Part 2:

23rd Day of the Second Cylon War:

Alexander:

Alexander sat in his quarters onboard the seadome Crete. His office was coated in mist from the steadily rising humidity, and his business jacket and slackes were almost soaked. On his waterproofed computer was displayed the Hydroworks corporate logo, then a long list of reports from his subadministrators. The refugees had overflown from the residential quarters that had only been meant to handle one fourth their number into every part of the station. They were eating the biologist's stockpiles of fish, including several infected with inter-species disease and sleeping in the unused drydocks. The last sensor buoy had been found by the cylons and detonated; leaving their submarine missions blind. Finally, with the solar arrays withdrawn beneath the surface, the dome's batteries were beginning to run dry.

Then his door burst open and secretary Mariam Charlats ran in. "Mr. Wynne, we picked up a radio messge, you need to hear this!" she said excitedly, and handed him a headset. Alexander listened to the Apollo's transmission. Then he jumped out of his seat and kissed Mariam on the cheek. "We have four hours, call Mance and tell him to get the sub ready!"

Huxton:

The Vindication's CIC finished listening to Nanderson's transmission. Several officers were smiling. Huxton remained grim. "Marlay, double check it to be sure," he ordered.

Marlay replied, "I was already doing so." After five minutes she announced "its clean."

Everyone looked to Huxton expectantly. He thought for a moment, recalling the various contingency plans he'd come up with to evacuate survivors. "Alright then here's the plan. The Apollo is going to jump back in seven hours and inform the survivors that we are sending an officer to meet with them and give them our evacuation plan. Ask them for a meeting time and location. Cage, you're going to be the diplomat here."

"Yes sir."

"We'll need a couple of transports for this, I'm afraid we are going to have to go to the President for them."

"Do so, it'll look better if he gives the order for a couple of ships to empty out instead of us. Assuming he has any real authority." Nessella said.

"Big assumption there."

Travere:

Two hours after the initial Cylon Attack:

The Athenian cruised through space, her raido antennae picking up the screams of the dying. "Anything new?" Johnathan asked First Officer Charlene Brie.

There was a nervous sweat running down the woman's face. "Someone is saying a battlestar is burning in over Virgon Primary." Johnathan's jaw dropped.

"How many colonies is that now?"

"Four definite, and I'm getting enough reports to all but confirm that the cylons detonated a nuke over Cap city." She stopped for a minute and listened to another transmission shunted to her from the already occupied communications officer. "The cylons are gunning down the Armistice day parade."

"Where's the fleet?"

"No one's saying anything about it."

"How did the cylons manage to jump directly into low orit? That should be impossible." Charlene shrugged.

Travere turned to the comms officer. "Helena, can you raise Gemenon flight control or our corporate offices on Virgon?" She shook her head. "Try them again, then try to raise one of the other ships." There were no less than ten ships within their DRADIS range. They were still maintaining their flight route to the designated jump point into the Helios Delta system. Like Travere, their Captains were probably wondering what the hell was going on.

Helena suddenly pulled off her headset and spun around in her chair. "The President just ordered a full stop to all civilian travel."

"What?"

"The message just came through on all channels, President Adar has suspended civilian travel between the colonies, no time limit."

Worry, shock, pure terror, all that crashed down over Travere at once. The Civil Travel Commission, or the Presidency could, and had, suspend travel over a region of space. This region always had a definite boundary and an estimated deadline. A full stop was unthinkable, unheard of, and yet it had just been ordered. Johnathan's first thoughts were to wonder how bad it was where they'd just departed from four hours ago. His next were to realize how vulnerable his lumbering unarmed liner was. His third was to note that the young radiowoman looked like she'd just soiled her pants.

"D-Daniel, plot us a course away from the space lane, put us as far into empty space as you can. Helena, contact the other ships, advise them on our course of action." The CIC sprung into some kind of stilted action as everyone tried to comprehend exactly how bad shit had just gotten.

"New transmission from Gemenon" Charlene said an hour later. Johnathan's heart rose at the hope that it was flight control. "It looks like one of the planetary defense ships broadcasting on an open frequency." It fell. Johnathan half nodded at her to keep going. "They are saying that there are at least thirty nuclear detonations visible from their position, as well as the wreckage of at least ten fleet ships."

Thirty. "What about cylons."

