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.

90. Chapter 90 Unknown Space

Chapter 90

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

Unknown Space

Many light years from New Circe

Star Admiral Kei Drummond of the Blood House Drummond was not a happy camper with the current situation that he had found himself in. His command had just received a load of fresh supplies from ships that should not be able to move like they have been seen too be able to do. By now the Nova Cat fleet had passed three of these resupply points along with stopping on two pre-mapped planets to let the crews and passengers of his fleet have some time on a planet's surface. His people and the survivors from that Cylon attack on Lost Home had even gotten used to the SLiE contact personnel they had run into. To those not in the military, it was not the food and other supplies that had been passed to them in these supply transfers or left on the planet they most liked. It was the data dump of entertainment files they brought with them along with those supplies of food, fuel, air, personal hygiene, and water.

That pattern had all changed when the Zephyr jumped almost on top of his Aegis class cruiser that was the flagship of the fleet, and that was still not the reason for the Star Admiral's frame of mind. This arrival was done without an E-wave being detected and the arriving new ship should have been close enough to have killed everyone on both of those ships. Then had come the news sent from that oddly shaped converted warship that shook the Star Admiral and his staff to the core. These AIs called Cylons had found the SLiE's until now hidden planet, and they were attacking it with a massive fleet of warships and divisions of ground forces.

The SLiE was asking the Nova Cat Star League for help in battling for their "home world". After coming across to the Zephyr, who was a ship that now Kei knew had been a passenger liner before the Cylons killed 20 billion people less than a decade ago. That was when Kei was briefed on what this ship's command staff knew and suspected about what was going on. Felix at first had wanted to run back to "his" planet and protect it with his command, but he was smart enough to know that his command didn't have enough firepower to do that kind of mission. That was where the Nova Cats came in and their warships come into the picture. This group of Nova Cats had more than a little firepower at their fingertips, but they didn't have the speed to get there in time, well maybe besides to count the impact craters and burn the bodies.

That was when Captain Gaeta dropped his bombshell on the Star Admiral. His ship could carry one of the Nova Cat's warships to new stars. Not only that, but they could also carry that second "normal" warship safely and faster than any other group even remotely connected to Terra and that included the Clans. The only thing was that the Zephyr could only do this with one vessel at a time. That the SLiE could get two jump drives to work within 100 kilometers of any other K-F drive was an exceptional feat of engineering to anyone not a member of the SLiE. To be able to use their drives to move both vessels without issues was something that was both something out of a dream and at the same time a certified nightmare.

######

The hatch slammed open into the briefing room, and if it had not have been for Kei's training in zero g, he might have jumped in his chair. Before Felix could stop what was about to happen, the over stress man started talking to the room at a volume that was just short of being very painful for those too close to the intruder. "Sir, the Experiment sent a message! She is heading out to intersect the planned route of the Nova Cats. She states that she is planning on the same thing you have." A sheet of paper was passed to the Zephyr's commander that was just under the definition of being thrown.

The man took another breath and handed over a second sheet of odd-looking paper. And Kei was trying his best to be invisible and soak up every word and gesture these two were given off without being noticed. The coms tech still didn't seem to notice him after many seconds or maybe he didn't care that the Nova Cat Admiral was there. Your home world being under attack by AI's that like killing humans with as many nuclear weapons as they could, that might be a little stressful.

Felix had not looked at the second message yet and the tech kept talking. "The Styx reports activating most of her "miss jump protocol" and is making her max speed back to New Circe."

Kei now was so focus on that one statement that was not matching his oh so many years of training. After all you didn't mix miss jump followed with moving at your max speed to your home planet. Miss Jumps normally ended in death or stuck in a single spot in space until help came to you…. Unless your crew had died already. That is unless the Clanner was missing something major that was like very common knowledge to these strange people. It was just another bit of information that he was going to have to dig out that was almost unique to these people.

Felix's next words brought Kei back into mental line with the rest of the people in this briefing. "Send a message to Captain Seis with our location and let her know they are with us. Also send a message to the Styx before that old bastard gets his own ideas. They are to divert to Split and pick up as much firepower as they can, and I don't care if its mechs, fighters, or dropships, they are just to go get it. After loading them up? The Styx is not to go home but to hold at Gateway and wait for orders from higher command to counterman mine. Until then, they are to screen the suspected routes the Cylons used to find us. I want them to kill anything they can that might be coming as reinforcements or running for the hills if we get them out of New Circe. Anything they don't feel like they have a good chance of killing; they are to avoid the fight and report to Higher Command or Alternate Command 2."

Kei had no idea what class of interstellar warship that the Styx might be, but a combat unit named after the river of death should be powerful enough to be an effective screening and or interdiction unit. It also seemed like a good move to make sure the enemy didn't get a second attack force into your home world without at least being noticed first. The coms tech left the room at the run and Kei could not help but smile at the running man. He was raised in a time where you could only run on a hamster wheel or on a planet's surface, not on just any deck this far from a star.

Felix raised an eyebrow at the Nova Cat's smile, but just kept with his own line of thinking now that is primary plan was not right for the resources on or soon would be on hand. "That second ship is larger than us, and she might be able to lift two of your warships at one go. But you have not told me if you're willing to step out of the box to go out and walk on the wild side with us. The ball is very much in your court, Admiral."

Kei leaned a little forward in his chair. "Well let's say that I am willing, for now. How would we do this? But one hard rule will be, that while my Carracks have nice weapons, they also are only just enough to protect my supplies so I will have to leave some firepower behind to protect them. Other than that, let's talk some details. Quiaff."

Felix spends the next two hours going over and back over the plan to move at least one of the Nova Cat warships over many hundreds of light years in only a few days…if the idea worked out.

######

The Star Admiral thought that most of his surprises were going to be over when that meeting was concluded on the converted passenger liner. At least until they went into combat with these Cylons the next time. If it had not been for a warning sent over from the Zephyr, the Nova Cat warships might have been surprised by the arrival of a massive warship almost on top of them for the second time in only one day. Now while this new warship was not running any IFF systems, the command-and-control systems refitted into this mission's flagship quickly worked out who this new vessel had been in a past life. Let's just say that it went over about as well as someone doing mystery dumps of Number 2 type waste in the corridors of your jumpship.

Now the Nova Cat warships were nose to nose with a warship that the Nova Cat's systems said was the Egg Sac. Kei had no idea how this group had gotten their hands on a Potemkin class cruiser of Clan Widowmaker and one that also just happened to have been reported to have been lost almost 200 years ago. But now it was sitting almost on his head with a distance measured in a few kilometers from it and the Nova Cat warship. It was just another question to put onto a file on the convoy commander's main computer.

A little less than a dozen hours after arriving near the Nova Cat Convoy and a ton of new grey hair. The Zephyr and the Egg Sac each had an Aegis class cruisers strapped to their hulls like kind of a metal Remora on the oddest Sharks that you could think of. Kei really wanted to know how the crews of these two vessels had developed this odd set of skills to such a high level.

They would be leaving "his" two Lola III destroyers and the Scout to keep moving closer to a planet that the admiral had just learned the name of less than a full day ago. This level of operational security was just added to a growing list in a folder his staff had put together not long after leaving the Pentagon worlds with just three letters as a title…. they were WTF. He had no idea what the letters in that grouping meant, but one of his Staff that had belong to the scientist caste before being selected for this mission had said it was not that big of a deal for a file name and it worked for not letting any slicers know what might be in that computer file. Kei was not sure about that, at least not after seeing the little smile the scientist thought was hidden.

Now what was making the Star Admiral an unhappy camper if all of the above had been taken in stride? It was that the very expensive, hard to find, and massive navigation computer his flagship had been refitted with was now having the computer version of a massive nervous breakdown. He had been briefed that they would be making 15 light year jumps every 33minutes until something broke on one of the ships. That part had not been well received by the crew of the Nova Cat ships, and the Star Admiral and his crew had understood the numbers. But as it turned out that this was not the case, and the computer support systems were having a harder time dealing with the situation than even the crew on his flagship. And that my friends was saying something.

They were moving so fast over such a great distance measured in light years, that the automatic systems on the Nova Cat Flagship were in….. distress. Only now the Admiral was wishing that he had traded flags with the Aegis that the Egg Sac was carrying. At least now he got a refresher crash course in relearning how dropship commanders reacted while being carried from point to point by ships under his command for the last decade.

Kei felt it as the warship he was in, had just finished moving another 15 light years and he was thinking that he might need that space sick bag after all. At hearing some of the sounds coming from around the bridge of his ship, he knew that a few someone's were already using those devices strategically spread out around this compartment. You would think that after so long traveling between the stars that those with even with a very light case of TDS would have been weeded out. And you would be right, but for the number of jumps just taken in so short of a span of time. This was something you could not test and screen for, outside of a nightmare, and there just were not enough drugs in the Pentagon worlds for this.

A half-choked voice speaks up on the other side of the commander center from the Star Admiral. "Sir, we have a message from the Zephyr. We are at the Gateway star system, and we will have twelve hours to get ready for the last jump and combat."

After a second or two of quiet the radio section finishes the information flow. "We just received a message from Hammer Hands. They report to have been here for a day, but they are not combat ready. They are reporting…issues with what they are calling extreme cases of TDS and will need another few hours of clean up before they will even think about getting combat ready. The XO also said that next time? You can take the faster way, or just shoot her and be merciful. I don't know why the Ship's Captain did not send this report?"

Kei made a sour face and thinks that maybe the slow way was the best way to travel after all. If the Hammer Hand had that much of an issue? Then it would have been a good bet that his crew would have had the same…. results. "I would bet that he is off shift, or he is out with some of the crew from the aftereffects of moving this fast. Please send them my condolences, and I will make it up to her when we are able to settle down for a few months. Advise her of what Captain Gaeta said about launching the attack in 12 hours. If that ship is not fully combat ready by then? Well, we will need to make some new battle plans."

#######

Eight hours later the Star Admiral was sitting in a briefing room that the Nova Cat thought should be more at home on a planet's capital and not on a spaceship. Then again, they had walked from the air lock to this point of the jumpship without hitting zero G once so maybe it was a good fit after all. While the Star Admiral might be the senior ranked officer, and the one in command of the most firepower to support this operation. He was not leading this briefing or even the leader of the soon to be launched attack. He just didn't have the experience in fighting this enemy, and while he had won over Lost Home, there had been way too many surprises that bled his people and cost many civilians their lives. Oh, and during that battle, he had outnumbered the enemy 2 to 1. That was not going to be the case this time, according to the intel brief.

