Battlestar Galactica is none of my property, but this ismy tribute to a great serialistion. Iwanted topost something that wasn't just some fatalistic pursuit of romance between Lee and Kara. Hope you enjoy, please remember to review!
Caprica, day 3 since the Cylon attack
'Speeches aside, Major, I'm counting on you to do everything in your power to maintain the Fleet's presence here on Caprica. There may come a time when it's needed. Other than that let your conscience lead you. That is, after all, the only thing that separates us from the machines.'
Station commander Bael held Major Agemnon's hand in his bear-like grip. There was nothing of fear in his demeanour, only solid determination to carry out his duty.
'You can depend on me, Commander,' Agemnon replied.
'Believe me, I'd rather be taking you with me. A man with your career record is worth many times his weight in cubits. It was a difficult decision to leave you here to hold the fort..'
'You're the man to lead the Flight, sir. No one would question that.'
Bael nodded, something like relief showing through in that brief moment and behind it, the fear he held at bay. It'd been a tough three days, especially for the old timers who believed they knew what was coming. But at least these two veterans could take heart from the fact that this war had been won before, and perhaps it could be won again. The younger men on the base had been showing the signs of despair but then again, they had just lost their families, their homes and everything that had kept them from going mad in this isolated spot in the Athenian Mountains.
'Don't get me wrong. I feel guilty about leaving you with this responsibility, but you've been running this place by yourself for the last three years. I have no doubts about your abilities.'
'Thank you, sir.' It was a dubious honour to be told you were a good administrator, especially when you'd been wearing the uniform for over forty years and held a record kill-score.
Bael turned and mounted the ladder, dropping into the rear seat of the Stalker Gunship's cockpit and accepting his helmet from the knuckle-dragger attending to his bird.
The gunship was long and sleek, with broad, angular wings encased in matt-black carbon composite. The Stalker was a new line of stealth fighter-bomber. There were only five of them operational and these still in the testing stages. They'd addressed the in-flight systems and dry-tested most of the other equipment, but this would be their first and last shakedown before going into combat for real, against an enemy that was far superior to any the human race had faced before.
Agemnon climbed the grille-work stairway and entered the control room with its long, tinted view-port. The deck-crew cleared their equipment as the last of the birds was fired up.
Bael turned to look up at Agemnon for the last time and saluted. The Major saluted back, catching a glimpse of himself reflected from the thick glass. He'd been steadily filling out since his fortieth birthday, despite his best efforts his stomach was going to fat. His proud features were lined and care-worn and this was especially noticeable since the attack. His dark hair was going grey at the temples, his late wife would have said it looked dignified.
'Kill the floods!'
The deck officer flipped a switch and the hangar bay went dark, only the cockpit illumination of Epsilon Flight providing any frame of reference.
'Open the bay doors!' Agemnon ordered.
Down to his left, the massive bay doors began retracting into the cliff-sides, the pale light of the stars limned the long, sleek, carbon-sheathed forms of Epsilon in all her veiled menace.
The comm. whistled.
'This is Commander Bael. May the light of the Lords of Kobol shine upon you in all your endeavours!'
'So say we all!' Agemnon replied, echoed by the control staffers.
Exhaust cowling flared as Epsilon took flight, blasting out the hangar bay doors and up into the night sky of Caprica.
'So say we all,' Agemnon muttered to himself.
He turned to the deck officer.
'I want to see Chief Haedar in my office. One hour. See that he gets there!'
Haedar was a surly man, used to getting his own way and not inclined to be nice about it. Bael had handled the Genius with kid-gloves, but that had been in peacetime. The amnesty was over. The man's family had probably perished, dying of radiation sickness or, if mercy prevailed, killed in one of the many nuclear detonations that had ravaged the planet's cities. He'd have to knuckle down like everyone else.
'How long will it take,' Agemnon started, 'To get Falcon Flight ready to fly?'
Haedar adopted his usual scornful mask.
'At least six months if we're to do it properly.'
Agemnon sat back in his seat. Six months seemed an age.
'You've got a week to get serial zero-two airworthy. In the meantime, I want everyone else engaged in salvage operations. I want everything that has wings ready to fly. Everything else is to be stripped for serviceable hardware…'
'You're crazy! We don't have that kind of manpower… And what about the shipment of carbon composite we were expecting? It never turned up. Without that you can kiss Falcon Flight goodbye!'
