by Chaoseternus Seven
Five frantic jumps is what it took us to get back to Colonial space, our engines being strained all the way as we forced the drives to perform in a manner they haven't managed since the last war.
Like the rest of the ship, they held up beautifully. But then, the Liberty class had always been known for the sheer robustness of the design, the ability to take anything and keep on fighting, keep on delivering.
We dropped into Colonial space already at Full General Quarters, our weapons armed and loaded, our Vipers in their tubes, ready to launch.
Our radiological alarms were triggered instantly, not by a Raider near by with nukes or a Cylon baseship or even a Colonial Warship, but by Gemon herself.
The planet could be seen clearly from the few viewports and outside cameras we had on the ship.
Gemon was dead.
Habitable worlds always look like jewels from space, deep green of land mixed in with the greys of mountains, white of ice caps and glaciers and the sandy yellow of deserts, all wrapped in the deep blue of oceans and seas.
Gemon was such a jewel once, but she certainly wasn't now.
The oceans were a putrid mixture of greys and browns, the land an almost universal expanse of deep brown which we could see glowing malevolently on the nightside, where the light of the sun couldn't hide the radiation.
The Cylons hadn't even posted a picket here, they had no need. They had literally nuked the entire world into uninhabitable oblivion.
Already the surface was getting blurry as the radioactive dustclouds created by the thousands of devices that must have been detonated here were starting to be spread out by the high altitude winds, spreading the blanket of radioactive dust to cover the whole world.
Soon, nothing would be visible; Gemon would never be habitable again.
The sound of shots in the distance woke us from our shocked stupor, and it wasn't long before we discovered we had our second casualties of the war. Five crewmembers from Gemon had shot themselves, committing suicide at the sight.
I had to damn them for their selfishness, we needed every human now. If the Cylons had breeched Colonial territory to the extent where they could cause this to happen, an entire world deadened then every trained warrior was needed if we to have our vengeance.
If we were to survive.
Mailman didn't have crew to spare at the best of times, and these weren't the best of times, not by any stretch of the imagination. Everyone who died placed more strain on those that survived, who had to take up their duties as well.
Viper Pilots were the only people we had in excess, and they had to maintain flight status, they wouldn't be able to help crew this bird that much.
It didn't take long for us to determine that the grand Colonial Military had been defeated, our worlds seized and nuked, though none to the extent that Gemon had been.
It was as if they had some desire, some reason to ensure that no-one from Gemon who wasn't already offworld escaped, as if something on Gemon was a threat to be eliminated.
They had certainly managed that.
The only smiles we had that day was when we found Admiral Nagala's taskforce. Nagala had known that Baltar was treacherous and it seemed had managed to inform several of her Battlestars in time.
The entire taskforce was dead, but around the five ships at the centre of the fleet was an expanding corona of wrecked Raiders and Basestars.
They at least had died fighting, like Warriors should.
By now, we were tired, despondent.
We had been searching through the dead remnants of our once great civilisation for hours and had found little of value whilst dodging cylon patrols and sweeps, the only bright light in our day was the news Galactica had escaped with a refugee fleet, the information torn from the receiver of a military shuttle found floating in space, the crew killed when their computers dumped their atmosphere.
We kept the shuttle, docking it one of our airlocks as we continued the search for information, for survivors. The ship could take the strain of a docked ship through jump, she was robust enough for the task and the extra utility of a shuttle was too valuable an opportunity to waste.
We also scavenged for whatever other supplies we could grab from the hulks, food, water, parts, slowly filling up the holds that had become depleted by our time on mission and the rebuild we had had to perform after we were struck by that Cylon Nuke.
On our fifth day in occupied territories, we struck gold.
Manoeuvring into a debris belt to elude a raider patrol, we stumbled on an trio of powered down Viper VI's. Six's never achieved much use with the fleet because their manoeuvrability was abysmal, only slightly better than a Combat Shuttle, but what they did have was missile armament as standard.
These three even had live pilots.
Upon seeing us slipping into their hiding place, their first response was to pulse their thrusters, giving them slight thrust away from us, thrust small enough not to be noticed even by a determined short range scan.
But the half squadron the Mailman could maintain active at any time was already in space when we had to dodge into the debris belt to fox the Cylon sensors and they quickly stumbled upon the Mark VI's.
With ten Mark II's surrounding them, the pilots of the VI's were very happy to come on board, they were pretty ecstatic at finding more survivors, though technically we found them, and after a cursory check to see if we were genuine told us all.
There was a second refugee fleet, one that had no true warship to protect them.
Ten merchant ships, two of which were on Military Contracts, four of which were bingo cargo, two full tylium tankers, one bulk grain carrier and a transport loaded to the gills with MREs formally destined for distribution across the fleet.
Even better for us, the two Military contracts were a freighter loaded to the gills with the very last operational Mark VI's, shifting the somewhat temperamental birds for decommissioning and the second had their pilots, headed for retraining to use the far more manoeuvrable VII's.
I almost snorted aloud at that, VI pilots were the only fighter pilots in the fleet that needed retraining to use a different mark; they got far to used to their missile boats and lost the ability to handle more manoeuvrable craft.
But as far as I was concerned, it was jackpot.
More fighters, more pilots, fuel, food, all we really lacked was people but that would change, somehow I intended to find Galactica and link up with the main refugee fleet.
But those bingo empty freighters we would have to do something about as soon as we got a look at them, got a feel for what they could carry.
I grinned slightly, four empty freighters and tones of dead Vipers floating around, just waiting for somebody to collect them, plus raptors, shuttles of all descriptions, Battlestars just waiting to be stripped of ammunition, to give something that can be put back into the fight!
