For the record, "Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force" is the full rank of the person who serves as the Air Force Chief of Staff's advisor. "Command Chief Master Sergeant" is one step up from a "Chief Master Sergeant," and a "Chief Master Sergeant" isn't to be mistaken for the "Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force." The role of the CCMSgt (Command Chief Master Sergeant) is to preside over a group of "Chief Master Sergeants," and report to the Officer in charge of whatever facility they work at. I had to have my recruiter explain that one to me, so I'm passing along that explanation in the interest of clearing up confusion, and believe me. If you hate reading that rank, imagine how much I hated writing it over, and over, and over again!

Chapter 15

The Hand of God Part 3

War of Attrition

***Pegasus Galaxy (Former Ancient Territory)***

**Lantea (Surface)**

*Atlantis (Control Room)*

"What do you mean there's not another pilot available?" Caldwell asked irritably.

"Trained pilot," Chuck corrected him. "I have the ATA gene, but I can't fly a Jumper. All of our trained pilots are away on missions."

"Then recall one," Caldwell ordered.

"Sir, we've just detected a signal from below the ocean," Amelia Banks reported.

"A signal?" Caldwell asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What type of signal?"

The woman didn't reply immediately. She was too busy working on her terminal. She was a somewhat recent addition to the Expedition that had come through with the Daedalus' last supply run. She had already proven herself more than competent and had earned the respect of those who worked with her.

"It's… it's a Wraith signal," she replied in a shocked tone.

"Wraith?" Caldwell asked in a similar tone.

"Yes, sir," Banks replied as she focused the city's sensors on the area. Just as it had before when they had tried to locate the drilling platform, the city's design blocked the bulk of their scanning power and the water diluted the rest. "I can't get an accurate reading, but it's definitely Wraith."

"Why can this city not look 'down'?" Caldwell asked the room at large.

"The Ancients assumed all of the threats to their world would come from orbit," Chuck replied.

Resisting the urge to trash talk one of the Four Great Races, Caldwell hit his earpiece. "Twitch, we're picking up a Wraith signal coming from beneath the ocean. Can you tell me anything?"

"We're reading the same thing," the Major replied. "Focused scans are showing a large pocket of geothermal energy. That's all we can pick up. Novak is attempting to refine the signal by modifying the sensors grid. We'll get back to you once she's done."

"Sir, if they can detect it in orbit then it's possible the signal could make it off-world," Chuck informed him.

"Can we jam it?" Caldwell asked.

"No, sir," Chuck replied. "Atlantis isn't equipped with a jammer of that type."

"And what about the Daedalus?"

"Shit," Banks swore. "I'm sorry, sir, you're too late. We've detected a Wraith Cruiser altering course. They'll be here before the end of the day."

Hitting his earpiece again, Caldwell ordered, "Twitch, jam that signal!" before turning to Chuck and adding, "The cloak will keep them from detecting us, right?"

"Yes, sir, but once the Daedalus breaks orbit to cloak with us, there's no guarantee they won't be able to pinpoint the source of the jamming field. If Daedalus is in the cloaking field when that happens, they'll find Atlantis by default," Chuck replied.

A beep in Caldwell's ear cut off his next remark. "Sir, we've identified the signal," Novak informed him. "It's a warning in Wraith to inform nearby ships that they've activated their self-destruct sequence. Judging by the way the signal is repeating itself at regular intervals and applying what we know of Wraith technology, I'd say we have less than three hours before the ship's reactor explodes."

"Then that problem solves itself, right?" Caldwell asked.

"Sir, the signal is coming from a Wraith Cruiser. After altering the sensors, we also managed to determine that the Cruiser is well within in the blast radius of the drilling platform," Twitch added.

"There's another problem," Novak continued. "The area of the crust they're sitting on is dangerously thin which is makes it a great place to drill for geothermal energy. It also means that, when the Cruiser explodes, it'll breach the planet's crust and all that energy will be unleashed all at once. The explosion will be amplified by several magnitudes and even Atlantis will be hit."

"So you're telling me we need the shield, not the cloak?" Caldwell clarified.

"It goes beyond that," Chuck answered. "The explosion will unleash tidal waves on the mainland and Atlantis will be pushed around with them. There's a number of different factors to take into account, but the end result is bad for us no matter what we do."

"Then we really need another Jumper pilot!" Caldwell stressed.

***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***

**P4X-650 (Orbit)**

*Devastator (Mess Hall)*

"It's a serious question!" Colson said with a chuckle of his own as the woman sitting across from him laughed hysterically.

"You design air planes for a living and you don't know the difference between a generator and a reactor?" Kit asked through her laughter.

"Laugh it up, Warrant Officer, but I can still pull rank."

"No offense to you, sir, but that's some bullshit right there. Since when do civilians give us orders?"

"Since you joined the chaos of the Stargate Program."

Kit stopped laughing long enough to think that over then smiled at the man across the table from her. "Touché."

"Are you going to answer my question?" Colson asked in a serious tone.

