Makrino Sector
System 64119
83 Days After Attack
Orion CIC
1626 People

Captain Dammers had been grateful for the frankly boring last 6 weeks. They had been looking for the Perseus and being on the look out for possibly 2 different groups of Cylons. Nothing had been found other than a comet that allowed them to top off their water supplies and another tyleum deposit. The Orion was as fixed up as much as she would ever be (lacking a spacedock or a repair ship) and the ships had been able to work on their flotilla coordination.

Right now she was duty officer in the CIC. Ensign Rakesh was a natural at navigation and communication but he seemed to have issues with tactical. 'Hmm maybe move him to more shifts with LT Berkins' she thought making a note. Ensign Rakesh seemed to have more issues with processing the information quickly enough rather than a lack of ability.

"Sir we are picking up two ships jumping in. It's the Sandpiper and a Colonial Raptor" said Petty Officer Gibson. "Captain Russel is saying they would like to talk to the Colonel."

The people in the CIC were too professional to cheer however the tension seemed to lift some. This is the first contact with Colonial forces since just after the Cylon attack. "Signal the Raptor they can land. I will contact the Colonel."

Waking up Colonel Gabrielle she told him the news.

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Orion Shuttlebay

Captain Russell had sent a short message explaining what had happened. The Sandpiper had been scouting a new system when they were contacted by a pair of Raptors. After a quick discussion one shuttle had gone back to it's ship that neither Raptor had divulged the name of. The other shuttle had agreed to follow the Sandpiper. Captain Russell might not be military but he was an expert in "don't give away more than you need too." The Raptor here was to check out this group of ships and then report back in 4 hours.

Colonel Gabrielle watched as the 2 Raptor crewmembers came down the ramp. "Welcome to the Orion. I am Colonel Gabrielle, this is Captain Dammers my XO, LT Flacca my chief of staff, and Ensign Rogers."

The more senior of the two from the Raptor said "Sir I am LT Karl and this is my ECO LT Yates".

Colonel Gabrielle was beginning to wonder about these two. Being cautious while talking to the Sandpiper which was clearly not a Colonial Naval ship made sense. The lack of badges on their flightsuits and their continued unwillingness to share basic information like what ship they were from seemed odd. They also seemed almost "cool" to finding another group of ships rather than excited. He was about to ask them to explain when the ECO spoke up.

"Sorry Colonel are you Major Olaf Gabrielle from the Hades" asked LT JG Yates.

"Yes I am. Or I did serve on the Hades for a couple years before I was reassigned" said Colonel Gabrielle.

"I thought so" said LT Yates. "I was a Raptor ECO there. My callsign is Triangle."

Looking at LT JG Yates he did look familiar. Wait Triangle? "Were you the transfer from the Aquarion SDF?"

"Yes sir" replied LT Yates. "I was on the Hades for about 6 months until a year ago."

Now Gabrielle did remember. The whole thing had been a bit of a joke on the Hades. Commander Barnes had been a major pyramid fan and really wanted the Hades to win the Fleet Cup and he thought all they needed was one really good player to reach that goal. Enter Ensign Yates who had been good enough to play for a major college but not quite good enough to play pro and who had just graduated from Raptor training. The justification was that Yates had dual citizenship as one of his parents was from Canceron and he had attended Mangolla University so this made him also a Canceron officer. There were rumors that the influential Barnes family had sweetened the deal with an at cost munitions deal with the Aquarion SDF but that may or may not have been true. All Gabrielle knew was that the Hades got a new star pyramid player a few months before they had their first match with the Aerilion SDF Battlestar Sulis. The Sulis was the flagship of the Aerilon SDF and had not been considered a threat but their pyramid team had somehow knocked the Hades out of the Fleet Cup. "Triangle" had stayed for a few more months before being switched back to the Aquarion SDF.

Gabrielle being chief tactical officer had not spent much time with the pilots other than the CAG of the Hades and the other senior pilots. He had seen the pyramid game of course as there wasn't a lot of entertainment and the Sulis and Hades had by that time reached a bit of a "grudge match" status and expecting to see the Sulis lose had been the highlight of the month. "Of course I didn't recognize you outside your pyramid uniform" Colonel Gabrielle replied wryly.

"Yes sir. So you are a Colonel now" asked LT Yates.

"I was the senior officer after the Cylon attack" he replied. Jumping 2 ranks in a year would be impressive after all and the confusion is understandable.

