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.

61. Chapter 61 20 Dec 3050

Chapter 61

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

20 Dec 3050

Holiday command meeting New Circe.

The Lord Protector looked around the briefing room and she tried to read each person as her eyes crossed them. This was the last meeting before almost everyone in this building took some much-needed family time off. This time of the year, the government and military tried to suspend as many operations as they could for seven to ten days. Jennifer Vaun was looking forward to the meeting and looking even harder to when it was over. She knocked her knuckles on the tabletop to start the meeting, after she found that it seemed like everyone was as ready as she was to start and get it done with. She had been the last one to enter the room, but as a benefit of her rank, she would be the first to speak. She had an internal smile as she realized that it was perfectly okay that she was even over ten minutes early. She gave a sly smile to the room,

"Yes, I see that you are all ready to get out of this rat's nest for some family time query affirmative," said the Lord Protector.

The head of the Orbital Station was going to be the first briefer today. Rear Admiral Xi stood from her chair and half turned to address the group. "Ladies and Gentlemen. The latest sets of modifications to the Behemoth dropship Hephaestus have gone better than we had planned. The total output of the different refined metals and steels are climbing again, as we try to see what her new limits might be. Currently the excess is going into storage until it's needed." She stopped talking as a round of applause started making its way around the small room.

When the soft clapping stopped, Xi was ready to continue. "We have even been able to take two of our oldest orbital facilities offline for some well overdue maintenance, and we are going to upgrade them before they come back online. Both should be back in full production by the first of the month, when all of the work crews come back off of winter break. The rebuilding crews volunteered to move their leave dates to the right until the work is done on those two orbital support facilities. If we could get a second vessel that is the same size as the Hephaestus in the next year. We might be able to start production of a new small warship with the added infrastructure that new facility would provide. That is if the funds were made available for the new warship, after the additional cost of acquiring the second Behemoth and paying for the needed modifications."

"All building/repair slips on The Station are filled with larger ships or with the two new jump capable Olympus class dropships under construction. The pair of Olympus class combat ships are coming along nicely, and they are about four months ahead of the published schedule when they first started cutting metal for them. Both standalone repair cradle type space support yards are working on repairing the least battle damage of our major combat units. The two City-State made and run cradles will take over the support of most of the Colonial civilian based ships, when they are done with these two light warships they are working on. This will free up The Station for major combat units and historic Star League designed warships. The Colonial government and naval staff are slowly working on a plan for both maintenance and upgrades to specific ships that have not been fully used and or have not been deactivated from the current fleet."

This was to show to the rest of the meeting, and to be passed to their staffs. That her people on The Station had been able to get ahead of the maintenance and the battle damage repair backlog that the SLDF navy had to deal with over the last year. Exploding nuclear weapons tended to do a lot of damage to whatever might be in the blast radius of those types of weapons, when the cans of sun were opened. The Cylons were not exactly known for their limited use of cans of sun. Sometimes that damage did not show up for some time after the battle was over, and even after the first quick repairs had been replaced with more permanent fixes. Both the Colonial Navy and the SLDF Navy had decades of experience dealing with weapon damages of this type on their different types of interstellar capable ships. At least repairs to the ships that had been able to make it back to base after someone had opened a can of light next to them.

Admiral Franks let out a short snort, which carried across the room when Rear Admiral Xi brought up about the Colonial made repair cradle and the future plans for their mission. But it was not that information that had gotten the public response out of him. He was the head of the SLDF in Exile's Navy, and he would dearly love to have another "Real" Warship. And this one would be able to be built with the idea of a modified K-F-B to do super jumps from the core out. That is if the money could be freed up, and even a small warship, cost a few dropships load of script at the best of times. Finding crews for even a small warship also would be almost as hard to find as the funds needed to build the warship in the first place. He noticed that all eyes were looking at him, and Rear Admiral Xi nodded that she was done to the senior admiral of the SLiE.

"Okay, I guess I will start next for Naval Operations. The Lyssa and the rest of the supporting ships have returned from H67-678. It was reported to me, that they have successfully completed the salvage operations there. All ships are operational, and the upgrading of the fleet continues for future super jump capability. All First line and Second line fighters and support ships have been updated with the highest technology weapons and armor we have on New Circe. They also have now been converted to Omni style fighters in all of those two top rated units. All of the non-Omni units, are being held for planetary defense units, third line units, or other special needs. As with our plans announced last year and again at midyear. We do not have any aero fighters that are going into storage, or being transfer to the recycling center, or up for future sale as excess of needs for the SLDF Navy. I still recommend maximum output for any aerospace frame that we can get made and crewed."

"The Colonials have been updating all of their Vipers, Avars, and Raptors as fast as they can. They have pulled all older marks of Vipers back into training roles. The older original Mark VIIs with 5cm lasers are still the main defensive fighters for the Colonials, but up armored and newer production Vipers are going only onto the Battlestars. It will take some time before those two heavy warships are fully outfitted with the new Vipers. I understand that they have some tired spaceframes still on those two Battlestars."

The admiral did not have to say that one of those special needs, was to support the resupply missions or other covert operations that might come up over the next year. He was not going to bring up that a working group was being formed to see if maybe that it be worth the time, effort, and spare parts to request some of the larger classes of Inner Sphere made aero fighters be brought back to New Circe. The pair of halfway updated Stukas class fighters had gotten a lot of attention from some of his staff. If they went that route? Then all the repair crews needed to do was slap on updated heat management systems, and new weapons to get another fighter in the lineup. They might be a cheap way to increase the planetary defense units with assault mass fighters. He had to force himself to get back to using his mental notes for this meeting.

"All security and marine personnel in the SLDF Navy have been outfitted with Weasel style suits, and all they need to do is finish the training to meet the required technical skills for deploying in them." Admiral Franks had a slight smile as he spoke.

Those few words that he had just said meant that the first 600 or so of the almost 900 of those new combat multipliers had been assigned as the leader had directed to be done. Now the full production of 50 suits per month would be open for another service to use. The Navy would still have first call on any needed replacement suits due to maintenance or combat loss. There would be no way that New Circe could outfit every infantry unit with those light power armors. But everyone they made would be very useful for the human race's war against the Cylons.

Admiral Franks had to fight down a sour smile, but this next part had been directed by the Lord Protector and her staff. It was just too bad that he could not come up with a good reason on why to object to it. With his political smile on his face, he finished up his part of the briefing. "Ground Forces training command took over the training school for Battle Armor on the first of October. The navy will have access to two full classes a year, for refresher training and for any replacements we might need in the future. I believe the ground force commander is next?" The slight smile was still on the face of the head of the Navy. "Well at least the running of the school was now not coming out of my budget," thought Franks.

##########

General Boyer was in charge of all of the ground forces of the SLDF, and he did not smile about the school for Battle Armor being turned over to his people. The construction of the new set of schools had not come out of his budget, but now the cost of maintaining them would come out of "his" pocket. And from now on those costs, expansion, maintenance, and usage cost would come out of his pocket and they would not be small. The more they used the school, the more it was going to cost his departments. And any class seats that the navy needed was going to be free, for them. It was "supposed" to be a way to pay them back for the cost of first setting up the schools. The cost to modify it, to better fit "real" combat situations had come out of his budget. That had been a lot larger hit than anyone on his staff had thought that it might, when the idea had been approved. It was not that the navy had not taken good care of the place. It just didn't fit the needs of the ground forces, and so they had to modify them.

"As the Admiral has just said. The ground force has taken over the Battle Armor Schools. The first army only classes of new trainees graduated two months ago. This has moved the training requirements of the Weasel suits away from the gaining units to a more centralized facility. The budget for the Ground Forces branch has taken a hit, fielding those 2.4 million script Tornado/Weasel suits at first. Now the cost has gone down to 1.7 million per unit. This was due to the economy of scale that has started to kick in, and we have found out what we can do faster or more efficient. We will increase the fielding of whole squads sized units as we have the suits. Production has hit full stride at 50 suits per month and this will be the max production per month. I was hoping that we will get up to 200 suits a month as more production comes online. But that has not panned out as hoped."

A soft groan went around the room. The General gave a level look to a few in the room, but he relented at the last second before his mouth let something out, he might regret. "I know that we are maxed out on what our production capabilities currently are. And I know that everyone wants more of everything. What I was thinking about was that if Copeland can recover a small factory satellite, like the ones on his shopping list. That it be dedicated to production of Weasel class PA(L). My staff projected that after we reach about 2000 total suits produced and, in the field, we hit the limit of support. After that production will only be enough to replace mechanical losses, and the needed parts to keep the rest of the suits in operation at a combat level."

"Now for some good news", thought General Boyer. "All of the three field brigades of the 331 Battlemech Division are fielding at second generation technology levels as seen in the Clan or if we have something better. 3rd Herd is fully up to Golden Century tech level, and it is moving up to full clan tech quicker than we thought this time last year to Clan level. Still, it is at full strength for her listed manpower and equipment. Our fourth BDE sized formation was reflagged as the 205 Independent Royal Assault Mech Brigade. It is still under half strength but is growing at a steady rate. We have been using them as a replacement pool this year and that has slowed their rebuilding, but it has helped all of the units in the field. They will be getting 60 to 80 replacements for tank crews and mech pilots in the next few months. For the first time, we are graduating an equal number of Wolverine, human form Cylon converts, and a smattering of Victorians."

"The 205 Independent Royal Assault Mech Brigade will have at least one Golden Century tech weapon or better on each machine. Every machine is equal to Royal level machines as a base to start with, but were they had old H class ER PPCs or even Gutbuster class IER PPCs. They now have been replaced with LR PPCs or second generation 8 cm extended ranged lasers. The Colonials have been making late Star League level weapons of limited types for some time now, and they might be able to expand that production if we let them know that there is a market. I would like to increase the updating and pulling machines out of the cache site. I would limit it to an increase of only one lance per month, not counting the machines that are "floats" or replacements needed to support the rest of land forces. I am comfortable opening the sale of more of the late Star League weapon types on the next run that Commodore Copeland makes to the Inner Sphere." General Boyer had to bite his lip on that last statement. He had been one of the few that had "no" voted for sending any weapons to the Inner Sphere. He hoped that no one was going to make a scene about saying "I told you so."

Jennifer nodded in agreement to what the ground force commander had said to the room. "I will take that under advisement. Only the cost will limit withdrawals of anything coming from the cache bunkers."

