The core behind the mental models usually performed millions of simultaneous tasks. While Maya was talking to Baros, she hacked into Athena's internal sensors log. The most significant contact was the Pegasus, a battlestar, according to the Colonial Fleet registry.
She shared the contact coordinates through the Tactical Network. The I-series submarines, Mia (I-400) and Sia (I-402), were assigned by Bismarck to investigate possible survivors. Prinz Eugen was out there, trying to catch more survivors. Both small ships were currently idle after locating the hub, so they welcomed the opportunity.
The submarines folded to the Pegasus' last location, according to Athena's log. The sensors detected a small fleet of survivors—fourteen ships, including tankers and cargo ships—trying to escape from the colonies at sublight speed. As the lethal predators they were, they defolded and submerged into the dimensional layer they used for hunting.
They scanned the ships, first looking for Cylon beacons and subspace transmissions. Satisfied that the ships were clean, they conducted a more detailed scan. They found several disturbing facts: first, there were few crew members; second, the jump drives had been forcibly removed; and third, the compartments were open to space, with missing plates and broken pipes.
Mia was talking with her crew. "I think something bad happened here," her sensor operator said. Mia looked at her crew and said, "It looks like someone took what they needed and left them to die."
The humans felt a bit ashamed that a human could do something like that. "We must help them," her XO said. "Yes, and I know it's not the best course of action, but we can fold them to a space far from the colonies and talk to them," the weapons officer said.
"I'm pretty sure they must be scared to death. If we take them forcefully, we'll complicate things even more," Mia said. "I only detected communication among the ships via light pulses. It seems they haven't activated their radio communications to avoid detection," she added.
"Sis, it looks really weird that these ships hasn't been destroyed," Sia asked.
"Bait?", Mia suggested.
"Quite possible, we must hurry," Sia said worried.
"How we start a conversation without radio? With sign language?" Mia asked.
"Great, we have to spacewalk and beat on the hull to say hello," Sia said in frustration. Mia sighed and said, "I will approach my hull so they can see me."
"Good idea; it will be better," said Sia. She accelerated slowly and sent several light pulses to one cargo ship. The blocky ship, a series of containers joined together with an engine block and a crew compartment in the bow, didn't even try to escape. A slow cargo ship will never can escape from a warship. The crew was glued to the small windows in the cockpit, having never seen a ship like her.
Mia didn't like what she was watching.
Cargo Ship Mount Parnassus.
The captain of the freighter was looking through the small porthole in the cockpit. The three crew members, after their experience with the Pegasus, were terrified of anything that resembled a colonial warship. Everything usable had been taken by that bitch, Cain, and her officers. Even the carbon dioxide scrubbers had been removed, and they were slowly suffocating. They were still breathing because one agro ship, the Green Leaf, was exchanging the contaminated atmosphere for clean air from its greenhouses. It was a desperate measure, but since many people were taken by Cain, it was working.
A strange, elongated ship with a weird command tower was approaching from the starboard side. Definitely a warship, the captain thought. Guns, strange antiaircraft small guns, and what looked like launching cells were present along the hull. The ship slowed down, and a message was sent via light pulses through the colonial equivalent of Morse Code: "Attention, Parnassus, this is an Earth's ship. You cannot jump. We will carry you. Be calm." Both ships repeated the message to the others.
The captain sat heavily in his chair. He was tired from fearing every second and a bit intoxicated by the viciated air. He covered his face with his hands and pondered the bizarre message. The ship didn't look like any Cylon ship he knew—at least, not until now.
He exchanged looks with his men and said, "Why not? We have not a chance in hades to survive alone." The two crew members accepted that they had no other options. The people on the ships knew they were going to die in space. He took a hand flashlight and replied, "Okay."
Another important issue required a quick solution if they wanted to save these people. Sia expressed her concern about the fold field, "Mia, I have doubts about our capacity to create a stable fold field for so many ships." Mia checked the calculations and acknowledged that Sia was right, "You are right; the chance of a bad defolding is not exactly zero."
"I'm calling Prinz Eugen here. She can create a larger field than us," Mia sighed.
Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen.
Currently, most ships had human crews, but the Supreme Flagship allowed each ship the freedom to take its own decisions. She missed her eternal partner, Bismarck. Given the choice before this stupid war, she decided she would sail through this new ocean alone. Right now, her mental model was walking on the exterior sidewalks of her superstructure, admiring the sights.
A high-priority communication from I-400 was a rare event. Those girls always worked in pairs and usually alone. What could they want from her?
