Star League DropShip Logan
Deep Periphery
1 April 3025
The fighter had come out of nowhere.
Nothing that Captain Helena Elphinstone had seen before, two scimitar-like wings sweeping forwards from a comparatively tiny main body.
"Any response?" she asked as she watched the wireframe image generated by the Logan's computers sweep around the icon representing the much larger dropship.
"No ma'am," Sergeant Abbot reported solidly. "I've tried English, Mandarin, Spanish, Cantonese, Japanese, Hindi, Welsh -"
"Welsh?" Elphinstone asked in surprise.
Abbot shrugged. "Closest I could come to Gaelic, ma'am."
She nodded her understanding. Abbot was an outstanding linguist, one reason she'd used to justify stealing him from Division HQ to serve on the Logan for this mission. Some of the smaller colonies out here in the Periphery didn't use English much, or at all.
"And Russian, ma'am. Nothing - if they're listening, they aren't saying anything."
"Try something a little more universal," Elphinstone ordered. "It's a long shot but some of the knuckledraggers they put in fighters these days know the classics." The command deck was too small for it to be worth moving but she turned her chair's shockframe so that she could see the radar display. "Still no sightings of the mothership?"
"No Ma'am. For all I can tell it might as well have jumped here on it's own," Lieutenant Honda replied with a smirk at his own jest. Then the smile slipped from his lips. "Aspect change! It's making an attack run."
Elphinstone's reaction was one ingrained in her since her teenage years. "Weapons free, engines to flank, squirt our logs to Helm's Deep."
"Missiles incoming," Honda snapped, eyes tracking the radar display. Beneath her feet Elphinstone felt the vibrations of the Logan's engines as they stopped idling and punched the little Condor-class dropship ahead at just over one gravity of acceleration. "They're tracking," reported Honda grimly. "Big bastards, ma'am."
"Drop the nose," ordered Elphinstone. "One eighty degree turn - get him in our sights with more than the aft lasers."
The dropshop's nose dropped and the tail rose as it turned. It was still perpendicular to the direction of travel when the first missile hit.
"Situation report!" coughed Elphinstone as smoke from burning computer systems began to make itself known. Sergeant Abbot was down - his shockframe had failed and he was wrapped around the radio controls.
Honda looked at what functionality he had left. "Radiation levels are... high," he admitted. "Must have been a nuke. Port wing is just gone. Troop decks are open to space, engine's not in a good way."
Elphinstone looked at the radcounter, rubbed her face, looked again. We're all dead, she realised. It was only a matter of time when that much radiation swept through a ship. "Weapons?"
"What?"
"Weapons," she demanded again. "Can we hit him back?"
Honda stared at her for a minute and then back at the radar. "We're still spinning. If he doesn't manuver then he'll be in our field of fire in about a minute."
Elphinstone unstrapped herself and made her way to the gunnery station. "Corporal Suang?"
"Ammo feeds are gone in the right wing but the lasers are alright and the nose guns are still active," the older woman - one of those NCOs who moved up the ranks when in the field and down them back on base - reported. "Get him in front of me and he'll be laughing out of the other side of his face."
The captain clapped the corporal on the shoulder. "Just make it count Suang. We've only got one shot at this."
The minute crept by with sadistic slowness, everyone watching the movements of the hostile, willing it not to change its course.
"Firing," Suang said calmly, centring the hostile in her crosshairs.
The first shots to hit were lasers, hammering into - in one place through - the fighter's left wing, laming it to match the Logan. A moment later the particle cannon mounted in the nose of the Logan raked across the 'face' at the front of the fighter's main body. The second impact shifted it sufficiently that the following cannon rounds and missiles missed but it was a non-issue. The fighter was dead in space.
Elphinstone straightened and turned back to the rest of the crew. "Right. Who wants to go EVA and get that heap secured? Back up will be here soon and I want everything shipshape when they get here." And I'd better update the logs.
Because by the time they do get here, none of us will be in any condition to explain what just happened.
Military Communique
From: Ringelli, Major Octavia (CO, SLJS Helm's Deep)
To: Elgin, General Samuel (CG, SLDF)
At 22:37 03.01.25 SLDS Logan (Elphinstone, Captain Helena commanding) detected a single fighter without apparent support in system 7-74-66-02. Per standard orders, Logan ceased emissions and attempted to avoid contact.