She raised an eyebrow at the general. "You will need to stay within your current budget. And I think that at this time, I will limit the total numbers of mechs and tanks that you can pull out to 144 machines in total. I will also authorize another dozen machines that come out of the local specialty shops for the next year. If something worthwhile comes up out of those hobby shops above that number? Please let me know and I will see if we can find you some more funds. Does that work for you General Boyer?"

The Lord Protector was answered by an agreeing nod from the head of her ground forces. She looked down at her notes before making eye contact with the next briefer. "Okay, I would like to hear from Planetary Interior Affairs next."

#######

The Department of Planetary Interior Affairs was a new position for the people that had fled the Clans so many decades ago, having only been made and staffed ten months ago. It was decided that with Clan Wolverine, the Colonial City-State, and a soon to be growing Victorian population living on the same planet, something needed to be done. This office had been set up to work through any issues that might come up, between those three groups living on the same planet. David Leck had been a member of the New Circe Parliament for the last decade, until he had been pulled for this job by direct order of the Lord Protector.

"As most of you know. We pulled more Victorians off that rock of a planet than we had first planned or even the second time we planned that operation. We also pulled fewer supplies than we had planned on when we launched the mission, thanks to the massive attack by the Cylons at the start of the operation. This has caused issues other than transportation, which we had known about when we planned the evacuation in the first place. I have asked that when the Colonial Battlestars and other long ranged ships, that are under repair or off mission, to start up their protein algae vats. The Colonials were very receptive to this request. They have been putting every vat they can back into production without asking for funds to complete the work. We have been giving that Vat protein and carbohydrates production to the Victorians to help feed them. In return for this free product, the Victorians have agreed to not kill any animals that they have brought with them. But only as long as we can keep them fed."

David Leck gave a soft snort as he remembered some information, which he had at first found hard to believe. "They have not even complained about the taste of the food that we have been giving them, but I have no idea how long that will last. Do we know when Copeland and his ships will make it back, query negative? If he is as successful, at least to the same level as he has been before? It will relieve some of the building stress that we have been having to deal with among the borderline Victorians. Query affirmative."

Every eye in the room turned to Admiral Xi, and it was her lane to address part of this statement. "He is not on a set schedule. But if he keeps to form on the last few missions that he has been in command of? He should be back in four to six more months, unless he has a jump fuel issue again. He knows that it is more important to be safe, then to have a full load of cargo. He should have plenty of funds, and that area has been having a large economic boom over the last few years. That could help or hurt him finding what we have asked him to find."

David nodded his head to what the head of The Station and one time head of External supply had said. "We understand that they are only carrying two cargo dropships and the little cargo space, that they were able to put back into the modified jump transport after recycling her "normal" jump drive. They were always hit with a lot of demands on their limited cubage, but every bit helps with the issues we are seeing on the planet."

He licks his lips and then jumps off the deep end. "I would like to be able to send them back out as soon as they can. Just the idea of them out there helps a lot with keeping a lid on things, and not just with the Victorians or the Colonials." He wanted to bring up the idea, that if they added a second interstellar ship to Copeland's command. It would double the number of tons of needed supplies coming in, if not more. Instead, he handed off the briefing to the next person in line.

#######

The Department of Resources and Development was next in the brief order for today's meeting. "The Lyssa had returned from her mission to H67-678, as was mentioned at the start of this meeting. We are currently just starting in the processing the recovered material that she brought back. Also, what had been noted in other briefings, is that we have been able to maintain production of our version of the Tornado suits at 50 suits per month. This is thanks to the added manpower from the Colonials and some of the longer-term or just plain brighter Victorians that have caught up technically skill wise. We also have closed down the 30mm and 50mm ammunition factories that were under Wolverine control. And we have just finished the conversion of them to other tasks needed to fill other capital requirements."

This statement got a few eyes to raise around the room. The head of both the Navy and Army had been pushing for this to happen for some time now. Having the City-State make some of the needed military gear, alone cut the cost by between 25 and 35 percent per item they made. When dealing with larger numbers that made the savings to their budget even higher. Still the briefer from Resources and Development was not finished.

"The Colonial City State has been able to take over the supplying those items to the military, and they have even been able to start their own stockpiles with the current rate of their autocannon production. We are still at full rate production of Omni fighters on both sides of the colonial and wolverine boarders. We are at low-rate production of hover tanks, and same for light mechs for the defense force. As most of you know, light mechs have been shown to be able to fight wave attacks of Centurion Cylons better that the upper end of the mass mechs. We still are producing larger machines to fight the growing number of praetorian and updated Heavy Raiders. But they are only as replacements, to reduce expenditures of resources."

"The types of light mechs in production are the new 35ton Wolfhound Omni that we released the designs to small shops this year. We are still making new 25ton Sling Omni and the 30ton Mercury III Omni mechs. We have an outstanding request from the Army to buy any Locust IIC the hobby and body shops are making, as long as they can find the funds for those purchased machines. Last year non-government fund raising had been enough to gift two Light mechs to the SLDF. After they are bought from the small shops or gifted to us, we are responsible for maintaining them."

She stopped talking and reviewed her notes on her noteputer for a few seconds. What she had said so far, was nothing new to the people sitting in this room. And it all had even been on the news and entertainment programs for the last few months. The next bit of information was yet to be released to anyone outside of her still growing department. The next projects were classified or were as good as classified.

"We have been working on a lot of different projects with the help of the Colonials and our other allies. First is that we have been able to take what we knew about the Nighthawk suits and the Tornado/Weasel suits to start working on prototype stealth armor for Battlemechs. That armor should be an impressive addition for certain mission types, like scouting or head hunting. We also are working on two new types of mech weapons. Both are joint developments with the Colonials City State and companies of Clan Wolverine. Currently we are up to kitchen sink production of a ton of usable stealth armor a month. It will still be a few years before it is ready for mass production."

She had to fight down a smile, as she got a few looks from the room. There had been a lot of pipe dream projects about duplicating the Nighthawk high tech stealth armor for larger mechs or even spy craft that were space or even atmosphere restricted. This was the first time that any real hope had been brought to a forum at this level. Updates had been sent out every few months to all of the key leaders and power players on New Circe. But most of the time they were only skimmed over, as not to get any hopes up only to have them dashed. Meetings like this were only done four or five times a year, unless there was a major breakthrough or other earth-shattering events. Then they would have a special meeting if it was deemed worthwhile by the Lord Protector's staff. After the Colonials had found this planet, the SLiE had been holding a lot more of them.

"The first weapon is an upscaling of the original Class of LBXUAC. This project has already been called the Class Ten HOD by the people working on it. It is one ton lighter in mass than a normal Ultra type of autocannon class 10. Right now, it only has the same rate of fire as the older weapon, but it now can also fire LB-X rounds at a double rate. We hope that we will be able to refine the weapon just like the latest production runs of the Class 5. It is up to three to four rounds for a burst on the heavy mounts built into our heaviest warships or fixed emplacements. The two stumbling blocks we are having is jamming and very high heat generation at the higher firing rates. Before you ask, the jamming event tends to make the breach block blow off the back of the weapons…..or worse."

No one said a word, and she kept talking. She shot a long look over to Admiral Franks. "As of right now. This is only the backup weapon, if the Hyper Assault Gauss Cannon class 15/20 does not work out. We have been working on this hand-built prototype HAG weapon for a solid year now. And we still are not at the production prototype stage, yet. If the HAG is not ready in another 8 months? I will put forward that we go forward with the heavier HOD in its place."

She shot a small smile to the general seated three people away from the Admiral. "We have not left the ground forces out in the cold. Currently we are working with the Colonials on the prototype stage for a gauss type SMG and a long shooter for a support weapon needed for the ground forces. Both also will work for a new handheld weapon for PA(L). We have also started testing on full spec Elemental suits that we can hand build. We have known for some time about the Clans fielding this heavier battle armor and that they are even testing some that are more massive. We have even had the plans to make the Elemental type of battle armor for over a decade, but we have not had the skills in key areas to make them in any meaningful numbers. With Commander Copeland bringing back all of those additional fitting and milling tools along with those ComStar made armor suits, it all has helped a lot. But the key has been data, skills, and additional hands that the captured Human form Cylons fleeing this Cylon Empire have brought with them. We took what they knew about making Centurions and mixed it with what we know about making power armor."

The room explodes in voice expressions in the positive and negative about this information. The head of Resources and Development had to both throw both of her hands up and raise her voice to cut through the den of noise assaulting her ears. "When can we start production of this 1ton suit? They will not be exactly like the clan version. We still do not have the components to make Harjel or anything close to an analog to that substance. We think we have come up with something a little better in some ways. We just finished some testing using a Colonial grade spacesuit plugged into the life support module as an underlayer of the Elemental sized suits. It took a lot of time, but they got it to work, and it was fireproof. It also will let the suits work in a vacuum without making any modifications to the supplied design information."

The Star League in Exile had known about the 1ton suits of clan made power armor called Elemental suits for some time. The SLiE also had put a lot of effort into coming up with ways to defeat them on the battlefield. Besides having to blast threw the hard armor shell to take out each one of these suits. They had worked out that very hot flames, like most mech and some tank scale flamers backed by fusion engines produced, were effective as well as some special types of inferno jells formulations. The Colonial space suit was thin, light weight at only about 7 pounds without life support, and very comfortable to wear for long hours. It would seem that R and D had found a way around the weakness ground command had found in the Clan made battle armor.

The Head of R and D now had the whole room looking at her like she had just pulled a rabbit out of her hat. "Do not get your hopes up for a lot of these suits to be hitting the supply department query affirmative. We are hand making them one at a time and it is very slow going. The Colonials have a production line set up for their flight suits to support their fleet's pilots and our fleet personnel with them. That is one area where we are not short in supply. We are also looking at one variant of the standard clan Elemental class suit. It is going to be about 500kg heavier coming in at just under 1500kg. But it is fitted with stealth armor, and it is as damage resistant as the "normal" clan standard battle suit. We have a working name of Ekorus, due to the expected missions these suits might undertake. These Ekorus class battle armor are going to both be harder to make, and they cost more than what the clan needs to make two of their 1ton suits. I would recommend that we keep to the plan of just out fitting our people with the copy of the Tornado suits, which we are turning out as fast as we can. Anything else that might come up in the near future timeline? Then we can first outfit our special forces with something different, when they need it and or we have the time to make it."