"Are you aware of the laws of physics which dictate things like current generation and such?" she asked, her tone going serious.

"Let's pretend I'm not."

"Okay. A naturally accruing magnet, such as a chunk of magnetite found in nature or iron that's naturally magnetic, achieves this state by having its magnetic domains aligned. Fun fact about magnets, if you hit them with a hammer enough times, you can actually demagnetize them. For the purpose of this explanation, however, all you need is the basic knowledge of the positive North Pole and the negative South Pole plus basic knowledge of how a conductor works. After that, it's just applying them on a mass scale.

"I'll start with the simple part. There are two types of currents; direct, and alternating. A direct current works like a really boring rollercoaster. It goes up to the top then stays as a flat line, which represents its maximum output, and stays there until it runs out of juice. A good example of that is a battery. Then you have alternating current which is a sinusoidal wave. In other words, it goes up then down then up then down… Translated into power generation, that means that it starts out neutral, goes absolute positive, falls to neutral, then keeps falling to absolute negative before rising to neutral and back up to absolute positive. The power outlets in your house are an alternating current. We use AC over DC because AC can travel a larger distance over a conductive wire, but, before you have AC, you have to start with DC.

"Magnetic fields in motion generate electrical currents in conductive materials. So, if you take a magnet and move it over a coper wire, the closer to the wire the magnet gets and the faster you move the magnet, the stronger the current that'll be produced. Here's the catch. Pushing closer and pulling back only alters the strength of the current, not the polarity, and holding still generates no current at all. Because AC has a better transmission range, we need to make the polarity switch, so we spin the magnet so that each pole has a chance to affect the wire.

"A generator is basically a magnet spinning around in a coil of conductive wire which produces the electrical current. For a Naquadah Generator, we use coils of naquadah wires because naquadah is a super-conductor which means we get more current per coil of wire than we would if we used copper or even gold. A reactor is part of the process that generates the motive force to spin the generator. For example a nuclear reactor.

"A nuclear reactor is nothing more than a heater. A very dangerous if uncontrolled heater, but a heater nonetheless. Its function is to heat water to create steam. This steam is then kept under so much pressure that it stays in a liquid state despite being hot enough to evaporate. This high-pressure steam is then channeled to a turbine attached to the generator. The turbine is spun by the force of the steam passing through it, and the spinning motion is transferred to the magnet in the generator, so a reactor indirectly drives the generator which produces electricity.

"For our ships' reactors, there's a nuclear-type water heater providing the motive force to spin the neodymium magnet inside of a coil of naquadah wiring. That's our Naquadah Generators…" kit explained.

"How do they fit all of that into the Mark I Generators?" Colson interrupted her.

Kit held up her hand to forestall any more questions before replying to the first. "I don't know how the Mark Is and Mark IIs work. I only work on the ship-based reactors. As for Ba'al… well, he got inventive. He took a nuclear reactor and used the steam to provide the motive force for a Naquadah Generator that then puts all of its output capacity into spinning a magnet the size of a 302 around in a coil of wire made from, and get this, Naquadria."

"Ba'al has access to Naquadria? I thought you said it was a Neutrino Ion Generator?!" Colson exclaimed.

"It is!" Kit replied in an equally loud voice. Her tone, however, was one of excitement as she had apparently misinterpreted Colson's exclamation. "The Asgard found a way to stabilize it, but they don't call it the same thing we do. Ba'al thinks he has Asgard tech, because he technically does, and Anubis knew about Kelowna so it's safe to assume that Ba'al knew something about Naquadria." When she finally caught on to the air Colson was giving off, she added, "If they were under attack, the Kelownans would've contacted us."

"How does Naquadria make a Neutrino Ion Generator?" Colson asked.

"If I knew that, we'd have our own! I will, however, say that I will make an attempt to figure out how Ba'al's doing it so that we can at least try to duplicate the effect if not make it better all together."

***Local Cluster (Sol System)***

**Earth (Surface)**

*McMurdo Air Force Base (Training Grounds)*

"Give me covering fire!" Tyson shouted over their 'battle-net,' as Command was referring to the wireless network their helmets were linked to.

Frasier obliged by putting a round through a hostile's head and dropping the poor bastard. Tyson winced at the sight. Intars hurt like a bitch as it was, and the stronger the weapon used against you, the more it hurt. As such, getting shot by Jorge, Frasier, or Jun hurt more than a regular Intar… and a headshot from a sniper was sure to leave the man dazed for a few minutes if not outright knocking him out. These weapons may be significantly less lethal than live rounds and better for training than blanks, but they had their drawbacks.

With the dead-weight of Commander Carter thrown over his shoulder, Tyson ran from behind cover towards where he could see their ride coming in low and hot. The Pelican, despite being used as a dropship during this exercise, was a heavily armed gunship… and even had its own Intar weapons.

