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.

65. Chapter 65 8 June 3051

Chapter 65

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

8 June 3051

New Circe

Robert was enjoying one of his last days on the planet of New Circe, at the outdoor café in the City of McEvedy. This type of café was a new idea to come to New Circe. This planet was cooler than most, and even with the City of McEvedy sitting this close to the equator of the planet and near sea level. It was more like being in Northern Europe or even the northwestern areas of the United States just without all of the rain of the latter. Even with the slow warming up of the whole planet, it still was a little on the cool side on some days of the year. So outdoor cafés were not thought of as a useful idea in all of the years that the Wolverines had called this planet home. That was slowly changing in certain areas of the planet.

This one was the first outdoor café, and it was owned by a group of friends that were indicative of the changes going on around this planet. One was a female human form Cylon from the Number 3 line, then there was a local from the city, and the last one was a widower from the Victorian City State. The three of them were owners and the sole operators of this business for the first year of this one very small cafés existence. Now the café had grown and even expanded…twice in this one location in less than two years. If Robert was a betting man? They would be opening in another location or two by the time that he had returned from this next supply run. They would just have to be halfway decent in management of the small business to make that growth happen.

It was not much to look at as a design to attract or keep business. And the food was not that great either, but they knew how to make the correct drinks. And as long as you eat or drank, you could stay all day just watching people walk by the outdoor tables in the busy city. They even had a note in the menu about chair rental for those that might not know the accepted social etiquette. There had been surprisingly few issues about this rental fee that was expected by new or old patrons of this establishment.

When it was a warm or warmish day? This little Café had a nice selection of small batch beers coming from both City-States, some young Ambrosia from the Colonial City State, and two versions of iced tea that was taking the planet by storm. Then there was the selections of off world wines and Wolverine based drinks that was common to see in the city.

When it was a cooler day or at night? You had that same selection of drinks as on the warmer times, but then you could have a selection of Coffees made by a professional on site. Or you had a selection of hot tea that came from the very popular Victorian green houses. Those cooler times were also when the café broke out a totally new product for the people of New Circe to enjoy. The warm Gluhwein had been a huge hit almost from day one, that the second person smelled it as it slowly permeated the local area in an invisible cloud sent. It was basically warm red wine, cinnamon, cloves, aniseed, and some other things that seemed to just work together when it seemed like they should be kept as far apart as possible. It smelled and tasted amazing.

Robert had a cup of that warm wine now, and it seemed like a few of the nearby tables had the same drink, if his nose was to be believed. As he took another sip of his hot drink, Robert looks around and opens his ears to the sounds of life going on around him. He would follow people with his ears and eyes as they walked by in the late afternoon coolness. He also could hear about what was going on at the tables near him. It was not illegal, but it was not nice to listen in on people you don't know. Robert could not help it, if you talked that loud then you must not care who was around that could hear your business. He could not help but smile as he took another small sip of his hot drink as people talked about their private lives around him.

While he was letting his ear's do their work. Robert could tell that other and less obvious things had changed, and that was just as he was sitting here and not doing anything. It was halfway through the 7th year of the war against the Cylons, and the opening of the planet to others fleeing from the genocidal AIs and their many types of combat machines. That opening to off worlders was changing the SLiE in subtle and not so subtle ways.

The Wolverines were not as hung up or as hypocritical against using contractions in public settings as the clans were reported to be, but they were not as common in there uses as in the Inner sphere. Then there were the lone words coming from the Colonials that he could pick up floating on the cool air. He thought that a few words he was hearing might have come from the Victorians, but he had not spent as much time working with that group to be positive. He was just sure that he might not know what they totally meant in their use. So that meant that they were not from the language that his people used.

The one thing that was clear to Robert as he sat alone at his outdoor table. It was that New Circe was not the same, and Robert thought that it was a good thing. He would not have thought that his people could have changed this much in such a short amount of time before that Raptor pilot found New Circe. Speaking of things that had been changing on the planet. Robert picked up the noteputer one more time, and he started slowly reading the files again. He had a good idea on how the information came in to SLIC, but he was sure that it had not come from anyone on the Styx and her small brood of dropships. Jess would have told him about this before they had come to the planet surface. Then there was the date referenced in the report in the footnotes. A date that was after Robert had ended his last run from the Inner Sphere.

Still the report that he had been given was hard to believe, and he never would have thought that something like it would ever happen. It would seem that fighting the clans was making all kinds of strange bedfellows all around this part of the Galaxy. This report had come out of the planet called Outreach, and it said that on the 5th of February 3051 Hades froze over but the stars had not all gone super nova in response to the braking of reality.

Theodore Kurita and Hanse Davion had signed a non-aggression pact between those two historic antagonists. That this was done, was not classified, only that it had not taken that long for the story to reach SLIC was not talked about. The DC and the old leader of the FedSun and now soon to be leader of the FedCom had buried the hatchet, and it was not in each other's skulls. Then there was the part of the story that the FWL was supplying weapons to the FedCom. That same FedCom that just happened to have the Lyrans who had been fighting the FWL for hundreds of years. And the icing on the cake on the report he was reading was that the FWL was also selling weapons to the Combine on a loan payment schedule. The information on the "loans" for those weapons purchased with was vague, but it was mentioned in the file he was reading.

Robert looked up, and he had on a smile that caused the people near him to lean a little away from him without them knowing that they were doing such a thing. "Who said there is not a god in this universe? That was about the only way that those two would have a meeting in the same room much less agree to kill others instead of each other. Maybe the Clansbastereds of those Wolf's Dragoons were not that bad after all. But how can I use this information? How are those Dragoons different from Clan Wolf?"

Robert re-reads the report on the noteputer three more times, before he is sure that he was able to pull all of the data out of the report that SLIC might have slipped in. When he was done with the report that had come out of the planet Outreach. Robert went to the next report that he needed to review before his work was done for the day. When he had submitted for a change in his organization for his next mission to the Inner Sphere? It had been after his meeting with Admiral Xi, that the shockwaves started propagating in the halls of power. He had expected there to be some push back with his idea, no one liked last minute changes. Robert was on the top of that list that hated last minute changes, especially when it was seeming to be made just for change's sake.

#########

Robert had liked using the Cargo modified Union, and all of that open space that she had given him. It had allowed them to make any needed internal changes to support this mission without much delay. But there was a limit to what the 3,600ton Union class dropship could do, and the SLDF Navy could use a fuel tanker now more than ever. Robert knew that they had many problems supporting two battlemechs along with the other workmechs that they had used on the last mission.

Having to deal with that head capped Crab battlemech was a perfect example of why mech bays were needed on a mission like his. That battle damaged 50ton mech had been a handful for his crew to handle without having a mech bay or even a mech shipping container to lock it down in. Just trying to keep it from moving around every time the engine fired, had been an exercise of colorful language used by the deck crew.

When Robert had been given word, on the sly, that his ground forces were getting bumped up in numbers? He had started looking around and asking some questions to some people that he knew were tight lipped. Even with the short notice of the rumors it had not taken him long to find what would work out for him, that is if the rumor was true in the first place. You would be surprised what you can find out, when you offer up to share your much talked about "private cellar" for a few private meetings.

It had taken less time to find out that this rumored information was proven to be accurate. It had only "cost" Robert a few mixed cases of New Dawn wine. Well, that and a few glasses from a few of the more popular name brands of Scotch whisky that he had brought back with him over the last few years from the Inner Sphere. He felt that he had gotten off on the cheap side for the quality of the information that he had been able to glean without breaking the letter of the law. He had twisted the spirit of the law five ways from Sunday, but he had not outright broken any laws with his digging or how he "paid" for the information.

When he was "officially" told about the company of mechs that was going on the next mission with him. He was ready with a suggested mech list and a new dropship to handle them all. That ship's name had been on the short list that he had passed to Admiral Xi, but below the names of the "usual suspects". It also was in his notes, which he had told Admiral Xi were on that short card he had given her. Robert had no idea how long it had gone under the radar or who had pointed this change out to her, and it didn't matter. He was paid to make sure he planned for contingencies.

Robert had found an old Lion class dropship that was planned to have been used as a part of a three dropships outpost plan. Stuff like that had been in vogue a few decades ago. With the number of Lion class dropships starting to grow due to new construction by MMM, and the numbers coming back online now that a source of spare parts was in operation and shipping to most areas within the Inner Sphere. Lion Class dropships would now not stand out so much on the shipping lanes. Then there was the point that Admiral Xi had taken one of that class with her and it had not caused too many questions at any star system she stopped at.

Robert had started thinking about that old Lion a lot lately. It was one of the few new dropships that had been made early on after they had found New Circe. The now released plans for the Outpost idea was that they would be dropped off on a planet, and small scouting missions would be launched from them. This outpost version of the Lion started with the clan modifications and a SLDF twist. It had not been an issue to bring them back down to the normal 8 mech bays, and then they bumped it to a full mech company when the SLDF had rebuilt enough combat power. That last round of modification proved to be a better fit with how the Wolverines would fight the clans or anyone that came to do them harm. Then it was fitted to carry a full company of heavy vehicles in place of the ten. Those bays could handle any vehicle that was used in the SLDF military or up to 100 tons of cargo if that was needed to support a given mission that might fall to them.

The designers had also fixed one of the known problems that was common on Lion class dropships, and that was that it was missing any organic fighter support. That modification had been added by reducing the cargo bay. The two fighter bays also occupied some of the same area as the cargo bay. The cargo bay on the dropship was further reduced more, by adding everything needed to support two full platoons of foot infantry. These two platoons were not normally used for combat units by Doctrine proposed by this Outpost plan. But it could be used to add more space for support crew or other people, and they could also be used to supply a guard force for the large dropship when it was on the ground.

Robert knew that the SLiE only had six of these new built modified Lions, and it would take some doing to get the Navy to release one of them for his mission. Robert had thought that the low number of production would have been the key sticking point in getting one of those craft for his mission. But near as Robert could tell from his connection into Rumor Control that he was plugged into. It had only taken two messages from someone high in their chain of command, before the freshest of the Lions that was just out of a refitting and maintenance cycle was sent to a ground side base.

It was there that a veritable army of people had swarmed over the Lion. They were making sure that it was ready for a resupply run to the Inner Sphere and possible combat with anything from Cylons, Mercenaries, ComStar, Pirates, Criminals, Clans, or House military units. The hardest part of this checking out, had been the pulling out of the laser anti missiles systems they had just sprinkled across its hull. They had to be replaced with "normal" ones, which would now not have seemed that out of place in the Inner Sphere. Still, they were Clan grade models and a little smaller and lighter than the old Star League made weapons. But the only way to know that, would have been to pick one up. Good luck on that happening after this craft had left New Circe and living to talk about it. The SLDF Navy was not going to put the original tech anti-missile systems back on this ship. They were looking forward to getting rid of the weapon and ammunition from their supply system.

When all of the required work was done to the dropship? Robert had to do one last walk through of the dropship, before it had been turned over to the expanded crew that would man it for the resupply run. The crew for the larger dropship had been based around using the old crew of the White Rabbit 2 for the last few runs. That old dropship's crew would work with the ground team to make sure that the vessel was up to their standards, and at the same time they would start training to knock any rust off or develop any new skills that might be necessary. It was a huge amount of work, and it was only thanks to the skill of the base crew and the old hands, that it could have been done in so short of an amount of time.

#####

One of the many issues that Robert could not help thinking about while he relaxed, was Operation Sword of Damocles. That operation would have launched every warship, fighter, mech, tank, and dropship into a head long attack into clan space. The SLiE would have broken out every weapon, including the entire stockpile of WMDs, to be used on the Clan Home Worlds. With this invasion of the Inner Sphere and the loss of so many planets to them. Robert wonders how close the rest of the clans were to having the hammer dropped on them. He also wonders what they would have done if they knew how close they had come to glowing in the dark. If they did know about that operation it would have been the cure for constipation for everyone in clan space. On the other hand, it might have made it so that the next time they went to the latrine, they would pass a diamond.

