Battlestar Mercury Book 3 “Logistics” Chapter 42: “Smoke & Mirrors”
Commander Indira Modi walked into Athena’s CIC. “Who is the task force commander?”
“You are Sir. Commander Evan’s wife went critical.” The Executive officer, the LSO (Landing Signals Officer) handed over a printed command orders. “This is the list of ships and tactical orders. Flip side is the number and disposition of Cylon forces. The big ones are Cratus class, we call them bulldozers.”
“That was Saturn I saw here. Saturn actual is senior.”
“Negative Sir. Commander Ramirez is down with sunspot virus Sir. You are task force 58 actual. Major King is now Solaria actual. He has been notified.”
“Combat jump? First salvo & air wing launch?”
“Air wing launch in progress. Heavy battlestar salvo fired, looks like the three Rangers are lagging. Comms signal the Rangers to fire salvo one. Sir everything is going according to plan, we are executing a starboard turn in a standard flak left formation.”
“Where is the Admiral?”
“No idea Sir.”
“Carry on Captain Leslie,” ordered the commander. Modi flipped to page 3 of her orders, written meticulously by she assumed Commander Evans or Admiral Lawson. The handoff of the task force and the mission was quite odd, to say the least.
“Three hundred plus mark 1 first war raiders inbound. CBDR. Flak is already picking them off on the edges.”
Modi spoke softly not necessarily meaning to be audible. “First war fighter craft, no modern raiders. Hmm.”
“Radiological alarm. Nukes inbound from the back of the enemy fleet.”
“Captain Leslie, order capital battlestar posture to defensive. Intensify the flak field. Gun ships and scout ship tighten the formation. Order the air wing to be ready to pounce, on our side of the flak barrier.”
“Already ordered Sir. All ships checking in.”
“We have several squadrons of war driver jamming and hacking ships attempting to breach our network. Squadrons are tasked to take out this threat if the point defense cannons do not.”
The LSO, now XO was looking up at her specially configured monitor. In one window there were the battle plan steps. A square window on the lower right gave her DRADIS its operator able to concentrate on getting ID of the various ships. Captain Leslie had reconfigured the CIC to allow her to give status without adding to the heavy background noise.
“Fighters are engaging as per the battle plan Sir. These old first war fighters are outclassed by any fighter we fly.”
Modi clicked on a button on her headset, making her voice live, flipping to the air wing channel. “Commander Air Group, this is task force actual. Two hundred more raiders CBDR.”
3:30
“Fighters report heavy fire Sir, they have it under control.”
3:50
“Rangers, you are doing a great job. Maintain firing rate.” Leslie heard the acknowledgment in her headset.
The Rangers
“Rangers this is Ranger Lead. Complete turn one, then fire salvo one, over the shoulder.”
“Ranger Lead this is Ranger two. Firing salvo one!”
“Ranger Lead to squadron. Fire salvo two!”
“Salvo two away!”
“Firing salvo three! We are lighting them up!”
“Rangers this is Lead. FIRE salvo 4!”
“Jamming is getting heavy!”
“Rangers fire salvo five. Gun the engines during reload!”
“Ranger two. Salvo six away. Cerrastes gunship headed our way. Assault raptors check in!”
“This is Ranger Lead. Our turn toward the enemy fleet is complete. Our best bet is to maintain maximum closure rate. Fire control system on these crates might as well be a couple of rocks.”
“Ranger lead to Rangers. Reverse course. Fire next salvo. Maintain formation.”
“Range Lead this is Ranger two. The jamming is getting bad. We have lost comms with the rest of the task force.”
“Look our a window Ranger two. The enemy fleet is burning.”
“This is Ranger two. He may be trying a ramming run!”
“Ranger Lead to Rangers. Weapons free. We have a firing solution!”
“Any ship can be a torpedo if it tries hard enough!”
Air wing
0:14
“This is Pony. Stay in formation. Do not attack until you have orders standby for antimissile duty.”
“This is Pumpkin. Why are we sitting here while the Raiders are attacking on the other side?”
“Commander air group. Pumpkin, you never went to war College. This is a classic flak trap. The flak and the point defense cannons will pulverize them as long as we don’t get in the way. Stay in formation and keep the channels clear.”
“Wizard raptor Niner 74. We have a missile shot! Firing.”
“Wizard I have a solution on the nuke, moving to intercept!”
“Wizard! Stick to the plan. Stay clear of the engagement zone. Those nukes are supposed to be engaged by flack.”
“This is Pony commander air group. Raptors cover the Rangers on anti-missile duty. 974. That is an order!”