The gatling gun on its nose spun up, the noise inaudible due in part to distance but mostly due to the massive amount of weapons fire tearing through the air and lighting up the ever-night sky. That light got all the brighter as the turreted weapon started spitting out hyperaccelerated rounds that tore through cover and mowed down hostiles with impunity. The insurgents turned their AA guns and SAMs on the gunship, hoping to bring it down as they had last time, but the pilots weren't falling for that again.

Even as Tyson ran forward, his team forming a protective circle around him and firing into the mass of enemies, the Pelican fired off a swarm of air-to-ground missiles. The paint-filled projectiles burst over their targets and 'destroyed' the offensive AA guns while the terrain protected it from an accurate lock from the SAM launchers, or, when that failed, they simply used flares. As the gunship came in for their extraction, it turned to reveal a manned turret mounted on the back ramp. The operator on the gun spun up his weapon and sprayed the surrounding hostiles with suppressive fire while the PJs boarded the craft.

Alcatraz jumped in and turned around so Tyson could toss the Commander up to him. Alcatraz caught the heavy-built man in his arms and gently set him down on the floor of the Pelican while Walsh helped pull Tyson into the back of the gunship. Pounding on the wall to signal the pilots to take off, Chino jumped in and strapped down, the last of their team to board.

The Pelican had thrusters on its short, somewhat stubby wings, two more on its tail, another two on either side of the troop bay, and four that pointed down at all times for vertical thrust. The wings and forward-vectored thrusters, however, were designed to be capable of pointing down as well thanks to their pivot-joint design. In short, the craft could hover quite easily, but taking off was a little awkward. The forward-vectored thrusters that pointed down during a hover powered up faster than the others so the nose pointed down like the gunship was about to crash, but the lift thrusters quickly countered. Nevertheless, the first second of a vertical takeoff had the Pelican looking like a helicopter in forward-flight the way its nose nearly touched the ground.

Then the wing-mounted thrusters fired up and the Pelican tilted back as the wings swiveled into a flight position and all of the forward-vectored thrusters fired in tandem to bring the gunship up to an incredible speed in a far shorter time than an Osprey was capable of. As they accelerated away from the 'insurgent camp,' the rear bay stayed open until they came to a hover behind Nobel Team, grabbed them, then took off to maximum speed again. Once they were a safe distance from the base, the pilots took them higher now that they didn't have to worry about a SAM lock.

During their 'flight back to base,' the two medics went to work on the 'gravely injured' Commander. Needless to say, because it was just training, the Commander was unharmed and needed no medical treatment. Nevertheless, they were required to treat him as if he had been through months of psychological abuse and physical torture.

When the pilots announced they were landing, Alcatraz and Carter were the first ones off, their teams falling in behind them as Lewison walked over to them. "It only took you three tries," their First Sergeant said in a tone of mild disappointment. "Even then, you managed to get it done faster than the other groups. Pack your bags, boys. You're being redeployed."

"Sir?" Alcatraz asked, more than a little confused. They'd only been here a few months.

"You're being reassigned to a new unit. I assume you know who the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force is," Lewison more stated than asked. He got an answer whether it was wanted or not.

"The personal adviser to the Air Force Chief of Staff?" Carter asked, more than a little shocked. "I wasn't aware that the E-Tens took squads."

"First, there's no such thing as an 'E-Ten'," Lewison replied. "Second, you need to stop interrupting me." When there were no more questions or comments, the First Sergeant continued. "You're being put under the command of the CMSAF's personal adviser and favorite subordinate…"

"The Eagle?" Frasier asked, the excitement in his voice nearly palpable. "Sir," he added when Lewison turned a glare on him.

"Pack your bags. Your flight to Colorado leaves tomorrow," Lewison replied before turning to leave. "But I want another five mile march for the interruptions."

"Sir, yes, sir," the assembled men and woman replied in unison before starting another round of punishment. Unlike last time, however, they weren't silent during their march.

***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***

**P4X-650 (Orbit)**

*Devastator (Reactor Chamber)*

"A neodymium magnet dropped onto a pure copper plate will slow before falling due to the eddy currents generated by the magnet in motion. Now drop the same magnet onto a chunk of purified naquadah and it'll slow even more. Next, drop it over a vat of liquid naquadah and it'll slow to a near stand-still before succumbing to gravity and falling in," Kit said in an effort to explain how changes in a magnetic field can induce electrical currents and electrical currents produced magnetic fields. "There's this one lab back on Earth that has a magnet so powerful that a piece of copper pipe takes three hours to fall two stories just because the eddy currents keep pushing it back up."

"I can't believe you're still talking about that," one of the other technicians with them said as they entered the generator room with full hazmat gear on.

"I'm just trying to wrap my head around this thing," Colson replied as he looked up at the massive power generator before them. "How does all that magnet stuff translate into this?"

"Have you not been listening to a word I've said over the past three hours?!" Kit asked in a hurt tone.

"Colson to the Bridge. I repeat, Colson to the Bridge," a voice said over the ship's internal comms system.

