Chapter 23: Scattered Part 2
"I have an idea, but you might not like it." Gaeta. "We network all of the computers on the ship, along with those on the raptors, together to get the processing power to do so. They have all of the software needed to do it, but can't do so independently."
"So you want us to just expose our computers to the Cylons," Kelly said.
"The computers would be connected in such a way to the point that there would be several different firewalls that would need to be breached for the computers to be compromised. They are programmed to shut down when they are breached, and they've been all backed up on separate computers." Gaeta said. "Sir, I don't see any other option. It's a risk, but finding them is going to be a lot harder without this tool."
Lieutenant Felix Gaeta and Captain Aaron Kelly discuss the merits of temporarily networking Galactica's computer system to jump back to the fleet.
Chapter 23: Scattered Part 2
The Galactica emerged after her battle at the FTL coordinates that she had jumped to. Damage control teams were already going over the vessel to try and stop the spread of fires.
Tigh was looking at the available options for what to do next. They needed to find the rest of the fleet, but so far they had had no luck. Raptors had been dispatched to the backup coordinates that the rest of the fleet would jump to in an emergency but they had reported nothing. Meaning wherever the fleet had jumped to they were unable to stay long, perhaps due to the Cylons.
"How the hell are we going to find the fleet?" Tigh asked. The FTL computer was not advanced enough to plot a potential course to where the fleet would hypothetically be. Other computers could do so on more modern battlestars, but Adama had always been reluctant to have the ship's computer systems upgraded. Considering what had happened to almost all of the other battlestars, it had probably been the best choice.
"I have an idea, but you might not like it," Gaeta said. "We network all of the computers on the ship, along with those on the raptors, together to get the processing power to get the coordinates. They have all of the software needed to do it, but can't do so independently. At least not in a reasonable amount of time"
"So you want us to just expose our computers to the Cylons?" Kelly asked, a look of suspicion on his face.
"The computers would be connected in such a way to the point that there would be several different firewalls that would need to be breached for the computers to be compromised. They are programmed to shut down when they are breached, and they've been all backed up on separate computers." Gaeta said. "Sir, I don't see any other option. It's a risk, but finding them is going to be a lot harder without this tool."
"Very well," Tigh said. "Do it." He then turned to Dualla. "What's the report on casualties and damage?"
"Sir, we have at least 221 dead, with an additional 371 missing or wounded. Cottle says sickbay is at full capacity for the time being, and that we are going to need to watch out for additional casualties. The majority came from the flight pod, and a fire is still raging in there."
"We need to vent the pod before this gets worse." He said. "Is everyone in the contaminated section of the pod?"
"Yes sir," Dualla replied. "The hanger crew managed to stop it. There were some spare parts for Vipers and a few damaged MK IIs in there, but nothing that can't be replaced as all of our serviceable airframes were out of there, and regular hanger operations have not been severely affected." Most of the Vipers and spare parts were also magnetically locked down on the deck which would prevent them from being thrown out when the pod was vented.
"It could have been worse," Kelly said. "A lot worse."
The Galactica soon jumped to Kobol, which the FTL computer would be using as a reference point to find the ship and her allies the rest of the fleet.
There were two basestars in orbit of Kobol. After the rescue teams had been captured, the Cylons had decided to return, probably to prevent future colonial involvement. Although the fleet managed to get away, they were staying here to prevent them from returning.
"Sir, the Cylons are approaching, and they've launched raiders. They haven't detected the computer vulnerability yet, but they will soon I'm sure." Gaeta said.
Galactica went through the normal measures that it went through when the Cylons attacked. Vipers were launched, a flak screen was put up, and the point defense gunners were prepared to take on Cylon missiles and fighters. It would take them 15 minutes to get coordinates of where the fleet would probably be located.
15 minutes to not get hacked and survive whatever the Cylons threw at them. That would be doable for the massive battlestar.
"Sir, the Cylons have discovered the network, and are attempting to infiltrate," Gaeta said. It hadn't taken them long to realize what Galactica was doing. He looked at a large monitor that showed the progress the Cylons were making against the computers but Lieutenant Gaeta's software firewall appeared to hold. The Cylons managed to get through two of the stages with five minutes left.
A few missiles got through, but no more nukes. Conventional missiles did little damage to Galactica, mostly just leaving some carbon scoring here and there. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some time in the mobile drydock.
Well, at least in the beginning. With only three minutes left, it felt like everything was starting to come crashing down on them.
