Author's Note: Woo, over 400 Follows, thanks everyone for your support, I never thought this story would get this much attention. Now some of you have been asking how relevant the plot of Halo Wars 2 will be to the Guiding Fire and for now I'll just be cherry picking any bits I like, such as characters or little technical details. But as far as the new units being added, you won't be seeing any post-war era UNSC technology like the Jackrabbit, Pelican Gunship, Condor etc any time soon. Isabelle provided Spirit with those designs on the Ark and she will not exist for two decades to come, that however doesn't mean I can't get a little creative. With that, it's time to get to know the crew of Spirit of Fire a little better.
Battlestar Galactica: The Guiding Fire
Episode 3
Rampant: Part 1
With
Gideon Emery as Captain James Cutter
Faye Kingslee as Ellen Anders
Courtenay Taylor as Serina
Willem Dafoe as Major Vladimir Markov
Rob Mayes as Jerome-092
Christopher Eccleston as Lieutenant Colonel Christian McCullen
Zachary Quinto as Petty Officer Jonathan Green
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lieutenant Commander Isaac Larson
Michael Peña as Petty Officer Lukas Blake
Jay Baruchel as Lieutenant JG Scott Travis
Sam Elliott as Chief Engineer Andrew Prescott
Karl Urban as Major Soren Heidegger
Bruce Willis as Colonel Maxwell Shaw
Introducing
Rinko Kikuchi as Ensign Yumi Abadie
Dominique Tipper as Petty Officer Roselyn Mary
Bae Doo-Na as Ensign Tae-hee Hyun
Joseph Gordon Levitt as Lieutenant Ward 'Warlock' Breckenridge
Alice Braga as 2nd Lieutenant Sophia 'Kick' Nascimento
Nicholas Hoult as Airman First Class Evan 'Chugs' Chugainov
James McAvoy as Senior Airman Hank Donnelly
MAY 1 2534 / 0949 HOURS (UNSC TIME)
214 DAYS AFTER CYLON ATTACK
COLONIAL FLEET
CLOUD 9
UNKNOWN SYSTEM
49,549 SURVIVORS
"Coming to you live from our studio on Cloud 9, it's the Colonial Gang! Humanity's most informative round-table program left in the known universe." Introduced a handsome middle-aged man in a granite-grey suit. As the camera panned out two additional people were revealed, seated to the man's left and right at a wooden half-moon table in front of a large panoramic window in view of the park-like habitat the cruise liner was famous for. "I'm your host, James McManus, formerly of the Caprica Times. And with me always are my two colleagues; veteran commentator, Playa Palacios and seasoned journalist…" McManus waved his hand over to the woman in a tan suit before motioning with his opposite hand to his other male peer in a deep blue suit red tie. "And Sekou Hamilton of the Picon Star Tribune and Aerelon Gazette respectively. I hope you are all having a wonderful day here in the fleet today on this special edition broadcast." McManus greeted with a smile as he straightened out a few papers on the table with a couple taps.
Darker-skinned Sekou nodded in agreement. "I'm sure they are James, but I'm not sure we can use that slogan of yours anymore," he said a bit playfully. "We could have some serious competition in the Thirteenth Tribe if recent events indicate anything."
McManus chuckled. "You may be right. We are of course here today on this special edition show, speaking just minutes before the latest upcoming edition of Around the UNSC, where afterword we will provide in-depth discuss of all the newest revelations from the Thirteenth Tribe."
"James, sorry to interrupt," the narrow-faced blonde Playa interjected. "I do believe we got some workers on rotation over from the Majahual this morning, should we catch them up?"
"Right of course," McManus agreed. "For those who didn't catch the two broadcasts yesterday from Spirit of Fire, the Thirteenth Tribe has begun broadcasting an informational series meant to educate the Colonial public on a series of subjects from within the territory of the UNSC, ranging from science and space exploration to arts and history. Titled: Around the UNSC, it is hosted by a crewmember who only identifies herself as Serina, and yesterday she gave us an our first under-the-hood peek at Spirit of Fire and her origins."
"Amazing that a repurposed ship like that could take out two basestars by itself and one of sixty-one years of service at that." Sekou commented.
"Indeed." McManus replied, sounding impressed. "You know, I'd like to see one of the Thirteenth Tribe's battlestars go at it with the cylons, and see what they can really do."
"Does the UNSC even have battlestars James?" Playa asked.
"Well whatever they have, I bet it could clean the floor with the cylons." McManus replied. "Other details include her compliment of Marine ground forces numbering a regiment in size in addition to an air wing boasting dozens of transports, four squadrons of interceptors, bombers and two types of gunships. Not to mention the Spirit's absolutely incredible capability to operate within the atmosphere of a planet. Now that's a sight I'd pay to see. Playa?" McManus ended, prompting a transition to the next topic.
"And another new program you might hear over the airwaves, Spirit of Fire's own radio music channel, Spirit Radio also hosted by the mysterious Serina. Already over three-hundred different songs have been on the air thus far from various existing genres and some completely new to the Colonies such as Flip, Blues and Rap. The Fleet's bourgeoning music community is already abuzz with the sudden surge of new content from our brethren of the Thirteenth Tribe. And despite the language gap, I found many of the songs quite the treat for the ears and I highly encourage our audience to give Spirit Radio a listen, wouldn't you agree Sekou?"
"Very much so Playa." Sekou answered as the camera focused on him. "Now to recap some of the events of the past few days, Spirit of Fire has continued its occupation of the Battlestar Pegasus with a Marine special operations force, the UNSC's Orbital Drop Shock Troopers." Sekou emphasized. "This is reportedly at Admiral Adama's personal request in the wake of Commander Garner's execution. After the actions Pegasus took in defiance of Admiral Adama's orders, it seems likely these troops will serve as the muscle to enforce the peace during the crew exchanges beginning today between Spirit of Fire and the Fleet's two battlestars as well as, I speculate, break the insular culture Pegasus is known to possess amongst its crew."
"Quite the development," McManus commented as the video cut to the angle of another camera to include him. "I think it's fair to say the happenings in the Fleet will never quite be the same with the Spirit of Fire around."
"I think that's an attitude many people across the Fleet are feeling," Playa cut in as the video again cut to a wide angle shot to include her. "With two skirmishes with the Thirteenth Tribe narrowly avoided at both times, a sizable portion of the Colonial people are concerned that if another such action were to take place, perhaps that would provoke Captain Cutter into implementing a fleet-wide occupation by UNSC Marines." Playa put forth. "People are also worried about the potential resource drain Spirit of Fire could be on the Fleet in terms of food if their own supplies ever run low."
"I personally don't think that will ever be the case Playa," Sekou commented. "I think we'll surely get to the Thirteenth Tribe long before that with the Spirit of Fire to guide us."
The video feed again switched angles to a center shot of just McManus looking directly into the lens. "And it looks like on that hopeful note, we'll have to pause it right there, as it is now time for the show we've all been waiting for to begin. Once again, stat tuned for our round table discussion at the conclusion of this latest episode of Around the UNSC to here we have to say and what possible implications what we've learned might have on the Fleet and Colonial society at large. See you in an hour folks."
With that the feed cut to black and stayed that way for several seconds until it was without warning replaced with a deep blue banner bearing a white emblem of the UNSC. With the prospect of getting some incredible ratings, the Colonial News Network was of course rerouting Spirit of Fire's broadcast on their own channel at no cost to them.
The emblem faded to that of Spirit of Fire's and then to the ship's uncluttered observation deck where stood a beautiful young woman of fare skin and long brown hair in a stylish outfit unlike anything in the Colonies before the Fall. Gazing outward at the tapestry of stars, she turned toward the camera with a lovely and intelligent smile.