She stopped talking again because she had dropped so much information on the group with a huge smile on her face. As with most meetings. Briefing slides had been given out, but now you could tell who had taken the time to read them and who had not. Now she smiled an evil smile, which she noticed was shared by the Lord Protector. The leader of the planet must have reviewed the briefing slides, because the next bit was going to knock the socks off anyone not prepared. As the head of R and D remembered. The Lord Protector had not been one of the ones with any surprised looks on their faces for the entire meeting.

"Now the last major project we are working is also a bit long term, but it is showing promise. My people think we might be able to go into low-rate production of new Nighthawk suits, in around ninety to a hundred and eighty days. Now before you slam me with questions, query affirmative. These will only be hand built suits with a few special jigs my people have come up with. So, I do not think that we will be putting them out like the easier to make Tornados/Weasels. At best we are thinking that maybe a dozen or two every four or five months. That number is a best case, with a lot of things breaking our way that I do not think will work. I think a safer number would be a dozen a year. And before you asked why it is taking so long to make them. Currently some of the larger key components are being made in the basement of the University, by engineering students trying to get some extra credits. I do not see this changing anytime soon."

It took a whole ten minutes for the room to quieten down again, so that she could end her briefing and get out of the spotlight that she had been under after her first bombshell. "Now what does my department need for the next year? We need more labor-saving equipment like workmechs, an expansion of tech schools' items, and above all more machining and fitting tools. Basically, what we have had on the list for Commodore Copeland to pick up. It is just that we need more of all of it. The average Victorians has a drive very much like the Colonials, to learn all of the new technology out there that will let them take the fight back to the Cylons. And the faster we can get more within those groups up to speed, technology wise? The better it is going to be for the Star League in Exile and Clan Wolverine in all manner of things. If Copeland agrees that the dropship Hercules worked out? I vote that she be used from now on, and we need to see about ways to increase his lift capabilities in any ways that match our core requirements." The head of R and D stopped talking and took a deep breath. She knew that she was about to cross the Rubicon.

"I also think that he should take both Heckle and Jeckle on his next run to the Inner Sphere for supplies. That should give him enough capital to make more than one run, even if he has to fill two Mammoth class dropships on each run. My department would like to put forward a request, that one of the remaining Tramp class jumpships be pulled out of mothballs and modified like the SLS Styx. And after final checking out that it be added to Commodore Copeland's command."

This was a little bit of a surprise to most people around the room, but this department was not the only ones to have had thought about the same thing. It would not take too much longer before they would have enough votes to push the idea, with only the Lord Protector standing in the way with her veto power. They were just the first to bring it up at this level of a meeting and left it like a fart in a very small car with the windows up and the doors locked.

With her back straight as a ruler and her chin tilted a little up in the air, she was ready to move along to the next topic. "To close my brief. I would like to announce that we have completed and posted, the final report from H67-678. After today, it will be posted on the appropriate servers for cleared personnel. This is all that I have from my department." She took her seat and felt the eyes of the whole room watching her before they picked up secure noteputors and started to read.

########

The Lord Protector looked down at her screen. She had not known all of the details about the mission to H67-678, and she was going to take this opportunity to do a little digging. She quickly found out that Heckle and Jeckle were the nicknames of a pair of Invader class jumpships, which had been found about a year ago around the H67-678 star system. They were at the Zenith jump point, of a system that had one planet dead in the center of the life zone, but the rest of the system were just small rocky bodies without even a gas planet to its name.

The two 500 meter long ships had not been just floating dead in space. They were orbiting around each other, in a rather odd way that could not have happened without human hands, minds or a huge amount of luck. Some had said that it looked like the pair of old jumpships were doing some kind of dancing so far from the nearest star. They had been labeled Heckle and Jeckle by the end of the first day that they had been found, by someone that very much wished to remain anonymous when the names had stuck to them. The first scouting team had quickly returned to New Circe with the limited amount of information they had collected. Then a mixed Colonial and SLDF Navy operation was sent out to the coldish star to see what else might be there. After all the two Invaders could have held 6 dropships between them. That could be a lot of nothing or lots of somethings, and anything in-between those options. It was the stuff of legends and nightmares.

While the Colonial ships were grabbing the two jumpships at the jump point, and then worked on getting them ready to be taken to their new home. The rest of the task group went deeper into the star system with every scanning system they had in operation operating with their best crews. They were looking for the up to six dropships, which were missing from the docking collars on the two "dancing" jumpships. The Star League support fleet found them, but it was not done quickly. They were in about the worse place to be, if the SLDF wanted to reuse them.

The dropships were found on the planet's surface in a ring on the only life supporting rock in this cold star system known only as a number in navigation computers. They were overgrown with plant life and only found by the overflying Raptors launched from the SLDF navy heavy ships in orbit over the planet. They looked like cover art for any of a hundred different books written over the centuries about lost colonies on the edge of explored space.

The landing teams found what had remained of what was not listed in the record of clan Wolverine or the old SLDF as a failed colony. From what they were able to find out, after an escorting force had checked out the area for any threats. It was that a group had left the planet of New Galicia, but they had started from the planet Griffith in the FWL around 2815. They were looking to get away from the massive war waging threw out the whole Inner Sphere, and that was killing whole planets that seemed to be happening every few weeks.

They had traveled for over a year and for some reason, stopped here. They had all landed in this one area of the planet to set up a settlement that was hoped to be the start of a new society. One that was without worrying about wars the great houses were involved in. They seemed to have started turning their motley collection of civilian dropships, into power stations and limited manufacturing centers for the young colony. There were not that many records that were recoverable about the wantabe colony, but somehow the colony had just died after about one hundred and sixty years after landing on this green world.

It was quickly determined that the dropships were wrecks after being left open to the elements for a hundred years or more. That did not even count the haphazard modifications that had been done while the Colony had been trying to live and using them for things, that the dropships were not even closely related for what would be called a "normal" dropship's mission. The ground teams were able to survey the whole planet from this data point, to make sure there were not any other areas of occupation. One that might wind up being useful, if the Cylons found this place after it had been "policed" as the ground pounders would say.

Luckily no other areas were found after three very detailed survey missions were completed. They had been running going from pole to pole of the hyper green planet that was going round a very small red dwarf star. Still, it was going to be one huge project, to clean up the mess that the colony had left behind before it had died on the vine for reasons lost in time. Then someone on the mission had made an offhand comment, which said that the Lyssa would be perfect to do this job. It had raised both voices and eyebrows, but as they thought about this off the wall idea more and more. Shortly it was decided that it was a great "ship" for this type of mission. A TackFax message was sent, and they waited to see what command on New Circe thought of the idea. The betting was split right down the middle on whether they would love it or hate the idea.

######

It was agreed by higher command that it was a good idea, and the Lyssa was dispatched after her repair bays completed their current work. It was not wasted time, in waiting for those three ships to be rushed out of the repair bays. She needed a lot of supplies, and she needed to have the crew with the right skills moved over. As it turned out very few new crewmembers were needed after the first review of what the new mission was going to need to do. Most of the time, the current crew only needed some refresher training to knock off any rust they had gathered on old skill sets. That would work to cover any of the high-tech skills that were needed. But not every job would need these hard to come by high tech skills.

The modified old recharging station was loaded up with two Colonial heavy lifters. A small mixed group of specialists were added that her commander thought might be useful and just so happened were not currently assigned to his command. The rest of the needed workers that were added to the ship, that had started life as a recharging and support space station, were going to be low or lower skilled workers. There were a lot of Colonials and Victorians that needed work, and this group easily fit the bill with the right skills. And they were more than willing to do a crappy job for all of the right reasons. The great part was that the low skilled workers would work for lower wages, than any member of the Clan would think about outside of military training.

######

The Lyssa was able to jump directly into high orbit over the planet, thanks to her modified Cylon jump engine from the old Cylon resurrection ship, and the data supplied to the command team by the advanced party to this world. The modified Olympus class recharging station was the perfectly armed and armored base to run the salvage and recovery operation on the planet. The first major mission that the new teams had to do, after landing more personnel on this planet, was clear cut the whole area of all of the overgrowing vegetation near the one-time settlement.

When that job was done, then it was time for the hard work to begin. The ground team split into two main groups. One was using some workmechs to do the heavy work, and the more numerous of the two groups had to clear the site of any man-made object on or below the ground level by hand. Anything that was man made was loaded into the containers that the Colonial made Raptors would lift back off the planet. It would be loaded into the colonial heavy lifter to deal with it if the parts were too large for the 50ton Raptors. It took both main teams and everyone that was not on other duties almost a month to get the first dropship hulk ready to be lifted off the planet.

The two Colonial heavy lifters were attached to the hulk of the easiest to reach of the 6 wrecked cargo dropships, and it was slowly lifted off planet and into low orbit. The multi thousands ton hulk was towed to the Lyssa, who opened one of her repair bays to receive the hulk and paired Colonial made heavy lift craft. This let in what might have been a Mule class dropship at one time, into the million ton ship that was never designed to move under its own power. It was amazing for the whole mission to watch this event happen for the first time.

They kept working on the two projects lifting tons of items into orbit, but no bodies, due to the settlement cremating their dead before they were found again. No one knew for sure if they did cremate all of the bodies, or not. It was just that no human bones were found in the areas they were looking and finding manmade objects.

The salvage crews were able to fit two dropship hulks into each of the two smaller bays on the old recharging station without too much trouble. They were able to get three other hulks into the more massive main repair bay with a lot of room to spare afterwards. That larger bay was also were all the other junk, that had been brought up from the surface was placed in. The small stuff was placed into shipping containers that were stacked floor to ceiling in the huge bay. The plan was, that it would be up to others that would have to go through the debris of the failed colony. They needed to see if anything was worth keeping, or taking notes for the history books, or if it only needed to be dumped into the recycling bins for the blast furnaces to start turning it into something useful for the SLiE. A lot of effort had been put into this mission, and higher command was not going to give up on a chance to recoup any of the effort needed, to slip through their fingers.

It had taken a little over three months for the mission to be complete, and now the SLS Lyssa was back home, and the failed colony was only a foot note in the history books for Clan Wolverine. The ship's crews, and a lot of additional personnel, were going through every item they pulled off the planet when most of the work on the planet was done. It was done just because they had the time and were board. When the huge "ship" made it back to New Circe, the work would have to be rechecked and it was. Those recheckers even found the odd missed items that had been overlooked by the search teams. There were not that many more interesting items that were found by the professionals, but there were a few.