At 00:03 04.01.25 said fighter altered course towards SLDS Logan. Captain Elphinstone deemed contact unavoidable and attempted radio communication. No response was received.
At 01:05 04.01.25 said fighter increased speed of approach markedly. Deeming this a hostile action, Captain Elphinstone took evasive action and transmitted a warning to SLJS Helm's Deep, then located at the Nadir Jump Point.
Four missiles were launched by said fighter at SLDS Logan. At least one missile carried a nuclear weapon that inflicted severe damage upon SLDS Logan, killing thirteen (13) crewmen and one hundred forty-seven (147) members of the survey party embarked. Secondary radiation effects inflicted mortal injury upon all survivors. Return fire from SLDS Logan destroyed the hostile fighter. Captain Elphinstone ordered the recovery of the fighter, such as was achievable given the limited resources of SLDS Logan, for intelligence purposes.
SLDS Elric (Buskhin, Captain Piotr commanding) reached SLDS Logan's position at 06:32 05.01.25. At that time, all crew and passengers of SLDS Logan were found to be dead. Full logs were recovered along with the essential structure of the hostile fighter, which matches no design on record within the databases of SLJS Helm's Deep. SLDS Logan was deemed unsalvagable and stripped of all recoverable equipment and bodies before being towed into a unavertable course for the stellar gravity well.
Based upon this encounter, the survey expedition has been aborted and SLJS Helm's Deep is returning to base. The fighter has been tentatively determined to be unmanned, using technology superior in some respects to that of the SLDF. In particular it is believed that certain components may comprise a Kearny-Fuchida drive smaller by several orders of magnitude than any on record.
Based upon the logs of SLDS Logan, Captain Helena Elphinstone is recommended for posthumous award of the Medal of Valour and promotion to the rank of Major.
SLSS Elphinstone
Deep Periphery
18 February 3046
Picket duty is fairly boring, Lieutenant Gordon Ringelli observed as he looked at the instruments again.
The Elphinstone was deployed in a high orbit around a gas giant that was - officially - codenamed Lizard. Most of the orbital defense platform's crew just called it The Iceball. Of course, since the Elphinstone had been artistically covered with ice and other debris from the Iceball's orbital plane until it looked like nothing more than another puny moon barely worthy of notice, it had promptly been dubbed The Icebox.
Lancea Orbital Defense Platforms were the backbone of the Star League in Exile's deep space infrastructure - dozens of them dotted the Sanctuary star system and probably almost as many were located in systems like this one, watching for unexpected arrivals within jump range of Sanctuary - either from the Inner Sphere, the Clans or...
Well, or whoever had killed the Icebox's namesake more than two decades ago in this very star system. Even after all that time there had not been even one more sighting and no analysis to date had given a name to them.
Since it was in orbit, there was always the possibility... Gordon straightened as the computer began to detail the differences between the parts of the sky that had been occluded by Iceball for the last few hours and what it had looked like on the previous orbit. Most of it was simply the predictable movement of the spare star system's other planets, moons and whatnot... three of them weren't.
After a moment's throught, Gordon was reaching for the communications panel - even if it just turned out to be previously undetected asteroids the Captain would want to know - when the computers pinged again and reported a fourth unidentified object. One that hadn't been there when the Elphinstone came around the Lizard.
Ping. Five objects. Ping-ping-ping. Ping.
Gordon didn't bother with the communications panel. Instead he flipped the cover off one of the least used controls available to him and hit the red button with relish.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
The lieutenant counted again. More than a dozen now, all in close proximity. Whoever was there was there in force and - he checked direction and estimated distance - nowhere near the jump conditions that a Kearny-Fuchida Drive was limited to.
"Well hello again," he whispered to himself. "I wonder why it took you so long to get here..."
"Situation?" Captain Arlene McEvedy asked as she entered the command centre. She'd been asleep but after two decades in the Star League Defense Force she'd gotten used to rising suddenly to deal with an incipient crisis. At least this time it wasn't two idiots on their national service tours beating each other up over a third idiot - she understood the need to run every able adult through the basics of military activity but for a woman from a military family, who'd served when the SLDF was a tight-knit body of proffessionals maintaining traditions that Sanctum could barely support, it galled to have half her command made up of short-term draftees.
Lieutenant Ringelli wasn't one of them, of course, and he snapped to attention as she entered the room, his eyes barely flickering from the displays. Of course, he was almost from a military family himself. "Multiple unidentified objects, Captain. They're coming out of nowhere - possibly jumping in. There are twenty-one of them by my count."