'Let me worry about the shipment, you just concentrate on getting zero-two ready. I'll get Dowd to co-ordinate the salvage.'
'That knuckle-dragger? He couldn't co-ordinate a wrench…'
Agemnon slapped a hand down on his desk to stop the Chief from finishing his sentence.
'Seeing as you refuse to co-operate, he'll have to do. In case you hadn't noticed, Haedar, none of us can exactly up sticks and go home, right now. We're in a hot casserole of trouble and we need all the punch we can get!'
Haedar sat and simmered for a few seconds.
'I can get serial one-alpha hot for tomorrow morning. She doesn't pack much firepower, but she's fast, agile and virtually invisible to Dragus.'
'It's a start.'
Serial one-alpha was built on the chassis of a traditional Viper, but with much of the ordinance capacity stripped to make room for her sophisticated electronic counter-measures equipment that made her virtually impossible to scan. On Dragus she would resemble little more than a hunk of space-dust with her carbon-composite hull casing and low-heat running systems. She was a recon bird, a precursor to the heavier Stalker and a hundred percent experimental. Haedar claimed to have built her himself and in his spare time. Agemnon believed it.
He had still jumped at the chance to put her through her paces and here he was, cruising at low altitude through the mountainous region surrounding the base. Her trim characteristics weren't quite the same as a Viper, she was heavier in the tail and tended to get sucked into every cross-wind. But Agemnon had flown every experimental bird Haedar had put through the factory. It didn't take him long to find the sweet spot.
'This is Hunter,' he said, coining his old call-sign. The message was encrypted and virtually impossible to trace. 'I'm putting the cat out, be back in an hour!'
He pulled on the stick and hit the burners, throwing the ship out into space. Caprica glowed beneath him, the dull orange of a dying sun.
'Damn toasters,' he cursed, 'Look what you did to my home!'
He cruised for a few thousand klicks before switching his advanced Dragus console on, probing nearby space for any sign of life. Or death.
In some ways serial one-alpha was little more than a scaled down Raptor, adapted to fill a less combative role, to observe and co-ordinate. As such her sensor arrays were far more advanced than that of a standard Viper and her comm. system was extremely advanced. Agemnon had no doubt that the series could well have replaced the old Raptors if they'd ever gone into production, at least for the kind of work she was better at. Obviously the transport capacity was somewhat lacking.
The only weapons she sported were the old Astoril pattern cannons, a throw-back to the Mark 2 Viper. Efficient and deadly enough for series one-alpha to be able to hold her own long enough to calculate a jump vector.
The system buzzed at him, picking up broad fields of small scale metallic debris. There'd been a lot of fighting in this sector, if you could even call it that. He switched on his comm. survey unit and began scanning colonial frequencies, hoping to pick something up. He got static.
They'd intercepted numerous communications during the first day and had been able to piece together quite a bit. Admiral's Ngala's death had hit them all hard along with the reported destruction of the flagship, Battlestar Atlantia. They'd also heard that the Cylons had developed some way of throwing a switch and deactivating the core systems of Colonial shipping. How else could a single squadron of Raiders to defeat an entire Battlestar and its fighter wings without breaking a sweat..
Haedar had immediately come up with a theory. The Cylons must have infiltrated the military databases and built in back doors that allowed them to take control over wireless networks and wreak havoc with a ships internal systems. It was lucky that Commander Bael had the same age-old mistrust that every old-timer carried with him. He'd insisted on independent, robust computer systems and had refuted any proposal involving wireless networks, disavowing the advantages because he knew what the price could be.
Haedar still hadn't quite pinned the problem down, he needed to see some hard evidence before he could make his post mortem.
'Gotcha!' The Dragus pinged. It had found a massive metallic hulk, out towards Tauron. Agemnon keyed the jets and burned in toward the mass to see what it was.
At five thousand klicks he killed the burners and activated his cold-thrust to keep up his inertia. Within minutes he had an eyeball. It was the Atlantia.
She was still burning, her pregnant fuel cells giving testimony to their safety record by refusing to give in to the super-heated flame-out. But the ruptured fuel lines had done their work on the rest of the ship. Her starboard hangar was ablaze, glowing bright as any comet. The drive section had been peeled wide open by multiple nuclear detonations.
As he passed over the wreck he saw that the port side was still relatively in tact. He dared to hope that there might be survivors aboard.