A woman that looked to have not had enough sleep in sometime addressed the room holding less than a dozen people. "First off, we have new orders. High Command needs us to wait for a dozen more hours. Also, the overall attack plan has also been changed enough to have become completely new. Now we are to get the Star Admiral behind the Gas Giant Io. Then we might not have to use the emergency cutters and just use the normal SOP to quick release the super cargo. When High Command is ready, then the Hand, Zephyr, and the Nova Cat flagship will make a high-speed run over the North pole of Io. While they are getting the Cylon's attention the Nova Cat dropships with the ground units and their escort will come around the south pole of the planet and make a hard burn for New Circe. I have a folder that has more details for the ground commander to review. Both groups will have to keep a close in CAP to keep any Cylon jump fighters from getting into knife fighting range and launching a nuclear warhead into their teeth."

Captain Gaeta rubs his short but curly dark hair with both of his hands. "Any word on reinforcements coming in for us or the Cylons?"

This question got a smile from the briefer. "The Yukon and a pair of Olympus each nailed what they think was a supply convoy with light escorts, The Yukon and the two carriers took some hits in return, but the convoys are dust." She looked over to the Nova Cat. "They Yukon is like a Clan York design, so its half a warship and half carrier. Oh, and at the time she was packing a pair of carrier type dropships that each packed a dozen omni fighters." She was not going to talk about the jump drive damaged Bismark acting as a Texas sized battleship base for scores of jump fighters and converted jumping dropships scouting around her.

The Briefer looked back at her notes that she was cleared to give out in this briefing. "Three Titan jump carriers and two small taskforces of Leopard jump carriers hit or re-hit any Cylon bases on record. So far, they report light to no counter fire or only spotting lightly armed supporting ships. It looks like maybe the Cylons stripped the cupboards clean for this one attack…. That was nice of them to put all of those eggs in one large basket for us to break. It's just too bad that it is a few frakk tons of eggs to have to deal with all at one time."

When the meeting was almost over, after long years in the military, the admiral kind of felt it. Kie asked something that had been bothering him the whole meeting. "Why is not the Egg Sac also attacking with us. I would think that the firepower of the Troop Cruiser would be very useful in a pitched battle like this? quineg."

It was Felix that replied to this question, after giving a snort. "The Egg Sac was only out testing a new type of jump drive when the Cylons attacked. She doesn't have any heavy weapons mounted on her hull, and her crew has more builders in her bunkrooms than sailors to run her systems."

"Oh." Was the simple but very effective reply from the Nova Cat officer. It would seem that the term experiment was not just made for no reason.

Counterattack

New Circe star system.

The warships arrived behind a gas giant called Io without being noticed by the attacking Cylons, and this was known thanks to reports coming in from around the star system that reported every Cylon craft they could see. The crews on the two SLiE crewed warships made short work on the lines holding the two Nova Cat warships. This was done mostly with cutting blades and the odd use of shaped charges on the thicker lines. A good part of these lines would have to be replaced, and that cost had not been worth a footnote in the mission planning. The term that went into the logbook was that all of those lines were field losses, and it was a term that was older than the Star League by a few hundred years and it was still used today.

As with most military operations, it was a case of hurry up and wait. But when the word was given, many hours later, the three warships came charging from behind the planet at full burn. With those massive burning engines and every electronic system on those warships set on full power they were not trying to be stealthy. Even the entertainment transmitters on these ships were set to 11 just to fill even more of the EM spectrum.

The Number One jerked so hard in pain that both of his hands had cleared the Wet Interface of the command bridge. While the Number One that was the "leader" of the Cylon Empire took a few seconds to get the human equivalate of seeing stars out of his eyes the Cylon fleet was frozen. It was only for a few seconds, but this was a light speed system that had reported the event and the enemy was able to get that much closer at a building speed.

When the hands of the human form went back down, it took a few more seconds for the Number One to accept that this was not some kind of joke being played on him. It was only after that final shock, that the alert was sent out to the rest of the fleet. "Three human ships coming in at high speed from the gas giant. Arrival time to effective firing range is 6 hours 22 minutes."

The Number One almost lets a snort slip out when the "command systems" built into his flag ship suggest that he attack the "new" enemy warships with all of his capital class vessels. The Number One thought that was a very bad idea in how to fight humans, so he issues his own orders. "All DreadStars are to drop closer to the planet. Any weapon those humans fire that misses us will hit their precious home. That will delay them from getting fancy. All light attack craft are to be emergency recalled for refitting and refueling for anti-Battlestar weapons."

The Commander Cylon's planned actions would reduce the pressure on the human aerospace fighters, and the humans would take advantage of this. This relief was not expected to last that long for the humans on the planet. The local commanders could have ordered their own fighter craft to make attacks on the grounded Cylon forces or they could also pull the craft down to do some rearming and or repairing. Thanks to the tech base of the SLiE, even most of the total forces of local air support assets had been refitted or were built with Fusion engines.

What did that mean in English? It was that all of those attack craft didn't need to be refueled. They had been using the water taken right out of the atmosphere while attacking the Cylons fast enough to keep their tanks topped off. So, all the humans had to do was refit a set number of attack craft that just happened to have the right weapons very close at hand to do the job when the orders were given. It was almost like this had been planned on for at least one shift before actions were taken. While those craft were being loaded, the pilots waited and napped until the new orders were sent to them. It had been a military axiom that a veteran combatant slept whenever they could even if it was only for what civilians would call a short nap.

It was thirty-four minutes after the start of the charge of the three human warships when the Cylon heavy raiders started launching from the remaining Cylon DreadStars and they formed up into attack waves. All the while the humans waited and just not the ones on the planet below the Cylon capital ships. If all of the Cylons left orbit of the planet, there was a plan for that along with half a dozen variations of that idea. But all the humans could do was wait for the Cylons to make the next move, oh and count how many small craft had landed and how many of them were in space around the enemy capital warships.

The TacFax on the Station was sending updates on the Cylon fleet location and disposition of Cylon craft to the three on rushing humans ships as well as using "normal" radio transmissions to get the data down to the planet. Of note was that the Cylon Capital warships were still getting into ever lower orbit but staying away from the SLiE capital city and its powerful anti-spaceship weapons. When the waves of Heavy Raiders started jumping away from the mothership, and alert was sent to anyone that could hear the next steps needed to get ready. When it was later realized by the humans that it had "only" been the small Cylon attack craft that had jumped, the team in one of the pressurized repair bays made ready for the next move with massive grins on their faces.

######

The attacking trio of human warships looked to be only charging straight ahead towards the planet and the assaulting Cylon warships. But space is three dimensions, even if most people and Cylons tend to forget that kind of thing. The pair of Nova Cat Aegis cruisers were the heavy hitters of the three human warships, but those two warships were rotating around a central point that was made up of the heavily modified colonial passenger liner. Were the Zephyr was "only" fitted with NAC 10 class cannons and turrets…. a lot of them. But she also was fitted to fight Cylons lighter craft along with Inner Sphere type aerospace craft, and she had been fitted with as many close in weapons like LRMs, HODs, and energy weapons as possible to deal with that threat. The spiraling formation also helped hide the Clan grade carrier and the SLDF grade Titan dropships with the larger masses of the warships. This was on top of the 15 remaining operational aerospace fighters that each of the Aegis could put into space and also hidden from the Cylons.

The term used for this type of formation was a fighter trap and it had been reinvented by the SLiE and then refined with input from the survivors of the Colonial Navy. You know the group that had been fighting the Cylons the longest time. But still this was going to be the first time that it was going to be tried outside of simulations against the Cylons. One monkey wrench was that this trap also would be done without organic jump fighters support on the human's side. To make up for that issue would be the heavy firepower provided by the SLDF grade Titan and Clan grade Carrier dropship.

As the up armored Heavy Raiders arrived, they ran into the human's fire almost as soon as they could make adjustments to attack the human warships after jumping away from the planet. Now that the pair of heavily armed dropships were exposed by their fire control systems and weapons fire, the attacking Cylons were not sure what to do. It was only when a human form pilot of a Heavy Raider lived long enough to work out that the firepower threshold set was wrong and the now reduced dog smart biomatter were in a loop on what to attack instead of you know…attacking.

Before too much could be done with this information. That human form's Heavy Raider took a pair of 8cm pulse laser hits to the port side that cut into the side of the attack craft like butter, all before the pilot was able to finish updating that part of the software. It was just too bad that after it was received each heavy raider needed to wait for the speed of light acceptance code that needed to be sent from the command Number One. You know the Number One that was still hanging back over the planet. Still just the kick of the waiting code to get final approval did get the Cylon attack craft to do something out of the loop that had rendered them ineffective, it was just too bad that they went for the three heaviest warships. Those heavy raiders could not even attack as a cohesive unit, with each Cylon craft picking a targeted area at random and pressing the attack on the humans. I guess that go for the heavies was as much of a time-honored tradition with the Cylons as it was for the Terrans.

The command crews on the two Nova Cat dropships were fighting their craft like just a pair of overly large aerospace fighters. It was just too bad they could not work as a team instead of being spread out and not within mutually supporting range. As it was each of the supporting dropships and their fighters were supporting each of the Aegis cruisers by helping take out the smaller and way more fragile enemy fighters. These two dropships would have been hard for "regular" clan or Inner Sphere grade aerospace fighters to have to deal with. The lower power Cylon weapons had a harder time scoring telling damage with each hit, but they had a frakk ton of them.

These Cylon made over massed and under engine enemy craft were skeet to the mostly clan grade weapons. With the Heavy Raiders looking only at the massive warships as "real" targets, the Cylons were only tossing back the odd guided missile or KEW shot at the smaller craft. The six nose mounted AMS on the clan Carrier class dropship cleaned the sky like a fire broom. Thanks to the 6 tons of ammunition the dropship's crew had not needed to "actively" manage those systems. With all of that ammunition, they could have an effect on the battlefield for a long time. It was later noted that this 6-pack could have been very useful on the Titan class vessels.

Even the "small" Streak 6 missile launchers were taken out a Cylon craft with just a single missile volley from a launcher. It was not long before each turret on the two dropships were under local control to handle the massive numbers of Cylon craft that was filling the local space. This had an issue of quality fire control and there were a few cases of friendly fire that hit both aerospace fighters and human warship alike. It also held true that Sir Isaac Newton killed more people in this battle than any other single person or Cylon.

