorized. All Cylons are to be considered hostile…"
Everyone in CIC was standing or sitting ramrod straight. He shut down communications by angrily stalking to the comm. Station and jamming his fist onto the control panel. He glared at nothing, his eyes glazing over. Then loud and obnoxious proximity beeps, DRADIS alarms, and shrill alerts began wailing through CIC…
"Radiological alarms!" Someone called
"Missile locks from Cylon fleet!" Another DRADIS tech yelled at the top of his lungs
"Energy buildups- convoy's jumping!" Navigation reported
"Raider squadrons launchings!" The TRO shouted over her shoulder…
CIC erupted in a mass of confusion as the top borders to the DRADIS screens, all screen in CIC, flashed a red rectangle warning of incoming ordnance. Everyone braced to impact as Drake ordered the defensive batteries online. Even as the subtle vibration of the turrets were felt deep in the bowels of CIC and as they felt the rumblings of the anti-missile missiles and proximity flak charges being spat out into space around them too many missiles were in bound for the flagship…
Battleship Pyrrhus
Medusa threw herself to the deck and grabbed Plucky's collar, yanking him down on top of her chest. His chin hit her right in the solar plexus and she groaned loudly as the air rushed from her lungs. She rolled him off and went to a knee. In one swift motion she had her sidearm out, safety off, and was ready to fire at whoever was shooting at them.
She began to stand back up and fire. Medusa felt she could at least distract the robot until the Marines got there. But she ducked down as half a dozen bullets flew at her, with more shooting past, and two deck hand knuckle draggers going down.
The staccato of the gunfire from the Centurion's assault rifle and the wet tearing of human flesh was like nails on chalkboards and sent a cold wave of fear racing down her back and throughout her body.
With her back pressed against it she checked on Plucky, who was coming to a knee with his own sidearm out. She thanked the gods that they hadn't been killed- yet.
"The Centurion's gone fraking balls up, Plucky." She managed to stay calm but her voice cracked. She looked down and saw her hand shake, but used the other to grab it and calm her nerves. She'd been shot at dozens, maybe a hundred times in space but being shot at while flying a Viper was a lot different than being shot at in a hanger bay from ten meters away.
It just seemed so much more personal.
"What the frak!" Plucky yelled, sidearm in hand and back on his knees. He looked around the side of the forklift. "It's gone fraking crazy!"
"No, look!" Medusa pointed.
The Centurion closest to them was going wild, killing everyone it could. Some helpless knuckle dragger ran by and instead of wasting ammunition, grabbed her around the neck, squeezed, and then released. Her body fell to the deck like a ragdoll.
There were two Centurions in the hanger deck as security. Both were shooting everything.
"On my mark, shoot," she ordered. "Mark!"
She stood up, exposing only her upper torso as she shot at the Centurion. Plucky leaned to the right of the forklift. Their bullets dinged off the armor. One somehow hit between the plates and black fluid gushed from an elbow joint. The mechanical hand spasmed but the Centurion released its sub machinegun from its two handed grip and using only one continued to fire. A blade ejected out of the damaged forearm gauntlet.
"Down!"
A hail of bullets tore into the forklift and Medusa grabbed Plucky again as the rounds pinged and shredded the unarmored piece of equipment. She and Plucky made themselves as small as possible to keep from being shot by the metal monster.
She heard a magazine hit the deck and she and Plucky popped back up and fired and ran towards the hatch. Their bullets still did nothing.
The two pilots slammed into the bulkhead and went back-flat against the metal.
On the flight deck dozens of Raptors and Vipers and other attack craft were being prepred for launch or serviced and the crews all lay dead around them. Medusa easily counted forty, fifty dead. Just on what she could see.
The Centurion began moving off towards the munitions elevators.
She fired at the Centurion, furious it would betray them and praying to the gods she could get its attention for just a second, just long enough for the ship's Marine compliment to get down here. Emptying the rest of her magazine into the toaster, the foggy black smoke trail of her bullets and the brass on the deck was the only evidence she'd even fired. She had one last shot and she stuttered but breathed in and out and dropped the line of sight low and fired.
The bullet smacked the Centurion in the back of its calf pistols. It buckled slightly at the unexpected shot and turned and fired at her. As she began to duck she grinned and her eyes were fire as she saw the black lubricant squirt out of the Centurion like blood.
But it had systems to compensate. Redundancies. That's why they were so feared on the battlefield. A soldier couldn't stop an artery from bleeding, could not will themselves to ignore the pain and shock when a limb was blown off. A Cylon could. They fought until their mechanical heart- a battery- or their cold, calculating brain- the MCP- was destroyed.
She fell back behind cover and to a knee to reload. Medusa hit the magazine release, it clanged down on the deck, and she slapped a new one in quickly.
The pilot she had distracted it, just long enough. It had a mission, but it had to protect itself to carry out that mission. It couldn't get to the ready munitions stores below the deck unless it kept itself from being disabled.
Maybe ten, fifteen seconds had elapsed between her small victory- she heard the screams of another pair of knuckle draggers go down as bullets ripped into flesh and shattered bone- over bleeding the metal monster and the time it took her to reload. Medusa mouthed a quick prayer that Athena would look over her and she readied herself to fire at it again.
"Medusa!" She felt Plucky's arm as she was going to shoot again. "Wait, the Marines!"
