General Alland.

Tomas walked among the rushing workers. Marine transports were well equipped with medical facilities. Combined with the CMS Solace's facilities they had enough beds to take care of the worst cases.

Worst cases. Tomas wanted to spit at the thought.

"Sir, we've got a count," Bransan said.

"And?"

"We found two hundred dead bodies in several units— some were shot… others…" Bransan gathered his thoughts. "Were left to die from dehydration."

"Understood." And there was no reason for that, especially since you were going to have to clean up the mess later. You could have killed them quickly. The first war had had cruelty aplenty— but it had always had a purpose and more so, a white hot rage behind it that you could see— the way the cylons fought was not simply a war for freedom, but a war for vengeance. Even so there had been an underlying logic to it, and in a few cases, well buried by the propaganda of the time, the cylons had exercised mercy.

But this…this was…

Sadism. What a human emotion. How unlike the old cylons…but then it doesn't look like we're dealing with the old cylons.

"And the humanoid…constructs?"

"We've got them in a temp morgue, under guard. So far we've counted seven separate phenotypes."

"I want a sample of each type dissected. I want to know just how human they are and what they have that isn't human."

"Yessir."

"Sir…" Bransan said. "The survivors…"

"Are going to present a difficulty, I know."

"It's… sir, there were nearly 9,000. Most of them aren't terribly bad, physically, but mentally…"

"I know. Normally we'd send them off to a psychiatric institution for the help they need, but well, we don't have those now."

9,000. Numbers didn't tell the story, Tomas thought, controlling the rage that threatened to overwhelm his good sense. 9,000 young adults and children, rooted out of shelters and schools, who watched their parents be shot down before them. 8500 females and 500 males… The purpose had been clear, some beds and artificial insemination set ups in the ship's med bay…and the stories of rape by both male and female inmates. The oldest were 21, from Malus University on Canceron who had seen the faculty and every older individual shot down or sliced apart by cylons when they'd broke into the school shelters.

They knew exactly where to go- and why not. Before we boarded those ships, we'd never have dreamed that they looked like us. For all we know ,the frakers were taking tours of the civil defense centers...

"We do have sufficient ration packs to keep the food situation stable for now— evidently the cylons intended to keep them on the ship for some time."

"Good." Tomas paused for a moment in thought. "Colonel, I want you to start a survey of all your subordinates— we need people with experience in dealing with teens who haven't been so traumatized by the loss of their own families that they won't be able to help. I also want a 24-hour watch on all of these people, and reaction teams ready in case of attempts of suicide, solo or group. I'll get you help— Commander Relan has some experience in this, and Mr. Jakes is canvassing the fleet for any civilians with psychiatric training."

"Yes sir."

"Secondly, I want you to come up with any type of labor you need and can think of, but make it hard and tiring— we can't give them what they need, which is time to get over this, if they can at all, but if we work them hard enough they may sleep soundly enough to not have… too many nightmares."

"Do you think that's doing to work?"

"In all too many cases, no." Tomas felt his hands clinch on the data pad. "You saw the sixteen year old I was talking to?"

"Yes?"

"She had a brother. The humanoid cylon in charge said they didn't need any male toddlers…so she ordered a centurion to…" Tomas' lips twitched into a snarl, "Crush her brother's head while she was watc-"

Both he and Bransan started at the snap and sound of a shattering screen. Tomas looked down at the destroyed data pad that he was holding.

"I'm going to have to watch my temper," he said in a mild voice.

"What do we do with the bodies of the cylons we're not dissecting?" Bransan asked. "Recycle them?"

"No. You've heard about the ceremonies around those who have died?"

"Attended one myself— a civilian worker who caught a fragment in the faceplate."

"That is an honor. It is not one that I will confer on any cylon. When we're done with them, we'll dump them into space. If their bodies have souls attached, they can endure the cold and silence until the end of time."

"Sir," Bransan continued, "There's another issue."

"Yes?"

"We've put the ones who aren't needing medical assistance in the troop bays—we were running light so there's room…but we're having to leave the compartment doors open— some of them panic-hell they go berserk if they feel trapped."

"Understandable…"

"But if we have to go to condition one-"

"Explain it to them— and be prepared to sedate the ones who absolutely can't control themselves…"

I should be talking to more of them… Tomas thought. But he had a thousand things to do… and not enough time to do them in.