With a sigh, Colson turned away from the reactor and moved to leave the room. "I'll be back in a minute. Try to get the primary reactor back online while I'm gone so we can start to really see what this ship is capable of."

"WILCO," Kit replied as she walked over to the terminal and cursed the damned gloves that kept her fingers from working properly. "Alrighty then! You're all sealed up, so let's start your power-up sequence."

"It'll probably take a few minutes for the reactor to heat up enough to boil the water…" the other technician began.

"And another hour or so before the Naquadah Generator has enough juice to turn the Naquadria coil, yes, I know," Kit cut him off. "I've been working on Aircraft Carriers and Destroyers for longer than you've been working in space. I know how to operate a generator." After a few frustrating minutes of using fingers she couldn't feel through the lead-lined gloves, Kit finally got the boiler's warm-up sequence initiated.

"What do you think we should do; let the Naquadah Generator build up until it's ready to start the NIG, or just start feeding the NIG power now?" the man asked her.

"Considering the problems it could cause if we tried to power this thing without actually having the power to control and contain the Naquadria reaction, I have a new question for you. Do you want to be shot in the head or blow out of an airlock?" Kit shot back as she monitored the power up for any fluctuations or variances.

He never did get to reply as Colson returned at that moment. "Do we have enough power to get the hyperdrive working?"

"The Impolans brought her to us using the secondaries and we've hooked a Mark II up directly to the new hyperdrive for the tests so it's still onboard. We could use that or the secondaries to power the hyperdrive so yes; we can get the hyperdrive working. Why?" Kit asked.

"They've finally authorized our launch. We're heading for that trinium deposit in the next system over. Let's get this ship in one piece so we can start using it for more than a research project," Colson replied.

***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***

**Tylium Mine (Colonial Mining Operation)**

*Battlestar Galactica (Combat Information Center)*

The full might of the remaining Cylon forces jumped into the system and all hell broke loose. Raiders filled the airspace to such a degree that Adama had to recall the Vipers to keep his pilots from dying needlessly. The Baseships were firing enough missiles at the three ships that stood united in the defense of the mine that space had been filled with the lines of their exhaust enough to create a blinding fog. Things were not looking good for the Colonials, but what could they do? They needed the Tylium, and they were so close to having all they needed. They only had to hold the mine for another hour and they'd be done.

An hour could be a hell of a long time.

Missile after missile impacted the hull of both Galactica and Pegasus while the Odyssey was nearly invisible behind the massive EM signature all of the nukes hitting its defenses had created, but still they fought on. The only saving grace here was that the nukes were targeting the one ship that could take it while the conventional missiles targeted the Battlestars, but Adama knew that even the Odyssey had limits to its power.

"How much longer do we have to wait?" Saul asked, his voice rougher than usual. They were all tired. So very tired.

"Colonel Davidson, what's the status of your people?" Adama asked.

"They should be here any minute," Colonel Davidson replied, the sounds of overloading systems bleeding through the comms channel.

"There!" Major Marks' voice could be heard shouting over the sounds of battle as another five Baseships appeared on their DRADIS screens.

**Tylium Mine (Neighboring System)**

*Cylon Baseship (Combat Information Center) [half an hour earlier]*

"Just don't touch anything!" Gabi ordered as they entered the nerve center of the ship. Finding this place had been easy enough. All she had to do was follow the map inside of the Centurion's memories… which Jack was helpfully carrying around behind her on an anti-gravity field with a bundle of wire connecting the metal man's body to Gabi's tablet.

The team fanned out to secure the area, but the only thing left on the ship was a bunch of dead bodies so they started moving the sure-to-have-been-resurrected-by-now Cylons out of the CIC. Gabi was in the process of hacking through the last of their firewalls and establishing a more easily understood command system when she found it. The Hybrid. She dove into the file and started reading everything she could. Once she understood the purpose, it all made sense. Then she heard a gunshot and the systems started to die around her.

"TOMMY!" Gabi shouted at the top of her lungs as she stormed over to the room the man had entered to find the very thing that controlled the ship lying in a tub of water with a bullet hole in its head. "I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING, YOU IDIOT!"

"What?" Tommy asked defensively. "That one was still alive!"

"That's the Hybrid, you dumb fuck!" Gabi replied as she drew her own weapon and slapped him across the face with it. "That thing serves as the server bank for this whole ship! Now I have to take an entirely organic system and find a way to attach a completely cybernetic component!"

From his place on the floor with a bloody cut over his eye, Tommy looked up at the woman and blinked in confusion. Oliver swung around the corner to the room, weapon drawn and flashlight on to provide some light. "What happened?" he asked.

"Tommy killed the ship," Gabi replied as she crouched next to the dead Hybrid.

"You alright?" Oliver asked the man.

"You know me," Tommy replied as he picked himself up. "Nothing hurts for long." True to his claim, the cut over his eye had already stopped bleeding and the skin was stitching itself back together at a visible rate. In a matter of minutes, he wouldn't even have a scab to tell he had been injured.

