Beginning the Razor story-ark now, so if you've not seen that, you might want to skip the next few chapters, as there will be spoilers.
Red In Tooth And Claw
Chapter 10: The Long Game
"Two crates of M6D Pistols. Two crates of M7 Submachine Guns. Two crates of M60A combat Shotguns. Once crate of SRS99D-S2 AM Sniper Rifles. Two crates of BR55HB SR Battle Rifles. Three crates of MA5C Assault Rifles. Four crates of M9 Fragmentation Grenades. One crate of M19 SSM Rocket Launchers. One crate of M7057 Flame-throwers. Nasty looking fracker, that one." Gaeta shock his head as he turned the page over and continued the inventory, "One crate of M6 Galilean Non-linear Rifles, whatever that means. Two crates of M247 General Purpose Machine Guns. One crate of AIE-486H Heavy Machine Guns. One crate of M41 Light Anti-Aircraft Guns, not counting the one attached to the back of that A.T.V. from the other pod. One crate of M68 Gauss Cannons, one of which Dr Baltar has taken for analysis. Then we've got a couple of dozen boxes of ammunition, assorted calibres, replacement parts and repair equipment. As well as enough body armour for an entire company of marines and a whole stack of equipment we've put in a pile marked 'unknown', because, well, we have no idea what it is." He looked up from his clipboard and shook his head, "I have no idea what our 'guest' and his friends were going up against, but if this is just the contents of one of their reserve supply pods, I'd hate to see what they consider to be a regular combat load."
"Frack me sideways: there are enough weapons here to fight a small war" Starbuck took the clipboard and double checked the numbers, refusing to believe them the first time, then handed the files back to the Lieutenant, "That's it; I want to be the Master Chief's liaison. With access to this kind of fire-power, along with what ever the frack it is their use for capital ship combat, we'd stand a fighting chance against the Cylons."
"So you believe him?" Gaeta asked sceptically, "You believe he's not a Cylon?"
"I've seen him in action, Felix; if he was a Cylon, we'd all be dead by now." The fighter pilot opened her arms to take in the entire room, "I mean, look at all of this; weapons that can probably take the head off of a Centurion at long range? Medical technically far in advance of anything we've ever seen? And as for that armour of his? If the Cylons had that sort of technology, they wouldn't have needed to cripple our defences and nuke us from orbit; they could have just walked in and handed us our collective asses, and there wouldn't have been a Gods-damn thing we could have done about it."
"You think the Admiral will let you be his liaison?" The Gaeta raised an eyebrow, "I thought you were supposed to be the new CAG over on the Pegasus?"
"Captain Thrace, please report to the Pegasus." The PA announced, as if on cue, "Captain Thrace to the Pegasus."
"Story of my life." Starbuck shrugged, then grabbed one of the pistol off of the table where it had been placed along side examples of all the other weapons. She popped the magazine and looked at the heavy, .50-calibre bullet for a second, before reloading it and working the slide; the mechanism moved with fluid, easy grace, the weight of the weapon comfortable and reassuring in her hand, "I'm going to take this, anyone has a problem with that, tell them to come see me personally."
The armour slipped on like second skin, warm and inviting. While Spartans where not required to ware their suits outside of combat, most did. The psychiatrists couldn't decide if it was out of a need to be ready for anything, all the time, or some deep-seated feeling that they were naked without it. Either way, no Spartan felt truly whole without their armour. It also allowed him to reintegrate the chip holding Cortana, bringing back the only person he knew he could trust.
"So," The AI asked the moment she had made sure his suit was secure and free of any bugging devices, "what I miss?"
"They don't trust me, but they're also not willing to take the risk that I'm not telling the truth." The Chief explained as he started unpacking some of the equipment he had been able to secure from the supply pods without drawing any unwanted attention. The most important part with a micro generator that could be connected to the palm sized holographic-emitter he had removed from the Pelican. With it hooked up and running, he'd be able to have a face-to-face discussion with Cortana, "But they're going to keep us around, under guard, for the time being."
"About what I'd expected." The AI contemplated their situation for a moment, "I can't see any insurrectionist group being willing to risk letting a Spartan run around their ship, guarded or unguarded. Add to that the rather unorthodox design of this ship and the strange reading I picked up when they fired the FTL drive..."
"You believe them?"
"Let's just say that I'm open to the possibility. I mean, given all we've seen and done, I can think of a couple of explanations for what they've told us so far."
"Anything you care to share?"
"Well, we could have been drifting in space a lot longer than we first anticipated, but that doesn't explain how the Dawn's emergency reactor was still hot enough to keep us both going. The only other option I can think of is..."
"What?"
"I'd rather not say until we have a better understanding of their recorded history."
"I don't like you holding out on me."
"Like I said, I need more information before I can complete my hypothesis. Until then, call it a hunch, okay?"
"I don't like hunches."
"Have I ever steered you wrong?"
"Don't get me started..."
"OH FRACK!" Starbuck hissed through clenched teeth as she dodged through the Pegasus' flack barrage and lined her battered Viper's nose up with the Battlestar's landing bay. Easing back on the power just a little, she raised her nose up, trying to ignore the antiquated Cylon Raider on her tail and the twin streams of tracer rounds that passed within arms reach of her cockpit.