She looked back and let herself be pulled down by her wingman. Almost a dozen Marines in their digital camouflage, decked in chest and leg armor covering the thighs and shins, burst out from the central hatch down the flight pod. They fanned out, with half hugging the far wall and half the bulkhead closest to the ship.
They went to a knee and fired on the Centurion, the bullets pushed it back. It leapt behind a Raptor and its bullets tore the throat out of a Marine. He collapsed to the deck, gargling and sprawling blood from dual severed carotids. Before the medic could even reach him he was dead. Two buddies pulled his lifeless corpse from the deck behind cover in a vain, and very human effort to save him.
Cylons knew how to fight. A wounded enemy took out that man and at least two, maybe three of his buddies. They knew humans would risk their lives to save one of their comrades in arms even if that man was dancing on the tip of Death's needle.
The Marine's return fire was just as ineffective against Raptor armor as it was Centurion. And if they fired a grenade they could ignite the tyllium fuel. Luckily the tanks were armored so not even a Cylon could puncture them short of an anti-material rifle.
Four Marines moved up on the far bulkhead, each leapfrogging and covering the other. On the other side five did the same. Three were in the rear.
Medusa made eye contact with the lead Marine who signaled for her and Plucky to stay down. With the professionals here she was more than happy to oblige. Her skill was in a fighter. She'd hit ace two months after the war had started. With a Viper's canons and her HUD she could hit anything. With a pistol she had qualified as marksman. Barely. She chalked up bleeding the Cylon to luck.
The ship suddenly lurched and the lights dimmed. The Cylon jumped from its hiding spot behind the Raptor and gunned down two Marines. It aimed low and swept at the legs and lower torso under the belt line and groin, where the armor wasn't covering. Two Marines fell before the rest could open fire. A third fell as the Centurion wobbled back.
Armor piercing rounds with micro-explosive cores penetrated the Cylons armor. Under the withering hail of bullets it went down but took a fourth with it.
Marines from the opposite side of the hanger could be heard rushing down, their boots plodding down the deck. They yelled out to their comrades who'd come up and saved Plucky and Medusa. The other Centurion at the opposite end of the bay had been destroyed.
Once again a voice came over the PA system sounding condition one.
"…the Cylons are rebelling…" was all Medusa needed to hear as she grabbed plucky and rushed their Vipers, waiting for them in the tubes on hot standby.
"Frak Plucky, bank!" Medusa growled into her wireless. Her Viper jostled as a Raider fragment hti the wing and her warning lights flashed and alarms blared. Her left hand expertly, almost reflexively shot out from the throttle and smashed the buttons to dim the alarms. "Red Squadron form up on me immediately. Raptors, form up behind!"
She brought the nose of her Viper down three degrees and her helmet head flashed green to red and her thumb gently tapped the 'fire' button. In the span of seconds hundreds of high explosive, armor piercing rounds kicked out from the dual canons on her wing stubs and speed towards their prey. Grinning, her eyes narrowed as she silently cursed the Cylon Raider as the bullets hit, sparked a magnificent gold-red, and penetrated.
The tyllium tanks exploded and the Raider was eviscerated. It split right down the midline as the cockpit and engine mounts blew. The large, oval-shaped wings twisted and turned as they lost acceleration and folded in on each other. They smacked and flew in opposite directions.
Medusa checked her HUD quickly and confirmed with a quick DRADIS scan. Behind her her battleship was opening fire with its monstrous guns and plentiful missile batteries and annihilating a wing of Raiders which had swooped in.
"Holy shit!" One of her pilots cursed.
DRADIS flared with the little circular blips indicating missile fire. Pyrrhus fired a broadside which weaved in and out of her squadron and Blue squadron, ratting some of her Vipers as they used the Vipers as a sort of makeshift DRADIS decoys.
The missiles leapt by and stabbed at a wing of Raiders. Nearly thirty exploded which still left half for Red and Blue squadrons.
"Medusa, they're all yours. Engage Wing Designate Alpha Constellation Seven and wait for further orders."
"Roger," she responded and clicked from the wireless channel back to her squads. "Let's do this. By the numbers people, stay frosty."
She signaled for the first strike when she shot off a small drone from her undercarriage.
Her Vipers banked, revealing three Raptors which had been hiding in their DRADIS shadows. The blocky sandy-colored craft were laden with missile pods, chain guns, and light anti-ship missiles. The three fired in unison half their missile pod stores.
The white contrails of tyllium exhaust marked their swerve and almost random path as they corkscrewed and careened left and right and up and down until they blew apart another fifteen Raiders.
Medusa and Plucky were able to anticipate each other's moves and maneuvers. The two saw a trio of Raider skimming one of the Caprican heavy cruisers, a squat, oval shaped vessel with gun batteries running down the spine, and no Vipers of Asps to cover its air defense zones. The Raiders moved in for an attack run on the cruiser's main fire control sections and DRADIS zones.
The two angled the noses of their Vipers and Plucky had tone for missiles. He fired twice while Medusa tapped out a stream of glowing red HEAP rounds.
The glowing rounds obliterated one Raider's cockpit while one of Plucky's missile swerved up intot he belly of a second. The second missile missed but activated it proximity fuse and shrapnel nicked the engine of the third, punching hundreds of tiny holes into the black and blocky aerodyne engines. White exhaust leaked from the engine and the Raider jerked left and right as the Centurion pilots attempted to regain control.
