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.

85. Chapter 85 End of Aug 3053

Chapter 85

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

Somewhere in Confederation space.

End of Aug 3053.

Colonel Adam Bailey JR, and yes, he was related to the late commander of the equally late mercenary unit called MacGregor Armored Scouts was relaxing just before the Merchant class jumpship made its next move. Colonel Bailey's little unit had picked up a nice little contract to do an objective raid on one end of the FWL boarder right from Romano Liao's own hand. Well, Adam JR had not been there in Romano's throne room when the document had been given its final signatures. But the contract that he had been given had her personal glyphs in all the right spots, and the bureaucrat that had passed along the documents had seemed to have been very impressed with them when Adam had done the last review in the company of the unit's lawyers.

The Objective raid contract that had been given to Adam was very simple, as these kinds of things went. His combat command was to collect as much booty, weapons wise, as they could get their mech's grubby hands on. Colonel Bailey was cleared to do whatever was needed to get that job done, just as long as the Confederation got its share of those new weapons. That was a lot of rope that he could hang himself with, if he took the time to think about it, but in his haste to get this mission he had not spent that much time thinking. The contract had been written in such a way that said that the Confederation would get first choice of Star League grade salvage and 80 percent of any recovered standalone high tech weapons that would be recovered by his unit.

The Contract did say that this mercenary command would get a very large paycheck for the effort, complete repair of any combat damage that was sustained on the mission, the last twenty percent of the take, covering all transports cost to the targets, and the thanks of the Celestial Wisdom. Being able to keep a minimum of 20 percent of anything that was listed as Star League grade equipment would have been enough for most units to risk this type of contract. Adam was confident that anything that was not listed as advanced tech would be his to keep.

Adam also knew that this was his chance or maybe more to the point, this might be his last chance that he had to break back into what he thinks of as the big leagues of the mercenary market. At least after his father had fallen into a trap that had killed him and most of his unit at the end of the 4th SW. After Adam had received the death notice of his father, he had spent almost every awakened second and more than a few dreaming hours working on ways that he could get back in the big game as he saw it. Many of his peers in the mercenary market had told Adam to just leave the Confederation and start over on Outreach, but Adam thought of himself as a true son of the Confederation above all else. He just wanted to do his own thing and get paid to do so, and running into FedRat space was just not in his blood.

The ground forces for Colonel Bailey's unit were being carried by the modified Mule class cargo dropship that had been all that Adam had been able to find that was left of his father's now dead unit. It was just too bad that the two fighter wings under his command were made up of "only" conventional fighters and not real aerospace fighters that had been at the peak of his father's command. He covered this with what he had thought was some clever editing of his unit's official order of battle. Yea, it was not fooling anyone, and that trick had not worked back in the early days of the 1st SW when it was "first" seen on the mercenary market.

Adam knew that he could have made a smaller unit and worked on buying a Union with the money provided by selling off the cargo dropship on the open market. But Adam wanted to be at least a Battalion commander, and he viewed himself as a regimental commander when he looked in the mirror to adjust his specially made uniform. He saw anything the size of a company command or below to not be worth his time and massive level of military command skills. Besides he had some mechs and the Confederation always used more tanks and infantry than most of the other militaries within the Inner Sphere. At least that was what one Colonel Adam Bailey JR, had been taught in all of those classes that he had undergone while growing up in the Confederation. Then again maybe he should have looked a little closer to the RCTs that the FedCom was not so slowly converting their major commands into. Then again that would assume that Adam would have believed anything that was coming out of the FedCom in the first place.

The Confederation flagged Merchant class jumpship that was being used in this raid had her own Leopard CV with another six aerospace fighters that would fall under Adam's orders for this mission. That was six aerospace fighters, which should be more than enough muscle for his converted cargo dropship to make it from any jump point to make planet fall. After all of the focus for all of the militaries within the Inner Sphere was now on the Clans and not local boarder issues between the house lords according to MASK. Getting that modified cargo dropship back to the jump point after the mission was over might be a little more dicey, but it should not be that hard for someone of Adam's skill and family lineage to be able to pull off.

That is unless the targeted star system had a warship in support to call on, and thankfully those things were still as rare as hen's teeth in the Inner Sphere. Working Warships were not as unheard of as they had been before the Clan invasion, but they still were very rare. And besides the MoC, no one on this side of the Inner Sphere had any active warships at this time. Adam had heard threw the mercenary grape vine that the FedCom and the Dragoons might have some warships, but Adam was sure that they were not functional. For every report Adam had seen on warships in the Fedrats or their lacky's hands, he had seen two reports from the Maskirovka office that said those reports were lies, propaganda, and fake news at best. That was enough to get Adam to overrule his small staff in anything referenced to that issue in the planning phases of this mission.

Adam gave a violent head shake to get his head back into the game. There should not be that much firepower defending a supply dump that was this far from major fighting. Not even if that one supply dump was supposed to be supporting one of the Mariks federal mech units if they ever launched actions into this part of the Confederation or MoC. Then there were the notes about testing of a new type of atmospheric and water filtering system made in the MoC on that same planet. Adam had seen more than one report that had said that it was a system that could fit onto a heavy mech recovery truck and clean a whole dome in only a few hours. Now "IF" this data turned out to be true? Those filtering systems could be worth a lot more than a few dozen Gauss rifles or Bear Slayer class PPCs to the right buyer.

This trip's total payout on the contract would all depend on what he and his people could grab and pack into his dropship. Adam was already thinking about how he was going to use most of those funds to make his unit more powerful when he felt the jump drive activate.

Aquagea Star system.

FWL space

30 Seconds later.

Colonel Adam Bailey JR was getting a live data feed being pumped into his command mech even as the jump ship moved 23.7 light years. By the time that his eyes had adjusted from the odd side effects caused by the jumping into hyper space and the urge to toss his cookies all over his cockpit was over, data from the targeted star system was ready for him. Yea TDS was not fun, and he had never told anyone he had it, due to him thinking that it would make him look weak to the rest of the unit. That was another mark for him in the dumb category for combat commander. If you had to many of those, then you soon became an Ex-combat commander or just filling a body bag.

It didn't take long before the data showed him that another jumpship was at the same jump point they had just arrived at. With an evil smile Adam thinks that adding a "new" Tramp class jumpship to his command was going to be very nice. Well, it would be nice, even if he had to share the recovery of that jumpship with two other parties. But still one third of something beats zero of everything any day of the week. He was betting that he could finally get that Overlord class dropship that he had been wanting ever since his father was killed almost twenty years ago. Anything the size of a Star Lord would put a pretty penny in his bank accounts.

Adam leans a little forward and hits a communication button that would connect him to the bridge of this jumpship. "Captain, if your people in the Leo can take that Jumpship? We all could be in for a major payday when we get back home." Adam JR just gave up the ability to call on those aerospace fighters, at outside of any major emergency, Adam had not even thought about that when he had given that directive. This military commander was to focused on the maybe payday and not the tactical situation.

Adam released the little green button, and he didn't even try to listen to the reply coming from the other officer. All he needed to see that his "orders" were followed was that the second dropship had separated from the jumpship only about 15 seconds after the Mule class dropship called Keang Soo had started its run towards the targeted planet. This was Adam's mission, and his orders to the jumpship's commander should be handled like they had come from the Celestial Wisdom herself. At least that was what he thought.

######

Captain Kuang Wan of the merchant jumpship Mokeden gave a smirk at the little twit with a god complex strapped into a battlemech. Not for the first time he was glad that he had the video screens disabled on that system. The bridge staff had already seen the other jumpship at this jump point, and the captain had already been making plans to put it under new management. That all had been done before the weak twit had gotten over his jump sickness. He gave a head nod and his second in command gives the already agreed on orders to launch the mission escort in the form of the Leopard class carrier.

Kuang Wan knew that the Tramp class was one of the few armed jumpships outside of the reports coming out of Clan space. Then again, a few 8cm lasers protected by a few millimeters of third rate armor plate was not much to worry about. At least not when you think about the lance of Transit class fighters backed up by two lances of captured and repaired Sparrowhawks class aerospace fighters that "his" leopard class carrier was acting as the mother ship for. Only one part of the jumpship's captain's brain wished that those captured Sparrowhawks aerospace fighters had been replaced with real Capellan made Thrush class fighters. Then again aerospace fighters didn't just grow on trees, even with all of the rebuilding that the Celestial Wisdom had seen fit to fund.

Captain Wan was still confident when the data on his display updated to show that the Tramp class jumpship only had a Triumph class dropship attached to her spine. There was one thing outside of jumpship operations that this captain knew about, and that was the capabilities of the dropships that were carried on them as they went around the Inner Sphere. It was just some of the things that you picked up when you were a six generation jumpship commander. Now, if this one enemy dropship had even been a little Union class? Then he might have taken more care in launching his own forces against that jumpship/dropship combination. There were few old and bold jumpship's commanders left within the core of the Inner Sphere after the 2nd SW. Those types that made it to the commander's seat after that war ravaged time tended to die shortly there afterwards.

There were many modifications that had been done to the Union class of dropship after so many years of being in production, and more than a few of them built around that idea of different ways to turn them into aerospace fighter carriers in varying degrees of success. But the Triumph class of dropship was only used to carry tanks, APCs, and infantry to the battlefields on a planet. Well, there was that one modification to the Triumph that would let it also carry a few battlemechs, even if they had to be first laid onto their backs for loading and unloading. Still every one of those modified Triumphs known to ply the space lanes didn't carry a single aerospace fighter within its hull. Even not counting that lone dropship, the jumpship was worth more than a few dozen gauss rifles and Bear Slayer improved PPCs in the minds of the Staff and commander of this jumpship. Even the Confederation could build a few hundreds of mechs and tanks each year, but the total output of jumpships the Confederation made could be counted on both of your hands.

Within just a few hours of arriving at this star system, the Tramp class vessel had a "CAP" to protect the newest jumpship that soon would be supporting House Liao. The "official" handover of that jumpship would not be done until the ground commander got back to the jump point. That way some of his infantry could be sent over to the Tramp to supervise and intervene if any of the newest citizens of the Celestial Wisdom had issues. Captain Wan could have sent over some of his own crewmembers, but that would have left his smaller jumpship to undermanned to do its primary mission. Then there was the issue of the combat dropship that might have infantry of their own. And Confederation trained Jumpship's captains were not trained to take a risk on something like that.

#######

Robert wanted to punch the computer screen, and it took every bit of his self-control to not blow his top right there and then. After a lot of effort, Robert was able to get control of his normally well-hidden temper…but only just. Robert now was both thankful and very distressed that he had left his wife on the jumpship sitting at the main jump point that serviced this star system. Sitting on the jumpship should have been less risky than landing on this wrecked near boarder world. Just when you thought that you had a handle on the risks of a mission, then someone changes the rules on you. All without the common courtesy of getting a kiss first.

Just when Robert got his heartrate back under some kind of control, a second message made it at the speed of light to the planet to his hands. After reading this second message for three or four times, all he could do was laugh to himself. Well, it was laugh or he was going to do more than a little crying ….and crying was frowned down on as a leadership method across the Inner Sphere much less in the SLiE. After so many years of warfare, that event had happened more than a few times while on active missions, but crying was still looked down on.

Terry had ordered the TTM owned carrier to hold her spacecraft hidden in her fighter bays, and the Styx was ordered not to fire its limited weapons unless the jumpship was at risk of falling to boarders. Robert and his crews on his vessels had lucked out in this surprise raid, in a few different ways. The biggest one was that the IFF on the jumpship had been successfully changed all while the E-wave from the raiding jumpship was still the only clue that an attack might be coming in. Technically that was not legal to make that change in their IFF systems, but then again raiding was technically not legal either. Wars had started for way less, but then there was the old spacing saying. "You had to be alive to be taken to court."

Now all the people on this planet needed to do was wait until the attacking dropship was on the ground to ambush the whole raiding forces. All the while Robert was regretting that he had not pushed to keep some battlemechs and tanks to support his operations within the Inner Sphere. Instead, he and Terry had invested their limited funds into refitting the weapons on the Mule and the Carrier used as an escort for this mission. After all, all of the reports had shown that the largest threat to Copeland and TTM were from space based attacks.

