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.

46. Chapter 46 17 May 3049

Chapter 46

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

17 May 3049

Unknown system on the edge of MC patrolled space.

Captain Maureen Farren was not a happy Captain. She had a long-term charter for MMM, and that should have made her very happy. Most of the time, she had been just running a load of new machines or spare parts to their buyers. It was not a bad gig, if you could get them to sign on the bottom line of a contract. She was paid at the beginning of each contract cycle, that she signed on with them. She also received a set amount of cash to be "available" within a reasonable amount of time during the contract length. Then she was paid a little below market rate, for any delivery she made for MMM. If she could find another load to fill the second collar of her Pampanito? That would put some serious extra money in the bank. She had been doing this kind of thing for almost a decade, and by now her merchant class ship was all hers.

That didn't mean that she was a happy camper. If she was honest with herself? She would not be that upset with one bad job, not after the dozens and dozens that she had been paid to do. What she was upset about, was that her very expensive Merchant class jumpship had been sitting in this empty star system in a pirate ridden part of the MC space. She had one Mammoth class dropship on her ships back, which alone made her skin itch. She also had a Trojan class ship on her other collar, and she held the "mission commander". That Blockade Runner also was the "escort" for this run. So at least she was not sitting out here with only a pair of Mules for defense.

She had been ordered here and to wait until she received a cargo for MMM. She was not told what the cargo would be. She was only told to be in this system on a certain date and she could not leave for fourteen days, or until the cargo transfer was made. It was very rare for a merchant ship commander not to know what she was carrying around the stars, at least in general terms. The nice thing about this mission, was that the mission critical window closed only five days after her jump core could be recharged. All she and her crew could do, was watch the engine charge scale climb with one eye and keep the other eye on the open space of this uninhabited system. When that scaled showed fully charged on the jump drive, the stress level of the bridge crew dropped noticeably.

What Captain Farren did not know? It was that she was not alone in this star system after all. About halfway to the goldilocks zone of this system, a visitor had been popping in and out every few hours keeping an eye on her. They had been doing this for three days before she was supposed to have arrived in this star system. When her jumpship did pop into the system, at the right jump point, and within a single day that she was expected. She started a chain of events happening outside of that system. Events that she had no idea were going on around her.

First was that she was kept under surveillance by the best scout systems that the SLDF could make, beg, borrow, or steal. When nothing out of the ordinary was found after four days of watching the merchant jumpship. A larger warship slipped into the system behind a carefully chosen orbital body. It would have been very hard for the ships at the jump point to have noticed a "normal" E wave coming from this location. To say the least it was going to be impossible for the people on the Inner Sphere jumpship to see the newest addition to the local population, even if they were looking in the right direction at just the wrong time.

The upgraded and much modified Riga class ship released her brood of small craft. Some of them had come from her own small craft bays, but most had come from the attached dropship. The two dozen small craft were picked because they were the most long ranged, and they could reach the end point from the expected hiding location of the warship. Still they were carrying extra fuel, just in case. But the reason for them? It was to carry 800 tons of old late Star League era ER PPCs and their packing materials. Then they were going to "pick-up" their payment for those old but very well-maintained weapons.

The radar operator on the Pampanito was staring glass eyed at the radar scope, but not really seeing anything. She was not military trained. and she had lacked the skills someone so trained would have been beaten into their skulls. They would have been someone who could be able to eye lock on a radar screen for hours on end, without losing awareness of what that system was doing. By the time her brain understood that something new was being displayed on her screen. The glowing dots were to the second ring of her scope's display, and they were closing fast on the jumpship.

Debra now choked on her own spit. "Alert! In coming. Over a dozen targets! Acceleration right at 2gs!"

Captain Farren floated over to the long-ranged radar station and looked down at the screen. She made a mental note about how long the approaching force had been on the screen before she had been alerted. She used an even voice, that hides the stress she was feeling. The first thing she thought of was that these craft were coming on fast enough for the crews to be hurting. She also thought that it was a good chance that they might be pirates. Who else would be out here, and coming at them like a bat out of hell? But where had they come from?

"Communications try to raise them. Then let the Rob Roy know that we have company, coming in hot." She was hoping that this was the "cargo" she was picking up. Before she could even start to work out her next move. Any more decisions were taken out of her hands.

"Ma'am. Rob Roy says they are clearing the collar, but this should be what they are looking for. If they are not? We are to fast charge and get the hell out of here, and then worry about them later. They cut the line on me?!"

Farren had to fight down a snort, the dropship captain must have forgotten that their drive was already fully charged. She wanted to tell the young dropship commander to "teach his mother to suck eggs", but in the end. She didn't say anything. She merely gave a head nod to the speaker. She could not do much more in 0g. Besides, the young pup had just given her permission to leave his dumb ass in this star system if things got hairy.

"Ma'am! We are picking up a broad band hail, from one of those small craft. They do seem to be the ones that we have been waiting for. They are saying that they will stop relative to us at 1000km, and we are not to make a jump until they have cleared the hazard area." The communications operator seemed to sound incredulous, at what he was hearing in his earbuds.

The radio was quite on the frequency, that the bridge of the jumpship was listening in on after that last transmission from the cloud of small craft. They knew that some communicating must have been going on, but someone had changed the rules on the Merchantman being in the loop. All the bridge of that ship could see, was that the Blockade Runner was matched in orbit by the cloud of small craft. Then the small craft would attach to her in groups of four.

From what she was told, before she had left Duniashire, this might be the cargo transfer. Then again it might not. MMM was keeping everything about this mission very close to their chests. She was lost in thought, as the small craft would change position and more craft would attach to the small dropship. But some of the odd small craft were not moving that far away from the dropship and her ride home. The Captain was lost in her own head, and she had only vaguely heard one of her staff say something. She turned and looked toward the sound and shot a questioning look.

The older man took the hint when his boss did not say anything. He was in charge of anything to do with the dropships that the Pampanito was designed to carry. He used a lower voice. "Captain? The crew of the Mammoth just exited their ship. They are asking that we release the locks and let the ship float free from the collar." He gave a slight head shake. This was so strange that even with all of his years in space. This was about as odd as it got. "They said that the visitors would take the dropship under tow. When it's at least 10km from us, they will take command of it." You could hear the confusion in the older man's voice as he made his report.

Captain Farren did another little head nod. "Okay, that is different. Go ahead and release the locking bolts and use the emergency ejection system, to get that monster off my ship." She ended her statement with a tight-lipped look. About the only thing that she thought was a good thing? It was that these people were not pirates. Or if they were pirates? MMM would only work with the ones that were very large and or well connected. And that meant, for now, her crew and ship were safe. They might be majorly confused, but they were at least safe.

While the massive and now un-crewed dropship was slowly floating away, thanks to the massive mechanical spring and jets of gasses mounted in and around the docking collar. The Rob Roy fired her own little jets, and she started to slowly close in on the jumpship. Hidden within that Blockade Runner's cargo bays were now 100 of the highest tech PPC's known to the Inner sphere. The payment for these H class ER PPCs and other items that Admiral Xi had handed over, were in the form of the Dropship and her half-filled cargo bay.

With the smallest of the two dropships now safely reattached to the jumpship. Four of the small craft had been attached to the sides of the massive ship, that was free floating in deep space. The massive dropship was only on emergency or backup power. Soon a dozen space suited forms started to do their job of going over the huge dropship with a fine-tooth comb. From these attached points the four small craft fired their main engines at a single command. It was not much thrust to counter the mass of the half full ship, that was the second largest dropship made in the Inner Sphere. It would take six hours to get the mass of metal clear of the area of space that was in the danger zone, when the jumpship activated its core. This operation was only possible thanks to the information and raw data that Robert had brought back from his mission to an almost forgotten colony.

