Chapter 14
The Hand of God Part 2
Waves of Destruction
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Tylium Mine (Colonial Mining Operation)**
*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*
The first wave of Baseships jumped into the system right on schedule. Ten of them stood before the asteroid the Colonials were mining, their weapons systems still offline. Colonel Davidson had been right. This wasn't an assault force, it was a refueling trip. The Cylons had finally fallen into a trap.
The Odyssey reappeared on their DRADIS screens as the small ship exited a state of full stealth, a motion Adama found to be hard to believe considering how hard it was to detect when 'passively jamming' their sensors, and fired a missile into the cluster of Baseships before disappearing again, this time due to the massive EM signature that was released by their frighteningly powerful nuclear warheads. The explosion was like a star being born unto the world. The shockwave rippled out as the radiation flooded the Baseships. The star died out just as quickly as it had been born and left three Baseships destroyed with another two heavily damaged
"Mr. Gaeta, move us into position," Admiral Adama ordered.
There was a brief moment of distortion as the Old Girl jumped into FTL and reappeared in the hole the Odyssey had just blown in the middle of the Cylon Fleet. A flash of golden light deposited the Pegasus beside her and the two Battlestars brought the remaining might of the Colonial war machine bearing down on her enemies. Between the powerful first strike and the two Battlestars, the first wave of Baseships was completely destroyed before they even had a chance to pull out.
The sight of it brought a smile to the aging man's face.
"Launch the CAP," Adama ordered as he picked up the phone that allowed him a direct line to Colonel Davidson and Commander Fisk. "How were things on your end, Colonel?"
"I'll get back to you on that one," Davidson replied in a distracted tone.
"Something wrong, Colonel?" Adama asked, the smile on his face instantly fading.
"I've got good news and bad news," Professor Naco, whose voice was, by now, well-known to the Admiral, replied.
"Give it to me straight."
"One of the Resurrection Ships must've been low on fuel because it accompanied the first wave. That's two of their mobile immortality factories destroyed in three days. On the down side, it appears that each Cylon Resurrection Ship is accompanied by fifteen Baseships… they brought four."
"That's…" Saul began before trailing off, a look of horror on his face.
"Sixty," President Roslin said, her tone hinging on fear. "Sixty Baseships against two Battlestars."
"And the Odyssey," Lee Adama countered. By the way he said it, Bill could tell that it was more of a hopeful question than a statement of fact. Hell, even he couldn't blame these strangers if they opted to run rather than stand between the Colonials and their own godsdamned mistake.
"Each Battlestar is worth three Baseships. The Odyssey's proven itself capable of taking on far more… the factor that tips the scales against us isn't their numbers…" Professor Naco began.
"It's the civilians," Commander Fisk concluded.
"Then we're going to have to adjust our strategy," Adama said in a neutral tone. "Recall the mining ships and tell the captains to get as much Tylium ore as they can as fast as they can. Any ship in the civilian fleet with weapons is to stand on post as the last line of defense between the mining fleet and the Cylons."
"And the rest of the fleet?" President Roslin asked.
"We're going to have to hide them and hope they're not found. We need the Tylium or we're all dead in the water, and if we can't run…" The sentence was left unfinished. They all knew what they were fighting for.
***Pegasus Galaxy (Former Ancient Territory)***
**Lantea (Surface)**
*Atlantis (Control Room)*
"All I'm saying is that you're not really needed," Caldwell stressed before rethinking the wording of his statement. "Down there," he quickly added.
Weir looked back to him with an amused smile on her face. "Nice save," she said patronizingly. "I respect your opinion, Steven, really I do, but this could be a serious boon for the Expedition."
"And you're not a scientist," Caldwell shot back. "Your being down there with Sheppard just leaves Atlantis without a leader."
"First," Weir countered sternly as she climbed the stairs to the Jumper bay, "we'll be in radio contact…"
Caldwell snorted at that and shook his head. "Yes, because we've never lost contact with a Jumper below the ocean before."
"That Jumper was badly damaged," Weir shot back. "Second, they'll have you."
"I'm overseeing the repairs to my ship, Doctor, I don't have time to babysit a city full of scientists," Caldwell argued.
"Your crew is incapable of carrying out basic repairs without you present?" Weir asked as they finally reached the Jumper bay.
"No, but…"
"Then they'll be fine, Steven, and my people are the same way. Just handle the situations they can't. It's not like you have to get status reports every five seconds." Without another word, she walked away from the full-bird Colonel and approached her second in command.