"Apparently they jumped out again. I'm getting planet-based distress calls through whatever comm satellites they didn't blow up. Cap, we have to tell the passengers about this soon."

The Athenian was carrying five hundred and fifty people, forty-six percent of her running capacity…if they could fiind refugees, they could take them. The spaceport she had lifted off of was a municiapal strip in a city of no more than three hundred thousand people and no major installations. The cylons wouldn't target it in a hurry. "Put me on the intercom. In the meantime, Miles plot a jump back to Gemenon, try to keep on the same hemisphere as our departure city."

"What!?" Charlene practically screamed. "What are you doing?"

"This ship is half full, and the cylons are not in orbit. We are going to pick people up from our departure port." Helena handed him the intercom as Miles watched him uncertainly.

"We will die."

"Keep the capacitor warm and ready to dump into the FTL spool if the cylons are there." The act would recharge the FTL drive in ten seconds instead of sixty, at the cost of leaving the ship dead in space for twelve hours and possible damaging the wiring of the spools. "Helena, tell the other ships what we are doing, ask them to join us." Johnathan took the intercom.

"You are not doing this, its not worth the risk" Charlene said.

She was right. They could all die, and the fleet could beat back the cylons. But Johnathan knew something was different from the last war. The Cylons hadn't used nuclear barrages on planets then, they hadn't achieved such an element of surprise. Johnathan ignored her, and pushed the talk button. "Attention please, this is your captain speaking. Three hours ago the colonies were attacked by cylon forces. Casualties are unknown, presumeably immense. We are returning to Gemenon to take on survivors. Please remain in your seats and fasten your seatbelts. I will update you as I get more information."

"Coordinates entered" Miles said.

"Jump." Miles turned the key and they felt a jolt of electricity. Then the starscape vanished, to be replaced by the mottled green-blue-nuclear illuminated surface of Gemenon taking up one quarter of the screen. Caprica was a distant blue speck.

Charlene spat the words out. "No cylons detected, I'm picking up a handful of ships including a Guard cruiser gathering survivors."

"Good. Take us in fast. Contact the Lirrinia spaceport."

The Athenian's nacelle mounted engines powered up and she accelerated towards the distressed planet. As they closed, the details of the apocalypse became more evident on the viewscreen. The blown out skeletons of ships, barely recognizeable as their type, became visible tumbling end over end in space, their metal insides and easily recognizeable crew spilling out. The orbital space stations were hunks of collapsed decks and ruptured bulkheads, or glowing craters on the planet's surface. In low orbit, they passed the upper half of a Valkyrie class battlestar, the lower half presumeably burned in and smashed planetside. The planet itself was on fire, with massive plumes of smoke rising from her scorched surface.

"I've got Lirrinia flight control. The port is packed with everyone in the city. They want us to land on the plains outside, their landing pads are already full."

"Do so" Johnathan ordered. The Athenian began to descend, to three hundred thousand screaming people and the inferno of the firebombed city. Even all the evacuation ships together could only take eight thousand people, and the rest were left standing around the launchpads, some cooked by plasma exhaust when they ran in in blind panic as the ships took off.

Johnathan stopped believing in the gods on their way back up to orbit, just in time for the cylons to return.

Present Day:

Johnathan Travere pulled the botanical ship Cygnus' latest report on the food situation out of his messenger bag and placed it on the table before him. He sat in what had once been a buisnessman's meeting room onboard the Athenian. Now the small room with its oval shaped table for sixteen, projector, and coffee machine had been converted into his office and the gathering place for the 'quorum of ship captains' as it was being called. At the table around Travere sat the captains of the fifteen largest ships in the fleet. Miles was present for the formalities, and a secretary sat in one corner banging away at a laptop. A better system of representation was in the planning stages, but this ad hoc system was all they had at the moment.

What Johnathan saw on the paper added yet another trouble to his growing list. "It will take three weeks to convert domes one through nine to grow food and require shipments of seeds. That is understandable and I'll put out a PSA on saving vegetable seeds. Now, why won't you convert domes ten to fifteen for food?"

The small, bespectacled captain of the Cygnus gave him a nervous stare as he explained, "we are currently carrying several dozen endangered species of plants. Given the recent destruction of the colonies they might be the last of their kind, saving them is important." Travere sighed. The plants were another reminder of something they had lost, and he had taken a walk through domes eleven and twelve during an ad-hoc barbecue on the twelfth day of the war.

