The Way Home – Going Home rework
by Warringer
Chapter 35
--
Leonidas shook as ten high yield nuclear warheads impacted in the frigates shields.
Helo's fingers gripped hard down into the handrail of the central plot. He stopped breathing for a moment and looked up as he heard a groaning resonate through his ships superstructure.
"Direct Hit!" Astral noted with a loud voice and Helo wondered how she could be that calm. "Shield stress up to ninty percent."
Helo cursed and glared at the shield indicator.
A loud snapping sound was heard and he saw the stress indicator jump up to one hundred twenty percent for a moment.
"Shield Circuit Breaker One has expired," came from engineering." Breaker Two is online."
Helo grit his teeth. It seemed that they had gotten into one of the particle eddies that were present in the entire sphere around Kobol and disrupted Quantum based technology. They could differ from one kilometer to the next and it was a problem in a combat situation like now. Especially if the strengthening Hyperlight Core didn't strengthen the shield.
Right now the shield was down to its original civilian strength.
"Can we use a torpedo?" Kijoshi asked, his voice loud enough to get over the still groaning hull.
"Negative," Astral answered." Shield strength would not be enough to survive a right now."
Helo breathed in deep and eyed the tactical plot again. Than he looked up.
"Get targeting data for the turrets and the main gun," he ordered. " We need to end this fast. And switch the torpedoes to short range combat."
"Yes, sir," came the answer.
As Astrals fingers flew over her console, Helo glared at the plot.
As far as Helo knew Ferron torpedoes were designed with three kinds of combat in mind. Short ranged low intensity combat in orbit, mid ranged combat up to a light second range and long range combat above one light second.
And with each range came its own warhead mode. On short range they acted as not much more than kinetic impactors and every bit of energy in the stores went into the drive to accelerate them with just slightly over five hundred times gravity.
Mid range had been used in the Battle of Zaitaku with devastating results. Long range was less devastating, but much more of a problem. It combined relativistic speed with the creation of a powerful gravity well and as far as Helo had heard that this mode could rip ships apart between two passing missiles, sorely because of the gravity wells.
Helo quickly calculated the power of the kinetic impactors in his head. He hadn't been very good in math at school, but flight school had gotten that out of him.
Each missile had around a hundred tons mass and at five hundred gravities they would make it up to about 20 kilometers per second before impacting.
He grinned a little. Each torpedo would have the same energy as a 4 kT nuke.
"Anything about Thunderchild?"
"Not yet, sir. They are still engaging the Cylons."
--
Grant closed his eyes, finger gripping around the handrail of the central plot.
"Impact in twenty seconds," he heard his tactical officer say.
It would not end well. Of the thirty nuclear tipped missiles, fifteen were still coming towards them and the point defense gunners were not reacting nearly as fast as they should. Not with several hundred Raiders out there as well.
There had been a brief contact just outside the DRADIS range, but he doubted that he was going to get any answers before the missiles had hit.
He send of a short prayer towards the gods as the tactical officer called out again.
"Unknown contact just jumped in. Distance one kilometer dorsal."
Grant opened his eyes and stared towards the tactical officer for a moment, his knuckles going white.
"What..." he brought out as his eyes fell on the timer for the impact.
One second.
Time suddenly seemed to crawl and his life flashed before his eyes. The microseconds seemed to crawl by as his eyes were locked with the timer.
Time seemed to stop all together as the timer hit zero and flashed a few times.
The Command Information Center of Thunderchild was eerily silent. The ship didn't shake, there wasn't the groaning of the superstructure as the nukes hit. Only the noise of the normal operation of a war ship.
Time speed up again and Grant looked up and into the surprised face of Pierce. A small part of his mind noted that he probably had the same expression on his face.
"What in Hades..." he brought out.
"Unknown contact identified," the tactical officer called out." Colonial frigate, ninety percent match to Canophus class. Colonial IFF, identified as Leonidas, part of Battlestar Group 75."
Grant looked around to face the tactical officer.
"Galactica," he heard Pierce say," Bill Adama's boat."
"Friendly?" Grant asked as jumped over to the tactical console, looking over the shoulder of the tactical officer and at his display.
"Probably," was the answer." They appear to be firing at the Cylons. And the nukes..."
"And the nukes what?"
The tactical officer was silent as his finger danced over his keyboard.
"I don't know! The nukes seemed to slam into something and detonated."
Grant grit his teeth and moved to the side towards another console that was unused at the moment. He grit his teeth as he switched on one of the external cameras on the dorsal hull.
"What..."
Outside the hull of Thunderchild was cast in a strange red light that came from a wavering red curtain of some sort. For a moment the camera caught how a Raider slammed into the curtain, detonating.
"Intensify fire on Delta-One," he heard Pierce call out behind him as he moved the camera upwards until it had caught Leonidas.
The frigate was very visible against the strange red curtain and Pierce noted that its hull seemed to be of a very dark red color, through a part of his mind noted that it might be painted black with the red glow illuminating the ship like that.
Just at that moment the frigate began to fire with its port batteries. Normally he would have awaited to see the bloom of the guns. Instead he saw what appeared to be blue bolts shot out from the frigates guns as it turned about to face the first Basestar. And it weren't just the large guns, but also the smaller point defense guns.
"What in Hades is going on?" he asked no one in particular.
