Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale

by cliff.west

This is a spinoff story. It takes place after "But a somehow a most melancholy" and" Hunted Tribes". Please read those before this bit of work. I will not be recovering those stories, but re-reading them will help you fallow this story. This fiction also will be slow on the combat action.

37. Chapter 37 1 Nov 3048

Got this: Oddshot:Still enjoying your story the one part I am having is with the bits brought in from Cannonshops Teaser as when I try to follow it on /forums its to broken up for me do you know if its posted elsewhere by its self as a stand a loan.

Yours Oddshot

Oddshot, I tried to replay to you note, but I cannot do that to your Guest account. I did send your request to cannonshop. Right now, he is not looking at doing this due, to the amount of work. sorry, maybe someone can step up and help him down the road.

Chapter 37

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

1 Nov 3048

New Circe

Admiral Franks was looking at the data that had just come in. He looked over to the commanders of his battle line. It was not just members from his clan before him, but it also held two warship commanders that were from people who had thought that the planet Earth had been a myth. That did not mean that they would not fight hard to protect it, any more than his clan would fight to protect the Colonials

Franks was very tired, and it showed on his face. There were too many things that needed to be done, but not enough support to do them all. "I know that you and your staffs have seen the data, that came from the first Recon of the planet Troy. What do you think?"

Bill Adama looked over his glasses at his counterpart in the SLDF military. "Well we cannot use that base for our recon missions. But it looks like a nice place to reduce the Cylon's numbers and support Infrastructure. I also think it would be a nice boost for my people, if we can reduce Cylons living on one of our old home planets."

Lee Adama took a light pen and a set of images showed on the screen for the whole room. He had to fight to keep his voice from cracking. "This is the area we call Hades 1. Thanks to some computing power supplied by Nike. We were able to get a lot out of the data of the original supplied material."

The image zoomed down so fast that it made a few people in the room a little queasy. It was like they were falling out of the sky in a death dive. It stopped moving when a set of some things were centered in the screen. "These are standard life support equipment containers. They are attached to domes or other structures in hostile environments. These are new, and they were not there before the Cylon attack. It does not matter if this is to support human forms are not, they are the same design. I asked some of the more talkative skin jobs and they confirmed this information."

The image shot up and then raced over the ground before stopping again. This time the image was a hole or crater outside of a lobe of the main dome. From this angle you could tell that it was over half filled with bodies. The image slowly cleared and the people in the room could now tell that the bodies were Colonial. Cylons normally did not have kids, and some of those bodies were too small to be adults. "We have no idea if any of them are left alive down there, but we need to see."

Franks was hit in the genitals, and his eyes could not leave a little form that had a dress slightly blowing in the contaminated air of the planet. He looked over to his Chief of Staff. "See what you can do. If nothing else, we can show the Cylons what it is like to be on the receiving end of an orbital bombardment. Query Affirmative."

That was all that needed to be done. This mission was now up to the planners to work out the details. This was going to be a snap kick of an operation. This meeting would need another hour, but this one subject was closed. The SLiE would not just leave POWs to die at the hands of anyone. They had not done this in the past, and they would not start doing it now.

It was three days later, and the next phase of this operation was about to be discussed. A set of very tired staff officers stood at the front of the room. "Thank you for coming to the last staff meeting for Operation Troy. After this, it will fall onto the staff of the flagship to address any issues between you and higher command. The warships assigned to this mission are the Bismarck from the SLDF Navy and the Colonial Battlestar Pegasus, along with their complement of fighters or Vipers, and Raptors."

The Briefer rolled right over the few groans in the room. The Pegasus had a very bad reputation at the start of the joint operations between the Colonials and Clan Wolverine. There still was some bad blood, but now it was more focused at "the old salts" of that crew. Since she had fallen under the command of Lee Adama, she had started showing the true colors of the Colonial Navy. That didn't mean that any ship, captain, or crew wanted to work with her.

"With our other operations ongoing and ships down for maintenance, that leaves us a little thin on other support. The Bismarck will be carrying one of our modified Clan Lion class dropships and two Mule class ships. The Mules are for split use on Troy and your secondary mission. The lion is being loaded with a company of Mercury II and Stag II mechs. Fighting is expected to be fast paced on the ground. Ground command has learned that even an 80ton mech can be brought down by enough Centurions. The Pegasus will be carrying two Triumphs, just in case the mission runs into any trouble. Each of those two dropships will be carrying a company of Colonial ground troops, and they will be backed up by a squad of Nighthawks."

The Briefer had to fight down a tired smile. She could see that the whole room was hanging on every word. "The Colonial Raptor was able to get some very detailed data on the target we will call Hades 1. While the mechs are keeping any forces from outside of Hades 1 from entering the facility. The two other dropships will descend and enter the dome here." A red dot showed on two different areas of the "dome" that were almost on the opposite sides of the facility.

Captain Linda Buckler was looking at the images. "How are they to enter Hades 1? They can be in EVA suits, but that is not great in a combat environment. Even Colonial made armored EVA suits are not going to offer that much protection."

The briefer did not miss a beat. "They will use the armored nose of the aerodyne to punch threw the hatches at those two locations. There is a reason that we want you to use these two points of egress. Then the ground team will exit out the two side doors on the dropships."

The room explodes in raised voices. It took Commander Buckler looking around the room for it to quiet down enough for the briefers to continue. "The dome or facility that makes up Hades 1 is very closely related to a Colonial design. The areas the two breaching dropships are aiming for are well known to be very high stress areas. If they suffer a breach? This part of the hull will be sealed by using light weight hatches that slide from quadrant 1-4. When the dropships are ready to leave. They will need to fire up their engines to an idle setting, and the plasma will blast the light metal emergency doors away. Then the nose mounted rockets, and lower hull lifting engines, can back out the dropships from the loading area and return to orbit." The Mules are for passengers and anything that might be useful that they might find just lying around. They will have a dozen Power Loaders and a like number of sealed hover APCs.

Two Weeks later

The great Texas class battleship and the Colonial Battlestar floated alone in space. All of the spheroid dropships were on the Bismarck, for the simple reason that there were limits to what the Colonials could do with their jump fields. The "flatter" Triumphs could fit closer to the Battlestar's hull. It was not perfect, but it was workable, and it had not taken long to modify the Colonial warship to accept the Star League made dropships.

This taskforce was ready to turn some Cylons into more useful scrap metal. All they were waiting on was for a scout mission to be launched against the target of their aggression. This was almost half of the active fleet of the SLiE, and they were not going to just be wasted like that. As soon as they had some updated data. They would jump one more time, and right into the teeth of any Cylons that might be in the local area.

Lee Adama was trying to keep from looking nervous. This was not the first or even fifth time he had taken his ship into battle. He just got that way in the buildup to combat. After the shooting started, he was as cool as ice. He did not think so, but his crew thought he was as steady as his old man was reported to be in combat. As Lee was working on his breathing. One of the stations behind him sounded off.

"Raptor returning!" Lee gave a small smile. Now all they had to do was wait for the Flagship's staff to review the data, and the orders to be given for the final jump. That could be an hour or a few days, but it was one more box that was checked off of the waiting list. At least the Raptor had not done an open transmission to bug out to the backup location. That would have been bad for the mission. They had half a dozen secondary missions, but those would not have been that satisfying for the crew of the Colonial ship.

Two hours later Lee was looking at a screen with the face of the mission commander displayed. "Looks like we have one Basestar, and eighteen other vessels that might be cargo ships. I need your ship's Vipers to go after those cargo ships. If we can take out the production or damage it enough on the ground. That will hurt them. But if they lose all of those cargo ships on top of the damage on the ground? That will hurt them even more and for a longer amount of time. It will be up to me, you, and the Bismarck's fighters to take out the Basestar in high orbit. We have to stop them from jumping out and sending for reinforcements."

Lee nodded; this was not that much of a change in their battle plan. It would only take a little while for him to get the updated plans to his CAG and the rest of the Staff in the CIC of the Battlestar. The CAG would need very little time to get the data to the Vipers sitting in the launch tubes. This was something the Colonial navy had practiced many times.