"Captain Morrolay. Any other time, any other day, under any other circumstances I would agree with you. If food weren't an emergency I would tell you to do everything you can for them. However, there are possibly eighty thousand people who are going to be starving very shortly and we need every inch of space we can find to grow food. So if you can't find an alternate means of saving the plants they are going to have to go."

"I can't do that." Morrolay was a botanist through and through; the plants were probably the only things he had left.

"Well you are going to have to, I'm sorry." Several other captains nodded with varying degrees of certainty. Most by the looks on their faces shared Johnathan's sentimentality at least..

"I am sorry, Mr. President, but the plants have to stay, aren't there other places to grow gardens? Aren't there-"

Johnathan slammed a fist into the table, startling him into silence. "They are already being utilized. Normally I would be happy to debate this with you for several hours, but given the sheer amount of problems on hand that need our immediate attention, I am going to have to tell you to get rid of them, or consequences will be of the military nature." It hurt him to say that, but he had to.

"Okay, I'll do it" Morrolay conceded sadly.

Johnathan wanted to apologize, but his already gathering opponents would take it as a sign of weakness. All he did was give him a satisfied "thank you," and pick up the next report.

"Good news, the doctors on the Barton are confident they can have a vaccine for the flu strain going around within two weeks. They advise us to save the syringes, though." A murmur of approval went around the table. "I'm creating a motion that we request the crews of the ships recycle and return every used syringe to theBarton for sterilization and reuse."

"Isn't that unsanitary?" Captain Marnie Vinsk of the space construction ship Hybadae asked.

"I'm assuming they are going to be properly sanitized. Add a second line to the motion about asking them this question."

"Motion seconded," Captain Errol Slater of the container freighter Zacharian said.

Miles raised a hand. "Call to vote, all those in favor?" Every hand went up. Fortunately there were no Sagitarrons present or they would have gotten twenty minutes of extremist spiel about the evils of modern medicine. "Motion passed unanimously. Proceeding."

Travere nodded. "Right then, next report." This one was from the Tylium tanker Weeping Somnabulist, whose captain was in the room. "Captain Hendricks, are you sure you're only down to thirty percent? We'll have a crisis in two months if that's true." There were ten more reports to go.

Aelia:

With her kneses trembling, hands clenched tightly in front of her, and a nervous sweat already running down her brow, Aelia approached the assembly room amidst a crowd of other recruits. She looked around at her companions. They came in all forms from men with greying beards to children just as young as her. Their uniforms looked as ill-fitting as she felt. They either clustered together in groups or shared nervous humor about the 'ass-kicking' they were about to receive, or like her stood alone in silence. A group of reservists and former planetary guardsmen stood proudly at the front of the line, smiling at the thought of returning to duty.

A rack sat on the wall, holding several hundred sets of dogtags. A crewman stood next to it, repeating over and over "collect your dogtags here. These are your identification and your symbol of military status. Keep them on you at all times, no matter the circumstances. If your dogtags are found, you will be listed as MIA and therefore be suspected of desertion or of being a cylon. Do not lose your dogtags." Aelia found hers, and puled the chain over her kneck and pushed the two tags beneath her shirt.

The doors to the assembly room opened and they filed inside. The assembly room was a large rectangle large enough for several hundred people at least. However, It still felt claustrophobic on account of the ceiling barely three meters overhead. A group of black clad marines in full gear stood along one wall while the recruits uncertainly gathered in the center of the room. Aelia watched them until she saw one step forward. He was a giant, at least two meters and ten centimeters tall, she was sure he could easily reach up and touch the ceiling. He did not wear a helmet, showing his short black hair and a long white scar reaching across his temple.

He bellowed "Attention!" Everyone jumped and spun around to face him, doing their best to stand straight. He smiled. Aelia was reminded of a Virgonian Lion shark looking at its dinner. "Form up into three lines, maggots." There was a flurry of frantic motion. Aelia looked around until almost everyone was clear before squeezing herself between a teenage boy and a female reservist. The marine walked down the line, glaring at each recruit in turn. He spoke as he walked.

