Battlestar Galactica: Wolfpack

by Phoenix4416

Part of the New Beginnings and Lions of Leonis. The Battlestar Pegasus and her small fleet of Battlestars, having escaped destruction at the hands of the Cylons during the Fall, must find a way not only to survive but to fight back. This isn't just about survival, it's about revenge. Also a crossover with the BSG Ghosts comics and Blood and Chrome. Next chapter up by 08/07/15.

3. Chapter 3 Forging of the Warhammer

Battlestar Galactica: Wolfpack

Chapter 3: Forging of the Warhammer

Previously

"You've read Cain's psych profile; she isn't one to run and is most likely to stay in Colonial space fighting us every step of the way, so…why not offer her a tempting target"-Cavil

"The last thing we should do is underestimate the Cylons but in my opinion they don't have many ships left…"-Commander Burkett, Battlestar Therion

"The Academy made sure that there was a lot of rivalry between Ghost and Argos Squadron when we were both formed towards the end of the first war in an effort to see which training regime produced the best pilots" Fleet Air Marshal Lucy Hudson

"War is our imperative. For those on Leonis and for those in the evacuation fleet. And if right now victory seems like an impossibility, then there is something else to reach for…Revenge!" Admiral Cain, Battlestar Pegasus

"I have a plan that will enable us to strike back at the Cylons and possibly cripple them" Admiral Cain, Battlestar Pegasus

"I guess I'm kinda in charge, Commander second class, retired, the names Fasjovic, Coker Fasjovic" Picon Fleet Headquarters Anchorage, Dock 46 wreckage

Pulling the panel back into place a face of a Three was revealed before she turned and continued deep into the Battlestar. – Teresa Manning, a Three on board the Battlestar Arion

"In 48 hours once we have dealt with the worst of the repairs, manned the Praetoria and rested, we will be launching a series of consecutive attacks on as many of the Cylon homeworlds as we can possibly hit. We are going to show those metal bastards that while we may be down we are not out, that we can hit harder, we can hit faster and we can hit further than they can possibly compute. We are the Colonial Fleet and I say that if we are going to go down then we are going to go down with style. We will go down swinging in such a way that the Cylons will follow soon afterwards. But we are not going down, we have went as low as we will go. The Cylons think they know war, they think they can just bombard our planets and that's it, the wars over. The war was not over 40 years ago and I'll be damned if it's over until every last godsdamn toaster is on the slagheap. We will show them a war of epic proportions, we will show them hell. In 48 hours people…in 48 hours we will have our revenge. So say we all" Admiral Cain, Battlestar Pegasus

And now…

01/08/55

04:48

Battlestar Arion

Section 18, Deck 6 Corridor

Kneeling down with a flashlight beam lighting up the dark area in front of him Sergeant Frost covered his mouth with his sleeve unable to smell the scent of faeces permeating the air around him. Looking down upon the two bodies in front of him Frost couldn't help but reflect that this wasn't just the first double homicide he'd investigated but his first homicide period and it sickened him to think that even now during a time of war when humans shouldn't be fighting among themselves but fighting with each other against their common enemy that someone would even consider killing both of these young crewmen with a knife or a sword stabbed through the marines head and into the female pilot. An engineer on his way to get a spare part had just happened to be travelling down the corridor just half an hour ago when he had come across their lifeless bodies and had immediately bolted for the intercom summoning a marine presence. Right now that engineer was being questioned since he had been their immediate suspect but both his shift log and his fellow engineers who were on the same shift as him gave him a solid alibi for him.

Judging by how cold the bodies were and the thickness of the blood on the floor plus testimonies of those who were last with Sergeant Bastogne and Ensign Turner and security camera footage, Sergeant Frost had come up with the time of murder being around about 02:15-03:00. What kept on getting to Old Frosty was the fact that his marines going over the security camera footage of neighbouring sections couldn't find anyone who came this way until the engineer and the footage showed no evidence of tampering. Reaching out with a gloved hand once all photos had been taken, Frost reached for the pockets of Bastogne seeing that they had been pulled out, then looking at Turner, he saw that hers too had been pulled out. Checking them he couldn't find their ID cards but he found cubits and even a gold necklace in Bastogne's pockets.

This wasn't making any sense, someone they couldn't see on any camera had snuck up, killed a seven foot high marine built like a brick shithouse and his lover in one stab of a bladed weapon and then rifled through their pockets leaving behind valuables and only taking their ID cards. Then you had the fact that the two victims were both well liked and to the best of his knowledge since, as Master-at-arms Frost was Bastogne's superior, Bastogne had no enemies. Why would someone take their ID cards and leave their valuables?

Then it came to him, the only reason someone would take ID cards would be if they didn't have access somewhere. This double homicide couldn't have been about greed and it most likely wasn't over a grudge, no, this was something else entirely.

Standing, Sergeant Frost moved to the wall mounted intercom "CIC/Sergeant Frost, I need you to connect me to the Admiral right now".

A few moments passed while he waited for the Admiral to answer his phone before a groggy, rough voice asked "What is it Sergeant?"

Kicking himself for not realising that this early the Admiral would be asleep, Frost stated "Sir, We've had a double homicide, the victims are a Sergeant Bastogne and an Ensign Turner. Both of them were stabbed at the same time through the head…"

"My Gods, do you have a suspect?"

"No sir, although I have reason to believe that we may be looking for a Cylon Infiltrator and that Infiltrator now has access to their ID cards. I'm going to immediately block those cards".

"Whatever you need, just ask. We cannot allow a Cylon to roam free aboard this ship".

01/08/55

09:00

Battlestar Therion

Solitary Confinement Brig 2

Walking through the smoke blackened corridors of the Battlestar Therion, Admiral Hudson was gaining even more respect for the men and women that had fought to keep her operational both during the Battle of Leonis and afterwards when the once mighty warship was just hanging on by a hairs breadth. But he had a job to do, he had been over just a few minutes' worth of the security recordings of the interrogation of the Cylon Prisoner currently held in the Therion's number 2 solitary confinement brig and he wasn't happy. Hudson was one of those men who tended to dismiss 90% of intel gathered under duress and what he saw going on in that brig could hardly be called an interrogation, to him it just seemed like the marines were taking out their anger on the only Cylon they had at hand on this ship. True, the marines always kept back from going too far but it was obvious to Hudson that it wouldn't work. He also knew that his superior Admiral Cain supported the methods used in the interrogation and while he may disagree with her in private, he could see that she was dead set on these methods and there was no way that he could safely change her mind, not after Gina had gotten so close to her. But if he could prove to her that another way existed then maybe, just maybe things could be better for Dozil but he knew that things would likely never get any better for Gina, Gina had struck to close to home by working her way so deeply into Cain's life, she had actually made Cain care for her and all the while she was just working her way into a position where she could do the most damage.

"Look, I'm not here to question your methods. Granted, I personally hate them but I understand that right now we need all the Intel we can get on the Cylons and it's become increasingly clear to me that your marines don't have a fracking clue what they are doing. It isn't an interrogation going on in there, it's a beat down. They should have worked out long ago that Dozil wouldn't crack under duress like they are trying to force him to. Do you agree that Dozil is a sleeper agent?"

Walking beside Hudson, Commander Burkett nodded saying "I do and if you think I like what's going on in there, you're wrong. That kid was one of my own, he's been part of this crew for years but you're right that we need all the Intel we can get and I tried to get him to give it freely…"

Stopping and turning to him, Hudson replied "You didn't try hard enough. If he has some kind of mental block then it's going to need more than a few words to get him to overcome it and it sure as hell is going to take more than waterboarding and electrocuting him. You need to get into his head make him realise that we care and that we understand. We need to get him to want to fight through those blocks if possible, because right now until we capture another skinjob, he has all the Intel we can get".

"What about Gina Inv…"

"Forget about her, any intelligence that comes out of her mouth I would hold at arm's length especially after what's happening to her. She knows what she is and if we're right she has known all along, but that one in there…even though he knows that he's a Cylon, he still feels like a Colonial and I'm more willing to trust Intel that comes from a Cylon that feels like a Colonial any day of the week. We have to use that to our advantage".

Nodding, Commander Burkett replied "I'll let you take the lead then. I hope to the Gods that you know what you are doing".

"So do I" Noah Hudson muttered as they were admitted entry by the marine presence at the hatch to the brig.

Entering the clean area beyond, Hudson turned to look down on the chained man on the other side of the glass partition. His skin was covered in large purple and black bruises and angry red welts were spread across his arms with bloody lines soaked into his green shirt and his face was almost unrecognisable under its bruising and cuts. Pools of water lay around him, evidence of the waterboarding he had been put through as well as an experimental torture where he was blasted with boiling hot and then freezing cold water in quick succession. Nothing had worked.

Looking to Burkett next to him, Hudson saw the pained expression on the man's face and nodded to the marine to open the door.

Stepping through, Hudson crouched down near the prone body of Dozil seeing the tears streaking his bloody face. Turning back to the marine, Hudson ordered "Get me a towel, facecloth, some warm water and a decent meal right now". The marine hesitated and seemed to look at Commander Burkett for confirmation at which Hudson shouted "Do I fracking look like I'm the sort of person who gives orders twice Corporal. If you value your job then I would run…now". There was no hesitation from the marine as he quickly left the room, if he was booted from the fleet, he knew that a hundred civilians would try and get his job in an instant.

Looking back at Dozil, Hudson softly said "No man should ever have to go through what you've been through".

Through swollen cracked lips and with bloody phlegm bursting from his sore mouth, Dozil replied with such hate "I'm no man. Haven't you heard sir, I'm a Cylon out for blood".

"And do you want to kill me? Do you want to kill Commander Burkett here? Or do you just want us to suffer as you've been made to suffer?"

"I…I don't know…I know why you're doing this to me, if I was you then I would probably do the same". A racking sob seemed to be pouring from the man as he continued "You have to understand that I don't know the answers…right now all I…all I can feel and all I can know is pain. You want to know what it feels like? Betrayal…you lot, you turned on me and I didn't do anything to deserve that apart from being a fracking Toaster. Do you think that I wouldn't kill myself if given half the chance? The toasters killed my friends…they've fracking butchered everything I cared about. I…I can't allow myself to be one of them, I just…I can't"

Laying a hand on Dozil's shoulder Hudson replied "Shhh. We don't hate you, not personally at least and you absolutely cannot hate yourself. When the Cylons created you and sent you out in the worlds with some grand plan in mind they couldn't understand just who you would become. They couldn't understand the life you would live or the passions you would experience. The 'you', the person that you are, is all Dozil. It's something that the Cylons would have been unable to envisage. Go right ahead and hate them all you want, we do, but don't hate yourself in the process and whatever you do, never give up." Fully sitting down on the floor, Hudson thought before carefully choosing his next words "None of us understand why the background personality you have in that brain of yours wasn't activated when the Cylons attacked. It's highly possible that you were somehow able to overcome that part of yourself that you knew nothing about and not even realise it. If that's true then it shows that the Cylons aren't as smart as they think they are and can't understand the strength of the human psyche…"

"Haven't you been listening sir…I'm not human".

"Really? You look human to me and unless I can suddenly understand machine code you sound human. But do you feel human? Inside do you really feel human? If you do then surely that implies that you are. You have lived a human life. You joined the Colonial Fleet and managed to become one of the best pilots in the Colonies for frak sake. Surely that means something".

"Maybe it means that Cylons have better reflexes sir".

"Hmm, I guess I never thought about it that way. See, you're already freely teaching us things about the Cylons that we never knew. But I don't think that's why you were accepted into Ghost Squadron, at least not entirely. From what I understand – and correct me if I'm wrong Commander – from what I understand Ghost Squadron chooses skilled pilots and marines with an eye for strength of character, ingenuity and fortitude. Ghost Squadron seems to be one of the few squadrons where they only pick you if they not only like you as a person but you can prove that you have what it takes, that you actually have the guts to do what's needed. Tell me something Lieutenant, can a machine be brave or does a machine just do what it's programmed to do?"

Seeing that Dozil was struggling to answer, Commander Burkett replied "Bravery is a feeling. Since when do machines feel anything whether it be fear or love…only people feel emotions".

"And dogs…" Dozil added as he struggled to sit up.

Laughing as he helped him, Hudson asked "You're a dog person then?"

Wiping the tears away, Dozil replied "Yeah…I have a dog back home, a little Labrador just two years old…Kayla. Stupid little thing's always chasing after parked cars and digging up her old buried bones and dropping them on the back doorstep…Gods I swear, the state of those things covered in gunk with worms crawling through them and bits of disgustingly green and blue meat hanging from them. She just sits there looking at you with a pleased expression on her dopy face waiting for a pat on the head and another bone to bury. I leave her back at Horn Hill (military base on Leonis) with a couple of friends whenever I have to leave, she loves it th…" The happiness on Dozil's face as he talked about Kayla seemed to vanish in an instant to be replaced with a worried expression as he continued "…Gods, she's probably dead. Fracking Cylons probably killed her already…and Jim and Zara…frak"

Patting his right arm, Hudson replied "You said you left her at Horn Hill on Leonis?" Seeing the nod Hudson replied "Then they should be fine, the military bases were all evacuated. Chances are they're all being protected by old Monty and his Legions right now. Leonis is the single safest place in the Colonies since the mad bastards pumped so much money into defensive arrangements we knew nothing about. Well they don't seem mad anymore". Seeing the marine come back in laden with the supplies he had asked for as well as a flask, Hudson took the facecloth and poured some warm water onto it before handing it to Dozil saying "Here, you need it".

"Thanks" Dozil replied as he started wiping the blood and sweat off of his face struggling with memories of his waterboarding.

At the same time, Hudson opened the flask and sniffed "Tea. Gods I can't stand the stuff unless it's strong enough to polish my boots. Oh well, it looks like I'll have to get used to the weak ass stuff from now on". Pouring the weak tea into three paper cups, Hudson asked "Sugar?" to which Dozil asked for one and Burkett for two. Adding the sugar from little packets and giving the cups a stir, Hudson handed them out before taking the plastic lid off the meal saying "That marine will be lucky if he isn't cleaning toilets with his own toothbrush…here you go, it looks like soy chicken sandwiches, it isn't much but you should eat".

Taking them, Dozil was hesitant at first to take a bite and asked "Why are you doing this sir? I should be getting beaten up or worse".

"Maybe it's because I'm a nice guy or maybe it's because I can see that you are a good person. I'm telling you the truth when I say that I don't see a Cylon before me. Cylons hate humans and if you were a Cylon then you could have easily killed me by now and one thing that Cylons don't do is care for animals. Go on…eat".

Looking down at the sandwiches before him with his stomach grumbling away, Dozil asked "What time is it?"

Looking at his watch, Burkett replied "9:15".

"AM or PM?"

"Morning" Hudson replied.

Putting the paper plate of sandwiches back down, Dozil said "I can't eat them, not yet anyway" seeing a confused expression, Dozil said "I follow the Path of Athena, we fast during the days of Quintilis (July)".

"Ah, well you should be happy to note that it's the first of Sextilis (august), any rules on fasting then?"

Smiling, Dozil shook his head "Nope, only Quintilis and December".

Opening his mouth and biting down on a sandwich, Dozil winced in pain causing Hudson to ask "Taste that bad?"

"Cracked tooth I think, but yeah, tastes bloody horrible" Dozil replied before carrying on eating.

Hudson just sat there with Burkett drinking the weak tea and asking Dozil about his life until he was finished and then pulled open a folder he brought with him, extracting a map of Cylon space and saying "I hate to ask you this but I need to know if you can tell us where the Cylon controlled planets are. I know that right now you probably don't know but right now more than twenty thousand people in this fleet need to know exactly which planets to avoid. We're all depending on you".

Nodding, Dozil took hold of the star map and just sat staring at it for a minute willing something to appear to him but his eyes just kept slipping away from the map and he couldn't seem to focus on any one spot for longer than a couple of seconds. Letting out a sigh and looking up, Dozil said "I couldn't see anything that could be Cylon, I'm sorry".

Shaking his head, Hudson replied "It isn't your fault but did you feel anything, absolutely anything at all?"

"I…I don't know...I felt like I…like I couldn't focus on any star for longer than a second or two. It's going to sound stupid but I felt like my gaze was being pushed away from the map".