With a snort he thought about that happening in clan space. They'd have to find three times extra-large diapers or larger for the Elementals seeing the Rods of the Gods coming to say high to them. Thanks to the Colonial made jump drives in some of the key ships of the SLDF, this could happen very quickly. If the SLiE had just a little luck, and in less than a year. They could have gutted the clans like a fresh trout for half a dozen generations or more. Robert knew that the operation was always being updated and he wonders if launching it would cause more problems than it would solve. Then again blowing the Clans back to the stone age might be worth it just for payback for what they did to his ancestors.

Robert smiled as he signed the last few digital documents on his device. When he dropped off this digital device at the Navy building for operations, they would be good to go to start his mission back closer to the cradle of mankind. With all of the paperwork done for the near time, Robert had some down time just to relax without even having to keep his "game face" on. Robert ordered a tall beer and sat deeper into the chair to watch the city move around him and enjoyed the show. One part of his mind thought that all of the hard stuff was done, at least until they were almost to the Inner Sphere. He had been amazed at how easy this reset of a resupply mission had gone. Robert almost choked on his tall glass of wheat beer as he had realized that he had just mentally tempted Murphy.

20 June 3051

New Circe L1 point

SLS Styx

Robert was looking around the bridge of the Styx, and he was working very hard to keep his facial expression from scaring any of the more shakable members of the bridge staff. He had taken the last two weeks off, and he was not allowed to even contact anyone related to this mission without repercussions coming down on his head like a falling frakking Battlestar. He had been very shocked when he had received this surprise vacation. And this "vacation" had been under direct orders from both Admiral Xi, Admiral Whitfield, and they were even co-signed by someone very high on Admiral Frank's staff. This had been the first time that Robert could remember ever hearing about tripled signed orders, much less be on the receiving end of a set.

When he had made the call to check on those "odd" orders not half an hour after they had hit his desk. Both Xi and Whitfield had told him just to take some time off before he showed his butt to people above them in the food chain. Both of them had kept referring to this vacation, as just being some mental health days before a long and hard mission. With those two phone calls done, he had no options but to take some time off of his own accord. He made sure to stick to the letter of the orders that they had taken the time to give him. But there was a big difference between the letter of the orders and the spirit of them, and Robert was so good at surfing the differences between those two things that it was second nature to him.

Robert had taken the time off, and he even didn't do anything but read for two solid days of his enforced vacation. Then he spent the better part of another two days camping in the wilds by a small lake in the Colonial City State. Then he started redoing his normal during, before, and after "hobbies" that he had done after each of those resupply missions. Only he had not done all of them after this last mission. He had started contacting his list of friends or just people that he wanted to have one last meeting with before he made his next run. This helped him set up some plans that he was, for the first time in a long time, looking forward to. And this was also the first time that he was able to move them more than just a small step forward at any one time.

His very last meeting, before he had to leave for the Styx, was with a few key members of his large family. It was held on the airfield in a private meeting room that Robert had set up, while he had been on vacation. The highlight of the meeting was Robert dropping some legal paperwork that he had just drawn up. He walked out while the yelling was still going on and, in a few hours, a military small craft launched from that port and took him back into orbit.

Robert had needed to prepare them for a few surprises, which might be unleashed on the rest of his family, and some of them might even happen before he left this star system. Robert did not care what the people in that room had thought of those plans. He was telling them what was going to happen, and they could take it or leave it. They could hop on the dropship or be burned by it. He would do whatever he thought was best for him, and if they did not like it? Then they could go see Hades for all he cared. It was all there in the legal documents he left with them. He didn't even care if they flapped their lips and let his plans fall into other ears.

####

Jules was still the captain of this vessel. And in theory, they would not move this ship one meter until he was ready to give the orders. They had been delayed three days now, all on orders passed around from the systems central Traffic Control. The first mission hold had been caused by a failed final inspection of the tie down points. It had been on one of the 152,000ton unmanned jumpships that had been strapped to the outside of the parent ship. That was fixed by a welding team, but it had caused a rechecking of all of the tie down points on all three ships. That window of checks had been exploited by others.

The second mission hold had happened while they were still working on the first issue that they had found at the last minute. The second shoe had dropped on this mission not long after the first report was passed dirtside. That one had been caused when word had leaked out about this run to the rest of human controlled space. It had gone onto the open news networks all over the planet within an hour of the first report. That had caused second and third order effects, kind of like a megaton class nuclear weapon going off over a city.

Robert was pretty sure that the news leak had not come from the Colonial City-State like some on the planet thought. The crewmembers on this mission, and under his direct command, were made up of almost one third of Colonial personnel or were connected to that city state. This would be the most Colonial personnel to ever get this close to the Earth of their fables in their whole written recorded history. There was very little to be gained by delaying the mission for them. Robert was betting on that the leak having come from someone within his own Parliament.

He had made sure that Jess passed along his line of thinking back down to the main SLIC office. The release of classified material was not looked on favorably by Robert, Jess, and anyone else that was connected to this or any other mission. Maybe the leakers had tried to smear the Lord Protector with this "surprise" information. If that had been the plan by someone, it had not worked out that way for them. All Robert had to do was give a news interview from the bridge of the Styx while it floated at the L1 point as they were getting ready to "launch his mission". That had been the third delay.

To everyone's surprise, all that it had needed to be done to defuse the huge bomb shell that had been released by some unknown leaker. Now the public was excited that a mission was being launched to not only make one more supply run to the Inner Sphere, but they also were to pull out some of Clan Wolverines people. People who had been hiding and spying on the Inner Sphere for all of these years without the average person on New Circe knowing anything about them.

The last few missions that Copland had run out of New Circe would only have a press release about them launching the mission months after they had left New Circe's space. To add some flavor and romance to the story that the press was spreading around about this mission. Their people were going to be pulled out of the Inner Sphere from under the very noses of the rest of the clans. It all was being played up the more time that past.

This was the first time that information about the Families had been made public, and that there was a way to pull them out of the danger that they had volunteered to be exposed to. The information about the game that SLIC had been playing on those people that had volunteered had not been release to the public. And Robert was not going to touch that part of the story with a 3-meter pole and someone else pushing. When pressed by the news anchor about the numbers that Robert and his mission was going to be picking up on this supply run. Robert had been very honest with the interviewer when they had asked this expected question.

He told them that he did not know the answers, and that there was no way to know the answer to that question. Robert had told the press, that the only exchanging of information had been one way. And the message form was not filled out with who was having kids or other personal issues. They had other things they were tracking. Then he had been pressed for a list of names of the people that had volunteered to live in the Inner Sphere. The press anchor had not reacted well when he had laughed at them and said that he would never give a list of those names. After all you don't give the names of your friends to people who might miss use them.

He also told the talking head. That some of the Families might not want to leave the Inner Sphere, and they would not be forced to come back to New Circe if they didn't want to. The only ones at risk were the ones in line of the Clan invasion. That left a huge swath of the Inner Sphere that was safe for them. Robert was betting that both the head of SLDF intelligence and the Lord Protector were going to get a lot of political capital out of the Families returning home. SLIC also would be getting points and more of a budget to run operations within the inner sphere. At least now that one Cat was out of the bag, even if it took one card his family could play in any future missions out of their deck. Then again any of the Families that made contact and didn't want to come back to New Circe would still be known to only a few people that Robert trusted with his life.

Robert knew that his interview had been sent on a fully open radio transmission going both to the planet and to all of the ships located all over the star system. They could not leave on the mission until certain people had time to both view and digest the story for a while. Now the flagship he was on was receiving more radio transmissions from the planet below. Mostly they were wishing them well, and to have a safe trip by the digital boat load. But they almost all would slide in a small request for something specific to bring back for just them. It was like having thousands of good idea ferries and not a AAA gun to be had to shoot them down.

Robert could now feel how Admiral Adama had felt, when he had been asked to bring back that toy the press had focused on. He was going down that long list made by the messages that had said that the author wanted, or what they thought was a good idea to bring back. Some of the items on that still growing list, were items he might just pick up a few examples. If he could, that is. They still were receiving those messages and his communication staff was still collecting and filing those missives. Robert would review those last messages when he was off the bridge. He knew that he was going to have to go through a lot of chaff to find one grain of a good idea. He was just thankful that the messages were only a few lines long.

#####

It took Robert a handful of seconds to see that Jules was looking at him and waiting without the rest of the crew noticing the look he was giving to the convoy commander. When the convoy commander made eye contact with the Jumpship's Captain. Robert knew that they were ready for the next step in the dance that was going to be a first step for the whole crew. It was time to get this show on the road, again.

Robert used his command voice to address the bridge and start the first step. "Captain Vaun! Are we ready to start our run?" Robert did not need to say to much more if he didn't want to. In the past he had said a lot less and at a lower volume.

Jules wanted to smile, but this was being recorded to be sent back for the people on the planet with today's evening news. He only had the one chance to get it right. He was just thankful that with the way the news cycle worked they would not need to do this kind of thing again. "Commodore Copeland! We are ready to jump, and to start our run to the Inner Sphere. We can begin on your orders?"

Robert was better at this game, so he had a stone face look and he had made sure that the nearest camera was catching him in profile. So now he made sure to use the right words for the start of the run to the Inner Sphere. "Captain, it's your ship. You are cleared for using the Colonial jump drive. It's time to go get our people out of harm's way."

Jules smiled and he went about giving the required orders to the rest of the bridge crew, and the jump clock was quickly set so that the camera could see it. Then he sent one final pre-recorded message, and it was sent to the SLDF Navy's headquarters building on the planet's surface. Jules would have preferred to have sent the message to his family, but that would have been a breach of protocol. The Styx did not wait for a reply to be sent back up to her. At the 3 second mark before jumping the last data packets were sent to traffic control for the public relations team to work with.

This was a new set of protocols being tested by Mission Control, and the Styx was out of this star system in a flash of energy less than 2seconds later. If anyone needed to contact the Styx after this? They would use the HPG or TacFax that she carried. They were eighteen light years away, by the time news reached the planet wide information grid of them leaving on this more complicated run. Then the SLS Styx started using a long-practiced pattern of jumps to make the trip toward the Inner Sphere. They were closing the distance to the rest of the Inner Sphere at a rate that was reserved for Science Fiction writers of the time.

19 July 3051

The Split system

The heavily modified Tramp Class jumpship carrying a pair of 505 meters long Invader class jumpships, and two large dropships were safely in this system. They had arrived in a flash of energy and with the illusion of movement. Movement that you would only have noticed if you were close enough to have been killed by a "normal" jump drive emergence energy wake. It had been the first ship to arrive at the jump point of this lonely star in a long time. That did not mean that this huge mass of metal was the first interstellar ship to come to this system over the last few days. It was a fine but a very real legal difference.

The first interstellar ship that had showed up was so small, that it would not have been picked up on by most sensors that ComStar had access to outside of maybe being on Terra on some testing base or university. Even what the vaulted old Star League would have had access to be put on a major planet would be hard press to see the arrival of the first interstellar ship, much less what both of those groups had this far away from any such animal.

Besides that, the small craft had not used a jump point to arrive in this part of space. It had used the area of the whole star system to arrive in, and a star system was a large place to hide something like the size of a Leopard class dropship. That was on top of when the said Leopard class ship was trying very hard to hide on top of that huge area.