"Ready to go?" Lieutenant-Colonel John Sheppard asked, that stupid smirk plastered on his arrogant face.
Caldwell shook his head at the man's antics, antics he had experienced firsthand, and walked back down the stairs into the Control Room. "Jumper Three is away," Chuck reported as the small craft launched out of the roof and flew off towards parts unknown.
With a sigh, Caldwell hit his earpiece. "Twitch, beam me up."
The Bridge crew of the Daedalus was, in Caldwell's opinion, comprised of some of the youngest specialist he'd ever seen. Still, they were good at their jobs. As the Colonel reappeared in the nerve center of his ship, he turned to face the duo that ran the bulk of their battle systems. There was his tactical officer, an admittedly young Captain by the name of David Kleinman, and his navigator, an even younger Major Christopher 'Twitch' Scott. Kleinman was nearly as good as Major Kevin Marks, but had less time served, and Twitch was misunderstood. Most people, Caldwell included, had initially assumed the man's nickname was indicative of a lack of grace under fire. They had all learned the hard way that it was anything but. Turns out, the nickname was given to him by an uncle who repeatedly told the story of the young baby having a leg that twitched.
"Where are we at?" Caldwell asked.
"Orbit of Lantea, sir," Twitch immediately replied.
Caldwell looked to his navigational officer who looked back unblinking. "What's the status of the repairs?" Caldwell finally asked when it became clear that the man wouldn't budge. He had to admit, he liked the kid. He wasn't the type to give in and Caldwell liked that. He had potential.
"They're stalling out again," Twitch replied as he brought up a display on the forward viewport. The HUD showed sections of the ship that were highlighted in red. Most of the damage was stopped at the hull, but several of the systems were still under repair. "At this point, the shields are back up to full power and the engines have been fully repaired. What's stopping us from getting back to Earth is the hull breaches. Because the shields are down during hyperspace travel, the hull has to stop the subspace radiation from killing the crew. We know the effects that hyperspace radiation can have on organic materials just from our knowledge of the Wraith. Now replace their organic hulls with our lives and you've got a pretty good idea why we can't make a jump into hyperspace."
With a deep, irritable sigh, Caldwell said, "The next time Sheppard has a brilliant idea to use my ship to block a coronal mass ejection, remind me to never agree to it." It was over a week ago that they used Atlantis' ZPM to boost the Daedalus' shields to stop the over glorified solar flare. That roughly five minute burst of radiation had fried more systems on the ship than the Battle of the Void had.
"At least we didn't need to go that far to reach breathable air when the life-support failed during the overloads," Kleinman pointed out.
"I can't believe that's the highlight of our engagement with a star," Twitch deadpanned.
***Local Cluster (Sol System)***
**Earth (Surface)**
*McMurdo Air Force Base (Training Grounds)*
This place was impressive. Ever since Wolf Pack got the news that they were being shipped off to McMurdo, they had been in low spirits. Then they actually got here and their attitudes changed drastically. Things were happening here, that much was clear. The base, which had undergone massive expansions and improvements in the past few years, was a virtual city in the midst of a frozen hell. This place demanded respect, and even nature was forced to oblige. The winds howled outside of the facility, but never cut across the grounds. It was possible, if one was properly acclimated, to wear shorts as you walked from the Barracks to the Training Grounds and not because it was warm down here. No, it was that the winds parted before they hit the base and left the facilities as the eye of the storm. No matter how bad it got out there, the base itself never seemed to get hit by the bad stuff.
That was the impression the group of newbies was under. What they didn't know, and indeed didn't have the clearance to know, was that the base was surrounded by a shield that could do more than stop wind and snow. A nuclear bomb may lay waste to the surrounding landscape, but McMurdo would be perfectly unscathed… well, aside from the people who would be blinded by the blast due to lack of protection for their eyes. An orbital bombardment may melt the ice around them, but McMurdo would weather that storm too. Why put so much into protecting one base? It was the new international training grounds for the Stargate Program's SG teams. Again, a fact that none of the newbies were aware of.
What they did know, however, was that there were people present from around the globe and they were required to play nice. The first few weeks, racism had run rampant. Then a well-known and highly respected General from the USAF showed up. One look from that man was all it took to get everyone to stop fighting long enough to get to know one another. He left two weeks after arriving and things were looking up. The multinational teams were running practice ops with near perfect results. It was inspirational.
And cold.
So very cold.
