A “Battlestar Galactica” Story, Part 12

Spire spoke up first. “Exploded is just fine. What the hell is that thing, and does it have guns on it?”

In response, streams of tracer fire burst outward from the right side of the hull, and three of the oncoming Cylons blew into fireballs. “According to the logs we found at the shipyard, this thing’s called a Halberd. Fast for an escort class ship, and armed to the teeth. But it’s been out of commission so long that it’s got some issues…Senior Chief Tyrol’s been working on it. We just got it working consistently this morning. I was trying out the FTL function when I jumped in here and found you guys.

As this conversation was going on, the battle continued; Giravick called “Flame one, raider”, Obo managed to rack up two more. Kon-X had worked himself into a swirling furball with four raiders; as Quinn watched, two disappeared into fireballs, and a third began to smoke. The fourth one stayed on Kon-X’s tail. Quin swung around and immediately pasted that one. Spire notched two more, and Hirise and Popinfresh managed to knock down one apiece. Then the remaining raiders jumped away.

From Spire: “Warrior Flight, check in. Status?”

Joseppi: “Joseppi, green board here. Weapons in standby, FTL ready.”

Bow: “Bow Zero-Five-Five, green board, weapons in standby, FTL ready.”

Kon-X: “Kon-X here, green board, weapons in standby, FTL ready. Took some minor damage but my hull integrity is still good enough to jump.”

Spire: “Warhorse, how about you?”

Quinn swept his eyes across the panel. The readouts showed green, with one exception…the mining scanner showed yellow. The status readout showed Scanner too hot…cooldown required. “Spire, Warhorse, I’m mostly green over here. Weapons in standby, FTL ready, but my mining scanner’s showing that it’s overheating. I’m gonna shut it down for a bit.”

Spire: “Overheating?? You only scanned one rock with it.”

“I know. Don’t know what else to tell ya.”

“Alright…well, we were heading for the Delta Canopis base anyway. Warrior Flight, map out a route for the shipyard. We’ve gotta get Warhorse over there. Check in when ready.”

From DarkSkull: “I’m gonna linger and loiter…this mine will need protection, and my guns are bigger than yours.”

A small chuckle from Spire. “That’s what she said Dark. Alright…you stick around, make sure the miners stay on the job and the Cylons stay away. I’ll make arrangements to get some help out here to ya. Warrior Flight, are you ready?”

A chorus of “Ready” and “Check” came from the Vipers. “Alright, check threat clear. When verified, jump.”

A second chorus of “Threat clear, jumping” came from the flight. Spire called Quinn directly. “Okay, open your system map. Delta Canopis is going to be above Galactica’s position in the Alpha Ceti system.”

“Got it.”

“Okay…use your trackball to tag the systems in the most direct route from here to Delta Canopis.”

Quinn clicked his way through the systems. “All set here.”

“Alright…hit the GOTO button, sit back, and let the computer do the driving. We should be there in a few minutes.”

As Quinn looked on, Joseppi, Bow, and Giravick all disappeared in a FTL flash; Hirise and Popinfresh followed a few seconds later. He tapped the GOTO button, took his hands off the stick, sat back in the seat, and…

FWOOOM.


* * *

A few jumps later, Quinn opened his eyes, and the massive bulk of Pegasus was floating in space directly in front of him. “Spire, Warhorse, jump complete.”

“Roger that. The shipyard is on the other side of Pegasus. Make your way around, and I’ll show you where to put down.” Quinn maneuvered his Viper around the massive battlestar, and the ancient shipyard came into view.

Man…this place looks prehistoric. He eased along the lines of ships. “Spire, what are these things, anyway?”

“That first one you’re seeing is called an Aesir. Very fast, heavily armed, but not a lot of computers on board.” Quinn slowly guided the Viper over the arrowhead-shaped bow. “The next one — -the one with the twin pontoons and antennas hanging all over it — -is called a Vanir, according to the builder’s plates. Not as fast as the Aesir, but has some massive high-powered computers on it. Looks like it was meant for fleet ECM duty…first time we tested the computers, we almost fried the targeting systems on Pegasus.” Quinn glided past the twin hulls and bristling antennas. “This last one — -the big blocky-lookin’ one — -is called a Jotunn. Not fast, but armored to the hilt, and some very big guns on it. We dragged one of the more-damaged hulks out of the shipyard to test the cannons; they cut that hulk in half with the first salvo.” A pause. “I kinda prefer the Aesir myself. We’re trying to get that one outfitted with all the spare parts we found…I’m hoping the Admiral will let me take it out.”

Quinn passed over the nose of the Jotunn and continued further into the yard. More ships came into view, smaller than the first set. “So what are these?”