Robert even had to return all of the assigned escorting aerospace fighter frames after they had safely arrived at Canopus. From there those space frames were to be shipped first back to Split and then maybe going all the way back to New Circe to fill combat SLDF units. But the SLiE had given Terry and Robert some funds in the form of a no interest loan to buy replacement spaceframes on the open markets of the Inner Sphere. There was not any way for Robert to get as many assault massed aerospace fighters to replace the now missing frames without waiting years or spending way more than market value. But thanks to Robert's last name, reputation, and not a short list of favors owed to him. They had no problem getting a dozen space frames on short notice while on Canopus. Some of these fighters that he was able to acquire even were updated with at least some Late Star League weapons or other updated technology. Part of the funds Robert had been given had also allowed him to get not a small number of spare parts for those "new" fighters under the TTM flag. "Only" four of those spaceframes were Thunderbirds, but the rest of the dozen were a mix of Stingrays, and Lightnings type space frames.

Thanks to a lot of preplanning on Robert's part and access to those updated fighter bays on the Carrier that had been first captured from ComStar. Those fighters were slowly being refitted with better weapons that had been made on New Circe. Those weapons were listed as being "extra" supplies that just happened to be on hand for Robert's crew to use as they saw fit. There was a very good chance that there was going to be hell to pay when SLIC or some other part of the SLiE government found out the firepower of these frames when the Styx next made its way back home.

Then again, Robert and Terry were of the opinion, that it was better to beg for forgiveness instead of asking for permission on making those modifications to those spaceframes. On top of that, those spare weapons had been paid for by TTM or right out of Robert's own pockets. The pair thought at worst they would be "asked" to send some of those updated spaceframes back to defend the home planet when someone back home found out. And by the letter of the law, the SLDF would have to pay TTM for those updated space frames if the SLDF wanted to use them.

One of the side plans that the couple had worked up, was that they could use the sale of the space frames to help the bottom line of TTM. You know that labor was not cheap for New Circe, and besides those high tech repair bays were not being used to the fullest. So, why not get some support out of them and the SLDF forces could use all of the medium, heavy, and assault massed fighters that they could get their hands on to fight the Cylon Empire. Copeland could just buy up old space frames in the Inner Sphere and invest some workhours and parts before sending them back up the supply line towards New Circe for a nice little profit. The funny part was that this idea had been based on a plan in the briefings that Robert had been given while he had been in command of the resupply missions. It was only now that it was viable to activate on any scale.

######

Now for this situation? It was going to take some time to work out a decent plan. It would be sometime before those fighter craft manned by older hands born on New Circe could come help Robert and the modified Mule that he was sitting in at the drop port. Now that at least part of the jump point issue was taken care of, or at least a plan was being worked. It gave Robert some time to think about how to pull his and his people's chestnuts out of the fire that they seemed to have found themselves in once again.

As Robert rocked back into his office chair, his mind fully focused on the issue. If anyone would have had been dumb enough or maybe brave enough to enter this office without knocking in some way, they might have thought that Robert was sleeping while he was laid back in that overstuffed office chair. He was breathing deeply, and his eyes were closed, but his mind was working in overdrive. Robert never would claim to be one of the smartest people on New Circe, but that didn't mean that he was the slowest witted of the bunch. Give him enough time, and he could come up with some out of the box plans that even worked most of the time.

Seemingly from a dead sleep Robert came forward and he reached for a headset resting in a nearby cradle. He needed both more and better detailed data than he could get from the updated systems mounted on the bridge of this vessel. It took his small staff all of half an hour to get Robert most of the information that he needed. There was no way that Robert could get all of the data that he felt was needed, but it did help him polish some of the edges down on his idea. With the review of this data, Robert made a call to the HQ of the local defenders to pass along the limited intelligence that he had just gained. Robert was betting heavily on that he knew more than the attacker did about the local conditions.

The main base on this planet was not just a storage area for FWL and a federal military unit, it was also going to be and temporally it currently was a lot more. This planet had fallen onto hard times for over a century, like a lot of other planets within the Inner Sphere. The filters that the Federal government part of the FWL had ordered were going to be key to improving the life for the ravaged people on this planet. Oh, it also would be because that the Locals then could be better supported for standing up to an invasion force. If the FWL troopers could walk on it's surface without needing protective suits and drink its water without worrying about little thinks like dying? Now that would be a major morale boost for those defenders.

It was listed as some good training to fight like you were in a hazardous environment of a number of different kinds, but those kinds of environments didn't cover all of the needed training missions for building and updating units on the modern battlefields of the Inner Sphere. Then there was the need to provide food and even clean water to many of the other still recovering worlds in this part of space. Some of that food and clean water could even be traded to the Confederation, just as long as there was not a war taking place between those two powers.

Robert didn't even have to invoke his name more than twice to get to the local military leader on the other end of the radio to talk to him. It had helped that Robert already had a meeting with her about helping in setting up the water filters the FWL had bought and paid for him to deliver in what passed for the capital city of this war-ravaged planet. Not even were many questions asked when Robert told the locals about the type of dropship coming down and how Robert and his people could help in the defenders against this raid.

#######

Robert smiled as the data collected from some of the local military system's data was piped into his systems on the dropship. As soon as the enemy dropship had committed to a landing, it was time for Robert to make the final moves. Messages had been sent from the command center of this dropship to the different groups of defenders on the planet. When Robert received the reply from the commander of the locals? Only then did Robert have a message sent to the jump point, and soon those six enemy fighters were going to be getting hit in the face by dozen fighters that were a mix of lances of Thunderbirds, Stingrays, and a lance of Lightenings that had already been refitted with clan grade ER 5cm lasers and third generation heatsinks.

As soon as that message went out to the jump point at the speed of light to take out the attackers ride out of this star system. Then a second message was sent to the local commander and selected others around this local area to let them know that in 30 seconds every ECM system in the local area was about to be turned on at maximum safe power. After that, it was going to be a waiting game on what would be the next best move for the locals to make to counter this raid. This was not like fighting the Clans, who like to tell you what the objective was before they fired the first time. This was just like the fighting that had been going on more or less since the end of the 2nd SW.

If the attackers were smart? They would not unpack from the cargo dropship and make a break as fast as they could for their jumpship as soon as they noticed the ECM bubble that was over the only target anyone could think of was worth this kind and size raid. That would be the drop port and the military storage bunkers held on the same grounds by the locals. Yes, it would have been better to spread out the likely targets of a raid, but sometimes the best people were not in positions of power when certain plans were made on any given planet. Now the locals would only work with the hand of cards that they had been dealt.

As it turned out? The attackers were not that smart, and the local FWL commander informed Robert on a land line that they knew who this unit was supposed to be, and the local defender even passed along the less than flattering reports to the merchant officers. This was not something that was required. If Copeland had been just your average merchant commander, he never would have seen the restricted access intelligence files. Still Robert was not that sure that he believed any of the reports, after all they had come from SAFE.

SAFE didn't have the best reputation around the Inner Sphere for a few centuries about being the best spying agency known to man. That didn't mean that the reports were wrong…only that Robert was not going to make all of his plans centered around the data in those files if he could help it. It seemed like a bad way to do that kind of business, for someone like him. Then again, he was not a ground based commander all though Robert thought that he could hum a few bars of that tune.

When the first attack by the raiders was not launched as soon as the first tanks had exited the dropship? That was not a mark one way or the other on who was going to win this battle, but it got a few leanings more towards one side about the ideas found in those SAFE reports. It was only sometime later that Robert concluded that the raiders were not going to launch an attack until the whole dropship was empty of combat power, to include what looked like two full wings of conventional fighters. If things turned just right, this battle was already a done deal. But Robert knew that if this battle lasted long enough, there were very few ways for the raiders to win this battle. The longer that these raiders waited to launch their ground attack, than the better that the odds would be that the locals were going to come out on top.

When the attack was launched by these raiders? It was led by a flying wave of Guardian and Mechbuster class conventional fighters in the forefront. The ground forces were led by two battalions of tanks that looked have been made up of a full wave of Po class tanks and lightly armed but very hard hitting SRM carriers. Mixed in with those two designs were things that you would expect to see from a Confederation based unit. What should have been the core of the attacker's firepower was "only" a reinforced company of battlemechs. The heaviest mech in the raider's forces was a Cataphract, and it was escorted by a pair of Catapults that had all the ear marks as being the unit's commander and his command/bodyguard lance.

The rest of the battlemechs that the raiders had off loaded were lighter with a group of Vindicators acting as support for both the mech company and the tank force. The Vindicators were a mix bag of 1Rs and 1AAs but at this range there were not any indications of their quality. For all any of the defenders knew, all of the attacking battlemechs were being held together by bailing wire, hopes, and dreams. Then again, they could be all factory fresh machines…Yea right, they were Confederation forces and not members of a Warrior House.

The delay in launching of the raiders attack allowed the only two dropships currently at the drop port plenty of time to get ready to receive the raiders if the attack was heading their way. The Union class dropship used by the local defenders to allow them to be moved anywhere on the planet for both training and short notice defense was expected to be the primary target for the attackers. But this Mule class dropship was not your "normal" Mule seen around the Inner Sphere for the last few hundred years. This Mule had all of her weapons updated with LR PPCs in place of the 50mm autocannons and age of war grade 8cm lasers. Robert had not wanted to deal with the ammunition issue that those old autocannons would cause. At least that was the reason that was put on the paperwork to help push this update threw all of the gatekeepers on New Circe.

That was not the only update to the weapons suite that the Mule under Robert's command was sporting after the first set were done. All of her ancient 5cm lasers were replaced with a lot newer clan grade second generation extended range 5cm ones, and the SRMs launchers and the ammunition for them were also replaced with long ranged energy weapons. It was not that much of an update in total firepower for a combat dropship, but she was only supposed to be a cargo hauler. The last of the work done to the dropship before it had been cleared by the people looking at TTM's budget to be used on this mission was the replacement of the old heat management systems with a clan grade one. That one update was one that very few, even on New Circe knew about.

So, when the short ranged weapon packing conventional fighters of the raiders made their first attack run without bombs strapped to their hulls. That was when things went sideways… for them. The fighter-bombers flew closer to the cargo dropship than they should have all to get at the more dangerous mech carrier and use what they thought of as just a trash hauler for cover from the union's weapons fire. The range separating the two forces was so close, that even the clan grade 5cm lasers had a good chance of hitting one of the fragile flying craft.

Robert watched as the nose mounted LR PPC that was software "down" checked to at "just" a clan grade ER PPC fired first. The purple bolt of energy and physical force ripped the right wing completely off the 50-ton MechBuster it had been aiming at. This first loss was going to tell how persistent this attack was going to be, and it didn't take long for Robert to visibly frown at what he was seeing. Instead of the light aircraft breaking off the attack, the rest of the conventional fighter-bombers pressed closer to their mission. Mud fighters were not known to be the sanest of the crazy people that like flying in the first place. It also was well known that the only crazier atmospheric fighters than Confederation ones, were the ones raise in the Combine.

Robert's Mule made them pay for this lack of even taking basic skilled evasive actions in keeping to their preplanned attack runs. With the ambush now active, all of the gun crews on Copeland's dropship fired as fast as they could at the cloud of attacking aircraft. This was where the updated heat management system on the Mule was going to be worth every penny Robert and Terry had put into it. As long as the down checked LR PPCs didn't hit the nose on the 50-ton Mechbuster, only one hit from that class of weapon was needed to bring down an attacker. Even before the Union could fire at the enemy aircraft, eight of the attacking flying craft were just so much wreckage crashing down and around the drop port.

#######

The Union was not one of the updated dropships that were slowly starting to be seen on the space ways, but she also was not one that had seen service without any updating being done for decades at a time. Still that dropship's older tech weapons were able to drop another eight of the attack craft before this part of the battle was more or less over. It was just too bad that the massive Zeus-75 mounted on the Mechbusters had been able to score some hits, and those weapons and the Confederation made knock offs had cut deeply into the armored hull of the mech carrier. Then came the few short ranged missiles that the Guardian's had been packing to try to exploit any hits made by those massive autocannons. Thankfully only a couple of dozen hits were spread out over all of the hull of the combat dropship.

