Indecision plagued the Captain, though he would never admit as much to his crew. He had been on duty for most of the day, waiting as the recon teams returned to the ancient battleship. Waiting, however, was something he had been accustomed to. Much of his career as a salvager had been spent doing exactly that, overseeing the recovery of wrecks and spending weeks tracking down old battle sites. More than once, shipping accidents had resulted in wrecked ships that his team could render down to scrap metal, and that was a long, tedious sort of duty.
Summers knew he had never been meant for this sort of responsibility. As the owner of a salvage company, he knew his trade. As the leader of a band of filthy survivors from a Cylon apocalypse, he was completely out of his element. But that couldn't be admitted, or shown. His crew depended on him, and the fleet depended on his crew. Without them, survival was a hopeless task. Even now, teams of salvage techs were scouring the hulls, repairing battle damage and fitting new point-defense cannons, themselves built of scrap metal worked by the machine shop crew aboard ship.
"Cap'n." Frank said. The heavyset, round little man had been losing a lot of weight, Summers knew. But they all had. Still, Frank was a man who, as long as some sort of food was available, would probably never be thin. "The shop was telling me just now... they got some of those death nuts ready."
Death nut was just a fringe nickname for homemade grenades. They had been common enough on any less-than-reputable vessel that plied their trade on the fringes of Colonial space.
"How many do they think they can produce?" He asked, stroking his chin. The Colonials had brought some small arms from Ares before the battlestar had been destroyed, but not much in the way of explosives. There was still a lurking suspicion that a Cylon agent might still be among them.
"Jack's telling me say, ten a day, until we run out of spare piping anyway. Lot slower after that. Guess it's just some leftover they're using from them rockets." Frank chewed on a hardtack cracker, one of the few remaining foods in the storerooms, aside from the terribly disgusting algae mash. The reality of the Fall weighed upon him, now that the last remaining creature comforts had vanished. His traditional stogie was lacking, and the taste of algae was in everything, even the booze.
"Get me Graystone on that farm ship." Summers turned to Kyle a communications officer and Zeus survivor. Most of the Colonial crewmen aboard Dreadnought were Zeus men, and for that Summers was grateful. The Admiral had been a decent man, but most of the Ares crew felt more loyalty to Nash instead of him, and that was understandable. That didn't make Nash any less of a thorn in his side, though. The Zeus survivors, of course, were much more reasonable. Even the most intractable of them had come around by now, including Elena herself. Some of them had even taken to drinking with the salvagers on a regular basis. They took pride, he knew, in crewing the most powerful ship in their little fleet. The Ares crew aboard the Tin Can, on the other hand, felt no such pride.
"Yeah? What do you want Summers?" Graystone's irritated voice came over the speakers. Paul Graystone had become the unofficial leader of all the civilians, most of whom crewed the farm freighter. But a scattering of civilian crewers could be found aboard Dreadnought, too, learning to weld and machine parts. Graystone viewed the pirates and the Fleet crewers with barely restrained hostility, as if any day now someone might decide to line up all the civilians against a bulkhead and pull the trigger. It probably didn't help, Summers knew, that they had been essentially reduced to farmers and "fertilizer technicians," which didn't even merit thinking about.
"How's that hydroponic bay coming?" Summers asked. The algae vats had been a brainchild of the Admiral in the days before the battle over Kobol. And they were effective at providing for the fleet's basic needs, though Summers didn't want to think about where the "nutrients" needed to grow the algae was coming from. The hydroponics bay, on the other hand, could produce small amounts of normal food with their seed stock, enough to at least season the algae with something less disgusting once in awhile.
"Well if your workers weren't drunk all the time..." Graystone complained. "But anyway, most of it's done. We've got some stuff growing already, but it'll be a month or two before we start getting anything out of it. Even then, it'll just be spices. The bigger plants... bit longer than that. Now, if you'll excuse me?" The civilian leader cut the connection and Summers frowned.
Even if they managed to find a habitable planet, someday, nobody would be eating any real meat any time soon. They had seed stock for plenty of plants in the freighter shipments, and for that Summers thanked the Gods. It was a stroke of luck that one of the freighters had been carrying almost nothing but agricultural implements. But they had no livestock, and the Captain certainly could have used a good steak or even just a slab of jerky.
"Raptor three-niner is incoming, sir." Kyle reported. Well, Summers thought to himself, at least the waiting was over. The entire mapping of the Cylon fleet depended on Stalker's recon mission as a sort of base.