"Can you fix it?" Oliver asked their resident nutcase. Ever since she had been exposed to that alien device, she'd been acting weird, but that was two years ago and her 'weird' was now considered normal.

"I'll have to replace the center of the network," Gabi replied. "Probably with my own mind."

"No," Oliver immediately countered.

"It's either that, or we build a server that can sustain the system, but doing that will take longer than we have before the Cylons attack again."

"You're not hooking yourself up to a damned alien ship."

"Why not?" Gabi asked, rounding on him with those brown eyes with their strange green flakes floating in them. "That thing right there was their anti-viral software and not only was I able to give it a virus, but Tommy just killed it. Right now, this ship is a body without a brain."

"It's still too risky," Oliver argued.

"But I can minimize the risks by installing the same failsafes here that I used to keep Ryan alive when he got hit by the secondary blast wave."

"Primary," Tommy countered. "He took the brunt of the blow, you got the secondary exposure. He got most of the space powers, you got most of the super brain. He got the killer cancer for which there is no cure, you got all the knowledge of an alien species. He has a computer in his head to stop the migraines from crippling him, you have a computer in your head because you wanted one."

"And now it's going to come in handy," Gabi shot back before pressing a button on her tablet. There was hum as the generators in the ship came to life and the lights turned back on.

"I just told you not to do that!" Oliver shouted, swiping the computer from her hands.

"We don't have time for this!" Gabi replied, pushing past him. "The Cylons are ten minutes away from jumping into their final assault on the fleet and I'm fifteen minutes out from getting these ships ready for combat."

As she walked out of the room and back into the CIC, Tommy asked, "Am I the only who thinks that Jack isn't the only person that's destabilizing?"

"Jack's tumors are acting up, Gabi's implant is full of too much data, and you're still an overgrown child," Oliver replied with a world-weary sigh. "Jack can let her aggression out through combat, Gabi just needs a hard drive to dump data on, but you? You need to go back to kindergarten and learn how to count."

"I can count to ten!" Tommy shot back. "One, nine, four, seven, three, five, two, eight, six, ten!" Tommy proclaimed loudly and proudly. Oliver looked at Tommy who met his gaze and held it for a second before the genetically altered super-Human burst into a bought of laughter. "Sorry, boss. I couldn't resist."

"I'm surrounded by maniacs," Oliver mumbled to himself as he walked away.

"It could be worse," Kimi said as the man passed her. "You could be surrounded by incompetent idiots."

"True," Oliver agreed before walking up to Gabi who had her hand in a pool of fluid. "Since I can't talk you out of this, what's our status?"

"I'm lobotomizing the other Hybrids and replacing their minds with a flash copy of mine. In short, I'll be able to control the five Baseships without stretching my mind too far. It'll just be a matter of sending them orders and them following them blindly," Gabi replied.

"How do you know how to do that?" Oliver asked.

"I don't know," Gabi replied, a tremble in her voice as the truth came out. "There was a similar technology in the Device. I'm just using that knowledge to help us. If it's going to kill me, I might as well take as many of these bastards with me as I can."

"Okay, here's the plan," Oliver said, speaking to the room at large. "We're going to jump the whole fleet behind the Cylon lines and open up with everything we've got. Once we're there, launch the Raiders and set them on suicide runs. Keep the other four Baseships between ours and the Cylon Fleet; let's use their own tactics against them and make sure we make it out alive. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," the occupants of the room replied.

"The Raiders may be a slight problem. I'll have to control them in small groups and I won't be able to maintain control of the…" Gabi began.

"So show us how to run the systems," Oliver cut her off.

"Give me that computer," Gabi said, pointing to her tablet.

It only took twelve of the fifteen minutes that Gabi had said would be needed which left their friendly forces fighting a superior force for two minutes, but that was better than leaving them on their own for five. The captured Baseships jumped into formation behind the Cylon Fleet and opened fire with all of the missiles the Baseships could add to the fray. Nuclear detonations lit up their rear flank and Raider swarms, remote piloted by the other members of the team, made kamikaze runs into the heart of the Cylon formation.

It felt like it lasted for hours, but it was really just a few minutes. The chaos, extra guns, and the second application of the virus allowed the Raiders not already under their control to be turned against one another. The fighters didn't last long, but the Baseships were being careful. Their communications systems were all purposefully disabled to protect them from the viral assault. Finally, it was ending.

"Just ram them!" Tommy shouted as the last of the Baseships made a beeline for the Odyssey.

"I'm trying!" Gabi replied before one of their remaining Baseships jumped into FTL and appeared inside of the hostile Baseship. The atoms of the two ships trying to occupy the same space cause the fabric of reality to fix the problem the only way it could… both Baseships exploded without ever catching fire. Their atoms simply pushed against each other until they were both equally repelled with tremendous force.

"Status report!" Oliver ordered.

"We've lost two Baseships and the other two are severely damaged," Kimi reported from her place at the DRADIS table.