The first ship had arrived in this system almost two full days ago. It was the modified Leopard CV called the Hobgoblin, and her mission had been to track down the spy satellites that had been left behind by the SLiE. It was able to find them without any problem, thanks to both knowing where they were, and they had the right handshake and communication codes to talk to them in the first place. The data downloads from the huge spy craft were done equally quickly. That was because all of the spy satellites had not observed anything like a visiting jumpship or dropship, since the Styx had left this star system all those months ago. This was very good news for the command staff on the flagship. No one wanted to put a secret military base in the middle of an interstellar highway of some kind.

With the Split system now deemed safe by the command crew of the dropship. The Hobgoblin had used its Colonial made engine to leave the system one more time quiet as a thief. And they passed along to Commodore Copeland, that it was safe for his ugly ship to arrive at the Split system. The use of the TacFax was not authorized to be used, not when using the Colonial jump drive was thought to be safer.

When the Styx had arrived, it had set a record for the fastest transit from New Circe to this point so close to the Inner Sphere. There had been so many trips to this part of space from New Circe that there were a lot of recorded jump coordinates in the databases. For the first time an interstellar ship had its whole flight plan pre-loaded into her computers before she left her home space port. All they had to do was jump, load the next file and then jump again. Their only stops had been to let the colonial jump drive cool down and for the crew to get some sleep. By all rights, in a month of travel they should have "only" covered 210 light years and not over a thousand. This had been a test of what some had started to call the second interstellar highway. This was going to be key data to be sent back to New Circe if they were going to be sending ships on a regular basis to support the Lyssa.

Now both independent interstellar ships were in the same star system, and they were about to multiply. The crews on the SLS M/V Styx were not only transferring the two skeleton crews over to the civilian jumpships. They were also working on the HPG monitoring mission, and other tasks that had to be done before they could start the next phase of operations deeper within the Inner Sphere. All of the crewmembers were going to be working some very long hours to get all of the needed work done if they were going to keep on the mission master's schedule.

The HPG team's equipment was within range of some of the other HPG stations within the Inner Sphere, and the data on the active stations were noted. It didn't take long for the team to find the telltale emissions from mobile HPGs that were a lot deeper into "uncharted space" than they had been detected before. Those mobile units seemed to be sending messages back to the larger ComStar network at regular intervals.

The team buried deep within the Styx's hull were picking up a lot of information. Information that ComStar did not know that it was leaking to anyone that might have the right open ears to "hear" what they were saying. The main task for the HPG team at this stage of the mission was a little different than on the rest of the mission. It was not the data mining the data feed pipes that they were now able to access. The access was thanks to the SliE's unregistered hardware that was using a mix of old SLDF, old SLIC, new SLIC, early Clan, and Cylon modified software. Right now, they were focused with the need to double check the message codes that were being used by ComStar, all before they used them to send data and messages to a few different points within the Inner Sphere for free. It was with side looks made by these specialized crews that the first batch of messages was secretly released into ComStar's network.

While the rest of the large ship crews were still settling into the pattern that they would have to use while they were in the more populated regions of the Inner Sphere. A second group of messages were sent out into the ComStar Network. None of the messages would be sent directly to the intended person, and only two of the dozen messages were "real" and not "junk mail". The first group of messages was a bunch of junk mail at best, and they were sent to see if anyone would notice the trespassers. The love letters sent to strangers might have caused some issues or broken hearts, and one shooting would be traced back to these messages many decades later.

But when the group deep in the Styx did not detect any alarm from those early first messages inserted into the HPG network. The go ahead was given that it was at least safeish for the second set of messages to be sent into the ComStar network. Robert would let these messages settle into the ComStar network for a week this time before he was ready to launch his next move. This would give the crewmembers of the Invaders a little more time to settle in and knock any rust off of their skills. Then the two ships would start on their mission to the point, which they would meet up with one of the people that the second set of messages had been sent to the Inner Sphere.

Kimberly Jay and Lora Noone were about to get a surprise note that not only would make them some money, but it would help them in the next steps in their lives. One was that SAFE would be the first group in the Inner Sphere to know that Robert was coming. It would only be by about a week, but it was a week that most others didn't have.

When Robert was ready, and when he thought that the time was right for any new problems to have been found on all three of the interstellar ships. He cleared Jules to dock the Hobgoblin to the long ship. Now they could begin their own run to the populated planets of the Inner Sphere and to see what might have happened while they were gone. The last item that had to be done before they could leave. It was to send codes to all of the spy satellites in this system, which said that they were again on duty. When those devices had sent the acknowledgement signals that they were mission ready. It was time to leave this star system one more time. Robert was hoping that it would see a major change the next time that he was out this way.

In a blink of an eye. The massive Tramp Class ship with her three dropships attached onto it's back and sides, left the star system that held no habitable planets. It was time to start their part of the dance, that could get them all killed. That didn't matter to the crew of the ships called Styx, Hercules, Hobgoblin, and the lion called Bad Kitty. They knew the risks when they had signed up for the mission in the first place

600 light years from New Circe

and closer to Colonial Space.

Captain Felix Gaeta walked around the combat information center of his command with his back ramrod straight, just like he had seen the Oldman do a thousand times on the Bucket. The Colonial ship Zephyr was not a "real" combat ship for the Colonial Navy. At least it was not in the Colonial Navy's eyes back before the surprise attack that started the 2nd Cylon war and blasted all but three Colonial warships into lifeless wrecks. The Cylon had not stopped with just killing warships. No, the Cylons had tried to kill every human in known space.

Now the Zephyr was a "real" warship and it had been commissioned into the Colonial military and she even had been seconded to the great SLDF and their not small navy. Thanks to the repair and shipyards over New Circe and the powerful will of Admiral Adama. The needed modifications had been done, even when most Colonials had not thought much of the idea. The work had been done very quickly, if not all at once. But now the old Zephyr class passenger liner was packing more firepower than the early models of the Valkyrie class Battlestar. Some would say that she was currently a close second only to the Colonial Flagship or other Battlestars in raw firepower.

Felix could not help but smile at thinking about "his" ship. Felix knew that he would never get to command a "real" Battlestar, but he was not disappointed with what he currently had under his command. Felix loved this command as much as the Old Man loved the old Galactica. The ship was beautiful and not one of the powered bricks that the SLDF preferred to paint their flag on. She had style, and grace.

The Zephyr currently was a nice blend of SLiE and Colonial technologies that would stomp the Frakk out of anyone that thought that she was just an old colonial passenger liner. The name of Zephyr had meant a soft gentle breeze. Felix was hoping that soon it would change to mean something was a wolf in sheep's clothing. When they had left Colonial space all of those years ago, she would have been just another easy kill for any single Cylon Raider that might have found her plying the space ways. But not now, and not ever again. Even if she was not carrying any escorts on some of the eight dropship docking collars, that she had been modified to carry on her long and thin hull. She was now a hunter of the deep black. If she was able to get the first shots in? Whoever she was firing at was going to be in for a fight of their lives.

The lady now was packing five turrets each with 20 long ranged missile tubes, but it was just too bad that they were not nuclear capable. They did have good range to take out small craft, and even some of the smaller Cylon warships would get a sand blasting from their very good explosive warheads. They also would be great at taking out any Inner Sphere aerospace fighter that might find them and had the guts, or stupidity to attack her.

His ship was the first one to be modified to carry six of the new space rated class 10 Thunder-Javelin guided missile launchers. The converted passenger liner only had a limited supply of ammunition for those weapons in her cargo holds. In Zephyr's captain's book, this was just the next phase of testing for that weapons system before any main line warship was refitted with the new long ranged and hard-hitting weapon systems.

There also was a spattering of the 5cm class lasers that had been pulled off the older Vipers when they had been brought in for rebuilding. The City State was making a low number of 5cm lasers, they were handmade, but they were making new lasers. The rebuilt older lasers had been scattered over the hull as a last chance anti raider and missile turrets.

These were the only "old" weapons on this lady of the deep black. All along the nose and running down all of the sides were six of the Colonial made Hera class 8cm lasers. The SLiE called them "only" first generation of extended range laser, but they were the best that the Colonial City State could make, and the Zephyr had all of the ones that had been made. The Colonials could not manufacture them in anything like in a factory setting, it was more of a laser cottage industry that was slowly growing. The 8cm lasers were handmade in a shop behind the only college of higher learning in the City State. She also had two dozen laser anti-missile systems that had been donated by the SLDF Navy along with a dozen of the Colonial named Hoses of Death class autocannons.

All of that firepower was nice, but thanks to the recovery of so many Inner Sphere tech level warships over the last few years. Zephyr had been planned to use these recovered weapons for some time before they were finally affixed to her hull and internal spaces. It had taken some time to not only get the warships, but then the heavy capital scale Naval weapons had to be pulled off of the recovered hulls. And then a lengthy repairing and refitting process had to be dealt with for the heavy weapons. Not all of them had survived this attention of the repair crews, but the best heavy cannons were returned to service.

Now the Zephyr was packing a twin Naval class 10 autocannon turret on each of her firing arcs. The twin mounts were a mishmash of cannon and turret designs made by Luxor, Armstrong, Whirlwind, Imperator and Capellan but they all worked. Each of those firing arcs also had a single old SLDF White Shark class missile tube to add in some firepower without needing to worry about recoil or constant heat stress of a capital scale autocannon. Felix was even able to make sure that each of those missile tubes had four 50kton Santa Anna warheads to fix to the missile's bodies in there smaller missel magazines. The warheads had been supplied by the SLDF along with a full load of "normal" High explosive warheads for those missiles.

The Colonial City State could only slowly make a handful of missiles that the two Battlestars could use in this war against the Cylons each month. Adama had decided that any other Colonial ship that might be able to pack a missile battery. It would be fitted to use SLDF designed and even SLDF made missile weapons. Felix had a feeling that it would not be too much longer before the two old Colonial warships would be brought back in repair slips, and they would be refitted to fire only SLDF standardized missile weapons. That change alone would reduce the logistics needed in supporting the combined fleets of these two powers. Felix had been pushing for exactly something like that to happen for a few years now, and he would keep pushing that idea as hard as his rank would let him.

The only weapons that he wished that he could have mounted on his ship, which had not been affixed to her hull, had been heavy energy and particle cannons class weapons. The ship just could not generate enough power to fire any weapons like that. Then there was the whole heat management issues those huge power hogs produced, when they were fired. The thought of what the recoil of one of those capital scale gauss cannons would have done to his ship didn't bare to be thought about. Now if this had been a purpose-built warship, that would be a very different beast.

Right now, Felix's ship could fire all of her weapons with only a little worry about the heat buildup they would generate. It was still up for debate about how long she could fire all of her current weapons before she started killing her own crew with the heat buildup. But it should be long enough to finish the battle or run away from one that looked like she was going to lose.

Felix had seen the classified notes about his ship, and he knew that it would take a complete rebuilt for her to be able to be fitted with the smallest capital scale energy weapons or gauss rifle. He also knew that something like that was not going to happen any time soon. There were so many people throwing out "good ideas" about future warships for the Colonial Navy, that a whole board was set up just to handle that issue. Not that any would ever see the light of day in the next decade.

####

When Felix finished making the rounds around this impressive if improvised command center, he went back to the data table that was in the center of the room. He pulled up some data, as they waited to make their next jump. They would be leaving this area of space in the next few hours if the engineer gave them a green light. They had been moving quickly and with longer jumps than someone from the prewar Colonial Navy would have thought was possible in their wildest dreams. This speed and long range jumps were only thanks to the updating of the computers that the SLiE had made to plot the jumps. They had been moving so fast, that now they would need to stop for the engines to cool down enough for the snipes of the engine room to check them out, before another round of interstellar traveling could begin.

While Felix was enjoying the quiet time as the crew worked around him, he pulled up his orders for this mission. This was the first time that this ship had been this close to old Colonial space since fleeing the Cylons the first time. Afterwards it had supported a few missions out this way, but this was a first solo mission and this deep. Now it was about to cross that line where it was going to be closer to old Colonial space than it was to New Circe. Normally this was the area for one of the colonial movers or the Rising Star to be working or even one of the SLDF or Colonial Navy's main warships. The Zephyr had been chosen for this run due to her larger size, speed, and firepower.