“Acknowledged. Yes Sir.”
“Wizard. Nine or 74. Have a gunship, threatening the Rangers. Moving to engage with missiles!”
“Diamond. Raptor 884. Rangers are coming after this guy with guns. Wizard we need to stay out of the gunships horizontal firing arks.”
“Wizard. I know. I KNOW! Missile lock. FIRE salvo two!”
CIC: Solaria
“I am Solaria actual? This is a combat jump into a toaster infested system. Where is Commander Modi?”
“Fleet emergency Sir. She is now Athena actual and task force five-eight actual.”
“Who the Frack are you? Lefttenant Samuels. Do you have valid orders?”
The mystery Guest handed over paper orders to Major King. He quickly glanced at them, and proceeded to read the combat orders that were printed below the command orders.
“Helm, execute, starboard, turn ready flak left, prepared to engage. Chop Air Wing command to Commander Air Group, Athena. Well then. I guess we will sort things out after the battle.”
Samuels settled in next to King like he had been by his side for the entire first war.
“Weak hacking attempt. Upgraded firewall should have it. Radiological alarm. Inbound nuke, flak should get it. Recommend defense posture.”
“Well do it already before its too late!”
“Forward batteries have a firing solution. Locking in firing mode. Where is the fire control computer?”
“This is a Jupiter mark two battlestar. You might have noticed the theater sized CIC. Lots more humans required to run the ship. Orders to the gun crews go by comms and wireless message. Forward guns, Salvo mode open fire now!”
“This is Commander Modi to task force five seven. Set up fleet CAP. Launch all SAR birds. We show 19 pilot ejection seats on the network. I want all pilots recovered, and all ships ready to jump in 45 minutes. Any ships needing repairs should join the repair channel and report their condition.”
The after action report: (zoom meeting to earthers)
The arrangement of the meeting was hasty. It was led by Commander Maria Ramirez. This was due to her seniority by several months over commander Evans, who attended from his wife’s bedside on a medical ship.
“So who wrote the battle plan for Task Force 57?” asked Commander Ramirez.
“That would be Major Sam Jones, executive officer of the Mercury. Call sign Whiskey.” HG his call sign stood for “Head Geek”, though only a captain in rank, HG was considered a department head. The reason for this was simple: He and his staff kept the Cylons out of the fleet network. Further, through great skill and effort, his command, known as the ‘Nerd Command’, maintained hacks into the network of the Cylons, reading about 20 percent of their message traffic.
Commander Modi spoke next. “Those orders that I received were verified from Admiral Lawson. Please explain that Captain Miller.” She used his last name and rank, which few would bother to do these days.
“Approval codes are clearly Admiral, Lawson. She is definitely alive. Everyone’s command codes includes a biometric signature. They cannot be used unless the person sending them is alive. However, the writing style is a 99% certainly the writing style of Major Sam Jones.”
Commander Evans, spoke next. “So Whiskey Jones wrote some orders, Admiral Lawson approved them. Why did they choose a dorky delivery method?”
“No idea,” Captain Miller answered. “It gets better. The Cylon fleet we just destroyed, was fully scouted. Reconnaissance was quite detailed. The air wing orders where the work of Fred ‘Playboy’ Wilson, Stanley Jacobs, blue squadron commander, call sign ‘Wheelchair’ and red squadron commander Hillary Simpson, call sign ‘Kitty’”
The video conference erupted into a cacophony of voices. A red light came on and Commander Ramirez gained control of the meeting.
“Everyone will speak one at a time. This seems like some kind of vast conspiracy. HG, are you telling us that at least 4 officers conspired with Admiral Lawson to cut orders to create task force 57, issue a detailed battle plan ending up in this conference call?”
“She’s the Admiral, why the frak would she need to forge orders?”
“I prefer not to speculate. Perhaps her orders are illegal or violate her orders from civilian authority. Perhaps she is just embarrassed or humiliated about something.” Commander Modi speculated, in spite of declaring she did not want to.
“That is exactly what I am saying. For reasons that I can not explain and probably way above my pay grade, Admiral Lawson wanted us here. Further we have been kept busy for some reason, so we would not notice her absence.”
“All right everyone,” Commander Ramirez ordered. “Dig into your logs. I want to know the last verified transponder signal from the Battlestar Mercury. Right frakking now.”
In unison, everyone spoke again. “Where is Admiral Lawson?”
Regulations were strict about discussing such topics. Soon, however, the number one topic on civilian wireless was: where was the Battlestar Mercury last seen?”
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