Planet Troy

The Cylon Basestar floated in very high orbit over Troy. The commander was a Number Five and threw the wet interface he checked on the status of his fleet. This was the first stop on a collection run to the outlying areas of Cylon controlled space. Groups of empty Cylon transports would gather here, and then be escorted on a set patter. One that would take them threw old Cylon space, before moving out towards the possible area of human controlled space.

As he thought about the items being picked up on the one-time Colonial controlled planet. The numbers of 100 and 10 came to the front of his mind. His great Basestar had just finished being repaired from her last run in with some Rebel Cylons, but her small craft complement was only 100 Raiders and 10 up armored Heavy Raiders. This was the same story of most Basestars after the Cylon Civil war. The 18 Cylon transports were not even carrying a Heavy Raider or Raider between them. That source of combat units had been the first stripped to fight the Humans and Rebel Cylons. He had no idea how long it would take to restore the "normal" squadron of Raiders assigned to each of the transports. All of the remaining Capital ships would have to be filled first, and then the ground bases. Anything after that was going to be on the back burner for replacements.

The cargo ships were coming to this location to pick up expendables of ammunition, like KEW's and different types of Missiles. They also were loading up new Cylons from the Praetorian factories around the planet. Most of the ships in this convoy had already taken up the assigned load of ores, ammunition and Praetorians. As soon as the last 6 cargo transports arrived. His small fleet would be leaving this area and heading to the next location "down the road". The Five was looking forward to the third stop on his list of locations. That stop would be where he could pick up almost 500 Raiders. He was planning on spreading them out among the rest of his little fleet.

One second the scopes were clear and only Cylon ships were in orbit. And the next, two great human crewed warships were sharing the same local space. The Cylons had not picked up the scouting Raptor, and now thinks to that scouting mission. The two warships were just far enough away, that the cargo of dropships was able to clear the main battle area.

Cargo ships did not have any reason to be in a space battle. As soon as the Bismarck arrived, the spheroid shaped ships cut away from the large warship like ticks leaving a dog. On the top and bottom of the Mercury class Battlestar, a pair of fat almost arrow shaped ships dropped or lifted away from the hull and started to fall toward the planet. While the smaller ships disconnected, waves of Vipers, Raptors, Kirghiz, Visigoth, and light Avar class fighters left both ships.

The Five's in command head popped up as the Hybrid started to speak. "The Shield of Man is coming. Her sword is drawn, and she comes to crush skulls. Etan E Epi Tas."

The Five now was sweating and a chill went down his spine. "Launch all Raiders! Fire at will on those ships. Have the base send up her Raiders!"

A second Five looked at the interface with a perplexed expression half a minute later. "The base commander refuses to send the Raiders up to help us. They are keeping them in the atmosphere, to counter the landing human force."

Now that they human warships were free of the weaker ships, they started to close in on the Cylon capital ship. It did not take long for the missile batteries on the Basestar to start to fire and the Cylon small craft started to leave their bays. As the human made missiles left their tubes, the speed of light human weapons reached out to the enemy warship. The Human fleet was not without her small friends in this battle. Behind the Lasers, and Navel grade PPCs came 40 Star league fighters. The fighters were "only" outnumbered less than 3 to 1. Those were some of the best odds SLDF fighters had faced in many years.

Captain Buckler was watching the battle unfold. She had a very good crew and all she needed to do now was plan for what might happen. She was reading the damage indicators on the six-armed enemy capital ship, anything that was 5,800 feet wide would take a lot of killing. She had a few nuclear weapons, but she had learned that those weapons didn't grow on trees. The SLDF fleet had already shot over half of the prewar stockpiles, and they could only make a dozen more a year. If a few more Basestars showed up, and she needed to use the magic mushrooms to save her fleet? She would shoot every one that she had left in this ship's magazine.

"Fighters are starting to engage the Raiders. Heavy Raiders Jumping!" That was an alert coming from the ships CAG.

Akiua Five was strapped into his Modified Heavy Raider. Not for the first time, he wished that he had paid more attention to what the Eights had been doing during training. He knew that he was not the better pilot, even after being shot down and brought back five times during the Cylon civil war. He slammed his controls over to one side, cut power to one engine, and then slammed the controls the other way. This radical sudden movement threw off the aim of a charging fighter, that was almost twice his mass. With some open space, he jumped his craft. His Heavy Raider was one of the few new up armored ones in this part of space. He had lost the whole quad KEW cannons for that armor, but he had not lost his missile firing ability. He just needed to get closer to the enemy capital ship.

Bismarck now was below the Akiua Five, and he smiled as he pulled the trigger. All of his missiles left the launching bay in one flash of rocket motors. That many missiles firing at once "pushed" his craft back a little. Akiua's smile faded as his cockpit screen darkened and then it went back to normal. He knew that he had just been hit by a DEW, but the new armor had held. Now all he needed to do was get away, jump back to his ship, and reload. He was hoping that maybe this time, they will have a few nuclear weapons out of the magazines and ready to be used. Before he could jump again, he was hit by a clan grade large pulse laser. His armor might have been upgraded, but it had not been upgraded by that much. He had not known he had been killed, until he was coming out of a goo filled tub many light years away.

The Bismarck rocked a little as a wave of short ranged weapons hit one side of her hull. They were not nuclear warheads, but they could have been. Captain Buckler was about to start looking into re-tasking some of her close in weapons. They were needed to deal with the increasing number of Raiders and Heavy Raiders that were getting around her fighter screen.

"Sir, we have confirmed hits on Heavy Raiders by LB-X rounds and LAMS, but they are not taking down the craft!"

That was all the information the Captain needed. "All secondary weapons focus on the Heavy Raiders. They up armored them again! Message to all Squadrons. Go for the Heavy Raiders, hard." She now looked to the woman that she only called Guns. "Guns, we need." She did not need to say anymore. The target of her comment was now shattered. The 8 pack of "borrowed" Colonial made cannons that had been mounted in the nose of the Battlestar, had just punched deep into the Cylon capital ship. And the enemy ship now was in four main parts. Two of the arms and part of the base of the massive ship was moving, at some speed, towards the surface of the planet Troy.

Captain Buckler looked at the glowing wreckage and falling arm. "Well that is going to leave a mark. I hope none of our people are going to be under that thing when it lands. Query Affirmative."

The crew around the command center just started to laugh on the SLDF Navy ship. The crew on the one ship that was called The Beast were not laughing. They knew the battle was not over. And the Mercury class ship had seen to many battles against the Cylons, to think that they only had one Basestar in the local area. They had just seen the object of their fires break up, and they were scanning the local space for more targets. And one showed up, very close to the Colonial warship.

The Cylon Basestar had been on patrol when one of the command group Five's sent the message, that said they and the convoy were under attack while over Troy. This ship was crewed my mostly Ones, at least the Ones held all of the command positions on this ship. As soon as the Command One saw the wrecked Basestar, and who was nearby his ship. He unleashed hell at the second most well-known Colonial warship.

Lee was looking and the numbers of Raiders and heavy raiders were climbing almost as fast as the number of missiles being launched at his ship. "CAG! Bring our Vipers back. Raptors are to get behind the new Basestar." He had planned to grab the bull by the nose and let the smaller Raptors kick it in the tail.

The Bismarck was not sleeping, and a set of Omicron-45 Naval scale lasers and two Sunspot 3L heavy NPPCs hit the top of the new Cylon capital ship. It was as she was still launching her brood of attack craft. Part of one of the purple balls of PPC energy "leaked" into some of the open and still launching Raider bays. This did not react will with the fuel and exposed ammunition still in those bays. Very quickly the 6-armed capital warship was a 5-armed vessel.

The second Basestar had also lost most of her Raider and Heavy Raiders to combat against the rebel Cylons, and to a few of the harder to kill pirates that still infested this part of space. Still she was able to get 250 Raiders and 24 Heavy Raiders out of her bays, and into combat against the humans. The second Basestar was in a higher orbit than the first one had been, and it was even in a higher orbit than the human crewed ships. This spread out the fighter screen of the human ships, but not for long. Soon Raptors and Jump fighters were re-deploying around the battle space. The primary target for them was going to be the enemy capital ship.