On one of those other runs in this part of space, a message had been passed to Ragnar Station. They were about the missions that the station now was going to be needing to support. Ragnar station was told to pass along to the teams working on the old colonial planets that they needed to change their focus. Now they needed to pull all the civilians out of the wrecked planets that had been the Colonies of Kobal. That was a lot of people to have to deal with, but not as much as one would have hoped to have survived the war that had started with the human population of over 20 billion souls.

One of the roles that Zephyr was to play besides taking anyone that was ready to leave in her opened old state rooms. They were also dropping off a lot of equipment and people with some special skills at Ragnar station that would need to be shifted to the ex-colonial planets. The one downside of Felix's mission orders was that he had no idea how many souls and other items the Zephyr was going to pick up. The one plus side was that he could stay for a wide window if he thought that it would better meet the spirit of his orders.

The largest items that Felix would be dropping off were the pair of 100ton modified Neptune class submarines and their specialized crews. These two ships would join the other vessel of this type in operation, but they would be placed on two of the other planets in the Cyrannus system. Only these two Neptune class ships would not have any battle armor support assigned to them for their operations. In their place would be "normal" combat troops, cargo, spare parts, or evacuees being pulled off of those planets.

The Zephyr was also carrying other people that would be going on missions around old Colonial space that was not directly connected with recon or combating the invading Cylons. Over a third of the people being carried today had not been living in the City State when they were loaded onto small craft to shuttle them out of the gravity well. And most of the remaining had more than a passing working relationship with the Ka'la'tha before the fall of the Colonies. This one fact was not well known to the rest of the Zephyr's crew.

Felix accesses the data that had been given to him by the current leader of the Colonials and tried to make since of it. She had given him some "advice" on the official documents that she was legally required to pass to him. But it had been Admiral Adama that had given him a better idea of what was going on behind the scenes in the Colonial City State. The Quorum had put a lot of "effort" into coming up with a list of items that they thought were needed to be recovered by "all" ground forces in Colonial space. It would seem that the political body would not accept the fact that they could not give orders to military people that fell under the command of the SLDF. That was why so many Colonials were on this run to the cinder worlds. They would have to at least pay lip service to the political body in question, but the notes from the Old Man said that he had their back if things went sideways about trying to fill that over two dozen page list.

The "official" list of items that they were needing to be recovered from the Cyrannus system, that Felix had seen the draft of. It had seemingly been drawn up by someone that should have been issued a SLDF "I love me" jacket for their own safety along with a regiment of heavy drugs. When Felix had asked if they were to look for tool shops, that were not on the lists he had seen? The Old Man had told him that it would be a very rare tool in Colonial space that was even up to Age of War tech tools. Or even older tools that they could get from out of storage from the Wolverines or from the trickle that Copeland was bringing in. Then Felix had asked if they had room?

Adama had relented and with a shoulder shrug had told that by all means. "You can grab what you can, if you have the room. We will sort it all out later when we have the time and extra room."

Laura and Bill also were not to worried about him bringing a whole temple of any kind, back to New Circe. They were to find art, museum pieces, and any small but high valued items that were connected to Colonial history. If they had room? They could bring back whatever was safe to steal, er pack down from the old home worlds. They were to hit the libraries for books, magazines, and data files of any kind. When in doubt, they were to pack it down and try to get it back to Ragnar Station. When Felix had made a comment that they were going to be a pack of locusts or ants on the bones of their people. He had been rewarded by a smile from the President and she had said one word. "Yes."

Felix knew that every person that had skills in what someone from the Wolverines would have called safe crackers and the Colonial City State officially said were lock smiths and other "special skills". All of them had been activated for a tour off planet, whether they wanted to go or not. As far as Felix knew, the special skills people were the only ones with a complete list of wanted items supplied by someone high in the government. Still the key resources that were needed to be recovered, were the people that had survived this long living under the noses of the Cylons. They had skills and the drive that could be used by the rest of the Colonials in this war.

#####

Felix stifles a yawn, and he checks the time on a Victorian made pocket watch attached to his pants. It was an old tech device but he like the feel of the cool metal in his hands even when he was not checking the time. Besides the deep and detailed engravings on the outside as well as insides of the device, they touched something in his soul. It had only cost him his back up Colonial pistol that he had carried after Starbuck had shot him in the leg.

He had already found a replacement weapon, and this one was something called a holdout needler from the Inner Sphere company called Ceres Arms. It was like a small handheld shotgun. It would not work against Centurions, but Felix was more worried about softer and lighter built threats. Shoot me once shame on you. Shoot me twice shame on me for not shooting you first. He had no idea that it was noticed that he scratched his new leg less now that he had the pocket watch.

Felix had to fight to keep his face from changing at seeing the time on the popped open device. He was well into his off shift, and he had not even noticed the last shift change of the CIC happening around him while he worked. If he didn't get some sleep soon, he would have to sleep while they made the next jump. The thought of being asleep during a jump was enough to make you lose your lunch before the event. He had done it one time; it had been back when they were jumping every 33 minutes running from the whole Cylon Fleet. It had felt like he had been kicked in the genitals by a bear, electrocuted, and being drowned all at exactly the same time.

Felix gives a shudder and puts all the data files away, and he fights down a smile as the digital device powered down to its standby screen. He had grown so used to working with computers, that he had not even thought about "how" he had been viewing this data. He mentally marked it up to how much the Colonials had changed over the last few years living on New Circe. He had to admit that sometimes computers made your life easier, and other times he doubted that they were worth the effort to build them.

#######

Six hours later Captain Gaeta walked back onto the mixed tech ship's command center that was the heart of his ship. Not for the first time after getting his captain's rank. Felix was wondering how Bill Adama had been able to spend so many hours "on" duty, and then return just as fresh for his next full shift a few hours later. Felix thought that it seemed like the elder Adama had been able to spend 20 hours a day in the Command Center of the old Battlestar Galactica. That had been back when they were fleeing from the Cylons, and he had rarely seemed to tire under the stress of that war. Bill Adama seemed to be made of battle steel like the hide of his beloved Flagship. Maybe they just made the survivors of the first Cylon war out of different substances then the younger generations.

Felix took in a breath and made a mental note that he needed to have a private talk with the Admiral when he returned to New Circe. Felix wanted to see if he had any pointers for a young ship's master that he had not been able to soak up yet. After all there was not a command school over Picon to teach him any of those old timer tricks passed down from older warship commanders anymore. The SLDF Navy also had not set a school like that up in all of their years of hiding. You did the job out of skill or luck, or you were replaced. It was that simple for the Star League in Exile. You could do the job, or they would keep looking for someone that could do the job.

Felix checked the plotting table that held the "planned" route that his ship was to take. Those additional jump calculations had not been done yet, and the planned line was more of a guideline than a hard and fast course that had to be taken by his lone ship. Felix walked over and checked some of the data coming out of the SLiE made standalone jump computer, and it seemed right to him. He took his time walking from the computer over to the helm station, and that was all the time he had to set up this game. This was something that the older Adama had pointed out to as being acceptable for a younger ship's master, but only until his new crew got used to him.

Felix drops the plastic like page with a long series of numbers on the station without walking behind it. "Helm, this is our next jump." Then Felix pitched his voice to carry to all corners of the room, like a now long dead NCO had taught him to do when he was a younger man. "Prepare the ship to jump! Put 30 seconds on the clock."

###

30 seconds later. The one-time passenger liner moved 24 light years closer to what had been Colonial space before this new war. "Sir, we have arrived! The computer is working on the next jump coordinates and taking observations and collecting stellar data. The jump engines are green."

Felix gave a short nod to let the speaker know that he had heard what had been said by the Helm station. "Good! Put two hours on the clock and let the engineer crew know that we will be making at least four more jumps today, unless they have reasons not to."

Felix had to hide his smile as this well-trained crew went about their tasks that needed to be done post jump. He had made a show of always checking the first set of jump coordinates of the day. It was more to show the bridge crew that he was checking the work of the computer. He was trading on his history as doing that job back on the Galactica without needing a computer to help him with the hard math, that had to be done fast and accurately or people died. After that, he did not fill the need to do that show again, and in truth. He didn't have the time to run that kind of game all day long. It was the type of game that Bill had said that he could overuse, and it would lose its effectiveness as the crew gained experience.

Speaking of time, Felix was neck deep in work when a voice cut through the command center like a knife. The person was manning a set of equipment that had come out of the experience of the SLiE detection systems built around New Circe to defend against possible clan jumpships. The SLDF systems had been able to detect "normal" jumpships as a way to help with the defense of New Circe. Any advanced warning would mean that many more defenders making it to their weapons. With that starting point, add in lots of money, lots of brain power, some time, add in a dash of luck, and shake thoroughly. You might just come up with something groundbreaking.

They had been able to detect even a Cylon made jump drive before it dumped a ship nearby. Where they could detect a "normal" jumpship from the Inner Sphere with at least ten minutes of warning, and sometimes as long as almost half an hour forewarning of the "attack". Against Colonial and Cylon style drives? This notice was at best 90 seconds long, and that was against Cylon capital ships. It was not as great against Heavy Raiders, and it had never been tested against the last mod of smaller Raider class craft that the Cylon Empire might still have. By the time that the SLDF and Colonials had a viable test system built, they did not have any Raiders with working jump engines to test this system against.

"Sir! Jump incoming. Cylon type drive. 96 seconds and counting!" The person running the system didn't need to tell the Captain that it was going to be a Capital ship or more than one of them. Then again it could be a bunch of smaller Cylon ships.

Felix was reacting before he could think. "Action stations! Launch the ready Vipers! Alert the Barge for combat!"

All that Felix could do now was wait to see what was going to happen next. They could jump, but this was a warship, and they needed to know what this maybe enemy ship or ships might be and what they might be doing. A warship's job was "just" not all about blowing enemy warships out of the local space at the drop of a hat. There also was a scouting and information gathering job that they not only could do, but it was required of them to do as a core mission set.

####

The Barge was a new idea that was being tested, just like the ship mounted single large warhead Thunder-Javelin missile launchers and targeting system. It was a way to add more aerospace fighters to any interstellar capable craft but be less crew intensive than just having a carrier dropship attached to their hulls. Finding enough space rated crews was becoming more and more of a problem as the needs for them outstripped the supply.

The Barge had started with just a hulked hull of an old dropship that was not deemed worth the effort to fully bring back into service or to transfer to the planet's surface. About all it needed to have was a sound outer hull. The hull would have a power and a distribution system for it, but not any plasma thruster engines. It also needed a tug to be moved around from interstellar ships. It didn't have a command crew and it had only the barest minimal support crews for the Barge, and they were there just to maintain the hull and fighter bay equipment.

The Barge that the Zephyr currently was carrying happened to be a modified and updated DroST IIB class dropship. With a daisy chained fusion power units from old combat units to provide life support and heat for the rest of the crew. They had "only" been able to add 10 aerospace fighter bays to the old and recovered hull. It had no weapons, due to needing to plate over the whole hull with layers of recovered hull armor from other hulked dropships. The work had been done by some of the teams still in training. They could not do anything complex, and the work was not pretty. But the armor was thick, and it was well attached to the frames. Think of it as an armored pimple on the side of the huge colonial ship, just waiting to pop out a brace of attack craft.

The limited crew of the Barge was pulled from some of the oldest members of the active SLDF Navy, but the fighters and maintenance staff were pulled from the SLDF ground units. The Navy was tasked out with all of the needed missions for all of its fighter craft, but some of the ground units were not nearly tasked to this level. So, the idea was put forward to rotate organic aerospace fighters from ground units to be used to support missions for the Navy in the deep black. These taskings also helps to keep the skills on those ground units up to near the same level as what the Navy was achieving. Skill creep had been noticed after the first few years of this war, and many ways were looked at to level the combat skills of the aerospace fighters.

