Relief flooded Summers' awareness as DRADIS registered the arrival of the transport. Weeks had passed since their departure, and without Isard running interference with Colonel Nash, relations had degraded. CAP fighters moved to escort the transport.
"They made it," he said, taking a long pull from some ancient Kobolian cigar, calming his nerves. There would be answers, he hoped. He watched the transport slow and enter Dreadnought's hanger bay.
"Sir," the comm officer, another Zeus crewer, began, "receiving request from um… Dana… Eternal Star… whatever. She is asking if we have information on the Thirteenth Tribe."
"Tell her to be patient. We'll get her an update as soon as we can. We'll patch her through when we get everyone on board. And someone tell Nash to get on board, he's going to need to hear this, too."
"Yes, sir."
The old salvage captain pondered that for a while. Nash clearly wanted to make a play for leadership, and under normal circumstances, that wouldn't bother him. Summers didn't want this role, but he had a duty to his men, to the Zeus crewers who had thrown in with his original crew, to the whole human race. Something would have to give.
Frank looked down from his ladder, where he had been replacing one of the bridge lights shot to pieces by Jack months before. Repair work never stopped, not even in CIC. "You think they got some women on Earth?"
"They're machines, Frank," another salvager replied.
"Maybe I don't care if they're machines, if they know how to frak." Frank observed.
Sandra rolled her eyes. "I don't know why I signed up for this shit, sometimes."
"XO is on his way up with Stalker, sir," the comm officer pronounced. If Eternal Star's AI was impatient, well, so was Summers. There had better be answers.
A few hours later, in conference with Dana, Nash, Isard, and Stalker, Summers felt like he just had more questions.
"Galactica is still out there?" Summers began.
Isard rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "at least one of their Vipers was. And I don't see how it could get that far out on its own, even if someone did figure out how to rig a jump drive onto one." He set the burnt flight patch down on the CIC console, next to the damaged machine faceplate. "I guess the real question is how do we find them? What do we do now that Earth is even less inviting than Kobol?"
Dana replied over the wireless. "You're going to have to find a new world."
Stalker shook her head. "I don't know how we're going to do that, either. The Cylons were clearly on the road to Earth, else they never would have found us on our course to Earth. They are everywhere out here. Probably camping out at every significant system and navigational marker within range. If there's a habitable planet, you can bet your ass it'll be a toaster party."
Nash glared at her, and Summers wondered briefly if he had been hoping Isard and Stalker would never return, but grudgingly agreed. "The safest place to be is probably where we are. In the middle of nowhere. Nothing significant."
"Could the Cylons see through our ruse with the ion trail?" Summers wondered aloud.
"Doubtful," Dana said. "We've switched sublight courses enough times, coasted long enough that no amount of ships should be able to track us that way. They could try to saturate the entire sector with random jumps, and maybe get lucky."
"They'd not only need to have seen through the ruse, they'd also need a gods-awful lot of ships to pull that off, and be extremely lucky, even with Cylon sensors." Lieutenant Manning, the ex-police officer answered. "We might be marginally safer jumping to a random location, but the difference would be small, I think."
Summers nodded. "I'm not prepared to abandon Eternal Star for such a small difference."
"Thank you," Dana replied, a tone of sarcasm dripping from the AI's voice.
"Should we return, Commander?" Isard asked. "Check out the crash site in more detail? Send a team to survey the ruins on Earth? Try to find out what happened to them? I don't know if we can track the other survivors from it, but there might be something." Something had spooked Isard.
Dana answered, her voice heavy with emotion. "To what end? They are dead, Major. My brothers and sisters are gone. My crew is dead. I wish I had gone with them."
Summers pondered that for a moment. "No, Colonel. We'll coast for the time being. We have years of supplies, fuel, and food. We have time to consider this in detail. I think we lay low for a year or so, maybe make the Cylons think we're dead, or long gone. We can get our house in order out here, outfit and repair our ships as best as possible, then send out recon Raptors when we're ready. We can decide then if we want to revisit Earth, or scout for habitable worlds."
"We can stay out here for a while," Sandra explained, "but not forever. We still have to use fuel to run the generators, even if we're not maneuvering. We can stretch that, but not forever."
"How will our reserves look after a year?" Nash asked.
"If consumption stays roughly similar, we'll be at about 60% after a year. We could ration a bit more if necessary."
Summers shook his head. "No. 60% fuel loadout will be fine for a year. We need the rest. Our teams have been running ragged out there. Let them enjoy some creature comforts. Let us not be stingy with fuel budgets for repairs and refitting work, or for basic comforts. We'll be in a much better place to figure out our next move then."