"Hey, mein Freund? Wie geht es dir?" she said with her accustomed German speech. Mia rolled her eyes. "Prinz Eugen, you and I know you're not German. Please use the standard language of the Fleet," Mia said.
The Prinz Eugen mental model, a young girl with blonde hair and strong Caucasian features, wearing a grey Kriegsmarine uniform, replied with a pained gesture, "Okay, okay, don't be like that. I miss my fleet's comrades, that's all."
"I have a task for you. We need to fold a small fleet of colonial survivors to a safe place to meet Britannic. Our combined fold field is insufficient," Mia explained.
"Understood. I have your position. Please alert the crews," Prinz Eugen said. "Roger that," Mia acknowledged.
I-400 and I-402.
The colonial crews were alerted that a new ship would come to help move the ships to a safe place. Five minutes later, a sphere of light materialized near the ships. This time, it was a larger ship than the submarines, almost seven hundred meters in length. The new arrival flashed its position lights, greeting the colonials.
Prinz Eugen left the fold close to I-400. Her sensors and the optical receptors on her mental model analyzed the fleet in front of her. Fourteen ships—a mix of freighters, mining ships, a couple of personnel transports for the asteroid ring, and a weird but functional botanical ship. Why do these ships lack FTL engines? The hulls are open to space, and it seems components were forcefully taken. What happened here?
The new ship took a new position, moving slowly. The submarines informed the captains to maneuver their slow ships around the larger vessel. Almost fifteen agonizing minutes later, the captains moved their ships into the assigned positions. However, a problem arose when they saw a blonde girl walking on the superstructure, causing frantic and scared communications among the ships, asking the submarines for an explanation.
"Oh, hell, you little idiotisch," Mia said, facepalming herself. Scared people are always hard to deal with. She explained that the "idiot" was an automated repair system with a human shape and obviously didn't need to breathe. More or less convinced, they continued maneuvering around Prinz Eugen, as they had no other option.
Around the fourteen ships, now in a compact formation, synchronized rings appeared and began to spin rapidly. For an instant, the space around the fleet disappeared, and they jumped to a new location in space.
A giant sphere of light appeared in the void among the stars. Slowly, the larger warship moved around to protect the small fleet. It was time to speak directly to the crews.
"Sister, I am going to attempt a docking maneuver with the freighter. My crew will assist me," Mia said. "It will be best if I start with a tanker," Sia answered.
"I will request a hospital ship with Colonials on board. There are too many ships to protect, and that damned jump drive is a tactical nightmare. These people are in bad shape, sis."
She stood at the hatch with her XO and said, "Let's go." She beat on the hatch twice and someone did the same from the other side. The hatch opened, and a wary man showed his face. His surprise was obvious when he saw a white-haired teenager and two men in unknown uniforms.
She spoke first, "Greetings, my name is Mia. As I mentioned before, we are from Earth. We know what happened to the colonies. I understand that our appearance right now seems too convenient. We found more survivors and will assist you in joining the Colonial Fleet."
The captain interrupted, "Colonial Fleet? That bitch Cain left us stranded in the middle of nowhere."
"This is going to be ugly, sis. Cain was received as a hero by the Colonials on Forge," Sia added. "What are we going to do with these people?" Mia asked. "When we return to Forge, we will explain the situation to Adama," Sia added with concern. The old I-402 was always a practical girl. "To be honest, our job is to rescue these people. Roslin will have to deal with this mess, not us."
One hundred and twenty two human beings were aboard these flying-coffins, and she was experiencing a deep conflict about Cain. Her sensors took detailed scans of the crew. Most people was notoriously old or sick, with chronic diseases. Cain's status as colonial hero was hard to reconcile with her last actions. The military file suggested a hot head and impulsive person, but to leave human beings waiting for the cylons or dying slowly in space? How is she going to react when Adama confronts her?
"Captain, I'm sorry for what Admiral Cain did to your crews. Let me tell you that one hospital ship will be here in one hour. We will transfer your crews to that ship because we can move all your crews together. Besides, I want to leave your ships close to the Colonies as bait," Mia explained to the captain.
"You said you are from Earth, the thirteen tribe, the lost tribe?," the poor man babbled. "Yes, we found a ragtag fleet from your colonies close to the Calanda Nebula. The fleet was protected by the Battlestar Galactica. Your Secretary of Education, Laura Roslin was elected as President of the Twelve Colonies, since she was in the succesion order" Mia explained to the still confused colonial.
"Roslin, the school teacher? Wow, this is the end of the colonies!" he said. "Excuse me, are you the captain? No offense, but you look too young," he added with curiosity.