Catching onto that statement as soon as he heard it, Hudson quickly postulated "That must be it. That has to be the background aspects of your mind trying to take control. Please, I…we all need you to try harder. We've got children in the fleet and the Cylons have got thousands of Raiders patrolling everywhere except the A-Line. Cylon space is the only direction we can go and only you can help us. Please…just try one more time".

Nodding and feeling the weight of it all pressing down on him, Dozil let out a breath and went back to looking at the map. Straight away it was there with a vengeance trying to force him to look anywhere but the map and it seemed to take all his strength of will not to. Within seconds he was suffering from the worst migraine of his life and his eyes felt like they were burning with tears as he forced them to remain open and to stare at each of the stars dotting the map. He felt like he was being torn apart but all he could think about was that there were children in the fleet, they now had civilians, he just couldn't let them suffer.

His gaze sliding over to another star it seemed like the migraine increased in intensity tenfold and he was struggling to even keep it in his focus as his body started to shake. This star had to mean something but his head, his head felt like it would burst at any second and his eyes felt like they were melting in a furnace as tears started to spread down his face. Calling on everything he had he forced himself to try to remember something, anything about this star, maybe if he could remember something about one star it would all become clear to him or maybe not but he had to at least hope. Right now he was being racked with so much intense pain that all of his skin was itching like he had salty vinegar poured on open wounds and sweat was beading his skin, he couldn't even hear. He had to look away but he forced himself not to. Why this star? He asked himself over and over. What's so important about this star? Fighting his way through the most torturous wormlike barrier he could, like fighting through a crushed diamond wall everything seemed to give way as blood started pouring from his nose then his eyes and finally his ears. It was still there but with one last bone crunching effort, Dozil screamed out his agony to the universe and with a thrust out thumb, gripped tight over the star as he tore apart that part of himself which was totally Cylon allowing the implanted false personality of Dozil to take full control of his mind without the Cylon agent being there anymore.

Collapsing on the floor with Admiral Hudson, Commander Burkett and a couple of marines looking down on him with fear and concern across their faces, Dozil held out the star chart with his thumb pressed to a single star so that they could see the star he meant as with agony and relief prevalent in his voice, choked out "This…Cylon Capital…its Willow". With such relief, Dozil slipped into a heavy sleep.

01/08/55

11:14

Battlestar Praetoria

CIC

"That's it Harleton, fire control is completely clear, the new software is in place, the firewalls are up and all guns are reporting optimal except for the few we need to repair" Specialist Glass informed the lead Network Specialist from the Battlestar Arion.

The news couldn't have come at a better time since Admirals Cain and Hudson were just entering the CIC. Catching the tail end of the conversation they were having as she moved to join them, Harleton heard "…marines are doing a full sweep but everything seems to point at It having made its escape through the air ducts or the crawlspaces. Right now it could be anywhere".

"I want it found, you know just as I do that we can't let even one of those things to have free reign on our ships" Cain replied before seeing Harleton she asked "Specialist, report?"

Saluting, Harleton said "We're green across the Board sir. All systems have been cleared and new software has been installed. We are down a handful of guns and some systems towards the bow are currently damaged but those systems are primarily non-essential to combat operations. We've also got a handful of breaches but they should be fixed by the end of the day. All told sir, we are at 97% operationally".

Glancing around the CIC, a CIC which not 24 hours before had been filled with the deceased bodies of this ship's last crew as had been the corridors and workstations throughout, Cain couldn't help but say "It's hard to believe that this ship survived the attack at Picon in such a pristine condition".

Nodding, Hudson leaned on the Information Management Table saying "It's a shame that her crew didn't survive though. But I suppose we have Lyle to thank for keeping this ship intact, bloody smart bastard. We couldn't have asked for a better ship too, Praetoria's only 8 years old, she's got some of the newest systems on any Battlestar…"

"I thought she was older" Cain replied.

"Her frame is, jumpdrives too to a certain degree but the rest of her was stripped and upgraded 8 years ago just after Adar won his first term. See, you might not have known this, you were what…an XO back then?" Seeing Cain nod, Hudson continued "Well, just before Adar entered office, Whitehall, Corman and Nagala realised that he was going to win the presidency and all those massive improvement projects he was promising back in the Colonies would need money for them, well where was that money going to come from? Us, the fleet. They knew that our budgets were going to be cut so they went all out not building new Battlestars although they did quite a bit of that, not even building new Warstars except for the Shield, but they were smart and had forty five of the oldest Battlestars set for total upgrades as well as 90 support ships. Their reasoning being that those ships names were already on the lists and their actions were less likely to get noticed. The whole thing cost a bomb mind, we could have just built 30 new Battlestars for the cost but that would be too easily noticed".

"Surely the government noticed?"

Smiling, Hudson replied "They did and for about nine months we tied them up in so much red tape and propaganda that they were blind to all. Stuff like we were supposed to be replacing one part say, and then low and behold we found micro-fractures in a neighbouring part and all ships with those parts needed to have them removed. About what…80-90% of the replaced parts were placed on those off the books anchorages. Well we managed to totally upgrade about 30 Battlestars and 40 support ships before we were shut down by Adar. It's a shame really since the Battlestar Galactica was on the list of Battlestars to upgrade but it was too late. The whole thing cost Admiral Whitehall his job and his pension meaning Corman became Fleet Admiral and my predecessor was forced onto the line early meaning my early promotion, and then when the government budget came out we all saw just how severe the defence cutbacks were. It could have been the fleet's fault it was so bad but I doubt it, Adar didn't care about the fleet, he cared about image. But the fleet, the fleet got greedy, we got so used to getting blank cheques every year that even though we knew we couldn't get that anymore and we would have to toe the line, we still decided to give it one more push only this time we pushed way too far with Adar and it blew up in our faces. If it wasn't for what we did then we may have had upwards of a hundred and fifty Battlestars on the line when the Cylons attacked, maybe two hundred albeit with less support ships. If we were smart then we could have got into Adar's head and gotten him to consider expanding Colonial territory into the unexplored regions".

It was commonly known throughout the fleet that the amount of support ships increased with the decrease of Battlestars and the civilians seeing that they now had more ships, had thought the fleet was stronger than ever not realising that it was much weaker since those support ships were both cheaper, less effective and much smaller than a Battlestar. To put it into perspective, a single Valkyrie was worth three destroyers or two heavy cruisers and a single Mercury was worth triple that due to a Battlestars strength coming not just from its size which was able to handle multiple nuclear detonations, its guns which could hit harder than most other ships and due to the increased size of the ship could have more across its surface and the power of its jumpdrive which due to its usually increased size over other ships could handle faster spooling and longer jumps. A Battlestars true strength came in its Vipers and Raptors since no other ship could hold so many and produce such an effective fighter screen allowing a strong defence to be held away from the Colonies thereby reducing the chance of a nuclear strike against their planets.

It helped for a Battlestar to be teamed up with support ships such as a Gunstar, Missilestar or a Destroyer but if it came down to it the whole point in a Battlestars design was that it had been designed to go toe to toe against two or more Basestars with no support on its own side and still come out the victor. Early in the first war when all the fleet had were Gunstars, Marinestars, Destroyers, Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers the Cylons had made a point that those ships were unable to last long against them which meant the Fleet was losing ships faster than they could build them. The whole war would have been lost in the first year if it wasn't for the original 12 Battlestars which were constructed, these Battlestars held the line and were able to drive the Cylon forces away from the Cyrannus system with the help of the support ships long enough for the Fleet to get its feet under itself and start constructing more Battlestars. But by Adar's time the Fleet was facing a series of new problems, stagnation as what was seen as the Old Guard (men like Adama, Nagala and Whitehall) started to enter into retirement taking their memories of war with them, piracy which was becoming more and more prevalent in the colonies meaning that a focus was place on Gunstars which were more cost-effective against the Pirates vessels and something even worse, the government forgetting exactly why Battlestars were constructed and struggling with a crumbling economy.

"I'd always heard rumours but nothing more. Adar still kept pumping money into the fleet though, after all the Arion is new" Cain replied.

"Want to know where three quarters of R&D budget came from? Private investors and countless corporations giving us freebies in the hope that we may have created a contract with them. Our money came from tech that we had developed and then sold and from investing in the stock markets although we always denied that but we still did it and we did it successfully since we had the inside information on who would get the military contracts. Frak, we even set up our own mining ventures under control of retirees. Adar forced us into that way of life but only because we forced his hand. But…" looking around the CIC, Hudson continued "…we did get a few good ships out of it".

Lowering her voice, Cain asked "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Maybe it's because you need to know exactly why we're in this position or maybe it's because I'm becoming an old man and I like telling stories of earlier times. The fact is that there was no right and wrong side back then because at the end of the day, when we had no enemies in our faces, we created ones out of our own government. Learn a simple lesson from our past and that's that you need to know yourself before you know your enemy because even if you think you know your enemies weaknesses and begin to exploit them as we did with Adar, things can always bite you in your arse if the enemy knows your weaknesses and in the end no one wins. Who won out of the fleet and the government when the Cylons attacked?"

Seeming to contemplate this, Cain said "You also need to learn something then. Never have regrets and never second guess yourself. In the end the fleet may not have pushed far enough".

"True. Anyway, any ideas on whom you want commanding the Praetoria and the Orca?"

"Not as yet. I was at first thinking of my XO but he's not ready yet to make the hard decisions...of course that could change if he had his own command but there's few I would trust to replace him although I do have my eye on one person but they did a little more experience in their current role. It would have helped if the Therion had managed to pick up a Commander or two over Leonis. What about you, any suggestions?"

"Yeah, I've been thinking about the Orca, as you know I was carrying a few extra specialists on my crew due to the fact that the Arion is a prototype. One of those people is Colonel Sallis, she used to be second in command on the Forge (R&D shipyard), she has a good head on her shoulders and has been groomed to take over the Forge, but I guess that isn't going to happen anymore. She should be perfect for the Orca".

Nodding, Cain replied "Send over her jacket when you can and I'll have a look over it".

"There's also the Praetoria. We got lucky during the recovery mission at Picon. It seems that a few fleet retirees were picked up. They were meant to be at Galactica's decommissioning ceremony but their ship never arrived to pick them up. There's a Commander second class in the group, he served during the war as a Raptor pilot and then rose to XO before getting his own commission on a couple of support ships after the war. From what I've read in his records, he's a bit unconventional but he has command experience and has fought the Cylons before. All it would take would be reactivating his commission".

Nodding, Cain asked "What's his name?"

Pulling out a folded piece of paper, Hudson answered "Coker Fas…Fasyo…Fa…here" he handed the paper over grumbling "damn hard to pronounce".

01/08/55

13:30

Battlestar Pegasus

Admiral Cain's Office

Looking up from the photographic intelligence gathered by Ghost Squadron while thinking about what Hudson had told to her earlier, Cain called out "Come" while placing the photos back in a folder which she placed into a drawer.

The hatch slid open to admit an old, grey curly haired man with a strong face. He entered with a limp on his right side and seemed to cast his eyes over the collection of antique weapons Cain kept on display before he walked over to her and gave a salute despite himself being retired. Returning the salute while standing, Cain reached out and gave the elderly man a firm handshake saying "It's a pleasure to meet you Commander Fashj…Fazyo…" just like many before her even Cain struggled with Commander (retired) Fasjovik's name.

Smiling a warm smile, he replied "Please, just call me Coker sir. I should have changed that damn name years ago. I was actually surprised you wanted to see me, I figured you'd have plenty on your plate and I'd be transferred to a colony somewhere…that was until I learnt that only Leonis and possibly Virgon are left".

Moving to the drinks cabinet, Cain poured herself a finger of smoky whiskey asking "Whiskey?"

"Please. Finished the last of my flask on the station. No chairs?"

Returning to him and handing him a glass before moving to the other side of the desk, Cain replied "I prefer to do my work standing up, I find that these meetings go a lot easier that way. Things…things have been tough. The Cylons caught us with our pants down, wiped out more than 95% of the fleet and hit every one of the Colonies but not before we took out most of their fleet. The fleet you see here got lucky, the Therion just survived the counterattack at Leonis when the Cylons left them for dead, Pegasus…well we performed a blind jump from Scorpia Fleet Shipyards when we had more than a couple of nukes baring down on us with no defence against them and the Arion is an experimental Battlestar out of R&D which was away from the Colonies at the time running tests on her systems. We had no way of safely getting replacement parts and ammunition since the Cylons may be watching every Anchorage which was why we were running recovery operations at Picon and Scorpia".

"Fair enough, smart move, a bit unconventional mind…but smart. So to what do I owe the pleasure sir? Good stuff by the way, Canceron?" He raised the glass.

"Picon, Locasse to be exact. I understand that you're a retired Commander".

"I am, although it's been ten years since I retired. Before that I commanded the destroyer Farragut and then the old Heavy Cruiser Chancellor before she was retired".

Opening his service record, Cain said "And before that you were a Raptor co-pilot and then a Raptor Pilot during the first war before you were injured and then became Tactical Officer on the Battlestar Sovereign before receiving a battlefield promotion to XO of same ship".

"Yeah, I couldn't remain a pilot after I lost the leg, but as much as I wanted to sit out the war I just couldn't anymore, a damn Husker made sure of that".

Looking up, Cain noticed how he was favouring his right leg but decided to ignore it "I also understand you flew with Admiral William Adama?"

Surprise registered on Coker's face as he asked "Husker? He's an Admiral? Well I'll be damned, he was after those pins for years, he certainly deserves them. I suppose it was a battlefield promotion when the Toasters attacked. Do you know if he went down fighting Admiral?"

Shaking her head, Cain replied "He didn't, not that I know of anyway. You are right that it was a battlefield promotion by then Fleet Admiral Nagala. The last intel we had on the Battlestar Galactica and Admiral Adama was that they had survived the Battle of Leonis and had been ordered by Admiral Nagala to lead a civilian evacuation fleet away from the colonies. They also took with them the last of the Colonial Fleet, about an expanded BSG in size, possibly more if the intel we had on recovery efforts at the Boneyards are anything to go by. We have reason to believe that they're alive but no evidence to support that past the Battle of Leonis as well as no idea where they are most likely to go. I was actually hoping you could help with that since you know Adama".

Taking a sip of the smoky whiskey, Coker thought carefully before saying "He'd likely go coreward since it's too dangerous going into Cylon space and we're about as close to the rim as you can get. Possibly…he'd possibly jump beyond the Prolmar Sector. He should have some general mapping of the area, not much of course since barely any has been conducted, but some…it's remote and then there are the scrolls…"

"…which state that the Galleon Fleet came from that direction. However, Adama doesn't strike me as a believer".

"He isn't, but he also isn't stupid. He knows that our collective history speaks of the tribes arriving from that general direction and while he does believe that we all shared a single planet at some point he doesn't believe in the lords of Kobol as being anything other than fables or maybe the names of houses. But if you want to find Bill, I'd say that gives you your best chance. Is that all Admiral?"

"Not quite. In our recovery mission over Picon we managed to recover the Battlestar Praetoria. Now, while the Praetoria is intact and close to 100% operational, all hands were lost when a Cylon computer Virus infiltrated its networks, networks which we've since disconnected and rebooted with clean software. This means that the Praetoria is now without a crew and while this fleet currently has more than double the personnel we need, we are lacking in command staff with experience". Sliding a box across the table Cain continued "I'm reactivating your commission and giving you command of the Praetoria and I'll be issuing transfer orders by the end of the day for new personnel to crew her. I expect the Praetoria to be at full readiness midday tomorrow at which point the Praetoria will move alongside and dock with the Battlestar Arion and take on 2500 civilians. Right now I have engineers going over her installing more CO2 scrubbers and improving her lifesupport and other facilities ready for this".

Looking down at the box, Coker finally said "I never expected to be given command of a Battlestar. I won't let you down Admiral".

"See that you don't. You will also be needing this…" Cain said as she handed over an intel packet to Coker "Pretty soon we will be executing a series of attacks on a number of Cylon Colonies, I would like to have your input at the meeting tomorrow at 0900. My XO will update you on everything we know as well as getting you security clearance on the Praetoria. One last thing…you are now a Colonial Fleet Officer, start acting like it. Dismissed"

Sharply saluting, Coker took the information packet and the pins and left for the CIC.