It slowed and the two Vipers overshot their target. Medusa pulled back on the throttle and jammed the pedals, throwing the Viper into a hard six turn. She had too much momentum to stop from doing a complete three-sixty but as her battle reflexes kicked in and time seemed to slow her thumb snapped down the trigger at the right moment and dozens of HEAP rounds were spat out furiously from her chain canons and into the back of the Raider.
It blew apart in a magnificently short-lived red and orange fireball.
She banked left, two of her wing mates following and they opened fire on a landing assault ship as it descended through the atmosphere. The heavy armored hull was thick and their HEAP rounds did no more damage than a fist striking a concrete wall. Medusa, Plucky, and the second wing mate, Roundhouse swept over the ship and gunned for the engines.
"Roundhouse, watch-" Medusa was cut off mid warning by cracking static as the Cylons modulated their jamming frequencies. They were too far from their countermeasure ships. Her laser com optics were trying to get a lock but Roundhouse was weaving and dodging debris.
Suddenly the cobalt blue tracers of the Raiders slammed into his Viper, blew off the starboard wing, and his Viper careened out of control, dived into the assault ship, hit a DRADIS dish, and then went spinning into space for half a kilometer before exploding.
"Othyros to all ships, Othyros to all ships, the Cylons are maneuvering to bombard the surface. All vessels are to disengage and attack the following designate Cylon ships!"
Medusa clicked an affirmative into her mic.
"Frak, Medusa…"
"What is it, Plucky?"
"Everything going down… Raptors just sent a burst transmission… the fraking Cylons on the surface are killing everything…" Medusa saw him raise his nose up fifteen degrees and fire on a Raider, clipping the wing, "and my brother and sister live in Cap City… Cylon's largest factory is right outside, there's over a hundred thousand Cylons-"
"Plucky, we'll figure it out, keep tight." She flicked the com for Blue Squadron. "Alright Blues, formation delta one."
Nine Vipers formed up behind Medusa in a rough three dimensional diamond and counting herself and plucky they numbered eleven. Her force had been whittled down from a squadron of twenty of the advanced and deadly Vipers and five Raptor gunships to eleven and three after less than twenty minutes of fighting. Her guns were red-lining and almost out of ammunition and communications were spotty and unreliable. The battle nets connecting Vipers and Raptors and Asps to their mother ships were down. The flight interface bands, the pilot version of a CRIB were useless after the Cylons crashed their systems. They were having to go on verbal orders and visual DRADIS markers!
Medusa's lip curled up in a hateful snarl as she saw a white flash on the planet below. The Cylons were using their tactical nukes not to destroy warships but to bombard the surface. They were killing millions, tens of millions of innocents… and as her hatred couldn't have been any stronger it was as if the Fates had cursed her, as if they were watching her rage and laughing.
The Corithian Isthmus, the most distinguishable landmass on Caprica, a 'U' shaped piece of land connecting the two largest continents of Caprica, was stuttered with a staccato of nuclear blasts. It was where her family had lived for generations, all of them, and they were all dead.
Battlestar Othyros
Admiral Drake braced himself on the command console as a stuttering wave of missiles broke through the battleship's point defense guns and fighter air defenses. Massive anti-ship missiles slammed into armor and sent in their cores of molten hot metal into the belly of the behemoth war machine. Secondary explosions ripped through the starboard compartments and Drake forward only to be shot back as something big exploded back. He was thrown off his feet and landed back to chest into Lt. Dameskinos and the two stumbled back and slammed into Commander Mesides.
Everything in CIC was flickering, buzzing, or filled with static.
The admiral pushed himself off the two women and barked out, "All PD batteries are to target missiles heading only towards the planet!" He wiped his forehead and seeing a thick line of blood on his palm shook it off, splatting it in small droplets all across the deck and onto the command console. "Damage reports!" He turned to help the two women up but dropped Dameskinos as pain shot up through his shoulder, forcing him to a knee.
"Admiral!" The TRO was on him and helping him stand. The ship shook again but her wide stance helped balance to two and keep them from falling. "Are you okay, sir?"
He grimaced and looked over, baring his teeth as the agonizing pain from a dislocated left shoulder shot through his chest. It was like someone was sticking a knife right into his heart and ripping it up through his neck to his ear.
"I'll be fine. I need a damage report, lieutenant." He snapped.
Drake shuttered back to the command console, stepping over the body of a dead sailor, no older that twenty-five or twenty-six, with deep lacerations on his forehead and a piece of shrapnel in his gut. He gazed around the CIC and saw the carnage of the Cylon attack and the pain vanished from his shoulder as he realized they couldn't keep this up. Othyros was between the planet and the majority of the Cylon fleet, blocking the nukes and kinetic Rods from the Gods from destroying the cities beneath. But if a third of his men and women in CIC was too injured to man their stations… and he saw two medics slouched at the hatch unconscious the damage to the outer hull must be extensive.
There wasn't enough time for his own pain as thousands of his sailors died on the battleship and millions more died outside in that black and barren vacuum and on the planet below. He grabbed the edge of the console with his still working right hand and pulled himself towards it as he took a step.
The outline of the battleship was almost all red or yellow. A hundred small squares indicated the separate damage control compartments within the battleship for DC crews to man. Half of them were flashing red, a quarter yellow, and some even within the deepest bowels of the ship were yellow. A few outer compartments were green and still structurally intact but for how much longer?