"Alright maggots, listen up now. I am Corporal Boris K. Belsinki and for the next week until the good Sergeant Alenko can arrive, I am going to be your drill instructor. For those of you who haven't been blessed with prior military training, let me explain to you the basics. First, you will not speak on your own. You will only speak when either answering me, or when you volunteer by raising your hand!" He raised his left hand. He passed Aelia. "Second, every sentence you say will begin, and end with sir! Is that clear?"

"Sir yes sir!" Aelia and half the recruits screamed. The other half got out confused 'yes sirs.' Aelia felt a surge of pride.

Belsinki's eyes bulged. "I said, is that fracking clear!?"

"SIR, YES SIR!"

"Good. Third and final thing. There is no mercy in this course. The cylons gave us none, and we will not be giving you any either. The Sergeant and myself will work you to the end of your capabilities. There is no quitting or respite here, so save your breath if you're thinking about it. Sound good?"

"SIR YES SIR!"

"Right, its time to start the warmup, now then, drop and give me fifty push-ups." Aelia dropped and began. Her arms and legs, weakened from twenty days of inactivity, instantly began to cramp. She collapsed on the ground after completeing the set, and looked around. She was one of the last done. "That was pitiful, maggots" Belsinki said. "Sit up, and give me fifty sit ups." Aelia sighed and complied. This time she saw several people stop outright. One of the marines walked over, bent down, and yelled in their face until they resumed. After this set Aelia's thighs and stomach burned. "Now fifty crunches."

She managed to keep going through the warm up and the two-mile jog around Vindication's eighth-mile running track. They returned to their lines, and were given a ten-minute breather. "Holy shit, I should've stayed home," Aelia gasped to the female reservist, who was somehow breathing normally.

She smiled back. "This is easy, wait till we start doing five miles."

"Oy, five?" the teenage boy asked. He was doubled over, his face redder than Aelia's, sweat glistening on his forehead and faint moustache.

"Five in the morning, another five at night. That's what the marines do apparently."

"And are you one?"

She shook her head. "I didn't make the cut, my cousin did."

"Well then why are you so confident if you couldn't make it."

"I'm still a lot better off than you are, sweetie." He dropped onto his rear, hard. She turned to Aelia. "And what have you done to keep in shape, Mrs…?"

"Aelia Wrenner. I was a cheerleader, a bit of running and pushups in that. Your name?"

"Erica Lannison."

They looked at the boy. "James Olin."

Belsinki strutted past them. "BREAKS OVER, MAGGOTS. GET UP, TIME FOR INDOCTRINATION!" he screamed. Aelia winced, and straightened up, her thighs burning. Why didn't she do the smart thing and sit down?"

Four hours later, she was flopping down on a crowded bench in the mess hall with a bowl of beef stew with her stomach rumbling. She was soaked in her uniform from her fast shower. She'd rushed in getting dressed out of embarrassment of being surrounded by dozens of people.

A familiar boy squeezed in next to her. "Hey kid."

She grimaced at James. "Kid?"

"Yeah, you're like fourteen, right?"

"Fifteen" she said, and sighed in frustration at being mistaken for younger than she was, again.

He shrugged. "Still a kid."

Aelia groaned. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen. I'm an adult, you're a kid."

"It's a term of endearment," Erica said from across the table. Aelia looked at James quizzically. He nodded, his mouth full.

Aelia wondered if she'd offended him. "Well, thank you." He nodded again. "Sorry." He shrugged and she just started worrying further.

"Where are you heading for the afternoon?" Erica asked.

Aelia said "I'm heading to communications, where are you going?"

"Back to boot camp. I'm getting my second shot at being a marine." Erica said proudly.

Aelia smiled at her. "Good luck, I bet you'll do great."

"Thanks kid." Aelia's cheeks turned red when she called her that. She buried her face in her bowl and rapidly shoveled the brown soup into her mouth to cover it.

"I don't think I can last another day," James said. Then he looked dourfully at his soup and said, "pass the salt please." Aelia reached for the shaker one place over on her other side and handed it to him. "Thanks you."

The man next to James laughed. "Did you think today was tough, wait until we start hard vacuum training?"

"What's that?"

"You put on a survival suite and stand in an open airlock for half an hour while reciting the navy creeds." Aelia had to stop eating, as her stomach had turned inside out. The man laughed. "The looks on your faces are priceless" he pointed at her and James. James scowled and returned to eating.

Erica added, "in the marines, you do vacuum combat drills." Aelia winced at the thought of going into a firefight with nothing but a thick layer of clothing for protection and a very limited air supply.