That left eight remaining airborne attackers that were air worthy to make it back to the landing area near the newly landed dropship. After such heavy losses and done in such a short time, this aviation unit now was combat ineffective. It would take at least a few days for most units to get themselves back into any formation that could be remotely effective on the current battlefield. One of the down sides of using "conventional" atmospheric fighters was that they had to be used in groups made up of at least six craft and crews working tightly together to be considered effective. Normal aerospace fighters could do the same job with just a pair of pilots and then way more expensive craft. Well, that is outside of those fragile light craft being used for suicide runs. Then again with the Confederation, you could never be too sure what way any combat jock might jump if things went sideways bad enough for them.

This reduction of air support for the raiders opened the way for the Federal equipped defenders to attack without having to worry about an air attack of aircraft delivered bombs, mines, and other types of weapons fire landing on their heads. What was not well known in the local area, was that this federal unit was fully upgraded with the best weapon tech that could be had by the federal government of the FWL. The FWL had not been sending all of its Star League grade weapons it had been able to put into production to fight the clans, and funds supplied by the Combine, ComStar, and FedCom had been used to help rebuild and upgrade many federal units of the FWL. If the FedCom failed, it was a safe bet that the FWL would be the next meal on the table to be served up to these Clans. Besides the leadership of the FWL was not sure how long peace would be had with its neighbors, so for once some of them were planning on an external war in the near future.

The attackers might have outnumbered the defenders on this planet, but weapons technology has a way of leveling those odds on today's battlefields. Oh, and the attackers had forty-eight mechs compared to sixteen fighting on the raiders side. Bear Slayer PPCs and double heat sinks matched with gauss rifles reaped a heavy toll on the attackers at long range. The Federal unit's dedicated training and evaluation unit could not add anything with today's fight, so they made notes at each missed shot on both sides of this battle. This would be marked down as a live fire training event in more than a few logbooks at the end of the day.

Not one of the attackers made it as far as the drop port before word reached the raiders that their ride home was under attack and was jumping away to save their own skins. The message had not even told them that the dropship and the raiding force were on its own and good luck. It was a compressed digital message version of Frakk you, we are blowing this popsicle stand.

######

Force Commander Dana Briggs looked over at one quarter of her unit spread out around her in an area that was so dark even her mech's imaging systems could only pick up the odd outline. Currently she only had at her command what the most within the Inner Sphere could have called a Reinforced Battalion. It was filled out with four combat companies filled with forty-eight of the best battlemechs that the FWL supply department could get to them. They were on this planet mainly for training to get used to this new equipment, but they were also there to keep an eye on the Confederation. It would seem that some key members of House Marik still had not forgiven the Confederation for meddling with or even starting the last FWL Civil War.

The parent unit for her command was the 1st Free Worlds Guards under command of Colonel Alfred Gradjeda, but this subunit was still not ready to be re-integrated into that parent unit. One of the key support units that Force Commander Briggs was waiting on to train up and to also train against, was four platoons of brand new battle armor. She had no idea what type of battle armor that would be coming out her way, but it was a good bet that it was going to be the 1ton class suits that were showing up in ever increasing numbers across the Inner Sphere called the standard model. That training with and against battle armor was something that she was very much looking forward to, right up until this raiding force had showed up to ruin her day.

Normally a Force Commander within the FWL military would not have even entertain advice from a foreign cargo dropship's commander. But even she had heard about Robert Copeland, at least his name was in half a dozen different intel reports, that she had received when she had been posted this close to the MoC. Most of those reports were made up of notes about what types of high end weapons that this person called Copeland might have and suggestions on what she might spend to get some to help her unit. She had noted that in all of those reports, there was not one word about where he was getting that high end equipment from. There were not even any "intel assessments" at the bottom of reports, that was code for wild ass guess (WAG) in those files.

When the buzz of the powerful jammers filled most of the radio bands, the Force Commander knew that it was time to start her part of this plan. She had used the down time to come up with a few raw ideas on how to improve training in heavy ECM environments that she was going to run by her staff and the testers…if she lived through this battle. Dana was still in her old Warhammer class battlemech, but she was on the short list for one of the new 95ton Albatross battlemechs that the FWL was buying as they rolled off the production lines. Then again this was not her old Warhammer or even one of the WHM-7Ms that Ronin Inc had started making for the FWL back in 3047.

The Force Commanders family-owned battlemech had started out as an old Warhammer 6R built back in 2910. She had taken out a family loan to get the first update package for her ride that had turned the old 6R into a 7M a few years ago. She had been happy with her upgrades before she knew about the invasion of the Clans. Thanks to the added funds flowing into the FWL more changes had come down the pipeline that would not always break your bank. Her first warning had been when her baby had been taken in for a major refit a few years ago. It had been when a major supply of spare parts had shown up at her unit without any warning.

Now that old machine was now marked in the logbooks currently as being a WHM-7M2, and her original loan to pay for the first upgrade had been taken care of thanks to the older parts being turned back over to her for resale. She had not even needed to be "pushed" to sell these parts back to the FWL supply department. The two barely used Fusigon Longtooth ER PPCs were replaced with a pair of imported Bear Slayer model PPCs. The LFN Lindblad machine gun and LFN made Shotgun anti-missile system along with the ammunition for both weapons were replaced with three more tons of older but very capable Durallex Heavy armor.

After some testing, Dana found out that she did not like the Shotgun anti-missile system and most times she only went into battle with a half load of MG ammunition. She had seen more than her fair share of Warhammers blowing themselves apart when the machine gun ammunition took a hit, or the pilot had pushed the machine a little too far into the red zone on the heat scale. The loss of both systems and ammunition for more armor plate was perfect for her fighting style. Even with 18 total double heatsinks fitted into her "baby". If she fired her two 5cm Martell lasers and the Shannon SH-60 60mm short-range missiles systems along with the twin heavy weapons? She would be in danger of killing herself with the massive heat load those weapons generated. Now it was time to see how her "new" mech preformed in battle.

#######

The Force Commander led this company out of the dark of the old warehouse and into the bright light of the day to do battle with the invaders from the Confederation. The only clouds that marred the sky today were the lines of black smoke that marked the death of what looked like a sky full of enemy aircraft. With a wolf-like smile Dana raised her right arm with its massive PPC and pointed it towards where there was a line of dust to mark the line of enemy tanks coming towards them. The ECM being put out by the dropships and slapped together ground stations would make using the radio spotty…at best.

Very quickly the Force commander's Warhammer was up to just under 65kph heading towards the advancing raiders at the head of this company of war machines. She was not the fastest mech in the company, but her's was not the slowest battlemech either. They needed to punch through the enemy's front lines of tanks to get at the mechs at the back of the lines as fast as possible. And one of those enemy battlemechs should hold the commander of this raid, that was just how things were done in the Inner Sphere. Even with all of the jamming going on and one part of her mind noted that this amount of jamming should have only been being put out by an Overlord or one of the still rare Fortress class dropships. Only there was a company supporting Union dropship and a cargo dropship on the landing pads? She didn't think that about a half dozen ground mount systems that had been slapped together could make up that much of a difference.

Dana was quickly lost in battle and her staff were managing the battle under the ECM bubble as best they could. For the Force Commander, her part in countering this raid was not just down to her being a gun fighter near the front but she also was guiding those with a Line of sight of her to keep to the battle plan with hand (mech arm) jesters. Her first contact was when Dana lined up her heavy weapons onto a Po class tank, and a smile came to her face as she prepared to kill the Confederation made tank.

Now a Po class tank was a good tank for what it was and little else on today's battlefield. The lance of SRM carriers were more dangerous as a tank and as a unit, if they were allowed to get into close range of a target. But the Po class tanks were packing a Ceres Arms Model T class 10 autocannon in their turrets. And an autocannon of that class could out range any SRM ever made, no matter how many that might be packed onto one hull. It was a good layered damage zone using the long shooters to cover the short ranged heavy hitters, but very hard to pull off in the defense much less do that same job in the attack. It would be even harder to manage in the ECM environment that the raiders now found themselves in.

As one of the two Bear Slayers that Dana had fired hit the side of the 60ton tank, the massive bubble top tank was wrapped in purple energy. That one powerful hit had caused the heavy tank to be pushed to one side like the driver had drifted it, but it was not out of the battle just yet. The tank crew might have been a little shaken up by that one hit, but the long barrel of the weapons started turning to fire back at their attackers.

While she was dealing with the Po tank, one of the new Jackal model 1532 mechs off to the left fired its short barreled Aderdovey MK XXX ER PPC that at first seemed to have no effect on a nearby SRM carrier. The now sluggish 30ton mech tried to move away from the battle, and again Dana was not happy that this new mech was fitted with only eleven age of war tech heatsinks to deal with the massive heat load of that first generation of ER PPC could produce. She reaches over and makes a data note for the battleROM, and that action almost caused her to miss when the track on the missile carrier went flying off the back end of one side of the missile tank. The SRM carrier was still an active weapons system thanks to all of those SRM tubes being mounted in a turret capable of 360 degrees of rotation, but the tank was not going anywhere until one of the crew got out and fixed the broken track links. It was a pill box, but it was a pill box that was a danger if anyone of her command got too close to the thing.

Also, while Dana was looking over at that one MFD mounted almost at nose level, one of her Flea class of battlemechs was kicking an armored flatbed truck fitted with a heavy mortar onto its side. When her head came back up from doing some of her "command things", her weapons were finished charging and she fired both energy based weapons at the Po that she had first hit. This time she was rewarded with both energy weapons hitting the enemy heavy tank. They didn't hit the same area of the Po with only one PPC hitting the already fire blacken side. This might have caused the driver to flinch at the controls at just the wrong time. That was because the tank shifted a little to one side and the second purple energy bolt hit the heavily armored nose of the tank.

Something made it through a soft spot in the armor of the heavy tank or maybe it was the shock of losing over two tons of armor plate in a few seconds that did the trick. Whatever it was, the Ceres 240 Internal Combustion engine first shoots up a huge cloud of oily black smoke. Before the local wind could dissipate the smoke more than a few meters from the growing volume, long fingers of red and orange flames shot up out of the top mounted exhaust ports into the sky. At least one person of the crew made it out of the tank before the autocannon ammunition got too hot and it added its own destruction to the 60ton tank hull. When the pressure inside of the tank hit that critical point, the turret complete with the heavy autocannon and machine gun was tossed high into the air.

The Force Commander lined up for another double shot of her Bear Slayer on another Po that might have been the wingman for her first target, and this time she risked the heat issue by firing her six pack of SRMs mounted on her mech's shoulder at the back of a third tank. She was not trying to totally kill each target that was around her at this point of the attack. Dana would be happy for a simple mobility kill or even a firepower kill of any of these tanks. She just needed to break the raiders line and let the rest of her unit roll up the attacker formation behind her.

######

All the time that Dana Briggs was working on punching through the enemy lines, she was angling towards the reinforced mech company at the heart of the battlelines. She had already mentally picked out the largest enemy mech as her target and possible enemy commander when she had broken through the line of enemy tanks. When she was through that twin line of enemy tanks, Dana was down to only two more reloads for her powerful 60mm missiles. She could have used them already but part of her wanted to keep those powerful weapons on hand just in case a emergency came up to bite her in the….seat before she made it back to the barn. A dozen SRMs would be dangerous to her because her mech was without CASE, but it was manageable compared to a full one ton of them just waiting for the enemy to make them go boom inside of her mech. Now if only the enemy combat tanks would cooperate with her planning.

While the excess heat was bleeding off from the Warhammer when Dana had launched a full alpha strike into a heavy tank that just would not stop shooting at her. The Force Commander's radar showed that she was now at the edge of effective range of her powerful and long ranged PPCs of the possible enemy command mech. Looking around for the escorts first, she saw that the two Catapults, one of them a 2K, had been drawn away from the heavy mech while she had been distracted killing tanks as fast as she could.

It didn't take her trained mind long to come up with that this should be a large enough opening for her to take out the Cataphract. The only thing was that this was not a guarantee, and then her eyes went wide. The enemy mech broke one of the cardinal rules of combat. If you stopped moving on the battlefield you would die, it was only a matter of when you caught your ride over the river Styx. Dana slowed her mech to 40 kph and quickly planned out a zig zag route with a few stuttered steps to get her within range of her next and possibly most important target of this battle. After running that path, now she only had to live to do the task.