The Cylons had gotten through three of the four layers of firewalls and therefore were almost at the end of the computerized defenses. The Vipers were causing serious damage to the raiders, but there were just too many and the air wing would soon take significant casualties. And while this was going on and they were doing this, the two basestars launched another large volley of nukes like had happened before. This time only 30 were launched.
At least the bastards were quite far away, and it still took a few minutes for the mass of missiles to reach them. But it was still a mass of missiles nonetheless. Gaeta rapidly layed out a plan to increase the Galactica's odds of survival. Armed with the calculations of the missile trajectories and the capabilities of the ship, Gaeta put his concepts into reality.
Galactica accelerated away from the missiles, putting as much distance between them and her as she possibly could. The aft section was against the missiles, which at first looked to be a dumb move due to the relative lack of armor on that section compared to other sections. If the engines were hit, it could significantly reduce Galactica's sublight speeds. What Gaeta was trying to do wasn't easy, but it was possible, and he was confident in his ability to pull it off.
About a minute out from the impact, he had the battlestar move 360 degrees to face the alligator head of the ship towards the missiles. This was also without slowing down, as the ship was essentially drifting through space backward.
The vipers took care of many of the missiles, as their speed allowed them to dictate whether they were in a battle or not. A targeting error in the Cylon computers meant that one of the missiles did not detect a raider, accidentally nuking it. This move destroyed several of the nukes and raiders, and soon there were only 10 nukes left.
Gaeta's idea had its effect. Creating a smaller profile meant that the Cylons didn't have as much of the ship to shoot at; they were funneled into a field of point-defense fire. One by one the missiles were destroyed until none were left.
Meanwhile, back in the CIC, Gaeta's firewall was holding. He had gotten some of the crew who had good knowledge of computers and programming to come over and help him fight the infiltration attempt. These men and women who were being led by Gaeta helped defend the ship. There was no hope of striking back at the Cylon, or even of holding against wave after wave of cyber attack.
But they didn't need to. All they needed was to buy some time and hold out for a little bit before they jumped out.
"Sir, we have a breach in the final firewall." One of the computer technicians said. "We're under heavy attack but holding."
"We can jump in one minute," Gaeta said. It was the longest minute that anyone in the CIC had ever experienced. The Vipers began landing, their escape covered by Galactica's point defense guns. The raiders were cut down after being attacked by the point defense guns. Explosions racked the raiders and the survivors were forced to withdraw.
Meanwhile, a Cylon Heavy Raider crashed into Galactica shortly before Galactica jumped and met the fleet. A group of Cylon Centurions emerged from the Heavy Raider, making their way out of the landing bay before anyone could pay them attention. Before the vipers could land, the centurion onboard centurions on board had made their move and were already advancing into the ship.
With the firewall barely holding, Galactica withdrew.
After loading the HMLTV with non-perishable food from the local Caprimart, Starbuck and Helo set off north.
It wasn't long before they passed a burned-out civilian convoy, probably made up of people who had been fleeing the Cylons. What had once been cars and trucks were now burned-out hulks.
Starbuck got out and went over to investigate and see if there were any supplies. As she looked at the corpses, she saw that some of them had weapons. Gun ownership wasn't uncommon throughout the colonies, especially in more rural areas which they were now in. Practically every law about regulating guns had been thrown out the window during the First War, and while some had returned after the war it was still less restrictive than before the war.
"It looks like they put up a fight," Helo said, looking at some dead centurions. These people hadn't exactly been well armed, but they showed that the Cylons weren't invincible and that Caprica hadn't fallen without a fight.
They gathered up some supplies that they found. A dozen civilian-grade firearms, including two shotguns, two hunting rifles, three pistols, and a modern sporting rifle which was roughly equivalent to assault rifles in colonial service except that they were only semi-automatic. Some of the colonies had tried to ban these types of guns, but in the few cases where such a ban succeeded it proved to have a negligible impact on gun crime. (Brief author note here, I'm not making fun of any real-world laws wink wink.
They also took several caches of medical supplies, including several weeks of anti-radiation medication. It was a good thing that the colonial government had stockpiled such medications and distributed them throughout the colonies, in both stockpiles that were well publicized and others that were practically unknown, and in plenty of cases deliberately kept secret. This was so that the Cylons wouldn't destroy them, but it looked like several anti-radiation stockpiles across the planet were still intact. The Cylons might have been using them to draw out any survivors, but it wasn't that clear if that had happened. The base that Helo had been at meanwhile was not exposed to the radiation that affected the colonies due to being deep in the mountains, being underground, and having massive blast doors which were specifically designed to protect against radiation from a Cylon nuke.
