By ChaosEternus Chapter 18
At Twenty-nine minutes, Adama's voice sounded on the intercom and our questions were answered, just not in a way any of us had expected.
"All hear this, all hear this.
The Cylon basestar has been destroyed and her fighters are being routed
The basestar was destroyed by forces from a second refugee fleet, lead by the Blockade Runner Mailman, assisted by several Viper squadrons"
The room went dead quiet, the only sound being the hammer dropping from Tyrol 's shocked hands and his furious curses as it landed on his feet. Then, a shocked and incredulous cheer started to fill the room.
More survivors, more warships.
The general consensus was that humanities chances of survival had just taken a great leap upwards.
But it quickly became clear that whilst the news was greeted cheerfully, even the idea being enough too momentarily raise spirits, that nobody in the bay was truly going to believe until they had seen it for themselves, which was understandable and somewhat commendable.
As it turned out, our prayers had been truly answered as the distinctive shape of a Raptor, but one bearing markings that clearly stated she wasn't from Galactica. Her crew too were faces I had not seen before, as I caught a glimpse of them before they were led of by Adama and Tigh.
Of course, we had been warned that a Raptor not from Galactica was landing on, after all the circuit used by the LSO's permanently piped over the bays speakers but still, for all of us, the Colonials especially, it had been a case of seeing is believing'.
Now we all saw, and now we all believed.
Course it wasn't all happiness and laughs, we had Vipers landing on, most of them heavily damaged and every one of their pilots injured somehow. We also had Viper wrecks being dragged aboard by shuttles and recovery craft, ready to be rebuilt and reused or torn down for parts and metals to be reworked.
Far too many of the Vipers I had seen launch came back as salvage.
Far too many pilots I sent on to sickbay, knowing they would be out of the cockpit for ages and it at least two cases, permanently. It got even worse when word reached us that the Port Pod, almost back operational again with all the work engineering had been putting in, had taken a direct hit and was heavily damaged.
We may have survived, but Galactica didn't come out of the battle unscarred and neither did her crew. It left morale somewhat uncertain, some were celebrating the welcome additions to the fleet, some were mourning their losses and quite a few didn't know what to do.
The ripples from that day would be a long time in fading and not all of those ripples were good.
Not when Baltar was officially arrested by security forces from Mailman and charged with High Treason, Conspiracy to Commit Genocide among a whole long list of offences.
Now everyone had a face to place with the fall of the Colonies and that wasn't a good thing. It encouraged hatred and fear to spring up once more, poisoning people's minds and hearts. Not that I was entirely blameless in that regard, I would cheerfully have tortured Baltar for what he did but Baltar had been locked away aboard Mailman, her crew at least had had more than enough time to get used to the idea.
If he had stayed aboard Galactica or any of the first fleet vessels he would have been lynched in a heartbeat.
That was a new thing too, having come into popular usage since the Mailman and her convoy arrived. Galactica and the ships from Ragnar were being referred to more and more often as the First Fleet, with Mailman and her force being the Second or Relief Fleet, depending on who you asked.
Still, whilst the arrival of Mailman and the fleet of ships, almost entirely support vessels, she brought with her was a high point in the voyage to Earth; it wasn't the brightest spark that occurred on the way.
That was still to come.