The Dragus pinged again. Live contacts, coming in fast. Two of them, not even bothering to jam the scanning frequencies as they had been reported to do during their initial attacks. Atlantia was a hulk, stricken and helpless. They'd come to finish the job with a fresh payload.
'Not if I have anything to do with it.' Agemnon clenched his teeth, anger flaring.
They hadn't seen him and they wouldn't until it was too late. Running cold, he allowed himself to drift towards them until they'd passed him by. Spinning about and jamming his foot down he, burnt after them. They wobbled slightly as they registered a new contact.
'Come and get it, you bastards! Time to get some payback!'
Bogey one stuck on target, Bogey two ducked out and fell in behind, spitting tracer fire in Agemnon's direction.
'Now that I've got your attention, boys, let me introduce you to and old friend of mine!' He jammed his thumb down as Bogey one passed through his reticule, his cannons belched and Bogey one was winged, her starboard tube flaring out and spewing smoke.
'This is Mr Astoril, 39 mil! You may remember him from back in the day. Hell… he probably wasted your great-grandpa!'
An alarm klaxon screamed in his ear, Bogey two had acquired a firing solution. More hard rounds showered overhead but Hunter had jinked away just in time and was back on Bogey one like a bad rash.
'Not today, shrapnel for brains!'
He missed completely with his next volley and Bogey two was getting more confident, he had to finish this quick before the toaster on his six decided to waste a guided missile on him.
Sure enough, the alarm klaxon changed pitch. That was the radiological alarm. Someone had just armed a nuke!
'Now that's just overkill!' Hunter jeered.
Missile launch. He had to act fast.
Agemnon stayed on Bogey one for another two seconds, powering up behind the crippled bird before suddenly cutting his burners and executing a severe side-slip with his cold-thrust. In the space of a few milliseconds Bogey two's missile cut through Hunter's heat-trail, lost its targeting solution and picked up the heat signature of Bogey one. Unable to power away and without the time needed to pop a flare, Bogey one vaporised in a brief ball of flame.
Agemnon had managed to put some distance between himself and the mangled Raider, but not enough to avoid being spun out by the blast. He yanked his bird back under control and commenced visual scanning, the Dragus was still fuzzed out.
Bogey two was powering towards Atlantia, straining to achieve its primary mission. Agemnon wasn't going to let that happen. He hit the burners and chased her in. Three hundred klicks and the bitch would be in range. He had to force the Raider to break off and deal.
'C'mon, one-alpha, what other tricks do you have?' he growled.
Nothing that could stop a Raider in its tracks from this distance, that he knew. For a Stalker this would be a walk in the park, but all Agemnon had on his side was a slight advantage in speed. It was going to be tight. He'd have to gun it right to the last second to deny the Raider a launch window.
Sure enough, it slowed as it came in range and painted the Atlantia in its sights.
'C'mon… c'mon!'
He fired, hard rounds ripping the Raider in two with a brief and unimpressive burst of flame.
'Scratch two!' he yelped. Then he saw the Dragus coming back on line. The Raider had managed to get its remaining two missiles away and he had seventeen seconds to knock them down or Atlantia took another couple of steps closer to hell.
He didn't dare throttle down but instead heaved the stick back against enormous pressure until he could see the bright contrails of the nukes. It was a stupid angle, Bael would have called it impossible, but Agemnon refused to yield. He refused to give up on the Atlantia and the hope it had ignited in his heart.
He blazed away but he had nothing like the range he needed and his bullets just fluttered away into space. One-alpha was vibrating with the sheer amount of power she was putting out.
'Get me through this, baby, and I'll give you a name!' he hissed, his lungs struggling to expand. He wished his could wipe the sweat from his eyes.
He fired again, clipping the nearest rocket and triggering a detonation. One down. He homed in on the last.
A little closer.
Fire…
Miss!
Ammo down to reserve.
Edging closer, thumb hovering over the stud, Agemnon closed his eyes and prayed to the Lords of Kobol like he'd never prayed before.
Opening them again, he settled the predictive reticule where he wanted it, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
'I got you, you bastard!'
He pressed the stud.
Just once.
A single tracer round lanced out into the night.
The missile exploded.
'YEEEEEAAAAAAAAA!' Agemnon screamed, streaking up over the ravaged hull of Battlestar Atlantia. 'Scratch you, you mother-frakking son of a toaster!'