"Alright, listen up ladies!" Sergeant Lewison, the hardassed SOB that presided over their squad, shouted at the whole lot of them. "Seeing as how Sergeant Parker has decided that he needed a bit of warmth and has taken all of his vacation time, we're temporarily merging Nobel Team and the Wolf Pack. Considering that my patience is not one of my better known virtues, I suggest you get your shit together and keep it that way. I don't like this anymore than you do, but, unlike you, I get to make you stand out in the cold for hours on end if you piss me off while I enjoy a hot cup of coffee. Do we have an agreement?"
"Sir, yes sir!" the assembled men, and woman, replied in unison.
"Today we'll be working within a new set of parameters. For the sake of this exercise, Noble One is MIA," Lewison continued. He waved to a group of soldiers standing off to the side and one of them came over. "Take him away," Lewison ordered. The man led Nobel One, Commander Carter, away from the rest of his team before the whole lot of them marched off in a seemingly random direction. "Your objective is to recover your captured comrade from behind enemy lines. This will be a two pronged assault. It begins with the ground team…"
***Pegasus Galaxy (Former Ancient Territory)***
**Lantea (Surface)**
*USS Daedalus (Engine Room)*
"And you're sure this will work?" Caldwell asked again.
"Yes, sir," Doctor Lindsey Novak replied. It was more than a little relieving that the woman had lost her nervous habit of hiccupping all the time.
With an aggravated sigh, Caldwell asked, "And what does this accomplish exactly? It's not like we need the extra sensor's range. Atlantis will see anything coming long before we do."
"The point is to test the hull integrity," Novak replied.
"Test? I though you said this would work?"
"Work as a test, yes."
"And if we fall apart in the process? We barely survived reentry as it is, and now you want to leave before the repairs are done?!"
"Sir, with all due respect, when Hermiod went back to the Asgard, we lost our most qualified technician to work on the Asgard systems aboard this ship. I understand why you're reluctant to try anything outrageous considering that, but what you're not realizing is that this is an Earth ship. The Asgard don't need to be here to tell me when we're stressing the hull beyond its limits. Right now, getting this ship into orbit achieves the goal of telling us know where the flaws we can't see are. I'd much rather wait for the NDI guys to get here from Earth, but they're looking for the Odyssey and don't exactly have time for us. Three weeks in hyperspace is only possible if you have a ship to enter it. Until we get the Daedalus operational, the Apollo finished, or the Odyssey found, we're all we've got."
Caldwell's anger deflated at that. News of the Odyssey had reached Atlantis a few days ago. They were all worried, and not being there to help was only making matters worse. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he said, "So stressing the hull is the only way to find the cracks? And you're sure this won't backfire on us?"
"It's not a matter of stressing the hull, it's a matter of getting into range of Atlantis' more advanced sensors. Right now, we're sitting too low for the sensors that are used to help the drones know what to target to best destroy a ship. Those sensors will scan through our radar absorbent hull and reveal every stress crack in the space frame so the drones can target those weaknesses. Obviously we won't be firing any drones at the Daedalus, but once we know where the stress cracks are, we can start fixing them. It's the only thing we can do until the SGC can send us the raw materials we need to patch up the hull breaches, and it's also the most pressing concern right now."
"Twitch," Caldwell said while hitting his earpiece.
"Sir?" the Major replied over the comms channel.
"Get us into orbit, but take it easy," Caldwell ordered.
The Daedalus, which had been resting calmly on the surface of the ocean between two of Atlantis' piers, was quickly engulfed in a cloud of steam as the engines flared to life and the ship began to rise. Slowly but surely the Daedalus left the oceans behind and reached up into the stars. As they moved, Caldwell found himself hoping that this didn't end up becoming the story of Icarus, son of Daedalus, who flew too close to the sun and fell into the oceans to never be seen again. When the soft vibration in the hull under his feet finally stopped, Caldwell breathed a sigh of relief.
"Orbit established," Twitch reported. "Atlantis is scanning us now."
"It'll take them a few minutes to find everything, sir," Novak informed him.
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Tylium Mine (Colonial Mining Operation)**
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
Sparks flew from one of the terminals as a standard ordinance-carrying missile impacted the hull of the Odyssey a split second before the point-defenses could take out the fighter that had slipped past the shields.
"We've lost one of the railguns," Donnelly reported as the weapon system stopped responding.
Behind him, the oddly calm scientist continued to type on her tablet. "The gun itself is still operational but the controls were severed. We can fix it, but someone's going to have to suit up and go onto the hull in the middle of a battle."