Alenko:

Alenko spent his time in the brig sleeping, talking to Venko and Johm, or exercising. He was doing the latter when Belsinki's deep voice said "looking comfortable in there." Alenko finished his pushup set, and then propelled himself to his knees with a flex of his forearms. He stood up slowly and pulled his shirt back on.

"This is a cozy place, as the realtor says" he replied. Belsinki's huge grin only widened further.

Belsinki nodded. "Can I rent this when you're done, put up a nice privacy curtain, pick up a couple of girls at the Pantheon, you know how this goes?" Alenko smiled at the Corporal's attemps to take off some of the sting at being stuck in the brig.

"How's the corps holding up without me?"

"Talos is the new Arms." Alenko was a First Sergeant; William Talos was a Staff Sergeant. With no gunnery sergeant onboard, as the ranking marine NCO, Alenko was automatically designated the Sergeant At Arms.

"How's he doing as the drill Sergeant? I hear we started training some maggots."

Belsinki snickered. "Actually, I'm doing the drills."

Alenko rubbed his eyes a few times. "You? What are you, a drill Corporal? How's that work?"

"Thanks for the support there, Sarge. Talos isn't the most charismatic, and Wallman lacks the experience, so I got the job."

Alenko raised an eyebrow at the thought of Belsinki terrifying conscripts. "How are the maggots?"

"Pretty good discipline wise and we've got a lot of military personnel. There's still too many

old men and little kids though, and its only going to get worse with each batch."

"We'll deal with it. Do you have any amnesac by the way?"

Belsinki shook his head. "Are you really asking me to violate contraband rules?" Alenko smirked.

"Beer?" Venko asked sleepily.

"Look who woke up! No beer, Ven. However, there is a nice bottle of Shorguz for you two when you get out."

Alenko winced. "Oh god, that vegetable alchohol you drink on Tauron? Are you kidding me? Go share it with the XO."

Belsinki's laughter boomed through the brig. "I'd love to, she's a pretty good looking one. Rumor is that the Commander agrees."

Venko's voice filtered through. "Hey Bel, how's the good doctor doing?"

Belsinki walked to Parris' cell. "He's curled up asleep, pained look on his face. Did he drop the soap or something?" The three men burst out laughing.

Aelia:

She looked around at the blackened walls and the humming consoles, and the seven other recruits sitting at various terminals. Marlay and a man with his left arm in a sling were standing in the center of the room watching them. When Marlay saw her out of the corner of her eye and turned she quickly made her best attempt at a military salute.

"Recruit, the shift started forty-five seconds ago" Marlay said. She gave Aelia a small nod and what could have been a faint smile. Though she knew Marlay was only referring to her as recruit because of required military etiquette, Aelia was unnerved by it.

"I'm sorrym". W-where do you want me, Captain?" she asked.

Marlay pointed to an empty chair facing a computer monitor. "This will do for now recruit, lets see what you're capable of." Aelia sat down there and began to examine the computer. It was monitoring radio frequencies, but in a format she had never seen before.

"Alright recruits, listen up" Marlay said. Maybe it was her imagination, but Aelia heard her voice quake faintly, reducing the authoritative effect the statement had. She and most of the other recruits turned to face her. "I am Captain Marlay, chief communications officer of the battlestar Vindication, flagship of the colonial remnant. This here is Lieutenant Traye, second communications officer-" she patted the man on the shoulder.

She continued: "You will probably get a speech on what it means to be a recruit in these dire times when you attend basic discipline training tonight, so I will skip that. You are in this room because you are skilled in radio communications, and we need as many people with your skills as we can get. With the casualties we suffered during the initial attack at Picon the Lieutenant and I will be your sole instructors and superiors."

She rapped Aelia's desk with her knuckles. The hollow crack reverberated throughout the room. "Look at you computer. Raise your hand if you have no clue what you are seeing." Aelia put her hand halfway up. When six other recruits raised theirs she put it all the way up. Marlay turned to the middle aged man with who hadn't.

"I served as the communications officer on the light cruiser Marathon, we used a previous version of the program" he explained.

"Alright then, one less of you who needs basic training. Now, for those of you who don't know, we use the Hermes communication program, version three. I will explain the basics while the lieutenant, and recruit Thome will perform a demonstration-" she pointed at the man.