"Hello again everyone, my name is Serina and I'll be taking you on a journey around the UNSC. She began walking to the deck's center to a holographic display table where a blue colored likeness of Spirit of Fire lied upon it. "Yesterday you all got a look at the place we on this ship like to call home. But for today's episode, we'll be going considerably further away." She said, smiling in a mysterious, playful manner into the camera. Serina turned around, facing ahead of the Spirit's bow. "Initiating slipspace jump in three…two…one." Then at once, a shimmering blue and white portal of wispy energy manifested and the ship suddenly shot into, replacing the guzzling display with complete darkness all around. "What we're experiencing right now is Slipstream Space or slipspace, as it is known colloquially." Serina continued, meeting the camera's lens. "Or a very accurate simulation at the least. It's not nearly as fast or accurate as a Colonial FTL drive but it is, from what our personnel aboard are learning, a great deal easier to calculate navigational coordinates for. However, slipspace is not the subject of today's program. We'll get to that some other time." The very human looking Serina said as the Spirit of Fire exited slipspace right in front of a large habitable planet bearing large continents and vast cerulean oceans painted over with random brushstrokes of bright white clouds, and a single silvery moon in orbit behind it.
"Today's subject is that which has been on all of your minds for several months now. The end goal for the Colonial Fleet. This…is Earth,"
MAY 1 2534 / 1018 HOURS (UNSC TIME)
214 DAYS AFTER CYLON ATTACK
COLONIAL FLEET
UNSC SPIRIT OF FIRE CFV-88
UNKNOWN SYSTEM
49,553 SURVIVORS
While Serina's little show went on, Spirit of Fire itself was cruising on up to the tylium refinery ship Tauranianto receive the refined ore she needed to replenish her munition supply. Now in position, the smaller civilian ship sided up to the Spirit's portside amidships where the volatile substance could be safely offloaded on to the UNSC ship. For the bridge crew of the Tauranian, they could without a doubt see the fully repaired portside wing hanging above them and more prominently, the thousands upon thousands of tons of titanium plate strapped together in thick cubes linked to the same manner of docking clamps the Spirit used to secure her five remaining D20 Heron super-heavy-lift dropships under the starboard wing.
Off to the starboard as well, a Colonial Raptor from Galactica was making its approach, being given permission to land in one of the many bays. Through the transparent canopy, Lieutenant Finnegan and Ensign Esrin could be seen in their helmeted flight suits making landing preparations while leaning out in between them from the rear section of the cabin was Felix Gaeta, whose excitement to begin his six-month posting to Spirit of Fire was more than apparent on his grinning face.
Ahead of them a space-suited aircraft director wielding two glowing signal wands directed Finnegan down on to one of the landing pads.
"Easy, easy," Esrin guided.
"Funny, I thought that was your call sign." Finnegan snipped back, not quite liking the side-seat flying.
"What's the matter?" Felix asked the Ensign.
"Their magnetics don't kick in until we're less than a meter above the pad, probably not a problem for their Pelicans and the suspension systems on their landing gear but we're all hard struts with nothing else, so when we hit-" Esrin was then cut off by a dramatic impact of the Raptor against the landing pad like a great hand had swatted down on the colonial craft as if it were a bothersome fly. Gaeta himself would have been knocked from his feet were his hands not braced against the narrow doorframe separating the forward and rear sections of the cabin. The craft now still once more, Esrin groaned. "-we hit hard." She finally finished.
"I'll keep that in mind." Felix replied with deadpan sarcasm before turning about as the landing pad began ascending into the inner hangar deck. Felix's concerning gaze fell back to the older officer seated rearmost in the cabin. "Admiral, are you alright?"
The Old Man himself seemed relatively unfazed but ever since Boomer shot him, Felix along with everyone else worried about the Admiral's wellbeing a little more than before that horrific event. "I've had a lot worse landings than that Mr. Gaeta. Back when I was flying Vipers, Galactica's old LSO would always cuss me out about my landings, I've had worse than that."
"Bet you were real popular with the deckcrew sir." Esrin commented with a lightheartedness in her voice.
"Alright people, here we are," Finnegan spoke up as the inner hatch of the airlock opened, flooding the aircraft elevator shaft with pale fluorescent light. "Welcome aboard the Spirit of Fire." Gaeta turned about, seeing the ever upward stretching interior canyon of the dropship hangar deck, while far closer, a small gathering of UNSC deckhands in their orange vested, dark blue coveralls and rounded orange helmets stood on standby next to an aircraft maneuvering cart to clear the pad of the Raptor.
"Hehe, Shark and Easy: Two, Starbuck: Zero." Esrin said with smug satisfaction, holding her fist out for Finnegan to pound in small celebration.
The pressure seal on the Raptor's door released with Esrin's prompting on her control panel and Felix turned about to walk out with the Admiral as the gull-wing door opened. Outside, a small four-man fireteam of UNSC Marines were ready to receive the passengers beside the familiar face of Captain Cutter, Chief Tyrol and another older man Felix did not recognize. Admiral Adama was the first down followed immediately behind by Felix and he was soon joined by Cally, Seelix and Jerwin Brooks out of their coveralls and in more appropriate uniforms for the crew exchange.
The Admiral saluted Cutter with a truer respect Felix hadn't seen the Old Man give other commanding officers in the past, including Admiral Cain the first time she came aboard Galactica. "Permission to come aboard, Captain?"
Cutter returned the gesture in kind. "Permission granted Admiral, nice to have you finally aboard Spirit of Fire," he said with passable Caprican though the Captain spoke his syllables a bit too straightly and had trouble with the R's.
"It's a pleasure to be here." Adama returned, shaking hands briefly.
"Lieutenant Gaeta," Cutter greeted warmly, offering his hand to him which Felix gladly accepted.
"Captain, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to serve aboard your ship." Felix said, still feeling as if he were walking on clouds.
"I'm happy to have you." Cutter replied. "I'm sure you'll do well here."
Joining the conversation, Admiral Adama offered his two cents. "Gaeta's the best Tactical Officer I've ever had, so you better not lose him." The Old Man said with his very dry humor.
"We'll try not to Admiral. Now if I may present to you, Spirit of Fire's Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Prescott," With a wave of the arm Cutter introduced the elderly mustachioed gentleman in dark green coveralls. "He'll be coming back aboard with you on your return trip to Galactica to oversee the refit operation but seeing as you wanted to have a chat, there's a few more ideas he wanted me to toss your way while you're over."
"Admiral," Prescott greeted with an even worse accent than the Captain's as the men shook hands. With a polite hum Adama acknowledged his rank that Prescott had horribly minced before the Old Man turned left to the three deckhands from Galactica.
"These are specialists Callandra Henderson, Diana Seelix and Jerwin Brooks. Your new transfers from my deck division. They're three of my best, so take care of them." Adama introduced.
"You don't have to worry none about that, Admiral, these three're in some good hands. While I'm off fixin' up your rig," he started, motioning his thumb back over his shoulder. "Major Vallum will be holding down my post here. She's a bit of a hardass but that gal is the last person you have to worry about havin' safety issues with."
Cutter clasped his hands behind his back "Well then, Mr. Prescott, we'll leave them to you and Chief Tyrol to proceed as you wish. Admiral if you're ready, we'll head on up to my quarters to discuss matters on the refit operation. Mr. Gaeta, I apologize I won't be able to walk you to the Bridge myself but the Marines will show you the way and my Lieutenant Commander will be there to get you situated before he has to head off to assume his new post on the Pegasus."