The damage to the inertial dampeners had more sparks flying as Marks pulled the Odyssey through a loop so tight it overrode the ship's artificial gravity generators and had anyone not strapped down floating above the floor. It actually managed to annoy Davidson when the strange-mannered woman floated past him in the zero gravity environment before landing on her feet without so much as a grunt of effort. She didn't even seemed the least bit phased.
"The only other option would be to cut into the internal hull and access the system that way, but, at this point, there's more armor between the wires and the inside of the ship than there is between the wires and open space."
"Their tactics have changed," Colonel Viride noted, his observation bringing Davidson back to the more pressing issue.
"How so?" Davidson asked.
"Every time we set up a Baseship for a kill shot, it moves behind another one. They're covering the holes we put into their armor by hiding behind somebody else's armor."
Davidson carefully observed the battle and noted that, indeed, once they had punched a hole into their target's armor, it fell back and another Baseship took its place. "That explains why their numbers aren't lessening. I thought they were just jumping in more ships."
"No," Gabi said as Marks took them into a barrel roll that narrowly avoided what had to be twenty nuclear warheads. "The same eighteen ships have been attacking us since we managed to destroy those two in the opening of the wave. Since then, we haven't gotten a single kill."
"Admiral, we need a new strategy," Davidson said, desperately hoping Adama would have a plan.
"We've noticed," Adama replied as Galactica's flak turrets kept pumping out rounds.
If the Battlestars were being swarmed, then the Odyssey was being flooded. Thousands of Cylon Raiders had jumped into the system and thrown everything they had at the two Colonial warships while more still made a run on the mining fleet. All of the Vipers and 302s the allied forces had to offer were serving as the last line of defense between the Raiders and the few civilian ships armed with anti-fighter missiles. If they failed, the civilians would be in the line of fire. If the civilians failed the entire battle was a waste. That did not sit well with any of the members of the command staff.
As for the Odyssey… twenty Baseships had jumped into the system to launch the first official wave of the Cylon offensive. Of the eighteen that remained, all of them were trying their best to destroy the agile Battlecrusier. If Galactica and Pegasus abandoned their positions over the mine to help the Odyssey, the Raiders would make it through and they would fail. If the Odyssey broke position to regroup with the Battlestars, the combined forces of the Cylon offensive would overwhelm them. They were stuck between a fleet they should be running from, and a mine they couldn't afford to abandon.
"Now might be the time to show our hand, Colonel," Oliver said as Marks took them into another gravity defying maneuver that, once again, had the Professor floating around the Bridge with the rest of the unstrapped-down crew.
Once again she landed with grace. Once again she was the only person to land with grace. How a civilian could be that unphased by this whole situation was puzzling to Davidson. She had to have had experience in space, but she was too young to have been part of NASA before it was shut down due to funding and too much of an unknown character to have been a part of the Stargate Program's fleet.
"If we have forces held in reserve that I'm unaware of, please feel free to fill me in at your leisure," Davidson replied as his ship shook under his feet from the force of several missiles striking their rapidly depleting shields.
"Gabi, how's the virus coming along?" Oliver asked.
Gabi finally looked up from her tablet, a look of shock mixed with confusion on her face. "You want to use that now?!"
"It's the only force multiplier we have left that's not already on the field," Oliver replied.
"It's experimental at best and lets them know how well we understand their systems at worse. And, just to be clear, if that's true, they'll rewrite their programming and the hopes of ever using a virus against them dies with it!"
"Gabi!" Oliver said more sternly as more sparks flew and Marks tried his best to get them out of the encirclement of Baseships. "I don't need to tell you what happens if we lose this battle."
"We abandon the Colonials to their self-inflicted slaughter and run like hell," the scientist shot back in a tone of complete seriousness.
Oliver blinked at her, a dumb-stricken look on his face. "Derek would've had it working three hours before this battle began. Derek also would've deployed it in a way that it would have traveled through their resurrection network and took out their Resurrection Ships. Obviously I brought the wrong technician with me."
The Professor, to her credit, managed to refrain from slapping the ever-living shit out of the man that served as her superior despite her lack of rank, though the look she leveled on him would've melted the flesh off of his face if looks could kill. Nevertheless, she walked out of the Bridge and the Colonel followed after her, the two arguing the whole way out of earshot.
***Pegasus Galaxy (Former Ancient Territory)***
**Lantea (Orbit)**
*USS Daedalus (Corridor)*
"Colonel!" Novak called ahead as Caldwell made his way through an active construction zone.
