Daala and the Fleet Chapter 7: How to Make a Bad Situation Worse, a battlestar galactica: 2003 fanfic

Well, I was wrong. I was able to post this chapter, and I might be able to post another one before I leave, but I'm not sure.

Disclaimer-I really don't own much here.

Spoilers-Not much right here.

I tried to do the best I could with this chapter, but I was never satisfied with how it went. Oh well.

Chapter 7- How to Make a Bad Situation Worse

Imperial Star Destroyer Gorgon

The Gorgon reentered realspace with a jolt. Commander Kretas was propped up against a bulkhead, the long jagged piece of metal that had killed the communications officer imbedded in his shoulder. Stormtroopers, damage-control teams and medics had immediately responded to the situation. The medics tried to get Kretas into a bacta tank, but he refused. Kretas managed to stand up and he faced one of the medics. "You. Pull that piece of shrapnel out."

The medic paled. "Umm, sir?"

"You heard me." he said. "Get it out."

The medic pulled a syringe out of his kit and tried to stick it in Kretas's arm, but he refused. "Painkillers will knock me out. I need to keep a clear head." The medic hesitated, but the grabbed the piece of shrapnel and pulled hard as he could. As it came loose with a wet sucking noise, Kretas gritted his teeth and tried to his best not to scream in agony. When it was out the medic slapped a bacta patch, a bandage soaked with bacta that would help close the wound a little and prevent infection, on the wound.

Kretas managed to stagger over to the damage-control team leader. "What's our status?" he asked.
"When we lost the viewport the vacuum not only sucked out chairs and small objects, but it also ripped out a lot of consoles. It'll take a while to get it running again, and at least four days without moving to replace the viewport. We also lost ten officers."

Kretas swore. "Get me to the auxiliary bridge. Were going back to rescue the Admiral."

The auxiliary bridge was intended as a backup incase the main bridge was destroyed or inoperable. While it was capable of doing everything that the regular bridge could do, it was smaller, had no viewport, and could hold less people, so all the officers had to be multi-tasking. In short, it was no substitute for the real bridge. When Kretas arrived in the auxiliary bridge, he found all the stations manned and ready. "Ready all weapons." he said. "Prepare to fire at the engines of the Pegasus as soon as we revert to realspace. The Pegasus has no networked computers, so it'll be a take more than one ion cannon shot to disable the engines. Forget about targeting the armor with the turbolasers. That armor is made to withstand nuclear detonations, and it would take at least twelve seconds to burn through it. Prepare to fire proton torpedoes in ripple formation. Let's keep it from hitting us with its main guns. Jump on my mark. Three, two one, mark."

With that, the Gorgon jumped back towards the Pegasus, not realizing that it had shut down all systems to show that it was safe. Seconds after the Gorgon left, three TIE Interceptors from Drake squadron and one TIE Bomber from Sigma squadron arrived in the system, hoping to tell their destroyer that the Pegasus was no threat. When the pilots saw the Gorgon jump, they immediately understood the danger the Pegasus was in, and prepared to jump back to stop the fighting. Unfortunately, it would take several moments to calculate the jump coordinates. The pilots just hoped they weren't too late.

Battlestar Pegasus, BSG-62

On the Pegasus, Cain had made her way back to the CIC. She had just arrived when the DRADIS console started beeping. "DRADIS contact, bearing 233, carom 155." Hoshi said. "It's the Gorgon."

Cain was relived to hear that. Maybe the two Imperials in the sickbay might just make it. But something didn't feel right. "Mr. Hoshi, what's the status of their weapons?"

"Ah, it seems like they're charging up their guns. Wait, missiles inbound! Forty of them!"

On the Gorgon, forty proton torpedoes were fired from their dual launchers. While fast, they didn't impact before the energy weapons. Ion cannons hit the engines sending sparks skittering across the whole ship, while turbolasers chewed on the engine mountings, weakening them. And then the torpedoes hit. The force of forty proton explosives detonating at the same time ripped of four of the Pegasus's six engine mountings, twisting them and treating them, effectively crippling its movement capability. On board the Gorgon, Kretas walked out of the control room. "Prepare an assault shuttle with some troopers. We're going to get our leader back."

Bravo 0, Sentinel shuttle

Kretas, still with fairly serious wound in his side, boarded the Sentinel-class assault shuttle. More heavily armed and armored that the Lambda shuttles, the Sentinel carried eleven blasters and ion cannons, and had two missile tubes with four rounds each. It could also carry up to six Stormtrooper squads, or 54 troopers.

When they were halfway to the Pegasus, the hyperdrive-equipped Interceptors and Bomber dropped back into realspace. "Gorgon, don't fire on the Pegasus! I repeat don't fire on the-oh." The pilots had seen the damage done to the Pegasus's engines. "Gorgon, this is Sigma 3. A Cylon had taken control of the Pegasus's weapons. The ship was under control when you attacked. Hold your fire. And you better get some medics over their quick. The Admiral's been seriously hurt. I don't know if she's going to make it." Kretas paled. Daala, dead? No. That can't happen. It can't. Upon hearing the transmission, the pilot goosed the throttles and sent the shuttle flying into the empty flight pod. As the wings folded up, the pilot lowered the skids and the shuttle screeched to a halt. Immediately Kretas disembarked, followed by 54 Stormtroopers. They had brought along a medic as well, although he also wore armor, an was indistinguishable from the rest of the troopers. The hatches that lead off the flight pods were closed, so Kretas raised his blaster and blew one of them open. The Stormtroopers that accompanied him were to well trained to look at each other or chat on the comlinks in their helmets, but blasting the door open without checking to see if it was latched was unusual, even if rescuing their leader was involved.