For every minute of combat let the three human warships get closer and closer to the Dreadstar that held the current leader of the Cylon Empire. All that the Number One could do for long seconds was watch as the numbers of his Heavy Raiders kept dropping like a waterfall of pain and broken dreams. If the auto evac code on the Heavy Raiders had not been deleted years ago as a way to fight the Human made Cylon? Then when half of the attacking Cylon force of Heavy Raiders was lost? Then the remainder of the attacking craft would have started to try to jump out to their assigned support capital craft or base to come up with a better attack plan.

But instead, only those few Heavy Raiders with human forms at the controls tried to get away from this trap the humans had sprung on them. Then again that number of human form pilots should have been higher, but this Number One had diverted all but a very small handful in relative size of this attack away from Heavy Raider controls to other missions. This was so that the Command One could have more human form shooters and commanders that could be used in this ground assault. The only positive results for the loss of effectively all of his Heavy Raiders was when one of the few remaining Heavy Raiders was able to put in an anti-warship grade nuclear warhead into one of the small warships that had ambushed his raiders before it was killed.

While the small human warships were powerful and fast combat vessels, but they were not that strong and that one hit had ended 12,000tons of human combat vessel. The Zephyr had taken two hits of equal power, but they didn't seem to have done that much damage to the converted passenger liner despite both strikes packing nuclear warheads. This was not good news, but it was not that unexpected for the planners of this attack. It was one of the reasons that this Number One wanted surprise in this attack on the human planet. That way his forces could get in a few hard hits before the humans could react to him by killing his people faster than the Cylons could kill the humans.

######

The Number One accessed a file in the Wet Interface on his flagship to try to work out how to fight the battle now that he had lost his primary long range strike capacity provided by his Heavy Raiders. He was let down to see that the combat computer, copied from Colonial machines captured early in the war, had said that he should surrender the battlefield to absorb reinforcements and attack again only after he had time to rebuild his forces. The Commander and leader of all of the Cylon Empire didn't accept that this was the only way to win this war against three human warships was to leave the star system.

When the Number One thought that the last of his Heavy Raiders had made it back to his fleet, he sent new fleet wide orders to his seven remaining Dreadstars. He was not going to leave this star system, but he was going to leave planet and engage the now damaged human warships with his own capital warships. Each of those human warships was smaller than even the small for a modern Battlestar that the Galactica had been. The Cylon designed combat computer models that had been lost with the Colony ship had said that even with the update to her weapons, that it should only take 2 of his new Dreadstars to cut even that old girl down. In this battle he would have six of them and the humans would not have any Battlestars to call on for support in defeating his battlefleet. What could go wrong with that thinking?

The sole remaining Landing Support Dreadstar would have to stay behind the rest of the Cylon battlefleet. The massive vessel did have some heavy weapons, but it would not add that much over all to the Cylons remaining firepower. Plus, with the loss of so many Heavy Raiders, it was going to be the only source of fire support available for the ground forces to call on until the rest of the Cylon fleet was able to return to this planet's orbit. At no time did the Command Cylon think about what the humans on the planet would do while the rest of the fleet was gone, or what would happen if his fleet was not able to return over the heads of the ground forces.

The Cylon fleet had dropped so low that they could not risk a jump from this current orbit, so they had started to rise to a higher orbit like slow growing mushrooms. But due to the "low" power to mass ratio of the modified colonial designed engines, this was not something that could be done that quickly. Oh, and the humans still had weapons that could reach the Cylons if they were able to get a line of sight onto any of the Cylon capital ships. The humans waited, and they watched what the Cylons were doing, and they had their own plans just waiting to jump out and slap the taste out of the Cylon's mouth. That was kind of a human thing.

#######

Terror ripped through the command wet interface of the whole Cylon fleet. "Oh Frakk! It's the Pegasus! That was not a storage area! It was a covered repair slip! But who in the frakk would build a covered slip in space?!" Those were not the only question and alerts that went rocketing threw the network, but the rest were just variations of this theme.

The massive head of the still damaged Battlestar had started to push out of the still opening massive doors of the pressurized repair yard ready to do battle with its long time enemy. The Colonial warship had been in for some much needed and highly complex repairs, and she didn't have a full crew when the Cylons had arrived in the New Circe Star system. But after the Cylons showed up killing their fellow humans, that had been mostly fixed with volunteers from the space station. As a lesson learned from the surprise attack on the Colonial support bases all of those years ago, every space based warship would always keep a full load of aerospace fighters and at least 50 percent of the pilots were to remain on the vessel at all times.

This last part of the modified SLDF SOP had been one of the key reasons that The Station had been able to keep the Cylons away from the space base so well. While The Station did have a massive number of aerospace jump fighters and combat support units like Raptors and small craft sized gunships. And just like in the Inner Sphere, all cargo small craft had a skin made of armor and enough weapons to try to keep an enemy at arm's reach. But even at "only" a percent of the BattleStars' pilots on hand had been a major boon for the humans. While the fighter craft could not be moved over to be able to use The Stations launching bays, her pilots could be. Well, they could but that would show a card that the Cylons didn't seem to know about.

That source of pilots had let the CAG on The Station rotate pilots so that the maximum number of attack craft were always on duty that were flown by fresh pilots. It also didn't hurt that this pool of pilots held some of the best colonial and SLDF pilots on the active roles. That skill and training would not have helped if they had just been sitting in cabins slowly going nuts and then doing something stupid when they were finally left off the leash to do battle with their tormentors.

Then there was a sudden change, and all of the pilots were put into seats until High Command told them what was about to happen. So, when the massive bay doors on the Number Two Slip opened to the rest of space? Every combat craft from The Station launched and the same was true as the launching bay or tubes were cleared of the doors, the Battlestar added her own combat craft into the mix. Waves of Avar, Vipers Mk VIII+, jump fighters, antiship weapon fitted Raptors, and anything else that was packing anything larger than a 5cm laser filled the space over New Circe. This would have been bad enough now that almost all of the Cylon CAP had been both drawn off and destroyed. But the planet also was sending up every aerospace fighter that could have a warm body in the seat that was over 10tons. Many of those craft only had internal weapons to do battle with, but a clan grade 8cm pulse laser or gauss rifle would damage the armor of even the newest Dreadstar. It would be a case of a death by a thousand cuts, but it still would be a death of a Cylon warship.

With the Cylon capital ships caught so close to the planet, the great Battlestar's heavy KEWs, and Star League made energy weapons she had been refitted with had started slicing away. First to be hit was the nearest Dreadstar, it also just so happened that it was the one nearest to being able to jump away from the planet. Instead, it soon was falling out of the sky towards the planet's surface. That much falling metal would cause more than one issue, but anyone of the warships that could not escape could not be rebuilt/repaired and used against the humans again.

The surviving Cylon capital fleet was cut in half in less than a minute of the Battlestar joining the battle at what was more or less point-blank range for space combat. The first two losses were the sole remaining Invasion support DreadStar and the Cylon Flagship. The Humans on the planet knew that they could not stop them all, not with just one human warship, not even with the help of the smaller jump combat craft. It was just too much metal and they could not stop all of the Cylon warcraft from leaving. A Cylon Basestar was hard to kill by even using Raptors, and a Dreadstar was even harder to kill than a "normal" Basestar.

The Pegasus was raining fire with every weapon they could even remotely bring to bear on the Cylon Fleet. They had even started splitting their fire just so in the vein hope of getting a lucky hit to damage one of the Cylon warship's jump drive with what was called a golden Bebe. A ray of hope for the humans came when a large warship with a Colonial designed jump drive arrived near enough to do battle with the remaining few now damaged Cylon warships. It opened fire as they pulled out of range of the ground support heavy weapons. The Zephyr might not have been as good as a Battlestar, but she was refitted and modified for war. And it was a lot easier to get one of those golden Bebes with a class 10 naval autocannon than it was with a mech scale gauss rifle.

#######

With the mission of taking out as many of the Cylon heavy raiders now having been done, there had not been enough time to reattach one of the Nova Cat's warships to the Zephyr's outer hull. So, the two cruisers were still making their best speed to the life bearing planet hidden in a nebula. It would take them hours to reach the planet and then only doing a fly by before flashing past and then slowing down and making it back to the planet. There was not one person on those three "major" warships' bridge that thought there would be anything left to do battle with by then.

The commander of the Zephyr did not have that issue, and even with waiting for orders when he sent his idea back up the chain of command. When the Zephyr was ready it moved faster than light in a micro jump, only one word was needed to launch his plan. This type of short move was not something a ship of this size would normally be required to make. As soon as the converted passenger liner had arrived over the planet, capital scale autocannons recovered from half a dozen ships started slamming out death.

The NAC-10s were not that powerful of a naval scale autocannon, but they were very long ranged, and the converted passenger liner was able to claim two damage DreadStars as destroyed by her weapons. The last DreadStar was able to jump out of the New Circe star system, but it was taking heavy weapons fire from the two human warships right up until the millisecond it went super light. The damage had been so bad to the Cylon warship, that it had been forced to leave almost a third of its own damaged hull behind in a degrading orbit into the local star. When the energy readouts were later subjected to an in-depth analysis many a colonial and Cylon support that also was working on that data wanted to toss up their lunch.

Miss jumps were very rare for Colonial/Cylon tech based faster than light engines, but they had been known about for some time and they knew what to look for in space disaster investigations. Those groups had even recovered dozens of vessels that had undergone one of those rare miss-jumps over the last two hundred years. In some ways a Colonial miss jump was worse than when an Inner Sphere K-F drive had a miss jump. When the last DreadStar had fled, it left only a few heavy raiders that were left in and around New Circe. Those were the ones without a human form at the controls and had only survived because they had been a little luckier than the rest of their kind. The humans only needed a few hours more before all of the space or flying Cylon assets were no longer an issue for the humans. Unfortunately, that left only the Cylons on the ground and there were few things more dangerous than a cornered enemy. Even Sun Tzu knew this thousands of years ago.

The Ground Battle.

Near the Colonial City State.

The dropships carrying over a battalion worth of reinforcements and was escorted by a powerful Pentagon class dropship made it into orbit over New Circe without any issues that the assault dropship and fighter screen could not handle. When they were still an hour out from doing a combat drop, the ground forces were asked to adjust their course and plans one more time.

Instead of combat dropping on an embattled city, the Nova Cats were to drop north of the landing area that was not even close to the largest city on the planet. They were going to be even just a little north of where the Cylons had been able to land their own versions of dropships full of combat forces to attack the humans. The downside was that now the Nova Cat mechs and battle armor were going to have to do battle across an area where more than a dozen nuclear weapons had been used…. And a few dropships load of FASCAM, Thumper mines, and liberally covered with UXOs. The only positive was that those nuclear blasts were cleaner than what Clan Nova Cat had seen used on Lost Home.