Now that they were back in New Circe. The repair bay personnel had already started breaking down three of the hulks into recycling sized chunks, that could be transferred over to "The Station" for it to be taken care of by the larger construction. The real work being done in any "real" volume would not start until the New Year had started and a fresh or recharge set of eyes could take a look at the haul. So far it looked like the only thing of value from this mission, besides the two jumpships, was going to be the refined metal of the six hulked cargo and liner type dropships. Well, that and they were keeping it out of the Cylon's hands.

The leadership of New Circe thought that all it would take, is for one laser or fusion engine to be recovered by the Cylon Empire, for it to start the shift of the technology edge towards being in the Cylons favor. It would not be until almost a year later that someone would run the numbers on the mass of metal pulled off that planet and to find that something was off. The total mass pulled off the planet massed more than the total amount of cargo space that the 6 dropships could have carried, without any passengers. This was not a miss of a few tons; it was a miss of almost four thousand tons. Many a hangover was caused by people wondering where that extra mass of refined metal had come from.

###########

As the people in the room finished reviewing the final report filed by the commander of the recovery mission. They would return the data pads to be locked away in heavy safes three floors down for safe keeping. The Lord Protector was the last one to brief the group, and she knows that most of them would not be returning to their offices when she was done with them. She knew that she was going to her home on the edge of town an hour after she was done in this room. She was ready to start the holidays, this year a little more than others. It had been a hard year, with over a thousand of her people dying in this war.

She went down the list of items she needed to cover for a meeting on this level. The last item was agreeing that the two Invader Class ships should be taken to the Inner Sphere whenever Admiral Xi thought they needed to be, so that her team can get the best use out of them. She asked for a review of if bringing back into operation a Tramp class jumpship with a Colonial made drive was going to be better than "renting" a Colonial ship like the Zephyr. She knew that within 24 hours, a skeleton crew of staff members would start working on those projects. With this done, she ended the meeting much to the relief of almost everyone in the room. When she got up to leave the room, she had a sudden chill go down her spine like a stream of liquid helium. She had a sinking feeling that God had just laughed at her plans.

Colonial Space.

Planet Libran, 500 miles from Themis

22 Dec 3050

Master Sergeant (retired) James Edmonds-Wilson moved a low tree limb out of his way to see into the small clearing. When his knee shot a bolt of pain up to his spine from a rock he had not seen when he had put his knee there. He thought, not for the first time, that he was getting too old for games like this. He should have been enjoying his retirement from the Colonial military and not stalking for food in a nature preserve.

After making it over the small clearing, he stopped moving like he hit a brick wall as he opens his senses to the local area. He was letting his Gods given ability to notice if something was off in the local area. After being still for many seconds, he felt that it was okay to continue. He would keep moving for the next hour before he would take a break of any length. You can only stay at a high-level of alert for so long, before you started missing things.

He knew where a place was not far away that he could take a longer break. It was just a hole made by a tree falling over and pulling its root ball out of the damp ground. All it would take would be moving fallen leaves to cover him and he would be good to go for an extended break. There was some importance to his mission, but he was not going to risk his life any more than he had to. It was a matter of getting there over the next hour, and before the sun went down over the woods.

James lays back while pulling over a huge arm load of wet and rotting leaves over his lower body, and then he moves another arm load that went over his head and upper chest. It would take a Cylon falling into the mostly covered hole to find him. The leaves would hold his body heat in, but it also will keep any Centurions from seeing his body heat. He would get some sleep for as long as his body would let him. All he needed to do was shut down his mind, so that he could get some sleep or at least get some rest all while not thinking about the smell. He started by running down why he was now in a damp bed of half rotting leaves.

#########

He had been enjoying his retirement in a family cabin a long way from anyone. This planet was well known for all of the nature preserves scattered around the planet like dragon's teeth. The cabin he was staying had been in his family's name going all the way back to long before the time of the 1st Cylon war. That just means that it was old and where others had been built during the same time, they had already been taken back over by nature. Even the road to that cabin had been so overgrown, that it was invisible from even a few feet away. One of the first jobs after retiring from the military had felt like it almost killed him. He "only" had to cut all of the overhanging limbs near the dirt road off the main road, so that it would clear a way for his off-road truck to make it to the cabin for the first time. It had taken him "only" two days to cut enough to make it to the cabin. Then it took him three more weeks to get it so that the limbs would not apply free pinstriping to his truck.

When the Cylons had come, they had leveled the capital of Themis with four "small" nuclear weapons. The attack alert had gone out for a whole three minutes before the weapons blew the heart of the leadership of the planet to ash. It was not much time to react and even someone with his lifetime experience had frozen as he watched the fall of man on the entertainment screen. After shaking the shock off. He had packed up his hunting rifle and as much food as he could as fast as he could. Most of the land area around this cabin had been purchased by the government after the 1st Cylon War. They had tried many times to buy his family land from him, but he had rebuffed them for so long that they had finally given up and were content to wait for him to die. Then they would use imminent domain to get his 50 acres at a song of a price to add to the "natural park". They just needed time, but it turned out that the Cylons were not going to be giving those bureaucrats that time.

He had packed his way, on foot deeper into the Induna Star Mountains. He had an idea of where he was going. Thanks to his family history, he knew of a place that might be safe if this attack proved to be as bad as it had first looked on the wall mounted screen. It had taken him two days to make the hike, and thanks to the tall trees. He had been spared the view of the crashing wreckage of the Colonial Navy and the space-based civilization coming back towards the planet's surface. He also had not seen a soul on his walk under the tall trees.

When he came to a ridge that should overlook the area of the old bunker. He had scanned the area for as long as he felt he needed to make sure that he lived to see the sun rise one more time. He had last been to this place only a few months before he had put his name on the line and went into military service. This bunker was only reachable by Raptor, small power boat on the nearby small river, and by walking a long frakking way through deep forest. As he scanned the local area, he could only see the old landing fields because of the smaller trees that had overgrown those areas. It looked like any other part of this part of the planet, which had not been touched by the hand of man in hundreds of years. The trip down the ridge took him the rest of the day.

He used the gathering night to scout the area at less than arm's reach, to see if anyone else had found this place. He was both happy and let down when he had not found any sign of another human wherever his eyes fell in the moon glow. Opening the hatch had been nerve wracking but on his third try, the emergency hatch could be seen to swing open. He had to make it through each tunnel manually activating each section, and it was like walking up Hades' colon. The rest of his time the next day was spent doing this, and the whole bunker was empty of Colonials.

This was not a command bunker, but an outlaying one meant to provide cover for only a few hundred civilians. It was there in case of a bombing attack by the Cylons during the first war against the machines. It was more than a bomb shelter, but it was not that much more in the larger picture of things. It also was not one of the ground support bunkers that were built to be a supply base filled with weapons and ammunition to fight the Cylons that had made a ground assault on the planet. It was a glorified neighborhood bomb shelter.

After a few nights of keeping watch and finishing bringing the bunker back online. He went looking around the local area again, but just like on his walk to this place he found no one. After a full week of being in the bunker all alone. He had hiked back down to the family cabin, mainly in hopes that some of the extended family had made it, or to find out that this had just been some kind of mistake and there was not a war. All of them were on different planets, but also some of them were on ships that might have been able to avoid the Cylon attackers. All of these days alone had given him a laundry list of "what ifs" and maybe "could have happened" that would have driven a saint to drink.

No one had been there, and it looked like he had been the last one at the cabin. He took a few days and packed down everything he wanted from the cabin and set up his truck for long term storage in an old barn near the cabin. He left some food, water, and other things that some survivors might need, along with a note that only someone in the family would know how to follow the listed directions to the bunker. He was hoping that if someone else found the cabin that they would stay in the local area until he found them. A person needs to have some hope, or they might end up doing something that was permanent to themselves.

No one ever found that cabin, and he had stopped by every month to check on it, rotate food, and leave updated notes. He had found others in small out of the way camping sites over the rest of that year. The numbers in the bunker always seemed to hover around 130 people. He lost some ever now and then, but not many. Sometimes he would have to put down an idea on going out and killing Cylons. All they had were some hunting rifles and bird guns with matching types of game ammunition for those weapons. Nothing that would take out a Centurion unless they shot it up enough to weigh it down with lead. The odd group of clones that were working with the Cylons was a different story, if they were found alone in the forest. But the Master Sergeant knew, that if you took out one of those and it was back tracked to human hands? The Cylons would drop a hammer on them, and they would not survive that. So, they had been incredibly careful not to draw any Cylon attention in their direction. The Forest on this planet can be an extremely dangerous place for those not wary to them. A surprising number of clones Cylon helpers fell to those dangers over the next few years.

The bunker had enough food for it to feed a few hundred people for almost a year. It might not be the best or even freshest food known to man. But it was food none the less. They also had some medical supplies that were designed for long term storage if they were kept cool and dry. Kind of like what you would get with a bunker built into the bones of a ridge. Primary power was supplied by generators, which they didn't have the fuel to run, but the backup generator was a turbine set up in a diversion tunnel on the large creek/small river on the back side of the ridge. The batteries were frakked, so when the water was low and slow. They had to cut down the power usage to the bare minimums of air supply, freezers to keep food safe, and as few lights as possible.

They had set up gardens spread out around the local areas, to help make the stored food last that much longer. A makeshift fish net over the tunnel to the power turbine supplied some fresh meat, but that was hit or miss and more miss than hit when the water was too low or moving too fast. That had left hunting for food. This was both loud and dangerous for anyone who took up this task. The last thing anyone wanted was for the Cylons to hear a gun shot. That was why James was out in the woods now. He was looking for boar, deer, or anything else that was worth one of their few remaining rounds of ammunition. It was to the visions of bacon and cooking red meat patties that James fell asleep in the half rotting and wet leaves in a hollowed-out spot in the damp clay.

#####

5 hours later James woke up, but he didn't move a muscle. He had no idea why he had woken up, but he had to make sure that it was not dangerous. After a while he assessed that it was just his internal alarm clock telling him it was time to get back to work. The sun was not up, but this was a good time to hunt. Slowly without making a lot of noise that might spook any wildlife that might come to be near him while he had slept. He only took time to stretch and have some water after clearing the rotting leaves off of his body. He had some food in his rucksack, but it was very minimal and not the best that had remained in the bunker.

