Chapter 25: A Quick Battle
"This is not good," Trace muttered. "SAMPSON!"
"We're moving, we're moving." On board the Galactica, the landing pod deployed. Sampson nodded politely to Cally before she ran off to see to the Vipers, and he and the others bolted out into the bay.
"Shit," he said with feeling as they manhandled the last missile out, burning their suit jets at max.
"Everyone to your fighters," Trace said, suiting action to words. "We've got at least sixty hostiles incoming. Make that seventy or eighty."
"Oh, hell, make it a few hundred," her XO said. "Looking nasty, too."
"Alright, people, get strapped in and ready to fight," Trace said. "Our goal is blockade, protect the civilian ships. The Galactica can look after itself. Work as a squad, people; this isn't a sim. We're not going to get a chance to try again if we screw up the first time around."
"I'd never have known if you hadn't told me," Tanachra said snidely.
"Trace," Tamsin's voice said over the squadron frequency. "You guys packed the A-3 jammers, right?"
"Sure, but that's designed to counter the Kanga coms, not what they've got. Hell, they still use radio."
"No, but it does disperse a large number of small jammers over the battlespace at high speed. Kind of like lots of shrapnel missiles. So if you alter the manoeuvring sequence for extra speed before dispersal…"
"It'll be like a few thousand tiny missiles with no guidance system – hang on…"
"They don't have battle screens," Tamsin assured. "It'll work. Make sure that it's a coherent firing solution that leaves the Vipers room to work, otherwise they'll end up on the receiving end."
"Right," Trace said. "Give us two ticks, we'll add their com system to ours. Sergeant Ang!"
"On it," he replied. "Give me just one second, I'll have it integrated as channel six…"
"Done and done," Trace acknowledged. "And I'm running up our software defence systems. Just in case."
"Nice. I'll be a bit busy, help you as I can."
"Right." Trace LeBeau finished integrating her neural net into the control systems of her interceptor Marvin, and could see the approaching hordes of Cylons.
"They're moving fast," she noted. "Faster than I think they should be."
"Must be overloading their engines," Tamsin said. "Apparently they can do that, if they don't mind needing extensive repairs afterwards. These things really don't think the same way Kangas do."
"Great. I understand the Kangas. These Cylons are getting on my nerves."
"Do me a favour and kill them, will you please?" Tamsin asked. "And watch the rear. Use an even dispersal, we're doing a protecting action and not a massive strike."
"Good point." Around the fleet, the large interceptors changed their formation. "We're on it. Bog off, now, Tamsin, we've got work to do."
Tamsin got back to the bridge and went straight over behind Duella. "Tell the fighters to avoid this zone here," she indicated it on the screen with the wrong end of a pen. "Our interceptors are going to fill it with shrapnel moving at high speeds."
Duella nodded and relayed the command just as the interceptors launched their jammers.
"What are they doing?" Tigh asked.
"A-3 jammers – it disperses jamming modules about the size of your fist at high speeds across a wide area of space. Those jammers are designed to screw up communications systems you've never discovered, but they'll make perfectly acceptable space junk. It'll give our interceptors a clear area to work in; they've got battle screens to avoid that sort of thing, and you don't."
"Cylon basestars moving in on attack vector," Gaida said.
"Radiological alarm," Duella said as her console started to beep.
"It means they're carrying nukes," Roslyn explained to Tamsin.
"Trace," she called into her earpiece, "Those base-stars are packing rather a lot of nukes. Try hitting them with novas."
"Done and done."
"Novas?" Adama asked.
"Nova cycle bombs. They – well, let's just say it requires a sequence of nuclear explosions to get the cycle started. One explosion like that can render a planet uninhabitable. We'll see if those work, and if they don't we'll try something heavier and why are you all looking at me like that? It's only light ordinance, after all."
"Something that can destroy a planet is light ordinance?" Tigh said incredulously, wishing for a drink.
"No, that's heavy ordinance. Novas only make it uninhabitable, at least without some rather specialised equipment. Blowing up a planet takes a bit more than fighters usually pack, although some squadrons stationed closer to Earth do pack bombs that can do that to smaller planets."
Everyone was paying her a great deal of attention. "We do have a battle on, you know," she reminded them, seeming to smile.
"Cylon fighters closing," Duella said. "They're flying right across that, that jammer arc… some of them have been destroyed. Interceptor missiles closing on the basestars…"
A ripple ran across her screen as an entire wave of Cylon fighters exploded in space.
"What did that?" She asked.
"Probably the power guns off our interceptors. Don't you use lasers as weapons?"
"What's a laser?" Roslyn asked.
"Coherent light emitters."
"They're still in the development phase – some have been developed for surveying tools," she looked staggered. "You use them as weapons?"
"Metal cutters, sculpting tools, surgical scalpels, communications carrier signals, a lot of things." She shrugged. "Looks like the Cylons can't even detect it. Are they usually so disorganised?"
"No," Adama said.
"Good." One of the base-stars exploded spectacularly, detritus slamming into the six nearer ships. "And their anti-missile systems aren't worth shit either, by the look of it. How many basestars do we need to leave intact so the fighters will pack up and bog off?"
"New Cylon strike force just jumped in behind the fleet," Gaida yelled.
"Trace…" Tamsin called into her earpiece.
The new basestars disintegrated before they could even launch their fighters, and behind them sixteen ships suddenly appeared on the Colonial sensors. A huge stream of fighters moving at high speed erupted from their launching bays, heading straight past the Colonial fleet to strike at the Cylons.
"IT'S THE CAVALRY!" Trace yodelled. "Tamsin, it's the Jutland and the 261st. They were on manoeuvres out of Gurconda!"
Tamsin breathed again. "They're ours," she said. "It's one of our naval squadrons. The big one must be a Hayden class battlecruiser – that's how they got here so fast, those ships are designed for speed."
"How do you know that, you know the ship?" Adama asked.
"Never heard of it in my life," Tamsin said. "But in each class of ship, they're mostly named for one thing, and the Haydens were named for famous wet-navy battles after the introduction of breech-loading guns. The Battle of Jutland was during the First World War, back before space travel was invented. It came along about four decades afterwards." She frowned. "The two-sixty-first squadron. Battle Division Sixty-three, I think – that means Admiral Yonung, and – oh, who were the commodores?" She frowned. "Damn it. Can someone give me a com-line to work with while they get on with the mopping up out there, please?" Outside in just a few seconds, the battle was shifting their way. The Colonials barely had to do anything.
"How'd they get here so fast?" Tigh asked. "How'd they know where to look?"
"They would have tracked the transponders of our interceptors. Those broadcast on n-dimensional warp traces, and if you don't have n-dimensional engines, you won't have the theory to track those, so Trace wouldn't have told her squadron to turn them off. They could have found us blindfold."
"Why didn't we detect them?" Tigh snapped.
"Because our stealth systems are better than your detectors are. We don't install them on the fighters, because they're too bulky, the newer ones. Give it another twenty years, we'll shrink them down. But for now, I want to know who's in charge of those ships and exactly what their orders are." She took the phone Duella handed her. "I think you can call your Vipers back now. There's no need to risk your pilots any more. And Madam President, you might want to see about that press conference you were going to organise."