While missiles and Cylon craft raced toward the Battlestar. The smaller craft started popping back into space behind the Cylon capital ship and blocking any escape routes. As over two dozen human craft formed up behind the Basestar, their paper cuts started to add up. Soon the 5-armed warship was down to 3 arms and it was bleeding gasses from every part of her dark hull. Taking fire from two different directions at once was not the strong suit for any Cylon designs. By the time of the arrival of the third set of human heavy weapons fire. The Basestar was only a burning wreck, and the Cylons didn't go for escape craft on their capital ships. The remaining human forms would have to burn, suffocate, or be blasted apart before they could be brought back into a new body.

The battle in space was not over. There were many Raider and Heavy Raiders left in space, and just before the second Cylon Basestar had died they had started their attack runs. A grand total of 4 Heavy Raiders survived long enough to jump away from the battle. The mentally reduced Raiders could only keep attacking the human crewed warships. Those small craft had gotten into knife range, and they were able to hit the Battlestar with two small 5kt ranged nuclear warheads. Luckily the massive warship was designed to take damage like this. Just as the rest of the human fighters started to return to the battle of the mammoths, 4 more Cylon ships arrived. All of the human fighters without jump drives had to turn around again and charge into the guns of four Cylon ships. They were just lucky that it was only lightly armed and armored Cylon transports that had unknowingly joined the battle, and not Basestars or other Cylon warships that had just crashed this party.

Aero Fighters vs Freighters.

The attacking wave of human fighters left the great Battlestar. They were on their own, the flagship was going to need her only 40 fighters to defend against the Raiders and Heavy Raiders the enemy capital ship carried. The waves of fleetfooted MK VII Vipers armed with lightening-javelins were the first to attack the fleet of Cylon cargo ships. They were followed by the slower and more heavily armed Avars. There were only 18 Avars in space for today's battle. The other two were down for maintenance, with a set of pilots that were not very happy to be stuck on the sidelines.

The Cylon transports were a designed that dated back to before the Cylon uprising that started the 1st Cylon war. Some time during that first war, the Cylons had started to arm them and made room for 5 Raiders. This might have been due to the humans raiding the extending supply lines of the Cylon forces. Even after the modifications, they could not stand up to a warship or anything like that. But they were fitted with over a dozen close in weapons mounted in twin weapons turrets, to handle any attacking Viper, Raider, Raptor, or attacking missiles. They could have added more, and towards the end of that war they might have. Rumors had started to float around the Viper Crews of a modified Cylons Transport. It was said that it carried 20 Raiders and more close in weapon systems than an Orion pocket Battlestar.

It those rumors had been true? It would not have mattered, because none of those types of ships were over Troy. These ships only had light weapons, and low ammunition because they needed to increase the cargo lifting ability. The battle was going to be like a pack of barracudas going after tuna. Only these tunas were very slow and could not turn on a dime.

The attacking wave of Vipers were behind a cloud of missiles. Half of the Vipers had fired off their light weapons, and the other half of the Vipers were holding theirs back. The CAP was there to stop any Raiders from jumping in from the battle of the Capital ships, or any support from the planet that might come up to defend the cargo ships. Besides you never know, those stories about Viper Traps might be true.

The Lightening-Javelin missile was a counter Raider weapon. It had a very good seeker, but a very light warhead. The massive 300m long Freighters would be able to soak up the lighter missile weapons warheads like a dry sponge being put into a glass of water. At least that would have been true of "normal" Viper launched weapons. After a few years of war and now with production facilities on New Circe mixing battle experience of the Clans, with the Colonial weapons. Now these weapons had a triple seeker that were IIR, infrared, UV and that was on top of what they could do as originally designed.

The engines on the freighters started to come up, but it would be awhile before the jump drives were fully spun up. Like a lot of Cylon craft, these ships were not "run" by a bio form much less human form Cylons. They were slaves to their restricted programing. Because they didn't have "bio forms", they did not show up any differently in UV. The warming up engines showed up nicely on IR, and the backdrop of Troy was perfect for the Image identification systems.

The attack was coming from higher orbit and the missiles came racing "down" towards the 18 freighters with shut down engines. The defending twin gun turrets took out 4 of the attacking missiles that were screening the on-rushing Vipers. The small warheads impacted mostly in the area of the slowly warming engine compartment on the freighters. Only three of the large ships were hit hard enough to cause them to start breaking up under the weapons impact.

Now the Vipers were in range of the light KEW's mounted on the top of the Cylon ships. Half a dozen Vipers were hit and blown apart or had to leave the battle space, due to impact damage. That left the rest of the attacking Vipers to do some impact damage to the thin skinned Cylon ships. While the first wave of Vipers made gun runs onto the Freighters, the CAP fired off their hoarded missiles. The idea was to keep as many Cylon ships stuck in orbit over the planet as they could.

Kat's face was nothing but eyes and teeth. She was taking her Avar to war. She had just gotten out of the Testing and Training squadron a month ago, and now she was getting to Kill Cylon's again. She smiled even bigger as her fire control computer picked out a Cylon ship. She pulled the trigger and her quad pack of 30mm KEW and medium pulse lasers fired. The KEW were "Zeroed" so that at a given range, the KEWs should strike like a hammer on a dinner plate sized area of the enemy hull. For once things worked as designed, and the one section of her target was blasted apart. The rest of the burst made it all the way through the cargo bays, and into the doomed spine of the ship.

The Clan grade pulse lasers cut just as deep, and Kat overflew the enemy ship as it's back broke. Now it was in two parts and falling towards the planet, and it was gaining speed as it was falling towards the planet. Slowly the number of enemy ships not damaged dropped to zero, and then the number of Cylon ships that were NOT heavily damaged started to drop.

The Cylon ships were not dying alone but the Colonial crewed fighters soon were swarming around the remaining Cylon ships. They could tell that the Cylons had Raiders down on the planet, and that they were not coming up to defend the lightly armed freighters. The squadrons were losing coordination as the battle started to wind down. That all changed, when all of the Radios started to pass along the orders to RTB.

When the pilots now focused on their screens. It was easy to identify the massive 6-armed ship on the edge of their systems, or it was data coming to them from the two large warships still in orbit over their heads. The massive wave of human piloted craft flipped and went to maximum thrust or jumped away. They were all headed out to protect their ride home. It would not take long for the lighter and smaller Vipers to pull away from the Avars.

Kat was not currently in a leadership position. She was "scheduled" to take over the Avar squadron on the Battlestar. The delay was only until she could knock off the rust, that she might have collected since the last time she had been on a combat mission. When the data changed and more targets started to show up behind them, Kat took charge without thinking.

"All Vipers head back to help the Barn, until ordered otherwise. Avars, we are heading back." Kat put her orders into action and her craft flipped, and her tail mounted engines when to over thrust. Within a few heartbeats all of the Avars were heading back toward lower orbit. For a few more heartbeats the attacking 18 Avars knew that they were not going to be fighting Basestars. 4 more Cylon freighters were now in the area of space that had held 18 other Cylon ships. By now the Avars had very few rounds left in their quad packs of 30mm. That still left them the use of Medium pulse lasers, that could cut up the thin-skinned ships like a Ltamae cutting into raw fish.

By the time that the second Basestar was only so much more wreckage in orbit over this planet. The last of the new arriving Cylon Freighters were also expanding clouds of wreckage in various sizes. It would take about twenty minutes for the fighter craft to be rotated into the large warship for refueling, rearming, and a quick inspection. About half of the returning small craft were not re-launched due to battle damage.

While the aerofighters and Vipers were being cycled through the landing bays and repair slots. 4 S-7Ab "Busses" launched from each of the Battlestar and Battleship. They were going to search the local area for any human survivors from the space battles. The humans could not afford to lose any warm body's, much less highly trained fighter pilots. As soon as they could, those 8 small craft would be joined by any Raptors that were safe enough to be put back into space.