"Doctor," Caldwell greeted the woman as she jogged up to him. "What's wrong?"
"Atlantis' sensors detected several major stress cracks, as we figured they would, but they also detected damage in several areas of the ship we didn't even think to look at. Since it was the front of the ship that took the bulk of the beating, we didn't even think to check the area around the engines."
"The moral of the story, please," Caldwell said to speed up an unnecessarily long explanation.
"It would appear that we have damage to the ship from our battle against the Wraith that's still unresolved. As it stands, it we hadn't have had Atlantis do a full scan, we never would've found it."
"I thought we had people back on Earth for that stuff?"
"We do, but x-rays can only penetrate so far into an alloy as dense as our armor. We're talking about cracks hidden so deep in the armor that it's actually not that surprising we missed them. I don't think that they did ultrasonic testing on the armor plates after the Battle of the Void. They were more concerned with life-support, and we got shipped out again because we were needed. In their defense, it's a part of the ship that's hardly ever effectively targeted, but…"
"It could've destroyed us if you hadn't caught it," Caldwell finished for her.
"Yes, sir," Novak replied nervously.
Caldwell sighed in frustration. This was another delay and they were already three weeks away from Earth at best speed. "Get it fixed," he ordered before walking away.
"Sir," Twitch's voice said in his ear.
"What is it, Major?" Caldwell asked.
"We just got a report from Atlantis. It looks like the search team has missed their check-in."
"Beam me down," Caldwell ordered with another irritated sigh. This was going to be a long day.
***Local Cluster (Sol System)***
**Earth (Surface)**
*McMurdo Air Force Base (Nobel Team)*
"Spin up the big guns, Jorge," Kat, the sole female in the duo of teams working together for this exercise, ordered.
"With pleasure, ma'am," Jorge replied as he stood up out of cover. His hulking form was frightening enough to behold. The gun in his hands, which was usually mounted in place due to its weight and bulkiness, only made him that much more intimidating. With the whir of servomotors warming up to operational levels, the gatling gun came to life with a roar. 'Armor piercing rounds' crossed the distance between the big man and his target at the speed of sound and tore into the cover the 'Insurgents' had set up to defend their 'base.'
As Jorge announced their presence, Jun, the team's resident sniper, used the distraction to pick off heads wherever and whenever he could. The whole thing was kept 'safe' by the use of laser rounds. Some new invention the Americans pulled out of their asses, and, oddly enough, named the damned system the 'Intar,' but everyone else just called them laser rounds. They stung like a bitch when you got shot by them, but they weren't even remotely lethal… or so they were told. Kat had her suspicions that, if you shot someone enough times with one such weapon, it could cause irreversible damage.
As Jorge laid out suppressive fire and Jun did the actual 'killing,' Kat motioned forward. Emile, the latest addition to their team, and Kat darted forward, taking pot shots at anything that moved while Jorge slowly advanced like a Human tank. Kat made it to cover and added her own bullets to Jorge's suppressive spray while Emile, a German spec ops soldier, and Donnino, the Italian more commonly called Don, ran forward, shotgun and assault rifle in hand respectively.
Despite the amount of fire bearing down on them, the insurgents kept fighting. Their own Intar rounds flew over Kat's head and forced her into cover as she 'reloaded' her gun. Then the carnage turned against them as Jorge did the same. Emile, now fully across the field that separated them, jumped over the nearest barricade and used his shotgun to let his opinion of his 'enemies' be known.
But he was outnumbered.
And very foolish.
*McMurdo Air Force Base (Wolf Pack)*
The V-22 Osprey, despite being an advanced marvel of modern technology, was a thing of the past. Already the aircraft with the speed of an airplane and the VTOL ability of helicopter had been made obsolete… by a new design no one had seen before they got to McMurdo. Introducing the Air Force's spec ops teams to the D77-Troop Carrier known as the 'Pelican' had left many of the veteran PJs wondering where the hell something like this came from. It was sleeker than anything ever created by man before now. Its lines curved and flowed like something out of a sci-fi movie. She was fast, quiet, and packed one hell of a punch. Overall, the thing looked like it belonged in space, but Alcatraz could understand why it was here being tested instead of being mass produced…
The pilots weren't used to flying the damn things yet.
The stabilizing thrusters were required to keep the jet-propelled VTOL airborne while the forward-vectored thrusters provided the thrust needed for forward movement. The tricky part was the stabilizers. When the aircraft slowed down below stalling speeds, those thrusters kept it floating. It was, by far, an imperfect system.
