Look Before you Leap, an nBSG crossover.
Posted: 2009-01-02 05:20pm
This is a crossover of nBSG with the Sphere story debate that has probably just died on SB. Obviously, nBSG isn't mine, and Sphere was a collaborative effort that was, ah, inspired by various sources.
Look Before you Leap
Prologue: You Only get one First Impression
* * *
“What the fuck? Dan, are you sure these sensors are working fine?”
“I'm telling you, Mike, they're perfectly fine! All diagnostics check out fine.”
“Oh.” Dan Fitzgibbons swallowed audibly. “Well, then you better fire up the hyperwave and contact Ophen, then, because a hundred or so ships that weren't there a second ago just appeared on my scope.”
“What? What in God's name are you... oh shit. Mary!” the blond man in the uniform of the Ophen Defence Force Navy yelled down the companionway to the bridge. “Get our engines up! No, shields first!”
“What's the hurry, Dan? It's not...”
“Shut up! Just get those fucking shields up. There's a Goddamn fleet heading right for us.”
The unseen 'Mary' was silent for several seconds, then began cursing foully. Loud clattering noises drifted down to the comm room as she tried to convince the ship's shields to activate.
Blueberry, a forty seven year old ore barge pressed into service as a picket ship, did not cut the most military profile. Consisting of little more than a box with engines, a simple control centre and a small hab unit bolted onto one end, Blueberry was not a pretty vessel, and even when new, had not been particularly fast or spry, even for a civilian ship. Nowadays, her systems were thoroughly obsolete, and under most circumstances, she would be good for little more than scrap. Even Rim worlds wouldn't buy her.
These were not, however, most circumstances. The war's constant demands for more and more ships had stretched the ZOCU member navies to the limit and beyond. The voracious need for cruisers, destroyers and even frigates at the front-line systems that were major points of contact with the Core was beyond the ability of the Zodiacs to keep up with, even using the most simple, austere designs possible. The possibility of using valuable military ships to picket rear areas was simply out of the question. So, ZOCU had improvised.
Ophen, desperate for forward pickets in the wild space between it and the Core, had rescued Blueberry from the breakers and modified her to fill the role. The additions were as fast and dirty as it was possible to be and still work; a cruiser grade delta dust drive, shields and sensors had been added by the simple expedient of bolting them to the outside of the hull and punching holes into the cargo bay for any internal components. Most of the hold was occupied by a bulky, obsolete hyperwave transmitter that looked t be scavenged from an old Challenger class survey ship. The antennae protruded out of the open cargo bay doors, or where the doors would have been if the yard techs hadn't removed them to prevent an accidental closure from damaging the hyperwave. Blueberry didn't even mount a rudimentary point defence net, let alone actual offensive weapons.
“Who the fuck are they, Mike?” Dan asked as his fingers danced across the hyperwave controls in the corner of what the merchant crew turned naval personnel that crewed the Blueberry laughingly called the Combat Information Centre.
“I don't have a clue. I thought the only entrances into this chain were locked down?”
“They are. We'd have heard about it if the Core had forced the Mercians out of Albion. Same with the Asakurans and all their lot out of... uh... that Second Stage system I can never remember the name of. There's no way they could get a fleet down this transit chain before Ophen got word.”
“Well, somebody did.”
“Yeah, and if I wasn't busy shitting myself, I'd be dearly interested to know how.” Static crackled in Dan's headset as the transmitter finally warmed up. Adjusting the boom mic, he tried to speak slowly and calmly into the pickup. Unfortunately for his pride, he failed miserably.
“Wicket Keeper, Wicket Keeper, this is Batsman! The ball is on it's way! I repeat, the ball is on its way! There's an entire Goddamn fleet out here with us. I'm sending you all our sensor logs until this point, and streaming incoming data realtime.” He didn't know if he was being received, but the light indicating a connection glowed a solid green, and the one thing that hadn't so far broken at one point or another was the hyperwave.
“Oh shit. Dan, they're launching fighters!”
“Crap.” The channel to Ophen was still open, but under the circumstances, Dan wasn't especially bothered by the prospect of a reprimand for poor comm discipline. “Okay, where's the fighters come from?”
“The big sucker right there in the middle. I guess it's a carrier of some sort.”