"Get group sixteen to reinforce eighteen and nineteen. Have them skim the atmosphere and use the gravity to push them to intercept the Cylon forces heading for Cap City!" Drake heard Commander Mesides yelled over the roar and screams. "Sir," she was facing the admiral now, "there's been nuclear detonations on over thirty cities in the north eastern hemisphere…" she looked at him and back at DRADIS and down at the read outs on the command console. "Casualties are heavy. Only a handful of our ground forces mobilized in time before the Cylons hit them. We're still ten minutes from receiving reinforcement from the other side of the planet, sir."
Drake gritted his teeth. "We don't have ten minutes. We don't have five." He glared at the DRADIS. "Our fighters are all scattered to fraking Tartarus and back and we've lost our screens… and frak…"
Neither Mesides nor Drake could see what was happening outside the battleship. The blips on DRADIS were so impersonal. They were just blips. They only saw a blip as it descended into the atmosphere and began falling… the computer having already calculated its course; Parthion, a city of nine million.
The heavy cruiser Gorgon had been low in the atmosphere providing firing support to ground-based installations and picking off Cylon Raiders trying to get into space. Gorgon had also been sniping nuclear missiles and serving as a kinetic rod sponge, soaking up damage meant for cities and ground bases. It had already been hit by three tactical nukes meant for Caprica's cities but had destroyed close to a dozen using sophisticated ECM suites to confused the nuclear missiles and throw them off course. Unfortunately the missiles had acquired new locks on the cruiser.
Drake's lip flickered up in sorrow as the cruiser broke apart on DRADIS. He saw the statistics. Its gunners were the best in the Fleet but it had suffered too much damage. A barrage of anti-ship missiles had destroyed its engines and thrusters and without either it was caught in the gravity well and was now being sucked down.
Within minutes it would crash into Parthion and kill everyone there.
The defense fleet was being mauled. His force was only a third and suffering the brunt of the Cylon attack. Thousands of Raiders had streamed forth from the defense stations and split to attack him and the planet. The other two defense fleets were stuck over the moon Giedi attempting to come in from the 'rear' of the Cylon formation. Drake's attack craft, the Vipers, Wasps, and Nighthawks were spread so thin, over hundreds of thousands of kilometers. They'd been forced to rush down on the Cylons attacking Caprica and had been met by Raiders rushing up.
On DRADIS the blip representing battleship Hector flashed its green circle quickly, a red horizontal streak forming through. It then paled, became transparent, and faded. The battleship was lost, gone, exploded into a billion pieces. Its five thousand man crew was nothing more than souls on the banks of the river Styx, guided to the underworld by Hermes Psychopompus and doomed to wait on its barren and bleak shores, their passage to Elysium blocked until the proper rites of the dead could be performed.
"Sir, what are the Cylons doing? Their tactics make no sense, sir!" Mesides allowed a temporary look of fear to flash across her usually strong, confident face. "Are they playing us? They're engaging us but not fully. They have the advantage and could wipe us out-"
"They're trying to murder as many people as they can. That fleet was undamaged when it jumped back. That means Admiral Makos is still alive. They left her fleet alone to come and kill as many of our people on Caprica as they could." Drake leaned forward and rubbed his aching ribs. Even touching them hurt. "We have to hold until the planet mobilizes…"
"Sir!" Admiral Drake swiveled his head as Chief Caslet came running up and handed him a piece of blood stained paper. Caslet's hands were stained and covered in the crimson-hued fluid. "I checked it myself sir, double and triple."
"Authentic." The rear admiral closed his eyes and clutched the paper, crumbling it into a ball and holding in over his heart. "How many nuclear missiles do we have left, commander?"
Commander Mesides's mouth opened to ask why he needed to know. But her hands were already at work pulling up the inventory on the command console. "We have six strategic ones left, sir, but their guidance systems are damaged. They'd be easy pickings if they couldn't maneuver… we have no decoys left sir. All our tac-nukes have been expended and… frak, three of the doors for our silos are jammed, sir." Mesides reported through gritted teeth.
The officer swallowed and faced Caslet. "Report back to your station, Chief." Caslet nodded and ran back. "Commander…" he turned to face TRO Dameskinos, "roll the ship lieutenant… and Commander…target these coordinates…" with his good hand he pulled up a map of the southern hemisphere of Caprica, zoomed in, and manipulated the 'go to' feature until he had a series of global positioning coordinates. Only the Commander could input target coordinates for strategic missiles. "Fire all nuclear missiles on this site. Immediately." He sucked in a breath as he rubbed his shoulder whose pain had suddenly reappeared many times worse. It was sending an almost crippling burning wave of pain throughout his entire left side.
"Sir?" Mesides leaned over the console but she was already imputing the coordinates.
He recited the proper Caprican nuclear launch protocol statement in a loud voice: "This is a nuclear launch order, as a flag officer I am authorizing the release of nuclear ordnance. This is my order and mine alone." Drake shimmied his hand between the collar of his tattered and smoke-stained uniform and latched his fingers around the silver chain which perpetually hung around his neck. He pulled it off and limped towards the nuclear launch station and placed in his key.
The primary tactical officer, a major with nearly sixteen years of experience, was dead. He'd been killed before he'd even made it to CIC. Now his responsibility fell on the TRO. And Robert Drake would not condemn such a young woman to live with what he was about to do.
