by Chaoseternus Twelve
Unfortunately, the mystery of the mark VIII Viper didn't clear up in a hurry. The Pilots last act had been to activate an acid bomb placed over the fighters computers, which made recovering any data a laughable concept. It wasn't long before the decision was made to refit the craft with new fighters and attempt to impress it into service, its secrets its own for now.
It took us a while before we noticed that the Cylon's were refusing to engage us, in fact we witnessed several occasions were baseships fled as soon as they saw us. This was weird, to put it mildly. There was some suggestion that it was because the reinforced fleet was too strong for them to just attack with just one baseship, that they wanted more capital ships in place before they made their move to destroy us and aboard Mailman at least this became the debated, but generally accepted theory. Galactica had a different theory, of course.
Still, as we moved deeper and deeper into uncharted space, the less we actually saw of the Cylons, indeed, when we actually saw Cylons they were the older models, the Harbingers of Doom and the old style basestars. It was becoming clear to us that whilst the Cylons had prepared their net, to catch any fleeing Colonial ships that they had felt the chances of anyone escaping this far to be minimal, almost non-existent.
There was no doubt in our minds that whilst the Cylons might chase us, they would have to move ships into the area, prepare supply lines and expend a lot of resources building up for a search in territory that even they appeared not to have explored.
For the moment we were safe, and maybe it would be time enough, for whilst the Cylons had to search for us, we had a course, a route to follow. We knew exactly what our destination was, we had our plan and if the Cylons took long enough to find us, we might even have our vengeance.
But still, across the void we travelled, trying our hardest not to leave any signs of our passage as we stocked up on fuels, water and food where we could, even raiding asteroids for essential metals and materials needed to maintain and repair our ships, even to build new fighters and shuttles.
On the tenth month after the combination of the Refugee and Relief fleets, the Transporter of the Books was officially commissioned as a Colonial Warship, classed as a Fleet Carrier and joined Galactica and Mailman as the convoys escort. It was a great morale boast, to have another full warship guarding the fleet and despite early expectations to the contrary, the Transporter was a full warship. The completion of her refit being delayed when the forge ships, assisted by a cowed and docile Baltar, figured out first how they could build most of the parts required by the railguns, then figured out how to build the Railguns themselves.
Of course, the production lines were never up to the quality of those on the Colonies before they were destroyed but they worked and whilst the reject rate for the parts produced was always high, it wasn't long before the early bugs were figured out and the pass rate upped to 75.
Naturally, the priority for the Railguns went to replacements first, both Mailman and Galactica had lost guns off our respective batteries either due to battle, accident or lack of time to do proper maintenance during the first hectic days of our escape and their were a number of Vipers aboard Galactica which only required replacement guns to be considered operational.
Next came Colonial One and the Transporter of the Books, both were priority targets for the Cylons, Colonial One because destroying her would effectively decapitate the Refugee Fleets government and the Transporter because her ability to launch and recover fighters made her an attractive target, especially when you consider that without those fighters, she was totally defenceless.
After that, it was sheer politics and a dose of who could shout the loudest that determined which ship would be next to receive some defences in the form of their own Railgun batteries. After making sure the orphan ship received the next set, me and Adama just stepped aside and left the civilians to it. Those Captains with sense had already figured out that those ships with Railguns would be used as a second defensive line and had quietly withdrawn their urgent requests to be armed, deciding that being at the centre of the fleet during the attack was far safer then being on the outside, acting as another line of defence.
The second act that made the Transporter into a full warship was the discovery that, between Galactica and us we had sufficient spare parts; Galactica's mostly acquired at Ragnar but also shipped aboard Colonial One , to build several new Heavy Cannon, the main ship to ship batteries in the Colonial arsenal. The Transporter, despite her heavy refit, was still just a Merchant hull and one that was having far more stresses placed on her then she was designed for at that, but it was the considered opinion of the Fleets best engineers and ship designers after a careful survey of the entire hull, that one Heavy Cannon, correctly placed would cause no extra stress on the hull.
Interestingly enough, and undoubtly an unusual challenge for her Captain to deal with, this meant the Transporter was the first commissioned Colonial Warship to go into battle with her main guns on what was traditionally and practically speaking, the underside of the hull. The other spare were kept just that, spare. We knew a time would come when we would need them and we hadn't yet figured out how to make them with the limited space and equipment available.
Course, it all helped when the Mystery of the Mark VIII was answered, but we were almost at Earth herself before that little surprise caught up with us.