While the small craft started looking for any survivors, the command group had work to do. Captain Linda Buckler had lost about five pounds of water weigh during the battle. She knew that she was going to lose more before she got back home. That would be because of the stress and meals, that she was going to miss until they were back into a safeish area of space. It was just the way her body worked while under a heavy stress load of combat.

She picked up a handset to talk to the Colonial ship's master. "Lee its Linda. While we recover anyone that might have punched out. I need you to start mapping the surface. We will provide any on call fire support for our ground teams. Let me know if you find anything that is "special". While you are out of line of sight, make sure a Raptor is up for relaying communication. If another Basestar shows up? The other warship can run up and we catch them in a crossfire. Query Affirmative."

Lee was nodding his head. He had argued that it should be his ship on over watch for the ground forces. Then it was brought up that his ship only had nuclear missiles, and her cannons that were not very good at orbital fire support. His command did have 8 HNPPCs that they traded to the SLDF Navy for. The Texas class vessel had more weapons that were not nuclear in nature, to provide high level fire support. That left the job of detailed mapping of the planet Troy to the Colonial made warship. "Will do. How goes the battle on the ground?"

Captain Buckler let out a sigh. "They are on the ground. They are getting some Raider attacks, but right now it is too early to tell."

Ground battle on Troy

Dropship Captain Howard Bode looked out the "glass" of his cockpit, and then he looked back down at his display. He had been one of the first Visigoth pilots ever to take that airframe off the ground, and after losing his edge he had been moved over to Dropship command. After the Colonials had come, his job had changed from "trash" hauler to Assault Transport. The first mission back to colonial space had proven something to the SLDF. That the Triumph class dropship would be in combat in all three environments of air, space and ground.

Now Bode was about to use his craft to "combat" breached an enemy base on the surface of a planet. One part of his brain noted that the Mules were making for a landing on an open plain to the North of him. They were to land in an area that held very little artificial constructions. They should be safe or have enough time to lift off, before they were put at risk. The Lion was dropping her cargo of a dozen medium class mechs around the building/base called Hades 1. The mechs were the outer ring of defenders, to stop any Cylon reinforcements coming from any outlying bases.

Bode made an adjustment to line up on his target area. The Raiders showed up in a gunmetal colored cloud of death. There were so many, that they could not be blocked by the hovering Lion class dropship. First in ones and twos the Raiders were able to make it around the weapons firing spheroid and to the fat arrow shape of the Triumphs.

Whoever was commanding these Raiders was not that smart, when it came to Star League craft. They might have thought that the two dropships were lightly armored and armed cargo vessels, like the Colonials used. That was a mistake, and one that the Raiders would not live to regret. The two dropships kept up a steady stream of weapons fire into the attacking waves of light Cylon flying combat craft. The dropships even were still firing missiles and cannon rounds, as the nose of the craft crashed through the outer layer of the massive Cylon base.

Almost 9,000tons of dropships had crashed through the entrances of the base in a shower of sparks, flying metal, carbon I beams, and other structural components. By the time that the dropship had stopped in a shower of sparks, the safety doors had already slammed down behind them. It would not take long for atmosphere to be thick enough to not kill you.

As soon as Bode "felt" his craft stop moving. He hit a button and the massive doors or hatches on either side of the dropship opened. A split squad of Nighthawks came charging out of each side of his command. They were quickly followed by a full company of colonial ground troops. The ground units were packing a mix of colonial bought projectile rifles based on an Inner Sphere design and Star League made Mausers. And at least every fourth Colonial was packing a heavy short-range missile launcher. They also had the supplies and training to use them effectively.

The dropship was in a massive room that was part loading bay and part storage bay. Most of the weapons on the dropship were blocked by wreckage from the crashing through the hull of the base. It would be up to the ground units to protect the dropship, until the wreckage could be removed from blocking the weapons firing ports.

Corporal Zang was the point man for his squad. The armored suits were punching out ahead of the rest of the slower Colonial infantry teams. He made a turn in another tall corridor and died. He didn't hear, much less feel the 30mm KEW rounds that killed him.

This machine had been made in a nearby Praetorian factory, and it was one of many that were waiting to be shipped off planet. There had been a delay for it to get ready for battle. This version of the Praetorian was updated with lessons learned from the first few rounds of combat with the humans. The left arm mostly held a 30mm KEW, and with the right arm packing a harder hitting 50mm cannon. It still had a head that mostly held communication and other gear. The left and right shoulders hold a skeletal frame that each held 15 missiles. That had been the reason for the longest delay. The missiles had taken some time to be made ready for war. Praetorian 1814 was the first, but he would not be the last of his kind to be ready to kill humans today.

The Praetorian made it around the blocking corner and prepared to fire the lighter cannon at any humans that might be there. Just as it made the turn. It was hit with two fat missiles that came off a device a human had carried over one shoulder. The Cylons were not the only ones who were looking to do some killing today.

Private Taylor was a big man. He was not as big as some of the Clan, but he was larger than most Colonials. That was why the 18-year-old was carrying the missile launcher. Plus, it helped that he was very good with the weapon. He was large enough of a man to carry an extra light launcher on his back to go with his main weapons. He had heard the heavy weapons fire not long after the corporal had made the turn. He had moved to one side of the wide and tall corridor, and with a wave he made sure the back blast was clear and that the rest of the team would stay out of his way.

Taylor didn't have to wait long for the massive walking death machine to come to him. He smiled and pulled the trigger on his stick launcher. He was rewarded with twin smoke trails leaving the launcher and tracking to hit center mass of the Praetorian. The center was the most thickly armored part of this Cylon, but it also was were the controlling bio matter was located. If you killed the bio matter? The machine stopped working.

Taylor tracked both of his missiles to their targets and just as they hit, two more from the other team came streaking in. After his had hit, he quickly pulled his back up single shot weapon to his shoulder. This time he did not aim for the center of the mech. He raised his aim and fired his single short ranged rocket at a specific target on the tall machine.

This time Taylor did not drop his launcher stick. He wanted a better look at what was about to happen. So, he kept his eye glued to the sight as his missile corkscrewed all the way to the target. This time there was not a massive explosion when the short fat rocket hit. This time a shower of a thick jell splattered over everything. For a second, but only for a second. You would have thought that the rocket was a dud, and you would have been wrong. The last act of the weapon was to supply a hot jet of flame to the jell.

A great fireball engulfed the left shoulder rack of missiles. The inferno jell lived down to its name, and it burned hot. It did not take long for the Cylon made rocket motors and warheads to start to react to the sudden application of high heat. Eight of the fifteen warheads of the missiles went off almost at once. These were followed soon after by the rocket motors and then the rest of the shoulder mounted missiles as they detonated. The Praetorian's hull was shattered by its own weapons. Also, the ceiling of the corridor was shattered. It rained down metal and a pair of walkways fell to mostly block the corridor. At least it was blocked for any Praetorian to use in the future. It would take a lot of heavy equipment to clear this damage enough for them to come back down this way.

Sargent Kyle Milliken walked over to the still stunned private. He just gave him a hard look before activating his radio. "Praetorians are active. One down. Be advised that corridor 23C is restricted to level 1 traffic only. Anything bigger is going to have to find another way around. Be advised that inferno rounds are effective with select targeting. But they can cause secondary issues in confined areas."

He released the mic button and looked back at the private. "Go get a reload. But this time leave the inferno rockets alone. I don't want to have to use my socks as an air filter again."

On the other side of Hades 1, the second dropships combat team also ran into the Praetorians. This time the action was closer to the dropships. Two Praetorians had been working together, right up until 16 SRMs were fired at them. 8 missiles were targeted on each one of the tall machines. Not all of them hit, but enough did. The Cylons were dropped or slowed enough, until more missiles could be fired at them.

Instead of going looking for the largest land Cylon known. The Colonial infantry took up defensive positions and let the Praetorians come to them on their own terms. Runners would have to make two trips back to the dropship, to retrieve more SRMs. But they stopped the attack and the following one made by normal sized Cylons. When they did not "welcome" any more Praetorians for ten minutes. The mass of Colonial ground troops started advancing deeper into the base.