The small craft were not going to take the dropship all the way back to the hidden warship. They were only to play a part in a larger shell game, all to keep the jumpship's crew in the dark about the bigger picture. They would keep slowly moving the massive ship closer to a certain point in space away from any "normal" jump point. Four small craft would rotate being attached to the hull and providing thrust needed to move the 52,000-ton dropship along a very defined path in the unmarked darkness of deep space. All the while that same dropship was being searched and scanned by people inside the hull, the small craft out in space around it, and the ones attached to the hull. Every one of those crewmembers knew how much a risk was being taken by the SLiE.

When the SLS Yukon detected the tail-tail energy wave of the Merchant ship's jump drive being activated? She had her Cylon made drive working on being spun up. It was ready to be activated when the civilian ship was finally gone from this system. On a command from the warships bridge. The ship was gone and back into space only 100 kilometers from the slowly moving dropship and her little cloud of smaller friends. Before the dropship was brought closer to the warship, it was hit with the full power of her active systems. It only took ten seconds for the information to come back that nothing was found, but there were a few worries about DNA damage from the people still on the dropship. It was also noted for years later that paint was not known to stick on that one side of the ship. That didn't mean that this inspection was done. That just meant that they would have to do two more sweeps, to make sure that something had not been missed.

The massive engines mounted on the back side of the cargo ship came to life for the first time in this system. The engines on this dropship were not that great, at the best of times. As had been suggested by Admiral Xi. The hull only needed to be sound, light life support, and some life left in the engines that would stand up for some light use. Those engines were used to counter the energy that the small craft had given their larger brethren.

Less than half an hour after the merchant ship had left the system. The great dropship was attached to the side of the old warship, and fifteen minutes later the Colonial drive was activated again. In an odd blurring of movement, the system was emptied of life, once more. It would not take long for even the exhaust trails from all of the craft involved with today's work, to start to be pushed apart by the solar winds.

In two weeks the first results of Admiral Xi's mission were back in the New Circe system. It would only take another two weeks, for the dropship and its contents to be integrated into the overall structure of the New Circe system. In less than a month it would not even be known if there was even a burp after the ingestion of the ores from the half full Mammoth class dropship. By the end of that month, the massive dropship was sitting in a stable orbit around The Station, and even the small craft crews were used to avoiding the newest dropship in the SLDF Navy.

The return of Pampanito to Dunianshire had taken longer for them to reach civilization than the SLiE needed. It would take even longer for the cargo that she had delivered to be integrated. Mr. McDonogh was sweating and losing weight at an alarming rate, due to the stress of this one "deal". The plans for the King Crab had been amazing. The Parent office on Canopus had approved of this deal, and they had coughed up the funds that Mike needed to seal and launch the whole operation. Some of that money was needed for the setting up of what was really little more than a very good repair facility. This new area would hold six of the new war machines at one time. Still the head office had given him a decent sized budget for the overall project. They had even sent him some parts that were on hand, within the company to speed up the total project. That had started filling those six building cubicles, a lot faster than he could have believed possible. He was already getting some of the parts lined up, so that the next half dozen would be put together almost twice as fast as the first set. He might have a dozen machines in less than a year walking around. Even if right now what they were mostly doing, was just putting on parts that were coming from other places.

He had to come up with the funds to "front" a local company, so that they were able to make the correct communication and TT&S for the newest assault mech in the MMM's sales book. With all of the information that McDonogh had "found", it had made it very easy to start production for that "new" company. He had two test sets and four sets ready for installation on some of the more complete mechs in those new "bays". They were sitting in a warehouse on this same campus, they just needed word to be sent to bring them over.

The rest of the limited production of those two systems had been sold on the open market. After the sudden appearance of so many high-tech weapons and upgraded machines. More and more of the larger defense companies, government militaries, and mercenaries were looking toward MMM, to see what they had for sale before looking somewhere else. The four extra TT&S had been sold within a few weeks of them being put on the market. The sale price had been…. impressive, and they had almost paid for the whole first limited run of those devices. They were gearing up for a steady, if slow production in the next few weeks. Mike and the head office thought that the "front company", might be a nice little source of additional income for his bigger project. If it worked out, the little company would be "publicly" rolled into the larger frame of MMM.

When word had come to him, from the jump point, that the Rob Roy was on its way to the planet "With a load of good glass". He felt the stress come off of him, like it had never been there in the first place. This load of high-tech weapons would be sold or used on battlemechs that MMM was making. An inter-company transfer will soon see the shifting of over half of those weapons to the main office on Canopus. That would be in as short as a few weeks. The only delays would be in the travel time from the jump point to the planet, and then for a fresh dropship and crew to take the required number of weapons back to a different jumpship at the sane jump point.

There they would join a shipment of newly made "Freezers" already on Canopus, that would go into new built or rebuilt 75ton Marauder class mechs. The funds for the sale of those updated mechs would go for the payment of the second and larger shipment of "Good Glass". Things were starting to come together, but he was still concerned about some of the strings that had been attached to this deal. The part about buying the shipyard had made since to him, but the company's auditors on Canopus were only just now getting into the books on what was left of the Athena Corporation. The only things that kept him pushing this project, was that so far. The people who had directed this mess had been right almost down to the decimal point.

He was thinking that soon his company would start to challenge some of the medium sized weapons manufactures in the CC or FWL. It would take a lot longer and a huge amount of money to even come close to the dozen of the larger big boys in those two nations, much less the big stage of the whole Inner Sphere. The new dropship engines sales might close that gap a little quicker than some of the bean counters thought. When they could roll out the first new built Union, Lion, and Fortress class dropships? That was going to be a kick in the….. pants for a lot of their competitors.

He drummed his fingers on the table, as he thought about the near future. He made a mental note, to see about how he could try to contact this Ms. Xi again. After all she now owned a nice chunk of the company he worked for. He also started working on an idea of maybe contacting one of the larger manufacturers in the FWL. Maybe they would like to get in on the ground floor with a up and coming new player at this scale. What was the worst they could say, NO.

Helios Delta

Canceron

Theodore (Ted) Roscoe looked over the lip of his command. He was hunched over what he knew was called a Conning Tower for some unknown reason. He was not the happiest person in the world, and he had not been that way for weeks now. He had been one of the top small craft pilots, in the whole SLDF. He even had a dozen Cylon kills, and each one of them had been a Heavy Raider before they could launch their payload of heavy weapons. When he had been told that he was being rewarded and given a new command. He had thought that he was going to get one of the assault dropships, that had been rumored to be being built.

Starting in January his whole crew with a few new additions had been put threw intense training, all thanks to the Colonial supplied VR tech flooding the schoolhouses of the planet and the SLDF. That was when he had found out, that he was not getting a new gunship. He and his crew were getting a cast-off underwater craft for their next duty station. The idea that this slapped together mission was as an improvement slip further from his mind, as he learned more about his ship and what was being used to support this scouting mission. They had ripped the old ICE out, and they had replaced it with a damaged and recovered extra light fusion engine out of an old Mercury II. It had lost some weight and power due to the damage, and it was deemed as a nice replacement now that it had a rated output that matched the old Inner Sphere made engine.

The loss of the massive old ICE and its replacement with a smaller late Star League era fusion drive had freed up a lot of space. First, they had added a first-generation Beagle Active Probe, and then a Johnston Industries Guardian ECM Suite was wired into the craft. Both systems were over two hundred years old, and both of those systems had come from updating machines in the cache with newer and lighter designs. Those systems were still "newer" than the design of the Gamma Laser mounted on the bow of the craft. That design had been around since the 24th century. He had pushed for an updated weapon or even one of the second-generation ER Large lasers to replace the older designed weapon, and he had been refused. He also was suspect of the torpedo tubes, but the clan had nothing like them. So, he had no idea if they would work as advertised.