Felix nodded in gratitude. "Not a problem at all sir, I'm just grateful to be here." Felix admitted with an awkward, barely suppressed boyish glee.
"We'll catch up later then, Admiral?" Cutter prompted and with that the two departed.
\\\\\\O
After getting shown his stateroom in the officer's quarters, something Felix was pleasantly surprised at, it didn't take long at all to reach the Spirit of Fire's Bridge. From Felix's initial impressions, Spirit of Fire was a ship with a far more vertical element than a battlestar, judging by the number of elevators on the ship and the speed they possessed as evidence to that. He could also tell they were magnetically driven versus cable operated and Felix was fairly sure the elevators had their own artificial gravity control given how impeccably smooth the rides were.
A whir of servos and mechanical clicks answered his Marine escort as the two olive armored men lead him to an unassuming door. Stepping through, Felix was surprised he had arrived at the Bridge, his eyes immediately drawn to a hologram of the Spirit of Fire and the Tauranian hovering above a large table with metal sides that reached all the way to the floor. Standing by it was a man of dark skin in his early-to-mid thirties wearing a uniform similar to Cutter's own, minus the cap and a couple gold bars on his shoulder pads. Felix stopped with the Marines who then saluted the man Felix assumed to be the Lieutenant Commander.
"Sir," the lead Marine spoke, his Caprican actually remarkably good apart from trouble with the R's again. "We got our first Colonial transfer reporting."
The man saluted back with a well-mannered smile similar to Captain Cutter's. "Thank you, gentlemen, I got it from here."
The Marines then departed, prompting Felix to offer the Lieutenant Commander an eager salute of his own. "Sir, Lieutenant Felix Gaeta of the Colonial Fleet reporting for duty from the Galactica."
The salute was returned. "At ease and welcome aboard Lieutenant." The Lieutenant Commander welcomed in a calm yet professional tone. "I'm Lieutenant Commander Larson, the Spirit's XO if you haven't guessed that at this point."
"A pleasure to meet you sir." Felix greeted with a handshake.
A half-committed sideways nod preempted Lieutenant Commander Larson's reply. "Well, I won't be around for too long. Before the day is out, I'll be on my way to Pegasus to take over as its Executive Officer. So I best get you acquainted with some of the crew here while I can." The Lieutenant Commander lead Felix forward to the massive window that gave him a worrisome pause interrupted by Larson as he bared right to the arc of stations to the portside of the Bridge. "This is Rosy," he introduced a young woman with dark caramel skin and shortly trimmed curly hair. "Or Petty Officer Second Class Roselyn Mary, if you prefer. She's our lead air operations controller."
She gave Felix a quick glance and a wave coupled with a smile before speaking but not to him. "Copy that, Two-Niner-Five, flight path has been confirmed with the Colonial Fleet CAP, you are clear to leave the launch bay. Have a safe flight." A quick flip of a few switches and the Petty Officer looked back over her shoulder to the Lieutenant Commander. "The Pelican with Professor Anders is en-route for Cloud 9, sir."
"Good to hear." Larson answered before moving on, stepping just a few paces over to a stocky looking man with a complexion slightly darker than Felix's and a well-groomed goatee that wrapped up and around his upper lip. "And this is the man you will be taking over for, Petty Officer First Class Lukas Blake, our Tactical Officer. To your right is Ensign Yumi Abadie, your counterpart on Navigations who you will be working closely with." Larson motioned with his arm to the narrow-eyed woman with black, jaw-length hair who in return, offered Felix a friendly smile before resuming her duties. "And past her is Ensign Tae-hee Hyun, who monitors Engineering." He continued speaking of a similar woman further down with a more rounded chin and a light shade of brown hair tied into a bun at the back of her head.
Felix only got a quick look at the other woman before the enlisted officer he was to replace, swiveled about to face him in his chair, connected to some rail in the floor, moved out of the station's alcove. "So this is the new guy huh?" he said with a neutral tone as he looked Felix up and down before standing.
"Mr. Blake here will also be assuming your post on the Galactica." The Lieutenant Commander said with a kind of subtle tone that could be inferred as amusement.
"Well, sir," Blake said, addressing the Lieutenant Commander. "Permission to go pack my things?"
"You are relieved Mr. Larson. Don't forget the switch over to Colonial Fleet time is happening today, your flight that leaves at nineteen-hundred hours is going to depart just a little over three from now."
"You don't have to worry Izzy, I won't miss my plane." Blake then stepped forward with Felix having to make an opening for him to walk between himself and the Lieutenant Commander. Before passing, the enlisted officer set his hand on Felix's shoulder in a semi-friendly gesture, looking Felix in the eyes. "Hey, don't worry about screwing up too bad new guy. Just make sure you don't burn the place down while I'm gone." Blake said, patting Felix's shoulder in a way Felix got the impression he was being deliberately patronizing.
"You are relieved Petty Officer." Larson reminded in a lighthearted manner.
Blake gave a relaxed salute matched with a warm smile in return. "Good luck on Pegasus sir."
"To you too. Dismissed."
Once Blake passed out of earshot, Felix turned his head back to the Lieutenant Commander. "Is he always like that, sir?" Felix asked.
"Don't be too quick to judge Mr. Gaeta, Blake's personality may be an acquired taste but he's never let us down and he won't let Galactica down either."
"It's more how he and Colonel Tigh will get along that worries me." Felix said with an embarrassed, half-mumbled tone on the behalf of Colonel Tigh's many glaring flaws, that in Felix's and many other people's opinions weren't quite befitting of an XO.
"Don't concern yourself with the happenings on Galactica, we're sending over some fine officers and the most experienced Chief Engineer in the entire UNSC Third Fleet." Larson ensured with a comforting smile. "So would you care to take a seat then, Lieutenant Gaeta?"
"What about the rest of the Bridge crew, sir? Aren't you going to introduce me to them?"
"I'll leave it up to you to introduce yourself when your shift is over. The only other person you absolutely should know the name of is Lieutenant James, folks around here call him 'JJ'. He'll be your direct superior when the Captain isn't around. He's sitting at the second station from the right on the Bridge portside. Now then." He prompted, gesturing at the seat.
"Sir," Felix replied in affirmative, sitting himself in the surprisingly comfortable chair and turned it about to face the computer and control panels, caught off guard when the chair automatically scooted him in just far enough that it didn't feel confining.
"We got the language already set up for Caprican but the rest of the controls you'll have to learn yourself. For today, you'll be running some tutorials to get to accommodated to the station and our computer systems. But in your spare time, the Captain wants you to study up on English until you can speak and read it effectively until you can operate your station without the need for translation."
Felix nodded, looking over the station for similarities to his old station back on the Galactica to not much success apart from what seemed to be the UNSC equivalent to a DRADIS screen. "Understood sir, you learned Caprican, it's only fair I learn your language while I'm here."
"And one more thing…" Larson said as he leaned over the back of Felix's chair, fixing him with a close, more serious look in his eyes. "You're going to want to watch Serina's program tonight. If you want to stay aboard, it's a subject you're going to have to get used to."
In response, Felix's brow wrinkled into a look of confusion. "Sir?"
"Just follow your orders Lieutenant and report to Lieutenant James if you have any concerns."
Though none of his curiosity had been sated, Felix went ahead and nodded. "Yes sir." After all, it couldn't be any worse than having a cylon aboard could it?
\\\\\\O
"Serina, what's the status of the tylium transfer?" Cutter asked to seemingly no one while he poured a thin stream of brown liquid from a square sided crystal decanter into two stout glasses until they were a third filled.
