Author: Cyclone
Feedback: Please be gentle.
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.
Rating: Nothing worse than on the shows, except maybe language.
Spoilers: Up to Symphony of Light for Robotech, with a few ideas picked here and there from other sources. For the other... you'll see.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: A navigational error throws the SDF-3 into the middle of another war.
Author's Note: Beware the vorpal plot bunny.
"Pioneer reports no damage from the nuclear strike, Admiral."
"Understood," Rick nodded. As soon as the Pioneer folded in, he'd given Wade orders to deliberately give the Cylons a chance to use their nukes on the Pioneer; with the omni-directional barrier system, they were no threat, and it made a powerful statement. "Order all ships: Defensive fire only until five minutes from mark, then give me an open comm, all frequencies, no encryption."
"Comm open, sir."
Rick cleared his throat and spoke, "Attention, all Cylon forces. This is Admiral Rick Hunter of the Robotech Expeditionary Force. Your sensors cannot see us. Your weapons cannot hurt us. Your hacking attempts are useless. We've already demonstrated what our weapons can do to you. You have five minutes from mark to cease fire and surrender. All ships, mark. Hunter out."
"Cylon forces still attacking, sir."
"Understood," Rick nodded grimly.
"He what?" Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Helena Cain stared in disbelief.
"The Earth admiral has issued a demand for the Cylons to surrender, sir," came the nervous reply. "He's given them five minutes and ordered all ships to engage in defensive fire only until the deadline."
Her XO, Colonel Fisk, looked at her questioningly, "What should we do, sir?"
Cain ground her teeth in indecision for a long moment, then finally closed her eyes in resignation. "We have our orders, XO. Defensive fire only, Guns."
"Let's RO-O-O-OCK!" PFC Jenette Vasquez roared as she and her partner in crime, PFC Mark Drake, proceeded to cut down the Centurions.
The entire platoon was outfitted for a boarding action, which meant VR-041H Saber Cyclones. The Saber boasted a dozen internal Recluse rocket-propelled grenades, and the -H variant -- for which the Saber was named -- added a pair of retractable vibroblades to the mix, which were impractical for anything besides stealthy commando operations or the tight quarters of a boarding action like this. In addition, most of them carried the standard EP-37 60mm particle beam gun. Vasquez and Drake, on the other hand, were toting the M-100.
The M-100 was designed for heavy fire support against soft targets, used mostly against insurgents and space pirates. It was of little use against even the relatively lightly armored Invid mecha. Against infantry of all sorts, however, it was deadly. It was a long and sleek three-barreled weapon with a cyclic fire rate of 600 RPM. It was loaded from two 100-round box magazines, and it fired 12.7mm rounds... which was, in fact, the venerable .50 BMG round that had been in use for more than a century, albeit updated with modern propellants.
Some of the Cylon Centurions the marines faced had been built for boarding actions. As such, they had much heavier armor than their standard cousins, who could be destroyed by the hotloaded rifle rounds that had become standard issue in the refugee fleet. Their armor was tough enough that the Colonials needed to use their limited supply of explosive rounds to fight them effectively.
With enough power to punch through light Cyclone armor or even early tank armor, the M-100's 12.7mm rounds had no trouble ripping through even the upgraded armor of the boarding Centurions. With the advent of powered armor, the REF's definition of "small arms" was somewhat different from the Colonial -- and by extension, Cylon -- definition.
The other marines were not idle, either. The platoon moved with precision, like a well-oiled machine, halting when they ran out of targets. "Talk to me, Hudson," Sergeant Al Apone ordered.
"Incoming, multiple vectors," came the irreverent reply. "These toasters are toast!" PFC Hudson grinned as he negligently shot a Centurion as it rounded the corner, the blast punching clean through its torso.
Apone had had Drake and Vasquez taking point. Their M-100s had enough power to take out the Centurions, and unlike with the rest of the platoon's particle beam guns, a missed shot wasn't as likely to bperforate something important. They had come loaded for bear and found themselves fighting squirrels; they'd already stowed their EP-37s in favor of the somewhat safer Gallant H-90s.
Corporal Dwayne Hicks rounded a corner and hesitated, the muzzle of his Gallant between the breasts of a beautiful blonde. It wasn't the blonde who had been on the Colonials' list of Known Cylon Agents, but...
His finger tightened over the trigger.
Her hands shot up.
"I surrender."
Hicks sighed. Why did this have to happen to him?
"Sarge, I've got a situation here."
Even stretched out by the five minute surrender window, the space battle outside was relatively short and brutal. Once the Pioneer and her veritechs joined the fight, they had immediately begun slaughtering the Cylons with near impunity, and hundreds of Raiders died even during the five minute respite, cut down by point defense weapons. The battle wasn't entirely one-sided, however.
"Damn it, Guns, I need that firing solution!" Lt. Cmdr. April Tobin snapped. She was the captain of the SCL-85 Garrote, one of the shadow-equipped Garfishes in the fleet; she was also Vanessa Leeds' XO in the Destroyer Squadron.
