Combat: “Air wing is refueled and re-armed.”
Lawson: “Hold them in the tubes. Cylons wont make us wait too long.”
Combat: “Saturn reports FTL drive is repaired.”
XO Mercury: “This is Whiskey Saturns orders are to hang back. Jump if pressured.”
Saturn Combat: “This is XO Saturn. Orders acknowledged.”
DRADIS: “Contacts, cylon air fleet. Launching Raiders. Lots of jamming.”
XO Mercury: “All air wings launch. Standby all weps defensive and offensive.”
Pilot: “Half of these guys are jamming wardrivers. Upgraded first war tech.”
CAG: “Request electronic warfare help us clear our scopes.”
XO Mercury: “Negative CAG. ECM are on different mission.”
CAG: “What the frak!”
Pilot: “These jammers are all over us. Where are the ECM birds?”
Combat: “Cylons are hacking our network!”
Lawson: “This is Mercury actual. Initiate Cyber defense.”
Mercury Actual: “Next pilot that gripes about ECM will NOT like their next assignment. CAG try and draw the raiders into our engagement zone.”
Combat: “Venus is under heavy fire.”
XO: Mercury: “This is Whiskey, Venus is authorized for emergency jump. Commanders discretion.”
“This is Venus actual. FTL offline. Attempting to disengage.”
Combat: “Base star is making a move on the refinery.”
Lawson: “Of course they are.”
Venus Actual: “We are in a crossfire. Taking heavy damage.”
Combat: “We lost the Venus.”
Combat: “Argos down!”
Combat: “Base stars are on collision course withthe refinery.”
Lawson in CIC: “They will jumping after the refineries go up. Marines and fuel ships
Jump to waypoint Zeus.”
“This is whiskey. All batteries take out the Cylon carriers.”
Chapter 13 story video.
Major Samuel Jones looked like he needed a glass filled with his call sign “Whiskey” which he had picked up as a nugget fresh out of flight school. He walked into the office adjoined to the commanders quarters, where Admiral Lawson had very few of her meetings.
Without permission, he sat down at the Admiral’s table. She was out of her blue uniform jacket, in the standard issue fleet tee-shirt, which was sleeveless. She had a serious look on her face, but also flashed a bemused expression.
“Major,” she said. “You wanted a meeting you have your meeting.”
“Well the fuel mission failed. We need to plan another attack as soon as possible. My in box is full of requests for fuel. The commanders are hoarding it so they can’t be left behind. I can hold them off for a while, but only if we plan another raid. Quickly. I think I know where we went wrong Sir. I wrote up a tactical plan.”
“Major Jones, would you like a drink? I’d suggest cold water, but I have hooch somewhere in these quarters as well.”
“Sir,” he sputtered, “I think I need a clear head to plan a raid.” He pushed a usb flash drive on the desk.
“What’s that?” Lawson was smiling slightly unable to keep a grave look on her face.
The door chime buzzed. Major Jones turned his head with surprise.
“Come in Commander,” Lawson looked from her seat at the door. Commander Ramirez, looking smart in her newly tailor uniform, gave a nod to Major Jones.
Jones looked flustered. He gestured at his USB drive. “Should I have submitted my refinery attack plan to Commander Ramirez for her review.”
“We’re attacking another refinery?” Ramirez looked confused.
Major Jones spoke up again. “The raid failed,” he said, “we have to plan another raid.”
“We need more fuel?” Commander Ramirez asked. “What happened to the fuel we took during the battle?”
“What fuel?” Jones asked.
“All right,” Lawson smiled. “News flash. If you remember the raid that we ran before the Cylon invasion was a fuel grab. Its easy for the Cylons to blow up a refinery. Their reaction to our assault was expected.”
“Why?” Major Jones asked.
“Because my hackers leaked the raid to the Cylons, We needed them to think we were coming and send out tankers.” Commander Ramirez smiled, proud of her hacker team.