"Thirty-four percent complete, sir." The voice of a young woman answered from the room's PA speaker.
Sitting in a cushioned chair, one of two placed in a corner of the room next to an adjacent quarter-circle corner table of well-polished dark wood, Bill suppressed his discomfort at the invisible presence of the ship's AI. "I don't know how you can get used to that." He said, still very wary of the idea of any artificial intelligence even after he'd had a week to process that little disclosure Cutter had revealed to him. The fact that the Thirteenth Tribe had been using artificial intelligences for almost five-hundred years and without incident, was to say the least, shocking. Bill was on the verge of being outraged of course but in all honesty he knew there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it and he didn't exactly have the moral high ground considering he had a pregnant cylon defector aboard his own ship.
Cutter took up two glasses from the small counter adjacent to the thin liquor cabinet and walked on back. "Serina looked out for all of us while we were in cryo, I trust her with my life, Admiral." Cutter answered offering Bill one glass before taking a seat opposite him.
For a ship of the Spirit's size, Bill had expected the Captain's quarters to be at least as big as his but was only half the size and rather modestly decorated though Cutter did have quite the impressive display case filled with what appeared to be model ships from Earth's industrial era.
"I still don't think it's a subject you should reveal to the public." Bill said, taking a sip of his drink which he found to be as good if not better than some of the higher-end ambrosia he'd had. "What is this called?" Bill asked curiously as the taste lingered in his throat.
"Bourbon," Cutter answered.
Bill hummed in approval. "It's good, I like the taste." he remarked as he tried another shallow sip and Cutter did as well.
"They're going to find out one way or another Admiral. And I would prefer control the release of information in the way I want rather than to have Serina's existence leak out."
"Still, if you want my opinion, what you suggested to me over the wireless isn't the right way to handle things. That reporter will do everything she can to get under your skin."
Cutter leaned back and crossed his legs. "I value your opinion, but if I go ahead and give her what she wants now, I'll be putting the worst the press has to offer behind me and I won't get hounded nearly as bad."
"It's not the press. It's the public that concerns me." Bill spoke. "People will be outraged that you have what they'll see as a cylon linked directly with every part of your ship, including its weapons systems. Hell, it still makes me uncomfortable." Bill grumbled.
Cutter finished off his drink with one final gulp that produced a satisfactory grimace as the burn slipped down his throat. "Right now there's more reason to it than not to." he responded to make a point he had in mind. "Given what you've told me about the Cylons, they like messing with people's heads, even their own given what they did to that sleeper agent copy of Sharon Valleri that shot you. The UNSC has a lot more knowledge about AI's than your people do, maybe more than the cylons-" Cutter said conjecturally before going on. "-and I think we should leverage that. Play a little psychological warfare of our own. That's one of the reasons I asked Serina to host those broadcast programs. Get her voice out there every day to remind those things that humans and AI can coexist."
Bill finally finished off his own drink with a long, slow sip by the time Cutter finished talking. "You'll be goading the Cylons into an attack by doing so in one way or another."
Cutter shook his head in a slow, uncaring manner. "Let'em come, I say." Cutter stated boldly. "I have yet to dip into my ship's nuclear arsenal and if they want to come at us in force, I'll show them just what one single Shiva missile can do."
"Shiva?" Bill asked as his mouth tried to form the foreign word.
"Named for the Hindu deity who would destroy the world in order for it to be remade." Serina said, making her intangible presence again known and again provoking the agitated discomfort sitting in the back of Bill's mind. Gods, he didn't know if he could ever tolerate it. A Gods-damned sentient machine inside the ship, always watching, always listening, capable of doing pretty much anything it wanted.
Wanting to push it all as far out of his mind as he could, Bill placed his glass on the small table between the two chairs before getting up and walking over to the glass display case of Cutter's model ships. "Did you make these?" he asked as Cutter followed him over.
"Yes, it's a small hobby of mine. I always loved naval military history, though my father did his best to discourage that."
"I have a model of my own that I work on when I can. I'll show it to you next time you're aboard."
Cutter came to a stop and pointed at one of the larger models, a long beast with a wooden deck bearing three large triple-gunned turrets along with several smaller turrets along its sides. "That one is my favorite, USS New Jersey, commissioned and recommissioned a total of four times during her forty-eight years of service back in the twentieth century. Try as they might, the bureaucrats just couldn't put the old girl down. In the end, it was her age that finally saw to the conclusion of her service. But I believe she still survives in permanent dry dock serving as a museum ship."
"Reminds me of another ship I know." Bill said, referring to the Galactica. It was a comment Cutter caught on to.
"I can tell you have a close connection with the Galactica. Any story behind that?"
Bill walked along the display case, continuing to examine the models, lingering on one with a rather outrageous paint scheme of seemingly random geometric lines covering it. "She was my first deployment. I served as a pilot aboard her during the war."
"I see, so you were there to see the Galactica in her heyday. That makes what I have to tell you all the more difficult then." Cutter said, moving over to his nondescript desk just a few feet away to retrieve a tablet computer sitting over what likely were more transfer papers. "I know it might be hard to hear this, Admiral but as much capability Spirit has compared to your Navy's ships, she won't be able to completely restore Galactica to her pre-war specs." He said regretfully, glancing down at the pad.
Looking back up and meeting the reflection of Bill's eyes in the glass, he went on. "Age is a hard thing to fight and we're just a support ship, not a mobile refit station, though to be honest, I'd give my left arm for one right now." Cutter said with a slight shade of disappointment to his voice.
To his words, Bill turned to him while taking a long breath. "What you're doing for Galactica, Captain, is more than I could ever ask from you considering all that's happened. Giving her one last chance at being a real battlestar again," Bill paused. "That's an act you've earned my respect and gratitude for. So, no matter how things play out in the next few days regarding your AI, you'll have my public support."
"Thank you, Admiral." Cutter answered, looking down at the pad with a smirk. "Maybe I'm just a sucker for tough older gals like ours. They have a kind of character you just can't put your finger on." Cutter said, then handed over the pad.
What was on it was a kind of cannon with a single wide, flat barrel that was almost sword-shaped. "I had my Chief and Serina work over the blueprints of Galactica you had transmitted to us a few days ago. I know you said that if we could equip Galactica with some UNSC weaponry, you'd like to have the same type of deck guns Spirit has fitted and while it would be possible to manufacture and equip Galactica with two full batteries of turrets, there are some shortcomings."
"Like what?"
Cutter stuck his hands into his pockets and leaned back on his desk. "They're a lot more complicated to manufacture and do maintenance on. And it would also require a massive overhaul of your ammunition elevators. To complete each turret even with everyone working overtime would take nearly fourteen days, plus another whole day to install."
"So you want to use these instead?" Bill said, cutting to the chase.
Cutter tapped on the screen, prompting it to begin a slow rotation of the gun's diagram. "Mark twenty-four-eighty-eight Magnetic Acceleration Cannon, the Onager. This is a longer, modified version Serina came up with for increased ship-to-ship capability. These are normally ground based emplacements used to guard high-value installations from dropship to frigate sized threats but to combat Cylon basestars this version will pack a lot more punch."
Bill adjusted his glasses to read the technical specifications more clearly. "I'm listening."
"It fires a fifteen-centimeter solid-core slug at nine kilometers a second which we managed to bump up to twenty with the modifications; that's around the effective velocity of a MAC gun for a frigate but with the slug at a fraction of the weight, we can expect a dramatic decrease in impact force. And we can't be certain of the combat effectiveness against a basestar until we actually take a shot at one."
"In short one is harder to make but we have reliable data on its effectiveness or we try something new that I'm guessing you can make more of in quicker succession. Am I right, Captain?" Bill summarized.