“Right. I'll see if I can get them to back off. Maybe they're a fleet of Postie emissary machines or something.” Neither of them were particularly reassured.
“Okay, warn me if they do anything nasty,” Dan ordered as he set up a comm channel to the maybe-carrier that had sent a small brood of fighters charging towards the Blueberry and it's terrified crew.
“Unknown fleet, unknown fleet, this is the ODFS Blueberry. Please identify yourselves and state your intentions.”
“They're not doing anything,” Mike reported. “Those fighters are still inbound.”
“Not what I wanted to hear, Mike. Mary, how're those shields coming?”
“They're warming up now,” came the bellowed reply. “One minute!”
“Dan, they'll be here in about thirty seconds.”
“Okay okay, calm down. If push comes to shove, we surrender. That's what we're supposed to do; we've already done our job and got a warning off, so we don't need to do anything stupid.” Eyeing the plot over Mike's shoulder, Dan shook his head. “I'll ask again first, though. Unknown fleet! This is Lieutenant Daniel Fitzgibbons of the Ophen Defence Force Navy, in command of the ODFS Blueberry. Please identify yourselves.”
Silence.
“Nothing, Dan.”
“For Christ's sake, we're unarmed! Please, call off your fighters!”
“It doesn't look like they're going to...”
Mike's voice was cut off by the fusillade of railgun rounds that shredded the unarmoured Blueberry as if it were constructed of tissue paper.
* * *
Look Before You leap
Chapter One: Warning, Objects in the Rear View Mirror may be Closer than they Appear
Vice Admiral Charles Hendee fastened the harness of his command chair as the translation warning klaxon sounded over the CIC speakers. Sailors all across the Pallada class battleship Capricorn would be doing the same. Such a thing was almost never needed with most modern supralight drives, of course, but it was far easier to take the precaution, especially in a microgravity environment. Doubly so if they might be entering a combat environment upon emergence, where such things most certainly were needed.
“All ships report closed up at GQ and ready for translation,” reported the sandy haired lieutenant at the comm station. The ratings crewing the consoles around him continued their low muttering into the boom mics on their headsets.
“Very good. Confirm with navigation, and begin translation on our signal.”
Hendee examined the cluster of light codes on his chair's integrated data screens. The thirty eight icons represented just about every vessel available within Londonium, Ophen, Hassledorf, Astro Isabella and Transbaal for immediate deployment. Even then, nearly a quarter of the ships- a pair of Asakuran light carriers and a handful of Protons, a Mercian Royal Sovereign class battleship and a trio of cruisers and a flotilla of Khemetian Asp missile destroyers- were a Pac-Am arm light task group on their way to the fighting over Haraway who had been short stopped in Londonium when the possibility of a threat to the heart of the Zodiac Outworld Colony Union had manifested itself.
It was a pitiful force compared to the slightly more than one hundred ships that had composed the fleet in Blueberry's frantic transmission, and Hendee would have dearly loved to stay on the defensive in Ophen, where he could gain support from the orbital defences that had been seeded around the UNSO-035 jump zone, not to mention the significant number of aerospace craft operated from the non FTL hangar barges the Ophen Defence Force had set up to operate it's considerable fighter and mobile suit assets from.
As the weeks had passed and no attack had come, however, he faced more and more pressure to advance into -035 and find out what was going on. Even along an un-beaconed jump lane like the one that connected Ophen to -035, there was more than enough time for a fleet to make the transit. Eventually, he had been forced to acquiesce to the demands for action.
Fortunately, despite the small size of his force, he had a strong aerospace wing; two fleet carriers, three light carriers and two battleships with a similar capacity, not to mention the launch facilities crammed into the Protons and the cruisers. Granted, the Colossus and her three cruiser escorts were stuffed full of obsolete Mercian crap that amounted to little more than ablative armour against any sort of modern fighter or MS, but even so, that left him with almost two full wings of suits and an equal number of conventional fighters. A similar force of aerospace craft had demolished an apparently crushingly superior European fleet at Haraway in the opening stages of the war, suffering few losses in return. While the air defences of EU fleets was better now than it had been then, they were still vulnerable.
Assuming it was an EU fleet at all, of course. It could conceivably be the Americans and their cohorts in the CPTO. Considering the state of the war in the Pac-Am arm, it might even be more likely.