The rest of the freed-up space had been filled by a 10ton infantry bay and a 13ton cargo bay. They should have loaded Nighthawks for the scouts to use, but instead they were loading 8 of the lower tech Weasels that were based off of a recovered Inner Sphere design. The rest of the space for the missing suits was being filled up with extra spare parts, tools, extra ammunition, and small arms. The same was true of the large cargo bay that had been added to the old warship. All so that they could stay on mission longer. A mission that only had 8 shots out of its main long ranged weapon, should not be called a long mission. But they had not asked him for his opinion when the mission had been thought of and then planned out.

He gave a snort as he thought about their mission, and that he had volunteered for it. It had taken two full days to get from the drop point in the open ocean, until they pulled into this small bay. A small bay that was on this small island, that would be their base of operations. It was a very nice island with about 150 acres of hard woods covering the land. It even had a long dock that went into the deepest water of the bay that they had just entered. The key was that the sea dock had a metal covered area that was meant to keep a mega yacht out of the weather. That covered area, with a few select modifications would act like a small sub pen from any Cylon over flights.

Robin Wenutu had given the location of this 150-acre island to the SLDF, for a price. The fact that she knew about this mission caused SLIC to take a hard look at information handling. Still it was too perfect for this mission to take a pass on, not after they were told that it was only a day's sail from the capital of the whole planet. The cargo shuttle and two Raptors that had come off the old liner had dropped off a lot of cargo. It was a list of items that had been selected from what had been left on the Ragnar anchorage.

In some of the now open space on those three craft, where spaces filled with items taken from the large home build into the wood line. The scouts had landed and looked around the island, to make sure it was "safe". They had not found any Cylons or living humans on this one time awfully expensive hideaway. They had found four skeletons that had died from unknown causes while they were looking for threats. Clan grade systems had taken DNA samples from those four bodies, and they had gone with all of the personal items from the home into the cargo shuttle.

The newly named SLDF ship Sneaky would stay under that metal covering for the next few days. The 7-person crew and the 8 scout troopers would use this time to break up the cargos that had been dropped off from Ragnar. It also would give them some time outside and under green trees. Both of those items would be in short supply while they were on mission. It also gave them some time to get to know where they would be living for the near future.

Sargent Van Barfoot's eyes popped open. Normally you would scout in pairs, but thanks to the abilities of both sets of PA(L)s that the SLDF had access to. You could spend a few days alone while on a mission. This let you cover a lot more ground with the same number of people, if they were good and they had the right kind of support.

Lt John Basilone had spread out his 8-man unit over a huge area. Van was currently over watching a coastal highway, that looked to have been used in the recent past. It was only a set of wheel tracks going over a small landslide, but it was a sign that someone had been using this route between major rainstorms. The armor that covered Van's suit was not as high tech as the Nighthawks, but it had been proven effective in testing against Cylon weapons and sensors. If you were still enough, and the light was right it was very effective. Even the human eye would not notice you, and that was the gold standard of hiding.

Van reset his alarm and went back to scanning the local area. He would doze off in a while, that was just the nature of the job. Two hours later his eyes opened again, but it was for a different alarm. This time it was because of his acoustic and then motion detectors had sent an alert ringing in his ears. Something was coming, and Van shifted just a little to get a better view of were his systems were saying that the threat was coming from.

A package truck, that was clearly well past being on its last legs came smoking around a distant corner of the highway at about 20 or 30kph. It was not moving fast enough to make the amount of smoke it was leaving behind. Its engine was just that far gone, as it left a cloud of unburned fuel or as the Colonials sometimes called it Castellumeline, or Eline and oil in a grey/black fog behind it. This was the first real sign of surviving Colonials, that he had seen since being dropped off the bottom of the low hovering liner.

Van had been ordered NOT to make contact with any Colonials. He was to report when safe and then await orders to come from the LT. They could always track them down later, to wherever they were hiding from the Cylons. That would not be easy, not if they had been alive this long. There was a good chance that this could always be a Cylon trap. The Ex human form Cylons had provided a huge amount of information on Cylon counter human tactics.

Van watched the delivery truck as it passed right below where he was perched, and thankfully it kept going for another few hundred meters. And then it came to a slow stop. Van went on edge, as he worried about if he had been spotted or not. An older man and two kids exited the truck not long after it had slowly coasted to a stop in the middle of the weatherworn highway. Van noted that the man was not a human form Cylon, and the Cylons did not make kids. Well unless it was under very special circumstances, which usually ended up with a glowing red spine, then all bets were off. The middle-aged male went to the front of the truck, and he quickly raised the dented hood. Van lost sight of the man, as he seemed to be working on the engine of the rolling wreck.

Van was watching the near threat of the man and truck and he made a rookie mistake. It was the yelling kid, that brought him and the man working under the hood of the truck out of the focus. Both men turned to look were the yelling kid was pointing. Van's heart froze as his eyes turned to look down the road. A full platoon of Centurions was less than a half a Kilometer away. One part of Van's mind made a note, that these Cylons looked to be just like the ones that had led the second war against the humans. They did not seem to be up armored or the carrying armored shields types of Centurion. That was strange enough, that Van noticed this bit of information.

Van's head came back around snake quick, as the man yelled. The two kids jumped back into the old delivery truck in between eye blinks. As Van watched, he could tell that the man was working as fast as he could to fix the engine and save his "family". There was no way that a human could outrun a Centurion, and everyone knew this as a hard fact of life. Van was still working out what he should do, when the hood slammed down, and the man jumped back into the truck almost as fast as the young kids had done

Van was moving before his mind knew it. He was going to buy enough time for the civilians to escape or he was going to die trying. Rules be Fraked, he was not going to sit around and let them be overrun by these soulless metal monsters. The nice thing about being in light powered armor, it was that you could carry a lot more firepower than a "normal" person. Besides a special backpack, that let Van live away from support for a week without needing to eat any of the local wildlife. He also was packing a Vibroaxe in his right hand and a heavy, if cut down, Mauser pulse laser in his left. He landed in the middle of the road with the truck at his back, and the on rushing Cylons were to his front.

He only waited until his systems stabilized from his jump out of cover onto the road, before he started to charge into the gleaming blades of the on-rushing Centurions. He led his attack by firing his Mauser until he was overwhelmed with the enemy metal ranks. Then he would bring his high-tech ax into play. The vibroaxe was considered one of the hardest melee weapons to learn how to use effectively. But if you spent enough time training with one? It was not that bad, and the ax was designed to be a close in weapon for a few thousand years of human history. This was something that the Cylons were about to learn, the hard way.

When Van was done? He pulled one of the two heads of his ax out of the hips of a Centurion laying on the ground at his own metal covered feet. He had lost track of time in the battle madness. As he looked back down the road, he saw nothing, but metal bodies spread out behind him. Some were blown apart, and others he could tell were cut apart. The truck with the two kids was long gone from where his suits systems could reach. Van didn't know if he should be upset or thankful, that they had fled while he took out the attacking Cylons.

There was not much else Van could do, so he went back to his overlooking position to survey the whole battlefield from a higher vantage point. He changed the depleted battery in his pulse laser from an extra one in his pack. He had to spend a few extra minutes removing a Centurion blade finger, that had broken off in between two parts of his outer armored cover. Then with his supply pack in one hand, the ax over a shoulder, and the pulse laser with a fresh battery in the other hand. He went up deeper into the tree line for a few hard seconds of running before he adjusted his path. He could do one of two things now that his cover was blown. He could try to track the fleeing humans in the truck, or he could report them to the LT and "Captain".

In the end, he did a little of both options. He tracked the truck for about 5kms down the coastal highway. He never once saw it again, before he turned and started to slowly make his way to the check in point that was in the opposite direction. He needed to let the rest of his chain of command know about the survivors in this local area, and that he had a run in with Cylons.