At least that was the idea that was being tested out, and a dozen Rapier class aerospace fighters were loaded onto this Barge. Only 10 could be used in combat at any one time, and the other two were in storage with the rest of the spare parts and ammunition. It would only take a few days to get those two spacecraft ready for combat, and they were considered more as combat replacements instead of ready fighters for combat. The two extra pilots gave them a pool to draw off of, and they were extra pilots to share the patrol duties.

Now these Rapiers were not the Bauer Enterprises made RPR-100 or even the 100b that the SLDF Royal commands used. These were RPR-100b-ECs, and they were something that Clan Wolverine had been making even before fleeing Clan space. The Clan engineers had started with that royal design and improved on it with lessons learned in combat and new weapons technology. The first generation 8cm pulse lasers were replaced with full clan tech level ones, and then the old LRM-20 was replaced with a lighter Improved LRM-20 system that one of the other clans had traded to Clan Wolverine for resources that they didn't have access to. The freed-up mass was used to increase the armor, number of heatsinks, and more ammunition for the Autocannon and missile launcher. That extra ammunition was greatly needed in the types of fighting that had been the taking back of the original worlds settled by the SLDF.

The 5cm first generation pulse laser was replaced with a clan grade 3cm extended range weapon. That last modification had been done in a refit after the coming of the Colonials to New Circe. The extra mass was used to fit one of the laser anti-missile systems that fighting the Cylons almost required. They were 85ton death dealing machines, if a little slow to fight Raiders.

####

The duty crews on the Zephyr were manning weapons around the ship, but it was not "ready" for a major battle. She was not toothless, but the longer her crews had to get ready for battle the better the converted passenger liner would perform. From the Zephyr's hull came four Vipers and a pair of Avars, only a few seconds after the alert orders had come out of the captain's mouth. It would be a few minutes more before the rest of the mixed force of 40 Vipers and Avars, which were carried within this craft's hull to launch into space. Even if there was only one Cylon capital ship in the force that had been detected? The Zephyr was going to be outnumbered in the terms of numbers of attack craft. Then again human small craft being outnumbered by the Cylons was just another Monday morning in this war. Frak anytime that the Humans were not outnumbered in one form or the other would be cause for being noted in ship's dispatches.

Felix looked up just in time to see the raw data that was mirrored on other manned stations. He saw the Cylon ship "appear" as if by magic. Then a second ship, and a third, and more ships just "popped" into being. In less than the span of a dozen heartbeats, ten new spaceships arrived at what would have been called long range before this new war. By now both sides were very knowledgeable on the advantages each side's Warcraft had at any given range of combat. All they needed to know was the class of ship that they were fighting at the time. It was knowledge that had cost both sides a lot of blood to gain.

The tactical station sang out when it looked like no more enemy ships were going to party crash the lone human ship. "Two modified Hades II class Basestars and eight other ships. Looks like a convoy of transports with a pair of heavy escorts."

Felix was taking in the data and planning on how he should react. The Hades class Basestars where hold overs from the early days of the first Cylon war. They had been showing up in greater and greater numbers for the last few years of this new war. The SLIC reported that this design was coming back into use because of the issues that SLS Nike had caused the hybrids on the new model Cylon capital sized warships.

The first ships of this class to see battle in this new war against the humans had been just vessels that had been pulled out of storage. There only major modifications that had been made to them before they were returned to battle was some salvaged armor plates. Those plates had come from the battlefields that had wiped out the Colonial war fleet. After Adama had shown that he could and would return to those wrecked planets. The Cylons had expended great effort to first collect and then recycled those wrecked human ships.

By now that resource of ready to use high quality armor plates was depleted, and the Cylon Empire had to react to the changes one more time. Those supplies coming from the wrecked colonial warships had bought time for the Number Ones to bring on more armor production facilities online. Those new production facilities were mostly done using recovered material from the Colonial planets and space facilities that were not slagged by nuclear weapons or the heat of reentering a planet's atmosphere.

The same had been true of the weapons that they were fitting onto Cylon heavy ships. They had first come from old Colonial ships and then newly made from recovered machines. Some Colonial ships were just repaired and modified to fit the Cylons needs and sent into battle against the humans. And now that supply was very thin for more replacements. Now the Number Ones were also making more of "their own" designs of ships to fight the humans. The original Hades class Basestar was at their core a Raider support ship with limited Close in Weapons, Missile tubes, and heavy weapons, but it did have thick armor to protect the Raider strike force. The Hades was the base for the following generations of Basestars used at the start of this war.

The "new" Hades class of Basestar now had a hull that was twice as thick as the old first-generation of Hades. It was now as thick as the old Galactica's had been, when she had been about to be turned into a museum for civilians. It was not as thick as it had been when the old Jupiter class Battlestar had been in her prime or on the new Dreadstars and other Cylon Command ships.

The close in weapons systems were copies of the old 50mm cannons used by the Colonials along with the Heavy Cannons that had been on Valkyrie class Battlestars. The heavier cannons that were of the size mounted on the Colonial Mercury class Battlestars, were reserved for use only on "main line" Cylon Empire ships. The Raiders and Heavy Raiders carried on the Hades Basestars were the same as used by the "newer" Cylon ships at the sharp point of battle between human and Cylon. The Hades were also used as a ferry craft to bring up replacement small craft for the active fleet.

The Cylons were working with a very long supply chain to fight the Colonials and to find the Star League's home planet. The Cylons were slowly expanding bases that could support the fleet, but that took time to build. And while those bases were being built? They were a drain on the supplies that were being brought forward for the fighting fleet to use. This had caused another issue with the Cylons and their well laid out plans.

They had not been planning on fighting a long war with the Colonials. So, the Ones had made sure to not only target warship capable building slips, but he had gone after the Civilian building slips as well and at the same time. After the first phase of the new war with the humans, all of those slips and the factories needed to support them were radioactive slag or shooting stars over a dozen nuked planets. Still with each base complete the supply line could be extended that much further from Colonials and Cylon Empire space.

Besides building new warships, now the Number Ones had to build the needed slips to make the ships to support the battle fleet with all manner of needed supplies. Now the Cylons were thought of as just being smart computers by the colonials before the new war, and in some ways they were. But the Number Ones came with huge egos as mental baggage to chain and degrade that computing power. At first, they had used recovered Colonial made freighters and other vessels to fight and support the fighting against what had remained of the Colonials and their Star League allies.

It had taken time for the Cylons to come up with a set of "True Cylon" ships of the needed mission support classes. Those classes of True Cylon ships were only just coming online, and there were still too few of them to totally replace all of the "captured" Colonial ships that the Cylons were currently using. This was one of the first Cylon support convoys that would be made up of only "true" Cylon ships. The Number Ones had been planning on using it as another bat to keep the rest of the human forms in line.

###

Felix smiled as he took in the data flowing into the command center like water out of a firehose. He had no idea what those other ships might be packing, they were not using the same electronics that had been seen on the many classes of Basestars and other Cylon ships that had been seen so far. The Cylons might have had better jump drives at the start of the war, but that was not true any longer thanks to the SLiE. The SLiE had supplied computers to colonial ships that could counter most of that Cylon advantage. Still the Cylon jump drives needed to cool down between those long jumps. Long jumps just like this little convoy had just done.

On an instinctual level, Felix knew how long it would before his lady could jump again. That would be in 7 minutes and 23 seconds and not a second more. Thanks to the information gained from the human forms that had come over to the human's side. The colonials had a very good idea of the window that a Cylon warship needed before it could make its next jump of any length after a long jump. That time was between 11 and 17.6 minutes for the Hades class Basestar. That was how long this battle was going to last, one way or the other.

Felix pitched his voice to carry to his command crew. "We are going to Baker 4. Keep the range open, and let's see how many toasters we can removed from space before they run from us!"

It was still rare, but it was not that rare for the human fleets to be able to force the Cylons to leave the battlefield first. Felix had no idea if he had enough firepower to force the Cylons to run or not, but he was going to try for the next 7 minutes and 20 seconds to do just that.

Cylon resupply convoy Kappa 7.

The Number One pulled out his hands all the way out of the wet interface with a jerk of surprise that had been too powerful to control. That device had been one of the many internal changes that had been made on this Hades IIA class Basestar. The Ones had taken over all of the key leadership positions and all of the other of the most important commands within the Cylon Empire. Some of the other human form lines had tried to take some leading roles within the Empire, but so far, they had proven that they could not handle tasks at this level.

This convoy was one of the most important convoys that had been sent out from the Hub to date, and a Number One was its commander. All of the remaining human form Cylons were equal, it was just that some human forms were more equal than other human form Cylons. The Ones had not even thought about offering for one of the other lines to do this mission.

Besides carrying the "normal" war material that would be expected of a military convoy. This fleet was full of human form husks, that were needed to replenish the resurrection ships supporting the war effort. This war had already cost more than even the worst-case numbers, which had been generated by the maddest and oldest of the early generation hybrid form Cylons that was still alive. This cargo was not something that could be trusted to one of the other and less capable of the Cylon lines. And the Ones had taken command without any of the other lines "noticing" or at least they were not voicing that they noticed that the event had taken place.

That could be because the Ones had not told the other lines that the level of human form husks was getting dangerously low near the conflict zones. It was felt that this information would weaken the Ones positions among the rest of the human form lines. And the last thing that the Ones wanted was to give the rest of the lines any reason to want to slow down this war. The One thought that they needed a major win to stay as the leaders of the Cylon Empire.

So, to find a Colonial ship this close to the supply routes that some of the Cylon Empire supply fleet used on a regular basis was a shock. The One put his hands back into the wet interface and gave orders to his ship and the rest of the fleet at the speed of Cylon thought. There was no way that they could jump, at least not without doing major damage to her engines and possible miss jump of the transports. He ordered all of the Heavy Raiders to launch to screen the rest of the Cylon fleet. Those expendable craft would need to buy time for the jump engines to cool down.

As the Command One gave those orders, a second One was reviewing the data coming into the "flagship" of the convoy. As the data came in, it was quickly worked out that this was not a Star League combat vessel. In seconds the old looking Cylons knew that what type of Colonial vessel this might be. It was with very little surprise, that the class of ship was known to have been with Adama when he found those "other" humans. But Adama only had one of this class of ship, and what were the odds that the Cylons would find it out here and without its own escort. Not for the first time, the One's were wishing that the Colonials had kept the IFF working on the ships that were called the Rag Tag Fleet even by those not carried by those vessels. He passed the data over to the Commander One, but he decided to voice this information also.

The One looked over to the Commander of the convoy. "It's a Zephyr class passenger liner, most likely from Adama's fleet."

The Command One had a look of surprise that he would only have been allowed to be seen when he was alone with others of his line. "Zephyr? Are you sure?"

The sensor data station One let a certain tone color his voice. "Yes. The ring on the back is quite distinctive, and it gives a very distinctive return on DRADIS."

The Commander One made his back go straighter, and his hands came just a little out of the wet interface. "So, a passenger liner. We should be able to take out one old passenger liner with our two capital ships. Move us closer to the human ship. Ready the missile tubes and start firing when they are in range of our heavy weapons."

####

This one order was going to cause some unexpected problems for the Cylons. The cargo ships were not "manned" by human forms. The Ones had repurposed the now little used Raider class biomatter command systems. It had taken three of those "pilots" to control the larger multi use cargo haulers the Cylons were making in ever larger numbers. The only reason that it had not taken more of those biomatter control units to do the work, was that the ships were slower and not armed heavy enough to stop more than a fly or other small bug. And hitting a fly at these speeds might have sent one of them back to the repair yards for the skin repair. The Ones had decided that having too much armor would cut down on cargo space that each of the ships could have. When the Cylon Flagship had passed the word to close with the lone Colonial ship? The eight cargo ships had followed right behind the two heavy Cylon warships like dutiful children.