Maybe if the fucking Mercians would do their jobs, we wouldn't have to worry about that, he thought to himself. No, that's not fair. They've fought as hard as anyone when they've been allowed to fight. Even so, if their government would stand up to the Americans, we wouldn't have to worry about shit like this. The vulnerability of ZOCU's spinward flank- and it's cause- was a source of fantastic annoyance to Hendee, doubly so considering how vocal he'd been in his support of admitting New Mercia into the alliance.
“Thirty seconds to translation.”
Hendee grunted an acknowledgement. It would have been impossible for an unaided human, even an augment or a transgene, to choreograph a simultaneous translation with any sort of reliability. Fortunately, modern computer systems were more than capable of handling the task, when so directed by a navigation officer. The intricate datanet that linked the ships of the small fleet together allowed Capricorn to exert an almost perfect control over her cohorts.
With the computers handling translation, there was almost nothing for the crews of the various ships to do. Even so, tension was thick in their internal compartments; everybody knew that an almost impossibly large, seemingly hostile fleet was waiting in -035, and just how small their response force was. Weapon crews bent over their consoles and pilots fastened their breath masks in readiness for immediate action. Shield generators hummed as they were fed power and point defence clusters slid smoothly from their armoured housings.
“Ten seconds.”
Actual translation back to STL needed no announcement; there was no way to mistake the twisting, nauseous sensation of one's inner ear protesting a velocity change that was otherwise imperceptible. Thirty eight ships appeared in the Ophen jumpzone of -035 in bright bursts of Cherenkov radiation. The unfortunate crew of the Asakuran Proton class light cruiser Amatsukaze didn't even have time for shock as their ship ploughed into the completely unexpected vessel that was, in defiance of all sanity, sitting right on top of the jump zone.
* * *
The eight basestars hung motionless in the outer reaches of the dead, nameless star system, surrounded by a sparse shell of raiders busily searching the surrounding space. Devoid of life as it was, it was easy to see why the Colonial Remnant had risked a stop here, rather than in the trackless depths of interstellar space. Even the most cursory analysis of the system revealed significant deposits of tyleum ore, sufficient to last the refugees a significant length of time. The Cylons had intended to trap the survivors in the system, indeed, they had had almost twenty basestars in position to pounce on the fleet once they were loading the ore and thus pinned down and vulnerable.
It had been an unpleasant surprise to have the Colonials jump out of the system as fast as they could recharge their drives. Most of the basestars had been sent back to the frustrating cat and mouse chase with the fleet, but a small force had been sent to find out precisely what had spooked the Colonials into fleeing so precipitously.
They had not, honestly, expected to find anything; a star system was a huge haystack in which to search for a needle, after all, and initial, albeit brief, surveys by raiders many weeks prior had revealed no sign of anything suspicious. They had expected a far more extensive survey of the inner system to take weeks, but luck was on their side, it seemed.
The raiders despatched to investigate the last known approximate location of the Colonial fleet had identified metallic wreckage, rapidly dispersing into the void. Recovery operations had been initiated at once.
“This is disturbing,” Six said.
“You have an indisputable gift for understatement,” Five replied to the blonde. “I think the word 'terrifying' is more appropriate, personally.”
“Perhaps. We'll know more when the examination of the wreckage is completed,” One commented. “I think it might be beneficial to review the facts as they stand. The Humans jumped into the outskirts of the system, as we wanted them to. At some point, they obviously encountered an unknown ship of some sort and attacked, destroying the unknown. Then they left the system as fast as they could. Presumably, they thought that whatever they found was part of a trap laid by us.” His tone of voice left no question that he was not impressed by the Colonials failure to draw the correct conclusion.
“Of course, we know that it wasn't our ship,” said Two. “So, if it wasn't ours and wasn't theirs, whose was it?”
“Another survivor?” suggested Eight. “Maybe they made it out here on their own.”
“No chance,” snorted Five. “First, if it were a Colonial ship, it would have run out of fuel long before now. The fleet has managed to secure new fuel supplies that a single ship would never be able to manage. Second, the hull, what we've been able to recover of it, was composed of simple titanium. Nobody's constructed a ship out of unalloyed titanium in the Colonies since well before the first War.”