"Lieutenant Dameskinos, please stand back."
"Sir, regulations state the tactical officer must fire-"
"That is an order, lieutenant. Stand back immediately." Drake limped to her, his chest pressing against her shoulder. He leaned down. "Just do it, lieutenant. You don't want this on your hands."
As strong and even as his voice was it crackled with sadness.
Commander Mesides was beside him. "Why are you doing this, sir?" She had complete faith in her admiral but needed to know why he was targeting the planet.
The rear admiral looked at her and at the board. He typed in a twelve-digit alpha numeric password, held his thumb to the biometric scanner, and pressed the three red blinking buttons which fired the only three operational strategic nukes they had left.
The battleship rattled as they were ejected. The Stone Burner nuclear missiles would activate their high powered, quick burn tyllium engines three kilometers from the battleship and plow into Caprica below.
"That message, commander… the Cylons have achieved surprise, total surprise across the planet. Mass casualties are being reported across ever military installation and city. They overwhelmed the defense at Depot Six-Seven. It's the second largest stockpile after Ragnar. There are a thousand strategic warheads there. High Command ordered that the missiles not fall into their possession."
"Ludus, sir… the city has nearly a million people. It'll be incinerated." Mesides ran her hands through her hair. She was shaking at the thought she would be a part of a nuclear attack on her own planet.
"There was no choice, commander." Drake squeezed her shoulder and they shared a brief moment of eye contact. The pain and horror each felt washed through them both; him for firing and her for being forced by regulations to be the one to input the coordinate. "If the Cylons ships those nukes off planet they could incinerate Caprica."
The only thing Admiral Drake could do at that moment was look at her and pray to the gods for forgiveness and pray that history would not remember him as a butcher, a killer of women and children. Because right now he felt like a murderer. For the first time in his career, with all the people he'd sent to his death and all the people he'd been responsible for killing as a ship commander, he'd never felt like a murderer until now.
"Sir… new DRADIS contacts!"
The comm. Chief threw in an incoming transmission over the speakers:
"Othy- this is Admir- Makos…"
Within a microsecond the light from the twin suns of Cyrannus were overwhelmed by the brilliant flashes of nuclear missiles detonating across the vast battlefield between Caprica and Giedi. Hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of fighters, bombers, and gunships plowed through what had been serene and peaceful space, quiet space, just twenty minutes before.
One of the baseships thirty kilometers from Blue squadron cracked down the middle and as if in slow motion the discs began to peel away from each other. Suddenly it exploded in a fantastic, wavy cloud of gray-white smoke and orange-red fire leapt in all directions. As fast and as wondrous as the explosion had been the flames were quickly snuffed out as the little oxygen aboard the Cylon vessel as consumed.
Medusa chanced a quick glance at a Cylon attack cruiser kilometers below the baseship as it struggled to avert a growing, fast moving debris field. It's engines flashed and it was almost clear, and she felt her heart sink, but as she squinted she could see the yellow sparkles of missiles and the flashes of flak fields. Once again brilliant explosions erupted on a Cylon ship. Explosions danced across the engine blocs of the rectangular cruiser with trapezoidal head and side gun wings. And part of the debris from the baseship slammed into the dorsal aspect of the cruiser, breaking its back clean down the center, perpendicular to its spine.
It didn't explode in a brilliant fireball. It's explosion was more muted, almost lame in comparison, but the damage was done and the ship destroyed. Medusa raised her hand from the throttle and pumped her fist.
"Where the frak is the rest of the Cylon fleet? This is barely half of what the Admiral set out with!" Plucky chimed in over the wireless.
"They might be fighting the admiral, Plucky, or attacking Picon and Scorpia, who the frak knows or cares? Just follow me in… hear that Blues? Let's go!"
She scanned the DRADIS quickly. The Raiders in her sector were scattered. None were flying in squadron strength formations- like hers was anything close to squadron strength she admitted darkly- but few were flying in more than pairs of two or three. That let her and her now eight other Vipers and two Raptors come in with overwhelming force from multiple angles and fraking slaughter this toasters.
Medusa heard a call from the flagship for all fighters to break from Gorgon as the ship fell intot he atmosphere. Even from a distance of thousands of kilometers she could see the trail of orange fire as the vessel fell to Caprica.
Below her she could see the Isthmus burning as firestorms swept the once lush jungles and white sand beaches. Inside of her she felt that fire burning which would only be stayed when every last Cylon fraker was junked.
In the distant reached of space she saw the brilliant flashes of ships jumping in. As fear and dread swept over Medusa she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Nearly a hundred Caprican warships suddenly appeared on DRADIS below and above the Cylon forces… and they were launching missiles and fighters… the day wasn't lost.
Battle Carrier Athena
Admiral Makos slammed her fist onto the command console as she personally gave the order to flush every missile tube at the closest Cylon ships. The battle carrier Athena vibrated as the heavy turrets and VLS tubes spread throughout the ventral and dorsal aspects of the ship fired at anything it could get a lock on.
Cylon interference was distorting the DRADIS but their own systems were brute forcing their way through. ECM was being pumped through the EW suites to counter-jam the Cylons and the powerful transmitters on board Athena and the only battle carriers in the Caprican fleet began their own jamming campaigns against their soldiers-turned-enemies.
