Chapter 4 – Catastrophe

Poseidon class ship Arawan – Earth Orbit

She awoke with a start and was immediately disorientated. She didn't know where she was, why she was there, and why it was dark and she could smell smoke. Then it all hit her, the last thing she could remember was onboard the bridge of the Arawan. Carefully taking a look around the dark room, she could see that that was where she still was, but on the floor. It was just then that she realised that there was someone near her, moaning in pain. There were no lights, and Heidi Galtua carefully moved across to the sound of the moaning person.

"Hello, can you hear me," she said whilst almost tripping on a chunk of a command console which had been splintered apart and was on the floor.

"Yes, over here," a female voice said through clasped teeth, barely audible. Commander Galtua knelt down beside the person, her night vision finally coming to her. She could barely see the outline of someone laying on the floor. She put her hand down to touch them but she met a wet sticky substance, which she knew was blood.

"You' re going to be alright, I'll go and get help," she said. She slowly made her way over towards where she knew the exit from the bridge was, but on her way, she caught a glimpse of one of the remaining monitors which were still operational. She went over to it and she felt a sense of dread come over her as she looked at basic statistics of her ship. Power to all systems except artificial gravity and life support was out throughout the ship, and even some parts of the ship didn't have those. There were several sections open to space. Fires were located in several other sections. There was absolutely no power to the engines. And worst of all, they were in a deteriorating orbit, and would hit Earth's atmosphere in about two hours. She left the station and made her way over to the exit for the bridge. She tried the phone that was housed near the doorway, but it was dead. She knew that she'd have to navigate her way to medical to get any help.

Hours later, Commander Galtua was kneeling down beside the injured person that she had found in the bridge. She hadn't gone to the medical bay, as the path was blocked by twisted bulkheads and wreckage not too far from the bridge. She was the only surviving person in this section of the ship, save the injured woman on the floor, which she doubted would survive. There was no one who was going to come to rescue her, and any minute now, the enemy fighters would finish off the ship. She didn't think that the damage to the ship would have been this extensive. She shields couldn't hold against the energy released from ten nuclear detonations occurring in close proximity to the ship. Added to the fact was that one of the enemy ship's large triangular arms had collided directly with the last remaining shields, and destroyed them, and had continued its vector and had impacted the Arawan. Heidi Galtua guessed that it was either equipment failure or the multiple electromagnetic pulses released from the ten nuclear detonations which had shut down their systems, but she expected the shutdown of all of their systems, save life-support, was from the damage sustained to the ship.

It had been her idea, and her decision to use the manoeuvre that they had just performed, but she thought that the ship would be able to handle the consequences. Instead, because of her rash thinking, she had cost the lives of almost everyone on the ship, and she would soon follow. She was responsible for the loss of over five hundred personnel.

It was then that she saw light entering the bridge, and heard a loud sound emanating from down the hallway from the bridge. She realised that someone may have been cutting through the damage hallway. She may be saved after all, but she knew that her consciousness would live with the decision that she had made for the rest of her life.

Research Vessel Copenhagen – Unknown Location

Dr. Wotresser had waited until Lieutenant Commander Aaron Doral had left the bridge unit he moved or made any noise of any kind. The enemy had infiltrated their ship, and probably the government of at least one country on Earth. That was the only explanation that he could come up with to explain why the commander shot all of the personnel on the bridge, after they had jumped to an unknown location, which he had plotted. Dr. Wotresser knew all about the translations off of 'The Great Ship' in the Antarctic, as it was being called. His mother was Dr. MacGuwyre, one of the original scientists who had found the ship in the Antarctic. His mother had told him everything about it, and he had wanted in. Unlike his mother, who was an Environmental Scientist, Dr. Wotresser was a physicist and chemist rolled into one. The Copenhagen was his brainchild. He had overseen the planning and development of most of the ship. Now, as far as he knew, people from the Twelve Tribes had infiltrated his ship, and taken control. The translations said to 'be aware' of the Twelve Tribes, and that there was a dispute between the Twelve Tribes, and the Thirteenth Tribe which had gone back generations throughout their history. It had been inferred that human beings on Earth may be descendants of this Thirteenth Tribe, ancestors from the race of people who built 'The Great Ship', but most of those speculations were dismissed almost as soon as they had come out. The fact of the matter was that humanity's evolution could be traced on Earth, and Earth was the birthplace of humanity, no matter what the translations said, hard evidence was more believable.

Dr. Wotresser moved to one of the dead bodies which was laying on the ground and searched for a weapon, but found nothing. He didn't find a weapon until the fourth body he searched, the communications officer, a woman that he was going to ask out today. He grabbed her pistol out of her pants and headed out of the control room.