They all had access to the information, of course. Even so, it seemed to Five that only he had grasped the significance of some of the data.
“Okay, so they aren't Colonials,” allowed Four. “But if they're building ships out of something as fragile as titanium, why the hell should we worry about them?”
“Because of the third reason they can't be Colonials,” replied Five, indicating a section of data in their shared network. “We've recovered small amounts of extremely complex electronics. So complex, in fact, that they're beyond our ability to analyse. What it looks like is a distributed computing network running on processing nodes smaller than the average grain of sand. With no way to interface with it or activate it, there's no way to measure it's effectiveness, and it's simply to small to analyse effectively with the resources we have available out here. I think it safe to say, however, that it probably had massive computing power, and that neither we nor the Colonials can create anything like it. Additionally, we've isolated a number of unknown elements and compounds, again, of unknown purpose.”
“So, they're some sort of alien? If they're so advanced, why the hell would they put such impressive hardware into such a primitive hull, then?” Eight demanded, frowning as she examined the data.
“I don't know,” snapped Five. “They're aliens. Maybe they wanted to build the ship on the cheap. Maybe it was an expendable drone. Maybe they don't have the resources to make stronger hull materials. It doesn't matter what the reason is; they're clearly extremely advanced.”
“It's clear that these newcomers have been sent to us by God to help wipe out the Colonials. I can't think that they'd be happy about their ship being attacked and destroyed for no reason,” Three gushed, eyes glinting with religious fervour.
“Maybe,” One allowed. “I fear that that assumption is jumping the gun a bit. Going from anger over a lost ship to assisting in the destruction of a species, however justified it might be, is a large step after all.”
“And, of course, if they find out the root causes of this mess, they may well view us as an unacceptable threat,” added Six. “From their point of view, we would be an unknown race that has already shown itself willing to wipe out an entire species. Regardless of the circumstances, that would have to make them nervous. They'd have to wonder if they were next on the chopping block. I know I would be.”
“This is all useless speculation at the moment,” Five said. “We're projecting our own attitudes onto them; for all we know, they might wipe out planets as entertainment. We need to finish off the Colonials first. We can return to these aliens later, when we're less distracted.”
“Agreed,” said Eight. “Let's just avoid them for now.”
“What if we can't?” demanded Three. “They could be all over this area of space. If we try skulking around and they catch us, it would be a terrible first impression. We run the risk of being blamed for the Colonials actions!”
“You're assuming an improbably large number of star systems under their control, with absolutely no evidence. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to post scouts in the middle of interstellar space to spot us and the Colonials most of the time. There's just no way...”
One broke off suddenly, eyes widening.
He didn't have time to do anything else before the unfortunate Amatsukaze converted him, the other organic Cylons in the chamber and the basestar itself into rapidly expanding clouds of superheated vapour.
* * *
“Holy shit!” someone on the flag bridge yelped as the Capricon began a violent evasive turn. “They're right on top of the jump zone!”
Under normal circumstances, Hendee would have had something uncomplimentary to say about such an unprofessional report. Normal circumstances did not, however, include translating out of FTL right into the middle of an enemy squadron parked somewhere no sane admiral would consider. The straps of his harness dug painfully into his shoulders as the battleship's manoeuvring surpassed the ability of the inertial compensators to handle flawlessly. On the plot, the neat formation of the ZOCU fleet exploded into a mad swirl of confused light codes as individual ships scattered in an attempt to avoid repeating the fate of the Amatsukaze.
“Sir! The enemy have fighters in space!”
Hendee paled. With the fleet so disorganised, those fighters could pounce on individual ships and destroy them with minimal risk. The enemy's plan became abruptly very clear.
“Launch everything! Get them off while we have the chance!” he snapped. “Point defence free; enemy fighters are priority targets!”
“Yes sir,” the rating acknowledged.
“Captain Armstrong is requesting permission to open fire, sir,” announced the tactical officer.
“Granted. New fleet orders; all ships, fire at will. Burn those bastards out of my skies.”
“Aye sir.”
“Incoming missiles!” A third voice yelled.