Tiamat walked through the forest covered camp at a carefully measured pace. He made note of a few things, as he walked. One was that he needed to make sure all of the covering sod was watered, and that the latrines smelled like they were full. Tiamat was not his real name, and he was not even the first person to carry that name in this camp of 80 permanent residents. They had learned a long time ago that they needed to make sure that groups of survivors didn't get to large. This camp was only the center camp, that worked with a few others of a like sized spread out in the local area. It was like the town square of a very spread out village.

And just like in any small village. If something happens out of the norm? The word would spread around like a wildfire pushed by a windstorm. He was on his way to check on what had happened with one of his best scavengers. What rumors had said was so far out there, that he was wondering if someone had slipped something into the village water supply. They had learned a long time ago. That you had to take care of the wildest rumors the fastest, or they could bring a whole camp to its knees or worse.

Tiamat walked into the center of the Village, and to the local bar. As soon as he entered the "bar" he could see the person he was looking for. He took a seat next to the other man and watched him as he drank with shaking hands. Tiamat could tell that the other man was shaken maybe to the breaking point. When the glass touched the bar top, he went fishing.

Tiamat spoke. "Okay, Lee. What happened out there?"

Lee looked at the local leader with wide eyes, almost crazy eyes to the trained observer. "We had a run in with a heavy Centurion patrol. The truck broke down, the fuel filter was fraked up. I think the Eline is going bad, again. While I was working on it. Frog was keeping an eye out for me, and she saw them coming down the road."

Lee did a head nod towards two kids playing in a dark corner of the room with some hammy down, recovered, and handmade toys. They were left just for kids to use while their "family" let off some steam or just did a little deal of some kind in the center of "town". Three Tiamats ago had stopped the Quillar traders in this very room. She had done it in such a way, that they had not had to worry about them again.

Tiamat looked over at the kids. Like most people, that survived the first few years of the new Cylon war. Families were more of who had found each other than of blood or marriage. He knew for a fact, that those two kids were not genetically related to Lee in any shape, way, or form. But they were his kids in all the ways that matter to the people in this area. Tiamat noticed that in the way that only kids can do, they knew that they were being talked about.

In a blur of movement one of the kids came flying over. When the slightly dirty kid was within a few feet of the two men, she was almost yelling. "DAD ARE YOU TELLING HIM ABOUT THE WARRIOR OF Hephaestus?" The two men were lucky that the kid automatically adjusted her voice volume down, as she had closed the distance on the bar stools.

The kid flew into Lee's arms, but quickly Lee sat the maybe 8 year old girl back down on the rough cut floor boards. "Now Frog. You know it's not nice to interrupt adults, when they are talking. Go back and play with your sister."

The girl didn't go all the way back to the play area, after her legs had been put back on the floor. Tiamat used that time the interplay took, to think. Hephaestus was the Patron god of his world. He was known to make things. He was most famous for making the Lightning Bolts for Zeus. He also makes mechanical things that ranged from owls to mechanical soldiers. When Greystone's Cylons had first came onto the market, they were often referred to as the Guards of Hephaestus. It was only after a lot of money was spent, that the name of Cylons stuck as a name for those devices, and the name Hephaestus Guards fell out of even reference usage. Maybe that had turned out to be a good thing after all.

Lee turned back to the bar and drank the last few swallows of his moonshine. When the empty glass hits the bar top, he was ready to finish his story. "When Frog let me know about the Cylons. I told them to get the frak back into the van. I broke all records getting my clean spare fuel filter put back on, and I hopped in after them. I knew we were not going to make it. The beast is not as fast as she used to be, even if we still had the right fuels for her."

Lee's head was shaking to match his hands and a tear went down one cheek. "Tiamat, I didn't fraking think we would escape. I Fraking knew that we were all dead. Then this Hephaestus' Guard just jumped onto the middle of the road big as day. Now Tiamat. I had looked around when the engine fraking stopped and I had to work out what I think was an air bubble. We were alone! Then it was there, and it charged right into the wave of running Cylons. It was like it was being guided by the hands of the Gods!"

"Come on Lee. You really believe that?" Tiamat had been listening to what the best salvager in the area had said. He was a very good listener, as well as being able to make the right decision when it mattered the most.

Frog had been just within earshot, and she had not liked it that the leader didn't believe her father or her. She took it kind of personal, like some kids who have seen too much of the horrors of the real world do. "He even had a singing ax! And he shot lightning bolts out of his other hand! I saw the whole thing!"

Lee quickly turned around and raised is voice just enough. "GIRL! GET BACK To Your Sister! OR you will go to bed without supper!"

When the girl known as Frog jumped wide eyed, and then fled to the other side of the room. Lee locked eyes with the human leader of this area of the planet. "Frog is not totally wrong. It was a metal man, but not a Cylon. It had a two headed ax, that hummed, and as crazy as it sounds. He did shoot some kind of lightning bolt weapon out of his other hand. They were watching to see if the Cylons were still coming after us, and I saw it out of the side mirror. I swear it was a Hephaestus' Guard! And that was before I started to calm my nerves."

Tiamat was on guard. "Why didn't you fraking call for help?" He had to get to the bottom of this. This was the type of story that could lead to blood on the ground. If he did not get ahead of this and talk some sense into this man, before it blew up even more around the camp? There would be blood on the ground by night fall.

Lee sat his glass down one more time and gave the leader a level look. "I tried! Frog's ear wigs couldn't pick up my box radio from the back door of the Fraking van. It was like the hands of the gods had cut off all communication, until we were a good way away from that thing!" The last words were muffled, as Lee went back into his drink to try to kill the memories.

Lee held up one finger, and the bartender refilled his glass with about two fingers deep of the clear liquid. Lee picked it up, smelled it, and then took another long pull with still slightly shaking hands. When the bartender had walked out of earshot, to refill someone else's empty glass. Tiamat made eye contact with the head bartender, who was sitting at the other end of the bar top. He held up four spread fingers. Lee was going to get four more fingers of white liquor on Tiamat's tab, all without a single word needing to be said.

The leader left the bar and walked back to his office. He knew that Lee believed what he saw, and he was scared bone deep. This little camp depends on Lee and his family, to make those high-risk scavenging runs to cities and towns now dead. If Lee didn't make another run to do some scavenging for the needed items? This camp and the others nearby were in serious trouble. He also needed to find out what really happened out there.

When he got back to his office, he sent for the commander of the defenders. By now everyone knew how to use weapons. But some were better than others with the few weapons they had. And then there was the group that had the right mind set to do this kind of job for an extended amount of time. Over the last few years, the number with both the skills and mindset had been reduced to only the good, lucky or both.

He had been in that group before becoming the local leader, after the last one had let the power get to his head. When he gave the mission to the defender's leader. He had wanted to go along with them on this mission. That had not gone over well with the current military commander. It was pointed out, that he was too important to risk on a mission where they might run into Cylons. If someone had taken down a few Centurions? Then it was a good bet, that reinforcements would be sent from the handful of Cylon bases left on the planet or in orbit.

The reaction team took off on the few trucks that both worked, and that they had "good" fuel for. Even with the trucks, it was accepted that they would not return until sometime the next morning. Only a fool would drive at night with head lights on, and their last set of night vision devices had long since given up the ghost. When they left the camp. All Tiamat could do was walk around the camp some more to reassure everyone, that the guard force leaving was not that big of a deal. The fact that they had left to check out the story would leak out soon enough.