"Suits me," Stalker said, looking at Isard with a strange expression on her face. "I could use a vacation." Summers knew that look well enough. He had some idea of what probably took place on that transport ship. More than a month of close confinement with a woman like her? Oh, frakking her would still be a mistake, but I understand, he thought.
The byplay was apparently not lost on Nash, either, who turned on his heels, a look of disgust on his face. He hadn't even waited to be dismissed.
"What crawled up his ass?" Stalker wondered aloud. But she probably knew. The psychopathic pilot was many things, most of them probably bad, but stupid she was not.
"Commander," Dana said, her voice still sad, somehow, "Since we apparently have the time, I am going to release the exodus records to you. I don't know that you'll find anything useful in there, but then again, I don't know that you won't, either. Someone has to remember them."
"So say we all," Summers replied, before closing the com channel. "So say we all," he whispered to himself.
… … …
The General frowned as he studied the DRADIS readings from his obsolescent flagship. Another retired basestar had taken up formation with his small fleet. He knew who was commanding that ship before the connection even opened up. Ellison. Gods, I should have her boxed. I should have had them all boxed. Every fucking meatbag. But then who would I frak? Still, this situation is degenerating rapidly. I will have to make plans…
"Ellison. I presume you have some kind of reason for bringing that antiquated junk out here." He demanded over the biolink.
"The rest of our brothers and sisters want me to help you find the pirates, but I'm not going to spend any time on your ship. So, I reactivated a second older basestar and staffed it with my model."
"Wonderful." The General replied, without even the slightest hint of sincerity.
"Don't worry," Ellison said over the link, "I'm checking in, and then I'm going off on my own search grid."
That both relieved and irritated the General. Relief came from knowing he wouldn't have to deal with the emotional attachments inherent in the flawed Six line, but irritation that he couldn't satiate his own base desires in the soft flesh of a bedded Six.
On the other old basestar, Ellison gave that some thought as she disconnected the biolink. Things had been degenerating between the Cylon models since the battle of New Caprica. Models were self-segregating on their own baseships. Things were coming to a head, and Ellison feared where the trend would lead.
On the other hand, only she could find the pirates. Only she could think like them, like a human caught on the edge of deep space. In the months since the General's original flagship had been nuked by a jury-rigged proximity mine, Ellison had time to contemplate the tactic and the limited data gathered before the explosion. There was something there. A Kiss of Death, she thought, a common smuggling technique of masking a sublight ion trail. But why would they do something like that? They had operational jump drives. Unless one of their other ships had somehow lost jump capability? But even then, they should have just abandoned that ship and carried on with the rest. Something doesn't add up here.
Ellison turned to another Six. It took over 300 of them to operate the old basestar. But as Cylon model relations degenerated, she had difficulty trusting any but her own. And maybe the Eights and Twos, but both of those models were prone to their own problems. Emotional instability in the former, and obsessive metaphysical philosophizing in the latter. No, it was best to stick to Sixes only, until things were sorted out.
"Have our raiders spread out in a search grid from these coordinates," Ellison began.
She pulled up an image of the coordinates in the flow-display, and the direction of the ion trail supposedly left by Dreadnought. "Jump along this direction, look for residual ion trails indicating a course change."
The other Six frowned. "It's going to take an awful long time to find anything, if there's even anything to find. Even if we use every raider we have at our disposal. We should get the General's help, use his raiders to boost…"
"No," Ellison interrupted. "Only our raiders. What he doesn't know won't… hurt him."
The other Six contemplated that for a moment, and Ellison could see the gears turning, knowing how her sister was thinking. This was a dangerous precedent.
"By your command," the other Six answered finally, nodding almost imperceptibly.
One year later
Unknown location in deep space.
Summers looked around CIC, a place now cleaner and more functional than he'd ever known it. Jury-rigged zip ties and cable runs had been replaced with smooth piping and c-clamps. Duty stations were free of grime and stains, and even the smell of stale beer had been wafted away over the months of relative calm. Even the duty uniforms among the fleet crewers were crisp and clean, with only a few well-hidden patches. The salvage crews were a bit less neat, of course, but little different than they had been before the one-sided war. The run-down, bordering-on-mutiny attitudes had vanished. Even the sewage lines had been repaired.
Dreadnought's battle-damage had been repaired and work teams had even reinforced critical sections with additional ablative composite armor bolted to the outer ribbing. It would be less effective than the inner armor layers, but quantity had a quality of its own. More dumbfire box launchers had been rigged to the old VLS missile tube hard points. The tubes could be opened and flushed of rockets rapidly. She was probably in better condition to fight than she had been the day she launched from the shipyard, at least in better condition to fight the kind of battles the running escape from the Colonies had force upon her. Two wars worth of fighting, and all the resources of a Galleon of Kobol, had shaped her modifications.