The Cylon ships had reacted to the surprise far more quickly than the fleshy humans the controlled the ZOCU fleet. The raiders tat had been spread throughout the surrounding space began to converge rapidly on the cluster of wildly manoeuvring ships crowded into too small a space. The organic units in the undamaged basestars, still hoping for a peaceful contact, hailed on of the closer ships, desperate to explain the accident, but the ship their attempt was either missed or ignored in the confusion in the Asp class vessel's CIC and bridge.
The sudden explosion of fighters and other unidentified smallcraft from the alien vessels left no doubt as to the intentions of the newcomers. As reasonable a reaction as it was, under the circumstances, it put the Cylons in something of a poor position. Under the stress of the totally unexpected situation, the various basestars acted alone, the organic Cylons aboard making snap decisions that were, in some cases, ill advised. Two of the basestars launched full spreads of nuclear tipped missiles, empting their hangars of fighters before they realised what had actually happened. By the time they had, it was too late.
Without time to devise proper targeting plans, the two ships had simply fired at the closest unknown vessel. Neither the Asakuran Akagi class light carrier Zuiho or the Asto Isabellan Proton, William Tell were particularly well protected. With point defences occupied burning raiders from space, neither ship managed to intercept a single missile. Zuiho, her shields down to speed the launch of her aerospace wing, vanished in a boiling artificial sun with most of her brood still on board. William Tell, her four Sarrisa mobile suits already in space, took the salvo on active shields. The warheads savaged the immaterial barrier, smashing past it to tear at the hull with fists of atomic fire. The wreck that emerged from the maelstrom was a melted ruin that glowed a bright cherry red. There were no survivors.
Capricorn fired seconds later, her armament of powerful mega particle cannons- the 'sugarbeams' dreaded by Core spacers and pilots alike- locking on to the closest basestar, ironically one of the Cylon ships that was transmitting a desperate, unheeded first contact message. The sakuradite weapons flashed once, sending beams of bright pink energy slamming into the Cylon vessel. The energy punched into the central body of the ship like a hot knife cutting through butter, and the subsequent explosion reduced the warship to a rapidly expanding debris cloud. A second basestar was the subject of the ire of the trio of Mercian cruisers and a handful of Khemetian destroyers. The smaller ships poured fire into the larger vessel, shrugging frantic, poorly coordinated missile fire off of their shields. One destroyer broke apart under the pounding, then the basestar vanished in a violent explosion.
The raiders that followed the missile volleys towards the fleet were met by swarms of fighters and other, unidentified craft, all jinking wildly in manoeuvres that should have been impossible. The alien craft and the Cylon fighters exchanged missiles with each other, and both formations were briefly spotted with the fireballs of dying fighters. There were far more on the Cylon side. Then, they were in amongst each other, railguns and energy weapons blazing. The outclassed raiders, obsessively obedient to their orders, hurled themselves to the teeth of the ZOCU fleet's firepower. A very few survived to attack their targets, and the cruiser Freya belched atmosphere as the fighter missiles struck home.
Then, the Cylon ships and raiders blinked out of existence.
“Report!” demanded Hendee.
“I... don't know sir. They've just vanished. No sign of them anywhere in sensor range.”
“What?”
“It's true, sir. They just vanished without any warning.”
“If they vanished, they could be back at any time. Reorganise the fleet, and get a CAP out. Contact Hyacinth, tell they to warm up their hyperwave. High Command will want to know about this. Then tell Lieutenant Commander Mitsuru I want to see her. I've got a job for her.”
“Aye sir.”
Look Before you Leap
Prologue: You Only get one First Impression
* * *
“What the fuck? Dan, are you sure these sensors are working fine?”
“I'm telling you, Mike, they're perfectly fine! All diagnostics check out fine.”
“Oh.” Dan Fitzgibbons swallowed audibly. “Well, then you better fire up the hyperwave and contact Ophen, then, because a hundred or so ships that weren't there a second ago just appeared on my scope.”
“What? What in God's name are you... oh shit. Mary!” the blond man in the uniform of the Ophen Defence Force Navy yelled down the companionway to the bridge. “Get our engines up! No, shields first!”
“What's the hurry, Dan? It's not...”
“Shut up! Just get those fucking shields up. There's a Goddamn fleet heading right for us.”
The unseen 'Mary' was silent for several seconds, then began cursing foully. Loud clattering noises drifted down to the comm room as she tried to convince the ship's shields to activate.