James found a game trail that seemed to have been used sometime in the last few days, and he followed it hoping for the best. He was moving a few steps, stopping, waiting, and moving a few more steps. It was how animals moved in the wild. It was during these slow steps that a sound of something crashing through the trees and into the ground somewhere close by reached his ears. Then James heard the sound of a craft speeding away and breaking the sound barrier over his head. That was something that he had not heard in years, and his brain had a hard time classifying the sound as belonging to the Cylons or Colonials.

James thought about leaving the area, but something made him want to find out what had happened and maybe even find out why. What made him decide that he would check it out after all was the absents of any other sounds that were not birds. He felt that if he was careful, he could avoid any Cylon or any other threats that might show up drawn to the noise. He gave a soft snort as he slowly heads towards were he thought the sound might have come from.

Thanks to all of the time he had spent in the woods over the last few years James had very little problem finding what had fallen. Sitting at the base of a tree was a large box, and as James scanned the area, he happens to look up into the treetops. The trees in this area were very tall and had huge bells to hold up leaves in the old growth trees. But those huge bells of bright green leaves were now broken. He saw three holes in the treetops that should not be there. They formed a line with this box being the center of those three holes over his head.

James now could do one of two things. He could leave the maybe honey trap or he could see what was in at least one of the boxes. He remembered stories from the first war that the Cylons would leave gold and other things with explosive gifts hidden in them for any human that might find them. The only reason he even thought about opening one of the boxes, was that his mother had always said he was part cat. And we all know what killed the cat, and it was not the Daggit.

James took his time and checked out "the package" as best he could. The box had smashed into the ground, so the bottom was safeish. He couldn't see any danger on the sides and top of the box. The lid was "popped" by the force of the impact, but it was not fully open. There was not a visible device that might set off a bomb, so he slowly opened it. He was still looking for the lid to hit some kind of switch that would set off some kind of anti-tamper device. He was not a bomb disposal expert, but he knew some of the dance steps.

When the lid was open enough to be about halfway, James could see into the green metal box. It was filled with some clear plastic wrapped weapons. A low whistle leaked threw his lips despite needing to keep quiet. He reached in without thinking, and he pulled one of the packages out of the now fully opened box. He knew the weapon in his hands very well.

It was the military battle rifle that had been the standard weapon for the military for the last few decades. He had a civilian knock off that looked just like this weapon back in the bunker. Why did he have one of those? Well, he had spent almost two decades and the heart of his life, working with them. He knew how to use them, clean them, and maintain them with the skills honed out of thousands of hours of their use. Only his clone weapon was not full auto or three-round burst capable, which was a standard part of the military weapon.

He flipped the weapon around a few times and rapped his knuckles on the thin clear plastic cover, and the sound came back as he had expected. It was not a toy, and after a light toss into the air. He knew that it was about the right weight for a "real" weapon. His hand went to his belt and a knife flowed into his hands out of muscle memory. With a quick flick of his wrist a line was cut into the clear plastic like it was made of cheap paper. He could hear the air rush in, and the bag puffed out away from the weapon as the vacuum was equalized. He let his muscle memory work and he checked out the weapon as he stood near the box. With another quick movement the knife was mounted on the end of the barrel. His knife was now a bayonet, and it was solidly locked into place. That was the last test, at least without firing a few rounds. And ammunition was very much a buyers' market, before he would call the metal and plastic in his hands a weapon.

He was about to throw the weapon over his shoulder and stopped. "How the frak does this not have a strap or sling? Those are supposed to be standard issue?" He had spoken in a very low voice and his head shot around after he heard his own voice floating through the nearby trees.

James had been hoping more than expecting, to be bringing back between 40 and 60kg of meat to the bunker. What was in his hands was needed a lot more than some fresh meat. He remembered to check before he pulled three more of the vacuumed sealed weapons from the now opened shipping container. Then he dropped his pack, the packages holding weapons, and the one he had inspected and then they all went into the main cargo area of his rucksack. Just as quickly, the pack was returned to his back, and he started looking for the other two packages.

The next box was only about 100 meters from the weapons box, and it also had a slight military look about it. However, this box was cracked open like an egg dropped from a building. Small metal boxes were in a close formation from the second shipping box. James took his time and opened the first metal can he came to. He had thought that it looked like a colonial standard small arms ammunition box. He had no idea what most of the words said on the outer cover of the familiar looking metal box, but some of the words were in Caprican. What he could read, had said that it was ammunition that would fit the four weapons in his pack. With a pop loud enough that made James worry about any nearby Cylons hearing, he opened the seals and looked into the now open box.

He reached in and pulled out a few small slick feeling packages. One part of his mind noted that they should have been weatherproof plastic packages and not this odd-looking paper. The paper was more easily ripped, and the now exposed rounds looked to be the right type of ammunition and it had the right mass. Still, they could have been very convincing fakes. The whole heavy metal box of black tipped counter Cylon rounds went into the pack along with the weapons. He now was pushing the mass that he could carry without slowing him down. With his hunting rifle in his hands, he looked back the way he had come. Did he want to go back to the bunker, or did he want to look for the third and maybe last box. This took him about 10 seconds, and he went looking for the third box.

The third box was harder to find, and James had to back track a few times to sweep the area looking. But he did find it, and this one was intact. Where the other two boxes had a military look, this one looked like a civilian shipping crate with a bunch of added padding of some kind attached to all of the sides. He was feeling that time was not on his side, and he rushed opening this third box thanks to liberal use of his heavy knife.

When the lid opened? It was clear that this shipping box was not filled with the tools of war. It was filled with the most brightly paper covered smaller boxes that he had ever seen. He had no idea what to do for a few seconds, then he picked up one of the packages at random. While he put this one brightly wrapped box in his pack. He saw a pack of letters in a pocket on one of the inside walls of the shipping box. He looked at them for maybe a second, and without thinking he grabs the string wrapped bundle of envelopes and threw them in the pack.

He was moving at the quick time while he lifted and then put the rucksack back on. He went through the woods at a reckless speed. He was not worried about someone hearing him, he wanted to get as much distance as he could from this location as fast as he could. It didn't take long for him to make it passed this sleeping hole and still he kept going without slowing down in any meaningful amount. He was not going to make it all the way back to the bunker before he ran out of steam or day light. He just wanted to get further away, and he knew of a good hiding spot that gave him exhalant field of view and fire.

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He had sweat running down his face when the rock outcropping came into view. When he was close, he stopped dead in his tracks and tried to hear if anyone was following behind him. If someone or the Cylons, were following him at this pace. His sudden stop should have caught them unprepared, and he would have heard them crashing through the underbrush coming after him. The only thing he heard was the sound of birds nesting in nearby treetops.

Now that he was close to his next hiding site, he slowly walked around checking things out as he "hunt" walked around. He wanted to make sure that no one else was in the area using this prime real-estate. It took him another hour to clear the area and feel a little safer. After he dropped his heavy pack, he went to a nearby spring and dunked his head in the cool water and drank deeply. The water was coming right out of the side of the mountain, and the spring was as fresh and clean as anything filtered by the hand of Colonials. Only then did he take the time to check the local area for any radiation that might have come in from the nuclear weapons strikes around the planet. But the local area was only just a little above the listed background radiation levels for this planet.

Feeling somewhat refreshed, cooled off, and a little safer. He took up his hide and watched his back trail like he was a hunted and wounded animal. He still had at least 4 hours of sun before night fall and he waited, and he listened to the soft heartbeat of the wild forest. The only thing he could hear were the natural sounds of the woods around him. When the sounds of the nearby woods had settled from his passing threw them almost at the run, over an hour had passed. Slowly he moved to his ruck and opened the huge center area that held his treasure. He didn't start with the weapons, or the box of ammunition, or the brightly wrapped box. No, he went to the small stack of envelopes he had grabbed at the last second.

He looked at the thin stack and he notices how strange they looked to him. The outer coverings where perfect rectangles, and not the cut cornered looked that properly finished envelopes should have. When he looked at the writing on the first one, he was confused. He took the top envelope and compared the lettering to the metal box in his ruck. It looked the same and it was equally undecipherable to him. He went to the largest envelope in the thin stack next. This one was red and had two different sets of handwriting on it, but at least this one was decipherable. At least he could read the words. What they meant was a totally different game of pyramid.

He had no idea what Christmas was and why someone should be happy about it. He also had no idea what was going on with the fat guy being towed threw the sky with a pack of 6 or so Cryneian Hinds. He thought about opening the deep red colored envelope but stopped at the last second. He put the stack of envelopes back together and retied them. He had a feeling that it was wrong to open one of those envelopes. With a slight shake of his head, he put them in a side pocket of his rucksack so they would not get damaged.

Next, he pulled out the weapon he had removed from the plastic cover. He now took the weapon apart with the ease of many years of doing this job, sometimes even blindfolded just to prove a point to some young NCO or to win some ambrosia money. It had been one of those young lion vs old lion things, and the old lion had won hands down. He started to check some of the different smaller parts as they came off the weapon in his lap. Quickly he found maker's proof marks that he was looking for. They were not of a design he recognizes, they were not always in the right places, and there also were too few for this weapon design. Where there should have been almost a dozen stamps, he found only four of them.

It was just another question to be stacked on top of all of the other ones that he had found today. More quickly than he had taken apart the weapon, he reassembled it. James put the weapon back in his pack and he made sure that he would be able to grab the rucksack and leave this place at short notice. He was going to watch until sundown and then he was going to get some more sleep. It was not like he was a young man anymore. There was only so much life left in his energy battery, and he still had a little less than four miles to go before he reached the safety of the old bunker.

#######

Sergeant John Scanian was angry. No, he was more than that. He was Hangry, which was about two steps higher than just angry. First, he was to search a whole Frakking planet with only a dozen warm bodies. Second was that they had been living in the wilderness of a dead planet for the last 6 months. He was only one team of the dozen that had been dropped off in what had once been Colonial controlled space. But still, he knew that one team had a frakking submarine, their own private island, oh and they had battle armor to work with. Those alone were enough to make him a little on the mentally cranky side. Oh, it didn't help that that all they had found were bones of Colonials and burned-out buildings in these last 6 months.

