Lieutenant Robin Sheaperd was slightly annoyed but understood as he sat at the command station of the old Scholt class missile corvette Catapult heading towards the destroyed behemoth Battlestars in search of survivors. His three small ships would have had trouble dealing with anything larger than a civilian ship, much less a dedicated warship.

"Ok everyone we may have been given the shit duty in this fight" Robin said his voice barely hiding his annoyance "but let's see if any of these guys are still alive."

The Corvettes were not much 258 metres long with a hundred and fifteen men and women crammed aboard with just enough room left for an ancient Seagull class dropship to be docked externally under the keel.

"Engineers will board first and set up the O2 tanks and install temporary airlocks in the first air tight compartments they come across. Naval personnel will start searching the ship, "Remember everyone to have your datapads to translate these people who don't speak english."

The three corvettes circled the massive ships avoiding floating debris as they slowly gilded their way into the massive hanger pods. Crossbow and Trebuchet boarded the Battlestar, the translation software identified as Minos while Lieutenant Shepherds Catapult boarded the Perseus.

The entire crew including Shepherd and the other two bridge crew doned their EVA suits and disembarked. Each command officer takes a section and splitting up. After pulling the MD6 magnums and M7 smg's from the armory.

Shepherd's team of forty-ish sailors started examining the vast hanger pod easily capable of housing at least six corvettes but housed nearly three dozen fighters and shuttles from a quick count of what was visible craft just floating aimlessly unsecured. A few more were here and there secured to the deck with physical tie downs.

A Sailor suddenly pointed his flashlight at a fighter drifting upside down relative to them. "Movement" he called out, drawing a dozen weapons to bear.

The sailors crept closer their mag boots thumping to the deck with every step as the craft continued its aimless slow spin the cockpit came into view as did the pilot sitting inside.

Robin tapped the side of his head and used his tablet with translation program active

Hold one finger up if you can read this

The pilot held up one finger as he looked at the gathered UNSC personnel.

Does your suit have any air left or are you solely on the fighter's life support? Hold one finger for air and two for fighter

The pilot looked at some gauges on his suit and held two fingers

Robin started to type again when another and another voice called out.

"I've got some here!"

"Me too some more of these dropship things."

Robin deleted what he had written and typed again looking around at the scores of drifting fighters.

Hold on

"Ok everyone lets push all of these craft over there." Robin pointed at what looked to be a maintenance bay "once they are all inside we will seal the room and activate the oxygen generators to let these people out."

The crew split into pairs pushing the floating spacecraft toward the indicated room. Once nearly a dozen craft were inside a series of aluminum sheets were rolled out and welded into place forming a temporary emergency wall. At his signal the oxygen crew activated its generator throwing high concentrations of pure oxygen into the vacuum. Robin watched the display on his suit as breathable O2 flooded the room.

At his signal he removed his helmet to show the colonials it was safe to open their hatches. And canopies. As they did, a few of them collapsed onto the deck sucking huge lungfuls of air down. The pilots looking around at other survivors with relief.

After some back and forth it was discovered the fighters the Colonials called Vipers had shutdown before launch the pilots had been able to reroute power to the life support systems but everything else was completely electronically dead.

The same for the small Raptors when the ship shut down the pilots had loaded as many as they could cram inside and tried to launch and likewise had shut down. Trapping them inside in some cases over the recommended number of passengers the life support could handle.

After asking around they found the Air wings supply of pressurized flight suits and EVA gear. In the Squadrons ready room just a hundred or so feet down a corridor. With no time to allow the Colonial men and women to rest the hundred and forty Colonials got to work aiding in the search and rescue operation and it immediately made a difference

Instead of wandering aimlessly around the teams now had people who knew the layout of the ship, maximized the efforts of the small number of personnel inside a ship meant to carry several thousand.

Survivors were found here and there throughout the ship, but the numbers of bloated and flash frozen men and women were far outnumbering the surviving crew. The same news was coming from the Minos as they found survivors that were few and far between. Talking to some of the crew more information was discovered about the battlestars.

The Valkyrie class Minos carried a crew of twenty two hundred plus an embarked battalion of marines making the total population of three thousand five hundred but luckily the ships commander who was found dead on the bridge had ordered the entire battalion to the planet before the ships departure.

The newer Mercury class Perseus had a smaller crew but its computer systems were more advanced carrying a crew of eighteen hundred with another two thousand Marines. Like the Minos the marines had been off loaded before the ship went down.

Nearly fourteen hundred bodies were recovered and placed with as much honor as they could aboard the ships to be handled by their comrades.

In less than four hours every surviving Colonial was aboard the less damnaged Minos numbering just over a thousand and change. And that's when the code monkeys from the Crossbow poking their nose through the Colonial systems for anything strange stumbled across the electronic backdoor the Cylons had used to shut the ships down and open the airlocks. In the Ministry of Defence official update to the Comand Navigation Program in the base operating system of every system in the battlestar all the way down to lifepod launch mechanisms.

The Colonials then the UNSC code monkeys showed them they were dumbstruck how they could have missed such an opening. Using the few operational engines the two wreaked battlestars more or less crawled under their own power once the backdoor and the virus had been deleted.

As the surviving COlonial engineers started making what repairs they could with the parts they had on hand, sealing important hull breaches so life support could be restored in critical areas. They received word that Scorpia-1 through Scorpia 5 had been recaptured. And were once again in human hands.

The Minos with three of its four thrusters operational slowly started towing the Perseus towards the planet and its operational shipyards to hopefully be repaired. And if not stripped to accelerate the Minos repairs.

Lieutenant Robin Shepherd breathed a sigh of relief as the battard ships powered slowly up and started crawling towards the orbital yards and began writing his report to the Captain. His Catapult escorted them in