We would never be able to damage the Cylons severely, we had no ship capable of that, especially with the big frakkers the Cylons were now using but if we could find Galactica then I am sure they would appreciate a relief convoy.
I turned to my officers and the VI pilots who were staring curious and a little disgusted at my grin and shared the plan.
Five minutes later we all had tight, grim grins.
We could get back into the fight, make a difference to the survival of the human race if, and it was one hell of a big if, we could meet up with Galactica.
The Cylons cleared the area two hours later and after another five hours to ensure it wasn't an ambush, we slowly left hiding, the ten Mark II's and three VI's flitting around the ship like overanxious guardians once more.
At space normal it took us four hours to catch up to the fleet were it hid, powered down and dark on a ballistic trajectory out of the system. From their things moved fast, we were a Military ship and we had a somewhat viable plan out of the situation, the Civilians listened, added their comments to the plan and got to work.
Armed with a short list of locations plus Pilots from the transport which was on the military contract, the President Monroe as Marines and if necessary, Pilots for the any craft they managed to salvage, the bingo freighters Gemon Run, Libran Voyager, Highland Dreams, and President Adar set ballistic trajectories and left nervously for their collections whilst we hovered protectively over the rest of fleet.
It wasn't long before Omega came to me with the suggestion;
"The Transporter Of The Books is already acting as a carrier but she isn't exactly equipped for it, no launch tubes or repair bays, how difficult would it be to refit her to add those without a drydock?"
The answer, as Omega knew, was extremely difficult and time consuming, and she would still never be a warship, just a ship capable of launching fighters which would make her a priority target for the Cylons.
But in all honesty, we had little choice. Mailman may carry far more then ten fighters, a half squadron, but she could only have ten available at any one time. Five in the Launch bays, just waiting for the Pilots to jump in and go and five in the repair bay. The landing bay could hold some in theory but the entrance to the bay was literally right beneath the main engines, a major hazard in itself and there was no way for the fighter to wave off and come around again, if they came in they were committed. Shortening the landing bay even further to store or even launch more fighters out the bay instead of the tubes would add another hazard to an already hazardous and far too short landing area.
A definite no there.
In order to better protect what we had, we needed a second carrier. The Transporter Of The Books , the name being a reference to a rather obscure passage in the books of Kobol, would have to do. She would lose carrying capacity, maybe even a little speed due to the extra weight and the drain of powering the extra systems but we already had far more Vipers then we could launch in any reasonable length of time and if... when the freighters got back, they would be carrying even more and hopefully some Raptors and Shuttles too, both craft Mailman couldn't support, though we were trying like hell with the one shuttle we had grabbed.
It would take a hell of a lot of resources, I just hoped the specialized spare launch bay parts we had plus whatever the freighters grabbed was enough, let alone repair bay and landing bay parts.
Libran Voyager never made the rendezvous.
According to Captain Khan of the President Adar , the two ships had been scavenging from the shattered remnants of Nagala's taskforce when Libran Voyager was destroyed, caught in the explosion as a munitions dump exploded on the Battlestar they were investigating. They didn't know why it had blown, though considering the ship was still bleeding air from that sector; they assumed that it was most likely due to a fire aboard reaching the munitions.
It was a blow, Libran Voyager was the largest of the freighters after Transporter Of The Books and had forty crew and ten Viper Pilots on board. Fifty people lost forever, each one representing one more chance lost for the Colonies to rebuild.
But we had to leave, no time to mourn. The longer we waited the further away Galactica would get and searching for her beyond the Red Line would not be an easy task, that and the fact that Cylon patrols were increasing all the time, as they finished their tasks on the surface of the occupied worlds and were joined by what appeared to be a second wave deployment out of Cylon space.
This was becoming an unhealthier place to be all the time and so, a full two weeks after we had first entered occupied territories, we jumped out and began our search for Galactica and the refugee fleet she protected.
I admit that whilst I appeared confident to everyone else, inside I had little confidence at all. We had no idea how many times Galactica had been forced to jump, how far she had gone from Cylon space, even if she had survived the Cylons and their attacks.
We had an idea she had survived Ragnar Anchorage, judging by the number of times Basestars had jumped into Occupied Territories within our sight showing obvious signs of Combat with somebody, we knew that there was Military units out their somewhere that were still in the fight but those had dropped of dramatically a while ago.
Either they weren't in the fight anymore or they had succeeded in losing the Cylons.
We hoped for the latter and carefully ignored any suggestions of the first. For morale's sake, I actively discouraged mention of the first possibility in fact.
There was a suggestion that if they were fighting Galactica there would be a debris trail we could follow, which might give us an indicator of which direction Galactica was moving in.
I ignored it that was a hopeless cause. The chances of finding enough battle debris in the volume of space we would have to search to give us a pointer was hopeless, we would be lucky to find one of their battlefields let alone the several it would need to get an idea of their direction, and even then all it would need is for Galactica to change direction and we are worse of then when we started, heading in entirely the wrong direction.
No, we needed luck but I had a feeling that just by surviving we had used all the luck available to us for the next century at least.
We were heading out of known space, in a relic of the first Cylon war (admittedly one that had proved itself to still be capable, if a little undergunned), with a flock of merchants under our wing all desperately searching for a fleet that didn't want to be found and had the sheer vastness of space to hide in.
We were so frakked as to be unbelievable, I just hoped the people under my command never realised that, but in all honesty, if they didn't realise it already, they would soon enough.