The ship was eerily quiet as Dr. Wotresser moved through the corridors of the Copenhagen. It wasn't soon until he came to a door. He knew that on the other side was a large lab, which would have a lot of supplies within it that he might be able to use. He put his hand onto the wheel which would open the door when a loud clanking noise reverberated around the ship. Instinctively, Dr. Wotresser jumped back, and for a second, he thought that he might have knocked something. Then, he heard another clanking noise, and he realised that he hadn't knocked anything, but something was happening to the outer part of the ship. Suddenly it dawned on him; the enemy was trying to dock with the ship. He knew that he didn't have much time to traverse the corridors of the two hundred metre long ship, so that he could get to the docking port in time. He hoped that he could decompress the airlock while the enemy ship was docked, therefore decompressing the enemy ship as well. There was a very high risk that the hull might be damaged, but he had to take that risk.

Before he'd even started, he knew that he would be too late, and that he wouldn't arrive in time. He had an idea, and began to slowly move along the corridors away from the air-lock, towards the control room.

One Day Later – Poseidon Class ship Chu-Jung

Commander Hitiksu was once again looking at one of the monitors showing an image of the Arawan, completely powerless in a descending orbit around Earth. Every Osprey class shuttle that could be called into action had been used to evacuate any personnel which had been aboard the ship. They had explored all avenues which were possible to save the ship from the deteriorating orbit, and the only viable one had been to repair the breached sections surrounding the engine room and control rooms, and repair the engines. There was one major flaw in that plan however, as by the time that repairs would have been fully complete, the Arawan would have crashed into the Earth. It was now, with no other choice that he gave the order for it's destruction before it crashed into Earth, causing even more people to die.

"Alpha One, this is the Chu-Jung. You have a go, over," Commander Hitiksu said into the radio to a pair of F/SB 603 Albatross class bombers. He watched as the pair of cylindrical shaped bombers moved forward, and a missile was launched from the underside of each. The missiles streaked towards the Arawan in the distance. A few moments later, a large flash erupted from the fore section of the Arawan, and then another bright flash erupted from the rear of the ship. He watched the monitor as the flashes died down, and watched as secondary explosions tore apart what was left of the Arawan after the twin nuclear explosions.

Osprey 062 – Area 51 – Nevada Desert – Western United States of America

Flight Lieutenant Samuel Johnson lifted the Osprey off of the ground in the take-off and landing area that had been designated at Area 51 in the Nevada Desert. The rear compartment was loaded with food and building materials for refugees from the Chicago area. The city had taken a direct nuclear missile, and the numbers of refugees were in the hundreds of thousands. This was his flight crew's first relief mission, and the other Osprey pilots had warned them that what they were going to see would not be pretty. He hit the switch to turn on the two large rotational jet engines, powered by the by-product of a nuclear fusion reactor which was located aboard the Triton. As they switched on, he slowly shifted the throttle for the jet engines up to low and turned off the VTOL engines which had been keeping them hovering in the air above Area 51. The Osprey accelerated and he checked with Captain Organ that their route was programmed into the computers. After receiving an acknowledged sign, he put the computer over onto Autopilot and relaxed in his seat.

Things were not pretty here on Earth. Already, the militaries of almost every nation on Earth were on high alert, either ready to repel more enemy invaders from the stars, or to lash out upon those nations which had hid the truth from them. Currently, the Planetary Defence Organisation was enacting legislation which would secure their facilities, as well as brief every government around the world about what had been going on in the last sixty years or so. That was being done at this moment in an emergency session of the United Nations which was being held in Italy. He knew that life on Earth was going to change, but he didn't know whether it would be for the better or for the worse.

Colonial Raptor 1315 – Colonial Fleet – Colonial Uncharted Space

Lee Adama, callsign 'Apollo' was coming along for this raptor mission, to see how the beacons were deployed. The raptor was the Colonial's version of an all purpose shuttle/scout ship/sensor platform, and had an FTL (Faster than Light) jump capabilities. They were flying away from the Colonial remnant, a fleet of fifty ships which held the last surviving people of the Colonial Civilization. Only one of those ships was a fully combat capable ship, the Battlestar Galactica, which was commanded by his father, Commander Adama. Close to two years ago, they had encountered another surviving Battlestar, the Battlestar Pegasus. The Pegasus had left the Colonial Fleet to return to the colonies to search for survivors, and to hopefully return them to the remanent of the Twelve Colonies of Mankind, in their search for the mythical lost, thirteenth tribe which had settled on a planet called Earth. Now, every couple of systems or so, the Galactica would deploy a raptor with a special communications beacon which had been co-developed by the crews of the Galactica and Pegasus. The beacons were very small, too small to be detected by Dradis, and lay dormant for most of the time. When the Pegasus decided to try and to return to the Colonial Fleet, it would follow the vector that Commander Adama had told the crew of the Pegasus that they would be travelling along, stopping off at various systems along the way. There, they would send out a unique signal, and transmit it throughout the whole system. Then, if a beacon was present, it would activate and transmit a data-burst to the Pegasus, relaying the condition of the fleet and the Galactica at the time that it was deployed. It could then be used to trace the Galactica and the Fleet's path. They all hoped that the Cylons never discovered the Beacons, or else then, they were all doomed.