This seemed to break the ice. LT Karl introduced herself as Joan Karl callsign Bugsie. They still did not give any information but there was mentions of "the Admiral" and a couple of slips saying things like "ships" or "the fleet." LT Karl asked some questions about the ships in Colonel Gabrielle's fleet. Seeing as they had a ship count and ship classes from their Raptor's sensors Gabrielle kept the subject pretty basic. What he did not share was the information that the Zephyr was a CIF ship and that there were around 300 CIF members in his fleet. This was in the "better to get forgiveness than permission" from a senior officer if they ended up merging.

As the conversation was ending LT Yates asked "Sir can I be excused for a moment" to Gabrielle. The odd thing was that LT Karl seemed to almost object and certainly seemed annoyed. Raptor protocol was use the head before missions. Raptors did have a small head but smells could "linger" and to avoid drama it was an unwritten rule to take care of such issues before entering the Raptor. Maybe LT Karl is one of those hard ass officers that wanted everything ran by them.

With a head flick of permission Gabrielle turned to LT Karl. "LT please inform your CO that our basic supply issues are decent if not outstanding. The biggest issue is the damage to the Orion which are in order the damaged engine, the lack of portside defenses, and the destroyed missile tubes. I do not know if any of those could be fixed. The rest of the ships are currently operational but eventually we will need some parts that we can not make ourselves."

LT Karl seemed to have a slight Aquarion accent and he knew LT Yates was from Aquarion. His guess was it was the Perseus out here in some "burn before reading off the books level triple black" type of operation and "ships" implied more than one (his Academy instructors would be proud of that deduction). A Bezerk lacked much in the repair capabilities and being out here for over a year a flattop or something similar would almost be a necessity. Of course he could be completely wrong but being up front with the issues might save time.

"Sir I am unable to give any information on that subject but I will provide it to my commanding officer" LT Karl replied.

Gabrielle had noticed during conversation that the status of the Orion and Vigilant seemed to interest her but the mention of civilian needs did not. Maybe the civilian ships needs were so obvious she felt they didn't need to be mentioned. LT Yates returned from his personal business and Gabrielle definitely saw a glare from LT Karl. The meeting was wrapping up so they lead the two Raptor pilots back to their ship. LT Karl said they would talk to their commanding officers. They were to meet at a new location in 12 hours. Shortly after the Raptor left he heard Ensign Rogers yell "make a hole" and then she somewhat out of breath said "Sir you need to read this note ASAP."

Looking at the note she handed him it was a crumpled piece of paper with a hurriedly scribbled note. It said "Colonel do not trust us. The Admiral is leaving what he considers useless civilian ships behind and then using marines to keep the other ships in line. We left 6 ships at system 64258 by the second gas giant 5 days ago. Please check if they are still there."

'Well frak' thought Colonel Gabrielle. "Thank you Ensign."

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System 62458
Fourth Planet/Second Gas Giant
Vigilant CIC

Major Gobi was hoping there would be nothing here and that "Triangle" was playing some weird prank. Unfortunately there were 6 Colonial
ships here 4 cargo and 2 passenger ships. The Sandpiper was sent back to inform the Orion about this turn of events. What that means is that it is up to Major Gobi to reign in this herd of cats.

"Everyone shut up!" he ordered over the wireless. "We are not from the same group you ran into previously. If there are any problems with your ships jumping away let me know. Otherwise pick one spokesperson and we will get your story later."

Major Gobi was not sure if whoever left the civilian ships here would come return but no one wanted to find out. At least until they had some information. Right now the information was more than a little jumbled. Getting the ships captains they all reported as being able to jump if low on tyleum. After being given the coordinates all 7 ships jumped away.

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Makrino Sector
Darkspace
Orion Officers Staffing Room

"Miss Martel I would like to apologize that you were abandoned by Colonial military forces. I do need to ask some questions" said Colonel Gabrielle. Isabelle Martel was a politician's aide on Leonis who had been heading to Libran for the upcoming Colonial Senate session when the Cylons attacked. Gabrielle would have guessed it would have been a ship captain but in a way this might be better. "From what I have heard when the Cylons attacked you were being escorted by a Leonis Escortstar the Spry and your fleet also had a 2 mining ships and a tyleum refinery. Would you say that is correct?"