"That's the shape of it." Cutter said to confirm Bill's rough assessment. "Overall, this modified Onager is not as powerful as our deck turrets but it will fire a lot faster and create less of a power drain. There will be one regardless but I'll get to the solution Chief Prescott came up with in a little bit. You go with this and Spirit will have the resources to make just shy of fifty Onagers- forty-six to forty-eight is the current number- and have the capability to complete at least two guns each day. With these we can equip Galactica with roughly thirty turrets more, since it'll also be possible to refit Galactica's existing turrets then you wouldn't have to worry about magazine detonations any longer."
While Cutter seemed to be looking at the glass half-empty in this case, Bill on the other hand felt a lightness in his chest that he hadn't felt since receiving his first command. Nearly fifty high-performance cannons, it was more than he could have ever dreamed of. Regardless of the hazy estimates on the combat effectiveness, this modified gun was a major step up in terms of technology in comparison to Galactica's existing cannons, which would easily be outperformed. To Bill, just at the face value, thirty-plus guns able to independently select targets was the better option than the eight quad-mounted turrets, no matter the minor tradeoff in the cannons' overall power. Not exactly a foregone conclusion but it was a bet Bill was willing to make. "I think these will more than do, Captain. Tell your Chief I accept his proposal. Are there any other provisions that will be necessary?"
"Well, we'll have to replace pretty much all your computers in the CIC with ours to account for the cannons' hardware and the extra calculations involved, particularly power regulation. This is the part where the energy consumption becomes an issue."
Bill wrinkled his brow as he looked up from the tablet. "How bad is it?"
Serina cut in once more. "To put it into perspective, your ship's tylium engine is a hand-crank generator and the Spirit's fusion reactor is a high-performance hydrogen engine. If you want to have yourself a respectable arsenal of MAC turrets, it's a bit of a roadblock that we're going to have to plow on through and forewarning, you're not going to like what we have in mind."
Cutter then took back control of the conversation, standing back up and with a couple prompts displayed Galactica's blueprint. "We're going to have to up power generation by at least forty-four percent if you want to bring Galactica up to the full combat capability Spirit can get you. If we had a stable continuous supply of tylium, this would be a non-issue and Galactica could operate just like she did back during the war. But we don't have that luxury, we're on the run, outgunned and outnumbered." Cutter stated plainly. Harsh words but the look in his eyes showed fully that in spite of this challenge, the man was not in the least undeterred. "In order to get the power Galactica needs, the only way we feasibly have, is to cut in from the outside with our repair drones and completely gut out the primary magazine in the aft section as a step to make enough room to fit two of the portable fusion reactors Spirit is carrying." Now Bill understood why Cutter made the suggestion of refitting Galactica's existing turrets, a proposal he'd found puzzling until now.
"Normally," Cutter continued. "The reactors are used to supply power to groundside firebases but they can power an area as large as a city for as long as a few years. Mr. Prescott assures me that it wouldn't require too much tweaking to hook them up with your ship. And to account for the reactor exhaust, my engineers can repurpose the emergency fire ventilation system in the compartment to vent it into space. It's a drastic measure, I know but it will also cut Galactica's tylium consumption by an estimated fifty-three percent when not inactive combat."
Bill sighed, a bit annoyed but he should have expected Galactica's refit wasn't going to be that easy. "How long do you need?"
"The engineers will have to get to work immediately if you want to be done before the Majahual finishes her mining operation. Galactica also won't be able to use her reserve engines until the work is complete. If there's time, I'd also like to get your starboard flight pod operational again."
"…Do it." Bill decided. "I'll inform my crew of the changes to the refit when I'm back aboard and get my engineers to move as many of our shells into the reserve magazines to make room for the new slugs and have Pegasus take on any spares we can't carry. Call me old-fashioned but I'd like to keep as many of Galactica's existing turrets active as possible."
"I believe that's a point I can respect, Admiral. We'll mount as many of the leftover turrets on the Pegasus as we can then. More firepower never hurts." Cutter replied, nodding a couple times. "So, if you don't mind me changing the subject now, how are your pilots feeling about the joint CAP so far?"
MAY 1 2534 / 1045 HOURS (UNSC TIME)
214 DAYS AFTER CYLON ATTACK
ASTEROID FIELD
JOINT COMBAT AIR PATROL FLIGHT: TWO-ALPHA
UNKNOWN SYSTEM
"I'm telling you that THING isn't a fighter!" Starbuck repeated with a laugh in her voice.
"And I'm telling you the Longsword has been the standard multirole strike fighter for the UNSC going on sixty…" Lieutenant Ward Breckenridge, call sign: Warlock began to reply back. "Scratch that, sixty-FOUR years counting the time we spent in cryo-tubes before running into you."
"Please, I could probably park my Viper inside that overgrown bus with wings." Kara bit back as they crossed into a more open area of the asteroid field some hundred kilometers from where the Majahual was conducting its mining operation.
"You're just ticked off that our birds are bigger, badder and better than your little stunt planes and micro-shuttles combined." Warlock smugly replied as his Longsword banked around a massive rock as wide as Spirit of Fire was. Starbuck along with Kat were positioned just off his wing in a delta formation, letting the UNSC craft take the lead with its more sophisticated sensor suite not to mention its thicker armor and heavier weaponry. Their mission was the same as before Spirit of Fire volunteered her squadrons to assist; monitor the immediate area around the Majahual for Cylon threats and engage if necessary. Now that the Longswords were in the fight, Kara was more determined now than ever to scrap that bastard Scar who'd racked up several more kills on her pilots since the CAP of the asteroid field began.
"I never said your Executors weren't good, Warlock, just that they aren't fighters." Kara said, using the new Colonial codename for the Longswords, one which the UNSC airmen had taken to with relish.
The pilots on Galactica had decided on 'Executor' on the account for the gun camera footage taken during the engagement with the five cylon basestars. Upon reviewing the footage from each Viper, it showed consistently that when a Longsword scored a kill on an enemy Raider it almost always took just a single round from either set of their heavy weaponry to blow the things into a thousand pieces.
"A fighter doesn't have a crew of four,Warlock. Two tops." Kara claimed as she scanned the asteroid field over her canopy, an image at the moment, Kat was reflecting in her own Viper.
As the younger Colonial pilot did so, Kat's eyes eventually fell on the Longsword's right wing still adorned with its messy crimson paintjob. "Hey Warlock, what's with that crap all over your wing?"
"Raider decided to play chicken and lost big time."
"Might want to clean that crap off, I know I wouldn't want any of that stuff on my bird. Who the hell knows what kind of freaky shit the cylons do with their own blood but frak if I want to know." Kat shrugged in discomfort. Months on and the thought of living biomechanical fighters still grossed the crap out of her.
"Nah, I think I like the new paintjob, it's sort of like a trophy. Let that ace raider of yours know who it's up against. What did you call it again Starbuck? Two-face or-?"
"Scar," Kara answered with a bitterness that she repressed. "The bastard toaster has taken out seven of my pilots so far, all nuggets fresh on the stick."
"Got a taste for new guys, does he? Well, he's not going to have any luck with our squadrons then I don't think…But I have a feeling we're not going to find him in this sector, plus we're about due to radio back anyway. Wait one mike while I check in with the Spirit. See if we can move on." Warlock communicated before switching channels. "Spirit of Fire Air Command and Control, this is Warlock, Joint Combat Air Patrol Flight Two-Alpha. Do you copy? Over."
A moment later, a woman's rather melodic voice was heard in all three of the craft. "Control copies Warlock, send traffic. Over."
