Seeker
Part Three of
the Mailman Saga
by Chaoseternus
Our first task once we had gotten our act together was simple, CPO Hallesy, who had passed the mandatory retirement age nearly two years ago, mentioned that his old CO, Commander "Firehawk" Tobin of the original Pacifica had set up his own supply caches, as was normal for the darker phases of the first Cylon war, but there was one he knew off that it was entirely possible was still in place. Considering the stated location was the 'eye' of a gas giant storm I wouldn't have been at all surprised if nobody had discovered it, but question was had the cache been closed down by Tobin at any point? Had Tobin placed it into the official record after the war? If he had, it would have to be considered compromised, but we had no way of telling, all we could do was investigate and hopefully she if it had any usable supplies.
We jumped directly into low, and I mean interestingly low orbit over the gas giant, which rested just two systems away from the Colonies themselves and instantly had to go to full Emcon (Emissions Control) as a cylon patrol was inside the system. Plus side about jumping so close to a gas giant was that the energies of the giant itself helped hide our jump signature, downsides were an increased risk of jump disruption and the obvious need to correct your orbit. Unfortunately, under full Emcon we couldn't fire our main drives and that placed us at a disadvantage manoeuvring wise. The ships orbit quickly began to degrade and we were, after three hours, forced to fire the main engines just to prevent an uncontrolled descent into the giant.
Luckily for us, the Cylons did not appear to notice the burst of energy, unluckily for us the cylons, to be exact, a single basestar, showed no signs of leaving. Indeed, they appeared to be acting not as a patrol passing through all the nearby systems but as a picket, a warship sent to defend and control a particular area of space.
It was a problem for us as far as investigating the cache goes but not an insurmountable one. The cylons had shown no signs of detecting our jump signature not the firing of our main drives to correct our deteriorating orbit; therefore they would be unlikely to notice the movements of a few fighters. I ordered four of our mark II Vipers launched, and very carefully they descended into the eye of the storm on what was, to put it mildly, an increased risk mission.
Or to put it less mildly, if they misjudged then they would run into winds which would tear a battlestar into shreds, a mere fighter… well, the pilot would not even be given time to blink. Still, the status of that dump needed to be determined before I took Seeker in.
The Vipers were gone a worrying four hours, during which time three basestars passed through the system, we guessed outbound from the colonies judging by the somewhat fuzzy picture of their movements we were able to pick up on the passive sensors, and two more basestars arrived and stayed.
Those two were an additional worry by far and the high level of activity meant we had to upgrade the system from merely picketed to perhaps checkpoint or distribution node.
But the Vipers returned in time and confirmed the presence of the depot, though they also reported that it had sustained some damage it was still operational, albeit not for much longer. They had boarded the station and amongst other things, had noted that the platform no longer had any reaction mass for the station keeping thrusters in its tanks and as such, its orbit was decaying. Its nuclear pile, the stations primary source of power, was still cooking however.
For us, this was near perfect, the station whilst damaged and decaying, still had masses of supplies we could scavenge for the Seekers use, whilst much of the food supplies, even those preserved supplies that generally last years would be useless, a combination of mere age and the heightened levels of radioactivity inside the gas giant, things like spare sections of hull armour and bullets were unlikely to be effected.
But it meant taking Seeker into the gas giant and that was not an idea everyone was happy with.
"Rate of descent now 45km/s, and holding steady"
"Major static discharge reported on the aft of the port flight bay Captain,"
"Radiological alarm, portside gunnery chain. Crew abandoning positions"
"Shit," I spat out, sending a grimace towards the DC Officer, a mere Petty Officer, "make a note; replacing portside armour around the gunnery chain is a priority"
"Aye Captain,"
I didn't need to explain that one, Petty Hollands was a veteran of the DC teams even if she was new to her position as chief of Damage Control and she knew as well as I did that the Portside Gunnery chain was what shifted munitions between storage bunkers to the ready lockers of the portside guns, without that chain, we could only fire what was loaded into the railguns and what was in their ready lockers. That generally amounted to a mere hundred seconds of weapons fire, not enough by far under battle conditions. The section was supposed to be heavily armoured but what with the mix up in Mx-679 and general erosion, was no longer up to scratch. Its replacement was one of the primary reasons we were headed for refit when the end came. It seemed we would just have to hope that the station we were descending too had enough usable armour sections to replace that.
"Gunfire reported, portside main!"