A rapidly growing wave of Cylon Heavy Raiders started flowing towards the lone Colonial ship that seemed to have been shocked into inaction by the sudden arrival of the Cylon fleet. With the Cylon fleet dumping their flight decks and coming closer to the human ship. The outnumbered Colonials Vipers and Avars formed a line drawn in space between the Cylon fleet and colonial ship. The humans looked like a target ripe for the picking.

The Zephyr, for her part, was working on keeping the range open as the Cylons tried to close on the smaller and maybe faster ship. Felix had made sure that the ship's crew was as well trained as he could make them, and that training showed as it moved around the edge of the local space doing whatever mission that she had been given. While it moved around in this battle, it would randomly change thrusting velocity, inclination, and its declination as rapidly as the crew could coax the long ship to make. It was something that only a very well-trained crew could do on the fly, and not have each individual shift of the ship being planned out in great detail by her captain or their staff.

The outnumbered human fighters were holding most of the Heavy Raiders at bay, at least until they ran out of the externally mounted long ranged Lightening-Javelin guided missiles. Then the fighting was closer ranged for the small friends to deal with their enemies. The Vipers were faster but lighter, and they could not carry as many missiles, armor, and other defensive systems as heavier craft like the SLDF used.

The Avar was at the light end for a Clan Fighter, but it was almost as massive as a Colonial made Raptor. It was not as agile as a Viper or the old Raiders, but besides packing more KEWs than the Mark VIIs. It also had clan grade 5cm pulse lasers in each of her wings, which would not need ammunition to keep it combat effective. The newest upgraded Heavy Raider might stand up to age of war level 5cm laser, unless it was a lucky hit. The clan grade pulse energy weapon was almost always getting a kill with a single hit on the heaviest Raider that the Cylons currently had fielded. Oh, and the Avar was fast, and she could fight for days without needing to return to its mother ship thanks to the Fusion engine mounted behind the pilot along with a fuel tank that massed over half of a MK II Viper.

When the battle between the small craft got into close range, it thinned out the Colonials ability to counter the wall of Cylon missiles heading towards the lone Colonial ship. The fighters were now more worried about staying alive and less worried about their ride home. Then came the larger, slower, but fewer fighters that had come out of the two launch bays in the old cargo doors of the Barge. Now all of the Human aerospace fighters were in space that could be launched.

The larger airframe of the Rapier had been first designed for the Old SLDF military. These were a lot younger airframes in use by the SLiE and SLDF, but they were still older than even the Mk II Vipers pulled from Colonial service. Only they had been fitted with one of the laser anti-missile systems, that was something that the Vipers could not mount. Only front-line units like jump fighters would be outfitted with more than one of those newer weapons. But every fighter that could mount one of them, had one of those ammunition less counter missile weapons fitted to their hulls.

The ten updated Rapiers had ten little circles around them that would at least try to kill any Cylon capital missiles that came close to these craft. They were effective for about half of the attempts to stop those huge missiles and every one of them had been nuclear tipped. This reduces the attacking missiles closing on the Zephyr. Still, this was only the second layer of missile defense for the Colonial and the SLDF Navy according to their now joint TTP (tactics, techniques, and procedures) in how to deal with Cylon missile spam.

The next layer of anti-missile defense came in the form of the ship's flak barrier. This should have been put out by Colonial made heavy cannons, but the Zephyr was not fitted with the Colonial made heavy coil guns. Her old hull could not handle the stress of firing them without ripping them off the hull or cracking the hull of the civilian designed ship like a dried twig. What it did have, was a dozen of the HODs type cannons mounted in her hull. Now these cannons had started life as Colonial's last-ditch defense against Raider and missiles. Then Adama had run into the SLiE and they had quickly become so much more.

The HODs had some Star league technology added as part of this design of the weapon and ammunition. This addition had added muzzle velocity, destructive capability, and range to the Colonial based close in weapons. They "only" had about half the range of even the notoriously short range of the Valkyrie's main cannons, and a third of the range of the cannons fitted to the Jupiter class Battlestar at the start of the 1st Cylon war. Still, they were fitted with a flak or cluster round that could be used to counter Raiders, Heavy Raiders, and missiles.

Any missiles that made it through the thin Flak barrier of the Zephyr had to finally come into the range of the two dozen anti-missile laser systems spread around her hull. All of these layers of defense still didn't stop all of the missiles being launched at the converted liner from two full, if older designed Basestars. Thanks to the SLDF, Cylon Rebels, and hard work by Baltar. They had software loaded into the fire control computer that would point out the nuclear armed missiles first. And those missiles had been given special attention by the gunners on the human ships.

It was not long before the Zephyr was starting to receive hits on the armor plates that had been added to her normally very thin outer hull. If the thick outer layer of armor was pierced, then a newer, if thinner, layer of armor had been added to the first inner corridors for one last bit of defense for the ship. That new layer of armor had come off recovered hulked dropships that the SLDF had found over the last few years. So far none of the Cylon hits where nuclear warheads had been hiding among the "normal" missiles that had survived to hit the modified ship.

####

The Zephyr was not the only ship in this part of space that was taking damage in the exchange of capital scale weapons fire. The Cylons had been dealing with HNPPCs and what the SLDF Navy called NAC 40s as the primary weapons of the combined human fleet. The cannons mounted on the Zephyr were smaller and fired a lighter shell, but it had much longer ranged than the class 40 naval autocannons. It was a sniper, and it was the perfect weapon for how this commander was going to be using the space-based weapon. The Cylons were used to missiles being the longest ranged weapon after small craft that the humans could throw against them.

The converted passenger liner was not a Battlestar, even with all of the weapons and armor that she had been fitted with. The bow and chin mounted twin turrets would fire in a 2, 4, 2, 4, 4, and 2 sequences of the shells leaving the ship. The first two heavy naval autocannon shells missed the lead Hades Basestar that had been targeted, but one of those shells had hit one of the Cylon freighters following the warship like a lost puppy. That one hit was not enough to kill the Cylon made cargo ship, but it was enough to knock it out of the fleet battle and any type of formation that the three sets of biomatter might have been trying to keep.

Hades IIA 05 took four of the next NAC rounds on the lower disk that made up the lower half of the Cylon warship. The hard outer layers of the armor were able to withstand the first two impacting shells, but in doing so the armor was spent. The follow-on two heavy shells easily passed through what remained of the armor and the weak hull metal on the lower front bow of the Cylon warship.

The pair of SLDF made heavy shells only made it a few dozen meters into the Cylon warship's lower hull, before coming to a crashing stop. If these had been Colonial made shells for their powerful coil guns carried on Battlestars and other heavy warships? This would not have been the last of the damage those shells had caused the enemy vessel. As it was, the solid shells just came to a "crashing" stop within the hull of the Basestar in a shower of metal fragments and secondary gassing going out the hole they had just made in the hull.

The hits from the NAC shells sent shockwaves bouncing threw out that part of the warship like a church bell at a noble's wedding. That shockwave was not just one wave, but four waves of shaking that had hit close together in time but slightly offline of each other. The Cylon ship would have been better survived if the hits had been closer together. These energy waves caused a few "minor" secondary issues for the Cylon warship in areas that were not even close to the weapons strikes.

Those minor issues with shockwaves in the Hades IIA design was known to the Number Ones. To date it was limited to "minor" power disruptions to the close in weapons, as far as they knew. All of the close in weapons ship wide shut down in a blink of an eye, right along with the power to most of the ship, and then the fuel pumps to one of the engines went offline. This "minor" loss of power let two huge White Shark class missiles slip threw to strike the warship next. If those two missiles would have hit in the same area of the lower hull as the four NAC shells had. It would have put that Basestar out of the battle, and it would have ended the current lives of the crew that called the ship home. But Murphy had other ideas.

Instead, the top disk of the Hades took this pair of hits from the human missiles. The huge high explosive tipped missiles caused more damage than the combined damage of the four cannon shells. The still moving, if not in a straight line, Basestar was leaving a cloud of metal in its wake that should have been listed as a navigation hazard. The damage Basestar was slowly falling out of formation with its sister ship. It had fires raging all along the top and inside of both hull disks.

The fire that was the top of the Hades class ship was burning the fiercest and shooting flames hundreds of meters into space like blow torches the size of small cars. It was not totally out of the battle, but it was out of the battle for now. And the rest of the fleet was still charging into the guns of the lone colonial ship. A lone ship that now seemed to have more teeth than the Command Number One had thought possible.

The now out of control capital ship slammed into one of the trailing freighters at a speed reserved for the gods. That much mass moving at that speed, could only have one possible reaction to them touching hulls. Both ships became a joint….very energetic reaction. It went BOOM, big bada boom. A lot of Number Ones got to see that boom from the front row seat, and they were joined by a lower percentage of the other lines that were crewing the capital warship. It was just too bad that Number One hulks were in short supply at the nearest Resurrection point.

The Zephyr had already fired off four more sets of shells towards the Cylon fleet. They were not speed of light weapons, so they had been fired where the computers and fire control crews "thought" that the enemy warship might be, but only when the shells reached that area. It was a game of math, chess, and checkers all in one. It was one of the reasons that good warship gunnery crews were so hard to find. It was often more luck than skill, and sometimes it was better to be lucky than good four days out of five.

Those hard shells had not found the battle damaged Cylon capital ship to…..kiss. Those NAC 10 solid shots found some of the more fragile freighters that were charging in "behind" the two heavy warships. Even not meaning to hit the cargo ships, did not lesson the results of those weapons strikes on their thin hulls. What happened next would not have been possible if the Zephyr had been using Coil guns shooting High Explosive rounds at the enemy fleet.

The Zephyr hit three of those freighters with the capital scale weapons dead on their thinly armored noses. The closing speed between cannon shells and ships had pushed those hard tipped SLDF designed shells length wise down the cargo ships. They just kept going longitudinally down those ships, until they hit the engine blocks towards the aft of the cargo ships. Those cargo ships had not "lived" to enjoy the attention that the human ship's weapons had just given them. Just like that, the Cylon convoy had lost half of the badly needed freighters and the cargos within their hulls. And the humans had not been trying to hit them, yet

####

Felix smiled as he saw the first of the two Hades class Battlestars die under the guns that he commanded. Not for the first time, he had wished that they had nuclear rounds for those huge cannons to fire at the Cylon ships. The Colonial Navy had been working on being able to fire cans of sunshine out of their heavy cannons even before the first Cylon war. The problem with that idea had been in two major parts. One was the EM interference that was caused by the colonial made Coil guns when they needed to fire the shells in the first place. And the second issue was the high g loading any electronics would have to endure when those same shells were launched/fired down the barrels. You know it is not just the little things that can cause a headache for the engineers. Sometimes it was the big things that just would not cooperate.

Felix had at first, had high hopes that somehow the SLiE would have some magic knowledge that would fix those issues. Ones that the colonials had not been able to overcome in a few decades of trying. But now he had less hope that he would ever see nuclear rounds for "his" capital scale cannons, at least not in his lifetime. It had only taken firsthand reviewing the technical specifications for the shells that his NACs fired to get him to realize this unkind fact of life.

Even Felix's "light" naval autocannons put a g loading on the shells, that was over twice as high as what the cannons mounted on the Jupiter class Battlestar forced on to their shells when they were fired. The g loading the Jupiter Battlestar used had been at the upper limit for Colonial electronics, and it was why the cannons on the Mercury class vessels were larger. If you cannot get the shells to go faster, than you need to make them hit harder. It was the old math problem of Mass times velocity squared = pain at the other end of the cannon. Those same high g loading issues had even stopped the SLDF from being able to fit those Naval class autocannon shells with any plain old explosive fillers and fuses.