Battlestar Pegasus, BSG-62

They plowed through the corridors, not seeing anyone. On their way to the LifeStation, they encountered Admiral Cain, who was exiting the CIC with Lt. Kendra Shaw. "Freeze! Put your hands behind your heads!" one of the Stormtroopers ordered. Cain was expecting something like this to happen, so she complied. Kendra, however, turned around and aimed her pistol at Kretas's head. "

Put your guns down, or I blow his head off." Even though the Stormtroopers could probably fire first, she would still have the time to pull the trigger before she died. But Cain intervened.

"Put it down, Shaw." Kendra eyes flickered from Cain to Kretas.

"But Admiral-"

"Put the fraking gun down now!" Shaw reluctantly dropped the gun and put her hands behind her head.

"Take us to Admiral Daala." Kretas said. Cain obediently led them to the LifeStation. When Kretas saw Kirana and Daala lying on the examination tables, he almost dropped his gun and practically flew over to Daala. "How is she?" he asked.

The doctor shook his head. "Critical. Parts of her skull are broken." Kretas motioned one of the troopers over. The trooper had been carrying a medkit. He withdrew several supplies and went to work, using a bacta cap, which basically was a small bowl-sized of container of bacta that could be attached to a wound. He attached one to Kirana's stomach. He then used various pieces of equipment to pull Daala's skull together. While he was working Kretas turned to Cain. "How did this happen?"

Cain began to recount the whole story, starting when Daala first arrived to brining her to the sickbay. "Your Admiral was mentioning that Cylons could look like humans when Gina-I mean Analyst Inviere, attacked. At the same time, we also had a officer who took control of our guns and fired them at you. Could they really be Cylons?"

Kretas nodded. "We have lots of intel you might like to know. And I apologize for shooting out your engines. I thought-"

"It's alright. I would have one the same in your position. And what happened to your shoulder?"

Kretas smiled grimly. "Your flak guns." Cain wasn't sure what to say about that, so she said, "Daala had mentioned something about tractor beams. Do you think you could use them to help us? We have almost 60 fighters just floating around in space out there."

"Sure." Kretas said. "We'll dispatch some shuttles to recover them soon." Before they could talk any further they heard of moan. They turned around to see Kirana struggling to get up. The medic rushed over to her. "Stay down. We'll get you back to the ship." He motioned for to of the other troopers to come over. They lifted Kirana, who was no longer in her armor, as it had to be taken off to treat her, and started to carry her back to the shuttle. Commander, come here." the medic said.

Kretas came over to Daala. "I'll need you to hold her down. She needs to be conscious." Kretas nodded. The device that was holding her head together needed her to be awake to work well for some technical reason that Kretas had forgotten long ago. The medic withdrew a long hypodermic needle from his kit. "This is a shot of adrenaline. It'll wake her up, but she might be dazed. Need to keep her still." The medic carefully inserted the needle into a vein in her wrist, and pushed the plunger. Daala's eyes snapped open, and she screamed. The troopers were startled and Kretas jumped back. Suddenly there was a buzzing noise from all around them. Kretas looked and saw a amazing sight. All the clocks on the wall and all watches and chronos were speeding up. The digital displays were moving so fast that the numbers weren't visible, and some of the analogue clocks were spinning so fast that they broke.

After a few seconds it stopped. Cain looker around at all the clocks. The ones that were still working were ticking along at a regular pace. "What the frak is going on?" she said.

Kretas had a sinking feeling. He turned to one of the troopers. "Soldier, what's today's date, as shown on your chrono?" The Stormtrooper activated the chrono in his eyepiece. "Sir, its cycle seven, day 22."

Kretas's eyes widened. "It was cycle four, day 13 this morning."

Cain looked at her watch. "It was the fifth of February today. My watch says it's May fourteenth. What in the gods' names just happened?"

Daala chose that moment to regain conciseness, even if she was very out of it. "Hey." she said, her voice soft and confused. "What's going on?"

Kretas kneeled down next to her. "It's okay. We're brining you back to the Gorgon. Just hang on." He helped her up, and let her lean on him as they slowly walked back through the corridors of the Pegasus. Cain decided to walk with them, and told Daala of the events that had just happened, although she highly doubted Daala was processing the information she gave her. Cain looked at the way Kretas was helping her, almost lovingly. Cain had noticed it when he had first seen Daala after Gina hurt her. Gina. It hurt to think of her. Fraking Cylon, she thought. Probably just pretended to love me.

They had just passed the CIC when an alarm went off. Cain had heard a unusual amount of chatter, but she had assumed it was confusion over the whole time issue. She walked into the CIC, with Daala right behind her, despite Kretas insisting that she had to get back to the Gorgon. "Mr. Hoshi." Cain said. "Give me a Sitrep."

Hoshi's face was grim. "We have a DRADIS contact. Three Cylon Basestars on intercept course, bearing 001, carom 103, CBDR. They'll be in main gun range in three minutes."

"Set condition one throughout the fleet, Launch the alert Vipers, send jump data to the civilian ships and make a emergency jump."

Hoshi shook his head. "We barely have any Vipers anymore, and we can't jump anywhere with only two engines."

Cain turned to Daala and Kretas. "Can you help?"

Kretas shrugged. "I don't know. Since we lost the main bridge, we have to use our emergency bridge, and we have less control from there. There's also heavy jamming. We're going to have to fly out shuttle back through a group of Raiders. But frankly, I just don't know. It's probably a even fi-"

Kretas was interrupted by a loud alarm. "Additional DRADIS contacts!" Hoshi said. "Four more Basestars, same bearing."

Cain looked at Kretas and Daala. "We can't fight off a fleet that big. We're dead."

I hope you liked it. If you don't, just review and tell me what I did wrong. I hope the part with the clocks wan't too confusing, as it will be important to the story. Please review, and thanks for reading.