"Perhaps even probably," she muttered, looking at the imagery. Whatever they were, they were pretty deep into the system. "They've waited a long time to come looking for their friend, if they're who you're thinking Lieutenant," she added warningly. "Still, we can't take any chances. We'd need to send a warning to Sanctuary Command. Who's on the ready launch status?"
Gordon had already checked of course. "Sergeant Colman and Sergeant Swyley," he reported. "They are ready to launch within sixty seconds and the rest of the Cluster will be at five minutes readiness within."
"'Cluster'," Arlene said and shook her head. "Sounds more like it should have a Colonel running it, not Captain Hogan. No offense to the Captain, of course."
"Well if the Ghost Clusters all had Colonels in charge, the extra brass would probably slow Sanctum's spin," Gordon quipped.
"I'd take that in trade if it meant I got real pilots not those console jockeys," Arlene grumbled. "They'd be no less annoying and at least I could have them go after targets that aren't right on top of us. Alright, send them off. And have the damn ghosts go to sixty seconds readiness, they've no damn excuse for not being ready to go on that little notice."
Fifty-one seconds after Captain McEvedy's order was given, one of the hatches on the side of the Elphinstone slid smoothly aside and pair of fork-nosed aerospace fighters darted out, heading for the cover of the Iceball. It only took them ten minutes to be behind it and completely concealed from the newly arrived ships.
Two minutes later they were gone as if they had never been there.
SLDF HQ
Aleksandrburg, Sanctum
18 February 3046
"What is going on here?" snapped Octavia Ringelli, three seconds after she stepped into what was supposed to be the strategic command centre of the entire Star League Defense Force (all one Division of it). It had sounded far more like a barroom full of football fan advocating rival teams when she entered and the chastened looks on the faces she could see after she spoke looked entirely too much like those of scolded children.
"Well?" she demanded, looking around at the suddenly silent chamber.
Lieutenant-General Hercule Maclintock cleared his throat. The commander of Beta Galaxy was the most likely of all the 331st Division's General Officers to be found in the Star League Defense Force's Headquarters building - Beta Division was the primary response force after all. "There is a report from the Elphinstone," he reported soberly. "Several unidentified contacts appeared suddenly deep insystem. No details yet, but until further notice they are assumed to be hostile."
Octavia nodded, processing the information. "How did they send the report?" she asked.
"Two jumpfighters arrived, both carrying duplicates of the information," a Colonel that Octavia couldn't remember the name of for the life of her advised. "They handed the contents to Jellico ODP on hardcopy and Captain Ericsson sent it to us on tightbeam."
"Good to hear someone kept their head," Octiavia grumbled. The last thing they wanted was someone panicking and sending major radio signals. Slow as such a signal would be, the risk of Jerome Blake's little band of acolytes damnable Explorer Corps - or worse, a far-ranging Clan jumpship - happening to pick up a radio signal was simply far too high for anything but the most desperate of emergencies. "Although we still don't know anything definite, do we?"
"Nothing but their presence," Maclintock confirmed, with a grimace at the implied criticism.
The Commanding General of the Star League Defense Forces, such as they were, frowned. "Well, that's enough to get a few measures under way. Hercule, I want one of your infantry clusters embarked for immediate departure. Jaina -" Lieutenant General Jaina Hoshigawa, Head of Fleet Command "- send a courier to intercept the Minnesota and her escorts. Order them to divert to Estevan Station - we'll use that as a rendevous point."
"Just the Minnesota and one battalion?" Maclintock asked hesitantly.
"No," Octavia shook her head firmly. "I think we can spare the Manitoba as well, and pry one or two corvette squadrons to bolster the screen. Two destroyers, eight carriers and eight corvettes should be enough to at least withdraw if need be." She smirked. "And who's to say? Maybe they won't be hostile."
A ripple of chuckles went around the room.
"Right, I'd better go brief the High Council," Octavia decided. "Get the forces ready to move and send out a general war warning. We'll go to Defense Condition Amber until further notice."
Galactica
Periphery
19 February 3048
"What do we do now?"
William Adama didn't look up from the desk he was sat behind. He wasn't sure he'd be able to look his son in the eye as he admitted: "I don't know, Lee."