"Get Isard out of bed. And get Jack up here." Summers ordered. He unbuttoned his uniform jacket, the only piece of the uniform the Admiral had given him that he actual wore with any regularity, and reached for the flask contained within. He took a short pull, just enough to take the edge off and waited for the other senior officers to show up.
Jack, as always, was the first. How that old man managed to move so fast, Summers would never know. The Captain stared in envy at the cigar Jack was chomping on.
"What's going on, Cap'n?" The salvager asked, holding his cigar out for a moment, letting the smoke waft about CIC. For a moment, Summers felt bad. Jack had been his First Mate for many years, a position that had now been more or less assumed by Isard. But Jack remained the real, day-to-day authority behind the repair and manufacturing efforts. At least he commanded more people, now, and while Isard could be trusted to handle combat and military affairs, Jack was by far the best at handling the repair and manufacturing crews. Summers had been making it a point to keep him involved in big decisions.
"Last Raptor is in. Stalker, of course." Summers waved his hand dismissively. It was natural for the arrogant pilot to have the last word.
"Sir." Colonel Isard stepped on to the deck, looking as if someone had simply dragged him out of bed. "Reporting as ordered." He said with stiff military precision. The Colonel clung to his military routines with a staunchness even his fellow officers couldn't manage. Everyone had their crutches to lean on during the shit, Summers knew.
"Relax, Colonel. Last Raptor is back, is all. Got some work to do." Summers explained, still staring at the alluring cigar smoke.
"Want a pull, Cap'n?" Jack offered the stogie.
"Gods yes. Killed my last one few days back." Summers took the offered cigar, tasting the familiar flavor. It had been too long. He reluctantly handed it back to the salvager. "How many you got left?"
"Last one. Figured finishing work on Revenge was worth it." Jack replied wistfully. "Bit by bit, Cap'n, it all goes away. Frakking toasters."
"Sir, Stalker's skids are down." Kyle reported.
"Have her report to the bridge." Summers ordered simply. "Now using your methods, Colonel... seems maybe we have a good idea where they are headed now. 'Course, Stalker's report ought to confirm it." Most of their precious printing paper was gone, though they would be able to recycle their stashes soon enough. So the old pirate pulled up the display on a CIC monitor.
"Whatta we got, Cap'n?" Jack asked, carefully nursing the cigar.
"Look at the jump times on these things. Hell, some of the Raptors, they had to do multiple jumps just to reach their target systems." The Captain pointed to the readouts on the chart. Confirmed sitings of baseships jumping in and out of systems did provide a good idea of general course.
"Gods, their jump systems must be good." Isard whistled. "No battlestar could do that in single jumps."
The Captain's face fell. "Same shit I was figuring. Let's just hope they can't track our jumps, or we're in trouble."
"You'd think they'd already be here if that were true." Jack pointed out, tapping his ashes into his pocket. "We should prolly jump out of here if it's all the same to you, though."
The Colonel nodded his head. "Agreed. Theoretically it's impossible to track jumps, and I don't really think the Cylons can do it. But might as well not take any risks."
"Do it." Summers agreed simply, nodding to Isard. "Jump the ship, Colonel."
"Landing deck secure?" Isard asked.
"Yes, sir." Kyle reported.
"Jump drive is good." Frank added walking over to that station. "Everything green. Sandra's coordinates are in."
Isard nodded to the rotund salvager. "Send transmission to the fleet: are jumping to prearranged coordinates. Two minute spinup, execute on my command."
As always, Summers felt his stomach churn with the proposition of jumping. Sandra had tried explaining it to him once, what jumping actually was, but it had just made his perpetual headache worse. Still, the physicist claimed there was no sensation, that you were simply in one place one moment, and a different place the next. Yet, he knew she was wrong. There was something to it, as if jumping, for just a moment, touched upon the domain of the Gods. And he dreaded it.
"It was the one thing different, in this cycle." A familiar voice whispered in his ear as reality bent around him. He was standing on the surface of ruined Caprica, as if a thousand years of nature had worn down on the decrepit towers. Ellison was beside him, her familiar smile oozing sex and desire.
"What?" He answered, but his lips didn't move. All about him, time flashed by, the wreckage of a civilization returning to the natural world from whence it came. Forests grew on the grand avenues of downtown. The freeways fell apart, becoming mounds and meadows, stretching out through the decayed towers.