Then the last resupply Raptor had dumped their supplies when they thought that an updated Cylon heavy raider had gotten a little too close to them. But instead of just coming back in a few days, the Raptor crew had just tossed the supplies into the trees before making a break for orbit. So now he and his team were walking through the woods on a planet filled with death and Cylons looking for them. He had to fight down a snort as the thought of what his old drill would have told him about his current mood. "It's just another day in the corp. A marine needed to like a little pain, or they were not real Colonial marines."

That fleeting thought didn't keep his mood up for more than a few seconds. The real reason for his mood was that this supply drop was supposed to have carried mail from home. He had been looking forward to some cards from his kids. Well, they were not "his" kids genetically. But as his father had said a long time ago. It took more than just being a gene donor, to be a father. If his father would have realized how far the Wolverines would take that idea, he would have lost his ever-loving mind. Well Monika had a bun in the oven when he had left on this mission that was his, but the other 6 kids were not even close to his genetics. Still if you would have hurt one of them? You had better give your soul to the gods, because not even your dentist would have been able to ID your body when he was done with it.

Sergeant John Scanian of the Colonial Marines had been pulled out in that one cluster of a first evac from old Colonial space, it had been when the Galactica had returned. He had been sick from all of the Rads he had taken, and without medical treatment to clean his blood of the slow death. He would have died in the next few weeks in ways that were not fit for man nor beast to die. Even with the medical treatment on those ships and the hospitals on New Circe. It had taken months before he was cleared to be put into a "normal" hospital room. It had taken a lot longer after that to recover so that he could be cleared for even light duty, much less normal duty. The rehab had been hard and many times he had almost given up.

It was when he was still trying to work up to "normal" duty, and maybe even see if the military would still have him is when he meets Monika. Her husband had been killed on the SLS Yukon in her first battle with the Cylons. He needed someone and so did she. He had no idea what Nightingale Syndrome was, and he didn't care. The both of them had been able to work through things, and that was what they needed. It also didn't hurt, that it was said that the Cylons pulled the Eights out of the gene pool that he had been swimming in. He was exotic to the eyes of the members of what at one time had been Clan Wolverine.

They had been married only a few months after he had been accepted back into the Colonial Military. Until this mission, he had been working missions on New Circe or sometimes on one of the other ships that had escape the Cylons. He had volunteered when asked about going back to the Colonial's old space. He had been fighting the Cylons from the first day of the new war until the rads had caught up with him. He knew what the planets of the Colonials had gone through, and he had been on the ground, so the military could not say no to his request. There were just too few Colonials, much less combat trained ones, which still wanted to fight, and had the skill to do so all without being a liability to the rest of the unit.

So, he had left for New Circe. And at the same time, he had left his wife, 6 kids, and one on the way to see if he could find and recover any more surviving Colonials. Oh, and take out any Cylons that his one small team on a whole Frakking planet might find. Oh, the joys of the small things in life. One of those small things had been the mail drop in every other supply run. With some of the most major clan wolverine holidays coming up? He had been looking forward to having some "special" mail from the kids as alluded to by his wife in her last letter.

So far, they had found 6 of the supply crates that had been dropped by the spooked Raptor. According to the Raptor and every other supply mission the ground team had received. There should be a total of 9 crates on this drop. The ones they had found were already moved to a central point and covered up. After they have found the rest, and the mail, they would then start moving them all to cache sites and the main camp some distance away.

John stopped moving and looked at his map. The data dump made by the Raptor EO before it had jumped out, had given John and his team an idea of where the supply drop might have landed when they were dumped out of the small craft. He looked around, after reviewing the map, and then gave some hand signals just like he had done twice before. Without a word being said, the team shakes out into a line, and he would be the north end of the line. When a hand signal was passed back up the line, that they were ready. John started to slowly walk again.

John's head was on a swivel, and he was the first one to notice the holes in the double canopy of deep green over their heads. He was also the first one to find one of the three missing crates. He shot up his hand to let the next few people in line know that he had found something, and after a few seconds he signals that he was going to stop. If anyone else found something, someone would come looking for one Sergeant Scanian.

#########

John looked at the mess around him on the ground. He didn't need to find the crate's manifest to know that it was carrying ammunition. Metal boxes were all over the place, well they were in a pile with a few outliers. He had just started stacking the metal ammo boxes, so that the load could be shared among his team. If the crate had not been broken, then just four of them could have carried it to the collection point with ease, now it was going to take maybe double that. He looks up when one of the team slowly walked up to him.

In a very low voice so that the sound would not carry too far. "Sergeant, we found the other two boxes." He pointed off down an invisible line from this box. "I will finish this. They have some problems they need to show you."

John didn't like this information, but he gave a head nod and walked towards the line that had been pointed to him by the corporal. It was a short walk to the next box, and before he could ask what the problem was. One of the team held up a sliced open vacuumed sealed shipping cover for a weapon. These weapons were some of the items that were to be handed over to any locals that the scout team might have found. Higher command out on Ragnar Station wanted to make sure that the scouting teams were ready to support other Colonials, even if they had not found any to help.

Seeing the packaging was all he needed to see, to know that someone had found these supplies before his team had. John walked over and open the cover of the shipping container, and instantly he could see that four weapons were missing. The open spots in this specially designed crate were clear as day and no checking of the manifest was needed.

He was about to put his team on alert with a short ranged radio message, when another one of his team walked up to him from deeper in the woods. "We found the last box. It was opened using a blade and a lot of effort. And you're not going to like it. It was a care package crate. The manifest told me that one "Family gift" and the mail is missing. What do we do now?"

John felt his face turning red. He hated a thief, and someone had taken one of the very rare gift or care packages and the mail. There was no way that he was going to let this just slide. Besides this was the first sign that someone was alive on this planet other than his team and Cylons. He didn't think that they were Cylons that had broken into these crates. Cylons would have at least taken all of the rifles if not them and the ammunition. But what could he do?

John gathered the team together and assigned out tasks after he spent a few minutes working out what he needed to do. All but four of the team would work on getting these last three packages back to their main camp or the nearest cache site. The rest were going to try to follow whoever had found the crates before they had. Even with all of them walking all over the local area, they found a trail heading off going deeper into an area of the forest that his team had not checked out.

At the dog trot they were on the trail of whoever had taken their mail. To say that they were very motivated to find this person, would be like saying water was wet and farts stink. They only slowed down in their pursuit when the sun was almost down. By now they had a good idea that the person they were following was a single person, and they were not one of the human form Cylons. Well, it could have been a human form but none of those models would use a size 10EW boot. This was someone, who as the SLiE would have said, had swamp bunny feet and would have no issues with quicksand.

The slowdown was not just because the light was fading. The space or gate between the steps they were following had been getting shorter and shorter. This was a sign that the person they were tracking was getting tired, and this mixed with a few other signs suggested that they were catching up to the mail thief. Not one of them were worried about the missing four military grade weapons, they wanted their frakking mail! When it was full on dark, out came the night vision devices that the SLDF ground forces had issued them.

##########

Master Sergeant (ret) James Edmonds-Wilson awoke with a start. He froze at the touch of cool metal on his neck. He had not even realized that he was that tired and he mentally kicked himself for making such a rookie mistake. He had fallen asleep in this exposed over watch position. After all, if you can see the enemy, then the enemy can see you. His whole life didn't flash before his eyes. More to say it was what would happen to the people in the Bunker if he didn't come back. At best they would have a long slow death. Then a voice spoke in soft Caprican.

"You took something from my people. You frakking better have not opened them." The thread of pain was dripping off every soft word.

James only held his hand out and up when the hunting rifle was taken out of his lap. There was not a moon, and this deep in the woods you cannot even see the stars. In other words, it was darker than 10 feet up a well diggers butt at 2am. Even with his night adjusted eyes, he could not see anything in front of his face. "I opened one, but the rest are in my ruck." He slowly moved his arm and pointed in the general direction of his rucksack."

James can hear the low growl from somewhere off to his right. That meant that there were at least three of them. He kept his mouth shut and was waiting for the next shoe to drop. His body might be calm, but his mind was working overtime. Then his heart sank even lower as the sound of moving people stopped, and a low voice reached his ears.

"They Frakking aren't here! The weapons and ammo can are here, but they aren't."

The first voice spoke in another low and dangerous tone. "Where…..is….it?" The weapon's barrel was pushed a little harder into the back of his head with each softly spoken word.

Before the old NCO could explain, the further voice, by his rucksack spoke again. "Here they are! He put them in a side pocket."

The old NCO kept his mouth shut. He knew that the side pocket was where he had put the packet of oddly shaped envelops. These people were not acting right. What group would value a stack of envelops more than military grade weapons and anti-Cylon ammunition. The weapon came off of his neck and James could hear the person taking a few steps back from him, and the stress dropped like an elevator to Tartarus.

James had an idea of how this group were moving around the area without lights, but that should be impossible. Colonial night vision devices used a set of specialized liquid salt batteries that should have been useless by now, even if they had a few sets in storage somewhere. They were known to only last about 2 years, even in storage. The group had moved away from him, but he kept in his place with his arms up so that they could be "seen" and not be a threat. If they had working night vision, and they were not worried about almost a half dozen weapons. This was a group that he was not going to take lightly.

######

The young soldier flipped through the packages of letters and handed some of them to the team that had been tracking this thief. John looked around and evaluated the hide site. It was a very good site, and if the old man had been back in it, instead of being set up watching and falling asleep. They would have had a hard time finding him.

John knew the next step, that should have been the first step, but for the missing mail. With a few soft words the team started pulling out their high tech SLDF issued blankets. Like many military items, they were not just to protect the users from cold and wet. They also would protect the person under them from being detected. They were not a stealth field out of some Tri vid or colonial entertainment show, but they worked really Frakking well against the Cylons and Inner Sphere scouting systems. Still, they were not magic.

In under a minute all four of the specialized blankets were pulled out and a crude tent was set up that could cover two of the men. While these two talked, the other pair of scouts would be on guard duty in case anyone decided to party crash this little surprise meeting. John got comfortable with his back against the cool stone wall of one of the huge rocks that made up the back of this hide.

###

James could hear a lot of movement in the area that would have been his camping area, if he had not fallen asleep on his perch. He thought that he had an idea of what was going on, but that would only happen if they were not actively planning on killing him. When the movement slowed to an almost stop? He could then feel a strong arm that helps him to his feet in the cool night air. That hand then slowly guided him towards the back of this hiding site.