"We've been boggy spiked," the pilot called behind him as a variant of the Intar rounds were used to imitate AA guns. There was even a dummy missile system firing SAMs at them filled with paint. It was the missile that hit them.
The Pelican, her starboard thruster 'destroyed' in an 'explosion' that covered the thruster in pink paint, started spinning as the pilot fought to regain control of the damaged craft. Taking his cue, Alcatraz turned to his team of Pararescue Jumpers and shouted, "Go, go, go!" as he followed them out of the back of the careening craft.
The six of them fell through the skies and their new suits came to life. Another seemingly random advancement to come out of the Air Force's labs under the deserts of Nevada, the helmets they wore were equipped with a Heads Up Display that highlighted where their teammates were as they fell. Rather than the antiquated system of falling with flares strapped to their backs so that they didn't ram into each other in midair, the HUD offered them a stealthier means to the same end. It also served other functions such as an encrypted comms system. Where this stuff came from was beyond the Lieutenant-Commander, but he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. To be offered the opportunity to come here and train with the best that the world over had to offer wasn't something he'd ever complain about. Still, he felt like there was a lot going unsaid here.
They dropped to the altitude preset by their mission debrief and deployed their parachutes. Their descent slowed enough that Frasier, ever the show off, managed to shoot one of the hostiles on the ground in the heart, but it was all for not. The Pelican, too damaged to regain a stable flight, spiraled down until it 'crashed' into the unforgivingly hard ice. Their equipment immediately went dead with it. All of the Intars in use for their exercise shutdown at once and their HUDs received a message from command simply stating, "Critical Mission Failure."
In a fit of rage, Chino took his helmet off and threw it on the ground. It was a decision he immediately regretted when he took an Intar blast full-on to his face and collapsed in pain. Walking up to the downed soldier, Lewison stood over Chino and shouted, "That helmet costs more than you make in a year, soldier! I advise you to keep that in mind before you start throwing shit around!" The training field was instantly silent as the man turned to the whole of them. "Well done you terrorist shit-heads, you won! You're all dismissed. Go get warmed up. As for you, ass-wipes, you failed."
"I mean no disrespect, sir, but how?" Jorge asked as he and Nobel Team walked over. Most of the time such a statement was the equivalent of a subtle 'fuck you,' but not when Jorge was the one saying it. The big guy was such a softie.
"How do you plan on making it out of this frozen hellhole without an exfiltration vehicle?" Lewison asked rhetorically.
"If I may, sir, I believe the fault there lies with the pilots," Walsh countered. "If they can't fly their plane, how are we supposed to rely on them?"
As if on cue, the Pelican, now flying under remote-control, landed a few yards away and the two pilots came to join in their berating. "I didn't say it was your fault, Warrant Officer, I said that you failed," Lewison shot back as the pilots saluted the man. "It just so happens that I agree with you. You two are going back to the simulators." When the pilots seemed to relax a little, Lewison smiled a very dark smile. "The external simulators," he reiterated as he pointed to the simulator that sat exposed to the open air. They wouldn't be sitting in the comfortably heated interior of the base proper. Instead, they would freeze outside while still learning what needed to be learnt.
But, because they were a team, that meant that they ALL had to freeze. "The rest of you are going to give me a five mile hike past the Line. When you get back, get ready for an extensive bout of physical conditioning."
"Yes, sir!" the assembled men, and woman, replied in near perfect unison.
"Dismissed," Lewison said before walking back towards the base.
"Wolf Pack, fall in!" Alcatraz called, Carter calling his own team into formation. The two teams, accompanied by the pilots who were expected to bear this part of the punishment as well, marched off towards the Line, the imaginary barrier that held back the storm… well, imaginary to them.
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Tylium Mine (Colonial Mining Operation)**
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
"How's it going, Colonel?" Davidson asked over the radio as another cluster of nukes hit their shield. They must've taken over a hundred nukes to their shields by now and the missiles were still flying. On the upside, they managed to take out another two Baseships.
"Why are you asking him?" Gabi shot back, a tight edge to her voice. "Sam, I need a transmission vector."
"You are aware of the fact that, if this doesn't work, they might actually learn enough about our systems to turn the virus against us, right?" Sam asked, concern clear in her voice.
"Nobody told me that!" Davidson said.
"It's either this, or we find out exactly how well our armor compares to Galactica's. Make your choice, Colonel, but do so quickly," Oliver replied as three more nukes hit the shield.