"Jump drives" Ellison mused, her eyes meeting his with a steady gaze. "It was an accident, of course. Laboratory experiments gone wrong. Your scientists very nearly destroyed themselves in the doing. That is how your kind discovers the truth. Cosmic accident, nothing but chance. But that, too, is part of God's plan."
The last of the great towers disappeared, collapsing into the floodplains, as Caprica City became nothing more than the mouth of a rapidly expanding river delta. Yet, hints of the former city remained, lines in the forest that seemed unnatural somehow. Eternal, tarnished bronze statues, reaching through the grassy hills.
"What does that mean for us, then?" Summers wondered aloud. A meteor cascaded down from the heavens, burying the last remnants of the ancient city in a great flood as it impacted the Great Sea.
"A chance, perhaps." Ellison looked over the virgin world of Caprica, scoured of human remnants, wild once more. Overhead, great starships entered the atmosphere, a colony fleet descending from the stars, bearing the hideous scars of battle. "Do you know why your kind repeats this cycle, over and over?"
"History repeats itself. It's an axiom in the most ancient texts." Summers replied, repeating the mantra of the Scrolls.
"It certainly does." Ellison agreed, running a finger between her breasts. "But why?" The finger extended, touching his lips, running down his cheeks.
A strange realization overcame him in that moment. "Men aren't Gods."
Ellison smiled. "They certainly aren't. But, sometimes, they start to think they are. That can't be allowed."
"You're real. Not just a dream." Summers realized with reverence, watching the colonists repopulate Caprica. "You're really one of the Lords."
"Perhaps. But I am not God." Ellison explained. "And neither are you, don't forget that."
Reality snapped into place around him, and his sense of time was off, somehow. As if, while everyone else had simply winked in and out of existence, he had been elsewhere. But whatever else the Captain may have been, he was a pragmatic man. It would be pointless to discuss his mad visions.
"Miss me, sir?" Elena, callsign Stalker, said pleasantly as she sauntered into CIC.
oooooooooooooooo
Someone had finally cobbled together enough paper to actually print out the revised course charts, Summers noted. Frank made his way back into CIC with a cobbled together mess of charts and a full-fledged copy of the ancient scrolls, conveniently in modern binding. The old Captain didn't know why the priesthood always insisted on using actual scrolls for ceremonies when a standard book would do just fine.
Sandra came in behind Frank, her wet hair sticking to her back. The physicist-turned-engineer had decided on using her shower allocation today, apparently, and that boded well for Summers evening. After all she rarely bothered to pretty herself up unless there was a practical reason for it.
He drew his finger along one of Frank's charts, following a moving-average of the various courses and Cylon encounters they had since leaving the colonies.
"This is very strange." Summers rubbed his chin in thought. "See, if we extrapolate the course back to the Colonies.. it's pretty straight-line, up until Kobol. Everything changes there. It bends outward."
Sandra shook her head, clearing her ragged hair from view. "Earth."
Isard looked flabbergasted. "What?"
"Earth." Sandra repeated. "What do you bet the toasters, or whoever they are following... found something important at Kobol. Maybe something that led them to the lost colony. So they alter course."
Jack took a final pull from his cigar, burning it down the nub. "Frak." He cursed as he burnt his fingers slightly. All eyes were on him as he dropped the butt to the deck and crushed it with his boot. Isard looked pained for a moment, as if the salvager had just committed blasphemy.
"Anyway." The Colonel began, glaring slightly at Jack. "Elena's data proves it. They are heading out, almost directly along the spiral axis."
Jack rubbed his hands together and glanced up at Elena. "Yeah, I get that. But what about this transmission of yours?"
"Old Caprican." Elena explained, still clad in her flight suit, sans helmet. "Or something like it, I guess."
"Now why the frak would the toasters put out some satellite transmitting in Old Caprican?" Jack wondered aloud.
"They probably didn't." Elena explained. "Seems to me, it was a Kobolian device."
"Or a Cylon trick." Isard replied.
"No, sir. I don't think so. They seemed very interested in the satellite after they jumped in."
"I can read some of this." Summers said quietly, with a touch of reverence.
"What? Oh yeah." Elena realized. "You're some kind of failed priest."
Summers smiled at her. The pilot was certainly arrogant, and probably not entirely sane, but somehow, the Captain genuinely liked her, in the manner one might like a favorite (if touchy) weapon. "Something like that. So you want to know what it says, or not?"