01/08/55

15:07

Battlestar Arion

Upper Portside Hanger Bay

Chief Martinez wasn't happy, granted this wasn't unusual for him since he wasn't happy unless he was unhappy but this time things were really bad. If it weren't for the fact that he had more knuckledraggers than a ship the size of Arion should have, the repairs to the Raptors and topside transports which had been deployed to Picon and Scorpia as well as those ones which had been picked up there would have taken days maybe even weeks but thankfully the repairs to the majority of them should only take a couple of days since their armour was designed to withstand heavy impacts although if something was travelling fast enough it would be able to shoot through the Raptor. It certainly helped that the Pegasus had her own collection of Raptors to repair and that by tomorrow the Battlestar Praetoria would be able to chip in once she was fully manned but the mobile shipyard Orca (which was referred to as a Battlestation in that her class carried more medium calibre guns on her than even a Mercury Class Battlestar) would be unable to handle any Raptor repairs until she was not only fully manned but her number two jumpdrive along with the hull breaches permeating the habitable section of the shipyard and the damage done to key systems and shipyard functions had been repaired. Right now it was mainly the centralised sections in the habitable section in a condition where you could live without a suit. It could be weeks or even months before the Orca was back on her feet and it wasn't even known if they could fully repair the starboard dock which was now open to space since that side of the station had taken the worst of the damage. But the fact that they even had a single shipyard now was something that few doubted they would ever have yesterday.

No what really annoyed Martinez was the fracking cold. Just one hour ago, measures to extend the amount of tylium they had available to them were put into place on all ships. One of these measures was the lowering of the temperature on all ships to 12°C, while this wasn't life threatening and wasn't even close to freezing, for someone who had grown up in Kawaii on the equator of Picon it was bloody freezing. Martinez even considered the usual 22°C to be winter back home. This temperature, despite the fact that the welders in the vast hangar put out their own bursts of heat, felt even worse in the vast hangar. In the end though, he would have to get used to it since the fleet had to conserve as much Tylium as they could. He had even heard rumours that the output water from the engine coolant system might even get diverted to the showers towards the rear of the Battlestars which he wasn't totally happy about. It seemed that in the end any comfort he could feel on a Battlestar was being removed, not even his bunk was safe since he was now hot racking with another knuckledragger as were most of the crew since they had excess personnel on board all ships as well as the civilians occupying non-essential areas. In the end though he still partly had a bunk to his name and wasn't one of those unlucky ones forced to give up their dormitory to civilian use.

Removing the cracked canopy from the Raptor he was working on, Martinez had a couple of deck hands take it away to be broken down and reprocessed into a new canopy while he oversaw the installation of a fresh one. Already he had permanently grounded 2 Raptors which were unfit for human use since their jumpdrives had suffered too much damage along with the rest of the ships. But he supposed the fact that they now had enough Vipers and Raptors for every pilot helped even if they were struggling to find enough service bays for them and the extra fact that they had picked up plenty of nuclear and conventional ordnance, food, medical supplies and spare parts really helped. That plus the fact that they had managed to find three vast cargo bays of luxury goods on Dock 12 which had been transferred over to the Orca along with other luxury goods on the civilian vessels meant that there was a good chance that in the coming weeks Admiral Cain may be introducing an economy of sorts in order to keep up morale.

Lighting up a cigarette, he only wished they didn't have to turn down the heat.

01/08/55

16:13

Battlestar Arion

Deck 3, Section 10 (Civilian area 4)

Things had changed dramatically for Arvin Tyler in the past week as they had for countless others in this small fleet. For most of his adult life he had lived as a merchantman with his own ship an Astral Class transport (same type of ship as the Astral Queen although modified for civilian use), the Orion purchased partly with money given to him by his father, partly paid for by his wife (now ex-wife) Sora, and partly by a loan he'd taken out with the First Aquarian Bank. When his father was hospitalised a few years before and needing extra money to pay for his medical treatment, Arvin turned away from the cargo and passenger runs to the outlying mining outposts and the many way stations which littered the Colonial domain and turned to the Black Market. He wouldn't have had to if it weren't for the fact that he was unable to compete with the big shipping companies like Janos-Serea and Hermes Speed which seemed to be scooping up the best contracts leaving only those where you could just afford to make a living to the one-ship merchantmen. To the Black Market he turned as a smuggler of illegal drugs, computer programmes, technology and even stolen goods.

The Black Market was huge with the key players being the Ha'la'tha, the Watermen, the Bloodpack and the Children of Erebus which technically was a terrorist organisation. Arvin was smart, he knew he didn't want to be operating the black market without backup and so made himself known to the Watermen. It helped that he was a native of Aquaria which was where they had originated. By signing on with them he was assured that he had their backup of an excellent lawyer should he ever be caught as well as armed and financial support should he ever be attacked and managed to escape. He was also guaranteed good paying work with only a quarter of the profits going back to the Watermen since they respected his reasons for entering the Black Market. Of course he needed to acquire a new crew but that was easily handled by the Watermen providing him dossiers on trusted individuals.

For three years he had worked his way through the Black Market just keeping his head down and managing his ship and leaving the rest to his contacts in the Watermen and while he was never rich, he could still pay his crews wages, pay for his father's treatment and have money left over for his ship and himself. It was a good life as long as you avoided the military patrols. He'd even managed to get on with his ex-wife Sora who, despite the fact that she was part owner of the Orion and could have challenged Arvin to be Captain, had instead remained as second in command and chief engineer.

Then the Cylons attacked.

Arvin was lucky as he had been on Aquaria visiting his father when the Cylon attack on the Colonies came. With the first of the attacks being centred on Tauron, Scorpia, Picon and Caprica and due to the fact that the Graystones had sent out a warning in the clear two minutes prior to the attack, Arvin had been able to transport his father along with some hastily gathered medication he needed aboard the dropship Sword to his orbiting Orion. They had managed to escape destruction when the Cylons had eventually arrived by jumping to empty space and had drifted for a while, fearful of joining up with a large civilian fleet. When they eventually decided to join with it, it was already too late as the fleet had left. They had drifted for a day unwilling to return to the defeated colonies before they eventually encountered a small civilian fleet of 10 ships at the time. There they waited as a few more ships joined them until the surviving Colonial Fleet under Admiral Cain had found them. Arvin watched as other civilian vessels were evacuated and stripped clean and he had just stood there as he was boarded by two marine fireteams and a handful of Colonial Officers and given just one choice, hand over his ship.

Arvin was no idiot, he was being guaranteed safety aboard the Battlestar Arion, as well as medical treatment for his father and a chance of regaining his former command in the future if he stepped down now. So he did since it turned out that his ship was going to be one of the lucky ones staying intact for now at least. The Battlestar Arion had then docked with the Orion and he and his crew were transferred over while supplies which had been gathered from the other civilian ships were transferred over to the Orion as they would not be needed right now and the Arion's cargo bays were at capacity.

Since then he slept with his former crew and 200 other civilians on the hard decks of a firing range, his head on a bag of clothing with only the warmth of the bodies around him and a rough green cotton blanket. He ate a watery noodle soup which while it had everything he needed to survive in it thanks to the protein blocks used, was usually tepid by the time it got to him. He had to wait in line to shit and piss in the head and if he was lucky could get a 2 minute shower a day. Then there was talk going around that the fleet may start shaving their heads due to the risk of lice. Things were bad and made even worse by the marines at the outer hatches to this area of the ship not allowing them to go any further out of their own area. Just looking around Arvin could tell that unless the Fleet and the Admirals in charge pulled their thumbs out of their collective arses then they would have bigger problems on their hands than the Toasters, after all the Arion alone had more than 7000 civilian refugees crowding her non-essential areas with another 4000 being on the Pegasus. Who knew how long it would be before some of those people could be transferred to the damaged Therion? One thing that Arvin didn't realise was that 2500 civilians from the Arion were to be transferred over to the Praetoria the next day and that once hull repairs were complete to the habitable section of the Orca more civilians would be transferred there.

"She's not here", his ex-wife Sora informed Arvin as she gingerly stepped over a sleeping civilian and towards him.

"Who?" Arvin questioned.

"Who do you think?" Sora replied as she sat down on the cold deck "That bitch you've been screwing for the past 6 months".

"Zeus' cock, can't you leave off for one moment Sora. Teresa's good for me, we're ha…"

"Bullshit, Teresa was just using you to get to the ship and now that she can't get the ship where is she? Probably fracking some marine right now".

Throwing his hands up in the air, Arvin replied "Oh, I don't know, it's a big enough ship and there's so much overcrowding, I don't know…oh wait, she's probably in another section given over to Civilian use. Why the frak do you care, you gave up on us years ago?"

"Is that really what you think? Who stood by you when you found out about Arco? Who supported you and got you an in with the Watermen? Who has always been there for you? You pushed me away, you gave me nothing but grief all those…you know what I'm not doing this anymore…" standing up, Sora looked down at her former husband saying "If you want to waste yourself on a no good gold digger like Teresa Manning, then go for it. But believe me when I say that I'm done, I won't be there to support you when it goes to shit this time, I've fracking gone as far as I'm willing to go and while you stew in here I'll be working for the fleet" seeing the surprise register on Arvin's face, Teresa replied "Yeah, that's right, the fleet's given me a commission as an engineer and is going to be taking on Ronnie and Brukka. If you want to be doing something with your life rather than fracking some whacko gold digger, then act fast because I'm done helping you".

01/08/55

16:30

Battlestar Arion

Lab 1

The Battlestar Arion had been designed to be part of the next generation of Battlestars, bigger, stronger and better equipped. This really showed in her on-board labs. There were 8 Labs of differing sizes and specialities on her from a CBR focus (Chemical, Biological and Radioactive focus) in labs 2 (largest of the CBR labs), 3 and 8, to those with a focus on technology and computers in Labs 1 (largest), 4 and 5 to an all-round focus in labs 6 and 7. The Arion and what was to be her follow up class of vessel if she was approved were designed with an outward focus of exploration support. Over the past few years under President Adar's terms in office, the fear of the Cylons that the 12 Colonies had held for decades had been lost and the Colonials were finally ready to start pushing their boundaries of conquering new planets and mining mineral rich asteroids and moons outside of Colonial space. Despite the Mercury and Jupiter classes having valuable labs (if fewer) of their own, they weren't really dedicated and as advanced as the tech the Arion held was, it was limited in use compared to that held on the Battlestar Arion.

Of course those exploration plans that the Colonial Fleet and the Colonial Government had – while they never came to fruition in anything other than a handful of small civilian vessels with a support ship watching over them and the construction of the Battlestar Arion – plans were in motion to have a combined civilian research, mining, colonisation fleet put together once the Arion had been approved, but that never came as the Cylons had attacked while Arion was running long range tests. Still she had one of the most advanced laboratory setups on any ship the Colonials once possessed.

Entering the Lab with a steaming mug of thick black coffee in his hand, Admiral Hudson saw that the people he asked for were waiting him, standing at attention when he entered. Returning a salute, Hudson waved them to sit down before moving to the front of the room and sitting on the edge of the table. Looking over at what could easily be seen as the best and the brightest in the fleet, if not the entire pre-war Colonial Fleet, he began "Thank you all for coming, what I have to say and what you have to do is quite possibly of the utmost importance to victory against the Cylons. Just one week ago the Cylons attacked us and won leaving just a handful of fleet vessels which escaped the attacks. What we have learnt is that the Cylons now have the ability to look like us and have used that to their advantage in infiltrating the fleet and quite possibly the government prior to the attacks. We suspect that either Doctor Gaius Baltar was working with one of these Cylons when he created the CNP which we have found to hold the backdoor into our systems – a backdoor which as some of you have no doubt seen was responsible for the deaths of seventeen hundred crewmen aboard the Battlestar Praetoria and countless others throughout the Colonial Fleet. We have found the coding to this backdoor to be both highly advanced and incredibly different to Professor Baltar's work and believe that understanding the coding involved as well as the recorded coding of the Cylon Virus will allow us a greater understanding of any vulnerabilities that the Cylons may possess".

Taking a sip of the Coffee, Hudson continued "The Battlestar Therion was also able to recover examples of Cylon technology in the battle site over Leonis including damaged Raiders – some of which are intact but shutdown – damaged heavy raiders, parts to the new Cylon Centurions along with their weapons, and parts to Cylon Basestars although these are highly limited. One thing we have found is that these new form of Cylons have a high degree of biological components in their makeup well beyond anything we have seen in the colonies except for the most advanced research at CORA which is why I have asked for a number of doctors and surgeons to provide what help they can when not needed elsewhere".

Looking down at a list in front of him, Hudson continued "We will also be providing blood, skin and hair samples from captured and deceased Cylon Infiltrators as well as bone marrow and CT scans. To date we currently know of six Cylon Infiltration models and suspect that one of these which has went under the names of Valerie Gresh, Linn Xu and Lisa Kidair is currently serving on the Battlestar Galactica under the name of Sharon Valerii but currently have no way to warn them of the fact. Both myself, Admiral Cain and Commander Burkett suspect that some of these Infiltration models may be sleeper agents waiting for some kind of activation signal and we currently have in our possession a Model Two (he held up a photo of Gina Inviere, not realising that the Cylons categorised her as a Model Six. The Wolfpack categorised her as a Model Two because she was the second Infiltrator they discovered among them) who we understand is fully aware of its nature and we have a Model One (he held up a photo of Dozil not realising that the Cylons categorised him as a Two) which we believe to be a sleeper who for some reason wasn't activated. For those of you studying the Cylon Infiltrators your job will be to work out if there is any test we can do in order to discover if there are any more in the fleet, to see if we can create some form of selective Biological Weapon to target only the Cylon Infiltrators and to work out their strengths and any weaknesses".

Taking another sip of Coffee as some of the specialists and crewmen were whispering among themselves, Hudson continued "Furthermore we have in our possession a number of Cylon devices which have been disguised as speakers which we discovered in our CIC's along with one of a slightly varying design in the possession of the Model Two (Six). In these devices, invisible to the naked eye we have found certain micro-circuitry and while we don't know what these devices do, we know that they must be important for the Cylons to have them placed in such an important part of our ships. While we don't know what they do, we suspect that they may be some form of Espionage device designed to gather information, be a tracking device or some form of wireless. We just don't know at this point, that's for some of you to find out. You will each be divided into groups based on your expertise and your jobs will be to work out what we don't know as well as countermeasures to the Cylons and their technology and any that we could reverse engineer to benefit the Fleet. I will say again that your jobs are of the utmost importance to this Fleets survivability and may be key to victory over the Cylons. Whatever you need you will get. You are under no circumstances to discuss with anything of what you discover to anybody outside of these labs and this group without prior approval, anybody who does will face a court martial and the punishment which comes with it".

Standing and draining the last of the Coffee, Hudson announced "I will leave you all in the capable hands of Colonel Fielding. Good luck and bring this fleet victory".

01/08/55

18:00

Battlestar Pegasus

War Room

Standing quietly going over the many reports that she was just barely keeping on top off, most of them dealing with transfers to the Battlestar Praetoria and the Mobile Shipyard Orca as well as the recruitment of civilians with valuable skills into the fleet, Admiral Cain allowed her senior fleet officers to enter with barely a nod at their attendance just allowing them to congregate and talk among themselves. When six o'clock came she signed off on one more report before putting them all aside and signalling to one of the marines to secure the room.

"I know you have all had a long day, we've all had a lot of work mount up over the past week but this meeting shouldn't take long and will be focused on just what we have and planning for our counter-attack against the Cylons. We can all rest and strengthen ourselves once the Cylons have suffered as they have made us suffer".

"Never a true word was said Admiral" Colonel Fisk called out. While Cain saw Fisk as a competent officer and someone who would follow her orders to the letter for want of a backbone she hadn't grown to fully trust the man or even like him. To Cain he represented a man barely worth the term but she also understood that she could count on his support if only because he lacked the courage to go against her and she knew he had valuable experience but he lacked the ability to be an effective Commander in her eyes.

