The Mailman
by Chaoseternus
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Eight
We started at Ragnar; salvaged Communications logs had confirmed this was where Galactica had begun her voyage with the refugees out of Colonial Space.
We had little hope of finding a clue as to where she had gone, after all she had been engaged by Cylons, she wouldn't want to leave anything behind that could help us trace her but if we didn't at least look I knew we would be asking ourselves forever, what if?
What if Galactica had left some clue behind at Ragnar?
Would we have found the fleet faster?
I'm sure you get the idea, so we searched and found nothing except the shattered remnants of Viper and Scimitar alike. We didn't probe the nebula itself, we didn't have the time, this area was too heavily patrolled to risk getting caught in a bottleneck like that. Indeed, a patrol appeared just as we were about to jump which included a basestar, far too big a ship for us to mess with.
Luckily for us, our countdown to jump had started and they arrived badly positioned to attack us so we were able to jump without interference.
We arrived at our first search point, well beyond the Redline and began our sweep, the few Vipers we were able to launch with the meagre facilities aboard Mailman joined by an even smaller group from the Transporter of the Books, the bulk of their pilots having donned overalls and began work on her refit, a priority task.
We quickly found evidence that there had been a fight in this system, shattered remnants of Vipers and Scimitars drifted close to the fifth planet, an undersized rock ball smaller than some moons I had seen.
But there was no sign of Galactica and no sign of where she had gone and so we left quickly, no doubt the Cylons would be patrolling the areas Galactica had moved through, searching for stragglers, groups like us desperate to catch up with the mighty Galactica and the bulk of the survivors of our once proud and mighty race.
The second system contained two Basestars, one being tended to by a massive support ship, almost bigger than the basestar itself. We jumped quickly, praisng the Lords that our fighters had found the Cylons and escaped without being noticed before the Cylons had any inkling we were there.
For the moment, the luck of the Lords appeared to be with us but I knew better than to count on that.
The third system was dead, no sign of Cylons or Colonials and no useful resources, we left quickly.
The fourth system also showed signs of battle, though, we were heartened to note, there were far more Cylon Casualties floating about then human, most of the wrecks showed signs that they had run into a stream of suppression fire from Galactica's guns. Of course, we didn't know that for definite but that's the way it looked.
The Fifth system we were jumped, a Basestar flashing into existence so close we could read the markings on her side from the Mailman.
At this range, neither of us could fire nor launch fighters, they would just splatter straight against the other hull and most likely, damage the ship that launched them heavily in the resulting explosions. It was almost amusing to see how frantically the Cylon craft manoeuvred for distance.
Amusing maybe, but we weren't laughing; we were spinning up FTL drives and preparing weapons systems for close combat.
Unlike Galactica we had an ace in the hole in the form of twin missile batteries, always the primary weapons system for this type of craft, after all you cannot blow your way past a blockade with rail guns and one oversized heavy cannon.
We kept these batteries loaded with a mixed bag, some decoys, some communications missiles but mostly the offensive Fire and Forget Saber missile.
That was the modern recommended layout for a Liberty class Blockade Runner, but Nagala had expected us to come across heavy opposition and from their came our ace in the hole.
Anvil class Fire and Forget missiles, with thermonuclear warheads.
I had made the decision as soon as we had began searching for Galactica to keep one Anvil ready in each launcher at any one time and now it would pay off.
We fired one, targeted at the central point where all the massive spires of the Cylon capital ship connected and frantically began to increase the distance between us.
The missile struck, dug into the hull and waited, its tiny electronic brain waiting for one signal.
We fired first, raking the Cylon hull with fire from our rail gun batteries.
The Cylon didn't return fire, it took it and we listened almost gleefully as those Civilian ships with outside windows reported damage, the rain of fire from the ten portside rail gun batteries tearing first into a hanger bay, battering the armoured hanger door away before pouring momentarily into the bay itself, the rain of deadly fire now crawling across the hull as fire burst from the hanger bay, followed swiftly by an explosion we felt aboard Mailman, an explosion we were told had blown the spire from the hanger bay down clear off the Cylon basestar.
We didn't rejoice, we knew the range, knew we would soon come under fire from the basestars main guns, from Scimitars now launching from the other launch bays.
The Civilian ships jumped and released from their constraining, slowing grasp I took Mailman to flank speed, racing to get enough distance from the Cylon that we could send the signal, detonate the Anvil buried in the Cylon hull and escape to jump.
And we need to do it fast; we didn't want the Cylons disabling our little present after all.
By now we had switched our railguns from the Cylon baseship to the Raiders , hoping to keep them at arms length just long enough.
By we had switched our radiological sensors off, fed up with the sound. We already knew every Cylon out there was carrying nukes, it just made our task more difficult, and the distracting warbling we could do without.
Today, we were lucky, making safe range just as the Cylons began their launches. We sent the signal, staying just seconds to see if the missile detonated and jumped, glad we didn't have a CAP to recover and slow our escape.
The sensor record of the basestar shattering into pieces would keep us entertained for months.
Joining with the civilians in the next system we began pouring over the records of the battle, passing them to everyone who knew how to read the logs. We knew something significant had occurred; it was just a case of pouring over the records to find out what.
The Cylon hadn't expected to find us there or they would never have jumped that close, that much was obvious, but it wasn't the killer.
It was Omega who spotted it and once again I thanked the lords that we had such a capable and observant Officer aboard and on Dradis.
"They never fired any railguns!"
I raised my eyebrow at this, a little startled at Omega's shouted outburst.
"The visual reports are quite clear, the baseship never fired any railguns even when we were raining fire on their hull. If they had, at that range we would have been damaged severely but they launched raiders, missiles and fired their main guns at various points during the battle"
Omega paused, looking me straight in the eye, "but they never fired any railguns or any other type of anti-fighter or suppression weapon from the basestar itself"
"They must rely on their fighters for antifighter defence" I mused, my hand rubbing my chin as I considered the implications.
If this was true and the basestars had no anti-fighter weapons of their own, then we had found a vulnerability, one we could use in time, once we finished the launch bays for the Transporter of the Books .
Morale was sky-high, we had successfully destroyed a ship far more powerful, capable and valuable then we were but I refused to be drawn into the celebrations.
The Raiders had shown they had jump capability, they would no doubt return swiftly to Cylon space and inform them of our destruction of the baseship and they would check their records and discover that they had been chasing us before they launched their assault and that we had been in Cylon space.
They would consider us a threat, something to be destroyed not just because we were survivors of the Colonies, humans that needed to join the fallen but because they didn't know how long we had been probing Cylon space, they didn't know what we knew and our single-handed destruction of the basestar would just increase the paranoia.
They would no doubt correctly assume we were trying to link up with Galactica and that they had to prevent. They couldn't allow potential knowledge of all their weaknesses to fall into the hands of the sole surviving Colonial Capital ship, it would give Adama too much of an advantage.
No, they would be actively looking for us now. It would help Galactica's chances, the division of resources, but it wouldn't be fun for us, at all.
We needed to hurry the refit, get the Transporter of the Books online as a carrier as soon as possible. It may make the Cylons consider her more of a priority target, but we needed those extra squadrons online and available for combat and CAPs.
The next fortnight was relatively quiet; we jumped from system to system, sometimes finding nothing, sometimes finding evidence of Galactica's passage, sometimes running into a Cylon patrol but not once did we see any Cylon Capital Ships again, until jump 267.
It was ironic really, there was us frantically searching for Galactica and we would find her the one time we weren't searching for her, the one time we were searching for desperately needed water and tylium to top up our greatly depleted reserves.
It wasn't irony that placed the Cylons there first however, that I blame on Murphy.