Chapter 14

Commander Hasan paced the bridge. The long-range sensors of the Kongo were still out as the subspace components of them were damaged beyond repair and would require a space dock to fix. The short-range sensors showed signs of debris from the Raiders but they had not found any that would seem to from the Viper. Still, he could not rule out that it was destroyed although it could not have gotten out of sensor range that quickly. The attack had been a concern because it might mean that the larger Cylon force was ready to engage the Olympus, but he also knew the Captain would call if they needed to cut their Warp Engineer test short. "Smith, report." He called into the intercom.

"Wrapping up now, we should be able to engage engines within the next 30 minutes."

"Okay, I'll report to the Olympus." He paused as he considered how to explain Kiko's absence to the Captain. He really should have reported in earlier, but he had focused on trying to find her and getting the Kongo back to Warp.

He went to the communication console and punched the correct buttons. "Kongo to Olympus, come in please," he waited a minute and did not receive a response. Asleep at the switch? He wondered. "Kongo to Olympus come in," he repeated. Again, there was no response. He double checked the settings. It appeared that everything was set correctly. The Colonial communication system could not receive subspace, but they had determined how to replicate the Colonial signals. It has also worked during the last communication attempt.

"Hasan to Smith, get ready to get underway," He called down to the Engineering room. "The Olympus is not responding."

"Understood. 15 Minutes to Warp. Are we just leaving Kiko?" he asked disapprovingly.

"We'll come back," said the Commander," Let's get to the Kongo and get a crew. If all goes well, it should just take a few minutes.

"Ok," replied the young engineer. He had always liked being around Kiko. He had just started wondering if it was more than just friendship. "I just remembered that the shuttle bay door is still open. We should close it but someone will have to go down since we have it opened manually."

"We need to go," said the Commander somewhat agitated with himself for taking too long to check in.

"I know. It will just take a minute. The warp bubble will protect us but I would hate to come into the middle of a battle exposed to space, especially because it would take us a couple of minutes to bring weapons and shields up."

"I'll go," said the Commander. "Get warp online." He had not yet taken off all of his environmental gear so he grabbed his headgear and headed to the turbolift. Out of long habit from being a in security, he grabbed his phaser and hung it on his belt."

The Cylon flight leader looked around the strange room. It did not recognize its surrounding as Colonial or Cylon. The chamber was too small to support large numbers of attack craft. During the battle with the alien ship, he had observed the wide beam that had destroyed 5 Raiders in one blast. It had been fortunate enough to be outside the radius and had originally intended to swing around and make what most likely would have been a last strafing run. It and its crew were circling around the rear of the ship when it saw an opening large enough for the Raider. Ship infiltration was a program it had access to and it calculated that the odds of surviving a direct attack were unacceptably lower whereas infiltration had an unknown success likelihood. The flight commander made a decision.

"Infiltrate the ship," it said in its mechanical voice, "use the opening in the rear."

"By your command," had been the answer.

Now that they were onboard, the quickly assessed the situation. "Surprised," was the wrong word but the centurions had been prepared for armed warriors to defend against the infiltration. When this did not happen, they had to recalibrate to the new situation. They grabbed their laser rifles and exited the Raider. They registered that there was no atmosphere either. Cylon Raiders maintained an oxygen atmosphere although it was not needed. This was a hold over in their programming from when Raiders would have been manned by living creatures.

The centurions found the open interior door that lead into a corridor. The entered the corridor and saw that there was a door directly in front of them. As the evaluated their next option, the interior door closed and an atmosphere began to fill the area. The emergency bulkhead opened and a human figure in an orange suit stepped through. The Centurions immediately opened fire.

Commander Hasan had come down to where the emergency bulkhead into the hanger bay had been closed. He realized that Kiko must have opened the interior door which caused this door to automatically close. That's alright, he thought, I can use this as a makeshift airlock. There was a computer console in a maintenance room that he used to access the atmospheric controls. He had the interior door close and then reestablished life support in the affected area. Once that showed green, he grabbed his headgear with his right hand and opened the emergency bulkhead and stepped through.

Immediately he saw Centurions. There was no hesitation on their part as he dropped and rolled away from them. Pulse laser blasts struck the corridor on all sides of him. He had lost his headgear in the process which was not a concern. He quickly reached for his phaser, but it was also gone. He glanced for it quickly but realized he could not waste anytime and had to get out of there. He ran around a corner as the centurions continued to fire. They had taken pursuit of him. He got to the next corner and took the time to punch the intercom button he found there.

"Intruder alert! Centurions onboard. Take control of the Kongo and get us to the Olympus." That was all the time he had before he had to run again. These things are single minded, he thought. They should be trying to establish their area of control, not mindlessly chasing the first human they came across. He shook off that thought and tried to come up with the next plan. Ahead of him was the transporter room and armory. He took off in that direction. The armory was a great starting point but he would still be outnumbered. Another idea started to percolate and he ran again.

Andrew Smith took off towards auxiliary control. Other than the warning from the Commander, he did not have any more details. He had his own phaser out but got the control room with no incident. He brought the control panels online and began to lay in a course for the Olympus. They were ready to go to warp. He reached out the communication panel and tried to reach the Commander again.

"Smith to Hasan, come in please," With a great sense of relief he heard an answer.