Nodding at him, Cain handed a stack of identical folders to a marine private to hand out saying "For those of you who don't know I have reactivated the commission of Commander…Coker" this time she was being carefully by not saying his surname receiving a smile from Coker in return "…and have assigned him command of the Battlestar Praetoria. Commander Coker served during the first war as both a pilot and then XO on the Battlestar Sovereign and has since commanded a couple of escort ships before retiring. As to the Orca I've promoted Colonel Sallis to Commander and placed her in charge of repairing the shipyard and commanding her once complete. Before she was assigned to the Arion as part of her trials, Commander Sallis was XO of the Forge Shipyard and Admiral Hudson tells me she was trained to one day take over operation of the Forge so her skillset should be easily transferrable to the Orca".

Greetings and congratulations were passed to those two before Admiral Cain continued "Okay, so onto business, what do we have?" Reading from the bullet pointed list in front of her, Cain answered "Right now we have enough Tylium to support 12-15 months of travel with a conservative one jump per day policy and current restrictions on life support and a handful of other measures being put into place thanks to the still surviving plentiful reserves on the Orca and the fact that the Praetoria was fully topped off on everything while she was at anchor. During recovery efforts at Scopia and Picon our crews managed to recover 136 twenty-five megaton nuclear ship-to-ship missiles and a further 28 in the fifty megaton range meaning we can reload our launchers and attached bunkers. This is in addition to the 271 Raptor deployable tactical nuclear missiles which measure between 50 and 250 kilotons. Furthermore we have managed to recover in excess of 300 conventional ship-to-ship warheads and almost 2000 conventional raptor and viper deployable warheads of varying ranges and the ingredients to make more if necessary".

"Frak me. How the hell did we score that many?" Coker asked.

"We simply hit two of the largest anchorages and shipyards for our resupply. Picon was the largest construction ever built, you can blast at it with a hundred nuclear missiles as the Cylons so effectively did but plenty of ordnance bunkers will still survive. Plus more than half of what was recovered was either on the Orca or on Dock…12 which survived the attack almost fully intact" Admiral Cain replied before continuing "In addition to missiles we have also recovered enough ammunition and raw ingredients to produce our own to allow us six years of warfare without resupply if we are smart and choose our battles. However, some of that ammunition is going to have to be broken down over the coming weeks since we can't allow the ingredients to settle for so long and a concern has been brought to my attention that some of that ammunition will be irradiated which is why I'm currently having the crates checked with Geiger counters. Storage is of course a major concern which is why I am transferring as much of the excess as possible over to the Orca where one of the focal points for repairs will be the damaged ordnance bunkers as well as creating new ones within a handful of central cargo bays" Cain looked towards the newly minted Commander Sallis.

"It shouldn't take much work if we use our stored outer hull armour plating to create a box in those cargo bays and rig up a safe pressure release for if they do blow so that we can direct the explosion away from critical areas, but we're looking at maybe a week or two's work if we're patching the holes in the outer hull and fixing the number one ftl at the same time with all the manpower you can spare, this would mean taking away personnel from the repairs to the Battlestar Therion but it shouldn't be too many and shouldn't set back repairs to the Therion by more than a week. It would help reassure me if you kept us out of any engagements for the foreseeable future until those bunkers are built, I don't feel like getting blown sky high by loose ammunition being hit with an inbound explosive or a ship based fire. You may also be pleased to note that we can use a stopgap measure to patch a lot of the smaller holes to our hull with the harmonic resin but will need to keep the pressure at a maximum of 50% in those areas until we can fully repair the hull. In essence it's like stitching a wound where the stitches can be torn" Commander Sallis put in while writing down notes for what she would need.

"Don't worry Commander, I don't have any wish to lose the Orca, you've got the most valuable command in the fleet and I'll be sending you every man we can spare once this meeting is over to "stitch" those holes, we need those sections at least partially habitable as soon as possible".

Looking down the list Cain announced "Food is always going to be a concern but right now with the extra picked up at Scorpia and Picon as well as that on Orca and held by the Praetoria which I should add was fully stocked on everything, we currently have enough to last us between 22 and 26 months with tough rationing in effect depending on how much is irradiated and how soon we can get the fresh food stocks preserved however the majority of that food is long life rations and protein blocks. In addition we have been able to increase our medical supplies and gather more medical equipment that we now have enough to build four more large life stations if we have to and due to the increased numbers of civilians and fleet personnel, it is something that we have to do but we can hold off for a while just yet. The extra medical supplies also mean that we can finally start fully treating those crewmembers with advanced radiation poisoning, we've already lost hundreds to it and I don't wish to lose any more. I'm also already getting reports of illnesses rapidly spreading throughout the civilian populations on my own ship, if it wasn't for decontamination procedures being in effect as well as biological containment rules being put in place then my own crew would have caught the illnesses plaguing the refugees. I'm hereby ordering all of you to follow those same procedures", the procedures that Cain meant was an isolation of the airducts in the civilian sections from the rest of the ship as well as airlocks with a CBR set up being put in place at the entrances to those sections given over to civilian use as well as full CBR kit being worn by the marines and doctors who came into contact with the civilians until such time that the major illnesses were fully identified and inoculations could be given to the crew with a major hope being that the medical supplies they had procured held those inoculations since they didn't have large enough facilities to produce their own in vast quantities.

"It's to be expected really. We can't hold so many people in such close quarters without illnesses spreading like wildfire" Commander Burkett replied.

"Which was why I put those decontamination procedures into effect, however it does mean that if those viruses break quarantine before we get a handle on them then we could have major outbreaks among our crews but we can't afford to have our crews be sick right now. In addition to everything else we have also acquired a substantial number of spare parts and armour plating which is currently being transferred to the Orca for storage. Some of this armour will eventually go on to replace the first hundred metres or so of the Battlestar Praetoria's forward armour belt which isn't as thick as it should be due to it being melted down by a nuclear blast wave and some will be dedicated to repairing the Orca. Furthermore while we were short on fully functioning planes, it seems that we now have too many to be deployed in a given time since we gathered more than three hundred Vipers and 200 Raptors which is why those that we are unable to hold I'm having mothballed on the Orca…"

"If we can fully repair the damaged starboard hangar on the Orca we should be able to add another two squadrons to the lists, sir. I'm currently waiting on a full damage assessment, you should expect it within a few days Admiral. I just can't risk putting them into full use until it's cleared. The portside hangar is however 90% active but we've had to close off a section due to a hull breach. The hull breach is small so we should have a patch in place by tomorrow then we'll fully repair it later" Commander Sallis added.

Nodding, Cain looked at her sheet before saying "Anyway we've also gathered an extra 27 atmospheric transports however due to the fact that we can't clog up our landing decks these transports are going to stay docked to the outside of the Orca. Finally, we have managed to build up a sizeable quantity of luxury goods from both the Civilian fleet and our recovery effort which should help improve morale since right now we essentially have no economy and our crew are going without any kind of monetary benefit for their hard work through these trying times. Right now I am placing all of these goods on lockdown until after we have managed to put together an adequate economy which I'm planning to do either over the coming week or next week. One thing should have become clear and that is that our fortunes seemed to have reversed only now we face new problems like a lack of space and fixing the Orca but we can do this. So are there any questions before we continue?"

Seeing his chance, Coker asked "Just one, Colonel Belsen was kind enough to show me the data gathered on the attacks and this has been bugging me for a few hours now" getting a nod from Cain to continue, Coker said "The intel gathered from Leonis High Command and the Colonial Fleet transmissions stated that the civilian fleet which was put together as an evacuation fleet held between 300 and 500 civilian ships, there wasn't an exact number. Plenty of ships would have been lost when the shipyards and colonies were attacked, personally I would put that number at somewhere around three thousand ships along with a possible two thousand more taken out by the Cylons between Colonies since we've already picked up over a thousand emergency beacons throughout Colonial space. Would you all agree that the Colonies held about 8000 registered civilian ships of all classes at the time of the attacks?" Getting nods from the others gathered around the table, all of whom were wondering what he was getting at, Coker continued "Well, my question is this, where the hell are the other two to three thousand civilian ships, because there is no way the Toasters have taken them all out in just a week? Try as they might they couldn't even do that during the opening of the first war and we had little to stop them from doing so when they took control of our Basestars".

All around the table expressions were dawning on everybody's faces as they realised that they should have been asking that same question long ago. Nobody had an answer after all Coker was right in his maths. All civilian ships had been designed with an emergency beacon which was designed to survive even a nuclear strike and would automatically activate if a ship lost power or was destroyed. Granted this beacon could be deactivated but they had only picked up the signals of 1200+ beacons and that was a pretty large shortfall from the 5000 beacons they should have been hearing. Plus, three thousand ships don't just vanish, but where they were no one at this table could answer.

"Nobody knows then? I've also had a look at the Colonial Fleet ships and while I've picked the disaster beacons of pretty much every Battlestar minus those we know escaped with Admiral Adama there are some Battlestars which are missing, that's no disaster beacons, no wireless transmission, absolutely nothing. They are the Battlestars Storm, Opus, Pythia, Enterprise, Theseus and the Neleus".

Admiral Cain and the others around the table just looked at Commander Coker for a long time before Admiral Cain asked "You are sure that there has been nothing on these Battlestars?"

"I'm sure, I've spent the last few hours going over the intelligence gathered on Cylon Space and that gathered by the Fleet before it fell and our own fleet. While they could have been lost, their beacons activated and we are just waiting for the signals to reach us, unless every one of these ships has been lost in the past 2 days then we should have picked up something either here or at Picon and Scorpia from before then or even when you first arrived back in the colonies and sent out recon raptors in all directions unless they are outside of Colonial space".

Seeing Admiral Hudson scribbling something down and looking deep in thought, Cain asked "Do you have a theory Admiral?"

Looking up, Hudson answered "Possibly. Commander Coker is right in that they could have been outside of Colonial space but I can't remember any of those ships being on a deployment like that except maybe the Theseus and the Neleus which I'm pretty sure were on border patrol at the time…I'm pretty sure they would have been in the same region as one another I'll have to check. But one thing I do know is that the Columbia 2 class Storm and Pythia as well as the Valkyrie Class Opus were all without networks and I'm pretty sure I remember Commander Cena kicking up a fuss and limiting the networks on the Mercury Class Enterprise a few years ago when a trip in his DRADIS caused everything to shutdown".

"So four ships with only the limited networks needed to run them" Commander Burkett put in before saying "It can't be a coincidence that all four of those ships are missing then. The Cylons could have attempted to take them out, but then why haven't we heard from them. What about the two Sobeks (Theseus and Neleus)?"

"I'm pretty sure they have limited networks, if I remember correctly the wireless arrays and DRADIS were kept out of the loop but I will have to check if they had the CNP installed but I don't think they were scheduled for another few months. Again I will have to check this out".

Nodding, Commander Coker pulled out another sheet and asked "Admirals, I think I have a theory, do you know if Admiral Nagala was creating another fleet, a ghost fleet? I ask this because in the tenth year of the first war I encountered a fleet of Colonial ships which had been reported destroyed but were lying in wait ready for a major counter-offensive against the Cylons".

"Not to my knowledge, but even if he was, I would think he would put together more than six Battlestars if he could and that is if he wasn't going to dedicate them to the counter-attack at Leonis. If he kept them in reserve then he should have had enough to ships to have hit back against the Cylon reinforcements" Admiral Cain replied.

"Which brings me to this…" Coker replied as he slid a sheet of paper across the table to Admiral Cain.

Picking it up, Admiral Cain read down the list of names on it before asking "What's this?"

"Support ships which have also went dark. There's 26 in total and they weren't at any of the battle sites, they're just gone. You'll notice that there are two Flattops and three tylium refineries on the list. In my opinion unless they are with Admiral Adama it's a ghost fleet waiting for an opportune moment to strike back against the Cylons or evacuating with those thousands of civilian ships. Some wireless transmissions I read from Virgon fleet command indicate that even they didn't know where those ships were but had suspected that they had been lost to the Cylons but didn't have the resources to follow up on them apart from sending Raptors to their last known locations which didn't bear fruit".

Looking back up at Coker, Admiral Cain announced "I think I made the right decision reactivating your commission Commander. You've just noticed something that we hadn't. Colonel Belsen, I want you to put together a team to go over all the comm traffic from these ships and the colonial fleet up until their disappearance. I want to know exactly where they are" Colonel Belsen nodded

Closing the folder in front of her, Cain signalled to the marine private to start handing out another set of folders while she drank from her cup of coffee before saying "Well there isn't much we can do about those missing ships right now so we should turn to matters at hand, namely the intelligence we have gathered on the Cylons, but first I understand that Colonel Hudson has gathered some more intelligence on the Cylons".

Taking her cue, Lucy punched up a map of colonial space saying "Towards the end of the recovery efforts at Scorpia we managed to pick up a series of high powered Cylon signals originating from one source somewhere between Helios Beta and Helios Gamma. While at the edges of the Shipyard debris field we managed to plot the target location to within a few hundred thousand kilometres but decided to proceed no further due to existing orders of maintaining low visibility. Upon our return to the fleet I informed Admiral Cain of the discovery as well as my own thoughts on what it could be…"

"And what did you think it could be?" Commander Burkett asked.

Looking at him, Lucy answered "In short…a trap. Due to the high energy output as well as the increased Cylon signals it would seem obvious that the object is a Cylon Relay and while we do use…did use our own relays they were mainly focused towards ship emergencies due to the fact that we don't have ftl communication". What Lucy meant was that if a ship was in distress and unable to jump then it would send out a wireless burst travelling at the speed of light which could take as long as a few hours to reach the closest relay, once there a docked Raptor under the purview of the Civil Aviation Authority would jump to the closest military base with the last known location of the distressed ship and a search and rescue party of either civilian or military origin would jump to that last location.

"Which is why you believe it to be a trap" her brother Admiral Hudson suggested.

"Yes sir. We've seen that the Cylons possess plenty of Raiders which could just as easily jump any orders or communications from their starting location to their target as we do with Raptors and Runners. It's simple and it's more reliable in that we would have to capture the Raider in order to intercept any communication. Admiral Cain then ordered out a scouting mission and these images were gathered…" Lucy started handing out a number of photos of the relay. "As you can see the relay is guarded by no more than a squadron of Raiders and has very little in the way of defences".

Admiral Cain picked things up from here by saying "Normally I would see this as a ripe target, something easy but high value. But looking at it and with Colonel Hudson's reasoning it seems too easy. However we can't risk letting this target go due to the fact that it may be even more important to the Cylons than we realise…"

"…and the lack of defences would be a ruse designed to make us think that it was low value or a trap just like we're doing right now" Coker added seeing the reasoning behind it.

"It's too risky, if we jump in we could lose the fleet. The Cylons could have fifty Basestars at the ready to pounce on us the moment we arrive" Admiral Hudson disagreed.

"Which is why we don't jump in the fleet" his own Sister replied before continuing "One…maybe two Raptors with an assault loadout and a nuclear package jump in, fire from a hundred metres of the station and jump out within seconds of arrival".

Shaking his head, Coker said "Too dangerous, you would barely have enough time to bug out from that range unless you had the nukes set on a timer and not contact detonation and even then you would have to survive the Raiders, but there is another way similar to that if you are prepared to lose a Raptor or two…" getting a nod to continue Coker said "an unmanned Raptor with either everything on automatic or on a timer. The Raptor jumps in under power, a timer launches all but a handful of the nukes while the Raptor continues onwards to the target with a couple of backup nukes armed and in the tubes in case the others are destroyed and then within a few seconds of launch the missiles detonate. Boom".

"We've certainly got Raptors unfit for human use due to damage sustained. We were going to use them for spare parts but it wouldn't take more than a few hours to both repair them to what we need and set everything up" Commander Sallis added.

Thinking on it, Admiral Cain asked "Are you all in agreement with this plan?" Seeing everyone nod, Cain continued "Very well, Admiral Hudson I want you to prepare two Raptors for the mission and have them transferred over to the Orca midday tomorrow. The attack will commence at the same time as Operation Warhammer".

"Yes sir".