After landing not all of the Nova Cats combat units were going on the attack into the back of the Cylon forces. A security force would have to stay behind around the dropships or risk the losses to capture or simple destruction. This splinter force was going to be made up of two mechs that had not been fully repaired from the battle on Lost Home, and five points of "Normal" clan infantry that had not been fitted with battle armor or their suits were too damaged to protect the pilots from the rads on the nuclear battlefield. There was supposed to be some support from the locals, but nothing could be guaranteed, and both the SLiE and the Nova Cats didn't want to lose a dropship to the enemy. It was common knowledge that more dropships had been captured on the ground than had been destroyed there.

######

Jasmine Carns was in her element that made her feel so happy, but being back at the controls of a battlemech was not all that was making her happy today. After the battle of Lost Home, she had been given the official rank and the position of a commander over a star of battlemechs. They had lost some good people on Lost Home, but those numbers had been replaced thanks to good planning on the Star Admiral and the Khans of the Nova Cats part. They had been expecting battle getting to where the visions were leading them, and battles cost not just mechs, armored suits, ammunition, but pilots also. There were many Nova Cats working other jobs to support this long running mission, but they had also been trained as warriors.

Those "replacements" could not be "given rank" so they had to start at the bottom of the heap just like some new recruit from the old Star League. Jasmine might have gotten this new rank by stepping into Deadman's Shoes, but it was the way that she had been raised to advance within the military. At least this time she didn't have to challenge someone for the job and possibly do the killing or maiming with her own hands. She was just glad that she was still at the controls of her now beloved Masauwu. The support staff had thought that they would have a lot more time to get things done, so many of the replacement mechs had not been brought out of storage and the most damaged mechs moved so that the techs could take their time getting the repair work done.

Star Captain Carn's mech had taken damage but it was mainly to the mech's armor, but she did take damage to one of her left arm mounted 8cm Kolibri Delta pulse lasers. That 5-ton weapon was replaced with a mix of battlefield salvage and storage supplying three SEP-Class 5cm lasers and two more 3rd generation heat sinks. She was very happy with this latest set of modifications done to her ride when she had been asked about it. She liked the firepower of the 8cm laser, but it only let her hit a single target at a time, and with the numbers the Cylons like to put on the battlefield in the form of Centurions. Carn felt that she needs more but lower output weapons in the kind of warfare they found themselves in. If they had some 3cm pulse lasers just laying around that might have been better, but you can only work with what you have on hand.

Jasmine's promotion had put her in charge of a reformed star of Nova Cat forces. This was good and bad; the good part was that all of them were survivors. But the bad part was that they only training time they had together was in the sim pods. Sim pods were great for keeping your skills sharp, but nothing beat working out in the field with moving mechs in the real world. This issue about working together was compounded on that she had different mechs in her Star, and some of them were mechs never seen in person much less seen working together before they had left the Pentagon Worlds. Something like that could end up killing them all.

The Pentagon class dropship landed on the edge of the clearing that was on a flattened hill, well it was more flattened now. The elevated location would let the Pentagon better cover the other grounded dropships around them. It was not the best location, but it was that or burn a lot of fuel to stay in very low orbit so that it could come flying down and hit any attackers from above after the shooting had first started.

While the battlemechs were exiting the grounded dropships, the infantry going on this attack were finishing putting on their combat suits. There were not any battle armor bays on the dropships that had been brought on this mission, so they were reduced to using cargo bays and cabins to support this kind of action. The Nova Cats were just lucky that they had enough first generation omni mechs that the remaining battle suits could catch rides instead of walking into battle.

With everyone ready for battle, the Nova Cat combat forces started to fan out in an advancing line or wave of firepower. Overhead a pair of Sabre ECs home based on the SLDF Union flew ahead of the slowly spreading Nova Cat force. It was hoped that they would act as a tripwire to finding the Cylon's ground forces. It was a good plan, it was a sound plan, so that meant it went right out the window not long after landing. If the Nova Cats would have contacted the locals and received more details on what it was like fighting the Cylons this might have been if not avoided, then at least it would have been mitigated.

On Lost Home the Nova Cats had not run into the Cylon using missiles in an air defense role much less being on the receiving end of massed fires of them. During the invasion planning for this human world, the Command One had made sure that the Cylon ground forces had plenty of missiles ready to reach into the sky and hunt humans that like to fly above the clouds. The Nova Cats were lucky that they didn't lose either aerospace craft, and that the two fighters were only forced to fly high enough to not be able to see what was happening on the ground below them with any measure of detail.

#######

The radiation alarms started sounding a little over 4km from the enemy landing sites. And by the time that the Nova Cat mechs had arrived within visual range, the Elementals were very happy for their high-tech armor. There was only so much that Clan medical care could fix, and even if you could fix something like this, it was going to really suck until all of the damage was repaired. There were very few people that liked tossing up their cookies and having extreme diarrhea at the same time.

The omnimechs had to slow down for the modified Elemental filled mining suits, the UMUs were removed after leaving Lost Home, and for the slower 1,500kg Rhino suits could be dropped off. The few 1,000kg Elemental type suits just hit the jump button to leave the outer hulls of the battle taxies. Thanks to these being Cylons ships that had been spread around the improvised landing zone, they were designed from the start of construction to handle 8 foot tall Centurions walking down every corridor and being in every room on the ships.

Still, that didn't mean that the short range missiles and their pack like launchers were that effective within the confines of the grounded Cylon ships. The Rhinos were great at taking enemy weapons fire, and their 3cm pulse laser on the Rhinos and 3cm lighter energy mounts on the Elementals class suits were very effective in the close quarters combat of the corridors. But it was not long before it was found that the industrial drill on the mining suits was more effective at breaching any doors or walls to get to the few Cylons that had remained behind. When it was over? The Nova Cats would have a very compelling claim to six of those grounded Cylons ships in only a few hours of combat. As they say possession is nine points of the law.

#######

Star Captain Carn had just rotated back off the advancing line of Nova Cat firepower so that she could be more than just another gunfighter. The amount of rads from the use of nuclear weapons had dropped after leaving the area of the spaceships that had just been taken under new management. With the warning of the mine fields and then copies of the fire plans being passed to the Nova Cats by the people that had laid them had made its so that this move had gone faster for the humans than what the Cylons had to deal with. The number of artillery laid minefields had been a shock for the Nova Cats, much less how thick each of the fields were reported to be laced with death. The next shock for the Nova Cats was when they had found out that it turned out not all of the mines had been just in those minefields. The Nova Cats were just lucky that all of those mines were set to be detonated when hit with a Centurion, or Pretorian, so the heavier Nova Cat mechs had set them off a few dozen meters Infront of the first ranks of their battle lines.

As soon as the grounded Cylon landing ships had been able to get a message threw the jamming being put out by Cylons, SLiE and the Nova Cats. The Cylons had tried to pull in all of their forces into the human city, but the combined forces of the Colonials and the SLiE had been able to start pushing them out instead. These battles were both short and very bloody… for both sides within the confines of that human city. But without the Command One and his Flagship, there was less command and control for the Cylons to fall back on. And as more and more human forms died in battle, this control had slipped more and more on the battlefield. Self-preservation was a major drive….at least for the Human Forms Cylons of the Cylon Empire.

Now about half of the surviving Cylons were estimated to be in the forest between the human city and the now lost Cylon landing ships. When the Nova Cats made contact with a large enough force of the enemy with their battle line that made up the Nova Cats? It would start the wings of the arms in to try to encircle as many of the monsters as possible. The problem was that you didn't know where on that line of advance was going to bump into the Cylon combat forces first. The enemy force was spread out between those that were the fastest or the slowest of the Cylons to react to the debacle this landing had turned into.

Carns had to push the speed up a little on her Masauwu to keep up with the Drift Shag and Firefly that were off to the left and right of her mech. And older mechwarrior that had been recently raised from the tech staff and now was the "proud" pilot of a Star Slayer EC reported on the Star's Radio net that proved to be a good distraction.

"Star Captain, my mics are picking something up to the south of us. I am also picking up something on an open radio link that is not covered with military protocols. I think they are telling "your momma jokes" and they are directed at the Cylons. I have to say that some of those statements are pretty good." She could hear the mirth in the older man's voice clearly coming over the radio.

The Star Captain had to smile herself. "Do I want to know how you know so much about those kinds of jokes….. MechWarrior? Quiaff."

The voice came back very quickly to the clan officer. "What do you think the forward repair teams do to pass the time while the warriors are out damaging "their" equipment. To be honest, I was never as good as most on those teams with these kinds of games. I think it is something you are born with or not. Aff."

Jasmine didn't have anything else to add and she scanned the Radio channels to get firsthand experience with this new radio phenomenon. It didn't take long for her computer to find an open channel and a young woman's voice to come over the speaker. "ran down your momma's leg and burned a hole in the floor. Your momma was a cheap microwave! And your daddy was an electrician with both social issues and diseases!"

Jasmine had a good idea of what had been the prefix of that first line had been and she had to stifle a laugh. After a few seconds of breathing, she used her command voice. "Person on this net, if you are in contact with the Cylons please switch to encryption. If you cannot, please leave the area. You are at risk, Quiaff."

The channel was clear for long enough that Jasmine thought the voice was gone, and then with a triple chirp said that her radio was now receiving SLDF encryption the girls voice was back. "Last caller, can you read me…. over?"

The Star Captain removed about three years off her guess of the woman's age with the tone of uncertainty she used on that transmission. Then she heard what had to be a PPC fire that was either small or very far away from the mic. Then a whoop of joy came from the voice that told the Star Captain that the woman had something to do with that burst of EM static.

Jasmine was all business now. "Okay from the background sounds you are in close contact with these surats. What I need you to do is lead them to me. I have a force that is traveling on a line from the Cylon's landing Zone on a heading of 118 heading towards the city."

Before she could say more the younger woman's voice over rode hers. "Zac, turn left about 45 degrees and don't spare the horses.! Woohhoo!"

######

After that the channel went dead and the Star Captain started to worry that this plan might not work, but it turns out that the Human Form Cylons really didn't like this girl. There was just enough time to get into a formation that would be to the advantage of the Nova Cats, and work best with culling the numbers advantage of the Cylons. The last warning was received by the Nova Cats that battle was about to be rejoined was when a very odd-looking hover bike came swerving out of the trees with a young man hunched down on the handlebars like he was mentally pushing the bike to go just a little faster.