Blueberry, a forty seven year old ore barge pressed into service as a picket ship, did not cut the most military profile. Consisting of little more than a box with engines, a simple control centre and a small hab unit bolted onto one end, Blueberry was not a pretty vessel, and even when new, had not been particularly fast or spry, even for a civilian ship. Nowadays, her systems were thoroughly obsolete, and under most circumstances, she would be good for little more than scrap. Even Rim worlds wouldn't buy her.
These were not, however, most circumstances. The war's constant demands for more and more ships had stretched the ZOCU member navies to the limit and beyond. The voracious need for cruisers, destroyers and even frigates at the front-line systems that were major points of contact with the Core was beyond the ability of the Zodiacs to keep up with, even using the most simple, austere designs possible. The possibility of using valuable military ships to picket rear areas was simply out of the question. So, ZOCU had improvised.
Ophen, desperate for forward pickets in the wild space between it and the Core, had rescued Blueberry from the breakers and modified her to fill the role. The additions were as fast and dirty as it was possible to be and still work; a cruiser grade delta dust drive, shields and sensors had been added by the simple expedient of bolting them to the outside of the hull and punching holes into the cargo bay for any internal components. Most of the hold was occupied by a bulky, obsolete hyperwave transmitter that looked t be scavenged from an old Challenger class survey ship. The antennae protruded out of the open cargo bay doors, or where the doors would have been if the yard techs hadn't removed them to prevent an accidental closure from damaging the hyperwave. Blueberry didn't even mount a rudimentary point defence net, let alone actual offensive weapons.
“Who the fuck are they, Mike?” Dan asked as his fingers danced across the hyperwave controls in the corner of what the merchant crew turned naval personnel that crewed the Blueberry laughingly called the Combat Information Centre.
“I don't have a clue. I thought the only entrances into this chain were locked down?”
“They are. We'd have heard about it if the Core had forced the Mercians out of Albion. Same with the Asakurans and all their lot out of... uh... that Second Stage system I can never remember the name of. There's no way they could get a fleet down this transit chain before Ophen got word.”
“Well, somebody did.”
“Yeah, and if I wasn't busy shitting myself, I'd be dearly interested to know how.” Static crackled in Dan's headset as the transmitter finally warmed up. Adjusting the boom mic, he tried to speak slowly and calmly into the pickup. Unfortunately for his pride, he failed miserably.
“Wicket Keeper, Wicket Keeper, this is Batsman! The ball is on it's way! I repeat, the ball is on its way! There's an entire Goddamn fleet out here with us. I'm sending you all our sensor logs until this point, and streaming incoming data realtime.” He didn't know if he was being received, but the light indicating a connection glowed a solid green, and the one thing that hadn't so far broken at one point or another was the hyperwave.
“Oh shit. Dan, they're launching fighters!”
“Crap.” The channel to Ophen was still open, but under the circumstances, Dan wasn't especially bothered by the prospect of a reprimand for poor comm discipline. “Okay, where's the fighters come from?”
“The big sucker right there in the middle. I guess it's a carrier of some sort.”
“Right. I'll see if I can get them to back off. Maybe they're a fleet of Postie emissary machines or something.” Neither of them were particularly reassured.
“Okay, warn me if they do anything nasty,” Dan ordered as he set up a comm channel to the maybe-carrier that had sent a small brood of fighters charging towards the Blueberry and it's terrified crew.
“Unknown fleet, unknown fleet, this is the ODFS Blueberry. Please identify yourselves and state your intentions.”
“They're not doing anything,” Mike reported. “Those fighters are still inbound.”
“Not what I wanted to hear, Mike. Mary, how're those shields coming?”
“They're warming up now,” came the bellowed reply. “One minute!”
“Dan, they'll be here in about thirty seconds.”
“Okay okay, calm down. If push comes to shove, we surrender. That's what we're supposed to do; we've already done our job and got a warning off, so we don't need to do anything stupid.” Eyeing the plot over Mike's shoulder, Dan shook his head. “I'll ask again first, though. Unknown fleet! This is Lieutenant Daniel Fitzgibbons of the Ophen Defence Force Navy, in command of the ODFS Blueberry. Please identify yourselves.”
Silence.
“Nothing, Dan.”
