"If you all remember your history you'll remember that while the vipers had the advantage in speed and maneuverability the raiders were well armored. Even the MK II's still have their speed advantage but the gap has narrowed, though still decisively in our favor. It looks like the armor is more efficient than what we had to deal with in the past but not nearly as strong, at least in most of the places. And our 20 and 30 mm shredded it and even smaller calibers did decent damage."
Captain Christopher 'Chris' KinsingserAuthor's note: Sorry for the long delay in uploads. I'm busy with college and on top of that stopped sending people email notifications, which really killed my motivation to write. That appears to have changed now so epect a more consistant upload scehadule, especially once I get to winter break.
Chapter 12: Flesh and Bone
In the back of one of Galactica's hangers, a Cylons raider sat under a tarp that was flung open by Starbuck and Apollo. A few other pilots and Tyrol were gathered around, specifically Chris and Gunslinger.
They would be trying to figure out how this raider worked, its complicated systems baffling everyone who had looked at it before. But these combined people might be able to make some understanding of what would have happened.
After a few hours, they had managed to get somewhere and were all presenting their findings to one another.
"If you all remember your history you'll remember that while the vipers had the advantage in speed and maneuverability the raiders were well armored. Even the MK II's still have their speed advantage but the gap has narrowed, though still decisively in our favor. It looks like the armor is more efficient than what we had to deal with in the past but not nearly as strong, at least in most of the places." Chris had been in another room testing parts of the Raider's armor on various weapons from small arms to autocannons that were found on Vipers. "Our 20 and 30 mm shredded it and even smaller calibers did decent damage." He said.
"Next we have weapons?" Gunslinger said. "This baby has two 30 mils that are honestly quite similar to ours, they can even fire the same ammo. Pretty much the same effectiveness as ours, and if you put them side to side it's a bit difficult to tell which is which." He said. "The biggest win was that we found a few of the missiles that the gang used, in fact, two varieties. The ordnance department is taking a look at them, but one looks like an anti-fighter missile and the other one looks like an anti-ship missile. They've got a few good features that we can see however, an internal DRADIS suite, infrared homing, an internal engine with some small batteries, and a decently sized warhead. I'm going to put this back in the ordnance locker before it decides to go off and kill us, which if it gets in the range of a raider is a very real possibility. The raider can carry a hell of a lot of missiles, however, up to 16 anti-fighter and eight anti-ship. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other types of missiles for different missions but this fighter didn't come with any. We're looking at a very deadly capability.`` Gunslinger said.
"These engines look decent, but not as good as what we put on Vipers," Tyrol said. "Put this up in a race against a viper and it's going to lose, probably would only be able to beat an MK I. A race in a race. So I'm not too worried about it. The issue with the engines is more that they need to be small enough to accommodate a FTL drive, which it does. So it's more akin to our raptor engines, which is fine for some missions but since it has to be a dogfighter it's a bad idea. Speaking of the FTL drive, it's a good feature, and more compact than our Raptors. I'd like to take a look inside of it though, because based on my estimates it's more efficient than our raptor one."
"Now let's get to the internals," Starbuck said. "This baby is organic. Take a look inside, it's got biological material in it." She showed them part of the red, sticky, inside.
"I was able to control it through some of the different organs, for like of them I remember what it is. She began, pointing out various red strands of organic matter. It was an interesting setup, but there was pretty much every type of control you would have on an aircraft or small spacecraft.
"This right here is what I think the brain of the craft is, though I think as of now the craft is dead for some reason. Probably the fact that there are several holes through the brain caused by autocannons, so we can't exactly analyze its behavior." She said. "I spotted this when I was digging into this craft and I found this box, which I think is the raider's sensor suite. Considering Cylon technology it's probably superior to ours but I'd need to get someone to look inside it."
"So what do we do now?" Apollo asked.
"Continue working on it." She replied.