"Now Operation Warhammer and the intelligence that Ghost Squadron have gathered…" Cain announced before opening a folder and then tapping on a series of buttons on a console built into the vast under lit table, Admiral Cain brought the glass topped table to life with a star chart of what was seen as Cylon controlled space with the straight Armistice Line border running along her side of the table. "As you all know, at the same time that recovery efforts were being deployed to Picon and Scorpia I also dispatched Ghost Squadron in their Stealth Raptors beyond the A-Line and into Cylon Controlled space. For those of you that don't know a Stealth Raptor has one of the most advanced jump drives and computer setups conceived for a ship of its size and is able to make maximum jumps of up to 25 Lightyears before hitting its red line. We deemed it necessary beforehand to just skip the first forty lightyears of Cylon space since if the Cylons had anything closer than that then we would have found out long ago whether by picking up any Cylon signals or seeing something with the Cyclops array and don't believe that we didn't try, we've recorded old battles out there whose light has finally reached us after decades but nothing on the Cylons past the war. So, Ghost Squadron's first jumps put them at an average of 15 lightyears into Cylon space depending on where they were jumping. It seems that we were right in our assumptions as, once they were that deep into Cylon space, the various Stealth Raptors started to pick up weak Cylon transmission. Over the course of the next 30 hours each of these Raptors was able to pinpoint the locations to what we believe are the majority of Cylon Controlled Installations and Colonies before the Raptors reached their points of no return and were forced to jump back to the rendezvous point".

Tapping another button on the table, Cain highlighted the various locations and planets discovered. In total there were 10 green stars representing locations with what were seen as the Cylons main planets with heavy industry groundside, orbital shipyards and cities, 14 blue stars representing locations which were seen as mining locations, 13 Yellow Stars representing locations which held bases of unknown operation and 15 purple stars representing possible military bases. Each of the assembled leaders and crewmembers looked down in astonishment at the representation of Cylon space before them since it was hard to believe just what the Cylons had managed to accomplish in just 40 years or possibly even fifty years if they had started this entire venture when they first rebelled. What was even more astonishing to them all was that just 14 Stealth Raptors had managed to gather so much intel in just 30 hours.

Looking up at each of the assembled group, Admiral Cain announced "We have also pinpointed the most probable location for the Cylons Capital World" as she pressed another button bringing to life a large red circle over another black star.

Turning to her, Fleet Air Marshal Colonel Lucy Hudson asked "How can you be so sure that's the Capital and not one of the other green stars?"

Looking at Admiral Hudson, Cain answered "Care to explain Admiral, after all we have you to thank for the intel".

"Earlier this morning with the help of Commander Burkett I…debriefed the Cylon Infiltrator being held on the Battlestar Therion, Lieutenant Dozil Pennit. Both myself, Admiral Cain and Commander Burkett believed that Dozil was a sleeper agent with mental blocks in place which restricted his access to any Cylon knowledge in his mind unless activated. Traditional interrogation methods had failed to release any of this information so the only way left was to get Dozil to break the block himself. It helped that even though he knew he was of Cylon origin, he still saw himself as Colonial and even more importantly wanted to be Colonial and help us. We were only able to break his block by getting him to connect with us and providing him with a star map of colonial space…"

"What, you mean one with all our gathered intel on?" Commander Coker asked.

Shaking his head, Hudson replied "No, it was a blank star map, we understand that there is a remote possibility that the other Cylons can see and hear what he sees and hears. We gave him the map saying that we had no other option but to escape through Cylon space but needed to know which planets to avoid. It took time and Dozil suffered a major seizure when we assume he broke through a mental block and was able to point out one star saying that it was the Cylon Capital and it's called Willow. Soon afterwards he entered into a coma but has since come stabilised and is currently resting. We cross referenced the star he pointed out to the intelligence gathered by Ghost Squadron and found that it matched up. We then did a little research into what we know about the Cylons in order to work out why Dozil called it Willow and have found that it is most likely named after a Sister Clarice Willow. For those of you who don't know, Clarice Willow was a terrorist leader in the old Soldiers of The One, the armed wing of a monotheistic religious cult which was active just before the first war. From the historical Intel we discovered that Clarice Willow was suspected of being the one who led the Cylon revolt or uprising, whatever you want to call it. From what I could tell from the Intel she was like a prophet to the Cylons. Essentially if the Cylons have named a planet Willow, then that planet is a high value world in their opinion".

"So we have the "prettily named" Cylon Capital and their main planets" Lieutenant Shaw announced before asking "When do we strike back and where?"

"I want to make the Cylons suffer, I want to slow down their manufacturing and hit them where it hurts. We could hit their mining facilities slowing down their war machine, they should be lightly defended but…were we to take out their mining facilities then they could just as easily move in on our own and we don't know how long it would take them to rebuild those facilities we destroy. For all we know they could have hundreds of mothballed mining ships we know nothing about, after all, we did".

"I agree" Admiral Hudson supported her "If the Cylons have been able to do so much in forty years then it strikes me that they must be able to set up new mining facilities at a rapid pace, most likely three or four times faster than we could since the mechanical Cylons have no need to rest. Imagine how long it will take them to rebuild their fleet if the biological components their ships are made of grow as fast as they work, we need to throw a spanner in the works before it's too late. I'd advise against hitting any of the military facilities since while they may appear as high value targets, they aren't the highest value targets when you consider that their main reason for being would be if the Colonies had invaded their space first".

"I know. If we really want to slow down the Cylons and help Leonis in the process then we need to level the playing field and take out their main planets with their heavy industry and possibly hit their shipyards in the process but…right now I'm planning on leaving those shipyards alone due to their possible defences. We need to be able to hit them as hard as possible in as short a time as possible since we are too few to hang around and get into a protracted fight" Cain replied. "One plan I have in mind is for the Battlestars Pegasus, Arion, Therion and Praetoria to all hit Willow at the same time with a nuclear strike. We will then split the fleet up with the Battlestars Arion and Therion consecutively hitting five of the Cylons primary colonies while at the same time the Pegasus and the Praetoria will hit the other five before we both jump out to a set of rendezvous coordinates".

Shaking his head, Admiral Hudson put in "It wouldn't work, the recon photos and DRADIS logs showed that the Cylons possess Satellite Defences and plenty of Raiders as well as the damaged Basestars at dock. They'd be all over us within maybe two jumps. At most we could hit maybe five of these primary colonies before calling it a day but only with total fleet coverage".

Looking at Admiral Cain, Lieutenant Shaw saw that Cain wasn't phased in the slightest, in fact it seemed like she had expected this kind of remark, that's when Kendra realised something, "That wasn't your total plan was it Admiral? You've got a way to beat the bastards at their own game".

"I believe I do. Noah, the Cylons won't be all over us if they can't catch us" Admiral Cain announced with a smile spreading across her face.

Creasing his forehead, Admiral Hudson asked "So we jump in, launch our nukes and jump back out within what…twenty seconds? The jump drives can't handle more than two jumps in a row like that…they need a decent down time between jumps and the Therion's jump drive isn't exactly in the best condition".

"I know, by the book the jump drives need a cool down of 12 minutes to be precise, but we could possibly push that to five minutes if we really needed to even with the damage sustained to the Therion" Cain replied.

Butting in, Colonel Belsen said "We can't go toe to toe with the Cylons for five minutes at a time. As soon as we jump in the Cylons are going to be launching Raiders and missiles at us while dispatching more Raiders to gather up the rest of their fleet that they've got in their own space. Those reinforcements would likely arrive within two minutes. Say we survive two attacks, on the third one we are going to start losing…"

"He's right" Lucy Hudson agreed "We can field about 300 to 400 Vipers at a time but by the time they all launch we would have to recall them all, that's going to push our jump out to 7 to 10 minutes even if you want the five minute jumps. By then there could be thousands of raiders all over us and there is no way we can put out a strong enough flak screen since the Therion is down 40% of her point defences and your own ship is down about ten percent".

Seeing that Cain was nodding along as if she already knew all this, Coker looked towards Lieutenant Shaw who seemed to be waiting for something and staring at Admiral Cain, turning towards Cain he locked eyes with her and could just feel the calm radiating off her as pretty much everyone in the room was discussing why this counter-attack couldn't work. Coker couldn't quite explain it but he just knew that Cain had the winning hand, she had some trick up her sleeve that would give them what they needed. Speaking up but not shouting, Coker said "I think we should all just listen to what the Admiral's plan is before we say anything because I'm pretty sure she has something different in mind to what we expect. Just think of how well her last plan to recover equipment from the battle sites worked. Do you agree Lieutenant Shaw?" he asked knowing that he would have backup in her.

"I do" Kendra replied.

Everyone seemed to calm down and turned back towards the Admiral as she spoke, "Thank you for that Commander, Lieutenant. Now, you are all right, if we do it that way we will fall which is why we won't be launching many Vipers, only as many as our defence necessitates. However we will be launching Assault Raptors which will perform a series of nuclear strikes on the other side of the planets we are attacking before jumping out and rearming at the next planet. But I will get to that later". Seeing that the others around the table were wanting to input why this was a bad idea but unwilling to speak yet, Cain finally decided to drop what would be the stroke of genius to the entire plan, "There is only one way we can get in and out without the Cylons destroying us…we speed up. You all know that our average cruising speed between planets is around 30,000,000mph, roughly 4.5% the speed of light. What if we accelerate to about ten times that speed?"

Everyone seemed to be sat in shock at what Admiral Cain was suggesting. "It could work…" Admiral Hudson dared to venture while thinking about what would be involved "Of course any head on collision with a nuclear missile at that speed then we can kiss our arses goodbye…we'll have to pray to the lords we don't get hit and launch control is going to have to be on a precise timer since we'll be past their planets before we even realise it. Even going too close to a planet's gravity well at that speed could rip our hulls off…"

"If we were to do this then I think we should do it right", Commander Burkett put in "45% is too much, the risks are too great at that speed. We shouldn't travel at more than 30-35% at the most. One method of attack would be to jump in within two minutes distance of the planet in question in a head-on approach firing from our bow batteries at any ground targets with all flak firing towards our bow before altering our course to bring us sweeping around the planet firing our missiles on a timer at pre-selected ground locations before accelerating from the planet and jumping either to the next planet or a midpoint. We'll also have to make sure that we steer clear of orbital structures which could house any raiders or defences but as long as we aren't heading towards them we should be out of range by the time they fire".

"We're going to need sets of pre-programmed jump co-ordinates along with backups spread along our course beforehand for each planet since we'll be travelling so fast that we won't have time to recalculate them if our jump drives are slow to recharge or are damaged" Admiral Hudson announced. When you were travelling at normal sublight cruising speeds you had to recalculate your jumps every hour in order to compensate for stellar drift and your own point of origin otherwise your destination could change by a large margin.

"We will, I'm going to be dispatching Ghost Squadron to our target systems to calculate four jump points at one light minute intervals with their targets being our next planet. A fifth Jump point at ten light minutes will also be calculated at each site, only this one will lead to the middle of nowhere in case things go wrong and we have to abort. Ghost Squadron will have to plot in the planet's movements and gravity-well precisely for each jump both in their own system and the target system which could prove tricky but we do already have their orbital patterns" Cain replied.

"You mentioned an Assault Raptor Strike Admiral" Colonel Lucy Hudson spoke up.

"I did. While the Battlestars strike the target planets from one side, a squadron of Assault Raptors having launched from the Battlestars and having retained their speed will be launching a nuclear strike either on the other side of the target planet or at targets of interest that the Battlestars are unable to hit like the shipyards. The Raptors are then to land before we jump. At the next target site while those Raptors launchers are being replenished another squadron of Assault Raptors will be launched and vice versa. We can hammer out all the details later".

"How long will our Jump Drives have to cool down?" Burkett asked.

Looking at her notes, Cain replied "approximately 7 minutes for our first jump point and I always want to make that first jump point, I don't want to be hanging around. When the Cylons attacked the Colonies they were too slow and lost hundreds of ships because of this, we won't make the same mistake they did. At the speed we will be travelling we should have about three minutes between backup jump points and a fifteen minute gap between our last backup jump point and our fallback jump point. If all goes off without a hitch then we could hit every one of their main colonies in 40 minutes".

Highlighting Willow, Cain brought up some recon images taken of the planet saying "The reason why I want all four Battlestars to hit Willow apart from its importance as the capital, is that it's got the largest manufacturing centres out of all their planets that we've seen and our attack here can be different. Essentially, we can use the planet against the Cylons". Bringing up a series of images on a large screen, Cain announced "The Cylons main form of power generation on Willow appears to be geothermal and they have built their largest manufacturing centre near to a stable supervolcanoe. We are going to hit that supervolcanoe in such a way that we will cause it to erupt, doing that should wipe out the closest manufacturing centre and add to the nuclear fallout as well as possibly shaking any fault lines it's near causing further Kobolquakes. One thing that I should mention is that I don't want to totally destroy these planets, if we did then the Cylons would just pack up and move their operation elsewhere and we would have to go looking again. Instead I want to destroy as much of their infrastructure and facilities as we can to slow down their war machine without going too far. I want to do that everywhere except at Willow, with Willow I want them to suffer".

"Remind me never to piss you off sir" Commander Coker joked, "Onto the fine details then?"

Shaking her head, Cain replied "We'll deal with the fine details tomorrow once we get the jump coordinates primarily because there is another reason I am sending out Ghost Squadron". Bringing up another series of photos on the wall screen while a marine handed out another folder, Cain pressed another button on the table's console bringing up another red highlighted star.

Seeing the new star, Admiral Hudson asked "Another Cylon Colony?"

"No, a possible target of interest to us. I and Captain Chen believe we have found a possible Prisoner of War camp. The planet it's on has a breathable atmosphere, a tough but survivable climate similar to the Northern Wastes of Gemenon and seems to be lightly populated with Cylons only possessing a handful of small towns, cities and bases spread out over the planet. The planet also seems to be lightly defended by a handful of outdated orbital defence satellites of the Catapult 4 class which if we do decide to do something should be easily taken out. On the ground, we are not sure but we believe there to be 2 medium sized military bases within a hundred miles of the camp. A Stealth Raptor will be tasked with verifying if it is a POW camp. If it is then while we are hitting the Cylon Colonies, the Orca which will be in a safe location along with the civilian ships will launch a Raptor based marine assault on the camp and once the local resistance has been pushed back an evacuation force of our civilian ships and atmospheric transports will make an inter-atmo jump landing at the camp. I can't really say more right now since it isn't definite if this is a functioning camp or something else entirely except that based on its size we believe that it either holds or can hold up to 12000 prisoners. But I suppose we will find out tomorrow".

01/08/55

23:56

Cylon Territorial Space

Star System CX-4135-ER14-6

Unknown Planet – Cylon name is Charris

A major storm was starting to sweep across the sunlit face of the planet below them. Bursts of blue light shattered among the thick black churning clouds as bolts of lightning crashed through the cloud cover. Pretty soon this sweeping storm would be passing over the western part of the continent below them and blocking out all sight of the ground below but right now Jorianne Landry and Myer Castall had an unobstructed view of the target sight. Hanging above the harsh but survivable world below them in their darkened Stealth Raptor, the husband and wife Ghost Squadron pilots captured image after close up image of the target site and its surroundings as well as the few bases, towns and cities dotting the planet. The more time they spent looking down upon the target site, the more they realised that Admiral Cain's and Captain Chen's suspicions were being proven right, this had to be a POW camp and what's more, it was in use.

It also appeared that the Cylons were being smart as the POW camp was in the middle of nowhere with the closest military base with its Raider and Heavy Raider hangars being 50 miles away from the camp and the closest town being almost a hundred miles away. This meant that if any prisoners escaped then they would have to travel fifty miles in the open just to get to the closest off world transport and by that time there was a good chance that they would be spotted and taken care of. Even though the Camp looked like it had been in use for decades, as they sat there in the Stealth Raptor taking shot after shot of the camp, a previously unseen class of Cylon transport ship approximately 500 metres long and looking like an overblown Heavy Raider appeared above the planet and began its descent towards the outskirts of the camp and a concrete landing pad they had spotted there.

Zooming in the cameras to their highest range, the husband and wife pilots observed the ship land and after about five minutes about a hundred people being corralled out of the transport and along a path between two fences for approximately 2 kilometres before reaching the boundary line of the camp. During this time it was apparent that some of those being corralled had attempted to escape but were quickly gunned down by the dozen Centurions behind them. Before the husband and wife team were able to observe any more the outer edges of the storm system was upon the camp and the transport was taking off. So, the Raptor turned and made towards the site where the planets orbit would bring it when a possible attack began and they got to work calculating the jump points to the rendezvous point with the added overlay of exactly where the planet would be. At the same time across Cylon space, almost a dozen other Raptors were calculating jump points of their own and all under the noses of the Cylons. The only difficulty came in leaving without a trace but it was possible if they weren't in the Cylons line of sight or there was a sufficiently large object right next to them when they jumped.