The Nighthawk teams had just gotten the news that the large Praetorians were active on the base. One group had been just about to cross a corridor, that was wider and taller than almost all of the others they had been using. That slight pause might have saved all of their lives. Jake was the point man and he watched as the machine walk by, and he was about eye level with the knee. Jake didn't think that hard about what to do next. He just went and started to climb up the side of the large Cylon, like he was part monkey.

The first hint to Praetorian 1844 that something was wrong, was when it's gyro told it that its center of gravity was out of specifications. Then something covered one of the video cameras, and it went dark for a few seconds. Then just as suddenly it was clear and only for a second, the now cleared camera could see what looked like an odd type of Centurion falling towards the ground. Praetorian 1844 stopped moving and watched the Centurion hit the ground. The knees flexed and within a few frames, the odd-looking Centurion was sprinting out of sight. Praetorian 1844 was about to alert the base command center about the strange Centurion, when it did not have to worry about anything ever again. Its wrecked hull fell to the polished stone floor with a crash, that could be heard and felt for a great distance from the site of the event.

The Mark 9 satchel charge was one of the newest additions to the Nighthawks weapons loadout. It also was not what you would expect, from something called a Satchel Charge. Frist off it was not a satchel, and it was more of a sticky land mine. It also was a mix of different technologies that had come together to make this effective weapon. The adhesive was an industrial formula dating back from before the Star League fell. The outer shell was Colonial tech, along with the HESH explosive filler. The firing circuit was pure SLiE Military.

Jake had slapped the device, hard on the Praetorian, before working on getting as far away as he could in the shortest amount of time. Why did he slap it so hard onto the Praetorian? It was not because he needed to activate the adhesive on the explosive device. It would have worked in the deep of space, all the way down too deep under the sea right out of the box. The hard slap was to activate the timer on the sticky bomb.

Jake hit the ground, just as he had been trained to do when learning how to Kneecap Clan mechs. This let him get moving out of the line of enemy fire, and maybe a falling mech. There was not a battle armor suit made, that would stand up to being landed on by even the smallest battlemech. Jake also wanted to see what was about to happen, and that was best done where you could have a good vantage point to see the whole event.

The Mark 9 was not designed to blast threw armor plate. It could do it, but that was not its main job. Four seconds after the crush switch had been activated by Jake, the plastic charge went off. The front of the Praetorian was the heaviest armor of any Cylon, besides a warship. The Mark 9 blasted through almost three inches of that armor plate, but that was not what was going to put down something like a Praetorian.

Besides taking out almost a third of the armor, when the warhead detonated. A shockwave was sent through the rest of the armor plate, and a huge scab was blown off the back side of the armor. It was to shred the soft insides of the Cylon war machine. A hunk of armor plate only one inch thick, but over two and a half feet around flew off the back of the armor. It turned the controlling biomatter into something that looked more like red sauce for your spaghetti, than a brain to control the movement and fight.

Mechs outside of Hades 1.

Captain Mann looked at his scattered command. Off to his right was the Lion class dropship that had dropped them off. It would be the fallback position, if things went sideways. The lion was very close to the Cylon base and at one of the main access points, that was located at each of the cardinal compass points. If any Cylons came out to play from that access point? They would run into her massive firepower at almost point plank range for the high-tech weapons. It also limited the avenue that the Raiders could attack the stationary target. It was hoped that any ground-based Raiders would head out to space, to be handled by the Vipers and other fighters that the capital ships had carried. Them not heading that way, had been a surprise and not in a good way.

All of Captain Mann's company was made up of second line machines. He was in command of 2 lances of 45ton Stag II and a lance of 40ton Mercury II. These were not the same old Mercury and Stags that had left clan space, or what had been built after the founding of New Circe. They had just been brought out of a deep maintenance cycle, using mostly new parts built in the City State. The old second generation heatsinks were replaced with Clan grade ones to save on some internal space. The armored skin was replaced with newer clan grade Ferro-fibrous armor. All of the old Stag II 24Gs had the old IER PPC that was introduced back in 2823 and replaced with a newer and more powerful LRPPC. Maybe later they would get a second round of updates, but right now this was all the people of New Circe could afford.

According to the data that was pumped into his mech from the more powerful systems on the Lion. They had faced about 100 Raiders, when they had entered this planet's atmosphere. By the time that all of the attack force had landed at the bottom of the caldera and around Hades 1. The enemy flying craft were down by about a third of the original number of attackers.

The Cylon Raiders should have formed one big fist and smashed the spread out mech unit one at a time. Not one of the grounded mechs were dedicated anti air machines, and they were also lighter than the 80ton Riflemen II that normally would sweep the skies. Instead the Cylon Raiders were fighting dumb, against the ground attackers. They spread out most of their numbers all over the battlefield. Every time they made a run against one of the isolated mechs, they would lose one or two of the attacking Raiders. They were slowly chipping away at the armor of the mechs with their low powered KEWs, but they could not land a killing blow. The mechs were just lucky that the Raiders did not have heavy missiles.

About the only tactic that made sense of the attacking Raiders, was that they tended to try to fire at the Lion first and then spread their fire out against the rest of the Mechs. That was like a moth going after a bug zapper. Any of the mechs that were around the dropship were able to fire at the attacking Raiders as they flew by. The ranges were long, but whenever a large laser or PPC hit a Raider. That Raider was going to come to the ground in small and medium size hunks of smoking wreckage.

Captain Mann was distracted when a report from his "scout" lance reported in, and he missed his last shot with his new LRPPC. "Hammer this is R4. My probe picked up a mass of movement coming up from the south near AA 6."

Captain Mann looked at a side mounted display. Axis of Advance Number 6 was a major crack in the volcano wall that led generally to the south of Hades 1. To the south of Hades 1 was a large number of "new" domes, that were also of a good size. It looked like most of the ground Cylon combat units were that way.

"Recon 4 keep them in sight and try to reduce the numbers. Fall back towards Hades 1, and I will send someone over to help block that AA." Mann looked around and quickly realized that he was one of the two nearest mechs to R4. Soon he and a wing man were moving at over 100kph heading to the opening of AA 6 into the caldera, that they were planting the Colonial and Star League flag in.

Mechwarrior Kosh was Recon 4. He had heard what the company commander had said, and he could only grunt as a reply. He was running as hard as the rough terrain would let him. His beagle probe had given him some early warning. But now every time he was exposed, a flight of missiles would head his way. And Cylon missiles very rarely missed. He was in a 40ton mech, but unlike front line units and all of the fighters. His mech did not have any of the old-style anti missiles systems, much less any of the new generation of laser based anti-missile weapons.

Kosh stopped around a massive bolder and lined up his clan grade ER large laser. He only had to wait for a minute or two, before a wave of a dozen Centurions came around the bend. It would have been better if he had one of the new HOD's. But it had been decided that they did not have the time to refit the mechs with one of those. Also, his type of mech did not have the deep ammo bins that a weapon like that needed to be of any value on the battlefield. If his bins were not deep enough? He would have to make many trips from the front lines to be reloaded at the dropship. That was just something they could not do. That was why his machine was packing only energy weapons. They might run a little hot, but they did not run out of ammunition right in the middle of a big fraking battle.

Kosh fired his weapons and four Centurions were not going to be leaving this area. If he had a HOD? He might have taken out the whole point unit, as it was, he had to pull back very quickly, or he would have been over run. The latest rumor had it that the new Sling omni mech they were working on, was going to have oversized hands. That was so that the jock could slap down more Centurions with one hit. Right now, he was hoping that rumor was true. As he raced back to the next position his probe said was nearby. He only took two missile hits in the back while he moved to his next firing point further down AA-6.

Captain Mann was running with a wingman. He knew that the new kid, Kosh was somewhere ahead of him but he did not know where. The pair had to slow down out of fear of running into an ambush. All of that change when they heard what almost sounded like a scream come over the radio, before it was suddenly cut off.

Mann pushed his machine back up to its maximum speed. It was risky as they ran cross country at very high speed. It was now time to trust your armor and your piloting skills. At over 100kph they only needed a few minutes to find the scouting Mercury. Before they found the mech, they started receiving updates. From what they could tell, the mech was down and it was being covered by attacking Cylon forces.