“For Christ's sake, we're unarmed! Please, call off your fighters!”
“It doesn't look like they're going to...”
Mike's voice was cut off by the fusillade of railgun rounds that shredded the unarmoured Blueberry as if it were constructed of tissue paper.
* * *
Look Before You leap
Chapter One: Warning, Objects in the Rear View Mirror may be Closer than they Appear
Vice Admiral Charles Hendee fastened the harness of his command chair as the translation warning klaxon sounded over the CIC speakers. Sailors all across the Pallada class battleship Capricorn would be doing the same. Such a thing was almost never needed with most modern supralight drives, of course, but it was far easier to take the precaution, especially in a microgravity environment. Doubly so if they might be entering a combat environment upon emergence, where such things most certainly were needed.
“All ships report closed up at GQ and ready for translation,” reported the sandy haired lieutenant at the comm station. The ratings crewing the consoles around him continued their low muttering into the boom mics on their headsets.
“Very good. Confirm with navigation, and begin translation on our signal.”
Hendee examined the cluster of light codes on his chair's integrated data screens. The thirty eight icons represented just about every vessel available within Londonium, Ophen, Hassledorf, Astro Isabella and Transbaal for immediate deployment. Even then, nearly a quarter of the ships- a pair of Asakuran light carriers and a handful of Protons, a Mercian Royal Sovereign class battleship and a trio of cruisers and a flotilla of Khemetian Asp missile destroyers- were a Pac-Am arm light task group on their way to the fighting over Haraway who had been short stopped in Londonium when the possibility of a threat to the heart of the Zodiac Outworld Colony Union had manifested itself.
It was a pitiful force compared to the slightly more than one hundred ships that had composed the fleet in Blueberry's frantic transmission, and Hendee would have dearly loved to stay on the defensive in Ophen, where he could gain support from the orbital defences that had been seeded around the UNSO-035 jump zone, not to mention the significant number of aerospace craft operated from the non FTL hangar barges the Ophen Defence Force had set up to operate it's considerable fighter and mobile suit assets from.
As the weeks had passed and no attack had come, however, he faced more and more pressure to advance into -035 and find out what was going on. Even along an un-beaconed jump lane like the one that connected Ophen to -035, there was more than enough time for a fleet to make the transit. Eventually, he had been forced to acquiesce to the demands for action.
Fortunately, despite the small size of his force, he had a strong aerospace wing; two fleet carriers, three light carriers and two battleships with a similar capacity, not to mention the launch facilities crammed into the Protons and the cruisers. Granted, the Colossus and her three cruiser escorts were stuffed full of obsolete Mercian crap that amounted to little more than ablative armour against any sort of modern fighter or MS, but even so, that left him with almost two full wings of suits and an equal number of conventional fighters. A similar force of aerospace craft had demolished an apparently crushingly superior European fleet at Haraway in the opening stages of the war, suffering few losses in return. While the air defences of EU fleets was better now than it had been then, they were still vulnerable.
Assuming it was an EU fleet at all, of course. It could conceivably be the Americans and their cohorts in the CPTO. Considering the state of the war in the Pac-Am arm, it might even be more likely.
Maybe if the fucking Mercians would do their jobs, we wouldn't have to worry about that, he thought to himself. No, that's not fair. They've fought as hard as anyone when they've been allowed to fight. Even so, if their government would stand up to the Americans, we wouldn't have to worry about shit like this. The vulnerability of ZOCU's spinward flank- and it's cause- was a source of fantastic annoyance to Hendee, doubly so considering how vocal he'd been in his support of admitting New Mercia into the alliance.
“Thirty seconds to translation.”
Hendee grunted an acknowledgement. It would have been impossible for an unaided human, even an augment or a transgene, to choreograph a simultaneous translation with any sort of reliability. Fortunately, modern computer systems were more than capable of handling the task, when so directed by a navigation officer. The intricate datanet that linked the ships of the small fleet together allowed Capricorn to exert an almost perfect control over her cohorts.
With the computers handling translation, there was almost nothing for the crews of the various ships to do. Even so, tension was thick in their internal compartments; everybody knew that an almost impossibly large, seemingly hostile fleet was waiting in -035, and just how small their response force was. Weapon crews bent over their consoles and pilots fastened their breath masks in readiness for immediate action. Shield generators hummed as they were fed power and point defence clusters slid smoothly from their armoured housings.