Colonial One
"So what's the supply situation for the fleet, commander?" Adama asked Commander Sandy Fenderson, the commanding officer of the heavy support ship Optimus. He was now the fleet's chief supply and engineering officer and oversaw the procurement and production of resources.
"Well, we're good for the time being on food. The botanical ships have all been converted to agricultural ships and they have been producing food for the fleet so far." He said. "It will probably become a larger problem as time goes on but I wouldn't worry about it for another year. A couple of passenger liners that didn't have much in the way of complement have had their passengers moved off and are being converted to farming vessels, as we have the supplies to start creating wheat and corn, and we've taken anyone we can find with agricultural experience. A few of the freighters were carrying livestock, and we've started a breeding program that should be able to consistently produce fresh meat for the fleet as I mentioned before we have a god's forsaken candy production ship. So we don't have much of a problem with food yet."
"Water should be fine for as long as we have the military ships intact. We can recycle quite a bit of it and even if recycling doesn't meet a hundred percent of our needs there are plenty of asteroids with significant ice deposits commonly in this region of space. As for medical supplies, we should be fine as the fleet's medical ships should be able to produce whatever we need." He said.
"Fuel is where I'm most concerned." He said. "We have only about 1 and a half months left before we run out. We need to find a source of tylium fast otherwise we're going to be dead in the water. On some of the older ships I'm having upgrades done to their FTL drives to make their engines more efficient but that's only going to do so much." He said. "We might be able to stretch it to two months but that would require very few jumps." He said.
"Now as to everything else, the Optimus has recreated all of its major production facilities and has distributed it across the various maintenance and repair ships of the fleet. So even if it gets destroyed the fleet should be fine as our systems have been transferred to other ships. Right now we are mostly performing repairs and upgrades on the various civilian ships they will need as we continue traveling into unknown space. I have a batch of nukes under construction and soon all of the both combat and supply ships will be filled up with ammunition of all types. So we're going to be good there for a while. Thanks to all of the various minerals that we mined we have enough of those resources to make most any spare parts that we could need, which will be useful as we have both the production facilities for that and a mobile shipyard."
"If we get a sustained period of few or no FTL jumps, there are several plans that I've been coming up with to expand the capabilities of the fleet." He said. "I want to replicate our mobile drydock. It's one asset that's going to be a lot harder to replace if we lose it, and if we can build it again we can double our ship production and repair rate. This brings me to producing ships, which is something I think we can do. We have the resources, the manpower to both make and man them and the time."
"So what do you want to build then?" Adama asked.
"A modified version of the Adamant MK II." He replied.
The Adamant frigate had been a design of compact frigates that entered production across the colonies about a decade before the first Cylon war. They were cheap, fast, decently well armed, and armored for their size, and had a hanger that could support about 20 vipers with a few raptors. The class served as a mainstay of the war, participating in nearly every significant battle and being produced in type thousands. However, in the postwar years, the colonial fleet moved away from corvettes, frigates, and other small ships towards light and medium cruisers as their main escorts. Therefore most were retired after the war, with some seeing use as civilian craft mostly stripped of their weapons or with their armaments as part of a PMC or planetary security force. Many would disappear from breakers' yards and reserve fleets and find themselves in the hands of pirates and criminals, and there were probably more than a few still serving to this very day.
The Adamant MK II was a design that was only about 10 years old, meant to take an old design and make it relevant again as a low-cost escort for the fleet. It retained the same basic shape but with many features, including a faster speed, better armor and weapons, a doubling of hanger space, and modern sensors, avionics, and computer systems. It would be used as a cheap escort as piracy rose throughout the colonies, though more than a few also found their way into pirate hands. There were Interestingly enough two in the fleet owned by the PMC, and they had proven to be effective escorts for the fleet.
"So what do you want to change about the design?" Adama asked.