"Two-Alpha reports: no enemy contact at this time. Sector nine is clear, requesting permission to proceed to sector ten for final sweep. Over." Warlock reported.
"Roger that Two-Alpha, you have the green light to advance to sector ten. Flight Two-Bravo will be on standby to begin their patrol momentarily. Break." The Controller then paused, peaking Kara's attention along with her eyebrow. "Be advised Two-Alpha: Flight Four-Delta spotted Cylon Raiders in that area eighteen hours ago, proceed with caution. Over."
"Roger your last, Momma Mary, we'll keep our heads on a swivel. Cylons won't catch us with our pants down. Over."
"Better not, Warlock." Control's reply came back with an edge of humor to it. "You may proceed to sector ten when ready. Spirit of Fire Air Command and Control: Over and out."
"Momma Mary?" Kara asked with an incredulousness that was slightly mocking.
"Little nickname the pilots on the Spirit came up with for one of our main Controllers. She can be a bit of a mother-hen." Warlock replied as he began banking right to head on to the next sector.
"Suure." Kara responded in a manner that was vaguely insinuating as she throttled up her Viper to match speed.
"So, what the frak is a 'Bravo'?" Kat then asked which provoked an irritated sigh out of Starbuck.
"Gods damn it Kat. The UNSC uses phonetic code just like we do. Bravo is their phonetic for Beta while our is just Beta." Kara explained with plain aggravation apparent in her voice. "November for Nebula and Oscar for Oracle. They even have a few letters in their alphabet we don't and vice versa like theta and psi. You'd fraking know this if you bothered showing up for the damn briefings on joint CAP procedures instead of trying to figure out where you're gonna get your next score." Kara dug in rather harshly in reference to the discovery of Kat's recent unauthorized use of stims when she was on duty.
"Hey, frak you Starbuck!" Kat yelled aggressively over the channel. "You know how fraked up things were before we had Pegasus and I haven't even fraking taken anything since then. You want to make this fraking personal, how about we talk about your dead boyfriend on Caprica huh?" Kat dug back "The one you left behind?"
"Ladies, ladies." Warlock interjected before Kara could fire back. "If you two want to have yourselves a little catfight, there's more than enough room on the Longsword for the both of you." Warlock said with an attempted suaveness that came off pervy, though that could very well have been what he'd intended.
Kara shook her head with an amusingly disgusted look on her face, thankful that he'd at least gotten them out of that argument. "Uck, Gods, I bet you're a real hit with the ladies, aren't you?"
"How do you think I earned my call sign?" He replied, almost proud of it.
Kara rolled her eyes. "Surprised it isn't 'horndog'." She said as the patrol flight corrected their flight path to duck below a drifting asteroid.
"Trust me, you have no idea." A new feminine voice pipped in over the channel.
"Hey, who's this?" Kat asked, still sounding a bit irritated.
"Second Lieutenant Sophia Nascimento, call sign: 'Kick'. And I have the unfortunate duty of being Warlock's copilot." She answered, void of any kind of enthusiasm.
"Mind if I ask where you're from?" Kara asked. "I've been trying to find one of you guys that's from Earth or been to it at least to get to know what it's like."
In quick reaction Warlock let out a hearty laugh. "Hoo, man Starbuck, then you sure picked a shitty day to go on patrol. Serina's broadcasting a show all about Earth right this second."
"What! Gods damn it!" Kara cursed while hitting the side of her cockpit with the bottom of her fist, much to Warlock's undoubted enjoyment.
"Ey, you'll catch it later I bet. After everyone else of course." Warlock replied with some remote sympathy.
"If it makes you feel any better, I am from Earth." Kick answered, though sounding disinterested, like she was just contributing out of obligation to Kara's question. "Rio de Janeiro, it's a city near the equator. Hot and humid, but the food is the best you'll get on the continent. It's a good place to live, good people."
Kara was beginning to catch on to what was going on with Kick's attitude or lack thereof. "You got a lot of family back there?"
"The communities we have in Rio are tight." Kick responded with a fond reminiscent tone. "Friends, family, there's not much difference."
"And you've been stuck out here for four years." Kara added, connecting the dots.
Kick sighed. "Long enough for all of us to be listed as missing-in-action by the UNSC." She half-muttered. "Long enough for people to have a funeral…move on."
"Hey, we're not dead yet." Kara stated defiantly. "The Cylons have been hounding us nonstop for months before we ran into you guys and I haven't given up. Your FTL drive glitching out and stranding you out here, there's no way anyone could've seen that coming. It was an accident."
"Yeah…I guess." Kick replied with a noncommittal tone, keeping to the Captain's orders of not saying anything about the Covenant or how they actually got stuck out here to the Colonials.
"You know, I bet your whole neighborhood will throw you a massive party when you get back. It's not every day you get to come back from the dead."
"Uhg, my mama will probably faint when she sees me." Kick replied with a single light laugh.
Feeling that the mood had been lightened a little, Kara decided to ask about something else. "So, being horndog's copilot, I'm guessing, you've gotten the brunt of his come-ons, right?"
"Hell no," Warlock replied with fearful emphasis Kara found surprising. "Kick's boyfriend is one of the ODSTs Colonel Shaw sent over to the Pegasus. And let me tell you, those guys are motherfraking psychos. Snake-eaters, all of them. I mean, when you're burning through atmo in a glorified coffin, praying to God the almighty it holds together long enough so you can fight a war on the ground…that doesn't remotely sound sane to me."
"Well, I bet they're good in the sack, plus they keep creeps like you off." Kara joked to which all Warlock could really do was grin and bear it.
"Control," Kick spoke up again, this time to communicate back their status. "This is Patrol Flight Two-Alpha, we are now entering sector ten to commence sweep. Will radio back in thirty mikes. Over."
"Control copies Two-Alpha, good hunting out there. Over and out."
With the subject of deities mentioned, Kat then went ahead and put the awkward foot forward. "So you guys really don't believe in the Gods?"
It was a question to which there was no softening the answer and Kara knew it. She still worshipped the Gods but in truth, she couldn't care less what other people did. Her rather harsh upbringing lead to Kara to develop an insular nature where she regarded most people as 'just other assholes', but still human nonetheless. She wasn't a complete sociopath.
"Sorry but it's nothing but ancient mythology where we come from." Warlock hesitantly answered with the brutal but honest truth.
"What, are you all monotheists or do you have, like a different pantheon?" Kat delved in deeper to the topic.
"Hoo, now that is a huge topic." Warlock answered back and leaving a long pause in the middle while he sorted his thoughts out. "Well to start, we have a lot of religions, I'd never be able to even list them all, let alone the different sects each has. You got religions with one god, lots of gods, or even no gods and it's all just about spirituality. I know you guys aren't big fans of freedom of religion but that's the status quo where we're from, so it's something you're going to have to get used to."
Starbuck gathered that Warlock was trying to resolve whatever Kat was feeling, maybe she felt insulted or just confused but regardless, that answer Warlock apparently didn't seem good enough for her. "But the Gods made us on Kobol, taught us how to build our society, everything we know. How can you just turn your back on that?"
Kara decided to intervene. They didn't need any religious divisions on top of everything else. "We don't know what happened in the past Kat and I doubt any of them know why their ancestors did what they did so just drop it for now."
Kat's sigh could be heard over the radio. "Fine, whatever."
