"Two."
"Three."
"Four."
Drakkar flight, consisting of four Viper Mk V-class fighters of the 183rd Fighter Wing, Colonial Naval Fighter Command, flew through the dark. Behind them, the Class G sun known as Jericho to the humans who had colonized one of the planets in the system, shone dimly. They were at least five AUs out from Jericho.
And a damnned long way from home, thought Colonel Vyascheslav Kapitsa, the leader of Drakkar flight. Kapitsa was, perhaps, the oldest man still flying Vipers. He'd passed up promotion after promotion to stay where he loved to be- in a cockpit. He craned his neck and turned himself as well as he could in his cramped cockpit, trying to find the small dot that represented the Capircan sun. Not a chance, though- it'd have been next to impossible to spot, even if he knew right where to look.
The comm system in Kapitsa's helmet suddenly flipped on.
"Ungh... ooh, yeah. Mmmmm." Kapitsa's eyebrow rose.
"What the hell are you doing over there, Three?"
"Sounds like he's keeping himself entertained, One." Kapitsa chuckled to himself.
"Mmm, yeah, you better believe it, Two."
"Flores!" Kapitsa barked over the comm, his Standard still accented in backwoods Virgonian, "Stop jerking off and pay attention to your flying, or when we get back to base, I will get out my tau-bar knife and-"
"OKAY, OKAY! By the GODS, Commander, I didn't think you were such a frakking-"
"Come on, Flores, you know I don't care what you do in your free time, but, seriously. The Viper's control panels were made to survive vacuum, not multiple layers of... sticky bodily fluid." The comm line suddenly filled with laughter. Kapitsa found himself joining in. He realized they were laughing more at his inability to find a proper slang term than the joke itself, of course, but that was fine. He could take his imperfect Standard skills in good humor.
"Alright, now that we have all had a good laugh, I want a weapons check. Count it off."
"Copy that, One. Drakkar Two, four raser, four heat, torp, and gun."
"Drakkar Three, four raser, four heat, torp, and gun."
"Drakkar Four, four raser, four heat, torp, and gun." Kapitsa nodded, although he'd known what the answer would be before he'd asked it. Each of his pilots had four raser- a tracking system that used both radio signals and laser tracking- anti-fighter missiles, four heat-seeking anti-fighter missiles, and all-purpose rotary mass driver gun. Each Viper also carried a single anti-ship torpedo- one was powerful enough to severely damage anything smaller than a battlestar. While the Viper could be loaded down with a lot more ordinance, the Colonial Military didn't spare much for a peacetime patrol outside of the home system.
"You think that the Cylons will ever come back?" a shaky voice asked over the comm. Kapitsa automatically tounged his implant to see who the call had come from, but he shouldn't have wasted his time. Drakkar Four, also known as Ensign Rico, was the newest pilot in the 183rd Fighter Wing. He was from Oceania, back on Caprica. He was green as hell- the academy had graduated him and his class less than a week ago.
Kapitsa considered not dignifying that question with an answer, but decided against that. "I do not know, Four. They could be on their way right now. You never know. It does not matter. If they come, we will defeat them. We have no other choice. But we've had peace for fourty years... let us hope it will remain that way."
Silence filled the comm system for a short while. But Rico was not to be deterred.
"You've fought the Cylons before. Right, Commander?"
"Yes. I have."
"What's it like?" Kapitsa rolled his eyes, then turned to look over his right shoulder. Hanging at the back of the finger four formation was Drakkar Four. At this distance, he couldn't see Four's face, and Four couldn't see his, but Kapitsa frowned all the same.
"You will find out soon enough. Our pilots are at least as skilled as theirs. Whiletheir fighters have more armor thanour fighters do,ours fighters are more manueverable. And there are many, many more of them. If you kill six of their fighters before they kill you, the Cylons still win. Easily. And every one of their Basestars has at least a squadron. If you eject, and they capture you alive, you will be tortured, and the toasters will show you no mercy. Does that help any, Four?"