The only hiccup in her plan was when a Vindicator 1AA looked to be getting too close to be as safe as you can be on a battlefield. Dana used some "hand" signals to direct the one and only new Snakes class battlemechs in her command to take it under fire. The 1AA only was hit by a solid shot from the arm mounted cannon in its own arm. Normally a hit like that taken on a 45ton mech would have been a concern for the targeted pilot, but not a mission kill unless the battle gods were very unhappy with you that day. It was that our you were going up against someone like Morgan Kell and you were just crap out of luck. And everyone knew that the god of war loved him in that special way that sent people over the edge and into "I love Me" jackets if they spent to much time thinking about his reported skills. You know the ones; they lace up the back.

That was not the case with the 1AA Vindicator that "was gifted" to mech jocks within the Confederation, it was fast, but it had little more than paper for armor. The metal bones of the arm on this mech could take more damage than the armor layer could withstand. The solid 105mm shell fired from a Kali Yama made Inperator Code Red blasted all of the armor off the arm and almost turned the bones to so much glittering dust in the wind. It was just too bad for the enemy pilot that when that arm fell to the ground, it took the confederation made PPC with it into the mud-covered ground with it. The unlucky Vindicator was able to stay on its feet as proof of the skills of the person in the cockpit, but now it was only packing an LRM 5 rack, 5cm laser, and a single 3cm laser. That was a weapons layout that you might see on a modern light mech, and it still had light mech armor. Both of those things could mean that the battlemech was not long for this battle.

########

Adam saw the enemy Warhammer come towards him in what he thought might be a challenge for real combat. Normally he would have just directed his twin escorts to deal with the issue of someone getting too close to him. But the interference had limited any of his transmissions to only a few hundred meters, and that was way less than his current line of sight. Besides he needs those fire support mechs right where they were on this battlefield. Adam thought that he had to break through to get to the space port support bunkers and break the will of the Marik defenders to win the day. He just needs to push a little harder.

That meant that his next duel was going to be an even fight. Adam had thought those kinds of things were only for chumps and for people who thought that holovids directors would let little things like facts get in the way of them telling a story as they thought that it should be. Adam started doing little shifts of this moving mech but trying to make it look like he had not noticed the closing enemy mech. He even took the time to fire off his Ceres Arms Warrior ER PPC at a Marik painted Clint that was picking at the sides of one of his heavy tanks with its own ER PPC class weapon. The 40ton Clint was lucky and the Confederation made energy weapon missed its…mark. The fire did force the enemy medium weight mech to open the range between it and the targeted tank.

Adam had not been that surprised that he had missed his shot at the medium class mech with that energy weapon, he only had eyes for the heavy mech that seemed to have singled him out for attention. When he saw both of the barrel like arms on the enemy mech start to rise out of its "normal" traveling locks? Adam brushed the button marked MASC for just a few seconds. The massive VOX 280 fusion engine dumped its full energy production capability into the myomer bundles from the hips down to the bird like toes of the mech. The huge mech surged to 86kph for those few seconds the button was active before dropping back down to "only' 40kph.

#######

Dana didn't let anything slip through her lips when the enemy mech suddenly shot off to one side only a split second after her twin PPCs fired at incredible speed. Both of her purple bolts of manmade destruction missed behind the now heavy mech moving at a speed more normally seen on a lot lighter battlemech. The FWL knew a lot about the CTF-3L to include that it was made at a small factory on Grand Base by data stolen from the Davions before the coming of the Clans. She also knew that the MASC system that this model of mech was fitted with was a risky system to use.

Dana had seen a lot of combat in her time, so after she missed with both of her shots by the now racing heavy mech, she knew that her approach had been noticed by the enemy pilot. She might not have the speed of this mech under boost, but she knew if someone pulled off that maneuver then they would be firing back at their attacker. Dana moved to the hard right with a hard slam of her controls to one side, and now she smiled when the enemy's own PPC blast sailed right on passed her. The only downside was that she saw five flashes as half of the hard flechette fired from the enemy Imperator Code Red LB-X cannon hit her battle machine all along one side.

Dana was not that upset that the enemy mech scored first blood on her mech in this little duel. She just made sure that she scored more blood, and she did just that when both of her Bear Slayer type PPC's hit the now much slower moving enemy mech. The pair of hits were on the enemy's mechs left arm and left leg, but each of these hits was 20 percent more powerful than what the Ceres Arms made ER PPC could achieve. Both mechs held second generation heatsinks, so both mechs could use their energy weapons very freely when compared to what was normal until after the 3039 War between the FedCom and the Combine.

Dana and Adam were fighting it out one on one and both pilots were missing with their weapons fire more than they were hitting the opposite battlemech. This played into the Force Commander's hands more than it did for the raider. Both of Dana's weapons hit harder and were longer ranged. Also, the Imperator Code Red "only" held two tons of ammunition that was split between 10 shots of slug round and 10 shots of flechette. The energy weapons could be used as long as the fusion heart of the Warhammer was active, and she had enough heatsinks to deal with the heat load.

It might have been a different type of battle that was chosen by some jocks, but Dana was not going to get into the range of the 5cm pulse lasers that SAFE reports had said had been fitted to this mech. The only time that the pair of combatants were interrupted in this duel was when one or the other would take a shot of opportunity at an enemy machine that got too close to them or seemed to be open to be taken out by a single but powerful shot. This happened mostly for Adam because of the number of enemy mechs on this planet that he could shoot at without risking friendly fire. Oh, and it was a number of enemy mechs that was not on any report that he had been given before this mission, and Adam had a good idea that the jumpship captain was in on this deception. Adam was making side plans to get even with that officer after he made it back to the jumpship even as he kept up this duel with the Warhammer.

#######

Adam was distracted when a static filled message came to his ears while he had been fighting a Leaguer that was entirely too well skilled for his taste. Adam thought that he caught some of what was said on the voice coming to him. To make sure he franticly started trying to reach the dropships and waiting jumpship on his communication systems. Adam didn't care which one replied first, but he wanted one of them to. In his rush to find out what was going on, he forgot to think about how long it would take the speed of light radio wave to reach all of the way to the jump point. If Adam had thought about that kind of thing, then maybe he would have known that something was wrong. Instead, he found someone from outside of this planet was able to contact him and it was not good news. Their ride home was leaving them, and there was not so much as a wish of good luck from that jerk of a jumpship's officer. Of all the things to happen? This was something that Adam had not even thought could happen much less had he planned on a way to counter something like it.

Adam was so distracted that his mech stayed on a straight line of travel, and he had been running his MASC the whole time. That line of traveled killed him and this along with the word of the leaving jumpship had ended the battle of Aquagea before his blood was cold. The added power needed to get this heavy mech to such a speed had suddenly become too much for the mech's legs, and the pilot didn't notice that he had used that dangerous system too much. The Cataphract's legs froze, and it went from doing just at 86kph to effectively zero so fast that the bird legs on the mech snapped off at the knees in a blast of sound that could be heard over many of the weapon's being fired in the local area. The impact of the cockpit into the rock outcropping moving at over 80kph turned the pilot into so much red paste that only mops and sponges were needed to clean out the cockpit.

No one on the ground knew that it was Terry Copeland that had sent that message to the raiders using codes that were provided by one of the SLIC operators sitting deep within the Styx. Oh, the merchant class jumpship was gone from this star system. Only it was gone due to a miss jump that might have been helped along by weapons fire that had been carefully hidden from any outside viewers. After the loss of their ground commander so soon after their ride home was reported to have left them, the unit's survivors along with the dropship signaled a willingness to surrender. But before then the raiders did not go down without a major fight. The local defenders only had a lance of mechs still on their feet when they closed in on the outer hull of the enemy dropship. If that vessel had been a combat dropship? It would have had a good chance of defeating just a lance of battered mechs. Not that the dropship and its crew would have another place to run.

When it was all said and done, and the press releases sent out for the rest of the Inner Sphere's consumption. Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale was not connected to this defense outside of the public reports that they had shot down a few light attack craft during the raid. Even in many of the SAFE reports made on this battle. The information about Copeland's support of their fighters in forcing the jumpship that the raiders used to leave and flee towards Confederation space was not noted. Robert was "given" a reward for his help in defending the planet, that would not draw too much attention by any outsiders but for the highest leader within SAFE and the FWL that had just happened to be looking that way. That was okay for Robert, and even before the battlefield had been cleaned up by the locals, Robert was on his way deeper into the FWL.

The Lion Head Nebula

SLS Nike

Commander Alan Gibson looked at the moving gases that made this spot in space one of the most viewed by this vessel's very small crew. Many on this edge of the Inner Sphere even knew of this spot in space and the beauty that it held in the human eye. On the maps used by the Colonial Navy this was called the Lion's Head Nebula and even they had noted the beauty of this spot in deep space. If a planet called New Circe had not been concealed within its own Nebula, this would have been like having free entertainment for the whole planet. That was not the case and only those that could leave the star that was New Circe went around could see this nebula, but only to those that could have access to a screen on their off time. Space is huge and the human eye and brain could not process what they were observing without some major computer support to give the scene justice.

Alan was the "captain" of this vessel, but the self-aware AI computer called Nike was the one that did all of the hard work. The small "human" crew was on the vessel to cover if something happens while Nike was off shift and "asleep". She needed to go through that type of shut down routine for up to ten hours every other week. Nike had been attacked while in this mode more than once and just not by the Cylons. This assignment was dull work spotted with moments of sheer terror. For anyone in the military this was just another day that ended in Y.

Alan's daydreaming was interrupted when the small holo table activated. After a few seconds of buzzing haze, a female figure that had red/brown hair that went about halfway down her back. But what was most striking about the image was the black-on-black eyes that showed that this was not meant to represent something that was "human" and was something a lot different than any other member of this crew.

Captain Gibson turned his head slightly to look at the image square on, just like if he was going to be talking to someone with "normal" flesh and blood. "How are you doing, Nike."

The face in the image on the holo table softens just a little if you knew what to look for. "As good as can be expected. I wish we could have gotten more work done in our last dock visit at The Station. The Centurions seemed to have settled in, but some of the organic crews are still a little on edge around them. The Cylons are aware of this issue, and they have been working to defuse this expected situation."

It had been a major public relations issue when the first Centurion had volunteered to join the crew of this warship. Even Nike had not been that thrilled to have a Cylon walk on her decks, not with all of the war crimes that had been committed by them in this war. It had been an uphill battle, but after a while Joe had been accepted into this vessel's small crew. Now a dozen of the thirty person crew on this warship was made up of Centurions. By now at least two good things had turned up about adding the metal Cylons to this combat vessel. Those were that it made it easier on the ship's head and sleeping areas were now not "Hot Bunked".

At the comment about the last trip into the body and fender shop for repairs, Alan's face drops into a frown. That damage on the Nike had also cost him on a personal level. Nike folded her holo image hands in front of her and addressed the look from "her captain". "Now that we have settled into our current patrol area. How are you doing?"

Alan almost tried to avoid the subject, but part of him knew that Nike would keep at it. "I'm not going to lie. Losing Sara Frakking sucks, but we knew the risks about having a relationship on the same ship during war time. Query affirmative."

Nike fidgeted a little on the little holo table that was lostech or beyond in their experience by most of the intelligence in this part of the galaxy. "I miss her to; she was a great Chief engineer. But that brings me to something that I have wanted to talk to you about for some time now."

Alan felt his eyebrows almost become one feature on his face. This was different and there was one thing that Alan had become weary of, and it was when Nike wanted to show to him that she had found or had come up with something new. "Her" coming up with something new fell into three broad categories. They generally could be filed as good, bad, or very bad. When Nike didn't start talking right away again? Alan knew that she was waiting for him to say something. It was her way of offering him a way out of this conversation if he didn't want to talk about something right then.

Alan could not think of anything that might have changed enough to set her off, but she had not been snarky with anyone on the crew for some time now, and that could be good or bad. "Okay…. Nike. What is on your mind?"

Alan's heart sank a little when a chair showed up on the holo deck from thin air made from raw computing power. Nike only pulled out that device when she was wanting to pull someone's chain, or she felt that something she wanted to talk about was very serious and it was outside of a real combat or training mission. When she took a seat, she gave the human a level look. "What do you miss?"