He heard Lee exhale and then the sound of the other chair scraping against the deck as the younger Adama pulled it back and seated himself where Tigh had sat, Gods, was it even a day yet?
"You were right," Adama said and leaned back, looking somewhere in the direction of Lee's chest. "We're not in any shape to fight the Cylons. That has to come first. We don't have much in the way of crew."
"How about the rest of the ships?" Lee asked. "There must be a couple of thousand people on board them."
"Mostly people with enough pull over Baltar to stay out of the mud of New Caprica," his father said gruffly. "I don't believe I'd trust them even if I could get them to work. The crews... well, maybe. But they're shorthanded as well. They're all fairly spaceworthy though."
Lee stiffened. "You can't be thinking of just going on?" he asked incredulously.
"Hmm?" his father said, the tone surprised and he looked up for the first time. "Go on? No. Not without..." He flicked his hand, apparently unwilling to put the rest of the objection into words. Or at least, willing to let Lee fill in the blanks on his own.
"Then we have to go back."
"When we are ready to, yes," he agreed. "Even if we can't fill out our crews, they're rusty - out of practise. We need to blast that rust off. Work out a plan. But first we need to hold the fleet together, which means getting our people onboard. Let them know that we're secure here - which we are, unless the Cylons get luckier than they have any right to be -"
"They've already gotten lucky once," Lee pointed out grimly. "I know you said that it was too soon to stop running, but finding us in that nebula..."
"That's true," Adama conceded. "However, it would take a lot of searching to find us here. And I'm not planning to just stay here. We'll head for one of the gas giants and shelter the fleet in the upper atmosphere - deep enough that they'd have to stumble right over us to pick us up on DRADIS."
SLSS Elphinstone
Deep Periphery
19 February 3046
The sensor station of the command centre, which had previously been chirping steadily as it observed the intruding fleet, wailed sharply, dragging McEvedy's attention away from the reports she'd been studying on the training cycle and back to Gordon, who had been playing with image enhancement to try to get a more distinct image of the distant intruders.
"What the hell!?"
Gordon studied the display. "Multiple contacts in high orbit of Lizard. Range one million kilometres. Twenty-one seperate... waitaminute."
"We don't have a minute," McEvedy snapped. "All hands, battle stations."
The crew had been at readiness anyway, but now they stopped conversations, card games and whatever other pastimes they had been diverting themselves with as they sat waiting for the decision that it was safe to stand down. Dozens of turrets twitched as motors stirred, shaking loose the light dusting of ice particles that disguised them. Missile hatches snapped open and magazines opened, feeding the tubes with war loads.
"It's the same fleet," Gordon reported. "They microjumped between us and the planet. The count and the imagery matches - and I've got a much better look now."
"What are we dealing with?"
Gordon grimaced. "Two battleships, captain. Big bastards - warbook says the smallest is as big as a McKenna. Several much smaller ships - they don't look military... I could swear one looks more like a liner."
Arlene's face paled and she reached out to the master weapons control, physically holding it in the safe position. It didn't actively prevent anyone firing - that would be one hell of a point failure - but it did mean they'd have to deliberately override it, which at least kept twitchy trigger fingers from being too much of a problem (or at least simplified things if someone with poor impulse control needed to be court martialed). "Are they moving?"
"Not right now," Gordon concluded, checking his reports.
Arlene exhaled slowly and then reached for the tannoy only then realising that she hadn't switched it off. "All hands," she ordered. "Do not - I repeat - do not go active. They're out of range and we're probably just a little bit out-gunned here, so let's hope that they don't know we're here."
"Why didn't we get any warning when they jumped away?" one of the younger recruits manning a weapons station asked the next crewman over.
"They were a light hour out," McEvedy told him, puncturing his illusion that the officers hadn't been close enough to hear the whispered question. "It'll take most of an hour for the light from them jumping to reach us."
The crewman winced. "Sorry, Captain."
"On the one hand, Green, there's no such thing as a stupid question. On the other, learn to think. You had all the informa-"
Ringelli's console sounded off again.
"Oh what now!"
Gordon grimaced. "Two more contacts, low orbit of Lizard, far side of our mysterious visitors."
"Anyone we know?"
The lieutenant grimaced. "Standard approach zone and they're boosting towards our orbit. Ten gets you one it's couriers from HQ with a response to our warning."
McEvedy slammed one fist onto a bulkhead. "Of all the rotten luck," she cursed.