"Hasan here," The commander was out of breath and obviously agitated.

"Ready to go to warp commander," he reported.

"Not yet. Too risky. I am in the armory but will have to move. There are three centurions so I am outnumbered. Here is what I need to you do to instead." And he outlined his plan.

Commander Hasan left the armory and immediately came under fire. He was armed with a phaser rifle and returned fire. The centurions did not take any defensive position but relied on their own fire to force Hasan to take a defensive posture. It worked. Hasan did with a carefully timed attack get one shot off that was not quite dead center on one of the centurions. He had not set the phaser to the highest setting so as not to damage the Kongo herself. The hit did cause the centurion to lose it right arm and the sparks from the explosion gave him enough time to leave the armory. He ran into the transporter room thinking, this had better work or I will be trapped. He took off one glove and threw it to the back of the transporter chamber. He then opened his communicator, tossed it to the back of the chamber and hid under the transporter console.

The flight commander the centurion 1 saw the human go into a room after it had disabled centurion 2. The door seemed to open based on a proximity so it simply walked up to the door and walked through. The room had no exit and it did not immediately see the human. There was an odd raised platform that it made note of but had no interest in. It began to initiate its search routine when he heard a human voice from the rear of the platform. A voice was emanating from the area in a language it could not understand. It was saying, unbeknownst to it, "Hasan, keep quiet or the will find the hidden door. Just stay quiet. It'll be alright." On closer inspection, the flight leader saw a glove at the rear of the raised platform.

"There must be a hidden door. Search the platform," ordered the flight leader. It and centurion 1 climbed up the platform and looked around for any sign of an opening. Once on the platform, it saw a small black device with a golden mesh. It and the other centurion looked but did not find a hidden entrance. Suddenly there was as noise behind them and they both turned to see the human at the control panel. The human said in its unknown language, "see you fellows." He pulled down on three levers. The centurions immediately lost geographic and chronological orientation. The flight leader realized a short period of time was lost. No malfunction was registered but the flight leader found itself in space looking at the outside of the alien ship. Centurion 1 was with him and both centurions were floating away from the ship. The flight leader knew that both centurions could operate some time in space, but they would not be able to complete its mission. It aimed its laser rifle at what it now knew to be a human ship and fired until the energy source was empty. It of course had no effect. The centurion then simply began to wait for another directive to kick in but nothing in this part of space would cause that to happen.

As Commander Hasan watched the centurions disappear, he let out a breath. He grabbed the phaser rifle and went back to where he had disabled the first centurion. It was still partially moving although it did not seem to be with purpose. The blast had severed its right arm from the rest of it. He aimed for the center of the device and fired again. The centurion stopped all motion. He went to the nearest intercom.

"Smith, I believe the threat has been eliminated. I think they were from the one Raider we could not find after we attacked. Can you run an internal scan and see if there are any more of them?"

"Yes sir," responded the crewman relieved. "I will have to set it to their energy readings since there are not life signs. Ready to go to warp?" He asked.

"Yeah. Let's go get a crew. We can deal with the rest of this later. I am heading back to the bridge."

"Understood. We'll be ready in five minutes." The transporter trick had worked, but he had power routed away from the warp engines to do it. Transportation was another system that was very power heavy. "The shuttle door is still open," he reminded the Commander.

"I know," he said. "Let's get second shift on board and they can deal with it," he smiled. While he was second-in-command for the entire ship, he also ran the first shift. There was a bit of a rivalry between them.

Hasan entered the bridge and took his place at the helm. He reached over to the navigation station and set a course. At warp this should only take a minute. He looked around to make sure there was nothing else he had forgotten. The ship would come in at warp and Smith would need to very quickly shift power back to weapons and shields. If they wanted to beam the crew over, they would have to drop the shields. This worried Hasan due to the sheer number of craft involved. He knew the Kongo would do tremendous damage to the attacking forces but he would not have access to any kind of damage control or support of any kind until he could get at least a skeleton crew onboard.

"Smith let's go over it again. Without long range scanners, we won't know what we are getting into. As soon as we come out of warp, we will switch power back to weapons and shields and assume the worst. We will re-establish communications with the Olympus and determine the next steps. If they are in the middle of battle, we will engage as best we can. I need somebody manning the phaser room and somebody ready to respond to damage control as best they can. The goal is to get he Kongo manned as quickly as possible. Understood?" Asked the Commander.

"Yes, sir. Ready to go to warp when you are," answered Smith.

"Alright," said Hasan sitting at the helm. "Initiating warp 1." He punched in the correct command sequence, and the Kongo for the first time in 6 weeks jumped into subspace. Hasan watched as the start flew by, a sight that he had not seen in some time. It was to be a very quick trip but inwardly Hasan cheered as the Starship did what starships are meant to do. Almost immediately, the Federation ship came out of warp. Hasan quickly went to the science station and scanned the immediate area. What he saw shocked him. He went back to the navigations station and double-checked coordinates but they were correct as well. Back to the science station, he began to scan the area again. The intercom on the captain's chair went off and he punched up the signal at the science station.

"Hasan here," he responded still staring into the scanner.

"What's the status, sir? I have diverted all power to weapons and shields," the crewman sensed something was wrong.

"Well we made it," answered the commander. " But there is nothing here. No Olympus. No baseships. Nothing. They are simply gone."