By the end of the eight-hour course Aelia could realy radio transmissions across frequencies and exchange jokes with the other recruits. The session relaxed until it seemed like one of her classes of school. When, ten minutes before the shift end she noticed and unfamiliar signal, zeroed in, and reported, "the transportCacedonia is requesting replenishment of its water tanks, what do I do?" Marlay patted her on the shoulder.

"We'll cover that tomorrow. Send it to the lieutenant's console and he'll get it to the right place, good work." Aelia flushed with pride.

After the shift ended she ate dinner with a mob of other recruits.

Discipline was four hours of having basic instructions drilled into her by one acting sergeant Belsinki, whose deep voice hammered her eardrums with each bellow.

She returned to her bustling barracks exhausted, and sat down at her bed, hot and tired. Noticing most of the other crewmen were in various states of undress, she stripped off her jacket and pants, hung them up, and curled up in her undershirt and underwear beneath her covers, letting the various conversations going on flow over her.

"Good evening recruit" Marlay said. Aelia tried to snap to attention. While in the bunk. Marlay's hand shot out and stopped her head just short of the unforgiving steel frame of the bunk above. "Easy Aelia, we're on informal terms now" she chided her.

"Thank you, and understood" Aelia said quickly.

"May I sit down?" Aelia scooted over to her pillow and patted the middle of the bed. Marlay sat down beside her.

"So" Aelia began, and then stopped before she made the situation too awkward.

"How was your first day, you did pretty well out there," Marlay said.

"It was tough, but I learned" Aelia replied. "You're a pretty good teacher," she added truthfully. Marlay gave her a warm smile.

"Thanks recruit. Tell me, how does boot camp compare to cheerleading?" Marlay said. Aelia groaned, and then decided to vent:

"Oh my gods it was awful. There were over a hundred of us in the parade room, and this Corporal Belsinki yelling at us for five hours. My feet hurt so much from that floor and my ears hurt from his voice, and then he singled me and a couple of the younger kids out and wondered what the hell we were doing there, in front of everyone too!" she said. Marlay was trying to show she was sympathetic, but she couldn't hold a smile back. Aelia noticed, "Its okay Captain, I could see it being funny" she assured her. She sighed and slumped against the bedpost. "And I have that six times a week" she said.

"I don't know the name, but I feel you" Marlay said.

"Did you have to take that class when you joined?" Aelia wondered.

Marlay recalled her four months of basic training. It had only been two years since then, so it wasn't hard. "I went to Picon fleet academy, class f '98. My physical work got spaced over four years, but I also had to go through the advanced academics, electronics, and command training simoultaneously."

"Nice. Hang on, class of 98'… that was two years ago, sorry for asking, but you're twenty-two?"

Marlay shook her head with a swish of her straight brown hair. "I'm twenty. I qualified for the academy when I was fifteen."

"Holy frack, you're some kind of genius, were you the youngest?"

Marlay laughed and shook her head. "Nah, there's been couple of fourteen-year olds somehow." Aelia was still amazed. She wouldn't have done the same though; there had been too many friends she'd wanted to finish school with and too many years of her childhood to enjoy.

"Still, that's awesome. How'd you make Captain so fast?"

Marlay sombered. "Everyone in front of me died" she said sadly. "I was a lieutenant until Captain Sare got caught in the port landing pod when it went up" she said.

Aelia gasped and patted her on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, were you close to him?"

"He was like a father to me, this small man in his mid forties with those thick-rimmed spectacles, who coached me through being an eighteen-year old officer" she said.

"I'm sorry" Aelia whispered.

"Shit happens. Best we can do is get up and keep fighting" Marlay theorized.

"Sounds good." Marlay stayed around for a few more minutes, but both were exhausted, and she returned to her bunk. Aelia stretched out over her nice, unoccupied bed, and was in a shallow sleep haunted by her memories within ten minutes.

Nanderson:

At the seven-hour mark, the Apollo received a reply. "Apollo, this is Alexander Wynne, chief business administrator of the settlement. I hear you. At one o'clock tomorrow afternoon, an Aquarian naval submarine will be waiting at these coordinates;" he listed off the GPS coordinates for a location in the southern sea. "Do not reply to this message, please."

Nanderson nodded. "Spin up the FTL, lets get this to the Commander."