Deep Periphery
1 April 3025
The fighter had come out of nowhere.
Nothing that Captain Helena Elphinstone had seen before, two scimitar-like wings sweeping forwards from a comparatively tiny main body.
"Any response?" she asked as she watched the wireframe image generated by the Logan's computers sweep around the icon representing the much larger dropship.
"No ma'am," Sergeant Abbot reported solidly. "I've tried English, Mandarin, Spanish, Cantonese, Japanese, Hindi, Welsh -"
"Welsh?" Elphinstone asked in surprise.
Abbot shrugged. "Closest I could come to Gaelic, ma'am."
She nodded her understanding. Abbot was an outstanding linguist, one reason she'd used to justify stealing him from Division HQ to serve on the Logan for this mission. Some of the smaller colonies out here in the Periphery didn't use English much, or at all.
"And Russian, ma'am. Nothing - if they're listening, they aren't saying anything."
"Try something a little more universal," Elphinstone ordered. "It's a long shot but some of the knuckledraggers they put in fighters these days know the classics." The command deck was too small for it to be worth moving but she turned her chair's shockframe so that she could see the radar display. "Still no sightings of the mothership?"
"No Ma'am. For all I can tell it might as well have jumped here on it's own," Lieutenant Honda replied with a smirk at his own jest. Then the smile slipped from his lips. "Aspect change! It's making an attack run."
Elphinstone's reaction was one ingrained in her since her teenage years. "Weapons free, engines to flank, squirt our logs to Helm's Deep."
"Missiles incoming," Honda snapped, eyes tracking the radar display. Beneath her feet Elphinstone felt the vibrations of the Logan's engines as they stopped idling and punched the little Condor-class dropship ahead at just over one gravity of acceleration. "They're tracking," reported Honda grimly. "Big bastards, ma'am."
"Drop the nose," ordered Elphinstone. "One eighty degree turn - get him in our sights with more than the aft lasers."
The dropshop's nose dropped and the tail rose as it turned. It was still perpendicular to the direction of travel when the first missile hit.
"Situation report!" coughed Elphinstone as smoke from burning computer systems began to make itself known. Sergeant Abbot was down - his shockframe had failed and he was wrapped around the radio controls.
Honda looked at what functionality he had left. "Radiation levels are... high," he admitted. "Must have been a nuke. Port wing is just gone. Troop decks are open to space, engine's not in a good way."
Elphinstone looked at the radcounter, rubbed her face, looked again. We're all dead, she realised. It was only a matter of time when that much radiation swept through a ship. "Weapons?"
"What?"
"Weapons," she demanded again. "Can we hit him back?"
Honda stared at her for a minute and then back at the radar. "We're still spinning. If he doesn't manuver then he'll be in our field of fire in about a minute."
Elphinstone unstrapped herself and made her way to the gunnery station. "Corporal Suang?"
"Ammo feeds are gone in the right wing but the lasers are alright and the nose guns are still active," the older woman - one of those NCOs who moved up the ranks when in the field and down them back on base - reported. "Get him in front of me and he'll be laughing out of the other side of his face."
The captain clapped the corporal on the shoulder. "Just make it count Suang. We've only got one shot at this."
The minute crept by with sadistic slowness, everyone watching the movements of the hostile, willing it not to change its course.
"Firing," Suang said calmly, centring the hostile in her crosshairs.
The first shots to hit were lasers, hammering into - in one place through - the fighter's left wing, laming it to match the Logan. A moment later the particle cannon mounted in the nose of the Logan raked across the 'face' at the front of the fighter's main body. The second impact shifted it sufficiently that the following cannon rounds and missiles missed but it was a non-issue. The fighter was dead in space.
Elphinstone straightened and turned back to the rest of the crew. "Right. Who wants to go EVA and get that heap secured? Back up will be here soon and I want everything shipshape when they get here." And I'd better update the logs.
Because by the time they do get here, none of us will be in any condition to explain what just happened.
Military Communique
From: Ringelli, Major Octavia (CO, SLJS Helm's Deep)
To: Elgin, General Samuel (CG, SLDF)
At 22:37 03.01.25 SLDS Logan (Elphinstone, Captain Helena commanding) detected a single fighter without apparent support in system 7-74-66-02. Per standard orders, Logan ceased emissions and attempted to avoid contact.