"Sir, we've lost a couple of our emitters to shield conventional missiles carried past the shield by their fighters. The strain of projecting the barrier with half of the emitters missing is too much for the generators to handle, ZPM enhanced or not. The shield's down to twenty-percent and falling fast. We won't last much longer," Marks added to reiterate the Colonel's words.
"Do it," Davidson ordered tightly.
"Transmission vector," Gabi said again.
"I'm isolating your lab and the short-ranged communications system. The Centurion will have one-way access to the transmitter. Let's just hope it doesn't take anything with it when you broadcast it."
"That's too risky," Gabi said, her tone indicating that she was shaking her head. "We're not sending the Centurion's mind anywhere, I've already had Doctor Baltar help me lobotomize it. We're sending a virus disguised as a Skin-Job's mind."
"You can do that?" Oliver asked.
"We're about to find out," Gabi replied before their comms system came to life. A massive amount of data scrolled across the screens in the Bridge as the computers that monitored the ship registered the grid isolating the lab, as Sam had said, before broadcasting a massive data file. "Now we wait."
"For what?" Davidson asked.
"The Trojans to jump out of the Horse."
*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*
Adama listened to the conversation, the phone forgone and the comms channel simply broadcasted to the CIC at large. He was nervous, but he wouldn't let it show. Even then, it didn't go unnoticed.
"The moment of truth," his XO said, his tone as subtle as Adama expected it to be.
"Sir!" Lieutenant Gaeta shouted over the noise of explosions impacting the hull. "Half of their Raiders just shut down! They're drifting free!"
"Take them out before they wake up again!" Saul immediately ordered.
Adama didn't even question his XO's choice in words. He just kept praying. "What's happening, Lieutenant?"
"I don't know, sir, but the rest of the Raiders are scrambling…" Gaeta began before the enigmatic professor cut him off.
"If I had more power I could!" she shouted, presumably at her CO. "If you want more of them shut down, I'm going to need the subspace communications array, but, to get access to that, I'd have to undue the programming that's turning them into pseudo-inertial dampeners. If we keep pulling stunts like this after I do that, the Odyssey's going to be torn apart!"
"Marks, cloak the ship!" Davidson ordered.
The Odyssey dropped off of the DRADIS grid entirely as the small ship entered full stealth. Now unhindered by the ship the Cylons probably assumed had fled the system, the Baseships adjusted their course and moved towards the two Battlestars. Three stars were born amongst their ranks as the Cylons flew past the nuclear mines the Tau'ri had hidden before the battle. Another six of the Baseships died in the explosions. Ten down, ten to go. Then five of the Baseships stopped moving towards them before jumping into FTL for no apparent reason. Shortly after that, the Odyssey reappeared on their sensors…
And the Cylons ran scared.
President Roslin breathed an audible sigh of relief and nearly collapsed against the wall she was leaning on, but her relief was short lived. "Now's not the time to breathe a sigh of relief, Madam President," Adama said solemnly. "We've still got forty hostiles to deal with."
"I'm actually happy to say that you're mistaken, Admiral," Colonel Viride replied in a tone that had a smile in it. "We just gained one hell of a tactical advantage."
"Care to fill me in?" Adama asked.
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**P4X-650 (Orbit)**
*Devastator (Combat Information Center)*
"There's only so much you can learn from a Goa'uld hyperdrive after being given the far superior version the Asgard use," Colson said as he checked the hyperdrive off of his list of things they were being ordered to study. "At least we know that even Ba'al is still years away from creating an intergalactic model. How are the weapons coming along?"
"Everything that was in their computers was forwarded to the Beta Site for further study. As for the devices themselves, we cut two of them out and shipped them off too; one to the Beta Site so they had a working sample, and one to the Alpha Site. They're scanning it in depth before sending it to Area 51. The rest of the cannons are being kept unpowered until we're ready for the weapons test," his 'second-in-command' over the science team replied.
"And how close were they to duplicating an Asgard shield?"
"They actually managed to get everything right on that one," the woman replied in an upbeat tone. She almost sounded proud.
"Excuse me?" Colson asked in both confusion and shock.
"The barrier composition is nearly an identical match to our own. The only limiting factor that Ba'al's facing now is the power generation, and, since the Mimner's team damaged the primary reactor core as badly as they did during the capture of the vessel, I can't accurately speak to its efficiency. I can, however, say that the back-up generators, itself an uncharacteristic aspect to a Goa'uld ship, are putting out enough power to give this ship a shield equal in power to our own."