And how much of that is true and how much rationalizing your cowardice about hearing one more story of horror that came about because the Fleet failed them?

Tomas shook his head, feeling obscurely guilty about the fact that he was now almost relieved that his family had been vaporized along with Picon HQ in the opening minutes of the attack.


Conference Room, General Allard.

"We all know what has happened," Tomas said looking at the assembled officers and Leeland Jakes, there as the newly agreed upon military-civilian liaison. "But we cannot talk about the horror the civilians we have rescued have endured. Nor can we talk about the vengeance we hope to meet out- this meeting is to maximize our chances of surviving for the short and long-term. It is hard… but we have to be hard if we are to protect those we are responsible for."

The angry nods were all the answer Tomas needed.

"First off then, our construction schedule, as in fraked all to hell."

"What?" Jakes asked. "I thought now you have even more production capability with the new ship…"

"It's not machines I'm worried about— it's people." Tomas replied. "I could have the Scorpia shipyards, but we still need people— not just to build things. We've got a nice new, well old, battlestar…and guess what? Until we can get it up and running, it's just a big target."

"How…" Leeland sighed, "hard can that be?"

"Do you now how long it takes to get a main KEW battery functioning?"

"No."

"24 hours to remove the protective coatings. 48 hours to test and verify that nothing broke, another 24 hours to install those components that aren't kept on mount…and 48 hours to boresight the weapon. Six days— six solid days." Tomas shrugged. "That presumes nothing goes wrong, mind you…and if you've looked out the window, you can see that the Hera has a lot of main and secondary KEW batteries. Then of course there's the matter of crewing her— I believe I mentioned to some of you that one of the reasons the Hera's were largely phased out was that they were crew hogs? It's bigger than a Mercury but designed with Galactica era technology and manning requirements."

"So we can't use it?"

"We can…but it's going to take a lot of work. So what do I take it away from? The new habitat ships? We need food. The new escorts? The people working on repairing the civilian ships?"

"Second problem," Bransan told Jakes. "Not everyone is temperamentally suited for these kinds of jobs."

"That's going to be a big problem with fighters…" Relan muttered.

"I know— we're going to remove the viper pilots off the cruisers and some off the Alland once we get Hera up and running." Tomas looked apologetically at the cruiser captains. "Sorry, but Hera's better protected."

"We may find some pilot candidates in the fleet."

"Maybe," Tomas said. "But if we have to jump quickly, anyone in a fighter is as good as dead unless they can land fast. Diane's inventorying the Hera and I'm hoping she'll find some gunships and cutters. The manifest indicated they were onboard, unless they were looted."

"Won't that just increase our problem?" A CAS squadron commander off the Alland asked.

"No, or rather, it's probably easier to find two or three people who can learn how to do one or two things rather than one person who has all the skills a viper pilot needs." Tomas shrugged, "But this is very much throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks." Now for the hard part. "Leeland, this may cause some trouble, but right now, we've finally got a decent list of who knows what among the civilians, and I'm afraid if we need people, they're not going to have a choice in careers."

"This is actually the best time to do it… the fleet is full of stories about what happened and everyone wants payback."

"I hope they remember that when we have lawyers working in machine shops," Tomas replied. "At least the Belters have a high percentage of technically skilled individuals."

And don't you forget that they're going to leverage that into power. Tomas didn't blame them. After everything that had been done to them, it was only natural to want to make certain that they weren't going to be used and discarded again…but even so, another headache.

"Lot of the prisoners were educated— I saw some Young Canceron Pioneer uniforms." Relan pointed out.

"Let's file that one for after we have some idea who is going to follow orders and who is going to self-destruct in a blaze of glory if they see a cylon," Bransan warned.

"The Belters have mentioned they'd be willing to accept some of the younger kids," Leeland said.

Belters…most of them survived as family units… Tomas thought. "Talk to them, then. Make certain we're talking about adoption and not obtaining cheap labor."

"Understood," Leeland said, making a note on his pad.