"The Odyssey nearly lost her shields and suffered several overloads, but Colonel Davidson says they're better off than Galactica and replacing the shield emitters will only take half an hour at the most then they'll be back up at full operational capacity. The Old Girl took several conventional missiles to her hull, but the armor held in all but two places. Admiral Adama says that the damage is reparable. Pegasus is another story. She took severe damage to her dorsal structure. One more hit and the ship would've… broken its spine?" Cassidy reported from her place at their impromptu comms terminal. A fitting place for their resident communications specialist.

"The space frame would've been damaged beyond repair and the Pegasus would've been scuttled," Gabi helpfully informed them as she disconnected her neural implant from the Baseship's computers and sunk to the floor with her hands on her head.

"Gabi?" Oliver asked.

"I'll be fine, it's just a headache," she replied, her voice near enough to breaking that Oliver could tell she was about to cry.

"Is Pegasus reparable?" Oliver turned his attention back to Cassidy.

"It'll take some doing…" Cassidy replied before trailing off. "Copy that, Pegasus Actual. Did you say he's dead?" Another pause. "Confirmed." Here she turned back to Oliver. "Commander Fisk was amongst the casualties. A terminal overloaded when they took the nuke that nearly broke them and the Commander suffered third-degree burns to his face and neck before succumbing to death. With no Executive Officer appointed under him, the line of succession dictates that the Chief Engineer be in charge, but, considering that he died to vacuum expose while preventing the Tylium reserves from going up in flames and taking the Pegasus with them, Admiral Adama is promoting Captain Lee Adama to the rank of Commander and giving him command of the Pegasus."

"What about the Tylium?" Oliver asked.

"We're twenty minutes out from having enough Tylium ore to fill the refinery ships' cargo areas. Once that's done, we'll have all the Tylium we need to keep the fleet jumping at the Odyssey's pace for a least a year if not more."

"Okay," Oliver said with a deep breath to calm his heart rate. "We're still alive…"

"Barely," Tommy muttered to Jack.

"… and almost ready to move. Keep making active DRADIS sweeps. I know that the Odyssey will see more Cylons coming before we will, but let's keep our eyes open."

As if that was some type of cue, space above their mining operation tore open as the barrier between normal space and subspace was thinned enough to allow passage… for an Ori Mothership. The large vessel barreled into the system, its shields already active, and rammed one of the remaining Baseships under their control. The Colonials, not knowing the danger they faced, opened fire on what they rightly perceived to be a hostile, but no amount of firepower the remaining five warships could bring to bear would scratch this thing. If the Lucian Alliance, Tau'ri, and Jaffa working together couldn't take on four, then there was no way for them to survive this one.

"Get the hell out of here!" Colonel Davidson shouted over the comms channel loud enough for Oliver to hear him from across the room.

"We still need to collect our fighters," the newly minted Commander Adama said. The fighters had been launched in an effort to finish off the last of the Raiders once the skies were clear enough for it to not be a suicide mission.

Gabi was on her feet and interfacing with the ship again in a second. The other Baseship moved between the Mothership and the fleet while taking evasive maneuvers and firing nukes at the Mothership to no avail, but Oliver didn't care. He'd rather that Baseship get their attention then have the Ori target one of the habited ships. Then the ground under him shook as the Ori returned fire with their smaller pulse cannons. Two of the arms on their own Baseship were blown off by the force of the impacts and part of the central column was opened to space before Gabi managed to maneuver them into the debris field of the former Cylon Fleet. On the DRADIS screens, they could only watch as the other Baseship took the full force of the feared Ori beam weapon and did nothing to stop the powerful blow.

That task fell to the Odyssey and her drastically depleted shields. The beam that would've killed the Pegasus instead was absorbed by the Odyssey as the Colonials spoiled up their FTL drives. "We've got the fighters!" Davidson shouted again as the Odyssey picked up the last of the Vipers. "Now go!" Predictably, the civilians left first followed by Pegasus. Only then did Adama spoil up his own FTL coils and jump away.

More of the minor weapons of the Ori tore into the debris field around them, the energy largely blunted by the time it reached them, but still causing massive damage to the organic ship. Still they fired more nukes at the Ori as if it would matter. Then Davidson shouted again.

"Get out of here, Colonel, that's an order!"

"Gabi!" Oliver said as the ship shook under a direct hit.

"Two more seconds!" Gabi replied, her eyes pressed closed. Finally space around them distorted until they blinked out of existence and reappeared with the Colonial Fleet. The moment the Baseship rematerialized, however, Gabi collapsed to the floor, blood running out of her nose.

*USS Odyssey (Bridge) [a few moments earlier]*

"How did they find us?" Donnelly asked as he unloaded all of their weapons into the Ori's powerful shield.

"That many nuclear detonations would've been enough for us to investigate too," Sam replied from her place at the back of the Bridge.

"The Colonel's Baseship is away," Marks reported as he pulled the Odyssey through yet another maneuver that overrode the Odyssey's artificial gravity. "Our shields are down to five percent. We won't survive another hit and I need to be moving in a straight line to jump into hyperspace."