Tiamat didn't sleep very well while most of the defense force was away from "his" camp. It was not that he was afraid of an attack by the Cylons. It was that something was up. And he had no idea how it was going to affect the people, that looked to him to both stay alive and be somewhat safe. Before the sun was up, he was waiting at the main gate out of the camp with his hand shoved deep in his light coat's pockets. He was just starting to wear a path across the dirt road, that had led everyone to this location deep in the mountains from the seacoast and city slums.

When he heard an engine straining to make it up the muddy, steep, and more of a trail than a road. He knew that his waiting was over. The leader of the mission jumped out of the first truck and waved for it to go the rest of the way without him. He did not have to take more than two steps, before Tiamat was at his side.

With a tired voice, he started back briefing the leader. "There was a battle, right where Lee said it was. We only had to stop once going out, that was when a Heavy Raider more or less buzzed us. We think that it had been on the ground near the battle site. I have no idea if they took anything, you know how they are sometimes. We found a full Centurion platoon spread out on the road for about 200 or 300 meters. I had most of the teams looking around the local area to make sure no more of the frakers showed up and surprised us."

Tiamat didn't say anything, and he just took in the briefing from the other tired man. "We found the hide sight that was used by the stranger. It was not the best place to set up an overwatch position on the road. But it was the place that I would have picked if I wanted to do it, and not get caught. They knew their stuff when they picked that spot. It was hard as Frak to follow their trail from that starting point. It looks like they followed after Lee for a while, and then gave up. I sent two of my best trackers to see what they could find. The trail ended at a small cove."

Tiamat let out some breath in a light sigh, and his shoulders dropped just a fraction. "So, it was not a ghost or some input from the gods into our lives."

The Guard leader shot a sidelong look at the leader of their camp, and he pitched is voice very low. "I don't fraking know about that." By now the pair had caught up to the last truck. The rest of the team were cleaning up their bodies and cleaning weapons, in a nearby cabin that was not the camp's armory. The guard force commander reached into the back of the truck, and he pulled something out that had been covered by a convenient and very frayed green and black tarp.

Tiamat took the offered arm of a Centurion with both hands. He was very strong, even for a man his size. He sees that something is off with the arm, and he turns the arm over to the end that would have attached the elbow to the upper arm. It was cut and cut so smooth, that it looked to have been done with the world's sharpest and hardest surgical knife. He ran his hand over the cut line in the metal, and it was as smooth as the rounded outer armor.

While Tiamat was looking and feeling the smooth cut metal. The guard force commander started talking. "I have no idea how that was cut. We also found two Centurions that were cut in half from helm down through the fraking crotch. We found 6 arms cut just like that, but behind the ammunition box. I had all six brought to the truck. I didn't want to take the time to collect everything that might be useful. We were pretty jumpy." He had just delivered the understatement of the year. That part of the road made everyone on the team feeling like a cat in a room full of large and hungry daggits. One of his troopers said he had not felt this way, since he had brought the Marshals daughter home a few hours late.

They had run out of Colonial made spare parts to keep what few weapons they had working without cannibalizing other gravely needed weapons. That did not even count trying to find more military grade ammunition for them. There were a few but well-established reloading shops to help with keeping them somewhat useful. Someone that was good with their hands and with some hand tools, had found a way to convert the Centurion arm guns into weapons humans could use. That didn't help with them having the hard ammunition that was best at taking down the metal monsters, but enough hits with the softer bullets still would take one down. You just had to be a little lucky with your shot placement.

The leader was brought back to the world, when his friend started talking again. "We rushed the job of looking around the highway, to try to track down who had done the work. We had to stop when it got too dark to track under the trees. As soon as we had any light, we started going again. We found a small cove less than an hour later, and the trail went cold. And before you ask, the tracks are not human or Cylon. Not unless they have a size 18 boot, and they can breathe underwater without equipment."

Tiamat's head snapped up, as the guard commander kept talking. "Oh, and they knew we were following them for some time. They left something for us." Now the guard captain opened a side container on the truck, to show his boss what had been found on the beach. A like new Colonial military battle rifle and a double-barreled pistol. The guard pulled out 3 magazines for each weapon. And they were loaded with the red tips of anti-Centurion ammunition. The gifts kept on coming in the form of a dozen military field ration bags. Each one of those bags was enough food to feed a person in combat for a full day.

By now everyone knew what to check, to see if something like this was still edible. With a raised eyebrow the camp leader noted that they were old, but they should still be edible. It had not been unknown for the Cylons to leave items behind that were traps. Most of the time it was of an explosive nature, but more than a few trackers had been found "in surprise finds". That was why the item had been put into that special box on the side of the truck. It would block any transmissions hidden in what they had found in that small cove.

"That is not all they left. We found a note, and I left one in return. I would love to meet anyone who can cut a Centurion in half like a hot knife through butter." A sheet of paper that was a perfect rectangle was passed to Tiamat. It was so alien, that it took a few seconds to read the note. It was very basic lettering, and it was obviously written in a hurry. It said that their trackers needed some work, but they were welcome to his extra supplies. The person would like to meet also, but only as long as they wanted to kill Cylons.

The guard had an evil grin when Tiamat's head came snapping up after reading the last line. "I left a note in the same place we found this one. I said that we would like to meet. I told them thanks for the supplies, and that we could use them and any extras he might want to give up. I told him we would check his spot next to the highway every few days."

The two men talked some more, and they worked out how to best talk to the rest of the camp. And how to let the other camps know that someone, maybe friendly was walking around. They also were warned to be on the lookout for any Honey traps, that the Cylons might have set out. There was no such thing as a free lunch, and it had only gotten worse after their cities had been nuked from orbit. There was still a chance that this was some kind of Cylon trap.

SLDF Sneaky

Captain Theodore (Ted) Roscoe was only called Captain, while he was on this ship and on this mission. When it was over? He would revert back to being only a lieutenant JG(p) as soon as he stepped foot on New Circe. Still it would say Captain on his next eval, even if ground units didn't give Captains the same pay as what a Captain in the SLDF navy made

He had dropped off the scouts for their first missions. While they were walking in the woods looking for Cylons and any humans they might have missed. He had taken his ship into the ruins of Hades, the capital city of this planet. As reported the city had been hit with a very large airburst nuclear weapon. How many weapons? He had no idea, and he could not get an aerial view to see if the wreckage had more blast patterns. Getting into and out of that wreck strewn harbor had tested his crew, but they had done it.

The scouts had found and repaired a few local made watercraft, to help them move along the coast of four large closely spaced islands. He had already received the first positive report about finding signs of some survivors. That had been the only good news, so far. The other scouts had not found anything but dead bodies and a dropship full of Cylons walking around or in small camps. The sub's crew had found their own dead. They had not found bodies, but they had found 6 underwater domes as they did a search pattern starting at Hades.

At first, they had started looking at a speed that was well below Sneaky's top cruising speed. Now they were doing spurts of flank and cruising speed. They only thing they had found for the first three days had been more broken domes and sunken ships. Those ships were just modified spaceships, and in some cases. They had been real spaceships that had not been below the waves, when the Cylons had come calling with their weapons falling from high orbit. Oh, and they had found more than a few biological contacts on the old Star League made active probe.

Ted walked around the small control area of his 100ton command. They had a few more hours before they were going to shut down for some rest. With the weasel's operators on mission, the crew could all get some sleep in the freed-up space of the infantry bay. They still would have someone on duty, but that would be spread out for the whole off shift. All he would have to do, is find a nice flat spot on the ocean floor at the right depth. He came back to his work, when a head came up from the Beagle probe's operator.

Before he could make his way to that station, its operator spoke. "Sir! The probe just picked up some movement coming away from what we are classifying as a Grain Pylon class ship. They are heading out at 6kph and climbing. She is on a heading 47 and up 14."

"Helm! Cut speed and drop in behind her. Do we have an idea on what it might be?" One part of his mind noted that the report he had been just given. It was a lot like what would happen when they were on his old small craft.