"This is a ship designed fundamentally for the escort of the fleet, which means that it doesn't need to be very fast. Like old Destroyer Escorts from Wet Navies. So we simplify the engine making it somewhere around the level of the original Adamant, which is still a little overkill in my opinion but still enough to keep it relevant if it ever has to serve in a role that isn't escort. I've also cut out a lot of the fancy computers as they are not very useful, sure with the network reforms we have implemented they should be fine but they aren't going to be able to be used up to their full potential, and it decreases their production cost. Some of the other components are just not necessary for the role of the advanced sensor suite and the FTL system, which only needs to be as fast as it needs to be to keep up with the fleet. I've reduced the crew complement as much as possible as well, and what's left doesn't need to be a particularly skilled crew. Give me a hundred people not counting the air wing and you have what we need for the ship. I've also reduced the size of the air wing as we won't be able to train enough pilots for all of them to have 40 Vipers. "
"So how fast can you make them?" Adama asked.
"I can get you one ship a month with the current rate of jumping, and two weeks with barely any jumps. I've figured that we need about 24 to defend the fleet. Of course, we will be delayed for a bit due to the replication of the drydock, but it won't be that big of a deal."
"Start replicating the drydock and then do 12 of them to start. I don't know what Zarek will be able to dig out of his terrorist back in the colonies but if he has some similar frigates he might be able to fill some of that role." Adama said. "What else to report?"
"We're doing well in terms of production in either category. Viper and raptor production is continuing in the background as we discussed, but I want permission to start conscripting relevant maintenance crews in the fleet and make some of the repair ships here into auxiliaries. They should serve the fleet well under a more unified command."
"Give me a list of the people that you need and you'll probably have who and what you need," Adama said. "Do you have anything else to add?"
"No sir." He replied.
"Then you are dismissed." He said.
"How did that go?" Roslin asked him afterwards. Adama explained what would be going on and that the fleer would be getting new ships.
Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet was doing well, or at least as well as they could be under these unique circumstances.
"Commander Hudson, do you have the intel report I wanted on the Cylons?" Commander Audrey Bakerson asked.
"Indeed I do, commander." He replied. Hudson had been preparing a report on the state of the Cylons and what was known about their capabilities and would be presenting that on Colonial One to the leadership of the fleet.
"So we don't have a lot of information about the Cylons and while there probably is back at the colonies we don't have the capabilities to go back there without jeopardizing the safety of the fleet. However, I have been able to figure a bit out about their base ships and raiders.
The raiders appear to be made of some sort of organic material. About even an MK Viper they are still inferior, however. All of our vipers have superior or at least comparable weaponry, armor, and engines. They do hold an advantage in the fact that they have an FTL drive and probably better sensors, though despite this grain of theirs they don't seem to be that smart. Starbucks is already coming up with a comprehensive manual for pilots to be able to outmatch them whenever we meet. They do have numbers on their side however, their base ships can deploy hundreds of them.
Speaking of them the baseship looks like it was designed with the planned Cylon victory in mind, pretty much lacking all forms of gun armament except the raiders. They can carry loads of missiles, raiders, and probably ground troops. We've seen that they don't have great armor but they weren't designed with a slugging match in mind. The Cylons probably have a lot of them but we just haven't seen many of them due to the position we're in. It's unknown what other combatants they have, probably some sort of escort but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't put much effort into it. They planned for a total victory and by the looks of it they nearly got it, except us and whoever else is running around in the colonies.``
"Do we know anything about their industrial base or homeworld?"
"Besides the fact that they have humanoid models, nothing. It's just that one has been past the armistice line so we can't tell. I'd wager that they aren't suspecting an attack though, and I hope that any other surviving colonials have tried to attack their territory if they are still around." Chris said. "If I were to take a guess they probably don't have much going on planetside. Or at least nothing comparable to what the colonies were. I mean they probably just have a network of bases and installations through their side of the armistice line. We can't tell for sure though."
"Very well," Adama said, turning to everyone. "You all are dismissed."