But it was the girl riding behind the boy facing aft that drew the Nova Cat officer's attention. She looked to be holding a man portable PPC and firing into whatever was following behind them. The Star Captain had no idea on how the young woman in a combat helmet was holding onto the heaviest weapon non-elemental troops took to the battlefield, much less how she was both able to fire and hit with the beast of a weapon. That last part she was doing both was told to the Nova Cat officers by her cockpit systems. It was a show of either high skill or lots of luck as a gunner, and both had a place on the battlefield. But soon the pair of teenagers were behind the firing line made up of Nova Cat war machines. Jasmine made a mental note about that girl, she had genes that her splinter group of Nova Cats could use in the rebuilding that was going to need to happen after this set of battles.

The two light mechs were moving forward and their many but lower powered systems were soon slicing into the first waves of running Centurions. By this late in the battle, even if a Centurion still had a shield, it was battered enough to sometimes to were only a frame was left. Even the old 3cm Martell lasers were taking down the larger human sized enemy in a single hit. But even with those many energy weapons in the Nova Cat's vanguard, the Cylons were soon pouring out of the far tree line and heading right towards the Nova Cats main line of resistance.

Jasmine and the warrior in the Star Slayer EC were waiting for some larger game to enter the field of battle. Their heavy weapons could also kill the smaller Centurions, but it was kind of like using a sledgehammer on a roofing nail. The first warning that enemy heavy metal was on this battlefield was when what looked like twenty missiles came roaring out of the trees without any warning. Without AMS all of those missiles hit their target, the Firefly.

While the Cylons missiles had been found to be weak individually, a cloud of them could outright kill a mech or they could find the weak points in any armored skin. That kind of sandblasting could cause damage to the things that made a mech worth the effort to keep on the battlefield. These incoming missiles hit all over the upper torso and head of the Firefly blasting off armor and other bits of mech in flashes of red and black. One or more of those enemy missiles must have found a weak point in the old machine. In a brilliant flash of red and orange the back of the right torso of the Firefly vented flames into the cool damp air of this planet. Something must have reached the ammunition for the clone of the old Coventry Five LRM launcher, but the pilot was lucky, and that CASE system did its designed job. But besides losing the LRM launcher, the Firefly also lost the use of one of the 5cm Martell lasers mounted near it. It was a loss of a lot of firepower but the mech was still in the battle and not spread out in small smoking parts flying across the battlefield.

Surprisingly, the pilot of the battlemech was not that shaken by at least a pair of hits to the cockpit on top of losing his LRM Launcher. The pilot was aware enough to know that he needed to get away from an enemy that knew where he was down to the millimeter. Now the Firefly was not known for being a fast machine for its weight class, but it did have heavy armor and one other trick to survive on the modern battlefield. The pilot hit the Lexington Lifters and the massive jump jets moved the 30ton battlemech over 100m across the battlefield at a speed that so much metal should not be able to attain.

With the Firefly out of position, the Star Captain took a few steps forward and she brought two of her heavy weapons into play. That many missiles had to mean that the heavy hitters, or as anyone used to a battlemech would call light mechs were on the battlefield. Before her one remaining 8cm Kolibri Delta laser or the KOV autocannon could fire a cluster round, her Shield -1 Anti-missile system fired up into the cloud covered sky. The right torso mounted weapon took down three of the four enemy missiles aimed at her, and the one survivor hit her in the center torso not far from the main antenna of the ECM system that had not even been active.

The damage to her armor was worth it for the Star Captain because she and her mech now knew where to start looking to fire back. With as savage smile on her face, she fired her clan grade 8cm pulse laser towards one part of the tree line. Even with many and thick trees between her and the target, the laser hit the enemy dead center and it was like someone had cut its strings. At least with the laser, as long as she had power and the heatsinks, she could keep firing it. That was something that so was not common for ballistic and missile type weapons systems.

The Star Captain's mech was carrying thirty rounds for her autocannon, she was packing 20 shot of Cluster and 10 shots of slug rounds. She knew that there was one other Masauwu on her Union C that had not gotten refitted with the trio of 5cm lasers and had gone with all three tons of ammunition for that class 10 weapon being of the cluster type. She had cycled a cluster round into the breach of her autocannon before the battle had really started. So, she looked for a group of Centurions nearby that needed to be…. reduced by cannon shot.

After the battles of Lost Home and before the Nova Cats had lifted off of that battle scarred landscape, it had been found out that these Cylons called their light and only mech the Praetorian. So far there had been found only two ways to really kill it. One was to blow both of its legs off as fast as possible, and the other was to core the center of the light mech like machine. That second way would kill the biomatter controlling the death machine directly or setting off the ammunition for the autocannons mounted in the arms.

The cluster rounds were great at finding weak points in battlemechs, and taking out Centurions, but it didn't have the knockout punch a single solid AC-10 slug possessed. The autocannon gave the same amount of damage that the 8cm standard and pulse lasers that were fitted to some of the Nova Cat's mechs. The Lancelot C at the end of her Star's formation was pumping out 8cm pulse laser blast that were taking out two or three of the enemy light mechs per volley of energy weapons fire. The only thing that slowed the fire was the need to keep the Golden Age mech cool enough that it didn't auto shut down or kill the pilot due to the massive heat load the Lancelot was generating.

The Star Captain started to have second thoughts about her plan as more and more Cylons of all types closed in on her unit in unstoppable waves. Her mechs were already having to fall back to keep the distance so that they could not get swarmed by the smaller Centurions. But there was only so far that they could pull back before the buckle in the Nova Cat lines turned into a pair of breaches…. or worse. The battle was so intense that she didn't notice the artillery falling into the waves of Cylons out of reach of her Star's weapons. After all it was not the clan way to use such weapons in battle and the only artillery mech, the Naga, was almost 200 years old. By this point in the battle, she was more of a gunfighter than a combat leader and didn't notice the artillery fire.

#######

The Firefly was down and thanks to its lack of arms it was having a hard time getting up off the ground. Oh, and the dozen or so Centurions covering it's hull were not helping the pilot get back into the fight. The Drift Shag and Jasmine's 3cm laser were doing their best to pick off the ants swarming the downed light mech, but the more massive battlemech only had its weapons ports for hands. That meant that they were limited in the amount of help that she could give. There was a very thin line between being helpful and being waaaay to helpful, and Clan grade 5cm lasers was pushing that line…. Even for a battlemech like the Firefly that was known for having thick armor. Well thick armor for a 30ton mech, and an extended ranged 5cm laser would turn a lot of armor into nothing but blasted fragments.

The Star Captain almost shot when a strange mech with what seemed like oversized hands started "slapping" the Firefly as it tried to get up off the ground. She had not even noticed it coming out of the wood line while she was trying to kill Cylons and protect her starmate. The mech was not in the war book of her mech, and it was not close in size to the Cylon Praetorian massing about 75tons. Also, the design philosophy was totally different than what she had seen of the Cylons. As she watched one of the arms came up and a forearm mounted weapon fired. She multitasked and saw what could only be a PPC reach out and cut completely threw a Cylon light mech. The range of the strike made Jasmine's jaw drop. The hit was at the far edge of extreme range for even a Clan grade extended range PPC. When she looked to check the power rating of that strike, she found that her computer had errored out. This was the first time that something like that had happen to her in all of the years she had been a mech jockey.

########

Mechwarrior Achen looked and wiped blood out of his eyes. The cut was from his cockpit glass that had mostly withstood a pair of enemy missile strikes. All he could do was wait and hope that he would not have to eat his own sidearm if it looked like the enemy AI foot soldiers were about to breach his cockpit. He was just getting ready to give it another try to rise his mech out of the mud. So far, he had failed due to his mech not having arms, a few cockpit hits, and damage to both of his machine's legs. Then a shadow covered his cockpit.

As Achen looked up what his sensor said was a 75ton mech had reached down and started hitting his mech. He was about to fire up at a machine that was over twice his mass out of a sense of short-term self-preservation. If he had been a little more concussed, he might have done just that. It was when he looked at the digital armor layout for his machine that he noticed that the strikes were controlled enough to seem to be only smashing Centurions. The mechwarrior looked up as more light spilled into his cockpit when another one of the little metal monsters had been removed.

Achen looked up just in time to see the arms of the massive unknown mech sweep out and extend fully. A massive energy wave leaped from one arm to hit something out of sight. The Firefly's systems flickered that was a clear sign that the strange mech had just shot a PPC at someone. He was close enough that his ROM picked up a lot of data on both the new mech and its weapons that would later be known as Fjellfras. Next the other arm started firing 50mm shells that his computer said was a LB-X firing canister. Only this cannon was firing way faster than any LB-X cannon in the data base. As Achen watch he could see red start to spread from the muzzle at an alarming rate, and still the mech fired its autocannon. He had no idea how long the new mech had fired its autocannon, but the computer would. When the cannon finally stopped firing, the new machine stood there like a god of war and for once Achen understood how PBIs looked at mechs.

After holding fire for a couple of minutes and watching the new machine cut massive wholes into the enemy, then the other mech used its hands to help up Jasmine Starmate to regain its feet. When the Firefly was on its feet it joined the battle by firing machine guns and pulse lasers into the backs of as many running Centurions as it possibly could. It would seem like help had arrived and the now six mechs started reaping the Cylons.

#######

The Star Captain was reaching for her radio when an open transmission came in. "To all human units! Don't let them make it back to the landing ships! The more we take down now, the less we will have to pry out of the woods! Up and at'em boys and girls! For the Star League! For the Human race! We will never go quietly into the dark!"

That was all the motivation she and the rest of the Nova Cats needed to somehow find another gear to fight with. What remained of Clan Wolverine and this group of Nova Cats fought side by side like they had been doing so for generations. They would save each other's lives dozens of times without even knowing the checkered past they shared. The past didn't matter, all that mattered was that they killed as many Cylons as they could and as fast as they could. The thoroughly mixed-up combat forces would not be able to kill all of the Cylons, towards the end even the human forms were raising their hands after the Praetorian or Centurion carrying them were cut down by human weapons. Thanks to the reinstalling of the Telecephalic Inhibitors the Centurions fought on against the humans living on this planet instead of trying to hide.