The shark from another world slides in behind the small underwater ship. It was small at maybe 30tons at max mass. It also was very quiet, as it cut through the dark water at a steady rate. It might not have been that fast, but the Sneaky was at her full cruising speed. How long would this chase last? No one knew, and if it lasted too long. His crew was going to get tired after the long duty shift, that they had been on. He knew one hard fact about being in command of a small ship's crew. Tired people would start to make larger and larger mistakes.

Harold was tired, as he made a slight adjustment in his thickly padded chair. He gave one last look around his command station. It was not that much of a "Command" station as those things went. His baby was more of an underwater truck, than what he had been driving the day the Cylons had returned. It was not a warship in anyway. He could carry a total of six people and 10tons of cargo or more cargo and less people. This time he had only himself and the rest of the passenger area was filled with very high value cargo.

He had been sent out to look for items to help the overloaded dome he also called home, after his ship had been blasted apart at one of the planet's spaceports. It had been a small dome, one that was so small and out of the way enough. That the Cylons had not popped it like all of the larger underwater domes in the area. It had been quickly overwhelmed, as survivors had found this small fish farm and underwater fruit grove. They had not been forced to send out or turn anyone away from the dome, but it had hurt everyone living there. If it had not been for people like Harold, the dome would have not remained viable after more than a few months.

He had found the sunken grain ship a few months ago, while he had been out looking for weapons. He had been a little let down when he noticed that three of the six pillar like storage bays, had been opened to the sea water. He still had been able to recover three full loads of priceless seeds from those wrecked bays, before it all had rotted into useless mush. He had been very happy to find that the other three large, almost pipe shaped grain silos had been full of ground grains of different types also in water tight packages.

Before this ship had become his own personal piggybank. It had been on its way to fill the food lockers of the largest underwater city on the planet. Maybe one that was filled with people who were too rich to want to see the slums around the largest land-based cities on the planet. Now every few weeks, he would make the long trip to draw a full load of grain to take back to the hungry stomachs of those who still lived.

Harold had no idea that someone was following behind him as silent as death, as it cut through the cold dark water behind him. He had a 28-hour trip, and he had been alone moving tons of priceless gourmet grains in 30kg packages. He had to move them one at a time from one of the silos to the well-sealed cargo bay or passenger compartment at the back of his underwater truck. That can take a lot out of a person.

Ted had very little sleep, but now he understood why, that the designers in the far away Inner Sphere had put a nice comfortable chair with seat belts in this section of the modified Neptune. Now he knew it was for the ship's master to get a few naps in while on a long mission. He had been able to rotate the rest of the crew to get some horizontal sleep. The target had been moving more or less on a straight line not long after they had gotten behind the small target. The Probe had told them that the target was small. Ted thought that it might only have a crew of one or maybe two people. Those would need to sleep, after a few hours. He was betting that they had turned on an autopilot of some kind on the small craft. The craft was close enough to the surface that it was unlikely to run into any underwater mountains, but also deep enough not to run into reefs of any kind.

Ted's head popped up from his chest, as the probe operator sounded off. "Target is dropping and has come to 336 down 7. She also might be slowing down a little."

Ted's froggy voice filled the room. "Match them and keep the distance. Start looking for a base of some kind." His tired brain told him that there had to be a reason that the target had made such a radical change after all of these hours.

Ted was starting to worry, that the target was going to go deeper than his repaired battle-damaged hull could handle. Besides what the few manuals had said on the subject, no one on New Circe knew what the maximum depth might be. Then just as he was about to call the track, the targeting display changed. Slowly an object started to take shape on the very edge of the display. It had a shape that Ted had grown to recognize. It was an underwater dome. It was not even close to the size of the ones they had seen so far; this one was so much smaller. It also was not listed on any of the reports he had read before the mission or after they had arrived on this planet.

In less than 10 minutes, they had enough information to know. That this was a small farm dome perched on an undersea mount of an ancient volcano and newer coral reef. These types of domes were not unknown, but very little was known about them by anyone on New Circe. All that Ted knew was that this one still had power, and they had at least one means to scout and recover needed items from the local area. After that it was just a bunch of question marks.

When the small target made a final course change, that would take it to the dome in an almost straight line. Ted had to make a snap decision. "Helm, come to a full stop. I want to see what they are up to." While he was talking, he walked over to the "radio" section. He pitched his voice to be very low. "Warm up the Colonial equipment. When I give the order? I want a recorded greeting sent over to the dome. I want it low powered, so that only they will hear it."

They had been a hole in the water for an hour, and Ted was getting tired of waiting. He was going to have to leave soon to make contact with the scouts. They had not set a date, but they did have a window. If he totally missed the window, the ground team would make it on their own way back to the island and wait for recovery. He had slowly moved his command, so that he was just at the edge of effective range of the 20 pack long ranged torpedo launcher. Intel said that this was well outside of any known Cylon or Colonial weapon. That is unless the Cylons had manage to convert capital sized missiles to work underwater. If that happened, then all bets were off.

With a slight huff Ted got out of his chair. The crew was about as fresh as they could be. "Comms, hit them with the message. Nav, turn on all of the running lights. Let's let them know they have visitors out here, and we are trying to be friendly."

The Inner sphere and for that matter most Star League made field radios, did not work on the same range of "common" frequencies as the Colonials used. That was going to work for the advantage of the SLiE while they were on this recon mission. Now it was time to risk "others" knowing that someone was down here.

Harold was sweating bullets as he stood beside Thomas. Thomas was the leader of this farming dome. He had taken over from his father, also named Thomas that had a heart attack and died early last year. Harold could tell the man was not happy at what was going on. Most of the council blamed him for the strangers finding them. Every person who had a weapon, had broken them out and taken up positions around the moon pool. That had been a larger number, than any on the council had thought were left in the dome. The people who had more than a magazine of ammunition shared with those that had none, just to get more shooters ready.

Harold had been told to be on the dock to "greet" the new people. He had turned over his hunting rifle and two pistols to a friend, that was somewhere behind him and hopefully behind something that was very solid. The people on this welcoming line were going to be the speed bump and be the proof that whoever was coming was friend or foe. It they were foe's they would be the first ones to die, and it was hoped that the armed people behind them would be strong enough to turn the attackers away.

The whole dome had gone on high alert, okay they freaked the Frak out. Most people didn't have a communication device to receive the message. But they did have eyes to see the red, green, and white light suddenly come on a vessel that was sitting outside of the dome. It had taken some time for the leadership to get everyone moving in the right direction. Every lifeboat in the facility was filled with as many bodies that would physically fit into them. There were not enough lifeboats to support the current population of the dome, not by a long shot.

Harold looked down at Thomas's left hand. The little device that he was holding beeped quickly three times. That was the only indicator that the strangers were in the access tube that leads from the Moon pool to the rest of the ocean. A few heartbeats later a rounded bow rose from the water at a steep angle, before dropping back down leaving only a rounded top of the pipe shaped ship with a fin like top sitting in the water. A circle of small waves radiated out from the odd-looking ship in a set of concentric circles, that only stopped when they reached the edges of the moon pool.

Harold had lived almost his whole life underwater or in space. He could only remember a few days every couple of years that he was walking under open skies. So, he had seen more than a few different styles of Colonial underwater craft. The first thought he had at seeing this strange craft, was that it was clunky as all frak. Whoever had built it, they had never made a dime on sells of that craft on the open market. There were too many "sexy" craft for sell, like his truck. What they were seeing? It could have come from a trashy entertainment show, but not a ship builder known to anyone in this dome.

It was that strange to the eye, that it was a surprise when ropes started to be tied to the main dock in the moon pool. The meeting was going to be held out in the open. With a sigh, Harold walked behind Thomas as he went to exchange greetings with a person that was in a uniform that had never been seen by people that called Colonials space home.