The pilot merely nodded her assent.
"Thought so. Now, this isn't Old Caprican. It's Kobolian, which is pretty similar I guess. Some of the really ancient scripture commentaries the priesthood used are pretty damn close to this though." Summers began. "That first part is a series of coordinates, although they don't make a lot of sense to me."
"Might make sense to me." Sandra added, glancing warily at the pilot. Summers nodded, writing down the numeric sequence on the first chart. "Yeah, these are no trouble. Similar notations are in the scrolls. Off-hand this is probably not very far from Kobol's location around the time of the exodus. Say, half a light year, maybe less.
Summers nodded and continued. "Now this second bit... can't get all of it. But sounds to me like a warning, and invitation."
"What the hell?" Jack wondered aloud. "That doesn't make sense."
"Sure it does. This first part is almost word-for-word from the Scrolls. Do not return to Kobol, for it shall exact its price in death."
"The Scrolls say exact a price in blood." Isard pointed out.
"This is definitely death. And it's weird. There's another phrase in there that I can't really figure out. Something about 'the heat of the wind.'"
Sandra looked up from the coordinates she had been working out. "Radiation, maybe?"
The Captain shrugged. "Maybe. If we figure it that way, seems to be warning us not to go down because radiation would kill us."
"Wasn't that bad when we scoped out the place." Jack pointed out.
Sandra shook her head. "A few thousand years ago, it was probably a lot worse. The scans we looked at before indicated multiple thermonuclear detonations in the past. Radiation is probably still bad in certain spots, too."
"And the other part, sir?" Elena wondered aloud, using the honorific pointedly. "This invitation thing?"
Summers smiled. "This is where it's interesting. Says here there were two colony fleets, and tells other survivors in the stars to follow the caravan to the twelve worlds."
"And the other?" Jack's interest had been piqued.
"The other... was to rendezvous in deep space, at these coordinates. Something about an alternate route and another fleet." Summers smiled.
"That'd be blasphemous." Jack pointed out.
"Maybe not." Summers answered.
Isard shook his head. "Even if there is something at those coordinates, if those people left something behind, the Cylons would have heard it too."
"Well, sir... they didn't show up until after this sequence of numbers." Elena explained.
Isard replied quickly. "Too risky. Obviously the Cylons are leaving behind some kind of detection devices in the systems they are scouting. They probably heard it."
"I doubt it, sir. For one, I destroyed the satellite. The drone we launched wrecked it completely. Second, they didn't show up until the drone cleared the Ares wreckage." Elena pointed to the message. "The way I figure it is, the drone was what brought them in. I can't guarantee that, though."
Jack nodded, briefly making eye contact with Isard. "You can't guarantee that, and who knows what they might salvage out of the satellite wreckage anyway. Besides, it could still be a Cylon trick."
Elena shook her head. "Really?" Sarcasm dripped from her voice. "The Cylons aren't Gods. So you're saying they whip up some ancient-looking satellite, make it squawk in old Kobolian, plant it in orbit for me to find it because they know we were going to go scout Kobol again later and would just happen upon it?" She cracked a sardonic smile. "I think the Cylons are crafty bitches too, Major. But that would take a lot more than brains to pull off."
"Even if your right," Summers began. "It doesn't mean they can't figure the coordinates out for themselves."
"Not so sure about that." Sandra looked up. "These are coordinates all right, but I can guarantee you they aren't in any Colonial units. Remember when we traced the route to Kobol? The Kobolian units didn't make any sense to me until I realized the Scrolls were reversed, even then the intervals were all wrong. Do the Cylons know that? Because if they don't, these coordinates won't do them any good at all. And nevermind that we still have to calculate them based on the estimated time of exodus, not modern positions."
"I don't like this at all Captain." Isard said. "Following the Cylons and scouting them is one thing. This seems frakking reckless."
"But it's also an opportunity. And if there is some kind of roadmap to a safe haven someplace, I'd rather the toasters didn't get their hands on it. Still, I agree with you partly, Colonel. No frakkin' way we're risking the fleet for something like this." Summers stood tall. "Jack, I want you to prep our biggest armed shuttle, and pack it with gear and specialists. I want welders, electronics specialists. Hell, even take Frank here, he's good with communications. And Stalker," he used her call sign deliberately, "you just volunteered to pilot this mission."
Elena smiled. "What are my orders?"