This might have been a good thing, because Centurion type Cylons fighting an insurgent war would not be a good thing for the humans. That didn't stop some of the human forms from trying to get away from the humans, but the Human Form Cylons were not really ready for that kind of fighting. They were armed and they had copies of the Colonial military pattern camouflage to blend into the forest. Only they didn't have any supplies or other survival gear to help them threw the rough spots that kind of fighting always seemed to have. Then there was the cold and wet weather the bodies of the Cylons would have to deal with. The Human Forms had not lived anywhere that was not fully climate controlled to their whims. And so, the cold and wet of New Circe killed them almost as fast as the lack of food ended up doing.

######

A few hours before the taking of the Cylon landing areas by the Nova Cats and in a small building in the capital of the Colonial City State. Nike and her adhoc team were pulled off the battle line and the rumor had it that they were to be broken up and sent back to their "regular" units. Well Nike was not assigned to a "military" unit, and she was technically underage even for the SLiE, also she had not been officially enrolled in combat training. So, she was to be evacuated to McEvedy City as soon as they had the room that was not needed for the wounded.

Her temporary unit was getting broken up because they finally had gotten enough heavy combat units from the SLDF into the Colonial City State. As far as Nike knew, at first all of the adhoc units were to stay on the firing line, at least now that the Cylons had reverted to killing any human they found. But now that the Cylon aircover had disappeared over New Circe, the humans were returning the favor… tenfold.

That was how Nike found herself wondering around with too much free time on her hands and nothing to distract her. Some of that was thanks to her Cylon human form that only required six hours of sleep to get at least close to "normal". It was the sound of power tools that brought her to this shack behind a tall building that Nike had not taken the time to work out its purpose as she glided by the mostly wrecked building. Getting the door of the shack open without making too much noise was child's play for her now. Combat experience tends to make you always want to move with as much stealth as possible….. even if your brain was telling you that you were no longer in combat.

In the room was a boy working on a pile of junk that took up the center of the small shack. It took Nike a few seconds to work out that it was a hand-built hover bike. The boy was doing some hard grinding with his power tool on something, and he had not noticed the door open until his grinder stopped and a cool damp breeze wicked away some of the sweat on his arms. Still, he about jumped out of his skin when a woman's voice spoke beside him.

Nike was almost looking over the boy shoulders and in a voice that she thought was soft she had spoken aloud. "So what'cha doing?"

The boy juggled his tools and when he put them down, Nike felt her stomach do something odd and she knew it was not food related. This boy was more than cute…. he was hot, but Nike was sooo not going to say that. She almost missed it when the boy started talking. "Holy Frakk! Where did you come from?"

Nike used the thumb on her left hand and pointed over her shoulder towards the open door. With him distracted, she easily steps around the boy and looked at what he was working on in the middle of a war zone. "Let's see, hover lifters off a League hover sedan. The thrust frame… is hand made." She bent down to get a better look at the power plant of the device. "Where did you get an Omni 5? And is that a semi portable PPC?"

The boy tried to get between Nike and the hover bike. "I found the Omni in a wrecked house, no one was around so I replaced my fuel cell engine with it. The manpack PPC was broken and left at the park they were using to pull out all of the kids. I was able to fix it, but it's too heavy for me to use… besides setting up in one place to fire and die."

Nike looked around before she just reached out with her human form strength and moved the boy to one side so that she could get a better look at this work. She now saw wires running from the fusion power plant to the back of the 40kg weapon. "I see that you wired in a power supply shunt at the back. That would be a good work around for the battery issue."

Nike pointed to a section near the Omni 5's output lines. "You know that you really should put in a 100-amp breaker about there. That way if you need to put full power to the lifters and thrusters it won't try to pull power from the PPC's battery and short out both the PPC and the lifters."

The boy changed like a switch was thrown. "Really?" He turned and went to one knee and looked closer at his hard work, and his eyes ran back and forth between the weapon and the power plant. "Yea, I should have seen that. Names Zac, who are you? You don't sound like a Colonial." Zac rose from beside the hover bike to get to his full height.

Nike stuck out her hand and the boy didn't even flinch when she gave her name. It was almost like he had never heard of her before today. That was very refreshing for Nike to have to deal with. It turns out that the boy was called Zac and he was an orphan. He only knew that his mother had "hooked up" with a really smart guy at some party on Caprica and he was the result. The gene donor had not wanted anything to do with his mother after that night and the mother seemed to be okay with that. She had told Zac that his father was very smart but a real frakk tard underneath all of that polish. Zac had been separated from his mother during the evacuation and they had ended up on different ships, but both had successfully made it off the planet. But even Nike knew about the Olympic Carrier, and she had not needed to ask any embarrassing questions when she was told the name of the ship that his mother had been seen boarding.

########

When the rewiring was done and they had made a few tests to make sure that it would work, Nike looked around wondering. "Well now that it's done. What now? I don't think you will be able to drive and fire that thing all by yourself."

Zac had this odd little smile on his face. "You know that the only way to really test this is in combat conditions…. right."

Nike felt her heart skip a beat and she felt her own face turn into a smile so large her cheeks started to sting. She pointed to the hover bike. "We can send some scout reports back on what we see… during the test. You drive and I will cover our butts with the PPC." She held up her hand. "I suck at driving, but I'm a better shot then most." Only part of what she had said was false, she was a very good shot.

######

The two teenagers shot off into the streets of the Colonial city looking to find the Cylons. It had not taken them long and Nike had started using the communication package in her military helmet to report to anyone that was within reach of her combat helmets radio about what they had found. It was one of their reports that had first reported that the Cylons seemed to have started pulling back from the bloody grind that the city fighting had become. What had not been reported was that Nike was very good with that less than mech scale PPC and any group of Cylons that was small enough had been killed outright. She might have forgotten to report those to anyone, but Zac.

Thanks to the power supplied from the Omni 5, the pair didn't have to return for a fresh battery for the weapon at a supply point. You would be surprised how fast 25 shots can be expended when you were almost neck deep in Cylons that wanted to kill you… very badly. It was during one of these scouting by fire events that the pair worked out that you could not take down a Praetorian class mech with one or even three shots from the 40kg weapon. Or maybe it was learned that you should not try to take out a light mech with only one of those weapons.

That is not to say that Nike could not do damage to those walking beast, and she found out that the full charge blast from this "small" PPC was powerful enough to take out the shoulder mounted missile launchers…. And if you hit them just…... right? You could knock them down… but they would get back up and be mad as all Frakk. Then you had a case of a game of chase mixed with whack a mole, and Nike and Zac were the moles.

It was while trying to avoid one of these damaged and mad as Frakk Praetorians that the pair had found themselves way behind Cylon lines in the forest that made up the north side of the city. It was while Nike was waiting for the Omni 5 to divert enough power to get another shot off, the drives were pulling almost the full load of the 5 rated engine to help them escape, and Nike got bored. As Allen would have warned anyone that would listen to him. A bored Nike, that is a Nike that is about to do something… odd. The "Event" this time happened as the pair had passed a Number 2 human form Cylon, but "just" a single human form was not worth a bolt from her PPC. Without a way to kill it…efficiently, she just started yelling insults at the top of her very powerful lungs. Oh, and she was flashing insulting Colonial hand signs in his general direction.

After seeing the response from the human form with this method, the pairs attacks…. change very quickly. Now Nike was saying every insulting thing about the human form Cylons that she could think on a clear radio channel… It was rather a long list. The reaction after she just made one final adjustment, that was in just using the Number Ones type of human form as the target of her verbal tirade was epic. It now seemed like every Cylon within a dozen kilometers was now closing on the hover bike at their best possible speed. This had not made Zac a very happy camper with her when the incoming fire was set to 11 and seemed to be heading into 12.

Nike was loving it as they flew through the trees with her insulting the Cylons and popping off with a PPC blast when she was even half sure of scoring a hit. She was just starting on her third repeat of what she thought were her best set of insults when a new voice comes over the radio built into her helmet asking her to go encrypted. She was about to do just that when her hand stopped like it was frozen in ice, there was something about how that woman had spoken that was triggering all kinds of alarm bells in Nike's head.

Before she risked painting a larger target on her, Nike checked the IFF data on her helmet HUD. "What are the Fizzle Kittens doing here? Well now, that explains why Allen wanting me to spend so much time studying the other groups within the Clan seemingly out of the blue. Gods!, I hate not being in the data loop anymore."

Nike went encrypted and updated the Nova Cat officer with what was going on around her and Zac. She was more than mildly surprised that the Nova Cat officer had not ordered her to just clear the battlefield so that "real" warriors could go to work. Instead, she was going to draw this knot of Cylons right into the guns of the defenders.

"Zac, turn left about 45 degrees and don't spare the horses.!" Before she was done speaking, Zac already was following her directions. It was only thinks to her strong leg muscles that she was not tossed off the side when the hover bike tried to turn on a real-life dime. Nike just kept grinning and went back to transmitting insults and firing her PPC at anything that drew her eye.

After they passed close by to what looked like an updated War Dog, Nike thought about the boy at the controls of this hover bike. She did a half turn and yelled over the slip stream into Zac's ear. In their rush to "test", they had forgotten to get Zac a helmet with military capabilities. "Hey, are you dating anyone?"

Zac was focused on driving and not killing themselves, so he didn't botch this reply like he normally would have. "Me? No, You?"

Nike was smiling. "No and good to know. How about you take me out to a holovid or something when this is all over?"

Now Zac almost wiped out at over 90KPH when his brain processed what Nike had just yelled into his ear. He was nowhere near being a "ladies' man" so it was only thinks to his quick reflexes that saved them. "What?! Are you sure? I'm aaa, you have to be beating them off with a stun stick. I mean you're pretty and you can handle yourself."

Nike moved more and now she was kind of sitting side saddle on the homemade hover bike. She felt a wild grin come to her face; it was not unlike a wolf looking at a goat. "Well looks like you got a girlfriend now."

Zac's back went straight, and his head felt like it was about to be ripped off his neck by the moving air. "Really…. I never had one of those!"

Nike grabs a hold of his shirt top and decides she will just sink her hook in right the Frakk now. "You know if you head east for about 20 klicks, there is a creek that we could sit by and talk without yelling."

She was already thinking about what Zac might look like without his shirt on, and with another grin she was about to see what she could do with all of these teenage hormones she had been fighting off for a year now. One of the Sixes that had been one of her councilors would understand….. Allen on the other hand might not. Well then again, he could use a few more grey hairs. And all the better that it would be her giving those grey hairs to him. Then again, Nike was thinking that she might need to kick both of them in the balls sometime down the road.

