The Mailman
by
Chaoseternus
Twenty-two
Trouble was, there were masses of Cylon basestars and fighters in system, they would have little difficulty in swarming us if they detected us or a single fighter escaped to get word out, if we acted, we would have to be stealthy in approach, then move swiftly decisively as soon as we were in position.
The Blessings of the Lords of Kobol wouldn't hurt either.
Mines of course, are hard targets. You can destroy the surface side support equipment easy enough, but that would only slow production down, equipment is easy to replace after all. No, you needed to collapse the shafts themselves, which would require either firing a nuke directly down into the shafts, a near impossible manoeuvre or actually landing and sending troops in on foot. Translation being, the mines were an unreasonable target for us.
The facilities the Cylons had seized and were using themselves were easier targets, they were either orbital or surface and were not as naturally hardened, but they were also far better defended. Translation, they were far easier to kill but at the same time, more risky.
Still, we all wanted to leave a parting present before the food issue forced us to return home and destroying cylons and the equipment they were using would get the message across.
In the end, after very careful consideration, we decided our best chance would be at a pair of smaller shipyard facilities in orbit over Scorpia, one of which appeared to be under refit, the other was in use, and according to the pre-Armageddon stats we had, was the perfect size to be producing the support ships we had seen the Cylons using. Whilst the loss of these facilities would not be devastating, we hoped it would be enough to slow the Cylons down.
Having decided on our plan of action, Highland Dreams was ordered off, to hide at a prearranged rendezvous, whilst Mailman and The Transporter of the Books carried out the assault. Unless things had drastically changed, we expected to have to have two squadrons of Cylon fighters to deal with, 40 Scimitars.
Initally we had planned to jump in some distance from Scorpio then coast in, hoping for a sneak attack but the fact that the Cylons had been clearing out debris fields and destroying asteroids and other natural phenomena had me thinking that perhaps, if somebody else was attacking the cylons, they had used the stealthy approach too often. Hence, we jumped straight into Scorpia's orbit and launched fighters. We were not using the subtle approach by any stretch of the imagination; luckily for us the boldness of the move seemed to catch them off-guard.
Mailman's Viper IIs were already mixing it with the Cylons, with the Transporters Viper VIs swiftly racing for the two facilities before we noticed anything was up. The first, immediately noticeable clue was that only ten fighters were providing any resistance, the others had, at some point between our recon and our attack, vanished.
The second clue was the huge amounts of chatter filling the airwaves, overlapping across a full dozen frequencies. The Intel boys would no doubt have a field day with what we were recording.
The third, and somewhat more obvious clue, was the arrival of a crippled basestar.
It was an unwanted surprise for us, we would have a difficult time dealing with a basestar but then two of the Transporters fighters reported seeing decompressions along one of the arms and even flickering flames visible through the windows. At which point, the situation changed from 'how fast we can get out of here' to 'how fast can we kill that frakker' and just as importantly, if it's still burning, who tried to kill that basestar?
Still, our Vipers were holding the fighters off okay; the VIs had successfully destroyed the first of the two shipyards and were beginning their runs on the second, that left Mailman to hopefully chalk up another kill.
As we charged in, we detected an energy signature we were beginning to suspect was linked to the Cylon FTL drives spinning up, but there were no fighters launches and very few nukes were sent our way, all of which were destroyed by intercept fire from our railguns.
Our single capital ship grade railgun was pounding the basestar itself, but we knew that single antiship gun would have difficulty destroying the Cylon mothership, even though it was already severely damaged. No, that responsibility was left to our nukes, two of which we sent spinning into the join between the two sections of hull, before breaking away from the attack; we didn't want to be nearby when those two went off.
It was the sound end to a good mission, as the basestar died, so did the second of the two facilities the Viper VIs had been tasked to attack, at this point we planned on recovering our fighters and just leaving but unfortunately a rather large jump signature was detected as another capital ship jumped into orbit.