by Chaoseternus Four
Things woke up after that.
System after system we would drop into and there would be almost instantaneous jumps out, always too fast for us to get an ID and on one or two occasions in quite large numbers.
We found no obvious signs of bases or facilities of any kind but if they were buried and went dead as soon as we arrived, well without taking the time for a real thorough sweep of the system we had little chance of finding them, and we didn't have time for that.
A real sense of urgency was beginning to build; we knew these were Cylons, even if we couldn't prove it. Too many glimpses of the same familiar silhouette, known to be the class used by Baltars contacts. Too much of a bad, almost precogniscient sense of approaching danger.
In the Forty-fourth system things came to a head.
"Contact!" came Omega's familiar shout as we arrived in the system, we listened, just wryly waiting for the shout to tell us that they had jumped and once again we didn't have a positive ID.
It didn't come.
"Inbound Raiders!" Omega continued, "Classify as Scimitar class, inbounds on attack course"
Snapping my mouth closed, I barked at my XO, Captain Atlas, to bring us to General Quarters as I strode once more over to Omega.
"How many contacts?"
"Thirty sir, I'm also reading what warbook says is a war era Basestar orbiting the fifth planet... masses of cylon activity all over the place, I think we've hit a hot one sir!"
I nodded slowly, calculating odds.
"Rig for jump!" I barked.
We fled, leaving the system before the Scimitars closed to weapons range, one of our objectives completed. We had confirmed that the Scimitars were cylon.
Now for the tricky part.
We jumped back in, arriving very close to one the largest of the systems three gas giants and went silent.
No emissions, minimal power relying on passive sensors only we were vulnerable to a surprise attack, or even just somebody stumbling onto us. Despite the vastness of the system, that was a real risk here, far too many ships were flitting about.
We identified Raiders by the squadron, several old style baseships as well plus a few craft we tentatively identified as support craft, tenders, ore carriers, forge ships and the like.
But it was the Raiders that had us shocked and worried. We had suspected for some time, we had seen to many glimpses not to but these Raiders didn't act like the old types we had heard about from the war, these acted like they had a human pilot aboard.
They acted like they had actual intelligence directing them.
This was, to put it mildly, worrying. Especially when you consider the numbers they had in this none system alone and this was undoubtedly not the only system they had control of.
Then IT arrived, and our jaws hit the floor.
IT was most likely a new design of baseship, and it was big, bigger than a Battlestar but spindly. The sensor silhouette showed six arms radiating from a single central point.
A full half of the Raiders in system vanished, flocking aboard the massive ship they must have been waiting for.
Our eyes just bugged out at the sheer volume of fighters that were crawling aboard the massive ship. Even if it just carried fighters, the sheer volume would make it a formidable opponent in combat.
But very few ships had ever been built as pure carriers and the Cylons had not shown the inclination to build one during the last war. We had to assume that this beast was armed as well, and probably quite heavily.
The same thought began to fill our minds, the extreme secretiveness that had caused them to jump out of every system we found them in, except here, where they just tried to destroy us. A massive basestar, loading up advanced fighters, presumably a newly constructed ship picking up its flock.
The Cylons were building up for a war.
This we had to confirm, then run like hell for Colonial space, to warn of the storm that we had little doubt was heading the colonies way.