02/08/55

05:12

Battlestar Praetoria

Starboard Hangar Deck

1263. That one number kept on running through Commander Coker Fasjovik's head as he walked through the hangar, limping slightly on his right leg where he had lost it at the knee decades ago. 1263. A simple number, easy to remember and forever more ingrained upon his soul. Looking around at the airlocks, Coker counted 1263 flag draped bodies awaiting their funeral service in this chilled hangar. 1263 men and women who had lost their lives on this Battlestar when the Battlestar's own systems were turned against them during the Battle of Picon. Battle, more like the Massacre of Picon, Coker couldn't help but think.

Sitting down on a stool next to a Mark VII Viper as he looked down upon the flag draped bodies, Coker couldn't help but think back to the Massacre when the Cylons had struck the Picon Fleet Headquarters Anchorage and its patrol fleet. He shouldn't have been there, he wasn't meant to have been. When the attack came he should have been on the Battlestar Galactica sharing a drink with an old friend as they celebrated the life of the Grand Old Lady before she was finally turned into a fracking godsdamn museum. The Intersun Passenger ship that he and several other war veterans whom had served on Galactica during the first war that was supposed to have picked them up at the PFHA 8 hours before the attack, never turned up, and despite arguing with the civil authorities and then some jumped up little squirt of a Lieutenant Commander that he wouldn't even trust to run his bath, nothing was done to get them to the old Battlestar. All it seemed to show Coker was something that he had learnt years ago, Nobody gives a frak anymore if you laid your life on the line for the Colonies or not during the war, after all kids nowadays are invincible, put a gun in their hands and they'll take out the entire Cylon Fleet before dying a heroic death. Then the Cylons attacked.

He had never been in a situation like the one he faced on the station in his entire life. It wasn't exactly a normal day on the Picon Fleet Headquarters Anchorage or PFHA as it was sometimes called due to the scheduled fleet flyby causing extra news crews to be set up on the observation decks and the extra civilians celebrating on the station and awaiting their loved ones return from fleet deployment that day and then there was the normal hustle and bustle of the most active orbital hub in the colonies. But all that was normal right up until one minute before the Cylons showed up when Condition Two had been declared. Coker had since learned that it was due to a civilian Raptor owned by the Graystones having jumped into close proximity to the station and broadcasting a warning that the Ribbon deep space array network of satellites bordering colonial space and was meant to serve as an early warning system against a Cylon incursion had either been shutdown or destroyed as had been Armistice Station. Admiral Corman had reacted immediately by declaring Condition Two and ordering the recall of all outlying fleets but Coker couldn't know that at the time. All he knew back then was the chaos as fleet personnel were ordered over the PA system to make for the closest warship and check in on their even if it wasn't their own ship. It was probably at that point that Coker and the Fleet Retirees – all of them veterans of the first war – realised that they were most likely under attack by the Cylons.

It was strange but Coker didn't remember panicking as the hundreds of other civilians and active fleet personnel and reserves were doing, he'd spent most of his younger life panicking and it didn't do him any good. And so, on a vast station filled with more than 300,000 panicking civilians and fleet personnel, a station in chaos, Coker and the small group of retirees were a small island of calm. He'd stood watch at the observation windows just watching as Battlestars and support ships which had been at dock, almost tore themselves from the docks as they rushed through undocking procedures. He'd watched as dozens of bright flashes announced the departure of dozens of Raptors in order to withcall the outlying BSGs which were on patrol throughout Colonial Space. No sooner had they departed had he seen more bright flashes appear only this time more than 80 of the modern Cylon Basestars had appeared within spitting distance of a nearby Battlestar Group which had only seconds before started launching it Vipers and Raptors. So close were they that a Battlestar and Basestar exploded as soon as the Basestar appeared with its event horizon being right in front of the Battlestar Heliopolis. Neither the Heliopolis or the Basestar had time to move before they collided head on. He remembered one of the old timers having a heart attack as they looked on and he could still hear the wailing of a six foot stocky SOB Marine in the corner of the room.

It seemed every gun on the Headquarters and the collection of warships hastily being assembled opened up on the Cylon Basestars but as soon as he saw them fire, Coker had known that they were out of effective range. What would have helped was if the Cylons had moved closer which would have meant that they would have been in the effective range of the station's defensive satellites but the Cylons were too smart for that and instead he was forced to watch in horror as they launched tens of thousands of Raiders. Thousands of Vipers and Raptors had already been launched from the Headquarters and were continuing to be launched and even more were being launched from the Battlestars and even if he couldn't see it then, he had since learnt that even more were on their way to the Orbital Headquarters from Picon Fleet Headquarters Groundside as the Colonial Fleet Reserve was called into service. At the same time that space was filling with planes, raiders, thousands of missiles launched from the station and the most impressive, seemingly impregnable wall of flak fire he had ever seen, the first of the recalled BSGs started to show up towards the edge of the Headquarters.

The Cylon Raiders seemed unfazed as they formed a diamond grid wall (like in bsg season 2) stretching for miles and at least five ships deep before advancing on the Colonial Fleet's own vast formation of Vipers, its largest single viper formation in history. Then the Raiders winked out of existence as they jumped to within the Colonial Squadrons ranks. It was chaos pure and simple as the Viper and Raptor Jocks seemingly struggled to get clear and turn in on themselves in order to face the attack. It was clear to Coker that more than a thousand Pilots died from friendly fire and then he noticed something, each Raider was flashing a red laser beam from its cockpit (that's what he thought it was back then) across the Vipers and Raptors. It was obvious straight away that whatever that red beam was, that it had shut down the Vipers. Drifting end over end and slamming into other Vipers and with no defence these Vipers had been torn apart by the Cylon Raiders as they swept through their fractured ranks firing missiles and KEW rounds. The pilots were being butchered and it seemed like the only ones still active were those in charge of the Raptors as they spun away from the onrushing horde of Raiders still flashing that devilish beam. Only a few hundred of these Raptors seemed to have assault loadouts, the rest were obviously there to lend their support to the Vipers and the station by using their ECM and EW systems to both cripple the Cylon missiles, possibly scramble the Cylons hardware and better direct the Colonial Fleet's own missiles while also picking up any ejected pilots. Hundreds of Raptors were cracked open by the Cylon Raiders but those with assault loadouts managed to get their own revenge by firing at close range every missile they had on the onrushing Raiders. Coker saw hundreds of flashes denoting the Raptors scattered withdrawals but so many had been lost. Gone were the tens of thousands of Vipers which had been assembled just a minute before. Gone were the hundreds of Raptors. And now the Raiders went on a full rampage flashing their beacons and firing whenever they felt like it.

Coker remembered telling those around him to get into the central compartments of the dock since he knew that would be the most protected place in the dock but he still stood there watching. Only a handful left, the rest were like him, they needed to see what the now far vulnerable Fleet's next move would be. The response came in the Battlestars filling in the gaps in the station's defensive net, yet even now not every warship had managed to launch. Some of the warships were having to be powered up from an almost complete shutdown while others merely had a skeleton crew while at dock which was a constant security measure on all fleet warships and so were waiting for more crewmembers to turn up. But still the Colonial response had come in the form of more than 300 nuclear missiles being launched in a coordinated attack from every missile launcher within the fleet and the station.

Coker and the veterans around him were wise enough to know that unless they wanted to be blinded then they needed to look away. But he had seen all that he deemed it was safe to see here and so, with his friends had made his way towards the deepest, most protected part of the dock with the constant vibration of chain guns, point defences, missile batteries and anti-ship cannons fire bubbling through the dock and into his body along with the increasing sounds of the station being pummelled by nuclear and conventional missiles. He had even passed a few members of the dock crew cutting their way through masses of fibre optic cables pulled from the walls with a blow torch as they followed orders to cut the networks on the station by all means. Even then he could feel the virus at work as the churning sound of the stations weapons lessened but even if the virus had hit every part of the Orbital Headquarters, thousands of guns would still continue to fire, at least 40% of the station's weapons in Coker's mind. You see, it would be different if Picon Fleet Headquarters Anchorage had been built in one go as one single structure, if it had then there would be a single network throughout the entire station, but it hadn't. Every year bits were added to it and some were taken away as they reached the end of their lifespan but the result was always the same, the Headquarters grew year on year and year on year became more bastardised as sections failed to connect to a single network, so instead there were many overlapping networks and plenty of sections with only limited networks.

The lights were constantly flickering and the deck seemed to constantly heave as nuclear missiles and even parts of destroyed Battlestars struck the station, some of them against the dock he stood in. He remembered the crying most of all. No…he remembered the mother.

Gods, why didn't he help her, why didn't he comfort her. She must have been there with her baby to meet her husband or boyfriend if he served in the fleet. Just there for one of those happy embraces as he returned home. But with the worlds coming down around them all that seemed to matter was her fear and her baby's crying and so she hugged him…she hugged him with all her strength trying to drown out his tears and…he stopped crying.

And then she realised and her wails tore the room apart and scored themselves deep into his soul at the same time that the dock was torn free by some titanic force and a pitch blackness descended upon them before emergency power activated and a red light flickered on. He couldn't take it, nobody was doing anything…and then he realised, why wasn't he doing anything and so he forced himself to. Marching with a purpose to the mother, he snatched the suffocated baby from her scrabbling clutches telling her with such hate in his voice that if she wanted the child to survive she would leave him be. She didn't seem to understand but a dock worker did and so held her back as Coker checked the baby's pulse before performing CPR on a baby for the first time in his life. He tried for so long. That's what Coker remembers most about the attack on the Colonies, not the death of the fleet or her colonies, not the scary beauty of the Headquarters and Fleets weapons lighting up the heavens and not the fact that so many had died because people wanted a faster computer. What Coker remembered the most about the attacks was how he had tried to save that child.

Shaking his head and rubbing at his face to clear away his tears, Coker berated himself for even thinking about it all, especially now when he was with so many of the deceased. The men and women laid at rest in this vast hangar had suffered one of the worst deaths defending the colonies and as he sat there shivering, he realised that this Ghost ship would give plenty of her new crew sleepless nights for months, possibly years to come if they survived the upcoming operation. All Coker could hope for as he sat there in the deathly silent hangar was that his crew didn't go out like the Praetoria's last and that if they did, that he would have the balls to do what the Praetoria's last Commander had done in saving the ship even if he couldn't save his own crew.

Struggling to his feet, age finally getting its claws into him, Coker wanted one last thing; a good drink with an old friend before his time was up. No, he wanted something else; to never hesitate again because if he had hesitated a moment longer…

02/08/55

11:05

Battlestar Pegasus

Admiral Cain's Office

"You were right Admiral, it's a POW camp and it looks like they're bringing in more prisoners" looking down upon some of the images captured by Captain Landry and her husband Captain Myer, Cain listened carefully to what Landry was saying, "The images aren't clear since we were at range and there were some atmospheric disturbances with a major storm system closing in on the camp but from what we can tell it looks like the prisoners being brought in were wearing Fleet uniforms, jock smocks, marine BDUs…"

"Why would the Cylons take prisoners?" Cain muttered under her breath, not realising that Myer had heard her.

"It could be for any number of reasons sir. The Toas…Cylons seem to have advanced into wetware rather than use hardware, maybe they're studying the prisoners and trying to come up with better forms and advancements or maybe this is like a zoo and the prisoners are pets. Who can tell what a Cylon thinks or computes" Myer answered before adding "from what we can tell this Camp has either been in operation for decades or has been built for decades and has only been put back into operation in the past week".

"What's the defensive setup like?" Cain asked as she cycled through more images and DRADIS captures.

Answering, Landry said "We counted 11 Catapult-2 type defensive satellites in geo orbit with only two of those covering the camp, the rest were above the toasters cities and bases. In addition there's 4 military bases on the planet with only one of those being within fifty miles of the camp and the next closest at 2…270 miles South East. The base closest to the camp we estimate at holding 2 squadrons of Raiders with a possible 5-10 Heavy Raiders based on the size of the hangars and depending on how the Centurions are stored or even if they are stored, we're looking at somewhere in the region of 250-500 Centurions". Moving a couple of images to the top of the pile, Landry continued "As to the Camp's defences, we counted approximately 100 Centurions manning the walls and a further dozen patrols of four centurions each outside the camp walls".

"What about in the Camp itself?"

"18 Centurions that we could see, that's five at the southern gate, three to the gate leading to the landing pad, two at the entrance of the large building to the north of the camp and 1 on each of the eight towers spread throughout the camp. Both myself and Captain Myer estimate that there could be a couple of hundred more in the Northern building which we assume is some form of admin or hospital. As you can see from the images, the Cylons have set up the camp in a regular grid with wide avenues and low buildings which we suspect is to ensure that if there is an uprising then they can quickly quell it from the air. In the centre there's also a 1km by 1km square which could be for heavy raider landings or daily prisoner inspections" Landry answered filling in the details she could remember of the top of her head.

"As to other defences, there's eight anti-aircraft guns setup a hundred and fifty metres outside the perimeter of the camp with two on each side and judging by some shadows we've seen in some of the images we can't be sure but we think that the Cylons have set up some form of minefield within the first hundred metre boundary of the camp. Other than that we couldn't see any other defences" Myer concluded.

Weighing up the details, Cain asked "How many Colonials do you estimate are being kept there?"

Looking at her husband, Landry then turned to Cain replying "The camp could hold 15000…"

"That's higher than previous estimates" Cain put in before nodding at Landry to continue.

"…but right now I'd put the camp at holding between 5000 and 10000 prisoners".

"Colonials" Cain corrected her before straightening up and asking Myer if he agreed, to which he did. "How large an operation would it take to free the Colonials held there?"

Rubbing her mouth as she thought it over, Landry pulled a photo of the camp across the table and peered at the aerial image of the camp before answering "Ghost squadron could do it, we've trained for exactly this kind of mission…"

"We're too low on manpower to pull it off without heavy losses" Myer disagreed.

Landry already knew this and so addressed Admiral Cain "Which is why Admiral, while Ghost Squadron can establish a beachhead, we are going to need an extra 200 marines with Raptors and a squadron of Vipers with your best pilots…gods, we're going to need every Argonaut you've got, I don't like them but they're as good as we are. Those vipers will need to be launched from the civilian transports which we are going to need in order to get the Colonials off the planet. But one thing we have really got to do is take care of the military bases and the satellites, if we don't and without BSG level support, well…"

Nodding, Admiral Cain replied "I'll have Captain Chen and Colonel Hudson work through the details but I'm going to double the marine support since this is an opportunity to learn what the Cylons long term goals are. They've obviously went to some effort incarcerating those Colonials and I want to know why. Inform Captain Chen I wish to see him within the hour. Dismissed".

02/08/55

18:00

Battlestar Praetoria

Starboard Hanger Deck

The lighting had been dimmed, vipers, raptors and mechanical equipment had been stowed, the deck had been scrubbed, vast hatches which normally separated the hanger up into compartments had been retracted, candles had been lit and flags representing each of the colonies had been hung from the catwalk. Throughout the open hangar over a thousand fleet personnel who had been transferred to the Battlestar Pegasus over the previous 24 hours stood at attention in their dress greys. Only a reserve crew was commanding the Battlestar now.

This was a sombre occasion which struck at the heart of them all as the lead priest from the Battlestar Pegasus presided over the ceremony. With the priest were those priests which served on the Battlestars Arion and Therion providing spiritual relief to many of the fleet's polytheists. Never before had they led funeral ceremonies such as this. No single one of them had presided over a mass funeral for 1263 people, you could see it on their faces as tears were shed while they recited the words from the sacred scrolls. It didn't matter that they hadn't known any of the crew being laid to rest because in the end it could so easily have been someone they did know. All that mattered was that these men and women had died and that they wouldn't be alone as they passed over.

With his words said and the prayers administered, the priest stepped back from the podium allowing Admiral Helena Cain to step forward as senior ranking fleet officer. Standing there she looked down on the twelve flag draped bodies which had been laid to rest on a sheet of steel hooked up to the launcher below it. To her left and right it was a similar situation in every launch tube on this side of the ship with up to 24 crewmen or marines laid to rest in the tubes airlocks. Yet even after these corpses were released from the ship, crewmen standing at the ready would need to load more pallets of Praetoria's previous crew onto the launchers.