At 00:03 04.01.25 said fighter altered course towards SLDS Logan. Captain Elphinstone deemed contact unavoidable and attempted radio communication. No response was received.
At 01:05 04.01.25 said fighter increased speed of approach markedly. Deeming this a hostile action, Captain Elphinstone took evasive action and transmitted a warning to SLJS Helm's Deep, then located at the Nadir Jump Point.
Four missiles were launched by said fighter at SLDS Logan. At least one missile carried a nuclear weapon that inflicted severe damage upon SLDS Logan, killing thirteen (13) crewmen and one hundred forty-seven (147) members of the survey party embarked. Secondary radiation effects inflicted mortal injury upon all survivors. Return fire from SLDS Logan destroyed the hostile fighter. Captain Elphinstone ordered the recovery of the fighter, such as was achievable given the limited resources of SLDS Logan, for intelligence purposes.
SLDS Elric (Buskhin, Captain Piotr commanding) reached SLDS Logan's position at 06:32 05.01.25. At that time, all crew and passengers of SLDS Logan were found to be dead. Full logs were recovered along with the essential structure of the hostile fighter, which matches no design on record within the databases of SLJS Helm's Deep. SLDS Logan was deemed unsalvagable and stripped of all recoverable equipment and bodies before being towed into a unavertable course for the stellar gravity well.
Based upon this encounter, the survey expedition has been aborted and SLJS Helm's Deep is returning to base. The fighter has been tentatively determined to be unmanned, using technology superior in some respects to that of the SLDF. In particular it is believed that certain components may comprise a Kearny-Fuchida drive smaller by several orders of magnitude than any on record.
Based upon the logs of SLDS Logan, Captain Helena Elphinstone is recommended for posthumous award of the Medal of Valour and promotion to the rank of Major.
SLSS Elphinstone
Deep Periphery
18 February 3046
Picket duty is fairly boring, Lieutenant Gordon Ringelli observed as he looked at the instruments again.
The Elphinstone was deployed in a high orbit around a gas giant that was - officially - codenamed Lizard. Most of the orbital defense platform's crew just called it The Iceball. Of course, since the Elphinstone had been artistically covered with ice and other debris from the Iceball's orbital plane until it looked like nothing more than another puny moon barely worthy of notice, it had promptly been dubbed The Icebox.
Lancea Orbital Defense Platforms were the backbone of the Star League in Exile's deep space infrastructure - dozens of them dotted the Sanctuary star system and probably almost as many were located in systems like this one, watching for unexpected arrivals within jump range of Sanctuary - either from the Inner Sphere, the Clans or...
Well, or whoever had killed the Icebox's namesake more than two decades ago in this very star system. Even after all that time there had not been even one more sighting and no analysis to date had given a name to them.
Since it was in orbit, there was always the possibility... Gordon straightened as the computer began to detail the differences between the parts of the sky that had been occluded by Iceball for the last few hours and what it had looked like on the previous orbit. Most of it was simply the predictable movement of the spare star system's other planets, moons and whatnot... three of them weren't.
After a moment's throught, Gordon was reaching for the communications panel - even if it just turned out to be previously undetected asteroids the Captain would want to know - when the computers pinged again and reported a fourth unidentified object. One that hadn't been there when the Elphinstone came around the Lizard.
Ping. Five objects. Ping-ping-ping. Ping.
Gordon didn't bother with the communications panel. Instead he flipped the cover off one of the least used controls available to him and hit the red button with relish.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
The lieutenant counted again. More than a dozen now, all in close proximity. Whoever was there was there in force and - he checked direction and estimated distance - nowhere near the jump conditions that a Kearny-Fuchida Drive was limited to.
"Well hello again," he whispered to himself. "I wonder why it took you so long to get here..."
"Situation?" Captain Arlene McEvedy asked as she entered the command centre. She'd been asleep but after two decades in the Star League Defense Force she'd gotten used to rising suddenly to deal with an incipient crisis. At least this time it wasn't two idiots on their national service tours beating each other up over a third idiot - she understood the need to run every able adult through the basics of military activity but for a woman from a military family, who'd served when the SLDF was a tight-knit body of proffessionals maintaining traditions that Sanctum could barely support, it galled to have half her command made up of short-term draftees.
Lieutenant Ringelli wasn't one of them, of course, and he snapped to attention as she entered the room, his eyes barely flickering from the displays. Of course, he was almost from a military family himself. "Multiple unidentified objects, Captain. They're coming out of nowhere - possibly jumping in. There are twenty-one of them by my count."