"We did forward this to the Asgard, right?" the Marine guarding the door asked.
"Of course," the woman replied brightly. She was a hard one to bring down.
"How did Ba'al manage this?" Colson asked.
"He was Anubis's… apprentice… replacement… whatever the two were to each other, Ba'al has access to everything that Anubis had, and Anubis used his half-ascended knowledge to create a probe that let him steal information directly from Thor's mind. Needless to say, Thor being who he is, Anubis got a lot of Asgard tech from that including the beaming tech. It's not that far of a stretch for him to have gotten his hands on Asgard shields as well. We know that, even before his encounter with Thor, the shields on his ships were far superior to the other System Lords' own Ha'tak. All Ba'al had to do was figure out how to fit the still superior shields of the Asgard onto a ship. Apparently his answer to that was a larger ship."
"Okay, so the shields will require a more extensive in-depth study…" Colson began.
"Not really," his second, the woman's name being Daisy, politely cut him off. "We have the perfected version of a technology Ba'al's just now getting operational enough to be used on a ship designed for front-line combat. The real concern here isn't that they managed to create an inferior version of a technology we already possess. What concerns me is the power core. They match us with their back-ups! How much power can the primary put out?"
"Is there already a team studying the power plant" Colson asked
"No, sir," the guard replied. "They had to seal off that section of the ship due to a radiation leak. We're currently waiting for a shipment from Earth through the Alpha Site. Once the hazmat suits arrive, a repair team will be sent in to seal the breach and repair the reactor. After that, your teams will have full access to the system."
"Okay," Colson said, putting a star next to the power systems on his clipboard. "That leaves life-support…" he began listing.
"Nothing to learn there; our systems are still more advanced. However, study has led to the possibility of using cyberwarfare tactics to disable enemy life-support systems during battle," Daisy piped in as Colson kept reading off the list.
"… sublight propulsion…"
"We might learn a thing a two about reducing the size of our engines without sacrificing speed, but the system is otherwise inferior."
"… FTLC…"
"Ba'al's Faster Than Light Communications grid has one advantage over ours and that's the holo-comms system which, I might add, is a stolen Asgard technology. Aside from that, we're either better or even."
"… the mining sub-systems…"
"A rather innovative setup, that is. We're planning a full study of the system's operation when we finally take her out to get the minerals we need to fully complete the repairs."
"… the transporters …"
"Nothing worth noting there. We've known that Ba'al's had the beam for a while now."
"… the sensors…"
"Less powerful than ours and they don't have as much range. Not worth in-depth study."
"… the hull, armor, structural, and metallurgical engineering."
"We've cut away samples and sent them to through the Gate. I believe the SGC is having them shipped over to Area 51 by C-17. They'll have the armor samples by the end of the day. As for the structural aspect… we're going to have to wait until a specialist team gets here. No one here knows enough about structural engineering to tell you why Ba'al designed this thing to look like a Star Destroyer from Star Wars."
Looking at his check list, with notes written beside each system that reflected his second's comments, Colson sighed and rubbed his temples. "We need more men."
"I take offense to that," Daisy said, her tone hurt.
"Not now, Daisy, I have enough of a headache without you taking an expression as a sexist jibe," Colson quickly cut her off as he moved to exit the Combat Information Center.
"Sir," one of the technicians placed under his 'command' said as she nearly ran into him.
"What is it, Kit?" Colson asked.
"The hazmat team was just ringed up from the Alpha Site. They're beginning repairs to the reactor breach. One of the technicians on the team asked me to inform you that the repairs should be done in two hours, but the radiation levels won't be low enough for unprotected access for a day or two. Apparently the reactor's giving off radiation with a short half-life… by certain people's standards at any rate."
"Considering that Cobalt 60 has a half-life of more than five years, let's be happy it'll only take a couple of days to reach safe levels," Colson replied. "Thank you for the update, you can go back to doing… whatever it is you were doing."
"That would be nothing, sir," the young Warrant Officer replied. "I specialize in power plants. Without access to the reactor, I'm just sucking in oxygen and blowing out carbon-dioxide."
"Well then, you can join me for lunch so we can discuss our plans for the reactor itself. The SGC wants this ship as intact as we can manage after we're done, and that means that the primary reactor needs to be brought back online without too many problems. What can you tell me about the system?"
"From what I can tell, it's a hybrid design; a cross between a Naquadah Generator, and a primitive attempt at making a Neutrino Ion Generator…" the woman began as the two made their way to the mess hall.