Early the next day, the Sneaky pulled out of the moon pool that allowed for access from the inner dome to the rest of the oceans. They were doing "a patrol" around the local area. They were only going around the mountain that held the dome in place. Things had gotten off to a rocky start at first, but a case of fruit cocktail had patched things over the surprise door knock the Sneaky had performed. The SLDF ship had 3 locals riding along with them on this "patrol." It was more of a hearts and minds operation than a war patrol. A lot more of the local VIPs wanted to tag along, but Ted was not going to be outnumbered on his own vessel, if he could get away with it.

Ted saw movement and one of the local leaders was standing in the hatchway. It was the one between the command area and the area that leads to the engine room and cargo bay. There had been some issues, when the locals had been given a tour of the vessel. The cargo and infantry bay had drawn some looks, but not as many as the weapons systems that were mounted on the nose of the Sub. Not one word was said about the large laser, and Ted was betting that it was not even "noticed" by the locals as the tour was given. The massive bank of 20 long ranged tubes had been the focus of that part of the tour, by both parties.

Ted was about to walk over to the other man, when he saw the back of his sensor operator get straighter in the high-backed chair. That was all the sign that Ted needed to know that something was up. "Sir, I have three contacts off the bow. They are reading as Cylon Heavy Raiders! The fire control computer says that they looked to be old first-generation birds."

Ted spends the next few minutes working out what to do. He didn't have to let the VIPs know what he was planning. But Ted knew a few things after all of his family's years in the SLDF. He had a handheld display, and he used the empty infantry bay to talk to them. After that meeting with all of the VIPs, he was glad he had taken the time. A slight course change would lead these Cylons away from any asset that the locals might need. Ted could not help but smile at the plan the two groups had come up with. He only had to give them a little refresher, about some of the weapons his craft had to finish up the finer details of a plan to take care of the monsters.

Ted looked around his small crew, and he could read the stress. "Helm, please bring us in another 30 meters."

The helm's men reached that point in space and brought the Neptune class ship to a halt in the deep water. A signal was given by Ted, and a hatch near the modified mech engine was slammed. The first time something like this happened, they waited to see if the nonmoving Cylons changed their posture. When they did not "see" a reaction. The Sneaky would move closer and they tried it all over again. It was only on the third interaction, that the Cylons seem to have noticed the 100ton attack submarine. It was not much of a reaction, but it was a reaction. Now that they had the enemy's attention, it was time to play the pied piper for them.

The Number 2 had his eyes closed, and he almost seemed like he was asleep at the controls to his Heavy Raider. He was trying to feel the universe moving around him. He "knew" that some humans were near this area of the ocean. He had been looking for them for many weeks, and his little squadron was down to only a few more days of fuel. He was the only human form on this mission, and the other two old generation craft "only" had bio forms to run them. He had "only" been able to get the One's to give him the oldest of the Heavy Raiders in the whole Empire for this project.

His eyes popped open when a beep sounded from his console. It took him a few seconds to work out where the sound had come from, but it had taken less time to work out why it had sounded the alert. A faint "something" had been picked up somewhere off to his right. One part of his mind said that this was the people that he was looking so long for. With a slight turn of his wrist, soon the noses of all three Cylon craft were pointed toward the sound. After a few seconds, he decided to apply a little power and close the distance on the object at the very edge of his water degraded sensors.

He had no idea what the sound had been, but it was something that he could focus on. Then his systems told him that it had picked up something else along that same line. He directed his craft and its two "wingmen", and they started slowly moving towards the sound. This was the first hint that "something" might truly be out there in many weeks. It was not really giving any signs of it being a Colonial ship, and this puzzled the Two. The targeting computers only said that something was out in that direction. The other part of the Two's mind told him that he could only "stick around" for 3 or 4 more days. Then he would need to head back up to a Cylon base for fuel and other items. So, what did he have to lose by checking it out? It all was very logical thinking for the Cylon.

Ted led the three Heavy Raiders away from the human settlement and any other point of interest. More than once, Ted had to backtrack and give the Cylons another "dropped tool", to get them back on track. This was a dangerous game, and Ted didn't want the Cylons to realize that they were being led around by the nose. Ted also had to be careful, as they powered threw the water in front of the Cylon combat ships. This was an area of the sea that they had not been in, and they did not have many charts to help them avoid any hazards. They only had a few directions given from the few VIPs they had been carrying from the Dome.

The Two still had not picked up on that he was being led around by the nose. He had the scent of blood, and he would not let it go. He knew that he was going to kill something. He didn't know what he was going to kill, but he was going to kill something. He just needed to get a little closer, to see what he was going to kill.

Ted was smiling in the soft red glow of the lights around him. The smiled fell just a little as his nose hairs started to burn just a little, everyone smelled bad. They had all taken showers before they had left the dome. It was not the unclean smell that was burning the nose hairs, it was the stench of the stress that was pouring off of each person. Thanks to one of the locals, they had been told about this little "canyon" that was not on any of the maps the SLDF had been able to acquire. The Sneaky had sprinted out of short-range sensors of the Cylon craft, as soon as they had found the canyon. Ted had flipped his ship and dropped down below the rock lip of the jagged canyon wall. While the ship was cutting power and speed, its ECM went active for the first time.

The ship was not moving, and an invisible bubble of electronic noise covered the whole area of the canyon. Once the enemy craft entered this area of electronic noise, they would be cut off from the rest of the world. Ted kept an eye on the screens around him and waited. As soon as the three enemy ships crossed the line of underwater rock, and they were visible to the Sneaky and her weapons. Now the Cylons were going to die.

Not long after Ted had thought of that, he soon would be in combat. The scope changed as the three Cylon heavy raiders showed up. Only they were not in a line, as Ted had wanted. They were in a V formation as they cross the lip of the canyon. They were in range but only for two of his weapons. Did he want to risk them getting closer to bring the two sets of SRTs into the battle? That was why he was in command; he would have to be the one to make the call.

"Weps use the LRT and the Lima. I want the far one and the back one taken out first." Ted had just put not only his neck on the line, but his whole crew's necks were now at risk.

It was just luck that the Two was not targeted by the enemy's weapons fire. The first sign that he had known that he had fallen into a trap. It was when a wave of twenty torpedoes came out of the dark water below his craft. He had no idea what had happened. But he did know that one of the Heavy Raiders that had fallen behind do to losing power to one of it's engines, and now it was just gone. The small craft had been broken in two by a weapon, that he had not seen before.

The Two was quick to react, and even before the cloud of on rushing weapons had hit their targets. He fired off a dozen weapons back to the point of origin of the many weapons. He was counting on the weapons own targeting systems, to find what had just fired on his raiders from the dark depths below them. As the weapons left his craft, he tried to raise the remaining craft on his mission to order them to fire. Only he could not reach them on the communication device. He was distracted all the way until that cloud of enemy torpedoes took out the second heavy raider. He was now alone, and a cold knife went into his guts. Without really thinking about it. The 50ton craft turned and started to climb to the ocean's surface, as fast as the engines could push it. It was dangerous to jump within an atmosphere. The risk of doing a jump from over 50 meters below the water line, didn't bear to be thought about outside of a heavy night of drinking at a bar.

As it turned out the Cylons did have torpedoes, of a sort. They were a missile with a super cavitation extension fixed onto their noses. It was not as fast as the missile would have been in an atmosphere, much less how fast they could move in space. The extended nose made an "air bubble" that the missile "flew within". Still it was a very fast weapon for underwater warfare. The Two should have only fired one or two of his "missiles" back down the track of the attacking weapons. But the attack had been so much of a surprise, that the Two had just fired everything he had left in the missile bay.

