BATTLESTAR HERMES COMBAT INFORMATION CENTRE

"Jump completed" reported Burmeister.

"Report!" ordered Bowman. The crew of the CIC worked their stations to assess their current situation. Burmeister monitored the DRADIS screen and confirmed that there were no contacts in the immediate vacinity.

"DRADIS is clear sir" she said. "No sign of pursuit!"

"Very good" said Bowman as he stood there staring at the screen hanging from the ceiling of the CIC. Silently he pondered the next move. The jump they had just completed had now put them that much further away from Scorpia. Bowman mentally ran through all his experience leading upto this point. He knew that what he was proposing was not going to be easy but he figured that the Cylons may still be disorganised enough to allow Hermes to sneak in? A counter argument suddenly came to mind. The Cylons aren't Human! They very well may have anticipated that avenue and manufactured enough of the new Centurions to insure their occupational army was of sufficient strength. But they were endowed with the spirit of man thus may have inherited some human flaw that he could take advantage of? Suddenly for the first time Bowman was confronted with putting his plan into action and the gravity of their situation. In the corner of his eye he saw Dytto waiting for his next order.

"We will remain at Condition One for fourty minutes just to be sure that we haven't been followed and then stand down to make preperations for our first jump to Scorpia" he commanded. He then turned to Burmeister. "Lieutenant!"

"Yes sir!" replied Burmeister.

"When we stand down from Condition One i want you to conduct a full tactical overview before we start back to Scorpia. Weapons. Vipers. Raptors. Marines. The works. Get Griffon and Imlay to spare no details regarding the air group. Please present it to to me at 0900 tomorrow."

There was a slight hesitance in Burmeister's voice as she acknowledged the command. As Bowman turned back he scanned the room with his eyes catching the nervous glance from the odd crewmember. The apprehension in the room was almost tangable. Maybe it was the shadow of having just been attacked but you could almost feel the fear in the air that was developing and worst of all consuming the ship. Because you have no choice is always the worst reason to do anything.

The next fourty minutes seemed to take a century to pass. Except for Burmeister and Stinger's brief encounter during the mission to the Hellenic Traveller they hadn't heard anything from the Cylons in over a week. Some had even thought they had escaped from them for good now that they were so far away from the twelve colonies. Clearly this was an error. As the clock ticked away Bowman replayed the attack in his mind. He tried to imagine it from the Cylon point of view. In the heat of the fight he had assumed that the Raiders were scouts. Now with the benefit of hindsight something was puzzling him. The second Raider jumped in a short while after the first. Even if both Raiders were on seperate scouting missions how did the first communicate to the second one for assisstance? There were no other contacts on DRADIS and therefore assisstance was out of the range of the Cylon wireless. So how then did the second scout know that the first had found the Hermes? Unless they weren't scouts and the attack was a poorly executed hit-and-run but that possibility made even less sense? If the Cylons knew where Hermes was then there would be no need for a hit-and-run. Hermes was hardly in a position to fight off a Baseship and its Raiders and the Cylons would have made a major 'snafu' by revealing themselves to Hermes that significantly under strength. It would have been better to have continued to quietly track Hermes while reinforcements were called in. No - something about the attack troubled Bowman and the harder he thought about it the more and more confucing it became. He started to feel like he and his ship were being toyed with like a yard of string in the claws of a mischevious kitten. As his mind turned he realised that the clock was coming upto fourty minutes since completion of the jump.

"Alright stand down from Condition One!" ordered Bowman. There were some sighs of relief from the younger crewmembers in the CIC but both Bowman and Dytto shared a glance that silently cursed them for their ignorance but also envied them for it. It was a rare moment, born out of the heat of combat, where the two men saw things completely eye-to-eye.


Burmeister got to work on her latest assignment quickly, almost impatiently. Her first visit was to the port side Hanger Deck where Chief Imlay was working on a Viper and was in no mood to be bothered by her. Once again Slammer had lived upto his name and had knocked out the hydraulics in his landing strut. Nevertheless her insistance paid off and Imlay soon relegated the task of repairing the strut to a young female deckhand who was, unfortunately for her, just walking past. Burmeister followed Imlay into his office where the two of them sat going over the log books of every Viper, Raptor and Tanker aboard Hermes. A fully loaded Jupiter-class Battlestar should be able to muster close to two hundred operational Vipers. In Hermes' present condition there were just eighty-six airworthy Vipers. Twenty four more Vipers Imlay classed as repairable but without the parts to be repaired and so these were being cannibalised to keep the other eighty-six flying. Imlay surmised that there were wreckage from at least nine other Vipers that they were scouring for parts but the truth was that the long term situation looked grim.

"If only we had a Viper factory like on the Mercury-class" sighed Imlay. "But then again where would we find the raw material for it to function not to mention finding pilots to fly them."