"That's my line, Lieutenant." Jack replied acidly. "So what's the op, Cap'n?"
Summers answered quickly. "I'm commanding it. We're going to see what this thing is about. I'm sick of Gods, of this mystery. Damn, Jack... it's like my father never died. The priesthood would have given up their testicles for this."
"That's truth." Jack answered, semi-reverently. The mysteries of Kobol had entranced an entire civilization for millenia.
"Starting to like me, sir?" Elena smiled dangerously, striking a pose. "Why, sir... do I always get stuck flying these missions?" Elena asked. But the tone of her voice wasn't that of someone complaining. If anything, she seemed to be happy with the state of affairs. Summers supposed he ought to be worried about that.
"It's like you said, pilot. You're a sneaky sort of bitch. For a stubborn bolt, you use a wrench, or maybe a grinder. For shaping gun barrels you use a lathe. For a headache, maybe some pussy. For killing toasters, you use a psychopath." Summers said, shrugging, facing Jack. "Jack, this is an op we've gotta get moving right now. If we do have a head start on the Cylons, I want to use it, get there, and deny them the chance to learn anything if they arrive."
"You got it, Cap'n. What if we run into toasters?" Jack asked.
"We bail. Simple as that." Summers explained.
"Sir." Isard began, but seemed to stumble on the words.
"I know. This is crazy. But I'm the only one who really understands this language. Even then... Gods it's been so long." Summers explained. "There's something going on here, read between the lines. We aren't the only players in this thing."
"No, I don't suppose we are." Isard agreed. "Never been much of a man of the Gods, but it's like their hand is in all of this somehow. I mean... a random jump and we find Graystone's men, and another, Ares. I don't want to calculate the odds. But still..."
"It's completely insane." Jack finished for the Colonial officer, waving Frank over. "So's this whole frakking war."
As Jack, Elena and Frank left the bridge, Isard frowned. "I don't like it, sir." He shook his head. "This is too much. If this goes bad, Colonel Nash could use it to take..."
"I know." Summers replied coolly, taking a long pull from his flask. "Believe me, Colonel, I know. But no one in my line of work ever got anywhere without rolling the hard six." The Captain offered the flask to Isard, and surprisingly the Colonial officer decided to take it.
"I hope you're right." He replied. "We'll be here when you get back. I'll hold Nash down."
"We've worked well together, Colonel. I'm trusting you."
"Yes, sir." Isard replied.
ooooooooooooooo
Reality twisted around Elena, and she felt the gravity of the moment. Ever since the battle of Kobol, things had changed for her. At first she had despised the pirate captain. She had met many of his ilk in inspections and anti-pirate operations over the colonies, and she had little respect for their intelligence or combat abilities. But Thomas Summers was different, somehow. Perhaps it came from his priestly education, or maybe the man was just naturally prone to introverted, drunken, religious philosophizing. Either way, he turned out to be very different than she had assumed at first.
The small fleet was held together by the firm alliance of Summers and Isard, their rigid grip on leadership was the only thing keeping that idiot Nash from taking over. Elena knew the risk of this operation was as much due to the fragile power structure in the fleet as it was due to the possibility of Cylon attack.
The DRADIS array beeped, the screen awkwardly dangling from the a makeshift panel above her. This shuttle had started out life as one of the many evac shuttles from Ares. But a few weeks in the hands of the salvage technicians had seen its armament tripled, with extra point defense cannons. Some were hooked up to computer control, but others were camera-equipped manual turrets operated by gunners aboard ship. There simply weren't enough computers around to control all of the new hardware. A hastily-erected armored-box launcher was mounted above the cockpit, loaded with a complement of Sandra's dumb-fire rockets, rigged to a single switch which would fire the entire box. Extra armor plating reduced her viewport to a thin slit. She had seen many such hodge-podge vessels in the hands of Sagi pirates and Tauron mobsters. But it was quite another thing to be flying one herself.
"Handles like shit." She cursed, reorienting the craft with some difficulty, aiming the DRADIS arc to get a better fix on the signal.
"Ah come on," Jack protested, "She's got a big ass on her, that's all."
"There's something out there, really far off." Elena pointed to the DRADIS display. The original system had been replaced with one of the larger arrays brought over from Ares, giving it a truly vast range, but also adding more mass to an already overstressed frame.
Jack stepped over one of the bracing girders, motioning for the copilot to leave, and taking his place. "Take us in closer, but let's play this real careful. Short controlled engine bursts." Jack ordered.