Kapitsa didn't get an answer, which pleased him in some hideously cynical way.
"Gods, sir," Flores called over the private comm line to Kapitsa, "you're gonna give the kid a heart attack. Calm down. We ain't gonna run into any Cylons out here! We're on Outcast control!"
"He needs to learn sometime, Two."
"You know, sir, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were treating Rico there like he was trying to replace Loor."
Images flashed in Kapitsa's mind, images of planet leave on Sagittaron's shimmering white sand beaches, of a brilliant flashing smile attached to an incredibly beautfiul, dark-skinned face and an amazing body, of the taste of fine red wine, of-
"I did not ask for commentary from you, Lieutenant, and I would appreciate it if you would be keeping to yourself!" Kapitsa's imperfect Standard got worse when he got angry, his Virgonian accent getting heavier by the syllable.
"Hey, I didn't mean anything bad. I know how you felt for her. Just remember what I said, okay?"
"Yes."
The four Vipers continued flying through the vaccum. Their engines had been turned off for quite some time, saving their fuel and letting the laws of physics do the flying until they had to go back to base. Kapitsa put the images out of his mind as best he could. It was hard. Loor had been his soulmate, he'd felt, before she'd been incinerated by plasma fire during the Battle of Quadrant 483-9A.
Just following the end of the Cylon war, a number of people decided they'd had enough of federal taxation laws and the potential for a Cylon sneak attack, and split off from the Colonies. They fled to Jericho, one of the only semi-habitable astral bodies known of outside of the Colonies. Their self-proclaimed Integrated Human Confederation had never been recognized by the Colonial government, and a few years ago, had just been a minor nuisance. Until they started raiding the commerical traffic on the space lanes. Because of the potential for political fallout, President Adar would not allow the Colonial Navy to bring its massive weight of numbers and firepower down on the IHC.
So one Battlestar Group, BSG 29, was sent to cripple the IHC's military capabilities and to bring them under at least a modicum of control, if not outright submission. This was something of a cynical joke- Battlestar Group 29 was one of the Colonial Navy's reserve groups, with outdated equipment and some of the oldest Battlestars still in existence. Reservists, putting in their mandatory duty time, and old-timers like Kapitsa inhabited them. But they were still more than enough to handle a few upstart troublemakers.
They'd been making a strafing run on an IHC cruiser, which they'd flushed out of an asteroid belt. It'd had been firing a railgun volley at the Battlestar Monolith. She didn't even have time to feel anything- not with a two-hundred pound hunk of iron intended for a Colonial Battlestar. And though they'd destroyed that small IHC task force, itt hadn't made a difference. The IHC was still out there. Loor's death had been for nothing. Even though the IHC was finally beaten down to just a few stragglers, it had never been wor-
Kapitsa's flight control panel chimed at him, which startled him completely. It hadn't come from the Drakkar flight comm circuit. It had come from... from the EWCACs- the Early Warning and Command And Control craft- that was orbiting the coreward edge of the Jericho system.
"EWCACs, this is Drakkar One. I read you five-by-five. What can I help you with?" A few moments passed. Long-range communication wasn't limited by the speed of light anymore, but they weren't instantaneous.
"Drakkar One, this is EWCACs. Relaying a message from Jerico Defense Command. We've been picking up something... strange. We're not sure what to make of it. We've got some ripples or richochets in heading in-system, so it's either some sort of spacial anomaly, or the IHC is pulling something. In any case, you're to go to ThreatCon Alpha and head back to the Pillar of Autumn and re-arm. Second Fleet's gonna be sending a task force in near you, too, so you might want to be car-"
Contact with the EWCACs was suddenly cut off. Kapitsa's Viper beeped at him. He hadn't just lost the voice link with the EWCACs controller, he'd lost the data link with the EWCACs completely. It provided, for every ship hooked into it's network, a fully holographic picture of a cubic lightday of space. Kapitsa was now limited by the sensors in his Viper alone. Losing the link with the EWCACs wasn't good. Kapitsa decided not to screw with himself by trying to be optimistic. There was no way the IHC could sneak up on, and destroy, a Colonial EWCAC! Those things could track things the size of his flight suit's glove at one AU's distance.