James is guided under cover and directed to sit on the ground. Slowly a light is brought up and James knows exactly what he was in. He had set up many of them during small group training events when he needed to guide a young officer. Mainly this was done due to some land navigation issues, but sometimes it was a planning event. The hard part was in using enough light to see by, but not enough light to overly damage your night vision.

With the glowing low light, James sees the other man under the cover. He starts at the top evaluating his surroundings. The blanket was different than what he remembered, but that was not a surprise so long after the devastating Cylon surprise attack. He sees the helmet, and it is not a design that the Colonial Military used. It had bends in some of the wrong places, but he can see that it might offer better protection from some sides. The device mounted on top of the helmet had four odd glass circles in a small arc. They are close enough to a new Colonial Military night vision device for him to think he knows what they are. They just looked higher tech to his well-trained eyes. Next was the face, and it was of a hard younger man. He knew faces like this all too well, but it also was not one of the clones working with the Cylons.

Next, he looks at the uniform and he is pleased to note that it holds no rank tab or name badges, it was a sanitized field uniform. It also was of the same cut and color pattern of a uniform that was common in the Colonial Military. Then his eyes drop to the boots, and he cannot help but raise an eyebrow. They were not Colonial Military issued. They looked more like some kind of cross between sport shoes, a set of light weight walking boots, and that were a sand colored and not military issue black. Both of those styles and color were not even close to being military combat field boots.

########

John saw the tired eyes of the older man for the first time, and he sees the eyes move but the head is not moving so much as an inch. He sees the eyebrows move and the eyes get a little wider and then his head drops to get a better look at his footwear.

Now Sergeant John Scanian of the Colonial Marines smiles. "Yes, I am a real member of the active Colonial military. It is just that we have some new suppliers that we are working with. Now I have to go back to the rule book, for making contact with survivors of the Cylon attack. We had to jump the line quite a bit, after you stole our mail."

James's blood ran cold but sweat started pouring out of him. As a lifelong soldier, he knew some things about how they thought and reacted. You could do almost anything to a fellow soldier, and it would at worst just start a prank war. But there were three things you never mess with, and that was their food, another soldiers' spouse, and never ever mess with their mail. That was a quick way to find a hand grenade pin in your bunk.

The two spent the next hour exchanging stories about what had happened after the Cylon surprise attack. Each man knew that they were not telling each other the whole story. For one, that would take too long and for a few other reasons. John did pass a noteputer over to James with all of the images of the human form Cylons. John had only been mildly surprised that the older man had an idea of that four of them were working with the Cylons. That was when John found out that this group had not had contact with any other humans or Cylons after the first few years of the attack. They were so far off the beaten path, that very few had been able to find them. They also didn't have a radio to contact or even hear from other groups.

It took some talking, but after some time the retired Master Sergeant agreed to lead John and one other to the "camp", but only two. John thought that it was a good idea and the older man had not pushed that hard on only taking one of them to his people. With the meeting done, the little tent was broken down and again James was in the armpit of Hades. He was not "allowed" to take a guard shift, but that didn't mean that he was sleeping all that well.

When the sun rose, the next morning the group split up. James's rucksack was down the brightly wrapped package and the now little thinner stack of letters from "a home" or support base very far from this planet. The two scouts that were not going to this new camp were going to back track and rejoin the rest of the scouting team. They had a set of rules that they had to follow, and this was the first chance on this planet, that they would be able to exercise most of them.

After the first hour of breaking camp, John was impressed with the retired or ex-military man that was maybe an NCO. He was moving out using good field craft, but he was doing it at a speed that those people who were not fit would have played holy Tartarus with their bodies. It was only after a few hours that John noticed that they were not taking a direct path to a set of ridges, that he could not see but knew were on a map. He had been very careful not to pull the map out where the older man might see it. It held information that John didn't want just anyone seeing.

##########

Just as the sun was about to be centered over their heads in the hot steamy air that this planet was well known for. They came to a stop near the shear wall of rock that rose a hundred meters over their head, that was the eroded edge of a small hill. John watched as the old NCO removed some rocks and what turned out to be three potted plants from the side of the cliff. The rocks and living plants were relocated nearby and looked perfectly natural in their new settings as they had in their old one. The thick metal 2 meter wide hatch was cut and textured, to look like the nearby rock even at a distance of about a dozen meters from where John was standing. It was the sound of kids playing that were the first noises that greeted the two men and one woman's ears as the hatch opened a little more than half of what it could.

John stopped them before they made it too far into the bunker and not a camp that the pair of scouts had been expecting. "How about we stay close to this exit. I don't want anyone to get touchy. You all haven't had visitors in some time and things could get….stressed. The last thing anyone of us want is to have something to happen that might poison the well."

James gave the younger NCO a look and after a few seconds did a short head nod. He had no idea where the young man had come up with that saying, but he had no problem understanding its meaning. James looked around and then backtracked them about 20 meters back up the concrete line tunnel, and towards the backup hatch they had used to enter this complex. The room James opened was an empty office that the population had not needed due to their low numbers compared to design capacity. When the military people had taken off their packs and had weapons at least not in their hands, James sent one of the young ones that had seen them in the corridor to get two of the other key leaders of this group at the fast step.

James kept an eye on the two as well as keeping any of the camp members from entering the opened hatch to see the new people a little too closely. Word of the new arrivals had traveled faster than a Raptor could jump a light year. After about the third try, James Edmonds-Wilson let his inner NCO out of the box without a leash. That was enough to scare the nonmilitary members of the bunker to keep a good distance from the open hatch to this room.

#######

John had time to read the cards from his family and open the package. It had just happened, that the old man had taken the care package that belong to one Sergeant John Scanian. John was showing off the latest set of artwork "his" kids had sent him to the other scout. He quickly put the items back in the opened box when a man and woman entered the room.

James introduces the man and woman with the titles they had assumed along with his retired military rank and full name for the first time. He raised his already high opinion of the younger NCO when John didn't even bat an eye at finding out that he was an old senior NCO ground pounder, even if it was all peace time service. James leads the following briefing from his point of view of events, and then it was Johns turn to speak.

John could see more than half a dozen people standing in the corridor trying to hear what was being said, but he was betting there were more in the corridor that he could not see. Now that they were not talking in low voices, under a blanket, in Cylon country, and at oh dark 30. John went into a little more detail about what happened to the rest of the Colonies, the help they had found, and what the mission was for his little team of scouts on this planet.

The woman raised her hand to stop John in the middle of talking about finding humans on another planet. "Sergeant Scaninan, why don't they send more to help the people." You could tell that she was not just talking about this group, or even just this planet. She was talking about all the planets that had been the Colonies of Kobal.

Mary gave a snort and John gave the other scout a quick look. "We are outnumbered, can be out produced, and we have only one whole planet that has not been glassed by the Cylons. That one planet is trying to do what a dozen planets couldn't. We are all that can be spared at this time. The rest are fighting and dying just to slow down the Cylons."

While the young Sergeant was talking James reached into the rucksack at his feet and passed around the weapons. Three of them were still in the plastic protective covers. "They are giving out support."

He then pulled the one weapon that he had been checking out in the woods, before he had committed the cardinal sin of falling asleep while on guard duty. Quickly his well-trained hands took it apart and pulled out one of the parts, and he pointed to one section of the small part in his hand. "This is not a maker's mark that I can place. There also are not in all of the right places that is required by colonial law."

John smiled a smile that made more than a few people standing in the corridor blood run cold. "Yes, you are now the proud owner or soon to be made the proud owner of four Callahan made battle rifles. They are used to making more powerful weapons than just a run of the mill battle rifle. As they say, whatever weapon they make it will take the head off the enemy with a single shot."

Very quickly the other three weapons were removed from the vacuumed sealed plastic, and hands started roaming over them. Then the ammunition box was broken open and the smaller boxes were handed out. These people only had access to hunting rounds, but only the very young could not remember that black tipped rounds were the go-to trope in entertainment shows for "the kill shot". With a nod of approval from the young NCO, 500 rounds of prime anti Cylon ammunition was added to this community's supply.

The meeting went on for over an hour before James ushered the two other leaders out of the room. They had a lot to talk about and they didn't want a lot of ears around when they touched on some sensitive subjects. This left John and Mary in the room more or less alone. It didn't take long for them to get a feeling that they were in a fishbowl. The pair just tried to block it out of their minds and go about setting up a sleeping area for them to use tonight. They had been briefed that food was a major issue with all of the survivors that had been contacted in what had been the 12 planets of the Colonies.

When John and Marry were told that it was getting close to dinner time? They had offered up two of their Colonial designed and SLDF made field ration packs for the community cooking pots. They would eat their own, that they had been slowly working on sense the sun has come up today. Each of those two packages held over 5000 Inner Sphere rated calories. And the running joke was that they could plug up a Battlestar's engines just by opening one of the packages. They might not be the best tasting, but they gave you a lot of energy for the trooper in the field. The pair of soldiers had no idea how the camp/bunker cooks were going to spread out the small candy packets, and they were glad of this little Intel gap.

############

Mary was keeping an eye on the open hatch to the corridor for any threats, while John was laying back on an SLDF supplied air filled tube bunk. He still thought that it was a thousand times better than any cot that he had used in his time before the Cylon attack. He was reading the letter part of the card his wife had written, when a small voice came from behind the sheets of non-cut cornered off white paper in his grime covered hands.

"What is that?"

John's right hand bent the pages so that he could see who had spoken. He looked right into the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen. They belonged to a dark-haired girl that might have been 6 or 7. Not wanting to wait, like any kid her age. She spoke again.

"What is that?" John tilted his head, and he could see that she was pointing to an image on the card of Santa Claus being pulled by his "reindeer."

John shifted his weight and lifted his legs over the kid's head before putting his bootless feet on the cool concrete floor. "He's called Santa Claus."

"What is he doing?" The little girl had not lost eye lock with the soldier. It was like she was drilling into his soul with those blue eyes.

"He's bringing gifts to all the good little boys and girls on the planet." John could not help but feel his heart going out to this child.

"Why is he doing that?" Her finger had not left the image. It was almost like it was glued to the card with space rated tape.

Before he could reply to the kid, a woman's frantic voice comes echoing down the corridor. "Helena, where are you! It's not play time!"

John looked up to see a teenage girl with a harried look on her face, and two small children in her arms and another pair of kids that were close to Helena's age attached to her legs. You could see the look of relief on her face, when she looked into the room to see the wayward child with the new people.

