The Mailman
Thanks to reviewers: rankukon alpha, evilclone666
No more slayer hunting yet, sorry rankukoon alpha
Mailman and EARTHMAN are now officially in the same universe
by Chaoseternus Eleven
Two days it took for us to get up to date, exchanging our news, our plans and our story with that of the Galactica. Two days in which celebration engulfed both fleets, or as much of a celebration as you can have when foodstuffs and drinks are limited and rationed
But still, for most people it was a celebration. Humanities chances of survival had increased greatly when the two fleets had combined, the destruction of the basestar, the reinforcing of Galactica's squadron using pilots and Vipers we had spare hell, Galactica suddenly found her Launch Bays loaded to capacity with Vipers salvaged during the Relief Fleets escape from the Colonies and with Galactica's help, work on refitting the Transporter of the Books into a carrier on the fly hurried along. Of course, as soon as the Transporter was fully operational, pilots would be an issue again but you couldn't have everything. The maintenance crews had real reason to celebrate too, the foundry ship that was part of the First Fleet had finally got their act together and were pushing out spare parts as fast as they could get the ore to work with.
Of course, it wasn't a happy time for everyone. Baltar in particular was not having a fun time of it, having been classed as insane by the medicos of the First Fleet he now had to deal with the fact that we knew what he was, what he had done and that we had told Roslin and Adama. Even worse for him, someone had let slip, probably a loose lipped member of my crew and word had spread. Gaius Baltar was a Cylon agent, a traitor.
As a result, he had to be hastily moved aboard the Mailman before he was murdered by vengeful survivors. We at least had had time to get used to the idea and could live with him so long as he didn't bother us and he proved useful, course I couldn't and wouldn't guarantee he would have a fun time of it but he would live. That unfortunately was the crux of the matter, we needed Baltar alive.
He was too valuable a resource to just let go, especially after he broke down and told us exactly why he appeared to be insane, something that was impossible to confirm then but would latter be confirmed by a new medical scanner, the MRI. He had a Cylon on a chip inside his mind, effecting his perception of reality. That gave him a lot of information that could be valuable to us, even more so when he insisted that this Number Six' had shown him how to build a Cylon detector that worked and proved it using the known Cylon, Sharon Boomer' Valerri. With half of Mailman's spare Vipers shifted over to Galactica, it was easy enough to arrange a lab in one of the holds for the traitor and put him to work, he complied gratefully, not surprising considering the alternative was mob justice.
Of course, it was us, the Second Fleet who were given the biggest shock when we were introduced to three crewmembers from a 13 th Colony Shuttlecraft Galactica had picked up a while back. Even more of a shock was finding out that there was now severe doubt as to whether the 13 th Colony was actually a Colony and not the origin of humanity as the 13 th Colony had been able to chart humanities evolution, a task the Colonies hadn't been able to manage mainly because we had no evidence of earlier evolutionary forms or even related species to look at, a consequence of being a Colony no doubt.
Of course, the dampener on that piece of good news was being informed that whilst their Computron sorry, Computer technology was significantly advanced, their space technology was a joke. Course, they had a massive population base they could use to rapidly build up if necessary if they could all agree on it And by massive, I mean if what I was told was correct, they had on just one world, a population equivalent to the Twelve Colonies.
Now that's a big honking population, something bound to cause problems when you pack that many people onto one world. Hell, I wouldn't have been surprised if the entire world turned out to be one city, supported by hydroponics. The Wing Commander, a Nichol Foster just laughed at that idea before hurrying back off to his research.
Still, the fleet was moving again and with definite and revitalised purpose. The conversions had been finished and we now had the general location of Earth, an area of just ten star systems to search through in fact. Then we would have the pleasure' of dumping our War onto somebody else's lap. I really doubted they would ever forgive us for that, ignorance is bliss after all.
Still, the Cylons would find them in time; it was best we got there first and tried to prepare them as best we could.
Two weeks after the two Fleets combined; we jumped straight into an unknown system and found the wreckage of a Cylon Basestar, and not much of it either. It had been trashed, debris was hurtling off across space and shattered Scimitars surrounded it in an ungodly halo. But whoever had attacked them had made time to cleanse the battlefield, and there was nothing at all, no wreckage and no dud ammo floating about that could tell us exactly who or what had torn into the Cylon baseship, at least not that we could see. Knowing that the Cylons would most likely be looking for their missing basestar soon enough, we left quickly and with haste.
The next system we jumped into was clear and having found several Tylium rich asteroids, we took the opportunity to top up, filling each ships tanks and tankers before moving on.
The shattered remnants of a Scimitar patrol greeted us as we dropped out of our next jump and we started to get uneasy and as it proved, with god cause. Jump after jump we found either Cylon remains or vengeful cylon patrols. Somebody was in this area and they were hitting the Cylons hard. The Cylons appeared to blame us, but whilst we were doing a fair bit of damage and getting better at it all the time, it wasn't actually us and considering how far we still were from Earth, even if they had managed a quantum leap in space technology since the Earthmen left, and developed a fleet, it wasn't likely to be them, fighting effectively this far from your homeplate was nigh on impossible without a massive and horrendously long supply chain.
Things changed when we found a heavily damaged Viper, its pilot injured and partially asphyxiated in an asteroid belt whilst we were hiding from the three basestars that had just jumped into the system. Three against us wasn't odds we were willing to take. Strange though, this was the second time Mailman had found Vipers whilst dodging into an asteroid belt, if it happened a third time, I was going to start asking questions.
There was one oddity about the Viper we found though and it was a biggie.
It was a Mark VIII.
Two days before I had received the orders which sent me to Mailman I had observed the prototype Mark VIII flying in an Air Show over Gemon City, it was the Mark VIII's first public appearance.
There were no operational squadrons flying the VIII, and this Viper bore Markings that indicated she was from a full Squadron of VIII's. It appeared we had a mystery on our hands, and one the pilot couldn't help us with, having succumbed to an infection in her weakened state and dying without ever having woken up again