"Perhaps even probably," she muttered, looking at the imagery. Whatever they were, they were pretty deep into the system. "They've waited a long time to come looking for their friend, if they're who you're thinking Lieutenant," she added warningly. "Still, we can't take any chances. We'd need to send a warning to Sanctuary Command. Who's on the ready launch status?"
Gordon had already checked of course. "Sergeant Colman and Sergeant Swyley," he reported. "They are ready to launch within sixty seconds and the rest of the Cluster will be at five minutes readiness within."
"'Cluster'," Arlene said and shook her head. "Sounds more like it should have a Colonel running it, not Captain Hogan. No offense to the Captain, of course."
"Well if the Ghost Clusters all had Colonels in charge, the extra brass would probably slow Sanctum's spin," Gordon quipped.
"I'd take that in trade if it meant I got real pilots not those console jockeys," Arlene grumbled. "They'd be no less annoying and at least I could have them go after targets that aren't right on top of us. Alright, send them off. And have the damn ghosts go to sixty seconds readiness, they've no damn excuse for not being ready to go on that little notice."
Fifty-one seconds after Captain McEvedy's order was given, one of the hatches on the side of the Elphinstone slid smoothly aside and pair of fork-nosed aerospace fighters darted out, heading for the cover of the Iceball. It only took them ten minutes to be behind it and completely concealed from the newly arrived ships.
Two minutes later they were gone as if they had never been there.
SLDF HQ
Aleksandrburg, Sanctum
18 February 3046
"What is going on here?" snapped Octavia Ringelli, three seconds after she stepped into what was supposed to be the strategic command centre of the entire Star League Defense Force (all one Division of it). It had sounded far more like a barroom full of football fan advocating rival teams when she entered and the chastened looks on the faces she could see after she spoke looked entirely too much like those of scolded children.
"Well?" she demanded, looking around at the suddenly silent chamber.
Lieutenant-General Hercule Maclintock cleared his throat. The commander of Beta Galaxy was the most likely of all the 331st Division's General Officers to be found in the Star League Defense Force's Headquarters building - Beta Division was the primary response force after all. "There is a report from the Elphinstone," he reported soberly. "Several unidentified contacts appeared suddenly deep insystem. No details yet, but until further notice they are assumed to be hostile."
Octavia nodded, processing the information. "How did they send the report?" she asked.
"Two jumpfighters arrived, both carrying duplicates of the information," a Colonel that Octavia couldn't remember the name of for the life of her advised. "They handed the contents to Jellico ODP on hardcopy and Captain Ericsson sent it to us on tightbeam."
"Good to hear someone kept their head," Octiavia grumbled. The last thing they wanted was someone panicking and sending major radio signals. Slow as such a signal would be, the risk of Jerome Blake's little band of acolytes damnable Explorer Corps - or worse, a far-ranging Clan jumpship - happening to pick up a radio signal was simply far too high for anything but the most desperate of emergencies. "Although we still don't know anything definite, do we?"
"Nothing but their presence," Maclintock confirmed, with a grimace at the implied criticism.
The Commanding General of the Star League Defense Forces, such as they were, frowned. "Well, that's enough to get a few measures under way. Hercule, I want one of your infantry clusters embarked for immediate departure. Jaina -" Lieutenant General Jaina Hoshigawa, Head of Fleet Command "- send a courier to intercept the Minnesota and her escorts. Order them to divert to Estevan Station - we'll use that as a rendevous point."
"Just the Minnesota and one battalion?" Maclintock asked hesitantly.
"No," Octavia shook her head firmly. "I think we can spare the Manitoba as well, and pry one or two corvette squadrons to bolster the screen. Two destroyers, eight carriers and eight corvettes should be enough to at least withdraw if need be." She smirked. "And who's to say? Maybe they won't be hostile."
A ripple of chuckles went around the room.
"Right, I'd better go brief the High Council," Octavia decided. "Get the forces ready to move and send out a general war warning. We'll go to Defense Condition Amber until further notice."
Galactica
Periphery
19 February 3048
"What do we do now?"
William Adama didn't look up from the desk he was sat behind. He wasn't sure he'd be able to look his son in the eye as he admitted: "I don't know, Lee."