--
The light of the distant star illuminated the massive gun metal gray hull of the massive vessel, the numerous scars of micrometeorites visible against the hull. Here and there light shone from the inside of the massive vessel, where the hangar decks were open to space.
Another, smaller, vessel was docked on the upper part of the massive vessel, its hull darker and carrying very visible weapons on hull mounted sponsoons. There were several large areas of the ships hull of the same gun metal gray color as the massive vessel where it had been patched up.
Unseen fingers of radiation fingered out from both vessels and towards the inner system.
Inside the massive vessel a human male in a blue uniform stood in front of a display and stared at it. His eyes closed for a moment and his hands moved through his graying hair. Than he turned around towards his companion.
"Are you sure that the transmission was on a Gold Channel?"
His companion looked at him, the single red eye sensor stopping for a moment, before moving from left to right again.
"I am sure," the metallic sounding, but clearly human voice said." The Tachyon scatter was a little lower compared to the Tachyon transmitters of the Sabre, but it was clearly a Gold Channel encryption."
The man turned around towards the display, looking into the faces of two humans talking to each other over the Gold Channel.
As the display died in static, he turned around again and sighed.
"They are Colonial," he noted," And about to attack your brothers."
The red eyes stopped again, hovering over the man for a few more moments.
"I thought that you would understand us better by now, Daniel," was the answer." We do not want to be compared to these Heretics."
"Sorry, Spectre," Commander Daniel Garret of the EAS Sabre said." It's just..."
"I can understand that," Spectre said." You are human. As are the Colonials. We are Cylons, just as the Heretics are."
Daniel nodded.
"Old habits die hard..."
Spectre made a noise that sounded like a laugh.
"That is true," he said." A good number of us was ready to blast you out of space before maybe talking to what remained."
"Still glad you didn't," Daniel noted." That spidy shipy thing really did a number on us."
"As are we. Working with you has been a better decision. And you have been a good example for us for humans that are not going to enslave us."
Daniel chuckled a little embarrassed.
"I guess working with aliens does that to you..."
"Indeed."
There was a beeping noise that went trough the very sparsely furnished Combat Information Center of the old Hades Class Basestar. There were a few consoles, with Cylons sitting behind them, as well as the odd human from the Sabre. The center of the Command Information Center was occupied by something that looked like a bath tub, filled with a milky white liquid.
"Raider Seven Five has just ended its jump in system," the occupant of the bath tub said and opened his eyes." They are now transmitting their TADAR data."
"Thank you, Merlin," Spectre said and nodded towards the man in the tub.
"Thats my job," he noted." Doesn't look very nice, through."
The display lit up again, showing a DRADIS like display. For a brief moment it showed static before clearing again.
"The Heretic Stars just detonated ten nuclear warheads against the Cruiser," Merlin noted dryly." I don't think..."
He stopped.
"Frack... The ship somehow survived..."
Daniel blinked a few moments and looked at the Hades' hybrid.
"What? Not even a Minbari ship can survive that kind of punishment..."
Spectre followed Daniel's glance over towards Merlin.
"There is one possibility," he noted." Force Shields. The V'Ampier database we recovered in the Delta Phi system talked about force shields being in use by most races outside the Kobol Fortress Zone."
"True," Merlin noted." A pity that ninety percent of the data was hopelessly corrupted."
He than raised an eyebrow and a hand rose from the milky white and slimy liquid inside the tub, pointing at the display.
"Take a look at that," he said." Looks like there is a frigate side ship above the Cruiser. It seems to be projecting the Force Shield."
The display had changed to show a very grainy image. It showed a smaller ship above the larger Cruiser and a red bubble surrounding both ships.
"Looks like the smaller ship is the Leonidas," he noted.
Daniel stared at the display for a few moment.
"I suddenly feel like I'm in Star Trek," he muttered." Shields and intelligent robots..."
"And as such a part of the Galactica's fleet," Spectre noted." It seems like they have jumped beyond the border of the Zone."
Merlin breathed in deep and looked a little scared.
"No one in their right mind would do that..." he said.
"We wouldn't do that," Spectre pointed out." We know that the Great Enemies of the V'Ampier are still out there and that they have destroyed countless planets in their crusade against the V'Ampier. The Colonials did not."
"That was 25000 years ago," Daniel pointed out more or less absentmindedly, still looking at the screen." Many things can change in that time."
"True," Spectre said and the head of the advanced Centurion nodded." But who could have give this technology to the Cylons?"
"Earth..." Merlin noted after a few moments." It's outside of the Zone. Galactica could have found Earth..."
"I am a little skeptical about that," Spectre noted while Daniels head whipped around.
"We need to make contact with them," he said." I know we're not in our home universe. But Earth is our homeworld. We all want to go back home..."
Spectre looked at Merlin for a moment and the Hybrid looked back at him. Spectre was glad that the injection of V'Ampier DNA had made the Hybrid very stable and almost human like.
"I guess we could try..." Merlin said, his face showing concern, only to be replaced by surprise as he stared at the display.
Daniel blinked once before turning back to the display, while Spectre had needed less time to turn around to look at the screen.
On the display several very small contacts separated from Leonidas and speed towards the three Heretic Stars with a breathtaking acceleration.
"What the fuck..." Daniel managed to get out as the contacts impacted into the Heretic warships, resulting in the complete destruction of the first just after the impact.
"Kinetic Energy Weapons," Spectre noted." We should keep a good distance between Seeker or Enlightenment and Leonidas."