Even if that wasn't the case, there was a colossal amount of anti-radiation medication in the complex of the bunkers. There was always the chance however that they wouldn't be able to get to the base in the timeframe that they expected to be there by, so they took whatever they could find.
The drive continued north, and they passed more burned-out or just abandoned cars. The Cylons must have patrolled the area, looking for stragglers as time went on. The two of them hoped that they would be able to get past this area without the Cylons noticing, as there was no knowing if they would still be regularly patrolling the area.
That wouldn't be much of a problem, however, as they would be soon traveling on a series of backroads that were not well known throughout the colonies. This would make them even less easy to detect. And if there were any survivors, they were probably smart enough to stay away from where the Cylons would be looking, unless they were trying to look for supplies.
However, a few miles before the back road that they were going to turn on they found the remnants of a small battle. It looked like a convoy of colonial army vehicles, which had fought a Cylon armored column. There were corpses, long since rotting along with plenty of dead centurions, which must have meant that the colonials had put up a decent fight. Helo looked at the burned-out Cylon vehicles, which his survivor group had captured more than a few of when they raided the convoy. They were decent vehicles, but in a straight-up fight against colonial armor, they would probably lose, however.
This time they were able to salvage more, as there were a lot of dead soldiers with their weapons and ammo along with several somewhat intact armored vehicles that had ammunition in them. They took a heavy machine gun off of another mobility vehicle and mounted it on the roof of the mobility vehicle, which had a mounting point for such a weapon on the vehicle. It would be a bit difficult to operate, as whoever was doing so would have to disembark from it and then get in the small turret. It slightly reduced their storage capacity, but this was more than made up by the fact that they found an intact trailer that they could attach to the back of the vehicle.
Not only did they manage to get the heavy machine gun transferred they also were able to put a portable anti-tank missile launcher next to it, recovered from the same vehicle. Within the vehicles, they found lots of ammunition for both of these weapons, along with plenty of other supplies. This included a decent amount of small arms and ammunition, some MREs and water canteens, more anti-radiation meds and some general medical supplies, some tools and vehicle maintenance supplies, and even a HAM radio. Another useful weapon that they grabbed was a couple of man-portable air defense systems and some missiles for them. If a raider came close to them they could easily be destroyed by such missiles, and the weapon might save them if they got close. They also topped off the fuel of their mobility vehicle, and with some gas cans that had been collected earlier stored some in it as well. There was no knowing how long they would go without getting more fuel, but if they ran out they wouldn't be hopeless. Their vehicle was hybrid gas and electric and had a network of solar panels that could be deployed on top of it. It wouldn't be the most efficient source of power, but if worse came to worse it would be better than nothing.
They drove on, now turning onto backroads that were less likely to be patrolled by the Cylons. There was also heavy foliage that might conceal them. The two took turns driving, but after pulling nearly an all-nighter they decided to stop. They turned into a driveway off of the road and found a small house that had been abandoned. It would be good enough to sleep in, and despite the circumstances, they slept well.
The next day they were off on the road again. They found a few abandoned cars scattered across the places, but far fewer than they had found before and on the main road. It seemed like there was little trace of civilization out here.
They passed a few dirt roads that headed to individual houses, but they didn't explore any of them. Perhaps there were people alive in there, but they needed to get to their target as fast as possible. If they found more evidence of survivors they would do something. But they simply didn't see any.
Well, not for a little while.
As they got up into the mountains, there were more signs of recent activity. Some footprints, and tracks in the road indicate that vehicles had moved around here recently, recently fallen trees, and other signs.
"We aren't alone," Starbuck said. "Someone else is up here."
The two soon found a potential source of the activity. There was a dirt driveway leading up to something in the mountain.
But what was around it was more revealing.
There were several dead centurions, including both old and new ones. A sign on one side read "Cylons beware" and another that said, "Private property, stay off or else".
"Must be a doomsday prepper," Helo said. "Let's see if we can have a look."
The two of them soon advanced towards the area that they would be investigating, before dismounting to take a closer look on foot. They grabbed their weapons and prepared to face opposition. They eventually reached the entrance to a small bunker, which must be where this person was hiding. Whoever she or he was.
An old man walked out of the bunker, a rifle pointed at the vehicle. It looked to be a first-war-era colonial service rifle with a variety of aftermarket modifications.
"Who the hell are you?" The man asked. "Another frackin toaster?"