"There you are! Now leave these people alone. I'm sure they have other things to do, other than keep an eye on you." You could hear the exasperation in the teen's voice.

"But D'ana, he was telling me there is someone who brings gifts to kids on a whole planet!"

The two leg leaches separated from the teen handler, and they walked bold as brass into the now converted office. "How does he do that?"

She was beaming and held up the card she lifted off of John's cot without even thinking about asking. "He flies!"

"Why would he do that," comes the soft voice of a little boy.

John smiled and reached into the box at the foot of his cot. Jasmine had sent her favorite book so that her daddy could have something to read. "I don't have all the answers. But this might help, and it has some pictures to show what they are talking about if I get the translation wrong."

Mary was grinning ear to ear and pointed to an office table near the door for the teen to take a seat. John rolled his eyes and then started to read. He knew that he was giving her blackmail points on a silver platter, and that didn't stop him for one second. "Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

He would read a line or two and then he would show the kids the detailed images in the book, before reading a few more lines in Caprican. He would have to end up restarting the whole book no less than three times, as more and more kids would find out that someone was reading a new story. When he was done, he returned the book back to the care package his family had sent him.

Helena looked up at John with those huge and deep blue eyes. "Will he come here?"

John was stumped for a second. "I don't know. I never knew about him before I moved to my new home. I don't know if he makes it to other planets or not. I never asked."

Another young one, this one a boy looked up at the scout. "How does he make it to all of the kids on a whole planet?"

An older boy who had been listening just as raptly as the rest looked down his nose at the younger boy. "There is no way he can get to every home on a planet in a single night."

A young girl with brown hair and eyes that had seen too much stress in her short life, came to the defense of the younger boy. "He could use a jump engine like a Raptor."

John held up his hands to stop the kids from getting into a yelling match about this subject. With a laugh that was more than a little forced. "Now, now. Sometimes you just have to believe in magic. But it's late and you all need to get to bed."

Helena was not about to leave just yet. "I believe! I believe! And I was a good girl. Do you think he will bring me a new toy? It doesn't have to be much, just something that would be mine. All of the toys are broken." Her voice broke as she asked for what she should never have needed to ask a stranger in the first place.

An older boy standing in the doorway gave a huff. "Why not ask for more guns, so that we can kill all the frakking Cylons."

John shot a look and then a wink to the teen still in the room. Then he looked down into Helena's deep eyes. "I don't know, but we will have to see. You have to be a good girl and always mind your teachers and parents."

The young woman started pushing the kids out of the room, but she shot a questioning look over her shoulder back to the strangers. She had no idea who these strangers were, but she was hoping that she understood that they were going to make good on the hint that they had given to Helena. She was going to have to talk to the Master Sergeant, but she was soon distracted when one of the older kids started pushing one of the younger ones. By the time that she went to sleep, she had forgotten about the wink and the hint in giving at least one of the kids a gift.

########

Sergeant Scanian had one more meeting with the old NCO before they left the bunker complex in the morning. It had started when the older man had tried to hand the 4 battle rifles and box of ammunition back to the younger military man. John had just shaken his head, held up his hand, and he told the older NCO that those weapons were meant for any groups that his team had found on this planet. The weapons and ammunition were now theirs to use as they saw fit, but he hoped that it would not be used against his team and only against Cylons. That is unless it was something serious, then even humans were fare game as far as John was concerned. John had given a slight smile at his last comment. Even before the new Cylon war. There had been people that the worlds would have been better off if they had been removed and their families charge the price of the rounds and weapons cleaning time.

The old NCO smiled so large it might have broken his face. James then pronounced that this group would work with the young Sergeant. James also let him know that they had room for any they found that might need a little safe place to live. He did warn that any newcomers would have to work and not sit around wanting a free meal and a hot shower.

The younger NCO and the retired one shared a warrior's handshake, and before they pulled away. John suddenly pulled the older man closer and said something in a low voice. The older man pulled back and shot the younger man a look and then he looked over to the woman. She just smiled a knowing smile and gave an exaggerated head nod. She was in on the idea, and she seemed to have loved it. James leans forward and speaks for a few long minutes in a low voice before pulling back and letting go of the other man's hand. When the hatch closed behind the pair of scouts? They only stayed near the hatch long enough to replace the plants and rocks to conceal the hatch before they were off at the jog. They were going to push very hard to catch back up to the rest of the team. They had something important that needed to be done and time was short.

Colonial Space.

Planet Libran, over 500 miles from Themis

25 Dec 3050

Little Helena was up very early today. Living in an underground bunker tended to do bad things to your internal clock. And early on it was decided that everyone would spend some hours in the sun at least every other day. That rule had proven less hard to enforce than you might think, at least after the radiation detectors had said it was safe. Think cabin fever but set to 11 after the first month, and then it went downhill from there faster than you can say climbing the walls.

Still this little girl was a kid on a mission this morning. She checked every room and hall in the areas of the bunker that had been occupied. After checking every room, she would get a little more distressed at not finding what she was looking for. When she finally made it to the room that had held the strangers a few days ago? She had huge alligator tears rolling down her face in two sets of twin rivers of salt water.

When she turned to leave the empty room, she almost ran into the old NCO that she could not see threw her wet eyes. When she came to a stop an inch from his legs, she looked up into the face of the man that scared not just the children. This time he had a softer look on his face than she was used to seeing.

She spoke haltingly threw tears. "He didn't come. But I believed! And I was a good girl. Why didn't he come?"

James almost could not hold back his own excitement, but he had to play this game for just a little longer. "You know in that book; this Santa Claus needed a chimney. We don't have one of those, besides the air handlers, and they are made so that not even insects can get in. Maybe he left something outside for you."

The waterworks stopped at a drop of a hat, and she beamed only like a kid can do. "You think so?" She went past the old NCO like a viper leaving the launching tubes. James followed in her wake and as he walked, he waved for more of the adults to follow and to bring their kids with them. Only three people in this bunker knew what was about to happen. Those three old souls were thinking that these next few minutes or an hour would give them all something that had been in such short quantities. Shorter even then the numbers of weapons and ammunition they held. That item that was in such short supply was…..hope.

The main hatch opened into a small clearing that was carefully maintained to look wild. In the spring it would be the main area that would grow wheat for the people in the bunker. This time of the year, it was just dried grasses swaying in the damp breeze. Only this morning there was something different waiting on them.

The little girl was well behaved, and she just didn't bolt out the opening hatch into the outside world. You could not leave the bunker until one of the adults checked the area. It was so exciting that instead of slowly opening the huge metal hatch, it was pushed fully open as fast as they could counter the friction on the hinges.

Standing out there for anyone to see from the hatch but careful so that an over flying Cylon would not see them, were three small metal "trees". The trees were in what was called stack arms and they did look a lot like fir trees, just only 20 or so inches tall. Around each of the three trees made up of 5 Colonial battle rifles, was a matching box of ammunition of various types but mostly for these weapons used to make the "trees". In an area under the trees were stacks of toys. There were even some "new" toys still in the boxes displayed, but most were just covered in plastic to keep any damp away from them.

Some of the adults were just as surprised and excited as the kids at what they saw. James had to be quick to keep the kids from damaging the weapons making up the trees, when they were released into the wild. When all of the kids had toys, James made sure that the weapons and ammunition were taken inside the bunker. The kids were careful to stay in the shade of the real trees and premarked areas "that were safe" to play in. James took a second to look around the local area, when the kids were fully distracted with their "new" toys. He knew that the military team was out there, and he was not surprised when he didn't see them. Still when he thought that the kids would not notice, he waved to the area he thought they might be watching from.

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John smiled as he looked threw the SLDF made field glasses at the waving retired NCO. He knew that the whole team was watching the open field threw their own issued field glasses. He had heard the term of winning hearts and minds before, and it had always seemed like a waste of time and effort. But seeing those kids and their "new" toys proved him wrong.

It had not been easy or safe to pull this off. The first thing that had to be done was for the two fastest runners to be sent to the nearest town. The last time the scout team had checked, the town had been clear of any Cylons. But that didn't mean that it was still clear of the mass murdering machines. Oh, and it was ten miles cross country from where they were currently working. You just could not order a pair of your soldiers to run almost 20 miles to pick up some toys. He had a long sales speech prepared to pitch the idea. He only made to "there is this bunker with kids, which would like a toy for Christmas".

After those first dozen words, he had to almost stop a fight on who was going to go to the nearest town or set of homes to get those kids some frakking toys. When the two runners were on their way with water, weapons, and a few tools. John had turned to the rest of the team. They spent the next hour working on his plan. They had more if not better ideas, and he listened to each one of them. When he felt like enough time had passed with them rehashing ideas? He had everyone gather the needed items for those ideas. It took them three tries to get the final workable idea done in their hidden camp.

When John had what was close to what he had envisioned, the remaining team started packing for their try at being Santa Claus. Still, it would take two trips from their camp to the bunker to bring all of the needed supplies for this mission. Not once did John hear a word said in heat or anger over this mission. It was near sun set on Christmas Eve when John and Mary approached the main hatch of the bunker. James had been waiting for them all afternoon and opened the hatch after looking threw a small window and seeing them while they were still a few hundred meters away.

James even helped clean up after everything was set up for the kids. It took them longer to clean up after they were done, than had been needed for setting up the surprise. They wanted to make sure that there were no boot prints or trash that would blow Santa Claus little helper's cover. The scout team pulled back deeper into the wood line and waited for the sun to come up. It was a tossup on who was more excited when they were awaken near dawn, Helena or the recon team. Today would be ingrained into the memory of not just the kids.

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Notes:

What gave me the idea of the Christmas story? Well, there was the time of the year that I first wrote this. Second was I had to explain the US holidays for Halloween and Thanksgiving when I lived in a small southern German town. Halloween proved easier of the two. Now some will say that Thanksgiving is a harvest festival. But remember this is near the Alps at the end of November. That area is done with harvesting by early-October. So, what holiday would the Inner Sphere have, and the Colonials would have no clue about. Well Christmas seemed to fit best for this story.

Non-government fund raising: Think bond drives in WW2 but less government involvement of raising the funds. How many cookie sales do you think you would need for a high-end light mech?

Standalone repair cradle type space support yards: Two Colonial ships with some production capabilities were converted with arms that would hold a ship. Think Star Trek like with 6 or so metal fingers with webbing that goes between the fingers. This contraption is mounted "under" the support ship and used to support the ships needing attention.

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