"Captain, I'm know this is a lot to process, but right now Earth is in state of war with the Cylons. We are helping your people, but Earth is different from the Colonies. Our experience with artificial intelligence didn't have the disastrous consequences you had," Mia explained patiently. "You have Cylons?", a second crewman asked from behind the captain.
"Not at all, we and the AIs have lived on Earth in peace for decades," Mia lied while she waited for the next, complicated to answer question. Right in that precise moment, Britannic defolded close to the small fleet. Naturally, her comm sigil chose that moment to dance on her face. The three men backed off and asked, "You are not human!" Mia looked at him with her most essayed look of boredom while she said, "what an intelligent deduction, Sherlock."
"Who is Sherlock?"
Hospital Ship, Britannic.
The mental model number one from Britannic was in her bridge, discussing with Major Aristides how to explain everything to their new guests. The ship and him had been dispatched by Adama himself to assist in a rescue operation near the Colonies. When the colonial doctor watched through the screens the ships they were going to rescue, he lost the color on his face. Britannic recognised through his biosignals that the man was deadly scared from something.
When she received the information from the submarines, especially about how the ships were stripped of almost everything, she understood. "Major, it would be better if we had a long and nice chat about what happened between these ships and Pegasus," she said as she approached the man.
Aristides faced, right now, an angry mental model. He, like many colonials, had watched what a mental model could do to a centurion. If this thing got angry...he raised his hands and said, "Please, I'm innocent! Those bitches of Cain and Shaw made the marines kill some of them! The marines are completely loyal to her! They are fanatics!"
Britannic had, obviously, recorded all the confessions. Someone will have a long, long chat with Admiral Cain, and it will not be nice. However, now she has two missions to accomplish: hide this asshole from the rescued crews and provide medical attention to these people.
"Major, I believe I'm right that an encounter between you and these persons would be a recipe for a disaster, right?," Britannic asked. The major nodded. "In that case, I will confine you to a room for your safety," she said. Almost immediately, one of her copies came in and took the colonial doctor from an arm. She didn't ask for his permission and pushed the man through the hatch.
With the most immediate problem in quarantine, she asked for a comm with both sisters and Eugen. The trio agreed to transfer the crew, one by one, while the submarines remained hidden in case the cylons decided Britannic was a valuable target. The Heavy Cruiser remained close, ready to engage the cylons.
The next problem was the number of ships. There were too many to transfer one crew at a time, and it would take hours. The mental models understood the realities of war. Probably, the Cylons left these ships alive as bait, in the same way they wanted.
After two hours of long and complicated explanations, Britannic used both sides of her hull to dock three or four ships at once, depending on the size. That reduced the time almost in half when everything went to hell. Two Raiders jumped close and launched a couple of nukes to Britannic. The ship had extended her shields, her powerful Klein Fields neutralized both nukes, but they had been discovered and she was not a combat ship. Soon, more dangerous things would come, and they were at a disadvantage. The Raiders disappeared in a flash of light.
"They know about us. How long will it take to finish?" Mia asked Britannic. "Twenty minutes at most," was the answer.
Two minutes later, a cylon heavy cruiser appeared. The cruiser launched a heavy assault of missiles and solid projectiles, splashing the Britannic's shield with impacts.
"It seems it will be cruiser against cruiser, girls," Prinz Eugen said to the sisters. "True, it's a pity we will loose the ships," Mia said a bit angry. Eugen didn't loose time, and as any heavy cruiser from the Bismarck's fleet, she was a bit...overdeveloped. She unleashed all her weaponry on the cylon ship, including a broadside of torpedoes. The cylon ship, for some reason ignored her, what was a severe mistake. Soon the cruiser accumulated gashes, hull penetrations and a pair of "bitten marks", courtesy of the corrosive torpedoes.
The heavy shields of Britannic, overtaxed by covering the civilian ships, were showing saturation. "Ah, girls, this is becoming a problem," Brittanic warned them.
Close to the cylon, two hundred meters under the cylon central pylon, a couple of old periscopes poke out the dimensional limit. Soon, two torpedoes left the dimensional space and the ion trails marked the warheads course. One hundred meters before the warheads reached the hull they exploded, releasing a powerful EMP. Blind, with accumulated damage, they couldn't detect the four new torpedoes approaching fast to them.
Four big spheres of light embraced the central part of the cruiser and left four bite marks around the place when the three arms joined. Explosions erupted from the hull when Prinz Eugen landed a full broadside with her main batteries. The cylon ship lost altitude control and began to rotate.
Without the pressure of combat, Britannic released the last batch of ships and folded to Forge. The submarines just waited, although the number of preys had been scarce lately. If nothing happened, they could always use the surviving ships to move more survivors.