"Donnelly, blind them!" Davidson ordered.

"You got it, sir," Donnelly replied as he input the necessary commands and Marks managed to avoid another beam by the skin on his teeth.

"You can't be serious!" Sam nearly shouted as she stumbled over to Davidson, more impacts from lesser weapons causing the ship to shake under their feet. "We're not even sure if that'll work!"

"The Mark IX is loaded, sir," Donnelly reported.

"Fire," Davidson ordered grimly, his teeth grit.

"Colonel!" Sam said again, but it was too late, the missile had already thundered out of the tube and was on course with the Mothership. The Naquadria-enhanced super-nuke impacted the shield barrier of the far larger ship and a cloud of radiation, concussive force, and enough EM radiation to blind their sensors spread out from the impact point.

Marks, fearing the blast that would surely kill them all, immediately leveled out their flight path and opened a hyperspace window. The Odyssey dove into the growing vortex at the same moment that the blast hit the window. The energy from the nuke followed them into subspace and the stability of the hyperspace tunnel was compromised. Then the energy hit the Odyssey herself.

Sparks flew from nearly every terminal on the ship as nearly every system onboard overloaded. The lights either turned off or overloaded with sparks flying everywhere accompanied by glass where the overloads were powerful enough to burst terminals, the humming in the floors stopped, the gravity failed… and then the hyperdrive gave out.

With gut-wrenching force, the Odyssey more fell than slipped out of subspace. The tunnel collapsed around them and the ship was ejected into normal space at a high rate of speed that no one was controlling. The view outside of the forward viewport was a disorienting blur as the Odyssey tumbled through space in a series of flips, spins, and rolls. Without any gravity holding them down, the crew was thrown into whatever hard surface happened to be in the way of their momentum be it the walls, floor or ceiling. The centripetal force of the ship's rotation provided a pseudo gravity that was both unstable and unpredictable. The only good thing about it was the fact that, once you slammed into a large enough surface to stop your flailing, that surface became your new 'down' and you didn't fly off again.

The auxiliary systems finally came online, the generator that provided power for the Bridge alone hummed to life and their computers rebooted. Marks, once his terminal was fully restored, fired the maneuvering thrusters in short bursts. Slowly but surely he brought the Odyssey to a gentle, unidirectional glide with the limited amount of control over the ship he had.

"Status report," Davidson managed to groan out past the bruises that covered his torso from the where the straps had held him into his chair.

Marks read over his terminal in silence until he had an answer he could comprehend. "Sir… we're dead in space."

"What?" Davidson asked as an unconscious member of his crew floated over his head, a trail of blood floating along after her. It was only then that Davidson realized that the only thing keeping him in place where the straps that were digging into his bruised body. He undid the straps for the sake of his sanity and groaned at having to move to do so.

"The Mark IX overloaded the hyperdrive. The system's entirely inoperable. Sublight engines are damaged in the extreme. Sensors are offline. Comms are scrambled. Life-support is in need of repairs. Gravity generators are offline. The primary power core's been overloaded. The power grid has taken serious damage. Shields are nonresponsive. Weapons are damaged. I have access to half of our railguns, but the missiles are officially depleted. Half of my systems are unresponsive and the ones that are responding are giving me error messages. There's also several hull breaches and the automated systems didn't respond. I've remotely sealed off the areas I could, but we've lost people and some of the bulkheads can be closed behind the ones I managed to activate to give us more access to the ship should it be needed…" Marks trailed off and looked his CO in the eye. "There's no two ways about this, sir…"

"We're fucked," Sam finished for him in a wheeze. She hadn't been strapped down during the 'crash' and Davidson couldn't believe she was still conscious. She was up near the ceiling, her body drifting in the zero gravity, and she had glass sticking out of her chest in several places.

**Dead Space (Colonial Fleet)**

*Cylon Baseship (Combat Information Center) [one hour later]*

Gabi woke up with a throbbing headache and the smell of copper in the air, but she knew enough to say with confidence that she was aboard the Baseship. Then she heard the voices. "Colonel Davidson ordered us to jump out, so we did. If they're not here, we have to accept the possibility that the Odyssey might have been destroyed," Kimi said in a hiss of anger and frustration.

"I doubt that," Oliver replied, his tone betraying nothing. Damn the assassin-turned-soldier and his ability to hide his emotions. "I don't see the Odyssey going down without a fight."

"They put up a fight, and they lost!" Tommy countered angrily. His anger, however, was clearly focused on the Ori.

From what little she could see without moving, because moving hurt so badly right now, she could tell that Oliver was shaking his head. "I just don't see it."

"Pull your head out of your ass, Colonel… they're gone," Cassidy said, her tone more hurt than angry.