“So when the Cylons discovered our attack plans, they emptied out the refinery. We knew that, We cut the size of the task force and diverted resources to the actual attack plan.” Admiral Lawson was smiling slightly.
“I wasn’t told,” Jones replied.
“We needed you to sell the attack plan. We hijacked every tanker that left the refinery. That is forty ships.”
“We outsmarted the Cylons?” Major Jones asked.
“We outsmarted the Cylons.” Admiral Lawson agreed. “To be perfectly accurate, Commander Ramirez outsmarted them. When I asked for a better attack plan, I rejected all the ones we had tried before. I wanted an out of the box plan.
Jones reached across the table and took back his USB drive.
“I will be needing to plan on a 250 jump sprint to get as far away from the Cylons as we can, as fast as we can. I routinely limit the information in my attack plans to keep the Cylons from finding out. As you know, I was frakking one of the humanoid models before we knew they had humanoid models.”
“Forty fuel ships, that is quite a bit of fuel.” Commander Ramirez said. “Toasters are going to be kind of angry when they figure thing out. We are going to convert the first 15 fuel carriers to hold passengers after we get their fuel unloaded.”
“Admiral,” Major Jones said, rising from his seat and offering a crisp military salute. “Please forgive me Sir for doubting your plan.”
Lawson stood up and returned the salute. “Nothing to forgive. You acted inn good faith on the information you received. It is my trust issues that I need to address.”
“So Admiral,” Maria Ramirez who had not sat down, looked directly into her commanding officers eyes. “Where will we go?”
“Well. We have taken copies of everything useful on the Cylon network?”
“Yes Sir. There is a copy of the database on each of the three Mercury Class ships. It is air gapped. We can only do research in the labs that have workstations. It will take some time to verify the data. The Cylons conducted a lot of exploration of the galaxy, mostly in search of the resources they needed to destroy us.” Commander Ramirez stood straight, anticipating the next question.
“So we can safely cut our physical encroachment of the Cylon communications network?”
“We already have,” Ramirez confirmed. “My hacking teams left behind quite a lot of clever malware, but we receive our data dumps from indirect sources. A bit of encrypted data on certain raiders. Our salvage teams are combing the refinery site for some more nuggets.”
“Well done Commander Ramirez. How long will it take the Cylons to remove all of this what did you call it malware?”
“Admiral Lawson,” she grinned. “Right now the Cylons have a choice. They can stop all military operations and clean up their systems with backups made prior to our hack. We estimate that would give us a three to six month head start.”
“Or they can pursue us, knowing that we are reading their email!” Major Jones added with his own grin.
“How did we beat the Cylons at computer software?” Admiral Lawson, a pilot at her core asked.
“We created the Cylons, we just wrote our own upgrade in.” Ramirez concluded.
“Okay,” Lawson began the brainstorming meeting. “We head for parts unknown, into parts of the Galaxy the Cylons have not explored.”
“Right,” Ramirez walked to the computer terminal and brought up a map of the galaxy. “It will make resource acquisition harder, most important would be our tylium and metals supplies. But in the long run, it makes it equally hard for the Cylons will have to develop their own resources along the way.”
“We can make it harder on the Cylons by hitting their fuel depots and refineries on the way through their territories,” Major Jones suggested.
In unison, the two women present said, “right.” Then they talked over each other, trying to outline some technical plans. Lawson finally took the floor. “We also want to rescue some more of those we left behind in the so called “new” Colonies.”
“We can send in some more arms for the resistance.” Ramirez said.
“Okay,” Lawson guided. “Lets make a list of priorities and see what we can get done. Priority one is the repair of our damaged battlestars while we continue to sprint for safety.”
“Then route exploration, aid to the resistance,” Jones added. “Don’t forget to blow up the Cylon fuel dumps.” The trio laughed together and almost missed the door chime, a private offering them some badly needed coffee. For a few hours optimism ruled.