"Kill the active DRADIS scan, too." Summers added. "Passive only until we get in closer. Are the return coordinates in?"
Jack nodded. "Yeah, we can bail anytime, Cap'n. Jump drive is hot."
With the slow overall acceleration it took nearly an hour to reach the target area, but by the time they did, it was apparent whatever it was, it wasn't Cylon in origin. And it was undeniably massive, several times larger than even a Mercury-class battlestar. All Elena could see was a small area of her viewport utterly devoid of stars.
"Activating the external lights." Elena said, matter-of-factly. "Approaching along the long axis. Hold on to your ass." She rotated the ship about, restarting the main engines for a controlled burn. The weaker grav-field of the shuttle couldn't compensate for the G-forces the same way larger vessels could, and she found herself pushed to the edge of her seat. Somewhere behind her, one of the gunners cursed violently, apparently not listening to her warning.
"Godsdamnit Frank, take off your frakking headphones." Summers barked out. "We're not at the frakking opera."
"Getting video feed. It's up on the main screen, Cap'n." Jack reported. "Gods would you look at that?"
The spotlights played off the surface of the behemoth. The vessel was nearly as large as Fleet headquarters. Immense sublight engines, far larger than anything produced in the colonies, extended along her long axis. Flight pods as long as a battlestar extended on either side of the hull. Elena caught the ancient letter forms, the original Kobolian alphabet sometimes seen on the oldest monuments in the Colonies. "My Gods," she whispered, watching as the computer began to construct the hull form based on visual and DRADIS input.
"The Galleon." Frank dropped his headphones with a sudden clatter, that interrupted the awe.
"Gods, I didn't know what I was expecting," Jack began. "But not this... I didn't expect this." He made the ancient sign of faithfulness in the air. The armored prow of the vessel came into view, similar in general shape to a battlestar, but scaled up to truly massive proportions.
"I did." Summers stated flatly.
"How?" Jack wondered aloud.
"A story my father used to tell me. He spoke of the last Galleon." Summers explained. "It stood to reason there were others."
"But we have no record of them." Elena answered, slowing the craft down.
"Exactly." Summers replied. "All of this has happened before."
Elena's mind latched on to it with sudden insight. "They were fleet units. Like us. They were running. Kobol didn't fall, or at least it didn't fall by itself. They had a machine war of their own."
"Yeah. Seems like they won their war, though. Wrecked their planet in the doing, and were forced to leave it behind." The Captain continued. "So they left beacons behind, for other ships."
"And I activated one." She replied with awe.
The letters on the prow of the vast starship we also written in the ancient letter-forms, but she could make them out. They were still fundamentally similar to the alphabet that replaced them.
"That means Eternity." Summers pointed out. "Fitting, I guess."
"So what happened to them?" Frank wondered aloud. "If they were meeting other ships out here, why is the ship still here?"
"Can't be sure." Summers took a pull from his flask and leaned against a bulkhead. "But if I had to guess.. maybe they had a Miss Ellison, a machine infiltrator of their own. That hull is intact, so you'll probably find sabotage, probably vent-action or something life-support related."
"Gods. It really did happen again." Jack muttered. "The whole godsdamned thing."
"We won't have much time." Summers began. "Find us a way to dock, Lieutenant, even if we have to suit over. Probably won't be any air over there anyway."
Jack's eyebrow lifted in curiosity. "What's the angle, boss?"
"Salvage. What else?" Summers laughed. "Come on, let's see what this museum piece has to offer."
Elena turned her head with sudden interest. "You don't think she'll fly?"
"Maybe. But I bet money she doesn't have a jump drive anyway." The Captain replied. There was a certain mystery to this man, Elena knew, things he obviously wasn't telling anyone. But then, that held true for her, too, didn't it? It wouldn't do to tell everyone she had visions of a Galleon similar to this one, while in the midst of a jump sequence. Or would it? The Captain's eyes met hers, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.
The docking port loomed large in her viewport. And she maneuvered it alongside. The size was all wrong, but it looked hauntingly similar to Colonial fleet docking ports.
"Well Jack," Summers mused. "We might get to use some of these." The Captain hefted a bandolier of death nuts, the makeshift grenades manufactured aboard Dreadnought.
"Godsdamned frakwit sons'o'bitches." Jack cursed, his tough personality overriding his sense of wonder. "Suit up and prep for boarding."