"We don't declare our men dead until we have a body to bring back to their families!" Oliver all but shouted. "Until I get undeniable proof that the Odyssey has been destroyed, we need to get this ship ready for a search and rescue operation," Oliver ordered with a tone of finality that left no room for arguing. "But first, we need to get Gabi shuttled over to Galactica so they can look her over…"

"I'm fine," Gabi said, more strength in her voice than in her body, "and you can't run this ship without me so let me do my job," she added when Oliver opened his mouth to say she needed be checked. With a few stumbling steps, she managed to get to the data link that the Cylons used to control their ships and put her hands in the fluid. "Cylon Baseships, like Wraith Hiveships, will heal most of the damage done to them over time provided they have enough energy. The solar panels on what's left of the arms and the hull's ability to absorb and utilize cosmic radiation will have the repairs underway in a matter of… now, actually. It'll take a few days, but we'll regrow the lost arms and heal the holes in the column. Until then… I guess we keep her around to help defend the fleet."

"It goes beyond that," Oliver shook his head. "Colonel Davidson had loaned a few of his technicians out to the Colonials to help repair and upgrade the civilian fleet after the last engagement with the Cylons before all this went down. There's roughly twenty scientists in the fleet that we have to look out for, plus the negotiation team. I've asked Commander Adama and… Admiral… Adama… that's going to take some getting used to. I've asked the Adamas to send our people over to the Baseship so I can take stock of our people. By the time they get here, you're going to have devised a system for controlling the ship without your damn interface, and we'll implement it without you because you'll be taking a Raptor back Galactica to have Doctor Cottle look you over. Do not argue with me!" Oliver cut her off before she could say anything. "You're going to get an MRI, or their version of an MRI, and you're going to be put on bed rest until you're better."

"I wasn't going to argue. It's actually a good plan," Gabi replied with a groan and a shake of her head as she fought back the urge to vomit. "We just need more computers… keyboards, screens… interface equipment. If we get enough, we can plug them into the existing consuls and just… translate the operating system and…" Gabi struggled to speak through the pain but finally lost the battle and vomited bile onto the floor. Only then did she find it in herself to speak coherently again. "Just turn the existing controls into something that resembles the Odyssey's controls and we'll be fine. Bypass the fluid stuff by plugging the leads into the stuff down here," she added while kicking the… thing that the fluid was sitting in.

"Go lay down, Gabi, you need to rest," Tommy said, guiding her back to the colder and darker environment of the Hybrid's room. "Just lay down, and don't worry about falling asleep. You don't have a concussion and you're not showing any signs of hemorrhaging. Right now, your brain is overtaxed to the point that it's going to shut down if you don't stop thinking. Just go to sleep," the team's resident battlefield medic/heavy weapons specialist ordered.

**Dead Space (Location Unknown)**

*USS Odyssey (Bridge) [a few hours later]*

"Life-support's been fully repaired. That's the beginning and the end of the good news," Marks replied before Davidson could ask.

"That's not entirely true," Sam countered. She was in bad shape. She had bruises all over body, cuts where glass had dug into her skin, and her head had been wrapped up by the chief medical officer where a gash had appeared from a rather nasty impact with something on the Bridge during their tumble. Even then she was one of the injured that made it off with minimal injuries and a list that impressive being considered 'minimal' said a lot about their current situation. "The shields were just a matter of getting the primary core back online and the emitters replaced. Now that we've managed to stabilize the power grid and made those repairs, the shields are back on the mend. We're sitting at around twenty-percent right now, and, yes, I now, it's low, but the power grid is in such a fucked-up state that it's a miracle we have anything working right now. That blast overloaded damn-near every crystal on the ship. We've salvaged what we could, replaced the ones we couldn't, and gotten half of the system at least responding to our commands even if the response is an error message."

"The bad news starts with the full loss of the hyperdrive and goes downhill from there," Marks picked up. "The shields will recharge slowly, and I do mean slowly."

After that, the two just started trading off.

"We lost all but one of the primary sublight engines and two of the secondaries. We're running on minimal propulsion with what we have, because those systems shouldn't still be working."

"The engines are so badly damaged, they don't even realize how damaged they are."

"We ran the numbers and figured out how far we can push them, but even that's risky so we're just sitting here hoping we won't need them."

"The hull's been torn open by the stresses of the ejection and the space-frame was stressed so close to the point of breaking that it's a miracle the ship didn't snap in half during the spin."

"We lost more than half of the computers on the ship during the overload."

"We're running everything on backups…" Marks began.

"And the backups are failing too," Sam finished.

"What about the comms?" Davidson asked, noting the lack of information given.

"Damaged, but working," Marks replied.

"Using them is inadvisable," Sam added. "We could give away our location, and, at this point, if the Ori show up, we won't even be able to run."

"The cloak?" Davidson pushed.

"Operational," Marks replied.

"Send a message to the Colonials, specifically the Colonel, telling them that they are, under no circumstances, to come back for us. If the Ori track the signal, cloak the ship and move us as fast as you're willing."

"Why risk it?" Sam asked.

"Because," Davidson said solemnly. "The last thing we need right now is someone trying to play hero. The Colonials need to keep running, or the Cylons will be the least of their problems."