#######

The Battle for New Circe had been over for a month and things were still up in the air, and that was not just true for the Nova Cats. The mix of Nova Cat and SLiE warships had stayed in close orbit of New Circe after the battles were done. That is to say that all of the available warships but the Zephyr and the Egg Sac, they had gone back and picked upped the rest of the Nova Cats warships and "Super Cargoed" them all the way to this star system. With two Nova Cat Aegis cruisers already in orbit, it was a bit late to start worrying about OPSEC when it came to dealing with them. It had taken three runs by both SLiE warships to get the Star of Carracks, 2 destroyers, and the Scout under cover of this nebula. It had taken longer for the crews to get over the last spurt of travels than it had to make the journey to this part of space.

There were very few planets in the known galaxy that could boast having almost two dozen warships spread out to provide maximum coverage for them. They were there in case that the Cylons decided they wanted one more try at occupation of this planet. Then came the issue of were to house all of these armed Nova Cats that had been put off because the locals had thought that the clans would not be near New Circe for another half a year.

The Nova Cats had not brought a passenger liner with them, the only open beds were the ones that the Cylons had made over the last two battles against these Star League Nova Cats. While the Nova Cats had been living in their ships or in "tents", that were really more like prefab huts, when they were on a planet in their travels from the Pentagon Worlds. That was not going to work this time, or at least it was not going to work that long for the Nova Cats, at least not now that they were on a populated planet like New Circe.

Living like that had worked, but only when there was no other life or at least no human life on those worlds. New Circe was not like that, not like that at all. Then there was the cold and damp that was the hallmark of this world, at least when compared to living in the climate-controlled hulls of jumpships and dropships. At first the Nova Cats on the ground were housed at Franklin Hallis airbase, but those also were mostly temp buildings and there was more than a little damage at that airbase, much like the other military bases spread around the planet. After some back and forth with the SLiE, because there just were not enough open homes around the whole planet, much less that close together. And splitting up the Nova Cats into too many smaller groups was not going to work on many levels, a plan was worked out.

What came to be was that the Nova Cats were to set up on the Northside of the city but on the main supply route to the Colonial City state in a mix of permanent and temp housing measures. The leadership of the ex-Wolverines and Nova Cats worked out that they were not to be a separate group on this planet like the Colonial City State and the as yet to be folded into core of the SLiE the Victorian City State. This was going to "just" be a Clan town/base when it was done. Until homes could be set up, the Nova Cats would live in an area close to the MSR of the wolverine city and in a like area in the Colonial city state to help with rebuilding on their off time, mainly in helping with the landmine and EOD clearing.…. Oh, and to do just a little bit of intelligence gathering on the side.

That was why Star Admiral Drummond was having to do this little dog and pony show today. After "winning" against the Cylons, his people had been working on this area to turn into "their" base of operations against future attacks by AIs. Today was his first "real" chance to show the rest of the Nova Cats that they had not been forgotten by the locals and that this war against the AI's….er Cylons was not over. The VTOL that carried the Admiral was one that had never been seen in the Pentagon Worlds, but it had been seen in the Inner Sphere for many generations, not that the Star Admiral knew this. This was a commercial VTOL that had been called a Ferret class when it was armed by the rest of the Inner Sphere.

Kei was almost in full Nova Cat dress for this little show to "his" people. That uniform also was sporting the modifications that had happened after this group had left the rest of the Clans behind. When he landed and exited the modified VTOL? The platform he was to use was ready for him and all of the Nova Cats but those on duty on the warships over head or walking guard duty around this area were present. The group came to attention almost as if commanded by one brain, and this made the officer smile as he took up position to address the groups.

The Admiral put the group to "at ease" before he started with his carefully prepared speech. "I want to think all of you for putting all of the required projects on hold for a while to be here today to hear me speak."

For the next fifteen minutes he gave out praises for sticking to the mission and then fighting two great battles to protect humans from these Cylon attacks. He also told them about the short-term plans that would see all of the surface landing capable dropships being parked around them before they could finish better than temporary housing for themselves.

When he thought it was the right time by judging the moving dust cloud displayed on a carefully hidden screen by his right hand. Kie looked over to a small group of what had to be Elemental stock even if they were not in battle armor currently. The Star Admiral made sure that he had a grave look on his face. "I would like now to think a special group standing off to my left. I asked your commanders to give me a list of those that fought not only bravely but with their heads in the right spots while wearing those old mining suits that was the best armor that we could give you. You were asked to turn over your old suits two days ago." Kie could even tell from here that this statement struck a nerve and just not for the Elementals.

The Star Admiral now had a smile/smirk on his face that was clear for all to see. "And I made sure that you were not told why you turned in those suits to your support personnel. I will say it now, you are not being pulled out of your armor to be issued just a set of body armor and a rifle."

Kie made a little show as he waved to a Star Captain standing off to one side that in turn wave for a large cargo truck to park nearby. "Our new Allies and the group we will be joining have been fighting for a long time against these Cylons, but they recognized that you all had the fighting skills that needed to be rewarded. Now it is not much, so keep your expectations under control." He needed to make sure to let it be known that they were not going to be getting replacements for everything that had been lost in those two battles.

The massive truck had stopped and the pair of built in lift hoists started to unload a design of battle armor that none of these Nova Cats would have forgotten. Soon ten 1ton suits were on the ground, it was enough for one for each for the tall Nova Cats standing nearby with jaws swinging in the wind. "As I said, it is not much, but as a member of the SLiE we are issued combat replacement equipment just like any other defender in this war against the Cylons. So, you all are the first ones to get upgraded."

The whole group gathered today had started yelling and the Admiral let it build. He was not going to tell this group that those mining suits had been traded to the SLiE, and that was because the locals needed the help in getting the needed ores to the smelters and to help expand the underutilized underwater mining operations on this planet. Trades like that were too much like the Diamond Sharks for most of his people to knowingly deal with, at least this soon after getting to see the sky again. He knew that those new battle suits were missing Harjel. But the Nova Cats Khans had agreed that this group would be fighting a long way from "normal" clan supplies, so a container filled with 100-tons of the stuff was loaded into the cargo bays of this convoy. If those supplies ran out? Then they could always tap the supplies used in the battle damage systems of the two stars of warships under his command.

What he didn't know was that seven out of these ten 1ton battle suits had been supplied by the Wolf's Dragoons with only the other three built on this planet. That was something that he didn't need to know about, and he was not planned on being told until the rest of the SLiE were sure this was not some kind of trap. This would not turn out to be that much of an issue for these Star League Nova Cats when they were brought into this information compartment. This group of Nova Cats understood about OPSEC, and they also knew that you needed time before all three strings of a bond cord were to be cut and allowed to fully join a clan.

The Star Admiral kept talking, "Those are not all that we have been issued as replacements for some of our combat losses. Over the next week we will finish getting two dozen Inner Sphere designed battle armor suits and about 50 suits of combat PA(L). Anyone that would like to have a try out for these lower tech or lighter suits is going to be welcome. "WE" will not be forcing any of you to change or turn in what you have been using. In my talks with the leaders of this planet. They are wanting to put anyone they can into the best protection they can find, and it just so happens that you Nova Cats of the SLDF have a lot of training in battle armor of all types." A new roar comes up from at least one part of the gathered crowd.

"The local planet has some rules that now make a lot more sense to me after seeing how these Cylons fight. One that I now agree with is that during these tryouts you are not allowed to kill any of the other participance, and even intentionally causing any damage that Clan grade medicine would have issues repairing is not to be allowed. If this happens? Then it will cause the offending person to lose the tryout. We are the few, that need to stand against many, and we cannot afford to be wasteful. Quineg?"

The officer could not help but smile a little larger. "After we get things set up, anyone that would like to shift around in a caste will be able to do so. I know this is different to what we have grown up with, but we have seen how the Star League and its freedoms can work. This will only be for those that wish it, and nothing will be forced onto you. For the bad news. To add more stress added to our plate, the locals will not be able to issue us any replacements of the mechs and aerospace forces that we have lost for some time. They just don't have them sitting in a cargo bay, and the war has bled them dry over almost a decade of constant war. As soon as we have at least some kind of homes built for our people, we will be unpacking our support factories to help replace our own losses and those of our allies. They might be small compared to what was left back in the Pentagon Worlds, but they should be able to help with the rebuilding of our units and the support of our allis fighting these Cylons. We are at the point of every little bit helps."

The Star Admiral didn't have high hopes for rebuilding to "a normal front line clan unit" for his people. The small factories they had with them could make spare parts but not turn out whole mech chassis in anything like large numbers. But if you had enough of the right spare parts, you could build a new machine. It just would take a very long time to hand built those complete new mechs, like a couple months per unit to get all of the work and testing done. To help fill out his "unit", the Star Admiral would order the breaking out of the last of the stored mechs, they were the lowest tech of what they were able to hide from the rest of the Clans when they were getting ready for this mission back in the Pentagon Worlds. But as with the locals, something beat a lot of nothing.

The nice thing was that according to the briefings from the Staff of the Lord Protector, the local factories could make clan grade replacement weapons. And as he lost weapons in the fighting to come, the locals would be able to replace those older weapons with the best that he wanted to fight this war with. The Star Admiral and his staff would have to come up with plans on updating some of his weapons with what the locals could make and in stockpile so that he didn't lose more people in these less capable machines. The commander's job was never done, and that was why so few made it to this high of rank, and that was just not a clan issue, but one very common within the militaries threw out history.

The leader of this branch of the Nova Cats only talked for another few minutes, but before he had left for more meetings, he watched as the group could get a closer look at what had been gifted to them to fight these Cylons. Some were not that impressed with some of the weapons because they were not as good as what the clan had started Operation Revival with. Those few were quickly reminded that what they had left the Home Worlds was not up to the front or even second line quality at the start of Operation Revival. For many it was just that a soldier is going to gripe, no matter what. This was an age-old tradition that Caeser probably had to deal with.

######

The Admiral was sitting in one of the locally supplied command trucks lost in deep thought. He had found that the only time that he was busier than planning for a battle to fight, was when he was cleaning up afterwards. Only this time it was worse than had been written about in any training manual that the officer had seen. Kie knew that he was lucky and that this staff had grown used to each other and they all had also gotten used to having to make plans for events that were way out of the box normal for a clan unit. Then again, the help that the Colonials, Victorians, and ex Clanners was a major boon to helping this staff get the job done. As it turned out, the Nova Cat housing and production areas had ended up growing towards the city called McEvedy and not towards the Colonial City State.