The Garfish was a small ship, with nowhere near the firepower or tonnage of a Tokugawa or Ikazuchi, but even discounting the new synchro cannons mounted on the latest ones, the Garfish's firepower was not to be underestimated. The Garfish had been designed as a mobile gunship, able to threaten light Zentraedi warships and support full-scale fleet actions with its ventral battery of three heavy cannons. Each gun was almost as powerful as the Wright's guns, which meant that a single good salvo could cripple a basestar if it hit the right spot.
The problem was in finding the right spot to hit. The basestars were flooding the area with some sort of ECM; the crew of the Garrote couldn't know that the "ECM" was actually a series of doomed attempts to access and hack into their computer systems. While the Garrote's guns were easily hitting the basestar -- it would have been difficult to miss at this range -- they weren't doing enough to cripple it, melting and boiling away its relatively thin armor plating and charring countless non-critical systems beneath. With each hit, portions of the basestar went dark, and missile tubes were silenced, but it wasn't enough.
While a larger ship could afford to simply keep firing until they hit something vital, the Garfish wasn't so lucky. With a three-second charge time between salvos, a relatively fragile hull, and only a matter of time before the Cylons got lucky at this range, they needed to make every shot count, which only increased the need for an accurate firing solution.
The Garfishes were not built for anti-fighter work, but while the Cylons still had a large reserve of Raiders -- despite the trap -- and the basestars' own internal ship-to-ship missile launchers, the shadow cloaking devices and the point defense weapons grafted on during the last refit protected the Garrote and her three sister ships -- the Trident, Broadsword, and Battleaxe -- from the worst of the Cylon counterattack.
The other three Garfishes in the fleet -- the Long Sax, Bokuto, and Masakari -- were accompanying the Xerxes on her mission.
"We have a solution!"
"Fire!"
Three particle beams raked across the basestar, once again melting and boiling away its armor plating and charring the interior. This time, however, the basestar's armored skin was considerably thicker, a sign of the importance of the systems it protected, but that wasn't enough to stop the beams as they punched through the armor plating and stabbed deep into the delicate systems beneath until they sank into the basestar's tylium power core.
The shrapnel from the resultant explosion caused more damage to the Garrote than the Raiders and missiles had.
"The last basestar has jumped out."
"My gods," murmured Admiral Cain, stunned. "We actually did it."
There was a part of her that still had trouble grappling with the reality of it. The plan had been sound, and she had already seen what the Earthers' weapons could do, but she had still remained resistant to the idea, unwilling to believe that everything would go anywhere near as planned, unwilling to see the Earthers' optimism as anything but either arrogance or naivete.
Unwilling... to hope.
But there it was. They had just captured the Cylon flagship, destroyed seven basestars -- two of which had apparently attempted to surrender at the end, but that was well after the five minute window, and Hunter had shown no mercy -- and sent the last one running.
She wanted to cheer; she wanted to pull the nearest person (Colonel Fisk, incidentally) into a bone-crushing hug; she wanted to whoop and holler and throw her arms around in celebration; she wanted to order a parade, a carnival, and a fireworks display all at once; she wanted to do all these things and more.
And she wanted to cry. Whether in relief, in amazement, or out of sheer, unadulterated joy, she wasn't sure, but she could feel the tears welling in her eyes.
She didn't do any of these things, though. Had she been a mere commander, she might -- just might -- have given in to the urge to celebrate, but she was not a commander. She was an admiral, and a flag officer was held to a somewhat higher standard of decorum. Instead, she blinked the tears back and hardened her expression.
"Excellent," she said. "Let's bring our birds home."
Six gasped as she resurrected. She sat up in the tub, unconsciously touching her breastbone, where she remembered the searing hot energy blast cooking her flesh. This particular Six had once been known as Gina, an infiltrator aboard the Mercury-class battlestar Pegasus. She had been partly successful in her mission, but then been captured... tortured... raped. She had died when the cell they were holding her in had become depressurized; her rebirth after that had changed her, lighting a fire of vengeance within her, accompanied by a sadistic satisfaction that her direct tormentors had died with her. When the humans boarded the resurrection ship, she fought, refusing to give in, refusing to surrender.
She would rather die a thousand more deaths than become the humans' captive again, and any she took with her was icing on the cake. She had hoped that the others would find a way to drive them off or that the humans would destroy the resurrection computer before she was reborn.
After that brief moment of reliving her last death, she looked around. Where were her siblings?
Fear siezed her heart when she saw them. Humans, clad in battle armor that could shrug off a Centurion's guns, stood vigilantly over the resurrection vats. Even here, in the heart of the resurrection ship, she wasn't safe.
Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. One of the humans, the nearest one, turned to her, and even through the layers of battle armor, she could tell the human was male, just from body language and what she could see of his face through the helmet's visor. She shrank away. She was nude, vulnerable, fresh from her rebirth and without even a makeshift club to defend herself with.
She knew what would come. These humans... they were animals, in every sense of the word.
Then the human did something totally unexpected. He averted his gaze and tossed her some clothing. She recognized it as coming from the ship's stores on board for newly reborn Cylons. She looked up and stared at him in confusion.
"Get dressed."
Author's Postscript:
Should have posted this up a while ago. Didn't realize how far behind I'd gotten in posting this 'fic.