Minutes passed after that last exchange, their efforts refocused to the task at hand. Five sets of eyes scrutinized every dirty rock around and the empty space in between in the dim twilight of this system's small and weak star. A sixth set belonging to the Longsword's Navigator instead looked down upon the screen of the craft's sensor readout. Unlike the Colonial Raptors which primarily relied on their DRADIS system for threat detection, which was essentially just their own iteration of microwave radar, the Longsword carried a much more advanced suite of multifrequency radar, UV spectrum lidar, and spectrographic cameras to scan the space around. Between the capabilities of the UNSC's Longswords and the greater load capacity of their Pelicans, Starbuck was wondering how much life the Raptors would have left, seeing how the only advantage they had left was their FTL drive. And even then, it was only a matter of time before the subject would get raised about trying to retrofit either UNSC craft with a Raptor's drive, thereby making them completely obsolete.
"Hold on, think I got something on lidar, initiating spectrographic scan." Warlock's Navigator spoke up, Kara had heard from him a few times during the patrol so far but never bothered to ask his name. "Two o'clock low. Mark negative five-four degrees off our axis, range is six-zero, spectrograph confirms non-natural metallic alloy and trace tylium signature."
"Control, this is Warlock, we have possible ID on a unknown signature, standby for contact report, copy? Over."
"Copy your last, Warlock. Standing by to receive. Over."
"Positive Contact!" the Navigator confirmed much to Kara's eagerness. "Lidar mapping confirms positive pattern match on a single Cylon Raider. It's on the surface of the asteroid, looks like it was planning to ambush us."
"Yeah, well let's go turn the fraking tables on the bastard." Kat chimed in.
"Control, this is Warlock, we have a positive V-ID on a single Cylon Raider, we are moving to engage."
"Contact confirmed, you are clear to engage. Reinforcements are inbound, more Executors on the way. ETA: three mikes."
"Roger Control." Warlock returned, leaving his channel open for the Spirit to monitor the engagement. "Let's move to engage," Then came his transmission to Starbuck and Kat, sounding quite eager himself after what had been a long, boring patrol thus far. "You got any issue with that Starbuck?"
"Negative, let's fry the bastard." she replied with a hungry look in her eyes.
"Copy that, you got the point. We'll cover the rear." Warlock returned.
The two Mk II Vipers were the first to bank off in the Raider's direction followed a moment after by the Longsword. The three craft accelerated to combat speed, deactivating the safety locks on their weapons systems.
"Master arm on, master arm on." Kick announced. "Fangs out, all weapons are hot. Give me a target, Nav." she spoke, her dour attitude now replaced with cold professionalism.
"Going on your HUD now."
"Has he seen us?" Kara asked over the loud hum of her engines less than a meter behind her seat.
The Longsword's Navigator let out a long audible hum as he tried to determine that. "Looks like a negative, Starbuck. We're coming in right over his head. He's blind. Over."
"Copy, let's keep it that way. Warlock, I'll hold course, you break off and use the asteroid field as cover to flank him from the rear. Let's draw this sucker into a fight before he gets wise to us."
"Copy that, breaking off. Nav, plot us a course through the field." Warlock replied before breaking off through a narrow gap between two thick asteroids the size of large office buildings the black craft almost disappearing into the shadows.
"Kat go with them, we are not letting this ambush become a counter-ambush."
"Roger that Starbuck." Kat replied before following the larger craft.
The minutes that passed felt like seconds as she drew closer to the Raider's position, despite her DRADIS still picking up nothing. Her Viper maneuvered around the various rocks that gave Kara cover as she closed in. At twenty kilometers, she broke cover, a deliberately sloppy maneuver to make her appear to be just another nugget to entice Scar to come out.
"Come on, where are you, you bastard?" she muttered to herself as she scanned the outside periphery of her cockpit for anything tailing her.
A beep from her DRADIS signified that the sighted Raider had taken notice of her and was quickly braking off of its position against the asteroid. "Tally on Bandit!" And just like Starbuck had hoped but not exactly expected, it started coming right at her. "So you got some balls huh?" Kara muttered rhetorically, hoping that maybe, just maybe this was him. "Come on is it you Scar? Did I catch you with your fraking metal pants down this time?"
At under five kilometers, short dashes of blue tracer fire started flying her way, trying to psych her out enough to break off. "Yeah, not gonna happen." She said and opened fire back with a couple two-second bursts.
"Starbuck, second Raider at your four heading your way. Distance is one-niner, closing in, we're engaging." Warlock signaled. "Kat, break off and engage the first Raider."
"I got'em. Don't worry Starbuck, I got your ass covered."
"Oh great, fraking perfect…" Kara grumbled to herself at the heroic stance of 'savior' Kat probably saw herself in. Narcissistic, cocky little bitch.
"Frak!" Starbuck gunned her starboard RCS thrusters to narrowly avoid a lengthier burst.
"Break off Starbuck!" Kat cried out.
"I got him!" Starbuck shouted back.
The distance closing fast, the incoming fire was getting all the more dense and the opportunities to return fire accurately growing ever slimmer. One bolt of cold fire shot past her head just out of arm's length and she knew she couldn't stay there. "Frak!" Starbuck rolled her Viper out of the Raider's path just a second before it shot past. It passed quicker than the blink of an eye but it had been just long enough for Kara to get a look at its face.
"It's not Scar!" Kara called out but by then Kat was already engaged and the sound of her guns drowned out Starbuck's voice. Coming in on the Raider's nine o'clock, it never had a chance to avoid the streams of tracers that raked its side. The engines of the metallic craft ruptured internally and the whole thing was consumed in a bright orange fireball that lingered for half a second before the vacuum extinguished it, revealing nothing but a collection of scrap left.
\\\\\\O
Not far away, the other Raider was desperately trying to escape the Longsword closing in behind it like a shark that had just encountered a hungry orca. "He's trying to shake us! I can't get a tone!" Kick shouted in English while the Raider desperately weaved through a belt of smaller asteroids to throw off the Longsword's targeting.
"Plow the road with the cannons then." Ward replied as he tried to keep up with the evasive little Raider. "See how the little fucker likes it when his cover is blowing up around him. On your mark, I'll cut the engines for a strafing run."
"Ready?"
"Ready." Ward confirmed.
"Mark!" She signaled and Ward cut the fusion engine exhaust and maneuvered with the Longsword's RCS thrusters to angle down at thirty degrees so that Kick's crosshair was just ahead of their target. The woman's finger pressed down hard on the trigger, letting loose a five-second burst of the fifty millimeters, followed by a second and a third. Ahead of the Raider's flight path, the rounds from the Longsword's cannons splashed on the surfaces of the primordial space-rocks, blasting debris in such a way that it effectively became a flak screen.
"It's too much for him, he's rabbiting!" Ward observed with a giddy chuckle as the Cylon UCAV peeled off and gunned its engines to their maximum output. "Oh, no you don't." he then said to himself as Ward reengaged primary thrust to pursue.
"Nav, what's his heading?" Kick called back to Senior Airman Hank Donnelly, their Navigator for this sortie.
"There's a large asteroid dead ahead, my guess; that thing is going to get behind it and jump back to base when it's in the clear."
"Kick, can you get tone?" Ward asked with mounting anxiousness. "I don't like that we're leaving the hatchlings alone for this long."
Kick gave a quick shake of her head. "Negative on tone, we're getting some kind of electromagnetic interference now, can't pin it down."
"ECM?" Ward directed back at Donnelly.
"Unknown." Was what the pilot got as a reply.
"Great," Ward cursed under his breath. "Everyone hold on, I'm gonna try something..."
