The Mailman
by Chaoseternus

Twenty-Three

This one was a Colonial Battlestar, or so its profile read, but it wasn't broadcasting any of the standard IFF protocols which made it a little difficult to identify.

To be honest though, considering the circumstances, I would have been far less trusting if it had been broadcasting standard IFFs, those had been compromised after all.

Still, it was a most interesting situation to be in, we were in enemy space, had just lopped off an enemy warship which they would no doubt be searching for, the area was like a kicked ant-hill with cylons in rather a bad mood due to the attacks we and perhaps this Battlestar had launched upon them and somehow we had to figure out if the ship in front of us was trustworthy or not, whether we should try to make contact or not.

Fun situation… not.

Still… a full Battlestar would be an extremely nice addition to the fleet and that was why we had been sent out here after all, scout out Cylon controlled space and try to find as many survivors as possible.

Still, one of us had to make the first move and knowing that all the fighters were aboard and that our jump drives were fully rigged and ready to jump, I decided that it was best if I made the first move.

"Open a channel," I tried to keep my voice calm, collected but I knew a little of my nervousness came through, this was why we were here, to make contact with other survivors, to bring them into the fleet we were gathering, but all I had to make was one mistake and it was doubtful they would ever trust us.

"This is the Blockade Runner Mailman, currently assigned by Fleet Command, Sol to recon the Home Systems to unidentified Battlestar, please identify yourself"

There was a pause, then a cautious, weary and wary voice carefully replied, "This is the Battlestar Trident , what do you mean Sol Fleet?"

We had contact, it wasn't the Pegasus that we believed to be in the area either, this was exceptionally good news.

"The scattered remnants of the fleet are gathering in a star system far from here," that I felt comfortable saying over the radio, the Cylons had to have figured that one out or at least be expecting it after all, "mostly E&E ships, and a few CBRs, but there are other Battlestars"

That I didn't feel comfortable saying, not on an open channel in enemy controlled space, but something had to be said, enough to get them interested at least, "this is not the place to be discussing this, we need a rendezvous"

"Agreed, co-ords on data channel six"

Well, I had hoped to set the location myself, but a Battlestar certainly outranked this tub, mores the pity.

We beat the Trident to the co-ordinates; we did have our jump-engines fully ready to go after all, only needed to reset the jump co-ordinates, but the Trident herself wasn't far behind, and the very first thing she did was bounce us straight out again as soon as both our jump engines were ready to go, a sensible precaution against a cylon having picked up the transmission containing our jump co-ords and deciding to gather a few friends to pay a visit.

The location we arrived at was rather startling close to where we were supposed to rendezvous with our support ship, the Highland Dreams, and as such, I ordered the Transporter to send a scout to retrieve our merchant friend.

That of course, left the rest of us with the awkward job of discovering if the Trident was still loyalist controlled whilst not giving away too much just in case she wasn't… and knowing all the while that the Trident crew would be doing exactly the same thing and had far more guns should they feel it necessary

The hardest duty any Commander has is to write those immortal, painful words, "It is with deepest regret I announce that…"

It has to be far worse when those words have to be written not for a crewmember, or even a few crewmembers, but for an entire ship, that I learnt was something else all together.

The Trident had seen to her end, and I use those words deliberately. They had seen the ship take a direct hit to the engines, and be captured by the Cylons. They said that's why they attacked; they knew that such a ship most likely could not survive this long without support which meant that somewhere, some survivors had just been compromised.

They had attacked in order to hopefully preserve whatever secrets the Messenger contained, and I am damn glad they did. If the Cylons decided that they were going to make a determined attack on Earth, it would most likely all be over very quickly, we weren't ready for that.

Unfortunately, it also appeared that unknowingly, we had dealt our brothers the death blow. The damaged basestar we had destroyed had been fleeing from the Trident, that basestar had had the Messenger and her crew aboard.

And we had killed them.

We didn't know and even so, we would have had good reason even if we did but it didn't make it any easier, we had killed some of the few, we had killed a ship that had fought at our side.

It hurt, but it was a hurt we had to deal with and slowly push to one side.

Far too many had died for us to dwell on a few.

Its perhaps callous to say it helped us, that Trident had already seen, thanks to Messenger that other survivors were about, but it was true, they knew, even if they hadn't found out that long ago, and it made them more willing to accept, and to trust.

It also helped that they had us out massed, out gunned… though not, it should be noted, out-armoured. If they decided not to trust us, they knew they could kill us.

A chilling thought for us perhaps, but a comforting one for them and I was willing to take anything that would encourage them to come to Earth with us… Of course, I wasn't going to say where exactly we were going, none of the Tridents crew had been tested for Cylons after all and our news, that Cylons appeared human know was the first time they had heard of it.

It would be all too easy for a human-form cylon to be amongst there crew, for that reason alone, we could not afford to trust them entirely.

Just three days after the fight over Scorpio, our combined but not entirely trusting fleet, began the long slow journey back to Earth.