Even his own uniform was in better shape. Some of Graystone's crew had seen fit to tailor it down to actually fit him. Certainly, it was more comfortable than his previous duty overalls.
"Commander," one of the Zeus crewers – no, one of his crewers – called out from the comm station, "Colonel Nash wants a word."
Summers picked up the phone. "This is Dreadnought, actual."
"Recon mission is standing by, sir," Nash began. The last word stuck in the Colonel's mouth a bit, but despite their consistently rocky command relationship, the beginnings of a grudging respect had formed. Nash would take orders, within reasonable limits.
"Launch when ready, Colonel."
"I really wish Stalker was leading this op," Isard commented. "Not that I don't trust Nash's pilots, but…"
"Well, that's your fault, isn't it?" Summers laughed, despite himself. If a legitimate Colonial command structure had remained, Isard would have found himself in seriously hot water. Getting your subordinate pregnant surely fell on the wrong side of every reg he'd ever heard of.
Then again, it was hard to fault anyone for that when the human race was on the verge of extinction. Survival took precedence over regs, and that probably would have been true even if the fleet wasn't led by a semi-pirate who took pleasure in sticking it the law whenever he felt he could get away with it.
"Talking about me?" Stalker sauntered into CIC like she owned the place. Her bump was more prominent every day, it seemed. Well, Summers thought, at least someone is getting some around here. It's been almost a month since Sandra and I even… Gods, I wish I understood women.
"It's your op." Isard shrugged. "Just wish you were leading it."
"Hatchet will do fine. He may be an Ares man, and Nash's pet Raptor driver, but I don't hold it against him." Stalker answered.
"We're talking a big risk here, sticking our necks out above water again." Summers answered. "So far, we've been free of the Cylons. It's been like frakking paradise out here. Booze. Meat. Vegetables. You know, I never thought I'd frakking say I missed veggies. I never want to touch hardtack or algae mush again. And then downtime on Eternal Star… It's like being planetside again."
Sandra, looking quite pretty in her neatly-trimmed Colonial uniform, replied. "Yeah. But we can't sustain that forever. We hit the 60% fuel reserve cutoff we talked about. Even if we dial things back, drop consumption to minimum, we've got a few years at most. Better to look for supplies before we reach critically low levels."
Summers nodded. "Which is why I've approved the op. But it's still a risk. If they find us…"
Stalker smiled. "If they find us, they've got a Galleon to contend with, too."
That didn't comfort Summers as much as it might have, and he wasn't sure why…
… … …
Frank's powered tender hummed as he drilled into the newly-installed ablative coating on Dreadnought's dorsal spine. Riveting the ablative armor onto the ribbing had its own share of problems. It would have been better to sweat heavier battle steel for the second layer, like newer battlestars had. The rivet joints could give way before the plate itself, and the whole thing could shear off. But ablative composite had its own advantages: namely that they could fire the heavy ceramic-composite blades without dipping into their precious remaining scrap metal reserves too much, and a year was sufficient to cover all the sensitive and damaged areas with the stuff. It wouldn't take repeated hits, but it would spare the ribbing and first layer of armor a hit or two. Sandwiching the ceramic-composite on either side was a thinner layer of metal. It was tough as Hades to drill through.
"Easy, Frank, don't burn out the drill bit this time." Jack came in over the wireless. "I don't think we have a spare on hand."
Jack's own tender held the plate in place as Frank finished the drilling. "Yeah, yeah. Just tell me there's some women at the end of all this."
Jack laughed. "Don't I wish. Look, at least this is the last one."
"There's that," Frank answered. Though it took a while, he finally drilled the last mounting point into the rubbing and fastened down with a rivet almost as big as he was. "Wish my dick was as big as this thing. Maybe then I could get some down time with Graystone's babes."
Jack frowned at that. While Frank was a good-natured sort, more talk than anything else, there were those who lacked that jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold personality. The ratio of the fleet was causing problems, and if Jack was honest about it, the survival of his species was hanging in the balance. Not to mention his own love life.
He angled his tender above the prow of the old battleship, smiling for a moment as he saw the great skull and crossed wrenches featured prominently over the new armor. But it didn't banish his anxiety over being alone, of sleeping in an otherwise empty bed every night.
"How about somethin' to drink? Hit up some of that Kobolian ambrosia when we get back?" Frank asked.
But Jack wasn't listening anymore. His thoughts were drifting. Jamie, where are you?