Kosh was rolling on the ground. He had been fighting back a wave of small Centurions, and he had let them get a little too close. He had been down to using his pairs of medium and small lasers after a Cylon missile damaged his long shooter. And when he had turned to get to his next firing position, he had tripped. It might have been a rock, or it could have been the dozen missiles that hit his legs about the same time. In the end it did not matter. He was on his face and the Cylons were all over him. All he could do was fight back and try to take as many of them with him as he could. As he fought back, he watched as system after system failed.

Captain Mann could now see a mass of thrashing metal, and off to one side he could see a dozen space suited individuals. They seemed to be directing two different types of Centurions and the much larger Praetorians. It did not take a jump drive scientist to guess that the humans were human form Cylons. Mann and his wingman started firing their LR PPCs, as soon as they were even close to being in range. If they hit one of the dozen Praetorians in the center mass? It would take out the war machines. If they hit it in a leg or arm? It would only be taken out of combat for a few seconds, and maybe lose some effectiveness. They would very much still try to kill any human that was within reach of any of their weapons, if you did not take out the center chest area.

As the pair of Mechs got closer, they could see parts of the mech being pulled off and thrown into the air as the Cylons tried to do two things. One was killing the pilot, and the other was taking out the scuttling charge that they had seen in action more times than either side wanted to count. By the time that the large Praetorian were taken out of the battle. The human forms were trying to hide around any handy large rock. Mann had to decide, if he wanted to kill the leadership or recover his man. It was not that hard of a choice for him to make.

As soon as Mann and his partner had forced the Cylons to pull back, they started trying to take care of the Cylon swarming over the fallen mech like army ants on a bug. They could not use even the small class lasers to help that much. They could see how thin the armor was on certain locations on the down machine.

It took longer to get the last metal Cylon off of the Mercury, than it had to take down the dozen Praetorians. Mann was just thankful that most of his Clan's mechs had been outfitted with two fully functional hands. With the Cylons off Kosh, he was able to get his feet under him. But both he and the captain found out that the scout mech was not going to be walking anywhere very fast. While Captain Mann helped the wounded combat machine get closer to the dropship. The second Stag II moved down the rocky valley, to make sure the Cylons did not try to come back and try to overrun them.

After the space battles were over a CAP of Human craft was put over this area of the planet. With the CAP emplaced, Mann was able to pull his mechs back and form them into small groups, that could be launched to block any ground attack. The ground mechs also were able to fire at any weapons turrets that would deploy to fire at the human fighters. Those hidden weapons turrets had been another late surprise pulled on the human attackers.

Inside Hades 1.

Jason Finan had his head in the lap of a beautiful woman. He never would have thought that he would be here and like this. As his mind wondered, the woman used a soiled damp rag to wipe some more of the blood off of his face. He was back to thinking about the woman trying to make him a little more comfortable in this ring of Tartarus. She was not a human, but a Cylon.

Jason let his mind go back to the first time he had seen them. It had been right after his Battlestar had been rendered powerless. It had been one of her kind that had pulled him out of the ship and put him in a prison barge, until they had moved him ground side. There had been a few thousand Colonial military personnel in the ground-based prison. That number had dropped, and then he had been sent here to be worked to death. He had no idea why he was still alive, but he was.

Then things had changed again. The male looking human form Cylons had thrown a bunch of the female looking Cylons in with the surviving humans. The humans had "killed" the first few groups of them as soon as they had the strength to overpower the enemy. It had slowly sunk in, that these Cylons were being treated even worse than the surviving humans by the other Cylons. When the humans had started to take the time to listen, they found out about the Cylon civil war and why it had started. By now there were more human form Cylons in this part of hell than humans. They all had the same goals, to live and to get out of this place. Oh, and they wanted to kill as many of the prison guard Cylons as they could.

Jason opened his eyes. Something was different, was that weapons fire? His head hurt. It was from when he had stepped in, when a Number 2 had started to rip the stained clothes off of a Three. He had stopped the rape, but it had cost him. This time he thought he might have pushed his body to far. He had killed the Number 2, but by now they knew that they would come back. When they killed him? There would not be anyone left strong enough to try to protect the growing number of weak in this set of cells. They thought that there were more cells and POWs, but who knew if any of them were still alive.

Jason started to move, but Heather tried to get him to stay still and right where he was. "That is weapons fire. We need to get everyone away from a line of sight of the door. If they are killing us, some might be able to avoid the impacts."

Now that Jason had said something. Heather's head came up and she heard the sound of Centurion weapons fire, and something else. She also agreed with Jason, about getting people away from the risk of being shot as best they could. It was not much, if the Ones had decided that it was time to finish "reducing" any groups of humans. Then she heard something that was a lot heavier than any Centurion fired weapon. She had no idea what it might have been, but it was not like any weapon she had heard before.

Mike took the time to change the magazine of his Zeus Heavy Rifle. One part of his mind noted that he was going to have to reload it with 13mm rounds soon. They had not run into any Praetorians in the last twenty minutes. The base was too big for such a small group to control. The Nighthawk suits had been tasked to take out any key points, and then to scout the insides of the base. After they had a feel for the internal layout. They would take control of secondary key points and wait for the Colonials to catch up. Mike was not in one of those suits. He was one of the slowly growing number of Colonials that were not actively hostile to working with armored suits and battlemechs.

With his weapon reloaded he extended a fiber camera around the next corner. He could see the human forms still working on putting up a barricade, with a Colonial military machinegun as the center point. With an evil smile he waved for the grenade launcher to come forward. To save weight his weapon had that device removed. After all, he was not 7 feet tall and solid muscle and bone, so someone else could carry some firepower.

The woman with the auto launcher went to the other side of the corridor and bounced a burst of four mini grenades down the next hallway. When the last round had detonated, the whole squad charge the still smoking Cylon defensive point. Not one human form was taken alive when the squad passed it by. The ones that had not died by human hands, had died by their own hands. They cleared the rest of the open corridor, until they came to another close and locked hatch. By now they were seamless in how to work together, and this locked hatch didn't slow them down but for a few seconds longer than the Colonial team had wanted.

When Mike went through the still smoking remains of the hatch, the smell hit him. It was not the smell of smoke or explosives. This smell was different, and the lizard part of Mike's brain put him on edge. When he stepped clear of the smoke, he saw the bars. This was not a housing area; it was a prison.

"I'm going to need some help up here," Mike yelled over one shoulder.

Cells line both sides of the corridor. But they were so dark, that he could not tell what was hidden within them. Mike felt very exposed, as he walked down the center of the corridor. He had already passed a set of two cells when he remembered his weapon had a white light. The next set of cells that his light passed over. He could see the dirty faces looking back at him. These people had been living in a special part of Tartarus for who knew how long.

Then Mikes light played across a face he knew well. He would have pulled the trigger, if he was not worried about the heavy round punching threw his target and hitting someone behind her. "Step away from the woman. She is a human form of Cylon."

Mike saw a bloody face man that was definitely not a Cylon, step between him and the human form.

"We know, but some of them are not like the others." Jason raised a too thin arm and pointed around the room.

Mike now looked closer into the room. There were more human form Cylons in this cell, than there were Colonials. Something strange was going on here. He knew that some human forms had switched sides to fight with the Colonials and the SLDF. Mike waved for the rest of his team to pass him by and continue the mission. With a few more hand waves he activates his radio. "Home Plate, RC5A6. I have found POW's. Catch. They say that some human forms are in with them." He plays the light into the cell and notices that the lights had been broken out. "I can see 3s, 6s, and 8s in this cell mixed with our people."

Mike had helped liberate a dozen set of cells by now. He had figured out a few things in that time after finding those first few. The Cylon POWs were all female, and they had been treated just like the surviving humans had been. The other thing he found out, was that as soon as the prisoners were released. They wanted weapons, and they joined the hunt for the male human forms or metal Centurions. They were actively picking up any Colonial or Cylon copied weapons that might be lying around. Mike and his teams were using more powerful SLDF supplied laser-based weapons and a few heavy projectile rifles. Things seemed to be going well, until a massive number of armed and Colonial body armored Number 4s and 5s launched an energetic but localized counterattack with a supporting attack of 005s and new model Centurions.