He heard Lee exhale and then the sound of the other chair scraping against the deck as the younger Adama pulled it back and seated himself where Tigh had sat, Gods, was it even a day yet?
"You were right," Adama said and leaned back, looking somewhere in the direction of Lee's chest. "We're not in any shape to fight the Cylons. That has to come first. We don't have much in the way of crew."
"How about the rest of the ships?" Lee asked. "There must be a couple of thousand people on board them."
"Mostly people with enough pull over Baltar to stay out of the mud of New Caprica," his father said gruffly. "I don't believe I'd trust them even if I could get them to work. The crews... well, maybe. But they're shorthanded as well. They're all fairly spaceworthy though."
Lee stiffened. "You can't be thinking of just going on?" he asked incredulously.
"Hmm?" his father said, the tone surprised and he looked up for the first time. "Go on? No. Not without..." He flicked his hand, apparently unwilling to put the rest of the objection into words. Or at least, willing to let Lee fill in the blanks on his own.
"Then we have to go back."
"When we are ready to, yes," he agreed. "Even if we can't fill out our crews, they're rusty - out of practise. We need to blast that rust off. Work out a plan. But first we need to hold the fleet together, which means getting our people onboard. Let them know that we're secure here - which we are, unless the Cylons get luckier than they have any right to be -"
"They've already gotten lucky once," Lee pointed out grimly. "I know you said that it was too soon to stop running, but finding us in that nebula..."
"That's true," Adama conceded. "However, it would take a lot of searching to find us here. And I'm not planning to just stay here. We'll head for one of the gas giants and shelter the fleet in the upper atmosphere - deep enough that they'd have to stumble right over us to pick us up on DRADIS."
SLSS Elphinstone
Deep Periphery
19 February 3046
The sensor station of the command centre, which had previously been chirping steadily as it observed the intruding fleet, wailed sharply, dragging McEvedy's attention away from the reports she'd been studying on the training cycle and back to Gordon, who had been playing with image enhancement to try to get a more distinct image of the distant intruders.
"What the hell!?"
Gordon studied the display. "Multiple contacts in high orbit of Lizard. Range one million kilometres. Twenty-one seperate... waitaminute."
"We don't have a minute," McEvedy snapped. "All hands, battle stations."
The crew had been at readiness anyway, but now they stopped conversations, card games and whatever other pastimes they had been diverting themselves with as they sat waiting for the decision that it was safe to stand down. Dozens of turrets twitched as motors stirred, shaking loose the light dusting of ice particles that disguised them. Missile hatches snapped open and magazines opened, feeding the tubes with war loads.
"It's the same fleet," Gordon reported. "They microjumped between us and the planet. The count and the imagery matches - and I've got a much better look now."
"What are we dealing with?"
Gordon grimaced. "Two battleships, captain. Big bastards - warbook says the smallest is as big as a McKenna. Several much smaller ships - they don't look military... I could swear one looks more like a liner."
Arlene's face paled and she reached out to the master weapons control, physically holding it in the safe position. It didn't actively prevent anyone firing - that would be one hell of a point failure - but it did mean they'd have to deliberately override it, which at least kept twitchy trigger fingers from being too much of a problem (or at least simplified things if someone with poor impulse control needed to be court martialed). "Are they moving?"
"Not right now," Gordon concluded, checking his reports.
Arlene exhaled slowly and then reached for the tannoy only then realising that she hadn't switched it off. "All hands," she ordered. "Do not - I repeat - do not go active. They're out of range and we're probably just a little bit out-gunned here, so let's hope that they don't know we're here."
"Why didn't we get any warning when they jumped away?" one of the younger recruits manning a weapons station asked the next crewman over.
"They were a light hour out," McEvedy told him, puncturing his illusion that the officers hadn't been close enough to hear the whispered question. "It'll take most of an hour for the light from them jumping to reach us."
The crewman winced. "Sorry, Captain."
"On the one hand, Green, there's no such thing as a stupid question. On the other, learn to think. You had all the informa-"
Ringelli's console sounded off again.
"Oh what now!"
Gordon grimaced. "Two more contacts, low orbit of Lizard, far side of our mysterious visitors."
"Anyone we know?"
The lieutenant grimaced. "Standard approach zone and they're boosting towards our orbit. Ten gets you one it's couriers from HQ with a response to our warning."
McEvedy slammed one fist onto a bulkhead. "Of all the rotten luck," she cursed.