Looking down on the words she had prepared, Admiral Cain began "No Admiral, no commander should ever need to reside over the funeral of someone who serves in the Colonial Fleet, let alone reside over the funeral of the entire crew of a Colonial Fleet Warship. We had thought we were done with this with the cessation of hostilities 40 years ago. We had thought that we could move on, that we could enter into a new dawn but…we fooled ourselves into trusting that it was all over, and into believing the Cylons would ever leave us be.

"We were wrong…and because we were wrong the Twelve Colonies fell and across a hundred Battlestars just like this one the Cylons struck down our fellow men and women…our brothers…our sisters. They had no respite when the end came. They had no defence against the long night. They died, and they died in one of the most horrible ways we can imagine. But…they weren't alone when they met their end. From the moment you join the Colonial Fleet you aren't alone. They lived as one and they died as one but, it still doesn't make it any easier.

"I've heard that there are those that call the Battlestar Praetoria the Ghost Ship. It's true…there are now many ghosts walking the halls of this mighty warship watching us even now, but when they look at you, they must see fellow brothers and sisters in arms. They must see a Colonial Fleet who will never forget them and who will never rest until we have vengeance. Until we have justice. The spirits of those lost will be proud of us because we are willing to go on despite it all. And you have no need to fear them because they will be there to support us in our war against the Cylons, they will be the ones listening to us in the darkest of our days and they will be the quiet voice at our shoulder supporting us when we need support the most. But…they need to realise that they can rest easy since because of their sacrifice, we will achieve victory.

"There are many rumours going around about how the crew of the Battlestar Praetoria met their end. It's now time to put those rumours to rest. The crew met their end with bravery. When they realised that they would not survive, they set about making sure that those that came after them would survive. Networks plagued with the Cylon Virus were severed with whatever the crew had to hand with the XO, Colonel Grayson leading the way with a fire axe in the CIC. While the crew fractured the networks with their last seconds of life, Commander Lyle set about powering down the ship so that her guns couldn't be brought to bear against the rest of the Colonial Fleet, and so the Praetoria could be rapidly brought back into service. It worked, and by the grace of the Lords, the Praetoria went largely undamaged during the attack.

"I promised you all after we found out about the Fall that we would take our revenge against the Cylons. The discovery of this warship and the fate of its crew has only gone on to solidified my resolve. Which is why, tomorrow at 8AM, this fleet will be launching a series of coordinated attacks against the Cylons and we will not rest until their suffering surpasses our own and they are no more. They think they know war…we will show them a war they could never comprehend and we will make them suffer a death of a thousand cuts. Through their vicious actions they have ensured no less.

"I will leave you all with something to consider, these were the last words ever wrote by Commander Lyle as he sacrificed himself saving this ship when he could not save his crew, just four words; 'For the Colonial Fleet'. Consider those words carefully" Stepping away from the podium, Cain looked towards Commander Coker Fasjovik and nodded before she returned to her previous position next to Admiral Hudson.

Limping forward, Commander Fasjovik saluted the flag draped body of Commander Lyle before taking a red leather bound book from a shelf on the podium. Putting his glasses on, Coker began "It's always hard replacing a Commander. It's even harder replacing a Commander who manages to leave such a strong legacy. Admiral Cain is right, Commander Lyle had no way to save his crew, but he could save his ship which he died doing and which his crew died doing and because of their actions, this fleet is stronger and with it humanity is safer.

"I saw a lot of death in the first war when I served on the Battlestar Galactica as a pilot and later on the Battlestar Sovereign as XO. I thought it was hard then, but I realise now that I had no idea what hard was. But I do know one thing; I know that if those I served with back then were here, they would be so immensely proud of you all, I know, because I am. Do you want to know why I'm proud? Because in the end, you're not rolling over and dying as the damn Cylons want you to do, instead you are standing up, you're holding your own and you're fighting back even if to fight seems like madness, we're still doing it. Never forget who you are, even if it gets tough remember that you are the proud men and women of the Colonial Fleet and of humanity itself just as those we lay to rest are". Wiping away a tear before replacing his glasses and taking a deep breath, Commander Fasjovik opened the red leather bound book to a marked page while saying "None of my words can do justice to those before us or to yourselves, so instead I'm going to turn to a poem by Kataris which seems to describe the previous crew of the Praetoria…it's called Soldier's Legacy".

"Your war is won

So bleed no more

And fight no more

Lay down your sword

Pass on your armour

Forget your troubles

Relinquish your burdens

Leave all your fears

Share all your hopes

Pass on in peace

For we will fight on in war

We will cherish your hopes

And brave your fears

We will carry your burdens

And heal your troubles

We will be safe in your armour

And protected with your sword

So fight no more

And bleed no more

Your war is won".

Closing the book, Coker nodded to the flag shrouded bodies before stepping back to his original position.

A drummer then started beating out a military tattoo while a single buzzer sounded as the airlocks closed. In one movement, the assembled crew and Fleet personnel stood at attention and saluted. With the airlocks closed, the air inside was steadily removed until, with no air, the outer airlock opened and the normally fast Viper launcher slowly pulled the metal pallets of deceased crewmembers down the launch tubes. At the end of the tubes the pallets and their crew were released into the embrace of eternal space.

Their war was over.

02/08/55

22:43

Battlestar Arion

Portside Upper Flightpod Hangar

While the mass funeral had been on-going on the Battlestar Praetoria, preparations for the coming attacks on the Cylons had been underway throughout the rest of the fleet. In the hangars of the Battlestars Arion, Pegasus and Therion this meant that Raptors were loaded with missile launchers and the Vipers which they planned to launch if needed were ready and safety checks were performed, while in the missile launchers of those Battlestars the autoloaders for the missile tubes were double and triple checked to ensure that once the first set of nuclear missiles had been fired and the missile launch tubes hatches were closed a new missile could be loaded into the tubes from the now full missile bunkers beneath them within a minute. In peacetime operations these missile bunkers are empty due to the Colonial Government not wanting to provoke the Cylons, but now, now they were at war. Throughout those ships loose cargo was bolted down and safety checks were ran on every bit of machinery they needed, especially the jump drives and the weapons.

In the Arion's Upper Portside Hanger the last repairs and adjustments were made to two Raptors which due to the fact that the damage they had received meant they were now unsafe for humans to use long term, but were now key to a planned unmanned nuclear assault against a Cylon relay in Colonial Space. These two Assault Raptors were manoeuvred to the airlock elevators with a pilot on board each and were then taken up onto the landing deck of the upper flightpod before being given the all clear and piloted over the short hop to the Orca where they would remain for the time being.

Steeping in between a group of knuckledraggers working away on two other Raptors, Fleet Air Marshal Lucy Hudson led five other pilots which were the entirety of the Battlestar Arion's own complement of the elite Argos Squadron as well as 3 other pilots towards their Vipers. It had been decided that since the mission to liberate the prisoners being held in the Cylon POW camp couldn't have Battlestar support it instead needed to have Ghost Squadron which was taking lead having extra Viper, Raptor and Marine support. The Vipers would be launched from the five Civilian transports which were part of the mission. However since there was limited room in the transports hangars there was only space for 20 extra vipers at most so they needed the best pilots on the mission from throughout the fleet and the best from Arion were Ghost squadron and a few others.

Already 150 marines whom had been assigned to the mission from the Arion had been transported across to either the Orca or the civilian transports to further complement the 150 marines being assigned from the Pegasus.

Stepping down the steps to the hangar floor, Admiral Hudson moved towards the pilots while asking out loud "You weren't planning on leaving without giving your old man a hug were you?"

Turning to him Vienna replied with a cocky grin "You had to do it didn't you? As if it wasn't bad enough that my pops was in charge, you do know I've got a reputation to keep down here?"

Pulling his daughter into a hug and kissing her head, Hudson replied "Less of the cheek or I'll have you scrubbing the head with your toothbrush".

Chuckling, Vienna replied "At least mine gets used" while releasing herself from her father's grip.

Cupping Vienna's cheek, Noah looked into her eyes trying to impress on her to keep safe before looking over her head and calling out to her twin "Victor, get your scrawny ass over here, you're not getting off so easily". As soon as he joined them his father gave him a dead arm saying "Keep each other safe out there alright, I want you both back here alive once our respective missions are done and, while you're over there…give the Cylons hell". Pulling his two children in for a tight hug, Noah then pushed them away while patting away at their heads saying "Go on…bugger off you're messing up my deck". Giving their father and commanding officer a salute, the two twins left for their Vipers.

Looking over to the other four members of Argos Squadron, Noah nodded at his sister. Coming over to talk to him, Lucy knew what he was going to say and so cut in "Don't worry, I'll make sure they're safe. Me, Nat Sue, CC, Jinx, plus the rest of us in the fleet, we'll all look out for them. Argos Squadron sticks together, we have each other's backs, it's why we're the best. We're all family and nothing comes between family".

Nodding, Noah looked about them saying "It's a hell of a plan that Cain's come up with…hitting twelve Cylon worlds if you count the camp and a relay satellite with just four Battlestars, a marine insertion and an unmanned nuclear strike. We're putting everything on the line for this, if we mess up…"

"Which is why we won't. You may be my superior, but one thing you lack is faith…"

Looking at her, Noah replied "It's hard to have faith after everything that's happened…"

Shaking her head and putting a hand to his shoulder, Lucy said "You lost your faith long before then and you know it…when did you last look at his photo or say his name".

"Don't, not here".

Squeezing his shoulder, Lucy nodded before saying "If you can't have faith then know this; you've seen the recon images, you know just as well as I do how wounded the Cylons are. The Colonial Fleet under Nagala hit back before they fell and the hit back hard…the Cylons went all out and were forced to put everything on the line and they suffered for it. They aren't ready for us, not for how we're going to hit back, they can't be. True, we haven't seen the Cylon construct that was at Leonis in their territory so we don't know their full strength, but it can't be much more than we have already seen and what they do have to defend them that we've seen…we can pull this off, we can and you know it. Just have faith in your crew and yourself if nothing else".

Nodding, Noah replied "You'd better head off, but…keep yourself and the kids safe out there and…do me a favour and look in on Seth while you're over there".

Nodding as she back stepped, Lucy mouthed "I will. Stay safe".

02/08/55

22:47

Battlestar Therion

Small Arms Locker 4

Unlike the many small arms lockers on the Battlestar Therion, small arms locker 4 (or armoury 4 as it was often referred to as) was specialised for one squadron in particular, Ghost Squadron. In this armoury were many types of weapons, body armour, explosives and assorted gadgets that the rest of the Colonial Fleet could only dream about. Everybody who knew about Ghost Squadron knew that they carried the Tauron Phoenix as their main sidearm (also carry the standard issue Lexington so that they have one weapon with a common ammunition to the rest of the fleet personnel) as do Argos Squadron (Earth analogue is desert eagle), the Tauron Phoenix due to its higher calibre rounds was much more effective against the Cylon Centurions than the Colonial Fleet standard issue sidearm, the Lexington. However due to the higher cost of the Tauron Phoenix and the fact that the Colonies had peace, only an elite had access to them.

Double Checking the firing chamber of an MGAT-49 light machine gun (hybrid design between light MG and an assault rifle) and happy with how it looked, Captain Chen loaded the MGAT into a crate with 24 more MGATs before sealing it and directing a small group of crewmen to take it and another four more identical crates to the hangar. Looking around the room and seeing that Major Ryden and Major Arkat were overseeing the removal of more weapons, body armour, explosives and jamming equipment, Captain Chen checked his watch and called over "Ten minutes guys, then we're out of here".

"We're just getting the last of the gear now sir" Ryden called back.

Nodding, Chen left the room and made for the portside hangar. Despite being lower in rank than both Ryden and Arkat as well as four other members of Ghost Squadron, that was largely by choice. Chen had never been comfortable with rank, he'd gotten to where he wanted to be almost 20 years before and had refused promotion which command was willing to allow since in the end it allowed them to save money. However when it was clear that Captain Chen was the most experienced Pilot in Ghost Squadron and was a natural leader able to inspire complete and total loyalty from his subordinates, and with Ghost Squadron's previous leader Colonel Crast retiring, they made clear to Chen that he was being placed in charge of Ghost Squadron. At first he had refused, but in the end had settled into his new role and found he actually liked it once he got used to it.

Reaching the hangar, Chen walked past the dozens of Raptors and Vipers being prepared until he reached the sections of the long hangar bay dedicated exclusively to Ghost Squadron. Ghost Squadron was one of the luckiest squadrons in the entire Colonial Fleet before the war due to the fact that they got the very best of equipment including highly experimental gear, and nothing was better or more experimental than their planes which had been designed almost exclusively for Ghost Squadron and its black-ops focus.

First off there was their use of Stealth Vipers which were a hybrid design between a Mk-5 Viper,the failed Mk-8 Viper which had been pulled from service almost as soon as the first ones were released and a Mk-4 Stealthstar. Longer by a metre than a Mk-7 and lacking its graceful streamlined design, the Stealth Viper was all about flat surfaces and made use of a specially designed carbon fibre coating in order to reduce its DRADIS profile. The engines were twice as powerful than even a Mk-9 Viper, and the Stealth Viper even had its own missile bays mounted in its wings able to hold two missiles each in addition to the two KEWs in the wings and a third in the vertical stabiliser. However due to the extra length, width and mass the Stealth Viper wasn't as effective in a dogfight than a Mk-7 Viper but could hold its own if needed. What really added the mass though were the larger Tylium tanks which were needed for the Stealth Vipers small jumpdrive which was classified as a V1-Jumpdrive. While due to its size it had a red line of 9 light year jumps, the very fact that recent advancements in ftl technology had meant a jump drive could be installed on a craft slightly larger than an average Viper at a high cost meant that the fleet had tried since it meant opening up new options for Ghost Squadron and the few other black ops squadrons it had available. However due to the high cost and the need to protect the technology until they had managed to create more advanced generations of it, few of these V1-jumpdrives were created and installed on specially designed craft. Possibly the only Stealth Vipers left were the 10 in this hangar and 6 more which had been given over to the Battlestars Pegasus, Arion, and Praetoria should the Therion be lost along with Ghost Squadron (that way the rest of the fleet would still have the technology if they needed it).

Walking past the Stealth Vipers, Captain Chen came to one of the few other ships specifically designed for the small jumpdrive, the Viper Gunship Mk-2-J. The original Mk-1 was an effective but costly design during the first war and was removed from service despite its successes. When the designs for the small V1-Jumpdrive became available, Fleet R&D had looked through their archives and had come across the Mk-1 Viper Gunship. The Mk-1 Viper Gunship was a two-seater variant on the Colonial Viper design specifically designed as a heavy gun platform. Longer and slightly wider in the wingtips, the Mk-1 carried two KEWs on its horizontal wingtips (one each) and two on the nose as well as having launch rails for three missiles per wing. When it came to redesigning the Viper Gunship as the Mk-2-J, it became clear that recent advancements in Viper Technology meant that internal space could be freed up by adding smaller, more powerful components freeing up space for the V1-Jumpdrive and expanded tylium tanks. The engines were also changed over to more powerful and more efficient ones as well as some of the electronics but when it came down to it, the designers wanted to stay as true to the original as possible which meant very limited networks seemingly impossible to hack from an outside source as well as keeping the looks as close to the original as possible (took heavy design clues from the Mark 2 and 3 Viper). Of the 16 Viper Gunships the Battlestar Therion had carried before the war, out of the 5 that had been launched over Leonis only 1 survived leaving just 12 of them left in existence. However the designs had been given to Admirals Cain and Hudson in case they wished to one day create more.

Next was the Raptor-S. When seen from a distance the Raptor-S was like any other modern Raptor design except for a handful of changes and adjustments. Chief among these changes were the specialised Carbon-fibre coating designed to absorb a DRADIS pulse rather than reflect it back to its source and the other chief change was that it was all flat, not a single curve had been allowed to grace its surface, not even the engines. In addition the jumpdrive was slightly more powerful than in a normal modern Raptor and the tylium tanks were larger allowing for an extended range. The electronics and other technology inside were also the most advanced that the colonies had, with any improvements added every 4 months and the fact that a lot of these improvements were reductions in size meant that more room was available in the fuselage. The fact was that the Stealth Raptor design had already proven its worth to the fleet in its use to discover the Cylon Colonies. 18 of these Stealth Raptors existed in the fleet but only 14 of those were in active use by Ghost Squadron which had given over the other four to the other Battlestars.