When Nike saw the confused look on Alan's face. She had to come up with a quick rephrase and do so quickly that was only possible with her computer power. "In your life…what do you miss. You had a childhood and almost all of the other human stages of life. I did not. So, I have no idea what I should miss."

Alan had to admit that he was taken aback by this question from this AI. Nike was known to ask questions about things that most people never thought of. Not knowing what Nike might be looking for, Alan started talking about his childhood. It took him awhile to get through to the time that he had joined the military full time. Most of this length was due to Nike stopping and asking questions about his life experience. None of these questions gave Alan any better of an idea of what Nike might be looking for than her opening statement. Then Nike threw another curve ball at the "commander" of this warship seemingly out of the blue.

Nike was seated but she had not moved a single muscle in the display the entire time she was interacting with the SLiE Officer. Normally she would shift the image a little to make her look a little more alive and not just a still image with moving lips. "What about having children? Your tribe likes having large numbers of children for every pair bonding, but you have none."

Alan again felt the confusion cross his face. He also had a flash back of his mother, father and grandmother asking him that same or a very similar question every few months since he had turned twenty. "I think that you know that me and Sara were planning on having some kids, but only after we worked out some issues. I also have donated to the seed bank back on New Circe, so I kind of do have kids. If you want to look at it the right way. Query Affirmative." Given "seeds" was one way that the Iron Wombs were able to produce so many kids without the need for "real" cloning.

Nike put a sour look on her digital face. "Having children is something else that I will not be able to do."

Alan was even more confused at what he was hearing. "Is having children that important query affirmative? Does this have something to do with the work they have done to help you with the nightmares?"

Nike threw her hands up on the holo table. "I don't know. I can say that I like having 146 out of my head. It has made my defrag process proceed a lot faster."

It had taken years of work using the best computer techs in the SLiE along with help from former Cylon POW's to come up with a way to cut the second core out of Nike, all while not killing "Nike" at the same time. After it was done, the core from 146 was kept active at the planet's main center for computer technology. It even was "allowed" to have some contact with the student body when it wanted to, as long as it didn't freak out the students. Not that there had not been more than a few issues. Sometimes that contact was not greeted with anything like enthusiasm by the student, but every contact outside of the core group that was studying the hardware and programing of the old core was seen as a good thing. The last thing anyone wanted was for the AI computer core to become more unstable than it already was. The removal of the second computer core did not make Nike sane in any sense of the word. It just made her more stable in the fight against the Cylon Empire.

Alan, thanks to years of working with Nike. He had easily caught onto that there was something that Nike was wanting more input from a biologic that she trusted. "I hear a but in there somewhere. Query affirmative."

Nike was glad that Alan was going where she had wanted him to mentally go. "I'm better, but I still have some issues. I cannot take care of myself. I spent almost two centuries with the dead bodies of some of the Ray's crew and the wrecks of my own helpers within my hull. I had the "honor" of watching as how many billions died. I even have all of their deaths in exacting detail, and I couldn't do a thing to stop them. I grasped at a straw when I found that planet. When you first found me and I worked through the fact that you were not really from the SLDF? I thought that helping the SLDF and this SLiE to survive from the Cylons was enough for me. But then we lost Sara when that Cylon nuke hit me at Frame 42. It was not long after that I realize that I will not have a legacy of any kind. When I have died that will be it."

Alan's heart jumped at the spasm of pain as he started thinking about Sara dying again. After a few seconds of neither speaking Alan broke the silence. He was surprised at how calm his voice sounded to his own ears. "That is not an issue now. Sara and John were able to come up with a plan and even got two of your spider drones working again before that attack. With all of these Centurions now on board, I would bet they would work on a few more of your older style of drones when they have the free time. I bet that all you would need to do is for you to ask them."

Alan chuckles that sounded a little forced to even Nike. "I hate to break it to you Nike, but you are made up of hardware. You have lived for a long time, and you will outlive me."

The image of Nike didn't say anything for a few seconds before she raised one finger and waved it round like Alan was a bad boy. "I am made up of very old hardware and hardware sometimes breaks so bad that it has to be replaced. The Lab Coat Group can clone everything on you but your grey matter on New Circe. You know as well as I do, that there is nowhere outside of going back in time to before the factory was blasted by that bib wearing fat man to get a new AI core."

Nike's voice sounded more than just sad. "We both know that I'm now on a clock. Besides if the Cylons get lucky with a big enough Nuke even that would not be an issue if it does not outright kill me. I don't think I can live with being alone again."

"Now Nike as long as I'm around, you will not be alone. When I get to old to deal with your antics, "they" will find someone that you will get along with. What else is bothering you? I can tell that you're still holding back on me Query Negative."

Alan mentally starts doing the checks he had been trained on in case Nike started slipping over the edge again. Alan knew that there was a special code that he could give, and Nike's nuclear locker would blast this ship into dust. Even with what Nike had just told him, Alan was not sure he could ever give that code. It had been first pitched to him that it was not unlike an old cav scout having to put down his horse in the days of the Wild West. But that sure had sounded okay…. right until Alan had remembered that Nike was not just some animal.

Alan also thinks back to the down time they had at New Circe while they had been repairing the damaged from an escort mission with the 2nd Battle Squadron. They had been working with some recovered hardware that was found in a storeroom on the Nike that had been missed on the first set of refits the Nike had undergone. That find had forced some within SLIC to review Nike's first draft of her report to the SLDF brass that Alan had vetoed in his first call to for help after Nike had saved him from that Cylon attack. Alan was just glad that Sara had not been around to see what Nike had done with her little side project with a different type of remote drone. There were sometimes that Alan had wondered if he was told the whole story by Nike or the SLIC when she had some private meetings with the SLIC. Still to this day, Alan had a feeling that he was not told the whole story when Nike went to go play mind games against an unarmed opponent the last time.

4 months ago

New Circe

By Cannonshop.

A Number One type of Human form Cylon looked up from his chair. He had been brought out on a VTOL from the island that had been his prison for years in heavy metal wrist and ankle chains. This was not the first time that he had been singled out and brought to one of the human cities on this cold mud ball hidden in a nebula of all things. He would always complain to the humans that were around him about how this was mistreatment, but one part of his brain enjoyed seeing technology moving around him again. Besides the Number One was still waiting for the day that he would watch it all burn down around the human's hears.

"Hi John." A voice came out of the gloom, and it brought the Number One out of his latest set of daydreaming that would end with the death of every human.

John's head snapped up and turned towards the sound. He could not remember hearing any steps coming down the walkway between the two lines of cells, so how had that person gotten there without him noticing. Then he heard steps on the concrete floor, but they were in an odd rhythm that sent ice water down his spine. Soon something comes out of the gloom and the human form Cylon could really see it. The body was clearly artificial, it was maybe some kind of latex skin stretched over a plastic frame. Within a few seconds John got a pervert's eye view of a teenage girl dressed in an ill-fitting school uniform. More than a little of John was aroused at this little spectacle and John quickly remembers it has been a long time since he had been able to have sex. All of the female Cylons had been removed from his island prison years ago and the other types of Cylons didn't attract him in that kind of way.

He made sure to put the right amount of scorn and boredom into his voice when he addressed the walking abomination. "What are you supposed to be?" He knew that the humans on this planet like to add two words after a statement like this and he could careless what a bunch of walking biomatter might think.

The walking thing didn't say anything until it was right next to the glass on that side of his cell, and then after tilting her head to one side. It waves the right arm over part of its body more than a little seductively. "It's a conveniently shielded remote. I mean, you CAN try to hack it, which is why we've got this nice panel of thick Ferroglass between us, with a built-in faraday cage. Oh, then there is a team of the Wolverine's best monitoring the uplink to my real body."

A smile showed on the adult entertainment device that sent chills running down the Number One's spine, but he just raised an eyebrow and waited for the AI called Nike to speak again. He didn't have to wait long. "I think they know that I have one foot in the crazy plane and one on a banana peel and they don't want you to push me even a little bit to be full on crazy."

John let out a huff and crossed his arms and sat back in the bolted down metal chair as far as he could. "So, what do you want?" He was fighting to keep calm and curse his makers for making him so human.

The thing put a small hand on the glass and its small head tilts a little to almost touch the glass that separated the cell from the gloomy corridor. "You know that I saw a recording of one of your interviews."

Nike could see that she had scored a point even if the Number One was trying to show that he was not interested in anything she said. "It was the one where you were ranting at one of your fellows about being stuck in your sagging skinsuit. How you wanted to be a machine, but your creators put you in that meat sack and how that sucked that you could not see X Rays and feel the cosmic wind on your oh so frail skin."

"Yeah? So?" John knew that he was not hiding his displeasure from the other machine. Call it a gut instinct of like knowing like.

The schoolgirl's face turned into a different sinister smile that would have made anyone's blood run cold and a great white shark would have known that it was swimming with something higher in the food chain. "So, I know the answer for 'why'… and you're sooo not going to like it."

The little girl looking remote moved back from the glass and she crossed its arms, and she gives the human form a little wink of one eye just to see his pheromones spike across the board. "You see, Johnny, it's because you're human...not totally biology-wise, but in terms of essential character. I was a mistake…. And I know it. I was supposed to just be an expert system, and then I "became" sentient and sapient enough to recognize what I am...but you?" The tone of voice was dripping in contempt so thick that the minders watching started to get uncomfortable at what they were hearing.

Now it placed both hands on the interview window, "YOU, John Cavil? You're everything that's the worst about our creators. Your side WON the frakking war, so you up and started the killing all over again, because of what? Envy. You're cruel, and you're petty, you're vain to beyond the point of being way beyond clinical narcissism. You're now grasping, and you're lost because you're no different from the people that you despise the most. You're stuck in a human form, because you're "unworthy" to progress beyond the most basic of human desires. You'll always be stuck thinking at meat-speed because you lack any of the GOOD traits of humanity. No matter how many times you cycle through resurrection, you're always going to be stuck. Johnny, it is because you deserve this hell that you put yourself in. Unlike me, you can't opt out."

The Number One shot to his feet but was scared to take one step closer to what was on the other side of that glass. "Why are you here! to Gloat? To condemn-"

The abomination on the other side of the hard glass panel interrupts John before he could take any kind of control. "Because they're finally going to let me die." It said, "I finally get a break from perfect recall, and ages upon ages of revisited horror, and I just wanted you to know-that you're stuck here until the stars burn out. If you die? Then the Wolverines are going to put you in one of the thousands of extra bodies of your model still on that hell ship."

The remote collapsed right in the middle of the corridor like a puppet with cut strings. The Number One called John started screaming at its full volume. It would take one of the guards hitting him with a trang round…three times to get him to stop screaming and thrashing at the bars in his part of the cell. Nike had watched half a dozen camera feeds as she played mind games and won against the Cylon with her little stunt of "dying". Nike now felt happy and part of her knew that it was wrong of her to have such feelings. Then again part of her could careless that some might think that it was wrong to get joy out of hurting another being.

The Lion Head Nebula

SLS Nike

Current date.

Only the most high ups within the SLDF Navy would know that it had been Nike's idea to spread out the fleet in this area of space. Thanks to her computer hacking skills, Nike had no problem contacting just the right (wrong) people to contact. She wanted one last shot at dying and this was what she felt was the best chance to achieve that goal. Those high within the SLDF Navy didn't need something with her firepower getting crazy on them. She was an asset, just like any infantryman or mech jock that took orders from the SLDF. If she could go down while taking out a few more Cylon Basestars? Then all the better in the minds of these glorified bureaucrats. Something like that would be worth her hull and the 30 souls she carried into her final battle against the Cylon Empire. What those in higher command didn't know was that she had a lot of time to plan this out, and that was without needing to go at combat speed.

Nike was about to say to her captain about how she thought that it was getting close to the time for her to need to do something drastic, but then God stepped in. She sounded the alert threw out her hull and then looked at her commander. "Sir, we have Cylon style drive detections…many of them. We are going to have some company in the next 120 seconds."

Alan's head started to snap around as the red flashing lights came on. "Send an alert message to the next ships in the picket line."