With the battle now well and truly started, Felix was ready to change his tactics before the Cylons could start to make him react to them, instead of the Cylons reacting to the human's actions. "Helm! Take us down their throats. Any weapon that can't hit the frakking Basestar needs to find another Cylon to kill."

Only a few seconds later the Zephyr made a radical change of course and actions. It just happened to coincide with a half dozen missiles strikes running along the spin and "wheel" of the converted passenger liner. That sudden action made by the colonial ship delayed the commander Cylon from knowing what was going on with the human ship.

When the Cylons had thought that the sudden movement was due to the battle damage caused by their missiles? The Ones had smiled at the thought of the pain caused to the human crew. They had kept smiling, right until the DRADIS detected that now six of those god offal cannons were facing the one lone Cylon warship. Karma is a thing, and it was about to slap the Ones like a two year old strapped on a basketball being used by a chimpanzee. Then the additional human missiles started to fly from a ship that should not have one missile tube much less all those tubes, that now were firing at the slowly shrinking Cylon Fleet.

The Cylon convoy commander reviewed the data coming in about the rising heat load the sub light engines of the Basestar was enduring, and a frown came to his face. It was high but not "that" high, and he sent orders that the engines were to have the last of the safety overrides removed from the engines. He needed the extra power to help avoid those cannon shells, and it would help make the human missiles less able to change their courses to intercept the maneuvering ships that carried his priceless body.

Another order went out from the Command One on the Flagship. This one was to the Heavy Raiders fighting the Colonial small craft. The order was for the Cylon Heavy Raiders to leave the human small craft alone, and they were to attack the parent colonial craft with everything they had. It was not a very detailed order, but it got the point across to the Heavy Raiders. In a surge, a second type of attack went towards the lone Colonial ship. The last dice had been thrown in this battle, and the reserves had been committed.

Avar 76 Recycler 2

Pilot Mike Dillon had been an active pilot for 24 months. Before the Cylon's new war, he would have been still called a Nugget with so few months of experience on the stick of a Viper. But now at just a year and a half of combat made him a well-heeled survivor. Two Years of combat moved him to the upper ranks of skill levels within the Colonial fleet.

He had graduated at the top of his class in Viper school as soon as he was old enough to legally join the Colonial military. He had wanted Avars, even before he had been accepted into the Viper training program. He was sure, that if he had graduated high enough in his flight training class. Then the Colonial navy had to give him one of the new omni fighters after his graduation from flight school. Yea, the Colonial Navy didn't work that way.

So, it had not happened that way for young Mr. Mike Dillon. He had been given a slot on one of the Pegasus Battlestars Viper squadrons, but it was in an old Mark VII Viper. One so old, that it had been recovered on the first mission back to Colonial space. Mike had kept his disappointment in check, and he did not say a negative word while he had gone through "Advanced Training" on the Battlestar. He had noticed that he was in a squadron that was filled with the very young or the very oldest pilots in the whole Colonial Navy. He had no idea what to make of that, but he had learned from his father to be watchful of the old man that was still alive in a young man's game.

As it turned out, the advanced training unit had not kept him out of combat with the Cylons as he had first feared. He had spent just under four months in that training unit before he had been "issued" to a combat unit as a replacement pilot and Viper. Even when he reported to the squadron XO that he had four Cylon kills, he had been treated just like any other nugget in the squadron. Mike had spent six more months slowly building up a list of kills and getting out from under the fresh nugget treatment. When he had felt like the new man put down treatment was about over. That was when Mike had been transferred again, for undisclosed reasons, and this time he was not "allowed" to take his Mk VII with him.

He went back to a training field, only this time it was not a Viper training school that he would be attending. He was now in the Avar training school. It had not taken him long to notice that everyone in his first briefing had been known to be a "good hand" at the controls of Vipers, but not the best dogfighters. The school was only a few weeks long, before this whole "Class" was assigned as a new Avar unit to support Colonial and SLDF Navy units.

#####

By now Mike had over 30 Cylon kills to his name. This also was his second Avar for him to use to kill Cylons. The first one had been lost when he was too close, when a Cylon capital missile had activated its warhead. This premature…..detonation maybe had been due to the battle damage that Mike had been giving to it before it could hit the Pegasus. Even if Mike had been in one of the newest MK VIII Vipers, he would have been killed when that warhead detonated. Instead, he had been able to nurse his crippled fighter back to the Battlestar for what he had thought of was a passable landing.

Well, he walked away from the hulk of his fighter without needing to be carried out of the hulk by the launch bay crew or medics. The Deck boss had been less than thrilled about the dent, folded steel, and scorch marks that ended under his wrecked craft. The wreck of the top of the line fighter had to be stripped down to the hull frames on the spot, and then it was sent back to the factory for a complete rebuilding. And the now fresh supply of spare parts was used to repair other craft of this class on the Battlestar. Mike spent the rest of the mission pulling every crap detail that the squadron's XO could find for him until they could fly him back to New Circe.

He had been sent back to the training field to work with the Nuggets while he waited for a replacement craft to come off the production line. It was not like the Colonial or SLDF Navy kept extra omni fighters out of the battle just waiting to be used for a replacement when a pilot had bent is last craft. When he had finally gotten a replacement fighter craft, it was a factory rebuilt model and not a new one. And by now his spot on the Battlestar Pegasus had already been filled by a replacement fighter and pilot.

Mike had been shocked when he had been placed on orders to be a part of the two fighter support squadrons on the Zephyr, for this run and for the near future according to his orders. It had only been when they were gone from New Circe for a full week, that the squadron had been told that they were heading to Ragnar Station in Colonial space. Now Mike found himself fighting Cylons again, and he smiled in his heavy helmet. It was feeling like he was getting a little payback for what they had done to his home planet with each Cylon he killed.

Mike like the plain old Avar, and he had not worried about making any modifications to any of the "approved" load outs for the light omni craft. Well, he had made one change to the Avar that he had picked up from the SLDF. The Colonials had not been that into "nose art" for the last couple of decades, besides just your name and rank painted on your craft. The SLDF had other ideas and Mike liked it. He had a figure of a woman, like a goddess, firing flaming arrows into Heavy Raiders. There were two or three "falling" Heavy Raiders with arrows in them. They looked to be joining other arrow "shot" Cylons in a trash bag at the feet of the goddess. Under this image was the fitting name of Recycler 2.

Mike used the primary load out to kill another of the up armored Heavy Raiders. If he had been in a Viper? He would have needed to fire his 30mm KEWs along with the under body mounted 5cm laser, all to make sure that he was going to get a kill on a craft armored like that one had been. But this Avar held a clan grade 5cm pulse laser mounted in each of its wings, and those speed of light weapons hit harder and at a longer range than the older 5cm laser that was still on the MK VIIs.

Mike was not going to risk letting this target get away, and he had fired both of his wing mounted weapons at that one target. This was a good plan and one of the pulse lasers had missed the maneuvering enemy craft, but not the second one. With this kill still in the beginning stages of an expanding cloud of hot gasses and small metal pieces. The HUD built into his helmet told Mike where the next nearest enemy Heavy Raider was to him. Mike's one complaint about the gear that the SLDF Navy used, was that the helmet was almost twice as heavy as the Colonial made helmet. But a colonial made Viper helmet would not let him fly this Omni type fighter so close to the edge as the heavier helmet allowed for the skilled user.

With a hard turn that threatened to make Mike black out from the G loading. He was back on the hunt, and he worked on lining up his next kill of the battle. Then just when he had pulled the trigger that fired his twin pulse lasers again, the Heavy Raider had rapidly changed course. Now both of his lasers had missed their target. It was very rare that Mike missed with both 5cm pulse lasers at this range when he chooses to fire them.

"You lucky little Frakker!" Mike wanted to slam his hand on the dash of his cockpit, but that would require him to let go of the controls, and he was not that dumb.

Mike's words were soon joined by others near him in space, but Mike had not paid them any notice. Not while he worked on getting a line back on the Heavy Raider that had just evaded his lasers. Mikes blood went cold when the wireless activated again, and a stressed voice cut into his ears.

"Oh Frakk! They are all heading towards the Zephyr! Came leaking into Mike's ears threw the battle focus he used to survive battle with the Cylons. He killed this Heavy Raider and came back into "the normal world."

Mike now "noticed" the chatter on the wireless, but he was still working on lining up on another Heavy Raider that had just happened to cut across his nose. With one squeeze of the trigger on Mike's throttle hand, his nose seemed to explode. The trigger on his "stick" would have fired his pulse lasers at the first stop, and then it would have gone for a full alpha strike if he pulled it all the way to the stops in one pull. The trigger on the throttle would "only" fire the nose mounted KEWs, or if a threat was at his aft it would fire any aft mounted weapon.

Mike was glad that they had finally fitted the long-suggested flash hiders on those nose cannons on his craft. It had been known that sometimes when you fired all four of those closely packed 30mm KEW cannons. That it would give the pilot an eye pain before the cockpit's auto dimming function would kick in. There were even some rumors that some pilots had even suffered permanent, until they had time to see a wolverine doctor, eye damage. Besides what the flash could do to your nose art was unthinkable.

Now with those installed flash hiders on the nose of the Avar, Mike was able to watch a "short" burst of his KEWs slam into the side of the Heavy Raider. He had no idea how many colonial made shells hit the target, but it was obviously enough to do the job Mike wanted. Even with the added armor on this version of the Heavy Raider, the long burst if it had come from a Viper, had cut the Cylon war craft in half either by the KEWs, or due to the reaction of their passages threw the Cylon made spaceframe and they had hit something fragile.

The Avar had deeper ammo bins for the KEW cannons than any Viper made, or even in any version of a Viper submitted for approval for the people over in the Colonial Navy department. Where a Viper might "only" fire a burst of 3 or 4 shells per cannon, depending on the version and the settings of the ground support team before launching. The Avar fired six shells out of each of her four cannons, and it still would out last any "normal" Viper in combat firing "normal" sized bursts. Ahhh the idea of ammo bins designed for long engagements.

Mike looked around to the different scopes and displays around him, and now he notices that all of the Cylons were running towards their ride home. Then the CAG's voice cut through the din of voices from the other fighter craft.

"Shut the Frakk up! Now you just have to aim for their hot exhaust coming off of the engines. Even some of you Frakkers can hit something that big. Now get after them, or you all are walking the frak home!" The CAG has spoken.

Mike didn't even reply to what the CAG had said to the group of surviving human fighters. He was too busy putting the spurs to his craft. He found a target and focused on it, and that was all he had the focus to do. The computer said that he should be able to get into weapons range before this enemy craft was a threat to the Zephyr. The bad part was that this target was the last Heavy Raider to break off from the fur ball and head for the long ship. So, it was also the furthest from the rest of the other Cylon small craft. Mike might be getting one of the enemy craft into weapons range, but that left the other Cylon war craft that he would not be able to reach with his weapons before they fired into his way home.

Just when Mike started taking a few ranging shots with the energy weapons, the battle was shifting phases one more time. There was a very low chance of scoring a hit at this range with those energy weapons, but it was not impossible. He was not surprised that he had missed with both laser pulses, and while he waited for the weapons to recharge one more time. He moved his eyes to get a better look at the Zephyr while it fought her own battle against the small enemy craft. Mike was looking just in time to see the Zephyr seemingly to erupt in flames as weapons fire jumped away from the modified colonial ship. In that blink of an eye, a dozen Cylon war craft were blown into so much metal confetti and hot gasses. Now the Cylons knew that this ship was not just outfitted with capital weapons, but also with powerful close in weapons to kill Heavy Raiders.