The Clan and Colonial troops were hard pressed, and they had to fall back. They fell back and threw one of the last sets of detention cells to be liberated. This had been the largest set of Cells with many hundreds of very sick and hurt occupants, made up of Colonials and female human forms. The now armored prisoners would not fall back one more step. To many of their people were not fit enough to move more than a dozen feet after the cells had been opened.

The short squad was out of power packs or projectiles for their weapons. All of the captured weapons had been picked up by the onetime prisoners. Now that the POW's had them, they were not going to give them up. This was the first time, in a long time, that they had power and they were not going to give it up. The freed POWs, both Colonial and Cylon, set up a blocking position and they would not leave. The wave of attacking human forms and metal ones broke on their former POWs, like a wave on a sea wall.

The backup control center, that was not on any map of this facility, was manned by only type Number Ones. When the internal systems told them that the counterattack had been repulsed by a massive amount of firepower. One of them decided that the humans must have focused a lot of their firepower in that one location. It was decided that it was worth the risk to kill that many armed and trained troopers.

The explosives had been part of the scuttling charge systems built into the whole base, but it was only used in a more controlled way today. Three levels of the Cylon built base came crashing down on the one-time POW's. The running to return Colonials squad ran right into the dust of the falling debris coming out of the massive detention area. They could only seal the area from leaking of contaminated atmosphere into that part of the base. They would make any Cylon they found for the rest of the mission pay for killing the ex-POWs.

Dropships outside Hades 1

With the end of the space threat and air threat, the two Mule class dropships "hopped" over to the outside of Hades 1. With the cargo ships closer, power loaders exited the two ships and sealed heavy hover APC's entered the two sealed off areas of the base. Four hover APC's entered the Cylon base just as a massive cloud of smoke and dust rose over one part of Hades 1. That was the first sign that this battle was about to shift objectives.

The sealed loaders and APCs were recovering whatever they could. First one of the Hover APC's had dropped off a press team to take as many images as they could. The Triumphs could carry an armored vehicle battalion. The pair used in this raid were quickly filled up with both cargo and recovered equipment in marked off areas of the massive loading deck. The Modified ex-Clan Lion class dropship would need to keep the space setup for its 12 damaged mechs, but the one-time infantry bays were filling up with POW's as they exited the hover APCs.

When it looked like about everything of value was pulled out of the Colonial controlled areas of Hades 1. The two Mules were then ordered to start hopping around with a few mechs and ground troops, to a few of the different domes on this side of the planet. The ground troopers and Mechs would "take" the dome and clean out whatever was in the loading bays of those facilities. Then they would strip whatever was close by. They were under a time crunch, and everyone knew it. Everyone was on edge and waiting for the mission commander to order everyone to boost for space.

Captain Mann was in the Lion sitting outside of the Hades 1 dome. "Captain Buckler. We are holding what we can, but we will not be able to take the whole facility. At least not without bringing in the mechs and maybe dropping the whole place on our heads."

Captain Buckler made a face, she wanted to have cleared this dome of any enemy presence. "What about the POWs you recovered. Are there anymore?"

Now it was Mann's turn to make a sour face. "We have recovered 600 POW's as of our last count. 200 of them are Colonials and 400 are what we have started calling rebel Cylons. There would have been more, but a few hundred of them had stopped that counterattack. And then the roof fell down on them. The only reason we have held as much of this Dome as we have, is because of all of the armed POWs we have found. We found a tunnel system set up under one wing of the base. When the Cylons tried to force a counterattack down that way, we dropped the tunnel on the assaulting train. I do not know if they have any more of those tunnels, but we have been dealing with a frak ton of Cylons of all types inside.

"Are you sure that we cannot recover anymore Colonials?" The warship commander was not going to call Cylons POW's, not yet. She wanted SLIC to dig deep and find out what the Frak was going on. She could smell that something was rotten, and she was betting that the "friendly" Cylons were going to try to pull something over on them.

Mann was ready for this and he could hear the tone in her voice. "I had a pair of Eights digging through the databases for any more POW's. I asked them, because of the reports I have read on Athena. And before you asked, I had bondswoman Bee keeping an eye on them. She was that Three that downloaded on Tartarus not long after we captured it. As far as they can tell. This was the last base or Dome on this planet, that was listed as having any "humans". The rest were ordered "reduced" some time ago. That is what the Ones call, kill them. That is about as sure as I can get. The data was doubled checked when M/V Cube landed at the first dome. The cells were empty, and they had been that way long enough not to smell bad anymore."

Captain Buckler nodded. "That is about as good as we can get. When you have full cargo holds or when they look like "they" are going to make another major push again. Pull out. We will take care of the other sites, but we cannot stay too long. Query Affirmative."

An hour later all five of the dropships lifted off of the planet. The Bismarck had started for the other side of the planet, as soon as the radio message with Captain Mann had concluded. As the great battleship raced across the sky, at 30 times the speed of sound. Her Omicron-45 Naval Lasers and Sunspot 3L Heavy Naval PPCs rained death on any and every Cylon they could find. They could have used the 2 massive NAC 40s, but that would have used ammunition. Besides what were two more weapons, when you were firing 16 HNPPC and 40 NL-45s.

The only site that did not get this kind of love, was Hades 1. SLDF high command had something special in mind for that little corner of hell. Just before the Bismarck came over that site, one of the four specially modified small craft bays opened. A weapon "fell" out of the bay and was pulled toward the planet's surface. A dozen small little metal fins kept the 250ton weapon on course for the center of Hades 1. The massive weapon was watched by a dozen Raptor scout craft, as it fell towards the planet's surface.

The test weapon did not work exactly as planned. After the massive weapon had broken threw the top of the dome, the hard nose should have broken off. This would have cleared the way for the large shaped charge to fire. The rest of the weapon would have "ridden" behind the copper jet cutting its way deeper into the base until it cooled. When the secondary nose, that was behind the large shaped charge would punch down threw more rock or structure, until it also ran out of energy. Then the 10-megaton nuclear warhead would go to work. This was a test of a new class of weapon, that had been brought off the "to fight the clans" drawing board. It had been moved to the "let's see if this works against the Cylons" board.

What was known, was that the shaped charge did not go off after the first nose had "broken off". One of the Raptors showing more guts than brains, had done a very high-speed pass and overflew the now damaged weapon. It was able to look down the hole the 250ton "rock" had done to the structure. This data would be useful because it did show how much of real world building it could go through, without any more engineering. Just when the Pegasus was about to put a colonial made nuclear tipped anti Basestar weapon on the Cylon base, the 10-megaton warhead detonated. After the fireball had dissipated in the thin atmosphere. The Raptors re-scouted the area, and they were just in time to see the first flows of lava and very distinctive volcanic ash come flying out of the still smoking crater. Very quickly a lava flow over a mile wide was moving downhill at the speed of your average ground car.

The weapon cracked an old deep geothermal tap. This one had been put in place before the first dome, and it had been sealed off in the lost past. The larger nearby Cylon made tap had not helped. The nuclear warhead had removed enough of the overhanging rock, that the rest of the bed rock only cracked between those two points at first. These two taps and crack opened a long channel for the contents of a massive lava chamber of a thermal plume, to vent its contents to the surface of the planet. By the end of the day. All eight of the geothermal taps in the local area would be connected and venting out lava, gas, and ash to the planet's surface. It would not take long for flying ash to cover the whole planet in a thick layer of grey clouds. This would reduce the amount of light reaching the planet's surface for a few years. Captain Buckler made a note to never let them mix Rednecks, lots of beer, and orbital weapons again.

Post battle at the Ragnar anchorage

The Tunnel had not seen this much traffic in a long time. How long? Well, the tunnel would not and could not say to any passersby. After the Rising Star class ship had left. The Anchorage under Colonel Bellamy's command was keeping a Raptor close enough to see, but not be seen unless someone came very close to the passage entrance. When the scout's systems had "seen" the two massive warships arrive some distance away from the Tunnel. The little craft had left its station and flew as quickly as it could to report the news. With the whole station going on alert, the little craft flipped around and raced back to the edge of the gas giant.