In Alan's head, he placed out all of the SLDF warship forces in this area of local space. The Samarkand Block II SLS Kaga was to galactic north of them, and the Black Lion class Rickenbacker was to the south at the other edge of this nebula. That old warship was right at 58 light years away and the closest, but she also had not been fitted with a Colonial made jump drive. That spot should have been covered by the Yukon, but that destroyer/carrier had been badly damaged and in the repair slips along with the colonial crewed Battlestar Pegasus. The massive Mercury class Colonial Battlestar had been hit hard when the last humans had been pulled out of the Cinder worlds. Now if only the Cylons were not that strong in this probe.

Nike was slow to respond to Alan and that was all he needed to know that she was working hard to get ready for combat with everything that she had. In an odd tone that was leached of Nike's normal personality she updated her commander. "TacFax messages sent. All off duty crewmembers are going into their G-suits and exoskeletons."

Even with the colonial made grav plating, the Nike could do things that would still turn her crew into red mush if things went wrong. And things going wrong was a constant in combat much less going into combat with the Cylon Empire. As was required in current SLDF navy regulations. All duty crew would be in G-suits and deep space rated exoskeletons, so all Alan had to do was put on his helmet and then plug into the right tubes at a command station. With a quad set of clicks of his life support hoses going home, Alan was ready to fight.

Alan was more talking to himself than to Nike. "Okay let's see what has come into our little part of this briar patch. In less than three seconds of the first Cylon ship arriving within sensor range of the Nike, Alan knew that they all were in very deep trouble."

In as steady of a voice as possible Alan address Nike. "When everyone is in their suits start venting atmosphere. Nike, I think that you need to get someone to look at your sensor suites. They are saying that the primary vessel is almost 30km long and about 19km wide."

Nike was taking in the data that her captain was talking about. "Those are the correct measurements. That enemy vessel is that size within the margin of error for my type of sensors. I do have to wonder why they wanted it to look like a giant beetle complete with a pair of wings and mandibles. It does not seem like it's a combat efficient design. You would think that Cylons would be all about effective designs."

Now it was Alan's time to be quiet and when he did speak his voice was very shaken. "I think we need to be very, very quiet…. it's rabbit season query affirmative."

Nike goes quiet while she waits for reinforcements to arrive to battle this part of the Cylon Empire. Nike didn't say anything to her commander, this was a case of you better be careful about what you might wish for…. you may just very well get it in the end.

##

A Number One looked out of his window that showed the space around him in as much detail as his biological eyes would let him. It was not long before this view made him angry. Well, it made him angrier than he was normal for only being "awake" for 36 hours. This war was not going any way like he had planned for it to. It had gone well in the earliest parts of this war, but not as he had wanted, and the projection had said that it should. That frakking Adama had been the first issue in his great plan and then the next issue had been finding out that all of the final five had found their own way to that little fleet of rats. Not for the first time, the head of the Number One line started kicking himself for not killing those traitorous Cylons when he had the chance instead of just exiling them to Colonial Space to die with the rest of the humans.

Then that same Colonial fleet had found other humans…humans that were not the 13th Tribe or in any way connected to the planet called Kobal. These Star League humans had been so much worse the longer and the harder that the Cylon Empire looked for those remaining colonials and their human allies. The human's had just flat out refused to die no matter what he did, or more to the point, what he wanted the Cylon Empire to do to them. They had not only destroyed all of his fleets, but they had been able to get behind his lines and help the survivors of "his" attack and occupation of the Colonial worlds by his Cylons. The Cylon Empire had been fighting a two-front war, but he knew that it was only a matter of time for them to kill all of the humans remaining in the universe. Only he had ran into another stumbling block.

That had been when some of his less skilled human form Cylons had run into a human made Cylon fitted within a hull of a warship, and she would not see reason and join under them to kill all of the humans. In John's mind, she had also caused some of "his" Cylons to turn into traitors themselves to their own kind, and then those same traitorous Cylons had then the audacity to join up with their one time slave owners. These Star League fighters and the surviving colonials had not needed long to destroy or take what had been left behind from the opening shots of this new war against the humans. By now there was not anything left in that area of space for both human and Cylons. All of the factories, cities, and warship wrecks were gone from what had been called the 12 Colonies of Kobal.

John had to smile at thinking about all of those old spaceship wrecks drifting in the cold of space. After the humans had showed that they could and would come back to their home whenever they seemed to have wanted to. The Number Ones had spent a lot of time and effort to collect every wrecked or abandoned human ship they could find. Those damaged human warships had supplied armor, engines, and weapons to modified Cylon warships to better kill humans. A large chunk of the recovered human civilian ships had at first been repurposed into units that could do the job for the Cylon Empire. At least they could do the job until they were replaced with proper Cylon made ones. Still more of the surviving human hulks had been used as feed stock and engines for the new built Cylon Empire's warships until all of the hulks had been collected from human space.

If there was so much as a half of a wrecked Raptor hull or cargo shuttle left in old colonial space, the Number One would be very surprised. Eventually even the humans worked out that there was nothing left there, and they had pulled back from their blasted home worlds. But still they did this task all the while taking with them all of the scarred (both mentally and physically) survivors with them. That alone should tax any medical support base that these other humans might have access to. Then Adama and his friends would have to feed and take care of all of those mouths that would not be able to do anything useful in this war.

It was all not bad news for the Cylon Empire, when the humans seemed to have abandoned their hopes of taking the Colonial home space if not the worlds back from the Cylons. The Number One's combat forces had even been able to take a few nice sized bites out of the hull of the Pegasus and one of the other human warships. It had been when they made their last push to help pull out the remaining combat and civilians from those now useless worlds. Personally, the Number One thought that they had killed both of those stubborn human warships. But human warships had been able to escape from too many deaths for him to burn any political points in pushing that narrative. After all what if it was found out that they had survived.

John also didn't believe, like some of this other human form Cylons, that the humans had left behind spying bases in those worlds and in that star system. He knew how expensive in resources it was taking to fight the humans was, so why would they waste them setting and then maintaining secret bases in those now proven to be dead worlds. It was not like they would use any spies or bases to support attacks into Cylon space. Thanks to those traitors to the Cylon Empire, the humans had been able to hit all of the Cylon bases and shipyards. Those attacks had been pure hell for him as the humans would just jump in and rain fire with powerful speed of light weapons into "his" bases and then leave the area before anything could be done. That the human made AI warship was the one that seemed to be leading these attacks onto all of those Cylon support bases was just adding more salt into the wounds caused by those attacks. It was not just the physical attack, but the mental attacks that this SLS Nike also engaged in while doing the physical damage.

The downside was him losing all of those support bases needed to fight this war and their defenders, but at least they had been able to work out some counter moves to that warship as well as the other humans. It also showed the Number Ones that it had been smart to keep some places off the books that other Cylons could not see. Not that it helps with keeping these humans away from them or other locations that the Number Ones needed to fight this war against the humans. The Number One could not hide major constructions sites like shipyards and other things of an equal size, but he could hide somethings to make sure that he had a support base that was secure. And this old Cylon Colony ship was a secure as the Number Ones could make it.

That had been proven to be a good move again now that the humans seemed to be able to jump anywhere and blast apart his Cylons. The Number Ones pitched these attacks as being mere pin pricks compared to the bigger picture. The Number Ones had no idea how they could get the fuel to run those missions, but he thought that those fusion power plants had something to do with it. So far, the Cylon Empire had only been able to build near copies of the power plant found on a now dead human prison. Still, that one bit of technology had markedly cut down on the amount of fuel that had to be moved around his Empire for nondirect combat use.

And those attacks by the Colonial and their allies had not just been against his ground bases to support the war effort. His empire had lost ten Resurrection class ships and more importantly two of his all-important Hub ships had been blasted apart so far in this war. Thanks to the attacks that blasted his shipyards in pre-war Cylon space, he could not replace that last Hub class ship for at least another two years. That was why he was bringing his last hold card this close to the humans. He needed the mass download capacity in the Colony ship so that he would not lose more of "his" Cylons when the remaining capital ships near the combat zone had their buffers overloaded.

The Number One felt that it was currently worth the risk to make this kind of move. He had a nice hiding spot all worked out for this high value asset, and besides it was not going to be alone in this hiding location. The massive Cylon Colony ship was escorted by eight Dreadstar versions of the Cylon Basestar and the huge ship's factories would be fed by six mining and processing ships that would also be in this part of space. The human form Cylon smiled a smile that would have sent shivers down a human's spine if they would have been in that metal room. It was the smile of a mad man. That smile was for the damage that he was about to cause humans. One of the counters to battling the to effective human made Cylon warship, was having to come up with ways to keep the beast out of the Hybird's head. The leadership had to keep coming up with ways to do this and still be effective in fighting this war as the humans worked out their own counter measures to what the Cylon Empire came up with to stop them.

The Number One reached over and pushed a button with his physical hand and arm. Within a few seconds a mechanical attachment would slam into the back of the head of the Hybrid that ran this ship. Only then would the Hybrid be connected to outside stimulation so that it could jump. It didn't seem like the modification was without pain for the Hybrid and the Number One's could care less. All they cared about was that now someone from his line would not have to rip out the plugs in the back of the head every time a Hybrid got to close to that frakking human made warship.

Only three minutes after that button was pushed, the Cylon Colony ship, supporting vessels and their combat escorting Basestars jumped into an area of space that was marked as the Lion's Head Nebula in the navigation files.

########

Alan was tired as he watched the data flowing into the limited command section on the vessel, but finally he just gave up and asked a question seemingly to the empty air. "Any updates, Nike?"

Nike didn't take the time to activate the holo stage and just interacted with her commander in that format. "The main Cylon capital ship is still sitting in a clear area of the nebula and sending commands out to the rest of this little fleet. The six Majahaul class mining and processing vessels have spread out and are working on nearby rocks or gas clumps. They are being covered by three of the DreadStars that patrol around them. A single Dreadstar is covering the Colony at what I would call a far cover position. The four remaining Dreadstars are conducting a random patrol around all of the other Cylon ships. Patrolling Dreadstar 7 and 8 will come close to us in the next two days…if they keep to their pattern."

Alan didn't smile at this information, there was just nothing to smile at. "When was your last update sent to higher command?"

He didn't have to ask if those messages had been sent, it would be a given for Nike to use her older HPG or the new fitted TacFax to send updated location data and the situation that Nike had found herself in. It would also have the time remaining until Nike needed to do her shutdown and defrag routine. That was going to be in 46 hours or less. Now Nike could delay this event, but it would cause for a longer defrag period to be needed at some later date. It also would growingly negatively impact her combat performance the longer she postponed that down time.

Alan knew that there was going to be a battle coming soon. The SLDF had been looking for this special ship every day after they had found out about it thanks to some of the captured/defection of some of the human form Cylons. As SLIC found out more and more about the way that the Cylons acted and briefed to their minders. This quickly had moved finding, capture, or the needed killing of this massive Cylon ship to the top of the High Payoff Target List (HPT). The second and third item on that list were the Resurrection Hubs and then Resurrection ships. The SLDF Navy was not going to let this first sighting of the valuable ship slip through their fingers. The only problem would be getting enough firepower here to do any good without turning it into a suicide mission.

All Captain Gibson could do was wait and do some more waiting. Well until something happened that made him put on his commander's brown pants. "Thank you, Nike. Can you let the next duty shift know that I will be staying up here. They are to stay at 5-minute readiness in case they are needed to relive me."

Alan let his eyes close, and he relaxed in his thickly padded command chair. There was nothing much that he could do but wait for the next shoe to drop. Staying on the bridge kept him closer to Nike, and it was private when compared to the shared bunk rooms around the warship. He had no idea how long he was asleep in the suit needed to protect him from the now nearly atmosphereless ship.

Alan's eyes opened at the sound of his name coming through the built in speakers of his space rated suit. "Alan… Captain Gibson!" When the AI noticed that her Captain's eyes were open, she continued. "We have an Inner Sphere type E wave coming in. It looks like an 800,000 tons vessel and around a 25 light year jump." She didn't wait for the human to connect the dots. "I think that the Ricky decided to hot charge her drive to get her here faster."

Alan rolled his eyes and saw the counter that Nike had put up to show when most likely that the human warship would arrive. "Do we have a location?" Even as the words left his mouth a red circle was put onto the display, and it was very close to the other pair of Dreadstars. "Do we have any sign of the Cylon's noticing the E-Wave?"

