7 Points
By Chaoseternus
It was a frustrated and unhappy Cerberus that returned to Del Shakka Mel to report, and reload their armouries from their Tel'tac supply vessel. They had seen their objective, held it within their grasp only to have it torn away.
At least now they knew for definite that there was a refugee fleet in need of assistance, and at least now they had an idea of how the enemy was. Machines, a race of machines, they still didn't know how intelligent the machines were, if they were sentient, hell, who there creators were, they did however know on startling fact.
The refugees were human. That meant they were the second survivors of a fallen advanced human civilisation the Tau'ri knew off, it made them valuable in their own right.
But that would lead the Tau'ri into open conflict with the machines in all probability, after all, unlike humans machines did not forget, did not forgive, just carried out there orders uncaring of morality, of human ideals of right and wrong.
And they were patient; a machine would have no problem waiting forty, a hundred, even a thousand years if it meant a greater chance of success.
These machines appeared to have carried out genocide on an unheard of scale, willingly. That made them a threat of the highest order, and machine logic being what it was, Flight Lieutenant Drew Miller rather suspected that they were already at war with the cylons, even before he had opened fire, after all, if humans are the threat, and you had ordered a human civilisation destroyed, wouldn't you want all humans destroyed in order to permanently remove the threat?
The Captain of the Cerberus didn't think that was a particularly nice thought.
Neither did Enerina when she read the report.
That was something the Goa'uld would certainly never contemplate and even more likely never allow. They needed humanity, like the parasites most of her race were they took took took, giving the humans under their dominion nothing and often acting cruelly and irresponsibly towards them, but they needed humanity.
Unlike before humanity, when the Goa'uld took hosts of various races, Unas making up the largest proportion at roughly 40% of all hosts, the current crop of Goa'uld could not, would not contemplate life in anything other than a human. Only a rare few took non-human hosts, and most jumped to a human as fast as they were allowed.
The time may just come when the Goa'uld may have to fight with the Tau'ri, for the survival of the host race they relied upon so much.
And, just wouldn't that be an interesting and unstable alliance.
Sighing, she began the familiar yet annoying task of typing up her own report for her allies the Tau'ri, adding her own thoughts to Drew's very through analysis. More trouble was on its way; trouble was Enerina wasn't sure if the Tau'ri were ready for it.
Drew gloated to himself as he took Cerberus back out to continue the search, Harris it seemed wasn't having much luck, they had been out on Rescue/Recovery for 23 hours so far and had found nothing, they hadn't even had a contact with the cylons, whereas Drew had been out just 3 hours, and had not only made contact with the enemy, but had managed to grab sensor records of the refugee fleet too.
Now, Blastboat would spend the next 8 hours, baring emergencies, shut down so the crew could hit the bunks and showers on Del Shakka Mel, whilst he would be out there continuing the search, hopefully making contact with the fleet.
With a flash, Cerberus dropped out of hyper…
…And right into hell.
"New contact! Multiple contacts! I'm reading 130 hostile vessels in system and counting!"
"Raise shields! Battlestations! Helm, break us off and rig for hyper!" Drew shouted, cursing his luck. They had dropped right into the maw of the beast!
" Contact! Refugee fleet on scope"
"What? Where?" Drew cursed, he couldn't break off, not with the fleet in sight, they needed to make contact!
"Helm, passing co-ordinates, rig a microjump to the fleet" Sensor/Weapons Officer Shane Cooper shouted, as he frantically typed commands into the console.
Drew nodded, good initiative, he flicked the intercom on, "All hands rig for Microjump, maintain GQ throughout the jump"
Shane cursed loudly, "Sir, we might have a problem here"
"What is it?"
"We now have 250 contacts on scope and more registering all the time, we're dicing with OBE here, I don't know how long we will have before the AWAC computer overloads"
Drew grimaced, "Isolate the AWAC computer from the rest of the network, make sure it doesn't take the rest of the ship down with it"
"Yes sir"
"Microjump in 3… 2… 1…" Ensign Bonner's voice carried over the bridge, bringing the shuddering of the gauss rifles to a close as the ship prepared for the jump.
The first thing Drew heard as they dropped out of hyper was the blaring eerie sound of a Master Alarm.
"Master Alarm on Sensors, AWAC computer down, attempting a reset…" Shane nodded, resigned "System dead, we've lost it sir"
"Shit!! All right, you know the drill; manual set Pulse batteries to target vessels with no life signs only, set gauss rifles to manual, torpedoes to backup targeting, manual target selection. Its gonna slow us down, nothing more" Drew grimly replied, his years of RAF service allowing him to resist the urge to curse a blue streak, just.
"Yes sir… pulse batteries 1,2,…4 and 5 accepting the change, pulse 3 not acknowledging, I'm shutting it down, gauss checks… torpedoes checks, we are go"
"Finally, weapons are now free on manual" Drew ordered.
"Sir, picking up refugee transmissions… running it through translation… its Latin based" Systems/Engineering Officer Tappin.
" Starbuck, see that?"
"Skip-jumper, yeah I view it, little busy though… Yes! Bagged one"
"Starbuck, Apollo, this is Galactic, we're reading human life symbols on the , I you to , try for an "
"Christ, we're losing half the messages, Pierson's supposed to be hot with languages, get him on the translator and get that cleared up" Drew frowned annoyed.
"Weps" Bonner shouted to make sure he was heard, "I'm prepping for a run on the heavy at 3 o'clock, be ready on torps"
"Belay that!" Drew snapped, "Ready on Gauss rifles, to many fighters about to intercept the torps, save them"
"Aye Sir"
"There's talking all over the , you see that Apollo, I recognise the symbols, there standard, but some kind of derivative , and…"
Pierson frowned as he frantically tried to bring his centuries of experience with language to the fore, tapping furiously into the console as he added missed words and corrected others, each modification reducing the number of mistakes the translator spat out.
"Frak me" came the quiet curse over the radio, and Pierson grinned slightly, he doubted even a computer would need help translating that one, "You see that Apollo?"
"Yeah"
"Not over the airwaves"
"Frak no, I'm heading back to Galactica to report, Kara, you re-engage"
"Copy"
"Systems rig the Rings, protocol SAR-15!" Bonner shouted from the helm as he danced the Cerberus through the fight, then flung on the brakes, bringing the MTB to a shuddering halt. Instantly, the rings dropped outwards from the hull, enveloping a refugee pilot who was sans ship in their embrace, depositing her into the largest open space aboard the MTB, horizontal in the main airlock, the only place there was enough room for Rings could be fitted.
"All vipers, all vipers, begin immediate combat landings, starboard and port bays are ready to receive you"
"The civilian ships they're…" Tappin paused, then continued slowly, anguished tears flowing down his face, "All bar one civilian ship have jumped, a Liner with 1,500 life signs didn't make it, the machines nuked it"
"Mourn the dead later" Drew snapped, unknowingly echoing Adama's words from months before, "helm, rig for jump, weps support the retreating fighters as much as you can, systems, see if you can contact that Supercarrier, we need a rendezvous, but as soon as they jump, helm, get us the fuck out of here"
"Sir, last fighters landing on now, they'll jump within seconds" weps responded.
"Shit, okay, forget the contact systems, helm, you have your orders"
"Yes sir… the carrier has now jumped, rigging for jump"
Cerberus vanished from the frustrated Cylons, carrying with her the battered body of a Colonial warrior.