Seeker
Part Three of the Mailman Saga
by Chaoseternus

5: Glimpses

We spent five full days hidden in the hull in that blasted gas giant storm before the ship was repaired enough for us to leave. The ship was no where near combat ready, but unfortunately as much as I would have liked, we couldn't stay safe in the eye of the storm forever. We had used nearly a sixth of our manoeuvring thruster fuel during the last few days, not to mention, a similar amount of our tylium stores and we couldn't afford either of those.

No, we had to leave before we used too much fuel and that meant going into a hot zone with a ship that would barely pass its SpaceSafe requirements and certainly wouldn't pass it ComSafe (combat safe) tests. Such I suppose is the nature of war, that the niceties of peacetime be forced to the side in the name of survival and of winning.

Still, very cautiously, we made our way out of the storm, using the interference the storm generated on our sensor plots as our guide, as a result we suffered far less damage then we did on our way in, but still, damage was suffered.

Our next problem was the cylons, hopefully they had no indication that we were here but I wasn't going to bet on it. I had hoped to cautiously slide in low orbit and under full emcon to the far side of the gas giant and jump from there, the idea being that once again the highly active radiological, electrical and magnetic fields that surrounded the gas giant would mask us from the cylon sensors.

Perhaps that worked, perhaps it didn't, if I was to hazard a guess I would say it was a raider that detected us purely visually but I doubt we will ever know for sure. Either way, when the first nuke hit, I ordered an immediate FTL jump, we had the relevant co-ordinates loaded into the drives already but it meant a full burn to a higher orbit before we could safely jump….

Well, safely certainly being a relative word under these conditions.

Having been detected, active sensors were quickly switched on and reported two raiders launching missiles at us whilst the basestar which by now was nearly over the planets horizon launched what appeared to be hundreds more.

Two Raiders we could survive, but the fact that we had been moving away from the basestar when we were detected would no doubt make the cylons curious. Once our suppression batteries had finished off the cylons and we had moved into a high enough orbit, we jumped into the void.


"Where the frak did they come from?"

"I don't know boss, but I know one thing for cert. They haven't been hiding in low orbit all this time; the low orbit patrols would have caught them by now"

"Can you get a firmer ID?"

"Trying Sheba, but the gas giant is interfering with their IFF beacon… no wait, their IFF beacon is damaged to. Data stream, such as it is from an IFF is corrupt. Profile is definitely a Battlestar, but…"

"What Bojay?"

"I'm not sure… what I can see of the IFF doesn't seem indicative of a main fleet warship. This may be an E&E vessel"

"E&E? Who the hell are they?"

"I'll tell you back on the Pegasus, we need to report this anyway"

"Fine, but this had better be good. I've never heard of this E&E"

"I'm not surprised, but from what I've heard, one of their Battlestars would make the ultimate support ship for a guerrilla war"


The void is always the safest place for a ship to hide, the massive gulf between stars is far too large to be patrolled, you would need literally millions of patrol craft to cover the area between just two stars, and there were far more then two in the galaxy. Whilst we Colonials had patrolled the gulf prior to the fall, it was done as a show measure to appease certain elements of the public and Central Government only, the Admiralty knew all to well the impracticalities.

The Cylons thanks to an apparent lack of the need to sleep could carry out such a patrol far more efficiently, but unless they had some idea of where we had jumped too, there chances of finding us were roughly comparable to the same person winning the Caprican Lottery Jackpot fourty times in a row without cheating.

Meet Slim, son of none everyone…

Doesn't stop the random event, i.e. a Raider managing the entirely unlikely event of dropping in on you, but the threat is low unless you're being tracked somehow.

That's why I felt safe ordering a stop down to a minimal alert level whilst repairs were completed, well, those we could what with our dangerously depleted supplies and the surviving crew were rested, sometimes forcibly for certain workaholics amongst the crew.

Still, the need was clear now, they needed to resupply, they couldn't hit an old supply depot, so it would have to be done the old fashioned way. That was fine, E&E ships were equipped for mining, refining and production to a far greater extent then their main fleet comrades, it just added a lot of risk. They would need the bulk of their personnel working swiftly on ore extraction, the rest they could do wherever they wanted. At the same time, the battlestar needed to be at full alert in order to protect the miners should the cylons find them on whatever hellhole they were stripping for materials.

She didn't really have the personnel for both, but she would have to order it done anyway. Then, once they had used their manufactured parts to repair the ship as best as possible, they would have to see about recruitment, the Seeker needed more crew; unfortunately Cade knew the Cylons would make that a tricky prospect.

Still, she had a few ideas…


"Commander?" Cade looked up wearily from the charts and maps spread out across the briefing rooms table with a sign, brushing her increasingly too-long hair away from her eyes. She should have it cut, but it was difficult to find the time. Besides, both the ships qualified barbers were dead.

"Yes Chief?" she asked, quietly.

"I've been looking over the sensors logs from our little escape from the gas giant and well, I think you need to see this"

Cade reached out one arm, grabbing the print-outs from the Chiefs hand, before glancing over them once swiftly. Her eyebrows rose, and she placed them on the table, leaning over them as she read more carefully.

"Is this for real?"

"As far as I can tell Commander"

"Then," she asked slowly, "what was a Raptor doing observing our escape?"