Heavy Raider 244519M

Heavy Raider 244519M was about halfway in the cloud of Cylon craft, which had been made up of what was left of the Heavy Raiders that had launched from the pair of Hades IIA Basestars. They still outnumbered the human fighter craft by almost 1.4 to 1. It was just too bad that at the start of the battle, the Cylon Heavy Raiders had outnumbered the human small craft by 4.3 to 1. Now they were ordered to leave those deadly little human craft and do what needed to be done to kill the larger Colonial ship.

Heavy Raider 244519M had no idea that the Commander over on the remaining Basestar had ordered this all-out attack by the Heavy Raiders, as a vain attempt to distract the colonial ship. He wanted the large human ship distracted long enough for one of the nuclear warhead equipped missiles to slip through the ship's defenses and end it in nuclear hell fire. It was a tactic that had worked against Colonial warships many times in this war, and there was no reason not to believe that it would not work this time.

So far, the Cylons had not recovered any data on how the Colonials and the Star League might have modified the ships that they used and had been first built in Colonial shipyards. The Cylons had plenty of evidence of modifications being done to some of them. So far, any battle that the Zephyr had been involved in. The humans had been lucky enough not to have left anyone able to make it back to the Cylon resurrection ships. At least not with any detailed data on her being involved in the battle and passed along information on what her attack and defensive capabilities might be. The Cylons command staff had been hyper focused on the warships that they were dealing with and not any support ships that might be in the local area.

The large LRM type missiles were not great at taking out one attacking Heavy Raider, but they could launch a cloud of missiles. One that would damage if not kill anything that they ran into, or that was chased into their flight paths of. Those large LRM turrets were great at taking out the wave attacks the Cylon Empire liked to use. The half dozen Hera class 8cm lasers were better at picking out point targets to take out with their focused energy. The weapons were both light speed and not detectable at this range by the attacking Cylon ships. Well, it was not detectable until the laser hit a target. Then everyone within a few thousand kilometers around knew that a laser had just pass threw a given area of space that had been occupied at the time by a Cylon Heavy Raider.

Heavy Raider 244519M picked an area of the hull of the long thin ship that was about where one of the mountings to the huge wheel would be. That was where "he" was going to launch every missile that remained in "his" bays to target. It would only be six guided weapons in that strike, but it was a lot of firepower. If it had still been in the early days of the war, back when a third of that number of missiles would have killed most Colonial ships. But that had been at the start of this new war, and that was a long time ago.

When the missiles were released, then the Cylon Heavy Raiders were going to try a new "tactic" on the humans. Raider and Heavy Raiders were not prone to crashing themselves into enemy ships, not even during the 1st war. It was not that it didn't happen, but it was a very rare event. The Ones might have thought that the other Cylons were disposable, but the Cylon fighter craft had not agreed with this assessment. The Ones had not been happy to find this out in this new phase of the war with the humans.

The Ones latest rounds of modifications to the Heavy Raiders had finally changed that little recurring issue in the Heavy Raiders he was "using". 244519M narrowly missed being hit by a flight of LRMs coming from near his targeted area. The little craft shifted course to get closer to the target area while the launcher worked to reload, and now it could target this human craft with impunity. It was a good idea, but it was not going to work in this battle. While the Heavy Raider was still at long range for SLiE weapons. It should have been able to get closer to the Zephyr before it could be effectively targeted again by the humans.

Then one of the ships newly mounted Thunder Javelin fired off from behind the Heavy Raider. The large missile was a mixed tech weapon. It had taken pointers from both of the SLiE and the Colonials to make this one new weapon. It also had a warhead ten times as large as a single LRM warhead, and it was equal to 10 LRMs hitting the same spot target at once. It also had a guidance package that any royal unit of the old SLDF would have given their first born for. Even the Clans would have been impressed with these seeking and targeting capabilities. They would have not said so, but they would have been impressed. They were even better than the much feared Head hunter missiles that were said to have been used in the Star League Civil war.

The TJ-10 had not even been "aimed" at 244519M. But when it had "stumbled" onto the craft after it had been launched from the Zephyr. It had started tracking it and the complex guidance system went to work. The Heavy Raider was fast, compared to some small craft, but it was not as fast as the targets that this class of missile was normally used to kill. The Heavy Raider had no idea that it was being tracked, and it was only trying to avoid fire that it could see to its front.

The TJ-10 had been designed to track faster and more capable craft like the Raider and Clan made and piloted fighters. When this TJ-10 makes its attack run on the Cylon craft, it had not missed the nicely glowing engines it was using as a reference point in its attack pattern. The heavy warhead had first made contact behind the "Cylon head" mounted off to one side of the bow, but closer to the center line of the craft. Even with the added armor to the modified Heavy Raider, that armor was not enough to save this craft. To add more insult to injury, the heavy Colonial and SLiE warhead hit the Heavy Raider's still occupied missile bay.

The combined force of these detonations ended the biomatter only known as Heavy Raider 244519M in a flash of heat and light. The only thing gained by its "death" was to prove the new human weapon was very effective in space warfare against up armored Heavy Raiders. Even if it was a little over kill for the job. Now it was known that they would not need the TJ-20 and TJ-15 for counter small craft weapons, just yet. It also signaled that the fat lady was getting ready to sing, and she was not a Cylon warming her lungs up but a human.

#####

Just over two weeks later a pair of Colonial crewed Raptors makes a slow flyby of the battered converted passenger liner called Zephyr, as it made its way slowly down the grey and black lined tunnel that led to a now fully operational Ragnar Station. The vessel had been over two weeks late, and the last message sent over the TacFax had said that they were about to be in a fight with a Cylon convoy with warship support.

That news had not been well received by the command staff working on Ragnar Station. And the Zephyr had not replied to the message sent from the new TacFax that had been fitted to the still modifying and repairing station. Then her next faster than light message had arrived that said that she was arriving at the tunnel mouth and would need an escort in. This message had made everyone start to jump through hoops to get ready for the large ship filled with cargo and new personnel to arrive. Oh, and try to help repair any damages that might have been inflicted on the converted civilian ship. It would not be the first time that ship repairs had been done at this base, but they were limited on what they could do deep in the gas giant.

The first Raptor pilot activated her radio. "Hey Lips! Looks like she has seen some action after all. Do you think the rumors are true?"

The second pilot looked down the long flamed scarred and cratered hull of the onetime passenger liner. 'Yea Con, on both of those. But what is the frakking deal with the broom they fixed to the bow?"

The Raptor pilot called Con and who's real name was Connie Weber looked in that direction. "I see that Lips. And do you see the black ship silhouettes near the bridge windows? They have two different types. I cannot wait to talk to them when they dock. They have to have one Frakking good story to tell. And I really hope they brought more of that Beer with them." In the seat behind her, EO Chris "Toe" Pusher grunted in agreement to one of those ideas.

###

Notes

The Rapier RPR-100b-EC: It came right out of the Golden Century TRO. I just made the change of the Laser anti-missiles system and MPL. This also gave me a way to explain how to keep organic aerospace fighters for ground units and stuck on a planet the ability to get some combat time. Nobody wants to be a green pilot in the time of war.

The Zephyr is up gunned. It is with mostly found weapons. 8 collars, 5 LRM20, 6 Thunder-Javelin 10, 10 ML, 6 Hera class ER LL, 24 Laser AMS, 12 HODs. It has hard points for Nose FL/FR AL/AR and aft for capital autocannons and missiles. She does not have enough power for Gauss and DEWs. 2 per firing arc NAC 10 and White Shark with 50kton Santa Anna (. Larger than Colonial made weapons, but all Colonial made missiles held for the Battlestars. mix of 40 Vipers and Avars. Has a Dropship CV barge with 10 ground forces aero fighters (Rapiers).

Cylon Convoy. 2 Hades class Basestars (twice thick hull like Galactica on day of attack. 50mm CWIS and 12 Cannons copied from Valkyrie class. 8 Cylon transports.

Chap 49 Connie (Con) Weber Raptor Pilot. Chris "Toe" Pusher young EO

Bad Kitty

Class/Model/Name: Lion (wolverine outpost Variant)

Tech: Clan / 2595

Vessel Type: Spheroid DropShip

Rules: Level 2, Standard design

Rules Set: AeroTech2

Mass: 7,300 tons

Length: 92 meters

Power Plant: Standard

Safe Thrust: 4

Maximum Thrust: 6

Armor Type: Ferro-aluminum

Armament:

8 ER Large Laser

8 ER Medium Laser

6 LRM 20+ArtIV

12 AMS

10 Large Pulse Laser

10 Medium Pulse Laser

6 LRM 15+ArtIV

6 Streak SRM 6

Equipment: Mass

Power Plant, Drive & Control: 1,781.50

Structural Integrity: 14 204.50

Total Heat Sinks: 110 Double .00

Fuel & Fuel Pumps: 215.00

Bridge, Controls, Radar, Computer & Attitude Thrusters: 55.00

Fire Control Computers: .00

Food & Water: (46 days supply) 52.50

Armor Type: Ferro-aluminum (940 total armor pts) 37.00

Standard Scale Armor Pts

Location: L / R

Fore: 300

Left/Right Sides: 200/200

Aft: 240

Cargo:

Bay 1: BattleMechs (12) with 2 doors 1,800.00

Bay 2: Heavy Vehicles (51-100T) (12) with 2 doors 1,200.00

Bay 3: Fighters (2) with 2 doors 300.00

Infantry (foot) Platoons (2) 10.00

Cargo (1) 826.00

Escape Pods: 10 (7 tons each) 70.00

Crew and Passengers:

9 Officers (8 minimum) 90.00

30 Crew (0 minimum) 210.00

11 Gunners (11 minimum) 77.00

180 Bay Personnel .00

Weapons and Equipment Loc SRV MRV LRV ERV Heat Mass

2 ER Large Laser Nose 3(34) 3(34) 2(20) 2(20) 24 8.00

2 ER Medium Laser 10 2.00

2 LRM 20+ArtIV(48 rounds) Nose 3(32) 3(32) 3(32) - 12 20.00

2 AMS(96 rounds) Nose - - - - 2 5.00

2 Large Pulse Laser Nose 3(34) 3(34) 2(20) - 20 12.00

2 Medium Pulse Laser 8 4.00

2 ER Large Laser FL/R 3(34) 3(34) 2(20) 2(20) 48 16.00

2 ER Medium Laser 20 4.00

2 LRM 20+ArtIV(48 rounds) FL/R 3(32) 3(32) 3(32) - 24 40.00

2 AMS(96 rounds) FL/R - - - - 4 10.00

2 Large Pulse Laser FL/R 3(34) 3(34) 2(20) - 40 24.00

2 Medium Pulse Laser 16 8.00

2 LRM 15+ArtIV(64 rounds) AL/R 2(24) 2(24) 2(24) - 20 34.00

2 AMS(96 rounds) AL/R - - - - 4 10.00

2 Large Pulse Laser AL/R 3(34) 3(34) 2(20) - 40 24.00

2 Medium Pulse Laser 16 8.00

2 Streak SRM 6(60 rounds) AL/R 2(24) 2(24) - - 16 20.00

2 ER Large Laser Aft 3(34) 3(34) 2(20) 2(20) 24 8.00

2 ER Medium Laser 10 2.00

2 LRM 15+ArtIV(64 rounds) Aft 2(24) 2(24) 2(24) - 10 17.00

2 AMS(96 rounds) Aft - - - - 2 5.00

2 Streak SRM 6(60 rounds) Aft 2(24) 2(24) - - 8 10.00

1 Lot Spare Parts (1.10%) 80.00

TOTALS: Heat: 378 7,299.50

Tons Left: .50

Calculated Factors:

Total Cost: 588,961,520 C-Bills

49