The Viper hit the deck so hard it felt like some angry God had unleashed their wrath upon it, followed closely by the Raider, its larger wings clipping on the narrow entrance. The Viper's port rear landing strut gave way under the assault, snapping cleanly in two and dropping the wing to the deck. There was a sickening moment as the Pegasus jumped back to the waiting fleet, then some unseen obstruction on the deck span the Viper round until it was facing the Raider head-on. Both craft shook violently as they made their way down the length of the flight-deck, finally coming to a stop in a tangled mess of wreckage. Shaken by the forced landing, it took Starbuck a moment to notice the movement within the cockpit of the downed Raider, but some sixth sence made her look round in time to see the emergency hatch blow open just below the cockpit. There was a flash of gold amid the smoke and tangled wires, and Starbuck sucked in a breath as a battered Centurion started to pull itself free of the wreckage.
Starbuck looked round; her controls were dead, communications off line, turning her fighter into a massive paperweight. Reaching down, she found the controls for the ejector seat and deactivated the rockets connected to her chair. Closing her eyes for a second, she pulled the yellow and black striped lever as hard as she could. The flash of detonating explosive bolts was visible, even through her tightly clenched eyes, and the Viper shook as the canopy was blown clear. Reaching down. She could the holster on her hip, pulling the M6D clear just as the Centurion got clear and stood on two shaky feet, its menacing red eye pulsing slowly from side to side, before locking onto her downed fighter. Gripping the pistol with both hands, Starbuck thumbed off the safety catch and fired. The lack of atmosphere meant that there was no sound, but the heavy kick from the Earth-built weapon was almost enough to wench the pistol out of her grip. Starbuck adjusted her aim and carefully pulled the trigger a second time.
This time her aim was true, and the heavy round struck dead centre in the Centurions visor. The glass like material was designed to stop anything short of an explosive tipped round, but it had never been tested against a weapon that had been built to punch its way through a Covenant personal energy shield. The 12.7x40mm M225 Semi-Armour-Piercing High-Explosive round went through, deforming so much that it lacked the power needed to get through the harder material that the rear of the Centurions head was made of. While damaged, the Centurion was by no means out of the fight, until a split second later the high explosive core of the bullet lodged in the back of its head detonated. Starbuck brought both of her arms up to fend off any debris that came her way, but the explosion was only powerful enough to shatter the Cylons head like a firecracker going off inside an old tin-can.
"Frack me!" Starbuck looked at her gun in astonishment, "Where have you been all my life?"
"That should do it." The Chief took a step back to get a better look at his handy work; it had taken him several hours to rig up a connection between the generator and the projector, but the last diagnostic he'd run came back green across the board, indicating that the system was working perfectly.
"That God for that." Cortana chuckled, "It was getting a little cramped in here."
"I'll remember you said that, next time." The Spartan replied as he reached round for the data-chip. It popped out with an slight click, the glowing crystal in the middle containing everything that was Cortana. He looked at it for a moment, still surprised that something so small could contain something so powerful, then slid it into the awaiting socket in holo-pad. There was a moment of silence, then a fountain of light erupted out of the flat glass surface. It swirled around for a moment, then reformed as a foot high representation of Cortana.
"Much better." The AI smiled as she looked up at the Spartan, "How long until you get get the rest up an working?"
"That's going to take time." The Chief looked round at the piles of equipment that lay scatted around the abandoned workshop, "I have to do it all on my own; I don't trust anyone enough to ask for their help, and even if I did, I doubt any of them would know where to start."
"I recommend getting the security system up and running first." Cortana cocked her head to one side, "I take it you did check for bugs and data-taps?"
"First thing I did; I found the ones they wanted me to find, as well as the ones they didn't."
"That's probably going to upset them, but I somehow doubt that they'll kick up a fuss about it. Do we have access to their main computer from here?"
"No, and it's probably best if we leave that be, at least for now."
"Agreed, the last thing we want to do is..." Cortana stopped and spun round, her hair whipping around her head, "Someone's coming!" There was a flash of light as she disappeared, just seconds before the main hatch opened to admit Adama and one of the Marines stationed outside.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" The Admiral asked.
"Not at all, Sir." The Chief shook his head, "I was just starting to unpack."
"I'm afraid that's going to have to wait for a little while." Adama handed over a folder of photographs depicting the broken remains of the crashed Cylon Raider and its crew, "Something has come up that I would like your opinion on, as an outsider."
The Chief looked at the photos, examining every detail. He noted the apparent thickness of the Centurions outer casing and compared that to how much damage they had taken, then ran the numbers in his head to work out tensile strength and potential weak spots. He noted the retractable blade built into one arm, approximating its effectiveness against his shields and armour. He also looked at a close up of one of the guns each carried, noting the dimensions of the barrel and magazine, working out its power-to-weight ratio and magazine capacity.
"Depending on speed and agility, no doubt more than capable of defeating several humans in hand-to-hand combat." He summarised, "At medium to long range, large calibre or high velocity weapons firing a combination of armour-piercing and high-explosive ammunition should negate their advantages, but that would still be dependant on accuracy and angle of impact; the sloped nature of the armour indicates that anything but a direct hit would risk deflecting off causing minimal damage."
"Pretty much what our military manuals say." Adama nodded, "I've got missing people; a group of scientist and two flight crew. We're planning a mission to get them back, and we...and I, would like your help."
To Be Continued...