There was an unmistakable urgency to that report and I was half-tempted to ask if she was kidding, but bad news never really needs any confirmation.
"Cylons?"
We had swept the ship pretty thoroughly, but it was always possible that a few had escaped our patrols.
"No Captain," Hollands was angry now, "it's the portside gunnery crew. They've fired upon marine guards outside a weapons locker… wait… marines are no longer responding. I must assume they now control that munitions locker"
Well, perfect.
Our home has been destroyed; we're a non-combatant ship with a decapitated command structure caught in the middle of a warzone with a depleted crew, trying to reach an abandoned supply platform with a decaying orbit that has been hidden inside the eye of a gas-giant storm. There are at last count three enemy basestars inside the system, and now by all appearances, there is a mutiny in progress.
Either somebody is laughing at us, or there is an action-adventure camera crew somewhere around that really hates us…
I just hoped it was just the old crew, not the marines that had been used to reinforce their numbers. If the marines had malcontents in their ranks, the ship would be in real trouble pretty swiftly.
Either way, I told my brother to get his arse into gear and contain those bastards. This descent was difficult enough as it was without a major distraction like that. Naturally, one of his first reports was that the mutinous dogs had split up, and were heading not just here, to the secondary command centre, the bridge still being repaired, but to the main engineering control as well.
With main engineering control, they had an override over the ships engines and power routing; effectively it would give them control of the ship. With the secondary command centre, they had weapons control as well.
Both logical places to go if you want to take command of the ship, though I would have sent teams to the localised weapons control rooms too. Perhaps they didn't have enough bodies for that, either way, a promising sign. It meant my brother could concentrate his marines and hopefully take them out in short order, and I meant take them out. We had too much of a depleted crew, we couldn't really afford to lose anybody but I didn't have the bodies to watch over mutinous and untrustworthy crew either.
And I still had a descent into the eye of a gas-giant storm to control, a rather tricky manoeuvre, though my mood was improved by the information that the alarm in the portside main munitions train was a fake. Radiation levels had increased yes, but not to dangerous levels, sheer static from the storm was proving far more dangerous then that. Minor discharges were being reported all over the outer portions of the ship, a worrying fact in itself. A spark in the wrong place…
This hadn't been reported by the fighters, a fact that I was quick to have confirmed. The answer was simple, we must be drifting far too close towards the edges of the eye, and perhaps we were leaving the eye of the storm itself. Unfortunately, the very energies we were surrounded with made, sensors, both passive and active useless, not to mention radio communications… so we couldn't use Vipers as our eyes. Outside observation windows, whilst far more common then on Fleet warships, were not enough to allow us to navigate through this mess.
As I was deliberating what to do, the sounds of gunfire finally hit the secondary bridge, sounding mere feet from the sealed airlocks. After checking that my pistol was loaded and ready, I ignored it. I had to trust my people to do their jobs… even as I knew; this was the result of people not doing their jobs and worse. You have to faith in your crew; there are few things more destructive to morale then a Captain who appears not to have any faith in their crew.
The answer to my dilemma was not simple at all, Seeker could not see but we were getting some pretty solid indications that the ship was off course…
So, I sent out the shuttles. They at least had signal lamps; something the Vipers lacked and could signal us that way. Of course, it also meant get bodies in radiation suits at every window in the ship, bodies we truly didn't have to spare but had to be found, mainly as it turned out from the flight crew and pilots.
As it turned out, we were very of course and were in fact brushing dangerously close to the edges of the storms eye. This was a problem, but at least the shuttle could signal us where we were going wrong now and tell us how to correct.
Unfortunately, only two of the four shuttles we sent out signalled us. One landed back aboard in short order, its electronics dead and its crew singed, the fourth was never heard from again.
The sounds of fighting had redoubled outside the door and blood could now be seen dripping down the one window in the heavy lock but no one was phoning us to say who was winning. Perhaps they were too busy too…
Still, the static discharges and the chaos they were causing amongst ships systems had dropped off dramatically and better yet, the sensors had cleared somewhat. Though, I give all credit to Lieutenant Zeus, an injured pilot who was temporarily serving as comm. officer for spotting that the sensors controlling computers were mistakenly labelling the walls of the storm, due to their high electrical activity, as areas of severe jamming.
Now that we knew we could maintain a stable course just by watching the 'jamming' on the sensors, we recalled the shuttles to the relative safety of the Battlestar.
Five minutes later, the sound of weapons fire outside the bridge redoubled and then swiftly died.