The very fast Cylon weapons had passed the weapons that had been made in the Inner Sphere so far from this planet. The IS made sensors on the torpedoes were not as good as these Cylons weapons, and these modified Cylon weapons were degraded to a point, that they were only used in the opening waves of the Cylon attack. And then only to pop the fragile domes on the few planets, like this one, where they were known to have been built.

Ted gave a few quick orders as the weapons fire came back at him a lot quicker than he had believed possible. The projectile based anti-missile systems were less than useless underwater, and this project had not been "allowed" to use the still limited laser-based systems that would work underwater. The old Star League ECM had already been proven not to be effective against Colonial weapons, much less against Cylon based missile systems. Ted only had his armor and the hope that his armor would hold against the "normally" weak Cylon warheads. Oh, and hope that a nuclear warhead was not hiding in the 12 speeding weapons heading towards his command. He took the dozen missiles all down the port side of his ship, just as the second Cylon craft came apart under the hammering of over a dozen modified LRMs. The flight time for the Cylon weapons was 20 percent faster than the human made underwater weapons.

Where the Heavy Raider had come apart under the hammering of the 15 long ranged torpedoes that had found it. The Sneaky took the dozen hits and then leapt to full speed to give chase after the remaining Cylon craft. The Sneaky left only a swirl of dark water and small flakes of old armor sinking to the ocean bottom 3k meters below them.

The Heavy Raider was a space craft, and you would think that there was not a chance that the old submarine could win in a race. But if you compared the hull design of each ship? Then you would notice that the Cylon craft was a brick. Now you could get a brick to fly, if you had enough engine power. The Sneaky was designed to live underwater. Her hull designs had benefited from a few centuries of warfare on thousands of different planets. As long as the battle was underwater, the advantage was fully in Sneaky's court.

The Two was leaning forward in his "command" chair, and he was willing his craft to go just a little faster. He had been trying to get a warning out to the rest of the Cylons on the planet. He had no idea what was trying to kill him, but he knew it was not a Colonial ship. It was Leviathan, and he had been a trespasser in the predator's domain. The Two just wanted to escape from it.

He had no idea that his craft was almost outside of the ECM bubble. He also had no idea that he quickly had gotten out of range of the energy weapon mounted in the bow of the enemy vessel. He did know that he had another 20 torpedoes coming after him. But the Colonials did not use torpedoes, as far as he knew. They only used nuclear warheads and huge kinetic strikes against targets under a liquid surface.

"Only" 6 of that flock of torpedoes hit his ship, but they were enough. They slammed into the aft most part of the heavy raider like the hammer of a god. One weapon was prematurely detonated by the thrust turbulence coming off of one of the aft mounted engines. That shock wave of the blast had ripped that engine off of its mount, and it fell to the ocean floor. It also caused the first "leak" into the main hull of the Cylon craft.

The other 5 warheads had finished that crack in the hull, and the Two died as the water forced an air hammer to crash forward of the damage. The air was compressed by the waterfront and just like a diesel engine, after enough pressure was achieved. The remaining air ignited into a super-hot blast of fire. The Two died before his brain knew he was dead. The rest of the Cylon craft would continue upwards for another few meters before the wreckage started to fall back down the cold-water column. It would fall until it reached the bottom of the canyon hours later.

The Two only came to while his remains and the remains of his craft were still falling, in a tub of goo. The only thing he knew was that something had killed him, but he did not know who or why. With shaking hands, he pulled himself out of the tank of goo. It didn't take him long to come to the realization, that he needed to find a new hobby. He made a mental promise that he would never again even come close to Canceron, much less land on that world or look under her oceans. He was not going to risk dying again.

Two Days later

Ted had a huge smile on his face. They had made it back to the Dome, after the run in with the 3 Heavy Raiders. The VIPs had been impressed with how quickly his command had taken out those enemy craft. They had been even more impressed, when they had seen the small "dents" running down one side of his vessel. That kind of firepower had breached more domes than any of the locals had ever cared to count. But they had only chipped the paint and left little dents, that were only noticed after being pointed out to the VIPs as they exited his craft.

Ted had dropped off a half dozen weapons and a couple cases of "military" grade ammunition, that was a match for them. Still they had been a little less impressed with the weapons on the larger ship, but as far as they knew. The Sneaky had fired 3 salvos of torpedoes, and they had killed 3 Cylon Heavy Raiders. That was better than anyone else the locals might have known. Some might have done it, but they had not lived to tell anyone about it afterwards. The Sneaky very much had lived to tell about her run in with the heavy Cylon fighters at 3 to 1 odds.

The Sneaky was on her way to check on the ground teams. The last meeting with the local leadership had gone over like gangbusters. Ted had found out that this dome was on the edge of failing, mainly due to overcrowding. Now that there was a "safe" place, some of that excess population would be leaving. The dome was only going to keep the seaweed farmers, fish wranglers, and those with the skills to help repair the machines. Anything after that, would have to be thought about.

They would start moving the first of about 60 people to the island that Sneaky was based out of. They would only drop off 5 or 6 people at a time, but they already had a short list of people that would be making the trip. The local house could only hold so many, and they would have to be careful to not do something that might attract the Cylons. They would be able to interact with the Sneaky and any of the ground scouts. Most of the time they would be alone on that island, with a lot of elbow room, and that was something that was in short supply in the Dome.

When the next scheduled supply Raptor arrived? The transit personnel would be lifted out, after the cargo had been dropped off. They would be first taken to Ragnar Anchorage. Would they stay there? Maybe, or they might be shifted back to New Circe on the next supply run between those two points. All of this had been planned for. Besides scouting and killing Cylons. The secondary mission was to recover any Colonial that wanted to leave. Just like Clan Wolverine, the Colonial City State was critically short warm bodies.

Ted could not help but smile a little bigger, as his ship made her way at flank speed towards the check point to check on the ground teams and transfer any supplies. As he was looking down at a majorly updated navigation plot, thanks to some of the locals living in that dome. He was thinking that this might not be such a bad mission after all. In less than a few weeks. He had shot down 3 Heavy Raiders, help save at least 60 people, and save maybe more people in that one dome. And they had not been on this mission, but for a few weeks. That was a lot more than what he and his crew had been able to do flying combat small craft.

Note:

Eline. Latin suffix eline from Ancient Greek for oil, olive oil

Cargo on the Mammoth. The payment was the more than half wrecked mammoth. She was half full of the same ores that MMM uses to make mechs. This was the dividend payment for all of the stock that the SLiE and Colonials own in the company.

Tiamat, a goddess in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. She is the queen and mother of evil dragons

Type/Model: Neptune Submarine mod

Mass: 100 tons

Equipment: Items Mass

Int. Struct.: 40 pts Standard 0 10.00

Engine: 270 XL Fusion 2 7.50

Shielding & Transmission Equipment: 0 4.00

Cruise MP: 3

Flank MP: 5

Heat Sinks: 10 Double 0 .00

Cockpit & Controls: 0 5.00

Crew: 7 Members 0 .00

Diving Equipment: 0 10.00

Armor Factor: 232 pts Standard 0 14.50

Internal Armor

Structure Value

Front: 10 78

Left / Right Sides: 10 58/58

Rear: 10 38

Weapons and Equipment Loc Heat Ammo Items Mass

1 Large Laser Front 8 1 5.00

1 LR Torpedo 20 Fron 11.00

2 SR Torpedo 6s Front 0 15 3 7.00

1 Guardian ECM Body 0 1 1.50

1 Beagle Active Probe Body 0 1 1.50

Infantry Bay Body 1 10.00

Cargo Bay Capacity Body 1 13.00

TOTALS: 8 12 100.00

Items & Tons Left: 13 .00

Engine is an old down rated XL 280 out of a Mercury II.