Chapter 46: Recon

Cavil was probably clinically depressed if not psychotic. His military campaign against the colonies was going poorly. The Galactica was leading a government taking 47,000 civilians into an exile, pursued by thousands of Cylon forces. The fleet of 1000 ships that wiped out the colonies was now spread across the galaxy looking for Galactica.

A rogue Batttlestar, the Pegasus was running rough on Cylon forces in the same general direction as Galactica. They had recently ambushed a base star group near Kobol, cleaning up the mess in the wake of the attempted assassination of Commander Adama.

Galactica had managed to take out a base star over Kobol. By the time a force recon of two base stars made it to determine the fate of the first base star the Pegasus jumped in and destroyed one and badly damaged a second before jumping away with hardly a scratch on her paint.

There were sixty base stars in pursuit of the Roslyn fleet with several hundred support ships.

Eva Lawson who was being fracked by a copy of Cavil’s model had run a successful campaign to deprive the Cylons of fuel. Half the force following Adama had stopped off to mine and process tylium when they had actually run out of fuel.

A group of five base stars had intercepted Lawson and Mercury and was bracketing her for the kill. Remnants of the CNP virus reported Mercury’s FTL was down.

Lawson had turned from running and conducted a high risk Battlestar charge, taking out one base star. Then the decrepit old museum that Galactica was slated to replace, had jumped in and disrupted the battle just enough so that Commander Lawson’s engineering team was able to replace the part and ring the FTL drive back on line.

Cavil had made sure the Lawson fleet had contracted the deadly Sunspot virus, and the infection rate in her overcrowded fleet was over 50% in the first week. The primary defense against a virus was social distancing and separation were impossible in an overcrowded fleet.

Battlestar Group 34 had done the least damage to the Cylon occupation of the colonies, but now represented the greatest threat. They had wisely avoided confrontation with the forces occupying the colonies, but had managed to put together a self sustaining ship building operation.

The entire operation was jump cable, using FTL drives seized from several manufacturers in the four solar systems that made up the twelve colonies.

They had mining ships, plans and were able to fix battle damage to their fleet. Further, they had raided the bone yards where hundreds if not thousands of war ships had been stripped an decommission and acquired millions of tons of materials that they could recycle into parts for their fleet.

There was an unconfirmed report that they had a ship yard consisting of between four and eight converted observatories and were in the process of producing Valkyrie class Battlestars.

The entire operation could be jumped with about ten minutes of preparation. Cavil had no idea what the size of their forces were and who was leading this effort.

Cavil came across an electronic intelligence that BSG-34 had rescued over 100,000 survivors from all twelve colonies. The Amaragosa, a Valkyrie had been lost trying to rescue survivors on Caprica.

That was a double edged sword. That many refugees needed a lot of care and feeding. That would likely expose the fleet and allow for their location to be pinpointed and destroyed.

On the downside, that many refugees would provide a steady supply of labor for the shipyards and crew for their fleet. They could if left unchecked grow into a force strong enough to take back the twelve colonies.

The good news was a member of the Peoples Council was raising all kinds of trouble for the war effort. Demanding that workers get paid, and that the fleet stop drafting people into the war effort. You would think the leader of this legislative body was a Cylon model, but no Cory Brooks was a 37 year old housewife that had lost her children in the attacks. She was a woman of principle. She was better than a Cylon agent.

There was no good news, until a Leoben stood smiling in his doorway.

“What are you smiling about?”

“I was under cover at the shipyards set up by Battlestar group 34. I was a low ranking enlisted computer operator. I’ve got their location, how they have avoided being detected as they jump in and out of this facility. I’ve got it all.”

“Good. Give me a written report. We can put together some forces to slaughter this outpost of humanity.”

Leoben smiled. “Right after you get me posted to the fleet pursuing Kara Thrace and the Galactica.”

“Whatever you want,” Cavil said “your models obsession with Kara Thrace will be your undoing.”

“All of this has happened before,” Leoben said. “and it will happen again.”

Cavil clopped his hand on the desk, making such a loud noise that Leoben was startled. Without further comment, he dropped a data stick on the desk.

“Get me our force commanders,” Cavil bellowed into the intercom. “We have some humans to slaughter.”

Two days had passed since the resurrection of the Leoben. Cavil was looking for something to throw when the military forces reported what they had available to crush the newly resurgent colonial civilization.

“It is amazing we even won the war,” Cavil muttered under his breath.

It occurred to him that he had not received one of the lurid, pornographic reports from Brother John the Cylon that was fracking Commander Eva Laws in some time. If he had been discovered and killed, his memories would become available to the entire model.

That would be very entertaining. It was probably something simple like an isolation protocol to stop the spread of the Sunspot virus.

Before putting the thumb driver the Leoben provided into his workstation, he wondered if he should have it checked. He jammed it in and began reading at high speed.

More great news, BSG-34 had a vaccine for the virus.

What the frack else could go wrong today.