The Raider banked around the moderately sized asteroid not much bigger than a dozen kilometers across, losing the line of sight the red-winged Longsword had on it and it began spinning up its FTL drive. What it did not expect was for Warlock to had broken off his direct pursuit and instead circle around the asteroid at a different angle to come at the Raider side-on, gunning both the engines and the RCS in a dangerous maneuver at that velocity. Dead in her sights, Kick fired off a burst of eight fifty millimeter rounds. Two clipped the Raider's wings in half while a third bored straight through its main fuselage in one side and out the other without even detonating but completely destroying the Raider's cybernetic brain. With no control for the engines, what was left of the cylon dove downward and smashed itself upon a sharp outcropping.
"Tango down! Tango down!" Donnelly confirmed on his instruments.
"Ha-ha, one more tally on the wing." Ward celebrated as he evened out the Longsword and reduced speed. "The Warlock works his magic once again." He boasted cornily, perhaps aware of the cringe he had incited from the rest of the crew with his awful line.
"You know," Kick began, looking over at her smug-faced pilot. "Sometimes I can't tell if you're messing with us or you really are that full of yourself." The only response Kick got was the most self-conscious and punch-worthy shit-eating grin she'd ever seen Ward bear and that was saying something. "Ugh, why did they set me up with you as my pilot?" she then said rhetorically, shaking her head as she looked back to the display on her console, checking their ammunition.
"Maybe 'cause they wanted to match up the best pilot the Air-"
"New contact on our six! Single Cylon Raider! Range is five kilometers and closing!" Donnelly announced with a measure of controlled panic in his voice.
"Shit! Where the fuck did that come from?" Ward swore while jamming the throttle back up. "Get me a visual Chugs, if I can't see him, I can't lose him." Ward spoke to his Systems Operator and ventral gunner, Airman First Class Evan Chugainov who Ward had been calling 'Chugs' since the beginning of the sortie on account he wasn't sure how to actually pronounce the guy's last name.
"Bringing up cam feed! Wha-" Chugainov stopped abruptly. "Crap, it's the Raider Captain Thrace was talking about."
Ward looked up to the camera screens mounted at the outsides of his station which acted like rear-view mirrors, clearly seeing the blackened gash upon the odd face the Cylon UCAV had. "Three kilometers!" Donnelly announced a second prior to a dreadful low flat tone sounded throughout the cabin. "We've been locked, initiating ECM!"
A more rapid and higher pitched beeping soon followed, causing everyone to tense up. "That's a missile!" Ward called out, rolling his Longsword to the right to foul the missile's targeting.
"I got it!" Donnelly replied with a measure of assurance. "Missile diverted." He said and ward watched the thing curve away and detonate.
"Warlock? Warlock come in, do you read?" Ward heard Starbuck transmit to them.
"Chugs, get on the turret, return fire!" Ward ordered before replying in Caprican. "Copy Starbuck, get your ass over here ASAP, we found your stupid fraking white whale." Ward then began a corkscrew turn in hopes of maybe turning it into a rolling scissors and get behind him or at least get the metal bastard in the sights of the turret.
"My what?" she asked, not understanding the reference.
"Scar, dumbass!" he replied frustrated, now toying with the idea that all this might have been a set up from the start to get the Longsword isolated from the Vipers.
Splashes of blue glimmered in his periphery. "Receiving incoming fire. I think he's aiming for our engines." Kick called out, likely feeling pretty useless at the moment.
"CHUGS!"
"I can't get him in my firing arc, he's stuck on!" the young Australian accented man replied.
"Frak, we're inbound, ETA: ninety seconds!" she replied as a metallic pattering sounded against the hull.
"No damage, ricochet!" Kick reported in Chugainov's stead but for Ward it was far too much. He was NOT going to be killed by some rampant fucking refrigerator. Breaking eye contact momentarily with the rear camera screens, ward keyed a few controls on his console which triggered a low whine gradually begin to rise in the engines.
"Sir?" asked Donnelly.
"I'm going full burn." Ward stated.
"In an asteroid field?!" Chugainov blurted out, flabbergasted at what he'd heard.
Kick looked over to him but paid her no attention and kept his eyes fixed forward. "You sure about this?"
"We are not gonna get shot down by a little UAV and I am not gonna get rescued by any Colonial pilot who thinks she's hotter shit than us." Ward replied, all remnant of his easygoing and narcissistic attitude now completely absent.
"Roger,"
"Keep up with this, motherfucker." Ward said in unheard challenge to the Raider before blasting the fusion engines up to their maximum thrust. In a second, several kilometers were instantly put between the Longsword and the Raider called Scar, who was left behind to watch its target soared away at a speed it didn't have a chance of keeping up with. Ward pulled up on the stick, rolling the craft to narrowly cut between a narrow gap between two closely positioned asteroids. Now in more open space, he began turning it around to come back at the little craft that had the gall to try to shoot them down.
Getting an idea of what Ward had in mind, Kick made some adjustments on her control screen. "Chugainov," Kick said, mispronouncing the name with a short i sound. "Bring the cannon forwards and slave it to my crosshairs."
"Um, copy that." He momentarily hesitated before following through with the order.
"Donny, status update." Ward requested, lining up the red diamond marking the raider with the nose of his craft.
"Target has increased speed and headed right for us." He reported, prompting a hungry smirk on Ward's lips. "I've zeroed the source of the ECM. Range is nine-zero, off our ten o'clock."
"We'll hunt the fridge down after we toast this one." Ward grimly assured.
The Longsword charged head on with Scar, three times the speed it was doing but the organic machine seemed nonetheless undeterred from its course. A solid even tone from the computer denotated that the Longsword had entered effective weapons range. "Kick, fuck his shit!" Ward's copilot let loose with everything she had at her disposal. Two broad streams of orange tracers were cast ahead accompanied by two heavier shots from the twin one-hundred-twenty-millimeters.
Scar made attempts to weave and dodge around to avoid the heavy spray in effort to close the distance and fire directly at the cockpit. When a fifty-millimeter shell sheered the outer edge of its port wing away, the machine's brain decided further engagement was inadvisable and calculated an emergency FTL jump.
In a bright white flash, the Raider disappeared from Kick's HUD, causing her to grit and bear her teeth in frustration. A couple seconds later, she relaxed against her seat now that the threat was gone.
"He jumped." Donnelly reported in a flat, disappointed tone that seemed well aware that everyone else knew it too. "Enemy ECM has ceased transmission, looks like they bugged out too."
"Warlock, this is Starbuck, I'm getting nothing on DRADIS, did you nail him?" The crew heard the Colonial Flight Captain ask.
Ward cleared his throat, preparing to once again start speaking in Caprican. "Negative Starbuck, he jumped. Clipped him but no kill."
They all heard her then give a very unladylike growl. "Gods damn it! I thought we had him."
"We'll get another chance, I have a feeling about that. For now, let's RTB, pursuit flight is inbound to do a thorough sweep of the sector and Celtic will want to hear the after-action report on this."
Starbuck sighed. "Copy that, we're RTB. Forming up on your wing."
Author's Note: Kind of a low-key chapter, I know. Hoped everyone liked the dogfight with Scar and that I got the radio jargon and procedure fairly correct. Expect this episode to be more about exposition, character development and moving the plot forward.
So to recap Galactica's current refit plan for those interested, in total she's getting: Full Titanium-A Battleplate, two portable fusion reactors, 30+ modified Onager turrets, an operational starboard flight pod and new computer hardware for the CIC. Queue Centurion screaming internally.
As a short little notice here, I will be taking the next month off of Guiding Fire to work on Second Chances. All the new Warhammer 40K lore coming out is pulling me back over but do not fear, I will return to Guiding Fire in the following month. Thank you all once again for your patience. Leave reviews of what you liked and constructive criticism of what you didn't. So long!