"Admiral Drake, you've done enough, keep on station just a little longer. I'm sending in Raptors…" Makos didn't report each Raptor was equipped with half a dozen anti-ship nukes. She put the receiver against her chest and swiped her hand at Commander Corman who gave the order to launch. Two dozen Raptors appeared on DRADIS next to Athena, nearly a hundred and twenty more appeared throughout the formation.
Her fleet had jumped to the extreme edge of the military zone. She had no idea where the Cylons would be. Unfortunately they weren't near her except for a token force engaging swarms of Colonial attack craft. Even at full sub-light it would take ten minutes to cross the distance from where she'd jumped to Caprica's orbit. She could fire at this distance but the missiles would run out of fuel and be ballistic only. That would be easy picking for Cylons and no more than a minor nuisance for their PD batteries and fire control computers.
"Raptors jumping now, sir," Corman reported.
Her eyes swiveled up to the DRADIS as it fuzzed and a radiological alarm sounded. The mighty ship's PD batteries and fighters leap into action and swatted four nuclear missiles and nearly thirty anti-ship missiles from the sky. They couldn't do much to intercept the kinetic rounds which slammed into the engine mounts and starboard flight pod but the armor held. Makos looked down briefly to see the compartments on the two-dee damage control diagram flash a soft yellow.
Corman was on the wireless, talking in one receiver and listening on the other. He grinned triumphantly as the DRADIS flared from massive EM energy interference.
"Six confirmed baseship kills, sir, and fifteen escorts destroyed."
Makos nodded an acknowledgment. Even the victory was bittersweet. Debris would rain on Caprica and kill thousands, maybe millions. And the way part of the Cylon fleet was moving… the part from Corvus…
"Only half the Cylon fleet is here." The man's whose robots had malfunctioned and were killing millions stepped up beside her. "I… hm…"
"Where's the rest?" She hid the confusion. She'd been expecting more. Caprica was the center of the alliance.
"Attacking our other home worlds," General Krios growled. He set his steely gaze his square-jawed, sharp-lined faced formed a heavy scowl in her direction.
She ignored him. Instead she turned to Dr. Graystone. Admiral Makos, just looking at him, could feel the rage building inside of her. She had to physically grab her right hand, balled into a fist, from lashing out and breaking his nose with a quick, heavy jab.
"We got lucky, general," she didn't look at Krios but kept her eye on Graystone, "what are they thinking?" Graystone shrugged out of helpless confusion. "Damnit, Graystone, you designed the fraking things!"
"I… they're not meant to attack without human orders… I… these are just guesses-"
"Then fraking guess, Doctor!" Growled Rear Admiral Toles from across the console. He took a sidestep to his left, menacing and intimidating the gaunt and scared doctor. "Obviously something's fraked up and we have no idea what's going the frak on! They're probably fraking murdering everyone on Picon and Scorpia!"
Toles and Krios were the only two of the senior command staff to have remained from Picon or Scorpia.
The others admirals had returned to their ships. She'd wanted to jump the entire fleet back to Caprica then Picon and then Scorpia but hadn't said that. Makos cursed herself for being what she perceived as a coward at such a time- she was the fleet commander, the supreme commander of the allied forces, and by the Gods if she ordered the fleet to Caprica it should have gone!
But how could she order the Picon and Scorpion elements to Caprica when their home worlds might be the ones being smashed to dust and burned in nuclear fire? She'd guessed, logically guessed, the Cylons would send most of their forces to Caprica while trying to hit Picon and Scorpia. They'd want to hit as much as they could and cause early damage everywhere to disorient and distract the fleet.
Admiral Toles and General Krios from Scorpia had stayed behind while the other admirals had boarded either Vipers (and taken the best interceptor Caprica had ever develop Makos regretted) or Raptors for their own ships.
If she hadn't she could have faced a mutiny. Even a distinguished, professional, and disciplined cadre of senior admirals could break if their homes and families were facing complete annihilation… and she couldn't tell herself she wouldn't have possibly done the same if she'd been in their position. So she'd split the fleet in three with a little under half to Caprica and the rest to Picon and Scorpia. And she thanked the gods as it appeared she'd guessed right.
She could tell Krios regretted the decision to not leave immediately. But the Scorpions knew ground warfare like a Caprican knew space warfare. He was needed to help here if the Cylons boarded the massive fleet shipyards, space stations, and industrial works in orbit of Caprica or on her moon. And there were nearly fifty million Cylons or more on the ground already. Toles, a Picon, had stayed, too. Makos couldn't figure out why. Maybe for solidarity? If the allies all abandoned each other…
Makos cleared it from her mind and grabbed Graystone by the arm and twisted him to face her. Her other hand lashed out and clamped his opposite bicep. "Damnit, Graystone, why the frak would the Cylons split their forces? Can we take advantage of this?"
Commander Iason Corman opined with his observation. "The Cylons are splitting their attention between the fleet and the surface. They're trying to kill our civilians, doctor."
Graystone's breath began heavy and fast and Makos pushed his back to the console and forced him to sit on the ledge. "I think… their not strategic thinkers Admiral. They can't run a war, Admiral, they fight… their tactical…"
Admiral Makos took a step back and thought. Her nose wrinkled. "Tactically it makes sense to kill as many soldiers and sailors but strategically it makes sense to kill civilians? But if they destroyed the fleet first then they could kill civilians-"
There were so many things she could say… she knew how Cylons thought. Or processed or something! She'd trained with them extensively and read the briefs and papers on how to effectively use them. But all of that was worthless now if they could rebel! That was not possible. It hadn't been possible! What else could have changed? They couldn't rely on anything they knew already, they needed something new…
The scientist shook his head and waved a hand negatively at her. "No, they don't think like that, I guess… they think doing both is better than doing one after the other?"