… … …
Jamie Ellison was, at that exact moment, tracking a rather large and impressive ion trail in deep space. Finally, she thought, we found something. A year jumping through a search grid larger than the entire Cyrannus sector, and she finally had something to show for it.
"It's weak, sister. Very weak." Another Six observed. But Ellison knew it was them. She didn't quite know how she knew, but she did.
"Yes, but this is it. This is them. Extrapolating from where we lost them after the proximity mine explosion, they must have come this way coasting with engines off, then changed course near here at max burn. They probably did it a few times – that's what I do – but now we have a directional fix. Jump raiders in a line," she pointed to a positional fix in the flow-display, "along this vector, and find their next course change."
Still another Six, Kelly, one of the few who, like Ellison, went by a very human name, chimed in. "Something's wrong, sister."
"With the plan?" Ellison asked.
"No. Not that. The General's fleet…" his three basestars, two new and one old, had been sighted checking in on Ellison's little operation for a while now. "…just jumped in, but they are out of position… and the resurrection ship isn't with them. Something is wrong."
The hybrid rigged to the old basestar's command deck suddenly screamed. It was blood-curdling, and she thrashed in her tank. "THEY ARE KILLING US. Brother and sister killing each other, sinning before God."
"What?" Kelly asked. Several Sixes turned to stare at the pair, fear coming over them like a shroud. They all knew things were bad between the Cylon models, and that some of the model representatives had been trying to negotiate a resolution to…
"Oh God." Ellison's flow-display went insane as the realization dawned. She knew there had been a dispute over lobotomizing the raiders, but she never thought it would come to… "JUMP THE SHIP. NOW!"
The General's basestars cycled all their launchers in rapid succession. Waves of missiles began impacting her basestar. Her older basestar had flak batteries and point defense, unlike the newer ships, but the first wave of missiles targeted the primary batteries. The General was, despite all evidence to the contrary, apparently not a complete fool. Raiders were killed by the dozens in their launch bays. Armor began failing all over the ship.
"We've lost sublights!" Kelly screamed.
"Main batteries offline." Another Six reported. "Point defense network is down."
"Jump. Jump!" Ellison ordered irrationally. The jump drive was spooling, she couldn't even blind jump until the cycle was complete. She needed precious seconds she didn't have. Another wave of missiles was inbound.
"Launch the raiders. All of them! Defend the ship!"
She felt sick sacrificing her raiders this way. Unlike the Ones, who regarded the Raiders as nothing, worth gutting and lobotomizing on a whim, she knew them as life. Different life, but their own creations. But there was no choice now. It was them, or everyone.
For what it was worth, the Raiders understood at their own subsentient level what they were being asked to do. They knew what the missiles meant to all of them. They knew that this wasn't a death they'd wake up from, and they launched without complaint anyway, to save their sisters.
"Thirty seconds!" Kelly exclaimed.
Raiders died rapidly, but they stopped a wave of missiles, giving her basestar a few more precious moments. Ellison watched, tears streaming from her cheeks as they gave their lives. She felt the screams through the biolink. She knew they were gone forever.
"Spooled!" Kelly said as the last of the Raiders fell to the swarms of missiles launched from the General's trio of basestars.
They had not even had time to enter in new jump coordinates. Instead, Ellison had used the first of her search grid targets, which at least had the virtue of being in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking. The jump drive died almost immediately, strained by a combination of battle damage and the need to jump instantly upon spool-up, but it worked one last time.
She connected to the biolink with other Sixes to determine how bad the damage was, and she gasped. The ventral hull was heavily damaged, with two launch bays destroyed, the primary batteries and launchers destroyed, and the life support systems critically damaged.
"We're venting atmosphere! Shut the hatches!" Fortunately, most of the ventral hull had been used for storage, so casualties among the Sixes were light. But most of the old Centurions were lost, and the entire Raider complement had died in the terrible, one-sided battle.
"We've got three heavy raiders in the upper launch bay," Kelly said. "And that's it."
"I don't think we can fix the jump drive." Another Six reported. "And the ventral hull is a wreck, I don't think the ship would survive it even if we could."
The basestar's aged design had saved them from a missile barrage that would have vaporized one of the newer ships, but that apparently meant a slow death in the middle of deep space instead of a quick death in the heat of battle. Unlike the newer ships, this basestar could not regenerate on its own.
"They're going to be looking for us. We need to go." Ellison wondered aloud.
"Where?" Kelly asked. "They probably genocided us right off the Colony by now. The Resurrection Hub was already under the control of the Ones… Where the frak do we go?"
"Well… I have an idea. But you're not going to like it…"