“The one you’re passing over now is called a Scythe, for obvious reasons.” Quinn slid past the scythe-shaped hull. “Very fast, decently armed. Lela’s actually slated to take command of the first one to get refitted. Next one up is called a Glaive…seems to serve the same function for an escort that the Vanir does for the bigger ships.”” Quinn passed by the arrowhead-shaped nose. The ship looked cold and dark. “Lastly, we’ve found this thing called a Maul.” Quinn braked the Viper to a stop, and stared. The bow looked like a giant fork, and the hull gradually opened out to three massive engines in the back. The ship was dirty and scarred, as though it had seen some action in the past and then been parked and forgotten about. Few lights shone from the portholes, and here and there he saw people working in extravehicular mode around the hull. Quinn spoke up. “This actually looks like it might have some potential.”

Spire snorted over the comm. “You like that one? We gotta talk about your sense of preference…if it were up to me, I’d take one of those Scythes. The few Mauls that we’ve found look like hammered daggit shit. From what I’ve seen, these look like the escort version of the Jotunn; lotta armor, some decently powerful guns…but they’re all beat to hell.”

“Yeah, but I bet they could deliver a punch back in the day. I’d take one.”

“Suit yerself.” A short pause. “Okay, enough dallying. Check your DRADIS; you should see a signal coming from my location.”

“Yep…moving to you.” Quinn worked the RCS thrusters, and soon found himself above a landing platform. He lowered the landing gear and eased down to the center of the platform…the gear touched down with a gentle thunk. There were a couple of loud thumps from underneath the Viper…”You should be hearing the landing clamps now,” said Spire. Quinn felt the ramp start to drop, and a few seconds later, a set of doors slid into place above the descending landing platform. It continued down into the center of the shipyard. At the bottom, Quinn found the rest of the flight waiting for him…and Senior Chief Tyrol. Quinn shut the Viper down, slid the canopy forward, and climbed down to face the Senior Chief.

“So…how’d she do sir?”

“Great! You know yer a miracle worker, right?”

“Miracles are my specialty sir…now: What’s this I hear about an overheating mining scanner?”

“I dunno Senior Chief…the whole thing’s new to me. I’m just reporting what the computer readout said.” As Quinn was speaking, Tyrol moved to the nose of the fighter and opened an access panel. He grabbed a module from the compartment, and almost immediately dropped it on the deck. “OW, SONOFABITCH! Yep, it’s hot alright…Eglin, get over here with some gloves and take this module to my workbench.” A crewman hustled over, gloves on, and took the module away. “I’ll have some answers for you in a few minutes sir.” He followed the crewman, flapping his hands and blowing on them to cool them off.

Spire came over. “Hot module huh?”

“Yep. Heckuva place, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.” Quinn found himself looking around. They were standing in the middle of a massive hangar…This place looks big enough to park Galactica in, thought Quinn. The lighting was not great — -Quinn had to strain to see, as only a few lights were actually functioning. In the shadows, he could make out enormous hangar doors along the sides of the space. Wonder what’s in those hangars…

A pilot walked up to him. “Major Quinn?”

He turned to face the new guy. “Yeah?”

“My name’s Chris, callsign Salahdin. I’m the head of Warrior Flight.” He stuck out his hand. “Glad to have you aboard. Spire’s told me about you.”

Quinn shook his hand. “Hope he’s told you all good stuff.”

“He has…although he did mention that you’ve got some issues with Thrace.”

Quinn snorted. “You could say that.”

“Well, don’t worry about it…we’ve all had our run-ins with her at one point or another. Welcome to the flight..glad to have you aboard.” Salahdin looked past Quinn’s right shoulder. “This is James, callsign Gingerninja. He’s our test pilot.” Quinn turned around to see a lanky redhead standing right behind him..he started slightly. “Where the hell did you come from?”

Salahdin leaned in close. “That’s why we call him ‘Gingerninja’. In addition to his formidable skills as a Viper pilot, he’s also reallllly sneaky. A number of Cylons have found that out the hard way.”

“I’ll bet.”

Gingerninja extended his hand, and in a heavy accent said, “Welcome aboard!”

“Indeed…thank you!” Just then, Tyrol walked back over.

“Sir, we’ve pulled that module apart.” He paused. “Can we talk in private?”

Quinn thought about it for a moment. “It’s alright Senior Chief…if something’s gone sideways with my ship, these two…” He gestured to Salahdin and Gingerninja. “…should know about it.”

Tyrol shrugged. “Alright sir. Anyway…we checked out that module. Somebody pulled one of the heat sinks…looks like they didn’t want it to melt down until you were out in space and couldn’t do anything about it. We’re gonna have to replace it completely…the circuit board’s partially melted from the heat so it can’t be rebuilt.”

Quinn sighed. “Great. Yet one more thing I gotta look into.”

Chris spoke up. “Whaddya mean, ‘you’? You’re part of Warrior Flight now…if somebody’s frakking with your ride, they get to deal with all of us.” He turned to Tyrol. “Go ahead with the replacement Senior Chief…and post a guard on that bird. I want to know everything that happens to that craft, from now until Quinn’s actually sitting in it to leave.”

“You got it sir…I’ll pull one of the Marines right away.” With that, Tyrol headed off.

Chris turned to Quinn. “Looks like you’ve got some friends.”