"Now for the best part of this meeting." Tomas finally said. "The Hera was being jumped manually, but they were using the Prince William's nav computer and had loaded quite a bit of information onto it. Honestly, these cylons suck at OPSEC. We now have more information about where Galactica may be, and how to find her." Tomas touched a button and the displays changed, showing what looked like a network of lines. "These are cylon search patterns— and you'll notice these purple nodes, resupply points. The Galactica group has been moving like a salesman after the farmer found him in bed with the daughter. There are other search patterns being run, evidently for other survivor groups but they're well out of our area… there's also information regarding damaged raiders and basestars having to be relocated outside of jump distance of the Colonies, at least for our FTL systems."

"They've lost the Colonies?" a marine asked, sudden hope on his face.

"No, but there's enough resistance that they can't keep damaged ships close to them." Tomas smiled. "It's the old problem in FTL combat— it favors the attacker. At this point, the resistance, whatever its size and nature in the colonies is the attacker. The Colonies have fallen, so they don't have to worry about protecting Caprica— just gathering enough forces to provide them with local superiority in an attack. And we, the Galactica and the other refugee fleets are helping them— look at all the forces that are looking for us." He shrugged, "If they were smart, they'd concentrate and kill one group at a time…but I'm not inclined to kick the gift daggit in the face. The cylons are probably afraid that if they do that, they'll lose the other groups for good."

"Galactica is further out…"

"And it's likely even further way now." Tomas said. "We're going to jump, avoiding these nodes as much as possible until we get in front of the Galactica's estimated position. Then we find a place to hide for a bit and see if we can find them with scout missions. It's a long shot, but at least this information lets us localize the general search area a bit."


Hera.

Diane walked through the empty corridors of the battlestar with a group of ratings and engineers. They'd killed the cylons and the marines had gone over the ship to be certain (and then depressurized it for an hour to be really certain they'd gotten the humanoid ones.) Even so, Diane had an entirely unexpected chill walking the ship's corridors. There was a sense of looming power…and equally, slumbering rage. She'd heard of the idea that ships had their own genius or spirit, and had laughed at it. Now she wasn't so sure. There was graffiti here from the first war and places where the floor plating had been rubbed to a mirror sheen by millions of footsteps. If the ship had soaked up a tenth of the human spirit that had gone into crewing it…

Other crewmen were inventorying the equipment. Fortunately, Hera hadn't been looted much, and most of it remained intact. No ammunition, of course, but they could make most of that.

But right now, Diane had a different job.

The Hera's had been larger then even the newer Mercury class that had taken their place. One of the design features had been a lower "belly" bay that did not need to be extended to be used. That bay connected to the flight pod bays, providing more storage and repair room. More importantly, according to the manifest…

"Here we are," Diane said and reached out to flip the light switch by the airlock door. Slowly the old lights came on, illuminating the vast bay area, the sealed airlocks that led to the other flight areas closed.

"Well," the petty officer standing by Diane said. "I haven't seen those outside a planetary guard for years…"

"Yeah." She said, looking at the neatly parked gunships.

The fleet didn't like gunships. If it was important enough sending an FTL unit bigger than raptors, you needed a real warship. Cutters were useful long-range adjuncts, but not strike units. Diane wondered how much of that had been serious, and now much had been part of the never-ending fight to make certain as much money as possible went to the big warships.

Doesn't matter, they're here. And unlike a viper, a crew of five or six could cover for each other's deficiencies. Unlike a viper, these ships could jump rather than risking being left behind. Not that the Hera didn't have vipers as well- the manifest showed a large number of MK-IIIs in the hanger bays, although Tomas had warned her that they had probably seen a good deal of looting by engineers who didn't want to go through the misery of requisitioning parts for birds on active battlestars.

"Chief?" she said. "Let's start going over this batch."


TBC.

Author's notes:

1. 9,000 is a fair amount— but the cylons would want a large number of subjects, with the assumption that much of their work would be fatal to the subject. Also, since the natural course of action for most civilians would be to head for a shelter the cylons could conveniently grab them.

2. About the gunships, the idea of a dedicated strike unit larger than a raptor makes a great deal of sense. We don't see it in the show, mainly due to the SFX constraints truth be told, but in this case, I'm simply assuming that as has happened in the real world, a promising concept lost out in the only battle that truly matters— the budgetary fight.

3. And once again, Tomas' big enemy pops up- not enough people. This is going to be a reoccurring theme- you've been warned.