The Cylons had arrived. It wasn't paranoia- somehow, in the back of his mind, he knew it.
"Drakkar Flight, ThreatCon Alpha is now active! Spread it out! Go! Now!" Instantly, four sets of reaction engines flared to life as Drakkar flight split up to prevent a near-miss from a flak round couldn't take them out all at once.
Kapitsa flipped his sensor suite on. It took a few moments to power up. Before it had finished, massive holes were suddenly ripped in the space/time continuim. Kapitsa's Viper was rocked by turbulence, caused by the energy that had suddenly been sent coursing through the space around him. Massive ships erupted into normal space around him- Cylon Basestars. Kapitsa took a quick count- one, two, three- THREE Basestars, but unlike any he'd ever seen before, only a few hundred kilometers distant. Seconds later, small craft- what Kapitsa assumed to be Cylon Raiders- came shooting out of the Basestars in the hundreds.
"FRAK!" Kapitsa swore. He flipped his Viper over onto its back and made an arc towards the Raiders- if the Basestars tried to engage him, then at least they'd be more likely to hit their own fighters than him. He quickly switched his comm station to the General Broadcast- Emergency channel, and toggled it on.
"Colonial Defense Command, this is Drakkar Flight! We've been jumped by an entire Cylon task force! Three, repeat, THREE Cylon Basestars, unknown design and many, MANY Raiders! Request IMMEDIATE backup!" As Kapitsa barked his report to the comm system, he tounged the implant stuck in the roof of his mouth, and the other pilots of Drakkar flight were given orders to stick with their wingmen and fire at will. He also armed all of the Viper's eight missiles.
A scant millisecond after his broadcast to Jericho Defense Command, the Viper shook from a near-miss. The Basestars were going to do their damndest to knock him down, and they had plenty of toasters to waste to try and get to him. Obviously, otherwise they wouldn't have committed such a large task force for taking down such an outdated and underclassed force like BSG 29. Kapitsa shuddered to think what the other Colonial units in the home system were facing right now...
Standard doctrine said you fell back and regrouped when faced with an attack like this. While that was definately the smart (and sane) thing to do, Drakkar flight could take out a lot of the Raiders in this task force before they were killed themselves, which would delay this task force from reinforcing whichever hugeass fleet had decided to pick a fight with the Home Fleet.
A tone growled in the back of Kapitsa's ears. His missiles had all picked and locked onto targets. Kapitsa pickeled the missiles quickly, and eight streaks of light erupted from his craft. He immediately jinxed, curving away from a cloud of Raiders that had formed and were heading in his direction. His Viper rocked again- the flak was ranging him in. There'd be a cloud of it before long.
Drakkar Two- Flores- had let his missiles fly no more than a second after Kapitsa had. All sixteen were screaming for their targets. Kapitsa jixed randomly, waiting patiently...
An airy chime sounded in his ears. The Viper's computer reported a second later- all eight of his missiles had hit targets. Six were a memory, and the other two were wounded- still heading for him. Flores' missiles had hit and killed seven of their targets. His last missile must have missed its target. Strangely, none of the raiders had attempted to evade the missles, they had just been irradiating some sort of strange light at...
"Drakkar Two, break and engage, now!" Kapitsa flipped his Viper on it's side and pulled the stick into his stomach. His gel-filled G-suit began to compensate for the tremendous gee-forces that he had forced his Viper into. Thanks to technology these days, Colonial pilots could handle turns of over 100 gees with their g-suits- something essential for dogfighting in space. Flores complimented his manever, following Kapitsa on his wing. They soon found themselves heading straight for Raiders- almost fifty of them. Flak- represented by flashes of light, and the occasional turbulence- was all around them. One Raider took a flak round and blew up spectacularly.