"Yes Commander I mean Colonel. We spent almost 2 months looking for help until tyleum started to run low. The Spry picked the Makrino Sector as it as far the Cylon space as we could get that there is at least some limited information on it" said Isabelle Martel.

Colonel Gabrielle had been thinking after more than a month of finding nothing that going past the so called "Red Line" of which the Colonials had some information might be the best choice. They were more likely to find Colonials in the roughly 100 lightyear bubble around Cyrannus. They were also more likely to run into Cylons. However without a goal they would be just "going that way" and the hope of finding the Perseus was a plan if not a great one.

Isabelle Martel continued. "We jumped to System 62458 6 days ago and found the second gas giant had a ring that had some tyleum. The mining ships we had (with a glare towards him) said this is unusual and if not rich it is much easier to mine. We had just started mining when 5 Colonial Navy ships jumped in. They said they were out here on a long term scouting mission and had heard about the Cylon attack. We of course were overjoyed to hear from them. Their Admiral Howard said he would send help over. His "help" was a bunch of Marines and they then took our mining ships as he said they needed them for his mission. The Spry objected but Admiral Howard threatened that if the Spry did not surrender and join his force he would destroy one of our passenger ships. Admiral Howard did return the crewmembers from the mining ships back to us on their shuttles but did not return any of the crewmembers from the Spry. With us being low on fuel we tried to use those shuttles to mine tyleum. It was very slow going but we couldn't come up with a better idea."

Miss Martel had brought over the sensor logs from the brief interaction from Admiral Howard and his four other ships. The lead ship was the Perseus as they had expected. There were also a tyleum refueler the Minos a former Canceron SDF ship and an upgraded First War Celestra the Thalia also from the Canceron SDF . Those three ships made sense. The fourth ship was the Patrolstar the Rhea of the Colonial Guard. The Rhea is possibly another ship that was forced into Admiral Howard's fleet. What was really odd is the fifth ship was a Marinestar the Priam (regular Marines not SDF) that could carry a battalion of Marines. There would be no reason for such a ship to be involved in any scouting mission. Who the Admiral Howard was and from what organization is uncertain other than being very unlikely to be from the Aquarion SDF which was very small and did not have an Admiral or high ranking Howard that he could think of.

This brought up some issues. They had deliberately missed their rendezvous with the Perseus. Colonel Gabrielle was certain that this Admiral Howard would have tried to steal the LZ and Dykstra. There was a good chance he would also try to press the Orion and Vigilant into his fleet and then abandon the other ships. With what is now 13 civilian ships and almost 3300 civilians he would not allow them to be abandoned to fate and a slow death to lack of fuel or food. 'Hmm need to make sure that the Dykstra can feed 3800 people' he thought. Captain Potts had said previously they should be able to feed 3000 with decent variation and up to 5000 with limited food choices but better to make sure nothing has changed.

A military showdown also seemed like a bad idea. A Rover class Missilestar probably would defeat a Bezerk in a battle but the Orion has taken a lot of damage and the Vigilant would be outnumbered 2 to 1. The Marinestar if present lacks much in the way of offensive firepower but does have a large amount of defensive protection. So he had decided to leave. Trying to rescue the Spry and probably the Rhea along with the crewmembers like LT Yates who were not happy with their present circumstances is something Gabrielle wanted to do. However he could not think up a way to do it and so they had deliberately missed their rendezvous with the Perseus.

"Miss Martel you said you were the chief of staff for a Senator from Leonis heading towards Libran" asked Colonel Gabrielle. After her confirmation he continued. "When we have some time I would like to talk to you about setting up some type of government." The civilian ship Captains were doing a passable job but a lot of people on the ships had little to do and now with doubling the population that would be worse. He had no desire or time to set up a military government and while she might not be an elected official being the aide to a senator Miss Martel would probably know more about government than anyone else in the fleet.

Colonel Gabrielle thought about things. Now they had possibly two groups of Cylons and a Colonial Admiral who might think they are traitors and who outguns them. Good times.

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Author notes

Unlike the Chiron's fleet which is a mining company with a military escort the Orion's fleet only has one mining ship. The Lucky Zenith can keep them in tyleum but it takes a lot longer. So the Orion fleet is moving around a lot less. This is not at all an excuse to have a time skip to get both fleets to the same time to make writing easier.

Thank you all for reading. Any questions or comments are appreciated!