Moving on to Raptors Hermes still had thirty seven fully functioning spacecraft and it were these little ships that Burmeister was most interested in at this point since they were fundamental to Bowman's plan to scavenge supplies. A common issue that kept recurring during their conversation was the issue of fuel for the sublight engines of the air wing. Not a single Combat Air Patrol had been launched let alone any training for over a week now in an effort to preserve the fuel for as long as possible. Luckily Hermes did have simulators for both Vipers and Raptors but as the pilots always put it "There just aint no substitute for the feel of actual vacum all around you." How could anyone blame Slammer for botching his landing when he hadn't landed a Viper for real in over eight days?

Having got everything she needed from Imlay she then proceeded to the pilots room and gave Grffon the same thorough drilling regarding the pilots. As expected the same grumbles came up and Burmeister was quick to cut Griffon off on a lot of them stating she had already been through this with Imlay and her instructions were not to make a list of 'Wouldn't it be nice if?' but rather to make a report on what the Hermes could actually muster for the operation to Scorpia.

As the evening wore on she had made her assessments of the engine room and the overall weapon status of the ship. It was tiring and tedious work but Burmeister kept herself at it as if refusing to stop for breath but finally the report was complete. She stopped and locked at the digital watch on her hand. The numbers read 02:25:55 and counting. With the sudden realistaion that she had been up for close to twenty hours and in that time had faced off a Cylon attack as well as her survey all of which was made worse by the low rations that the ship was on due to the supply shortage made her suddenly come over quite light headed. She knew she had to stop and rest.

Being a junior officer Burmeister was fortunate enough to have one of the 'luxury' quarters aboard Hermes being that there were only four bunks in the same space as one of the enlisted quarters which could have as much as eight to ten bunks in them. Burmeister sat in the space where her bunk was located. Ever since her first tour she had always taken the bottom bunk after an incident involving her getting out of bed a lot quicker than she had anticipated. She lay in 'her' space and rested her head against the back wall. This was the first time all day that her mind had stopped. This was always the worst part of the day for her because it gave her the opportunity to look back. Her eyes suddenly fell shut and she was asleep.

"Josh!" she gasped suddenly. The nightmare had returned. It was the same one she had been having ever since her secret fiance was killed eighteen days ago when a damaged Cylon Raider crashed into the landing control room on the starboard Hanger Pod where he was working. The Raider hits and Josh is screaming as his body is consumed by fire. She fought to keep back the memories everyday since it happened by consuming herself with work and there was plenty to do but at night he would come back in her dreams. She didn't even have a photo of him but she could still hear his voice speaking to her the last time they were allowed to be a couple.


FRIARS HOTEL, PICON CITY
29 DAYS EARLIER
FIVE DAYS BEFORE DESTRUCTION OF THE COLONIES

Chloe Burmeister was frantically tying her shoe laces to complete her uniform. The sound of running water could be heard from the doorway to the on suite bathroom as her fiancé, Joshua Albert, showered. Suddenly the water stopped and Joshua appeared in the doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist.

"You don't waste any time do you?" said Joshua as he leaned against the doorway his tone not even pretending to hide his annoyance. Chloe sensed the ensuing argument and turned to pick up her jacket off the chair.

"Don't do this now!" she pleaded softly.

"Well how do you expect me to behave?" he said. "You just get up and go in the morning like we're having an affair or something. Then when we're on the Hermes you completely shut me out!"

"Josh!" protested Chloe. "You know what will happen to us if they find out. Dishonourable discharge! Everything we ever worked for would be just thrown away. Two officers who are in a relationship cannot serve on the same ship. Once you transfer to the Olympus we can go public and then we can get married."

Joshua paused for a moment as he stared at her. His mind was racing as it always was at this point. Then a horrible thought crept into his mind. Maybe she's just using that as an excuse. Maybe she's just playing me?

"Is that what you want?" he asked. "Really?"

"How can you say that?" she cried. "I am Gemonese! I-I shouldn't even be in the same room as you until we're married! Do you know what my parents would do to me if they ever found out we've slept together? I did that for you!"

"Okay" said Josh apologetically as he rushed to embrace her. "I know I just get so frustrated sometimes. I hate all this cloak-and-dagger type love."

"And you think I don't? Just…Just a little longer and all this sneaking around can end. But in the meantime we have to behave like officers."

Joshua looked into her dark blue eyes. In that instant all doubt erased.

"I know" said Joshua as he kissed her forehead. "Go on. You better go. I'll head out in an hour or so. I'll see you on the Raptor back to Hermes." The two of them hugged tightly and whispered "I love you" to each other before she turned and left.


PRESENT DAY

The pain of that last day that they were allowed to be a couple rushed over her. It was overwhelming. It was so powerful and Chloe had only one way that she felt she could cope with it. It was something she hadn't done for years but was now doing it every every night it seemed. Stuffed into her pillow was a small pen knife wrapped in a bloodied old rag. She closed the curtain on her bunk for privacy before she opened the rag and flicked out the old knife. She took off her uniform on the top half of her body right down to her bra and held the knife to the top of her arm. There were aready several small scratches on her arm that were still healing. Each one was no longer than inch.

As the blade cut into her skin she didn't feel the pain only the momentary relief that it brought with it.