The first-generation homes might only be prefabs, but they were nice ones, and they would last more than long enough for better buildings to be made. By now all of the Star League Nova Cat's ground forces were up to paper strength and in some ways, they were more powerful than when they left the Pentagon Worlds. All of the mining suits and Rhino type battle armor were back in the SLiE labs to work on those design issues that had been found or in the underwater mines. The Nova Cats now had the same number of Elemental type suits in the field as he had at the start of the first battle. But the increase in his firepower was that about half of his infantry had at least Combat PA(L) to go into combat with. Then there was all of the lower tech battle armor suits from the Inner Sphere that while not as good as his Elementals all had some advantages over just combat battledress or PA(L).

His battlemech strength was back up in numbers to where they were at the start, but that was only due to the extra mechs that had been packed down, but at least all of the battle damage had been fixed on the ones that were repairable. There even was a slow trickle of clan grade spare parts and weapons coming in to upgrade some of them from the SLiE. He was still short on aerospace fighters, and the loss of the Titan was keenly felt by his black service crews. To cover that loss, the SLDF Navy had turned over a "mostly mothballed" Carrack Transport that they recovered some time ago called the Rawhide. It would take some time to get it fully back into service, but it was working great as an armed and armored space station protecting the planet from any Cylon counterattack and as a training base for his people. Things were looking up, and that had been before he had been asked to this weapons range on the back end of nowhere.

Until today he had thought that clan tech weapons were the best that could be made by the hand of man. And as a person with his rank, he had been briefed about what the Scientist caste had been working on all around the Pentagon Worlds. So, he knew that some "new" things were in the works, but they would be many years to a few decades down the road before they would flow into the Clans Toumans. He had just thought that this was the way of things for all groups, but oh how wrong he had been.

Now seeing that these people had laser based anti-missile systems in mass production was a major surprise. The jaw dropper was the Long Range PPC, and the Ultra-LBX combination autocannon. Nothing like them had been briefed to him as even being thought about, and these people had them in production for many years. He had seen the reports of these two strange weapons from his peoples reviewed battleROMS. Between that data and what he had been just shown, there was no doubt that these were not only "real" weapons, but they were also on the current battlefield. It would take maybe a few months more, but soon his mechs, fighters, dropships, and even warships would start getting the first deliveries of them mounted.

Kie had not seen all of the new tech at this range day event, it was not like you could shoot capital grade missiles just anywhere. So, they had settled on a briefing for some things that were almost like magic to his mind. Thanks to his many years on warships, he knew about capital missiles, and he was one of the few that knew that the current generation of these weapons in clan space were no better than when they had left Terra for the deep black almost three hundred years ago. What the SLiE were talking about were a lot better weapon, even if they looked to be the same on the outside. Kie had seen the quality of Cylon seekers firsthand in the space battle as well as the performance of the engines on those death machines.

The TacFax faster than light communication system had "easily" explained how they were able to communicate at such distances but his built in HPGs had not picked up a peep of it. The rest of the display on the new tech available to this planet were things that he had experienced firsthand. It was just too bad that the refitting of any of that to his dropships and warships was a long way down the road. But the recovery of the Cylon Landing ships and hulls of these DreadStars might speed some things along.

Still there were issues with "free" Centurions, and POW Human Forms Cylons that were a slowly growing force on the planet. He had to say one thing, after his people had the classes on Colonial history and learning what some of those POWs had been force to do was going to make for many unforeseen complications. But the real issue for "his" Nova Cats was that 60 percent of their people that made this trip from the Pentagon Worlds were male, and for all the faults of human form Cylons. Being hard to look at was not one of them, and it was a good bet that freeborn mixes of Cylon and Nova Cats blood lines were soon going to be another thing he was going to have to deal with.

New Barcella, Irece

Nova Cat occupation zone

Khan Santin West looked up at the buzzing of the device on the left side of this massive working desk. He could have replied, but instead he just hit a button for his assistant to enter his office to talk to him face to face. He was "only" reviewing the latest report on the quiet relocation of his clan to the Inner Sphere. Much to his surprise things were moving along very close to the original plan, and that kind of thing almost never happened in a military. He still knew that they were on a clock until things went down the drain back in the Pentagon Worlds.

Khan West still had to find out who had taken a page out of history and set up a very complex deception communication plan to hide the ever-dropping numbers of Nova Cats back on the home worlds. Still, he knew that soon the cat would be out of the bag, and it would be a feeding frenzy on those few that were unlucky enough to still be back there. If things just lasted six more months as the status quo, the last major push would take all of those that wanted to leave the Home Worlds to start the year long trek to the Inner Sphere and their new homes.

Some of "his" Nova Cats had not wanted to make this kind of move, and to keep the long-term peace the later Khans had decided that those that wanted to, could stay behind. Khan West had seen the report of what the Jade Falcons and Steel Vipers were doing to both the locals of the Inner Sphere and those lower caste left in the home worlds. To say that he didn't have high hopes for the long-term survival of those that had wanted to stay behind was an understatement. It was very hard, even for a Khan, to keep people from making a very bad life decision.

Santin looked up when the door opened and in walked his assistant, and what would have been a surprise to most, she was not clan born. "My Khan, a representative from ComStar wishes to see you. She says that it is most urgent."

She steps to one side and a woman in an expensive business suit entered the room of the leader of the Nova Cats. Khan West approved of the change from robes to this "uniform" even if it was more in line with the merchant caste than what any warrior would wear. "So, what can the Khan of the Nova Cats help ComStar with today?"

The woman had just the right amount of grey in her hair to give her "that look" that worked any place but the age conscious clans, but her voice was still full of energy. "Khan West, I have a coded message marked "for your eyes only". And as is proper it was my call to bring it physically to your office." As she was talking, she finished walking up to his desk and passed over a data file to the massive man.

West took the file and put it in a desktop scanner to make sure it was safe before he did anything else with it….. besides dumping it right in the waste can. There had been dozens of times that spying software had been loaded onto clan systems after the start of Operation Revival. Thankfully the Nova Cats only had to deal with two successful infiltrations…so far. The Ghost Bears seemed to have been the less secure in their computer systems and had at least three dozen issues so far according to the Nova Cat Watch.

The first thing that Khan noticed about the data, after it was declared clean, was that the message had come from the capital of the Magistracy of Canopus. The second was that it only held a single image file. But it was an image of the first Khan of the Nova Cats Phillip Drummond with his child and future Khan Sandra Rosse. At the bottom left of the image was a water mark that was used internally of the Nova Cat Watch. Santin was a Khan, and he kept his face from showing anything that he didn't want it to anyone else that was in a room with him.

Khan West looked at the image and did a shrug of his massive shoulders and turned off the screen of the device. "Precentor, thank you for stopping by. But I think that you have more to say than just dropping off a family picture. Quineg?"

As had been expected the ComStar Precentor did have more that she wanted to talk about to the senior leader of the Nova Cats. Most of the next half hour she covered things that even a Khan of the Nova Cats had no say over. Well, they could have a say about it, but that would have required a Nova Cat galaxy jumping over and landing on a Jade Falcon world to put it under new management. Right now, Khan West was more worried about his boarder with the Combine. Oh, and then there were the outer edge defenses that he was going to have to pull his units back to when the rest of the clans in the Home Worlds come knocking angry about the Nova Cats leaving. Then he had to worry about the boarder with the Ghost Bears. Currently they seemed happy with "only" blooding young troops along the border the Bears now shared with the Combine and Wolves. But only the Bears knew when they might get bored and try for worlds in the Nova Cat OZ.

When the Precentor finally left the Khan's office, Santin almost jumped on his noteputer to decode the image file. The Nova Cat watch liked using images to hide messages from the other Clan Watchers, and as far as anyone knew it was still effective. With West Khan level of access, very quickly he had a short message that was pulled out of the data that made up the image. Khan West almost fell out of his chair when he read the words.

My Khan, whomever it might now be.

Hope to see you soon. 12-57-78-99-00

Star Admiral Kei Drummond.

Khan West pulled up the stand-alone main frame that was for a Khan's use only. Not as quickly due to the multi-layer security, he had started searching the files. First, he pulled up a file on the Star Admiral that was for a Khan's eyes only. Santin had known some of what was going on before Operation Revival was launched but this part had not been told to him. West then found the detailed mission plan about the dreamers going to find the SLDF that was fighting AIs killing worlds. A third file also listed a complete order of battle at this Star Admiral's command and a general idea of the support that had been sent on this mission.

Next the Khan looked up the code phrases used in the very short message that had been hidden in the image. 12: Mission Successful, 57: it is all true, 78: the threat is more than real, 99: an alternate den is being prepared, 00: we are more Cameron than Clan. That was a very odd message to have been put together. It also would have been a death sentence if anyone but someone like Khan West had received it.

Khan West shut off the main frame access point and then shut down all of the lights in his office but the lights on the artwork that the last Combine leader of this planet had collected. He liked it a little dark when he had to do some deep planning. Off the top of his head, it was nice to know that if he was not able to keep the Combine from stabbing his people in the back. Well, they would have at least someplace to run to in the resulting chaos of something like that.

The Khan might not know how far and where this fallback Den might be, but the message did say "hope to see you soon." That should mean that someone would be coming to see him, and the Khan would have to assume that they would have directions to this emergency Nova Cat den. There were a lot of things to think about, and it was just too bad that he would have to keep most of his staff in the dark about this.

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Notes:

Star Captain Jasmine Carns and her Star: Masauwu (-1 LPL for 3 Erml+2dhs) Lancelot C, Drift Shag, StarSlayer EC, Firefly FFL-3SLE (Guardian ECM Suite not that useful). See TRO Golden Century and Operation Klondike.

Relief arrives. Zephyr and Egg Sac super cargo 2 Clan Nova Cat Aegis class to New Circe. SLDF Union (12m+2f saber EC), Union C (15m), Confederate (5m+inf), Broadsword (5M), Lion (10M+inf Binary with 10 points), and escort Pentagon. (Carrier and SLDF Titan supporting warships 15x2 fighters from aegis).

Semi Portable PPC/ManPack PPC: damage per shot 2, 40kg mass, 25 shots in a backpack battery pack.

Nova Cat of the SLDF first steps in rebuilding: 10 elemental suits, 24 IS Battle armor, 50 Night Hawk/Weasel suits (mix of stealth and nonstealth armors). No mechs. They will have to supply the parts for them out of the shops in the dropships.

Fjellfras, meaning Wolverine in Old Swedish

Hiding text data in an image file: Yep, its real thing and it is called Steganography.

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