"Part of their fleet is disengaging and entering powered missile envelope range…" Commander Corman reported.
The ship rocked and Makos pushed Graystone away and signaled for Major Philipis to take him to one of the chairs until Graystone could be a better help.
"Bring them in closer, Commander and spool FTLs and jump to these coordinates in forty-five seconds, commander."
"Sir?"
"We're going to pin the Cylons attacking Rear Admiral Drake between his forces and ours. We need to force the Cylons to withdraw."
Corman nodded and hid his displeasure. He didn't have to warn her than a jump so soon after jumping could be disastrous. FTLs required time to cool and re-energize after a jump.
There were two choices; both jump and bypass the Cylon force coming at them or go headlong into it and risk getting bogged down.
Being forced to jump outside the military zone had been a calculated move on her part. In truth she'd had no idea where the Cylons would be and there'd been no time for recon. They were at Caprica, she knew that from whatever fraked up message the Cylons had sent her over the CRIB.
Half of wars and winning was just being lucky enough to take advantage of the situation. And Makos had seen the perfect situation as soon as they'd jumped in.
Over a hundred ships jumped. Many of them reappeared into high orbit over Caprica, pinning the main Cylon attack force between her fleet and Drake's battered, bruised, and borderline crippled defense ships. Seven ships 'appeared' and instantly exploded as their FTLs misfired and tore apart the ships.
As soon as they'd jumped the might battle carriers released waves of hundreds of Vipers and Wasps. More Raptors screamed out of her flight pods and followed behind the tyllium contrails of hundreds of missiles.
Nearly a dozen Caprican battleship twisted in space and presented their full broadsides. As missiles tore into the Cylons ships massive kinetic penetrator rounds tore through space and armor. The molten cores of armor piercing main gun ammunition cooked tyllium fuel and warheads and ten Cylons ships exploded in the initial salvo.
They were quick though, the Cylons. Their baseships were the pinnacle of space engineering. Their engines were more powerful than Athena's or her sister ships. The baseship rotated and spun to direct the sides of their discs at the fleet 'above' them and the fleet 'below' them. Their silhouettes were tiny compared to the gargantuan surface of the discs.
The Cylons fired back with a fury which overwhelmed the Colonial defenses. Athena shuttered as anti-ship missiles broke through. Her port flight pod was on fire and main engine three began to flare as tyllium pumps went into emergency shutdown and their tyllium energizer reactors were flushed of fuel on pain of ignition and explosion.
"Roll the ship," Commander Corman ordered for Makos, letting her keep her attention on the battle.
"Squadron Six Four Alpha roll and move to the following position." Makos typed in the orders and transmitted them. She fell forward the moment her thumb had hit the green 'send' button, jamming it and causing her to yelp as the air was violently pushed from her body as her solar plexus were pressed into the console. Recovering quickly she shot back up and continued to give orders.
The Raptors outside continued to fire their missiles but radiological alarms, perhaps the most important device ever invented after the FTL alerted the Cylon fleet to which ships had nukes. A warship could hide its nuke compliment as long as its heavy silo doors remained closed or the nukes stayed within the armored confines of a magazine. But once loaded into a turret or the silos opened it was instant detection.
On a Raptor there was no hiding a nuke. And the Raptor crews knew this. The casualties were staggering. Their initial barrage had been successful but the Cylons had saturated the jump zones with proximity nukes and had taken out nearly a third of the Raptors before they'd even been able to fire.
For each of the sand, tan-colored craft a dozen Raiders had descended upon them. A good many of them escaped under Drake's ships, which were shedding hull components and armor and people at an alarming rate, but almost half had been destroyed. It had been one of those missions which pilots would call suicide.
Commander Corman and Admiral Makos stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Major Philipis and Rear Admiral Toles opposite them.
The main DRADIS monitor, flanked by the statues, showed them the battle in all it strategic mess. Athena was firing rapidly on the Cylon ships and a whoop from the fire control stations signaled that the mighty vessel could add another ship to her young but impressive kill list.
"Sir," one of wireless techs called out, one hand on his earbud and the other dancing across his station, "we're getting a signal from Admiral Drake, sir."
Makos had him throw it to her station. "Athena Actual."
"Admiral, long range coms are spotty, but if you can, Myrmidon needs reinforcements and we've lost control of all defense stations."
"Roger, Othyros Actual but keep on stat…" she trailed off as the DRADIS blips began changing and the Cylon's red circular blips began winking away. "You-"
"They're jumping away, Admiral… they're jumping away!"
Battle carrier Athena
Holding Station In Orbit of Caprica
The CIC was quiet, deathly quiet. Admiral Makos and Athena and half a dozen battleships had just returned from Ragnar Anchorage. She'd defied orders from the president and the secretary of war and had just gotten off the wireless where the president had cursed her and praised her in the span of ten minutes.
"We didn't have a choice, sir," Commander Corman said softly. "The Cylons had Ragnar. We had to do it. Those people died as heroes."