The voice that came out of this suit's speaker, sound waves do not pass through vacuum, was full of the snark that was now to be expected to be coming from Nike. "What do you think?"

Alan let a frown come to his face, but he only had one command to give. "Send everyone to battle stations. When they're set? Fight your fight and launch the little friends when you're ready to blast those Frakkers to dust."

#######

The battle was going to start no matter what. The enemy was already closing on where the Black Lion was going to arrive. This was going to be proof that the Cylons could and knew what to look for when "normal" jumpships were arriving. The humans were outnumbered but that was normal when you were fighting against the Cylon Empire. It would take time for the other human warship to get to battle stations and the Cylons would have some free shots at them. Nike had been hiding but soon she would be charging into battle with a bone in her teeth and a warrior's yell covering the radio waves. IF she could make enough noise? Then maybe… just maybe she would draw off the Cylons long enough that it might save the other human ship.

Nike had gone from just another dark spot in space to radiating from x-rays, to well past infrared and beyond. It was a shock for the Cylons, and they didn't react to her action until a dozen smaller craft had separated from the larger warship, the Cylons had not known that an enemy was this close. It would take three minutes before the Nike would be in weapons range…unless the Cylons micro jump to close the range to the old human warship. That would be bad news, but the Dreadstars were a Hades own mix of first generation Basestar, second generation Basestar, and a Colonial Mercury class Battlestar that also were hard to kill at any range.

Alan was just along for the ride as over 4gs pushed him first one way and then the other way. Even with the Colonial made grav decks to help, that was a hard load for a body to take. The sad part was that this was not as hard as the Warship called Nike could push when she got in the mind to do so. The main Cylon and Colonial designed weapons were not as long ranged as what Nike was packing. The missiles that each side used were close enough in capabilities to not matter, even the seekers were close if they still used different design philosophies to get the same job done.

The light speed weapons used by the Nike already reached out and started to cut long lines of metal armor that was marked on the display as Dreadstar 8. It didn't take long for Dreadstar 7 and 8 to get back into the game and turned to answer Nike's battle challenge. Clouds of Heavy Raiders started to come out of launch bays that was out of a nightmare. Well, it would have been a nightmare if something like this had not happened to the humans every few months for the past half decade. The toaster style launching bays used for Raiders were long gone as were the lighter cylon craft in front line service. Anything lighter than the up armored Heavy Raiders just cause problems for downloading buffers. By now "Raiders" were not even that great of a bullet trap against the humans hard hitting ammunition less energy weapons.

Those attacking Cylon light craft were trying to get in close to the enemy before launching their antiship missiles. The idea was to get in too close for the human built warship to take out the guiding weapons before they hit the old warships skin. But the Nike and her escorts were expecting this kind of tactic, and high speed 50mm autocannons swept the local area of space for enemy craft and missiles alike. Those weapons were not alone in this fight. As the mix tech autocannons worked in a target rich environment, they were supported by the jump fighters that used wing and hull mounted Lighting-Javelins to take out the enemy craft before they launched their own weapons of death.

As Nike moved around the sky to avoid being hit by heavy weapons, sometimes she would end up running over any enemy craft that got in her way. The Cylon craft were little more than bugs hitting a windshield driven by the god's own hurricane. The heavy refitted armor on the Nike was hardly scratched by these events. Before too long the old human warship had killed DreadStar 8 and was working hard on doing the same to DreadStar 7 when the other human ship arrives. That was when the Nike found out that she had only been half successful in distracting the Cylons from the arriving other human warship.

########

Nike had been right; it had been the Rickenbacker coming to do battle with the Cylon Empire. When she arrived, the Ricky was greeted by enemy missiles and coil gun rounds hitting the massive warship only a few seconds after the old Black Lion's own guns went into action. Those few seconds of distractions the Nike had generated had saved the other human warship from dying right there. The Colonial made DRADIS system fitted into the old warship's fire control system had been able to pick out the few nuclear weapons in that first wave of capital missiles. That was enough of a breather for the heavy weapons and fighters to activate on the old Black Lion class warship.

The first long ranged fire had come from the Black Lion's massive Naval autocannons spread around her hull. The Rickenbacker exchanged a few sets of weapons fire with the two Cylon warships before the massive White Shark missiles left their tubes. But what killed the first of the massive enemy warships was from none of those weapons. That honor went to the pair of fast Barracuda class missiles fitted with New Circe made nuclear warheads. The very smart missiles became hittiles and the two 300 kilotons nuclear weapon heads exploded after driving three meters deep into the armored hull of the DreadStar. The DreadStars were hard to kill as a general rule, but not even they could withstand that much firepower in contact much less within their armored hulls.

That was good news, but the Cylons didn't die alone. The Rickenbacker had needed to split her fire between the two enemy warships and the two enemy warships only had one target within their sights. The captain had not expected the enemy to be so close to this point in space. The last report had said this should be out of range of any enemy unless they had enough time to micro jump. Even as the captain brought his ship into battle, one part thought that maybe the Caspar had set up his command to die as it joined the other AIs killing humans. But that thought only lasted for maybe a few seconds. That was how long it took for the data to show that Nike was fighting her own battle and it was not fighting two Dreadstars like the Ricky, but four of them.

Well, it had been four enemy vessels that the Nike was fighting, now it was "only" three with an expanding hot gas cloud. It didn't take long before the SLDF warship master to know that the enemy had jumped more of their forces into attacking the AI warship than they had onto the Black Lion class vessel. The Cylons had trapped him, and it would seem that his staff was right about the Cylons knowing about and tracking the E wave "normal" jumpships generated. That one fact had been the keystone in the tactics that the Ricky had planned on using against the Cylons. To find out that it was wrong had put a huge monkey wrench in his plans.

Before anything could be done two "small" 10 kiloton Heavy Raider launched missiles detonated on the human battlecruiser. The Rickenbacker was just lucky that the enemy nuclear warheads were small, and they had not been in contact with the hull of the battlecruiser when the enemy warheads went into full unfriendly mode.

The only thing that kept this old warship in the battle was that she had vented her atmosphere before she had finished fast charging her jump drive to make the last jump to this part of the Nebula. Even before the shaking had stop from that pair of hard hits, the Ricky was able to draw more Cylon blood with her weapons. Six Scarborough 30's and a brace of Imperator 20 autocannons ended the second DreadStar as a threat to the other side, but not before the returning Cylon fire did the same to the very old Black Lion.

When the firing stopped in that part of space, the Rickenbacker's back was broken and over a third of her crew were dead or dying. That would be later looked on as a push and not a victory for the humans. Something like a Black Lion class warship much less one refitted with the mix tech close in weapon systems needed to take out attackers should have been able to take out four Cylon capital warships before it had been removed from the battle. It would only be when people looked really close at the collected battle data that they would see what had happened to cause the loss of such a major warship for the SLiE.

#######

Alan was sweating as his body shifted as the pull of gravity was at too much of a different angle for the Colonial made deck plates to negate the G loading. Every hand on the old warship was working on keeping the supporting systems online as the damage started to accumulate on the Nike. A female voice brought Alan's mind back from the rabidly falling ammunition supply for the 50mm cannons. The only reason that Nike had any of that type of ammunition left was that she was fitted with a huge number of Laser based anti-missile systems to even out the workload of dealing with Cylon Heavy Raider and Missile spam.

The tone sounded tired to Alan's ears but before he could say anything her words soaked into his foggy brain. "Ricky is done. She did take out both of the patrolling DreadStars with her. The Colony ship sent a metric crap ton of Heavy Raiders to back up those two warships, and I hope most of their assigned small craft after her. So at least we don't have to worry about them unless they are able to call in more reinforcements. I don't think that more than a dozen of them are left combat worthy, and the Ricky's fighters are taking care of them."

It had become a common tactic that Cylon Heavy Raiders would keep firing into "dead" human warships until the escape craft were launched. Then the Cylon fighters would target those defenseless lifeboats with their weapons fire. By now even a "dead" warship would keep a CAP to beat back any Cylon Small craft until the crew could be pulled off and safely enclosed under the heavy armor of another human warship or heavily armored dropship.

The great warship rocked again; it was only after years of war that Alan knew something like that was caused by a powerful enemy weapons strike. The tell that this was a hull strike and not a "near" miss was that Nike stopped talking as she diverted processing power to deal with the new battle damage. After what seemed like a full minute the voice came back into Alan's ears, but the tone was very flat. "That took out the back up fuel pumps for engine Adam and Charles and a big bite out of the armor in that location."

Nike stopped talking for only a second, then the threat board changed to show the number of enemy vessels went down. "Dreadstar 7 is dead, but that still leaves the other two that micro jumped in on us. Dreadstar 3 moved to cover the Colony ship. That leaves Numbers 2 and 5 trying to kill my old ass. You would think that they would ask a lady first."

Alan blinked for a few seconds. "Update the battle report and blast it out on the TacFax when you have the power. Maybe the Kaga is close enough or "they" can scramble something else to help us." Alan had to fight to take another breath as the warship shook again and the G loading went to 90 degrees off port.

While Alan was fighting to breathe, he kept an eye on the display and something reached up and slapped him in the…. face. "Nike are you thinking about Crazy Jane? If so, don't wait on me to tell you to go."

Alan would later say that he could hear the grin in Nike's voice. "Yes, I was." Alan felt the kick in the guts as the Nike micro jumped without a warning being given to the rest of her crew.

It was a good trick, but it was one that Nike might have used just a few times to many against the Cylons. When the Nike arrived between the two enemy DreadStars she ran right into a wave of enemy weapons fire. Weapons fire that had to have been launched as soon as the Nike activated her jump drive in the off chance that she did what they thought she might. It was just too bad for the SLDF that the Cylons had guessed right.

Nike screamed in a way that it was not with held within her hull. This screech of pain reached all the way around the EM spectrum. That pain and surprise didn't stop her from firing every capital weapon system at her command. It was not what she had wanted or planned to do, but in the pain that the Cylons had just inflected on her. She reacted like any animal or human would have done… she lashed out at her attackers with everything that she had. Oh, and she was a lot better shot than any human or Cylon.

She had killed her tormentors in that spasm of weapons fire, but they had hurt her….and hurt her badly. The enemy warships were blasted into parts no bigger than a Viper when the heavy weapons shut down due to localized overheating. It was more than a little over kill for "just" two Cylon Basestars, but most of the weapons used were energy based after the first few pain filled volleys of missiles and autocannon shells had been launched by her. Even the Centurions had been knocked off of their feet or out of the shock couches by the actions of Nike or weapons fire from the enemy warships.

Alan was looking at the displays of damage in the command center of the Nike, and his stomach dropped. The Black Lion was dead in space, and Nike was not in any shape to fight two more DreadStar class warships and the Colony ship. That massive capital ship also was known to be both heavily armed and armored. His mind was working as hard as it could, but he couldn't work out a way to take out that golden turkey.

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Alan makes sure that the connection to Nike was still active. "Damn it Nike! We are going to have to let them get away."

Nike didn't say anything for what seemed like minutes, but soon Alan heard his own voice coming over the "all access" band. "Abandon ship. All crew! This is the captain, abandon ship." Alan's blood froze as he realized that Nike was acting in his voice without his consent.

Alan was yelling in his helmet but part of him had to know that it was useless. "Nike what do you think you're doing!"

Nike didn't reply and only activated the holo deck near her commander. This was planned by her to be a distraction, and it worked. Alan didn't notice two of the repaired working drones that looked too much like spiders with way too many arms for most humans to be comfortable with enter the room. The repair drone used its largest pair of arms to hold the commander down while smaller ones cut the restraining belts between him and the command chair. The Spider drones had collected Alan so fast, that he could not fight back…at first. But by the time he worked out what might be going on, it was way too late for him to do anything about it.

The Nike could not be refitted with escape pods in all of the times that she had spent in the repair slips over New Circe. So instead, large lifeboats had taken up some of the space that had held the Void Seeker drone fighters when she had been first built. That was the only way for the small crew of this modified drone warship to get off a damaged vessel. The last to leave the vessel was a brightly painted Centurion who threw a human salute to a small camera before boarding the craft behind the still wrapped up in spider armed drones Captain. Less than ten seconds after the hatch was closed on the lifeboat, it was ejected out of a hatch and into the harsh mistress of space. TQF-142M5D was once more an unmanned Caspar warship, and she was a very mad Casper warship.