"Drakkar Two," Kapitsa barked, "Chicken run!" He turned his attention to the reading on his helmet-mounted, holographic heads-up display. The Raiders were almost in range... his finger grazed the trigger... flak erupted around him... a cheer, somewhere- on the flight comm circuit?...
He had the range.
Kapitsa's finger jerked backwards. Hard. Raiders began to take damage and explode. The Viper's mass driver began sending spitting death at the Cylons. Flores' Viper opened up, too.
Kapitsa held his finger down and counted to himself. One. Two. Three. After three seconds, it was time to let go of the trigger- so as to prevent his cannon from turning to slag- and jinx as hard as he could. But he didn't. Kapitsa kept his finger on the trigger, and shoved his throttle forward, to the stops.
Four. Five. His armor began to flicker and flare in several spots as the Cylons got in a few lucky ranging shots.
Six. Seven. The Cylons were getting closer... too much closer, and his armor would be overwhelmed and punctured, and then-
"NOW!" Kapitsa screamed, throwing his fighter into a lateral spin while he pulled the stick as far back as he could. Flores joined him, knowing full well what was going to happen. If Kapitsa hadn't practiced this maneuver many, many times before, the combination of quickly spinning around and the intense gee-forces would have made him pass out, cold. As it was, he could barely keep from doing just that. Enemy fire was still everywhere, almost enveloping him, but he'd-
wa-BAM! Kapitsa's fire control computer flickered and almost died. A massive surge of gamma-wave radiation had almost cooked him right there and then. Kapitsa straightened his Viper out and checked his sensors. Nearly all of the fighter wave that had been heading for Kapitsa and Flores were dead or hurt.
The nearest Basestar must have lobbed a large anti-matter charge in his direction.
For some reason, that pissed Kapitsa off. Very badly. For some reason, it seemed like an insult. The toasters didn't want to play fair. It was beyond any common sense, of course- but Lieutenant Commander Vyascheslav Kapitsa was beyond common sense right now.
"Drakkar Two, Basestar number two. Now."
"Roger that." Kapitsa and Flores accelerated towards the Basestar that had launched the anti-matter charge that had nearly turned them into atoms. Instead, it had added almost fourty more fighters to the thirteen the pair had already destroyed. The flak erupting around them increased steadily in intensity, until it was almost insane. The Basestars were launching more fighters. Drakkar Three and Four were engaged in heavy dogfighting. The remaining fighters from the first wave Kapitsa and Flores had devestated were still heading towards them, shooting for all they were worth. The signal from Drakkar Three winked out.
But all Kapitsa saw was the Basestar, hanging fat, dumb, and ugly, right there in front of him...
And he pickled the one anti-ship torpedo he carried, which promptly headed for the Basestar at high speed. Before Flores could do the same, a searing-white burst of light erupted from under his Viper's fuselage, and Flores was no more. Kapitsa grimaced, more from the loop he had just entered than in remorse. Remorse was a feeling, one that he didn't need right now. He could feel remorse later. Right now, he needed to-
Kapitsa's Viper shook hard. Massive holes were being torn in subspace. No! Not again! They're being reinforced! As if to compound matters, the Basestar that Kapitsa had targeted was on fire in multiple places...
Wait...
Kapitsa suddenly checked his sensors. A group of capital ships had just emerged from hyperspace in the middle of the battle...
All were blasting Colonial IFF transponders. Battlestars! A relief expedition? The Basestars around him began to take multiple hits, and Mark VII-Vipers poured out of their docking bays. This was the Second Fleet task force that he'd been told about.
"Yes!" Kapitsa screamed, altering his Viper's turn to head for the nearest group of Colonial fighters.
The last thought through the mind of Lieutenant Commander Vyascheslav Kapitsa, Flight Officer of Sh'quo Squadron, 183rd UNSC Fighter Wing, was one of triumph. And then, his world became heat- searing, infinite heat, and a blinding light.
And then, silence.
A deep, velvet silence.