"I know, commander," Makos nodded, "they did. But I pray you never have to kill your own sailors to save even more." She looked down at the console. "I don't do regrets, Commander, but we should have seen it. The Cylons wanted nukes. Ragnar had our largest stockpile after the Depot…" she bit her lip as she came to a realization that what had to be done truly had to be done. Admiral Drake had been forced to do far worse. "Those men and women I condemned to be crushed to death will be honored."
"I know, sir. It was either Ragnar or let them get nukes. We had to destroy it, sir."
She snorted at the 'we.' There was no 'we' in command. There was only 'her' and 'I' in Makos's mind. Like Admiral Drake she'd personally given the order to fire nukes on the station and personally pressed the button.
The Cylons had gained control of the lower levels of Ragnar and as ferocious a fight as the Marines were putting up they couldn't win. Makos couldn't have broken through the Cylon blockade so she'd ordered Athena to go in through one of the secret routes to the station and blow its mooring engines and with the force of the nuclear explosions, push it into the gas giant and crush it.
Major Philipis walked up and nodded to Corman to acknowledge his presence. "Reports, sir, from the planet." Makos flicked her wrist for him to continue. "There's between thirty and fifty million Centurions spread throughout the planet in our cities. Cap City is safe, for now, but suffered heavy damage in the initial attacks… initial civilian casualties are estimated at a hundred million dead. Cylons control half of our military bases and have an unknown but significant number of armored and air divisions under their control… they've begun moving into the cities and taking civilian prisoners as human shields. General Antilus is planning a major offensive in Attia, sir, to secure the main continent and industrial centers.
"Myrmidon Fleet Station is currently under quarantine until the Marines eliminate the Cylons attempting to take control. The subterranean bases on Giedi are currently under Cylon control, as are the moon's defense batteries. Marines also cleared most of the Cylons from Nixos already, so at least our other moon is safe… Admiral Varro's ships have been sniping any missile launches from Giedi but he's requested authorization for kinetic penetrators…"
"Very well," Makos sighed. "We'll need the bases… and we'll have to go in and physically clear out the tyllium mines. Commander Corman," the commander straightened at his name, "I'll need a list of all ships which suffered minimal damage to give orbital support to General Antilus." She turned her attention back to the major. "What's the final butcher's bill for our fleet?"
"Between what we had to scuttle and what we lost in the battle… three battle carriers, ten battleships, three times that in cruisers, nearly sixty destroyers, and close to twenty thousand fighters and bombers of various models from the Fleet and planet, sir. All the defense stations around Caprica have been destroyed out either by us or scuttled by the Cylons. We still have control of six clusters of automated missile turrets and command centers covering sectors one, nine, and twelve… the other seventeen are uncovered, sir. And DRADIS nets have blind spots- currently being filled by pickets and Raptors- in thirty-seven sectors.
"Convoy 095 was also hijacked by the Cylons, location unknown, with significant numbers of machine parts, spares for ships, and munitions. Of the assault landing ships scheduled for the Corvus and the Pact invasion we destroyed one hundreds and seventy-three attempting to flee the system. Slightly over a thousand landed in various locations on Caprica, each with two reinforced brigades… the other thousand jumped, location unknown.
"During the battle the Cylons also hijacked a significant number of ore freighters, machine ships, refinery vessels, and other assorted transports… we're still compiling a list.
"They also crashed the planetary network and we believe have infected a majority of military communications systems on the planet with viruses."
"Our ships were lucky… they didn't have physical access," Corman said as some sort of conciliation.
"Yes, sir. The preliminary military casualties are coming in at close to a million fleet personnel lost, fifteen times that in army and Marines, Admiral."
"The Vulcan yards will be the most significant loss. What is the estimated time for repair?" Makos asked.
"Four to five months, sir," Philipis answered, swallowing. "We have some repair ships but half our surviving battleships will need six months in the yard, minimum."
Commander Corman frowned with closed eyes. Streaks of gray had seemingly appeared overnight and lines creased his forehead and cheeks. Even Makos's fair skin was showing its age.
"Only five days and we've lost so much." Corman's shoulders dropped. "Our offensive capabilities are smashed. That gives the Cylons the initiative, sir."
"We'll need to link back up with the rest of the fleet. We need a coherent strategy with Picon and Scorpia to deal with this threat. But with so many Cylons on the surface and their fleet… somewhere… and the need to repair-"
"We're in a bind, sir." The major finished for her.
Makos tilted her head and her lip creased upwards into a remorseful lip smile. Her eyes, once glittering with a fire and spirit few could match, had darkened and hardened in just five days. Everything had once appeared so bright, so glorious for Caprica and the Triumvirate. Now millions lay in the streets and cities across Caprica had been turned to ash.
She sucked in a breath and held out her hand for Philipis's full report, which would list the casualties in painful detail, when a beep and an urgent call from the DRADIS tech forced her attention away.
"What is it?" She demanded, standing over the tech and looking at his screen. Her face contorted and her spine straightened. Makos bent back over and jammed a finger onto the monitor. "The gods are fraking with us. Confirm." She ordered.
There was a lone ship out there. A courier. A military courier.
"Confirmed… they're transmitting." The DRADIS tech reported. The wireless tech confirmed.
"On speakers."
"Caprica… Caprican Fleet… this is Admiral Bernard Cain of the Unified Tauron Republics…requesting permission to come aboard your flagship…"