By the time that the Raptor returned. The Battlestar Pegasus was just starting to nose her way into the tunnel, with the old Star League battlewagon right behind her. Nerves got a little short before it was worked out, that all was well with the new visitors. This was going to be the first time a warship from another branch of man was going to see this anomaly. It was slow going through the lightening illuminated tunnel for both ships. The Mercury class ship had never been here, and the Bismarck only had secondhand data. Besides accessing the anchorage was known to be very challenging, for even the best trained Colonial navigator. The Raptor crew had dozens of trips down the tunnel under their belt, and all of the data that every other round trip that the other Raptors had completed. It was able to make its way back to the anchorage with the good news that the visitors were friendly, well before the warships could be detected by the anchorage.

Captain Buckler was not impressed when her ship could see the station. She had grown tired of looking at the butt end of the Beast, well before two hours of being on that creepy tunnel. She had been studying the images that were in the Galactica's and Colonial One's database. Those images had been updated by the last mission to return from this spot. To her, it looked like what you would expect for a rat-infested space station in some trashy holovid.

The great station had changed since the last major ship had visited her. It had been known even before the 2nd Cylon war, that Ragnar's atmosphere was not healthy for the outer hull metal the Colonials used. One of the major storage items in the cargo hold in the Boreas had been paint. It was not real paint. It was more like a polymer, that would act as a barrier between the caustic atmosphere and the hull. It was the standard "paint" that the Star League Navy had used even before the official founding of that organization.

Now that the two warships were closer, Buckler noticed that some things had changed. The most noticeable, was that some of it did not look so rusty. The lower spike looking attachment was now a nice fresh looking white/grey color. The rest still looked bad, but it was getting better. Some of the damage on the top decks had even been visibly fixed. There still was a lot to do to make the station look safe to live in. The last ship had only been able to leave a few hundred tons of general use supplies. Most of the cargo had been for the needed things, that would keep a few hundred people alive for six months.

Now that the main mission was done and more or less successful. The SLiE were going to drop almost 10,000tons of supplies and materials. That would include enough food and other expendables for a crew twice this size to last for a year. It turned out that it was a good thing, that this stop had been planned for at the end of the mission. The Bismarck had some good medical facilities, but the Anchorage had a full late Star League made MASH truck sent out. They might not have the doctors to fully exploit this capability, but the Bismarck did. Not all of the people who needed access to that level of care would be able to fully use it. It made more than a few people chafe, but the human form Cylons would have first use of those facilities and medical personnel. It was well known that they could not "stay" for too long in this location.

As soon as about half were checked out and out of the woods, medical wise. They would be loaded onto one of the dropships and moved outside of the tunnel. As more were checked out, one of the Mk VIIC landing boats on the Bismarck would transfer them out of the effect zone of Ragnar. What would happen to those Cylons when they got back to New Circe, was going to be decided above Buckler's pay grade. But she had collected a file that held statements by every one of the Colonials, that said those human forms were on their side. She also already had written reports about what those same half-starved and abused human forms, had done to keep the other Cylons from breaking the thin human lines within Hades 1.

The Pegasus was attached to the "North Pole" of the Anchorage. The great Colonial warship was not even down a quarter of her fuel load, so she would not be topping off her tanks at this location. With the reported amount of fuel remaining, she would not be leaving any behind either. Finding all of that Colonial made KEW ammunition was nice. Both ships would top off the ammunition they had used on this mission. The SLDF Navy would "cut a check" to the City State, when all of the reports were done. She was betting that they would have no problems cashing that check or trading it, for items that the City State badly needed.

They would not be leaving much more in the way of crews, but another 6 Raptors and their crews would be staying. That was going to make the few support crews for those craft lives stressful. But it would allow them to keep a better watch on the tunnel, without wearing out crew and craft at the same time. It was expected that the small fleet would be spending about a week here. During that time anyone not actively repairing damage to a warship, dropship, mech, fighter, or small craft. They would be expected to spend a few shifts over on the Anchorage. If any Cylons showed up to check on this place, they were going to get a very warm reception.

A week later

Captain Buckler took one last look at the anchorage, before the view was going to be blocked by a large pillar of mixed gases. Even from this distance, you could see that the anchorage had changed again. For one, every square foot of the station now had at least two coats of protection applied. Also, section 6 of Deck A now could hold and launch "normal" fighters, Vipers, Raptors, or small shuttles if an attack was coming in. Getting them back in was going to be an issue, but they now had some teeth. That would change again when the bay doors were attached in a few weeks. They still had a dozen small docking points that would fit Raptors, shuttles, or small to medium sized Colonial ships. It would not take much for the engineers back on New Circe, to make an adapter so that any visiting SLiE dropship or warship would be able to use something other than the North Pole dock.

The insides of the Anchorage still needed a lot of work, but they had willing hands to do the work. Some of the most productive were the POWs. Even the "healthy" Cylons would spend a shift scraping rust off the anchorage corridors. Even with all of the repair work that needed to be done, somehow even the small repair shops on the dropships found open time to bend metal or pipes the anchorage needed.

As she was thinking about all of the work that the POWs had done, she remembered the latest reports. Over half of the Colonials POWs wanted to stay and continue the fight against the Cylons. As the mission commander, she had some say on this subject. She would only let the ones that the MASH Truck could reasonably help stay, and all of the major medical cases were coming with her. More than that number of human forms wanted to stay and fight what they called the Cylon Empire. The effect of Ragnar had put a damper on that.

She also understood that Captain Adama had a pile of request to stay on the Anchorage from his crew. After seeing what the Cylons were doing to their fellow Colonials, a major part of his ship's crew wanted to be closer to the action around their home planets. Very few had been approved, and that was starting to cause a little backlash on that ship. The Colonials were as short of trained people back home as the SLDF. So, they could not let any stay out here.

Besides all of the 50mm KEW rounds for the close in weapons turrets. A few other items had come off the station. 300 lightening-Javelins had been loaded onto her or Lee's ship, and what was left of the decrepit stations jump engine was loaded onto one of the Mules. She hoped that it might supply some spare parts or help the egg heads back home, work out how to make larger scale drives of this type. They also were taking some specialized Flak warheads that had been found. They were supposed to fit Nike-Hercules class missiles. They had not found any missiles of this class that would fit the Galactica, or the larger and newer Nike-Zeus class weapons that would refill the Pegasus's missile magazine. But they had found way too many Nike-Ajax's class anti-ship missiles. That would have been great, but the Colonial Navy did not have a Valkyrie class warship to use them.

Buckler was looking down at her screen. It was the latest damage report on not just the warships. Each of the dropships were going to need some repair work on the outside as well as the insides. The mech company was down to only 8 machines, and even those were barely combat capable. Besides the updated weapons and armor on the Praetorians. It was noted that the Cylon missiles had improved. They each now packed the punch of a single SRM. Only they were longer ranged, and they rarely missed. That was not a lot of damage, unless you were hit with 20 or 30 of the things all at once. Then you were in some trouble, even if you were in a heavy mech or battle tank. The Bismarck's commander didn't really notice when her XO ordered the ship to jump. It was going to be a long trip home, and both ships were going to need some major support from "The Station" when they got back to New Circe.

Notes:

Clan Wolverine Lion class dropship. When the Wolverines left clan space many of the old Lion's had been modified to carry 10 mechs and some infantry. It would make sense, that the SLiE would cut the infantry bays down and add up to 2 mechs. That would let it pack a full mech company, security, or other types of combat support.

Mercury II+ 40 tons 280xl, ECM, beagle, Clan ER LL, 2Ml, 2SL 119kph JJ 210m. It now also has clan grade Ferro armor and clan grade double heatsinks.

Stag II 24G+ 45ton 270xl, 119kph (LR)PPC, 3ML, 2MPL, 2SL. Both updated with Clan DHS and clan grade Ferro-armor.

SAR in this battle. If the craft were damaged, but the pilot did not think they were at risk. They might stay with the craft until the right someone came to get them.