+26 days after attack
Mover force Alfa
One jump from Sagittarian
The fleet of forty sacrificial civilian ships had just departed after their targeting data was uploaded to target the eight Basestars in orbit of Sagittarian. The eighteen ship element of eight War-Movers, six police cutters four heavily modified Everson starlight transports and stood with the ninety cruise liners and freighters waiting for the ten minute timer to end. Captain Sophia Blyth aboard and commanding her father's old ship. The Gemini Falcon before he joined the council representing all of the pirates that had followed his lead.
Command had been given to her and in the last month she had lived even thrived to their expectations her force had claimed three basestars in conventional combat and rescued a dozen civilian ships. And doubled their number of War-Movers, giving the Irregulars as she has taken to calling themselves twenty-four operational War-Movers and another eight in the process of being augmented and reinforced. Shaking her head she came back to the present.
Sophia walked across the bridge to the communications "We jump in two minutes as soon as we arrive I want every fighter we have out the doors. And tell those cops and starlight's to stay close we welded some extra armor plate and weapons on them but they were not designed for heavy combat like what we might see." As she looked around seeing the clock counting down the last three minutes she could practically feel the vibrations through her feet as the fifty fighter pilots she carried running to their collection of vipers and raptors. She listened in to the readiness reports coming in:
Fleche squadron ready
Main weapons bay reports ready
1st raptor team ready here
Grapeshot squadron lets go get them
3rd raptor team let's do it
2nd raptor team were good to go
Missile bay ready to blow them down
Archer squadron ready to take our homes back
Point defense ready to knock em down
Nodding in approval at the minute fifteen second check-in for her ship. The clock scrolled down she simply ordered her force to jump.
+26 days after attack
Mover force Alfa
Sagittarian
They arrived just in time to see an old trash hauler miss its target the last surviving basestar only to explode in a nuclear fireball. The plasma wash rolls through and over the raiders surrounding it and the now disabled but intact basestar scorching its hull all over Alfa over two hundred vipers and half that in raptors are hurled out into the scrapyard to face down less than a hundred surviving raiders.
With no huge threat seen Captain Blyth sends word to the ninety evacuation ships as well as the dedicated raptor in the hanger to deliver word back to Troy and the council with a second report to follow. The raptor flew out of the hanger pod and blinked away.
Looking back at the decreasing numbers of raiders Blyth smiled as she watched the last raider duck out of the way of four of her vipers and smack into a chunk of debris. "All raiders destroyed send all fighters' planet side we need to secure spaceports stadiums parking lots whatever can handle our freighters and liners we have six hours to get as many people off as we can."
As orders were passed and freighters started moving down all over the planet Captain Sophia looked out over the field of wreckage… and the intact scorched basestar and an idea came to her "Taskforce Alfa lets surround that last baseship all vipers stay to guard the evacuation efforts raptors will assist us with repairs and salvage of parts from the other wreaks let's get this toaster shiny again. This will be a hell of surprise when we get back huh.
Sagittarian airspace
Lieutenant Jack "Hawk" Talon led his Buckshot squadron down into the atmosphere escorting the passenger liner Aquaria's Star. As he looked at his dradis display showing the other fourteen fighters when the dradis screamed out followed quickly by another pilot, Cylon raider were coming up from the surface "Enemy fighter's coming up from the surface DRADIS reads eight…no nine carom 22.3.!" Jack looked to his left and right "Come on Bucks lets show these rooks why we get all the good booze in the canteen."
Every Buck grinned as they opened their engines wide open veering onto an intercept. Buck6 was the first one to see them her voice announced "I've got eyes on them; eight shinny's coming up fast." A quick burst of 30mm echoed on the line as she laughed "make that seven."Buck8 flashed pass her to flip in front of her nose firing his guns "six ya mean" he drawled in a piconese drawl it was over less then a minute later as eight and six racked up another kill each followed with Buck14 and talon each scoring a kill with the last being hit by Buck4.
Regrouping with the Star they finished escorting it to a small city with a massive church in the center. Circling the city Aquaria's Star landed in the churches courtyard as Lieutenant Talon watched the main ramp lowered and a dozen marines aboard as security came out to start searching for survivors. "All Bucks this is Hawk, let's see if there are any more toasters around Buck1-7 will follow me eight through fifteen will remain here flying CAP" as the two groups formed wordlessly Buck8 spoke up though "isn't it weird guys the jammer was destroyed even before we had our fun with the toasters. Yet we haven't heard a single radio transmission."
Jack thought about it for a moment looking around it was weird the city was mostly intact a few building near the edge were nothing but a piles of rubble. He was about to answer with a general transmission from the marines made him stop.
"There all frakking dead we found a shelter under the church must be two thousand people here looks like poison."
The sound of the marine puking cut him off as they saw marines come running out from the church.
"According to a plaque in the church this city has a population 28,000 we are going door to door there must be other shelters"
Flabbergasted the Bucks said nothing. Continuing their patrol sweep in silence silently praying they found survivors. Over the next hour their prayers were answered as entire families were found and then entire neighborhoods in basements and sewers most of them interconnected with tunnels from what they had heard the elderly pastor and beautiful blond (a human cylon 1 and 6) head sister gave them bad feelings. They gathered their families and close friends and went to their own basements knocking walls down to gain access to their vacant neighbors houses for food and supplies without being seen. By time the city had been searched by the marines and half the Bucks who landed to help speed up the search they had found just over six thousand survivors.
Three hours had passed in silence they were finding survivors but not nearly enough according to records there was just under two billion people. They had found almost twenty-two thousand people and the rate was slowing millions of dead were everywhere either killed by the cylons, by each other or starvation it was heart breaking most of the freighters would be going back empty of survivors.
In those three hours they had also been busy with repairs to the disabled basestar they wanted to capture. So far they had replaced the fried computer interfaces scorched armor plating with salvaged ones. Some of the hull breaches instead of being replaced with armor additional salvaged launchers were installed upping the original two hundred and twenty launchers to almost three hundred and fifty after converting some of the toaster racks for raiders. As conversion and repair work was being done raptors and Everson's scoured the entire battlefield finding over two dozen intact Heavy Raiders transporting them as well as over a hundred wreaks and salvaged extra pieces from other basestars. Armories on the other derelicts had been emptied granting them a huge surplus in cylon manufactured missiles and hundreds of launchers torn from wrecks.
In another hour they would be ready to move. With less than an hour left in their planned mission Captain Blyth called it. Dispatching the follow up raptor carrying a updated report
14 vipers lost
3 raptors destroyed
7 basestars destroyed
1 repaired and updating basestar captured
22,000 survivors