Passing by members of his own squadron and his own squadron's deck crew (all trained to repair Ghosts ships) whom were busy loading the cargo onto the Raptors, Chen passed into the next section of the hangar which held the last type of special ship which had been provided to his squadron, the Raptor Ultra. The Raptor Ultra which was usually called a Raptor Dropship, is twice as long and half as wide as a normal Raptor designed primarily as a personnel carrier. Able to hold 14 fully armed marines as well as 2 pilots, the Raptor Ultra allows for a large group of marines to enter a location in a single insertion rather than being spread over a number of Raptors as well as allowing Ghost Squadron to perform a number of other operations including the ability to retrieve larger pieces of enemy technology which may not fit onto a normal Raptor. The Raptor Ultra design also differed from the average Raptor in that it didn't have a sensor board in the rear but instead had a starboard hatch allowing the passengers to deploy from both sides and in addition to that held a chain gun mounted just above each wing and another on the rear controlled by the co-pilot on a computer in the cockpit (a slight design cue to the original non-jump capable Raptor). While the Raptor Ultra design wasn't exactly common throughout the Fleet, some of the larger Battlestars did have one of these larger Raptors even if they weren't normally used or, if they were used, were used as cargo transport. The Therion however held three of them but one was in need of repair and the Battlestar Arion held another which was being moved to the Orca to join the station's six (two had been scavenged from Dock 12 and the rest were part of the Orca). On the other two Raptor Ultras Missile Launchers had been attached next to the hatches.

Seeing that the last of the marine transfers were waiting in the Ultras with the last of the gear, Chen headed back to his Stealth Viper which was then pushed to its launch tube. Within fifteen minutes Ghost Squadron would join the rest of its attack force on the Orca whose Starboard Hangar bay, despite needing substantial repairs was being pressed into service just like the rest of the habitable sections of the Orca were being even if a lot of the outer sections, while they had been patched with a harmonic resin coating and uncut steel sheets, needed to be at half pressure or risk the breaches opening up again.

03/08/55

00:00

Battlestar Pegasus

CIC

Admiral Cain was stood in the CIC when midnight came in order to start the final preparations for Operation Warhammer. She felt a buzz running through her entire body unlike at any other time in her life as it was getting closer to the appointed hour of the start of the operation (08:00 Caprica City/Fleet time). Seeing the time was now midnight Admiral Cain ordered "Helm, start increasing to 20% forward thrust and maintain constant forward thrust until ordered otherwise".

"20% constant forward thrust, aye sir" the helmsman replied.

Cain soon felt a gradual shift of vertigo within herself as the ship started moving faster and faster and the inertial dampers increased power to match. While Raptors and Vipers didn't have inertial dampeners, this wasn't because the 12 Colonies lacked the technology, they had it and they had it for almost a century, they just so far lacked the ability to make it small enough and cheap enough to install on ships so small. They could have by now though but what was the point in spending so much to improve a reliable design and make it smaller for a Viper when a pilot could fly a Viper without it. It was only when you reached ships the size of the atmospheric shuttles which the Colonial Fleet made heavy use of that the technology was both small and cheap enough to be used. After all how would a transport or Battlestar reach such impressive speeds to cross between planets in hours and slow down at the other end in as short amount of time as possible without killing everyone inside the ship? The average cruising speed for a Battlestar was 4.5% the speed of light and while the thrusters were constantly on it was usually at as low a thrust as possible in order to ensure that should they need a quick burst of thrust then they wouldn't have to wait for the engines to power up. The forward thrust was usually countered every six hours by the reverse thrusters slowly firing in order to slow the ship back down.

However due to the fact that the Battlestars Pegasus, Arion, Therion and Praetoria were now at constant forward thrust at 20% of full thrust and would be for 2 hours and 18 minutes, their speed would be constantly increasing to a point where they would be travelling at 31% the speed of light when the thrusters were dialled back to 1% (never fully turned off unless at dock since they are slow to start up and they might need rapid acceleration should the Cylons turn up). The reason why they weren't going at full thrust was that as powerful as the engines and thrusters are, if they went at full thrust over more than a fifteen minutes then they would slowly burn themselves out like if someone tried to sprint in a marathon. However by limiting the engines to 20% thrust they were keeping them slow enough so they wouldn't burn out and they were cutting down on the amount of tylium they would burn through. There was one downsize in that the inertial dampers were now using more power than usual but in the end was worth it.

Cain soon left the CIC to the second watch and joined the flow of the first watch from the CIC before returning to her own quarters. Upon entering she unbuttoned her tunic and poured herself a glass of ambrosia before glancing at the pile of reports awaiting her approval. She decided to leave them though and get as much rest as she could before getting up at 06:00 for her morning exercises before arriving in the CIC at 07:30. Glancing at the few photos she kept of her family, two of them of her son, and the other being of her entire family when she was just a child, she stared at the smiling face of Lucy and hoped that she wasn't making the same mistake with this coming Operation as she had back then. Swigging the ambrosia back and revelling in the burn as it slipped its way down her throat with a little finger to her lips, Cain realised that this was the only path if they wanted to stand a chance of survival long term.

03/08/55

05:40

Mobile Shipyard Orca

The Battlestars of the Wolfpack had passed far beyond range of the Orca hours ago leaving the heavily damaged mobile shipyard alone in space. Within her still largely intact portside dock the five civilian transport ships they had decided to keep were docked with clamps and collars down Orca's central section both to save on Tylium and allow the offloading of cargo which had happened the night before to all of the transports. This did mean that the Orca's halls – some of which were open to space with the harmonically pliable Resin still being applied to the hull breaches in order to patch them (once the specific vibration was taken away from the resin it would quickly set in minutes) – were packed with assorted cargo but they had little choice.

Readying herself for the first of three jumps, two unmanned assault-laden Raptors were launched. Carefully programmed instructions had been written into these Raptors which were left behind in open space as the Orca made her first jump to a few lightyears away from the A-Line.

03/08/55

07:20

Mobile Shipyard Orca

Portside Flightpod Hangar Deck

With the Orca's last jump complete placing her in empty space far from any star and deep within Cylon space, the minutes seemed to tick by as 08:00 grew closer. Those aboard her had been given a hearty breakfast which wasn't rationed and had been given time to ready themselves for the upcoming mission with last minute briefings and checks being performed on the Raptors and Vipers which would be part of the liberation mission as well as the other equipment and weapons, you could almost taste the excitement and the trepidation in the air. Within just twenty minutes the five transports in the portside dock would be launched carrying 20 Vipers between them in their own smaller hangars ready for when they would be needed.

Catching sight of her nephew smoking while sat against the side of one of the nine Raptor Ultras which were part of the mission, Fleet Air Marshal Lucy Hudson moved over to join him asking "Since when do you smoke, Squirt?"

Looking up, Seth smiled when he saw his aunt, and struggled to his feet giving her a hug "It's good to see you…"

Returning the hug before holding her nephew at arm's length, Lucy announced "You look good, you'd better be careful around Kyoto, she's still got her eye on you. They treating you right? If they aren't I can crack Chen's head".

"I'm good. Chen's…he's a good guy, he saved my ass out there at Leonis after the battle".

Lucy could see that Seth stopped himself from saying more on the subject, so she instead said "Gods, I can't believe you're part of Ghost Squadron, you do realise you're breaking a family tradition here by joining the enemy, you know we're Argos Squadron all the way".

Chuckling, Seth shrugged his shoulders replying "I always did break the family traditions, anyway I'm pretty happy with my boots on the ground than in a cockpit and I'm not in yet".

"That's not what I've heard, turns out you've been co-piloting for Chen, I knew it was a good idea we trained you up…anyway pass that bloody fag over, can't you see I'm dying here? I fracking left mine on Arion".

Pulling a pack from his back pocket, Seth handed them over saying "Keep 'em, I've got another. How's the family?"

Lighting a cigarette and drawing in a deep lungful of nicotine filled smoke, Lucy replied "Oh, you know…Victor's being his usual quiet self, Vienna's…Vienna's actually calmed down the past few days…"

Laughing, Seth replied "Bullshit, she never slows down".

"No, I'm being serious. She was actually the person who discovered and brought the Praetoria back to life and I haven't seen her make any mods to her Viper for today's op, I think her last verbal beat down might have scared her. And your dad…same as ever. He asked me to look in on you, I know he doesn't like how you're pushing him away…"

Looking at his aunt, Seth asked "Is that really what he thinks I'm doing?"

"Yeah and I get it, you need time just know that we're all here. Look after yourself out there today, okay, and after we get back I'll make sure Kyoto keeps her claws out of you, but…I've got a feeling you might be starting to like her, ha. I've got to run, I'm going to be flying one of those Stealth Vipers".

03/08/55

07:45

Mobile Shipyard Orca

Raptor Ultra 04

As the damaged shipyard hung in space, the vast horizontal doors to the portside dock started to swing open like a mouth opening up and within this dock umbilicals, docking clamps and docking collars were severed to the Transports held within. With bursts of thrust they pushed themselves away from the spine of the shipyard and into the centre of the dock before propelling themselves forward and into open space.

At the same time the Raptors, Raptor Ultras, Stealth Raptors, Stealth Vipers and Viper Gunships started to launch from the portside flightpod, many of the Raptors having been forced out of a lack of space in the hangar to remain docked at docking points throughout the night. Just the liberation of the Colonial Prisoners being held in the Cylon POW camp was an impressive operation in terms of assets and manpower and yet it was just one small part in Operation Warhammer.

In total 50 Raptors were being deployed, half of them with missile launchers and with a handful of these carrying tactical nuclear missiles and all of them holding a marine fireteam. Then there were the 9 Raptor Ultras holding 10 marines and two deployable anti-aircraft batteries in a compacted state each. The 14 Stealth Raptors also had attached missile launchers which increased their DRADIS profile and held another marine fireteam each. Then there were the 10 Stealth Vipers and 12 Viper Gunships currently deployed and then there were an extra 20 Vipers within the five transport ships hangars due to the fact that those 20 vipers didn't have jump drives, and a mix of an extra 30 marines and armed crewmen on each of the 5 transports with another 4 deployable AA batteries each courtesy of the scavenging operations in Dock 12 and the other warships littering the battlefields. Added up it came to a total of 496 marines and armed effective crewmen which in the Wolfpack's current state, wasn't seriously depriving them of marines on the Battlestars due to the fact that they had enough crew and marines to man another two Battlestars before training up the civilian refugees. Despite this fact though, the intel picked up about the POW camp suggested it was holding fleet personnel and part of the reason why Cain had authorised the rescue attempt was a long term goal of building their own Battlestars and rebuilding the fleet.

The 25 Raptors without missile launchers moved over to join the five civilian transports ready to jump in the second wave once a beachhead had been secured.

On board Raptor Ultra 04, Corporal Seth Hudson breathed in the thick heady smoke of the cigarettes being puffed on by a handful of the 9 marines surrounding him. His heart was racing, he could smell the sweat of ten men, himself included thick in the air around him, stomachs were churning and the heavy booming of three different types of music could be heard as digital music players were at their loudest settings. Pulling on his gloves and double-checking his helmet's chinstrap but knocking into the marines next to him when he tightened his backpack's straps, he got a tight grip on his newly acquired MGAT and looked up when a red light flashed twice…30 seconds. 30 seconds which seemed to stretch to forever before the light flashed again and again as it counted down from 10 seconds and then in a shudder and a moment where he felt time had stopped…

…they jumped.

03/08/55

07:59

Colonial Space

2 Lightyears outside of Cyrannus star cluster

Raptors 313 and 208

Drifting through space, there was no life on these two damaged Raptors. The original plan before Operation Warhammer was put together had been for these two Raptors to give up their parts in order to repair the rest of the fleet's Raptors when and as needed. That was no longer the case. Instead they had a chance to go out in style.

Looking at the two unmanned Raptors it was clear that many of the Battlestar Arion's crew had left their own stylised epithet on the Raptors from the catchy "Paybacks a bitch" to the message "To the Cylons, here's a little present cooked up by the boys and girls of the Battlestar Arion's deck crew. Enjoy".

The engines on both Raptors increased in thrust as the programmed instructions were cycled through and then in a flash, they were gone.

03/08/55

07:59

Cylon Controlled Space

38 Lightyears Deep

Battlestar Pegasus

CIC

The four Battlestars had split into two distinct groups with the Battlestar Arion due to having the strongest defences being paired with the wounded Battlestar Therion and the Battlestar Pegasus being paired with the Battlestar Praetoria. 100 Assault Raptors loaded with tactical nuclear missiles sat already fully powered up on the landing decks of all four Battlestars (25 each) with another 100 ready to be brought onto the landing decks of the Battlestars when they were needed. In addition more than a hundred pilots sat ready in their Vipers which had already been loaded into the launch tubes. When these Raptors and Vipers left the Battlestars they would be automatically travelling at the same speed as the Battlestars (31% the speed of light) until either the Battlestars or Vipers and Raptors changed speed. Condition One had been called twenty minutes before and all positions had been manned, all hatches had been secured and the civilian sections had been completely locked down despite the fact of the civilians not being able to pose a problem due to the use of sleeping tablets being crushed into their morning meal since none of the Commanders could risk civilians running wild on the ships during battle.

Admiral Cain could feel the buzz of excitement and nervousness throughout her ship, it was so strong, so intense it was like being on the cusp of the most sensual and sexual orgasm of her life. She felt more alive right now than at any time in her life since the birth of her children. As the seconds ticked down she looked across the information management table at her XO Colonel Jurgen Belsen. Locking eyes they seemed to see into each other's souls. There was no fear, not this time, they were done with fear now, and now the Colonial Fleet was going on the attack. They were going to take their justice. But most of all they were finally ready to exact their vengeance.

An alarm sounded at the same time that Fleet Admiral Helena Cain ordered "Jump!"

All four Battlestars slipped into subspace in a flash of bright white light.

Operation Warhammer was underway.

To be continued…

And yep, it's a cliffhanger. I'm so sorry but this chapter is already 29000 words long and I really wanted to get Warhammer into this chapter but the actual operation is going to be pretty big.

I've decided to give you some background history on this BSG/Caprica universe in regards to the reduction in Battlestars which isn't cannon (past the point that Adar cut defence funds meaning the fleet was reduced) or at least I never heard anything like it in BSG, it's there to give you insight into the way the fleet and the government both worked.

The poem that Coker reads is actually by me (yeah I suck) and not by Kataris (famous poet in bsg lore, pilot in season 2 of bsg uses one of his lines to threaten tigh after Gideon incident).

As to the harmonic resin, I watched some documentary on NASA a while ago where they were on about how they either developed or bought this solution so they could "paint" it on hulls in space. If I remember correctly they passed a certain tone through the resin which turned it into a liquid like form which they could paint onto hull and once tone was taken away it would solidify. I figured the colonials probably have something similar.

As to the high cruising speed of 4.5% I refer you to below with the key being what billy says under distances and speeds, I have went with alternate version. at the bsg wiki

wiki/Navigation_in_the_Re-imagined_Series

The battle of picon hq anchorage which coker remembers is an expanded version of the battle in new beginnings chapter 3 seen from a civilian perspective.

I don't know if there is an actual science for if a ship's momentum carries on through a jump since I haven't found any info anywhere which is why I have made an Authors decision to say it does in order to allow the strategy used by colonial fleet.

As to the ships that Ghost Squadron has (Raptor Ultras, Stealth Vipers (looks a lot like the blackbird) and Raptor Gunship and Stealth Raptors) the only one that they didn't have in the Ghosts comics were the Stealth Raptors.

There isn't much info in the wiki which is why I have added a bit extra to the descriptions and slightly changed sizes etc (also increased the amount that they have) but here they are at bsg wiki

wiki/Stealth_Viper

wiki/Viper_Gunship

wiki/Raptor_Ultra

Well, I guess it's time to start writing the next chapter and remember "No plan survives contact with the enemy".

And as ever all reviews are appreciated, will update asap