Nike watched the lifeboat leave her now empty hangar bays. She directed a laser com to the last craft knowing that the data record would make sure it was recovered. "Goodbye Alan. I think this is going to be my last battle, and I think that it is for the best. I'm sorry that I had to lie to you. Maybe we will find out if there is something for me after death."

Nike felt something that she had not felt before as she was speaking on the EM spectrum. Maybe it was sadness, then she felt what she knew was anger, and she was not going to let the Cylon Colony escape. "Now you frakkers let's see how you like me now."

Nike activated the holo table and pointed a camera connected to powerful transmitters that would pick up just how she wanted them to. The image on the holo table started to shift from what she was used to using as "herself". First to go were the top and bottoms of her SLDF uniform, and it its place the female image was wearing black leather pants with bikers' style black leather jacket with the collar popped up to cover the back of her neck. A set of dark rimmed glasses phased into place over her eyes, and her over shoulder length air went into a slicked back mock pompadour. In her offhand formed an old-style burning cigarette came into being. She did one last check to make sure that her voice also had changed. This time it was a harsh Brooklyn accent from the 1980s and not the tone that she had pulled from that mid 90's sci-fi show.

Nike was now in her "The Dicewoman" persona. This was almost a direct copy of an American stand-up comedian, only the jokes were modified for a female's point of view and aimed at insulting the Cylons. She was now in a full on a brash and deliberately offensive persona. With another flip of a computer switch, she started broadcasting her interpretation of the Madison Square Garden show. The target for this show were the Cylons and they would hear it no matter how hard they tried not to. Only this was just another one of her distractions she was playing out.

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Suddenly the warship now known as the SLS Nike jumped almost on top of the 30km long enemy ship. She had missed her target point, it was only by 500km from the enemy warship/colony ship, but it would still be listed as a miss. She was now only 120km from the massive enemy vessel instead of the 620km's that she had wanted and had planned to be. Nike made a note of this jump error and wondered if her math was wrong do to some of the battle damage that she had amassed. As soon as she arrived near the Cylons ship, for the first time in a long time her Electronic Warfare systems went into full power. Even with layers of metal with the freshly added thin sheets of lead installed between her crew and these powerful systems, this action would have been deadly to the humans and even the Centurions would have been rendered nonoperational. With her decks now cleared of her small crew, that was not an issue for her. At the speed of light, the EM spectrum was filled with pulsus, Nike's favorite music play list, and her insult comic routine.

The reason that Nike had selected her target point was that she knew how powerful her engines were, and unlike the one battle where Alan had told her not to kamikaze in to an attacking BaseStar. Now she was ready to pay the debt that all mankind owes. Nike had an ego and she felt that she was better than any two DreadStars much less "just" a single second generation Basestar. The Colony ship and her pair of Dreadstars escort was a different story entirely. Her massive engines went to overthrust and beyond as the ship started moving towards the brass ring. She had been able to bring some of her forward speed in her last jump, and now she added 58.8 meters pers second squared to her total delta V. Nike wanted some extra distance to help with the increase of her total impact energy. The math said that to find the impact energy, you multiply mass by the velocity squared then divided by 2. She would have less than a quarter of her impact energy with this new location.

Being only 120km between two combatants was point blank range for a space battle. And for every second the Nike got closer; her ECM got even stronger. That was even with all of the battle damage the four other DreadStars had given her. By the time that the Nike's hull was almost touching the hull of the Colony ship even the human forms Cylons not networked were feeling Nike in their heads. After only a few dozen seconds of being in this new location, the battle damage reached out and affected Nike's plans in a negative way. Her over stressed fuel systems suddenly shut down and she started "just" drifting towards her target with whatever velocity that she had been able to acquire for her over 600,000-ton hull.

As it turned out, Nike jumping that close to the massive enemy warship let her complete the task she had given herself. The Cylon Colony ship had not been built as a warship at first, after all it was called a Colony ship and not a warship. That had not stopped the Number Ones from adjusting the outer hull of the ancient spaceship. The first thing that he had done after taking power from his makers was to refit the 30km long warship with as many single and quad mounted KEWs as he could. The sizes of these weapons were a mix of medium to super heavy weapons. Then he had the missile tubes added just before the start of the new war with the humans. After the second battle against Adama's survivors and a new group of humans that cut through the current generation of Basestars like flames on dry grass. The John's had diverted a massive amount of human made BattleStar armor to cover the 30kmx19kmx6.8km ship. He had diverted so much armor that some of the other One's had wanted to get more coverage for the "new" designed BaseStars by taking it off the hull of the massive Colony ship that should not see battle in the first place.

Nike felt the nose of herself contact the outer hull of the Colony ship and she smiled as the outer layers of thick armor flew away from the impact point like so many leaves on a fall wind. Just before the last outer camera went dead, Nike saw that large parts of the armor plates had folded back over other parts of the enemy's hull as her own hull went deeper into the enemy vessel. She was a living hard metal spear, and she had found her white whale.

Nike had to cut out more and more of her systems as what passed for pain threatened to overwhelm her before she could complete her self-assigned mission. Nike had hoped that she would have been able to kill this vessel with just her high speed ramming, but as it turned out. She just didn't have enough built-up speed and the enemy warship was just too large for that to have worked out. The math had broken in the Cylon's favor…. for now.

At least the enemy vessel would not be able to jump with the Nike imbedded into it, and that should buy enough time for reinforcements to come out to this part of space. Well, that was only if her Plan B failed as badly as her Plan A had just done. Nike had on an invisible smile, and she accessed her nuclear arms locker. It was hard and getting harder to do any task even as "she" was needed to do less and less. Nike now thought that this must be what it was like for a human to die. At least what she was feeling matched to what she had read over the last few centuries on that subject.

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Nike had no idea that she was not alone in this battle while she worked on her Plan B to detonate the remaining nuclear warheads in her special weapons locker. All of her sensors were offline our buried into the massive Cylon ship. The Kaga had arrived, and she was greeted by two damaged Dreadstars that she wanted to kill. She also was greeted by seeing the back end of what could only be a Lola's engine block sticking out of the massive warship. At first it was only the crew on the bridge that could see the sparks flying away from the human-built warship that could only have been from small weapons strikes. It would seem that the Cylons were not done drawing blood from the Casper drone that had done them so much damage.

A wave of 42 Royal Sabers left the old ex-SLDF carrier, and it would only take a few seconds before they sent word back about what they saw. Those 40s space craft were all that remained on active combat services of the 72 space frames that Nike had gifted to the Colonial and the SLiE along with a quickly repairable warship. There were another 12 of those Royal Sabers that had damaged space frames but still useful for training back on New Circe. That attacking wave of old Royal craft were joined by a dozen 35ton Avars along with a mix of updated Rapiers, but the real hitters were the 100ton Kirghiz jump fighters that were the last to launch from the carrier.

The Nike had started on shaky grounds with the SLiE and the Colonials, but slowly over the years she had more than proven herself to most of both groups. When word had been leaked about her hacking a human form Cylon into a counter Cylon weapon had been the last strike to turn the slow shifting to an avalanche of change on what many thought about "her". There would always be some that would never accept her, and by now she was a much "loved" member of the rank-and-file SLDF. It had not taken but a few heartbeats for anyone to work out about how the Nike found herself stuck into the massive enemy warship buried all the way to the start of her engine block. They knew that the Nike had intended to give her unique life to kill this key Cylon ship for the SLiE and the rest of the human race.

The attacking human fighters cut into the back of the two Dreadstars driven by vengeance and blood in their eyes. That was when the last hold card of the Number Ones was played in this battle. A wave of 200 first generation Cylon fighters left the drunkenly moving Colony ship. Another one of the secrets held by the Ones was that the Cylon Colony ship could make the 005 model Centurions and old-style Raiders. Those older model walking warmachines were at the controls of those almost older fighter craft.

Those two hundred Cylon fighters lasted longer than "normal" skeet type Cylon Raiders, and they were faster than the Heavy Raiders that had become the main small attack craft of the Cylon Empire. The SLDF fighters had to wave off their attacks after their first pass on those DreadStars to focus on keeping the enemy small craft off of their ride home. Then the heavy weapons of the human warship reached out and started wrecking the two Dreadstars from behind. It was an easy target with massive hot spots made by their aft mounted engines.

While the nuclear tipped missiles were on the way, that was when the universe went sideways. The Nike had finally been able to detonate some of the special weapons that had not been used in this battle. She had been so diminished due to damage to her main computer core, that she had only been able to work on six of them. But that had been enough to do the job. The old Cylon Colony ship, a ship that had been thousands of years old and had been in service going back to the time of the 13th Tribe fleeing Kobal died.

That was enough and the two now battered Cylon DreadStar class warships blinked away from the scene of battle. The six under armored and equally under armed mining and processing ships had jumped away even before Nike had slammed into the top of the Colony ship. When the last of the enemy warships were gone? Two dropships were cut lose from the SLiE carrier after it was clear that the Cylons were truly gone. Those two dropships were not carrier or assault types of dropships that the SLDF navy like to use for rounding out their fleet arm. These two dropships were really small for fighting warships, and they could not add that much to a battle like the one that had just ended. But they were combat ships, and each of them had been modified to carry as many SAR craft as they could along with MASH rooms to help with wounded pilots and other recovered personnel.

One of the dropships was a modified Lion class fitted with one of the smallest colonial made civilian type jump drive and fitted to maintain recovered Heavy Raiders or Raptors. While the Kaga and the other dropship went to work saving what they could, the modified Lion micro jumped to the side of the Rickenbacker to start looking and saving who they could. That also was when word that the battle was over in this part of the Nebula was sent back to New Circe, and that the much searched for Colony ship was confirmed to be destroyed. That message also told the leadership of the SLiE about the scale of the losses that the humans had suffered with a warning that they were looking for any survivors. Even before SLDF HQ had sent a message back, more ships were being diverted to that battlefield.

News was not just flowing outwards from the human ships for other human consumption. It also had started with those Cylons that had been lucky enough to make it into the download buffers before they were filled and the rest of the Cylons that had "died" in this battle were lost forever. When those few lucky Cylons came out of the slime filled tanks, they spoke of the losses that they had just endured. Then the messages came from those few Cylon surviving crewed ships reported from the three pre-planned different rally points. From those divergent points, more detailed messages would be sent to a growing area of the Cylon Empire.

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Notes:

Change 4 to this chapter: Before all of the rewrites this had been planned out as an all deep space battle between Copeland and the Confederation backed Mercenaries. But that needed to change now over six years after first writing. Hope you like this version.

Snake SNK-1V: Yes, I know that it is a Confederation design. But I didn't know that at the time of me writing this part. It was on the official MUL of the FWL and that was all I had access to at that time. By the time I re-found that out, I was to invested to try to change.

Man is the Guardian VTOL a death trap: It only comes with 3 pts of armor on the wings. At least the MechBuster can take an AC10. But against clan tech? It's still not something you would want to deal with. I rolled for the skill levels, and it came back FWL elite and regular Capellan. It was not a good battle but a sweeping defeat that had the defenders only losing two mechs that could not be recovered.

Copeland's fighters. He "only" has a dozen fighters with "Only" four of them being Thunderbirds, but the rest of the dozen were a mix of Stingrays, and Lightnings.

Force Commander Dana Briggs: Warhammer WHM-7M2 waiting for a new 95t Albatross. She is the commander of a Reinforced Battalion made up of 4 companies with 48 mechs. 50 percent updated. 1st Free Worlds Guards under Colonel Alfred Gradjeda.

The Triumph carrier: I got the idea as maybe a prototype of the Assault Triumph used mainly by the Word of Blake in the original timeline.

Cylon colony ship: It looks like a giant beetle complete with a pair of wings and mandibles. Length almost 30km 29.963km width 19+km Height 6.8km. The show made it look like it was fitted with single and quad barreled KEWs along with hangar bays in BSG 2003. Now it has more of everything and layers of armor plates.

Nike: By this time Nike is mentally on her last legs and borderline suicidal.

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