“Ten seconds.”
Actual translation back to STL needed no announcement; there was no way to mistake the twisting, nauseous sensation of one's inner ear protesting a velocity change that was otherwise imperceptible. Thirty eight ships appeared in the Ophen jumpzone of -035 in bright bursts of Cherenkov radiation. The unfortunate crew of the Asakuran Proton class light cruiser Amatsukaze didn't even have time for shock as their ship ploughed into the completely unexpected vessel that was, in defiance of all sanity, sitting right on top of the jump zone.
* * *
The eight basestars hung motionless in the outer reaches of the dead, nameless star system, surrounded by a sparse shell of raiders busily searching the surrounding space. Devoid of life as it was, it was easy to see why the Colonial Remnant had risked a stop here, rather than in the trackless depths of interstellar space. Even the most cursory analysis of the system revealed significant deposits of tyleum ore, sufficient to last the refugees a significant length of time. The Cylons had intended to trap the survivors in the system, indeed, they had had almost twenty basestars in position to pounce on the fleet once they were loading the ore and thus pinned down and vulnerable.
It had been an unpleasant surprise to have the Colonials jump out of the system as fast as they could recharge their drives. Most of the basestars had been sent back to the frustrating cat and mouse chase with the fleet, but a small force had been sent to find out precisely what had spooked the Colonials into fleeing so precipitously.
They had not, honestly, expected to find anything; a star system was a huge haystack in which to search for a needle, after all, and initial, albeit brief, surveys by raiders many weeks prior had revealed no sign of anything suspicious. They had expected a far more extensive survey of the inner system to take weeks, but luck was on their side, it seemed.
The raiders despatched to investigate the last known approximate location of the Colonial fleet had identified metallic wreckage, rapidly dispersing into the void. Recovery operations had been initiated at once.
“This is disturbing,” Six said.
“You have an indisputable gift for understatement,” Five replied to the blonde. “I think the word 'terrifying' is more appropriate, personally.”
“Perhaps. We'll know more when the examination of the wreckage is completed,” One commented. “I think it might be beneficial to review the facts as they stand. The Humans jumped into the outskirts of the system, as we wanted them to. At some point, they obviously encountered an unknown ship of some sort and attacked, destroying the unknown. Then they left the system as fast as they could. Presumably, they thought that whatever they found was part of a trap laid by us.” His tone of voice left no question that he was not impressed by the Colonials failure to draw the correct conclusion.
“Of course, we know that it wasn't our ship,” said Two. “So, if it wasn't ours and wasn't theirs, whose was it?”
“Another survivor?” suggested Eight. “Maybe they made it out here on their own.”
“No chance,” snorted Five. “First, if it were a Colonial ship, it would have run out of fuel long before now. The fleet has managed to secure new fuel supplies that a single ship would never be able to manage. Second, the hull, what we've been able to recover of it, was composed of simple titanium. Nobody's constructed a ship out of unalloyed titanium in the Colonies since well before the first War.”
They all had access to the information, of course. Even so, it seemed to Five that only he had grasped the significance of some of the data.
“Okay, so they aren't Colonials,” allowed Four. “But if they're building ships out of something as fragile as titanium, why the hell should we worry about them?”
“Because of the third reason they can't be Colonials,” replied Five, indicating a section of data in their shared network. “We've recovered small amounts of extremely complex electronics. So complex, in fact, that they're beyond our ability to analyse. What it looks like is a distributed computing network running on processing nodes smaller than the average grain of sand. With no way to interface with it or activate it, there's no way to measure it's effectiveness, and it's simply to small to analyse effectively with the resources we have available out here. I think it safe to say, however, that it probably had massive computing power, and that neither we nor the Colonials can create anything like it. Additionally, we've isolated a number of unknown elements and compounds, again, of unknown purpose.”
“So, they're some sort of alien? If they're so advanced, why the hell would they put such impressive hardware into such a primitive hull, then?” Eight demanded, frowning as she examined the data.
“I don't know,” snapped Five. “They're aliens. Maybe they wanted to build the ship on the cheap. Maybe it was an expendable drone. Maybe they don't have the resources to make stronger hull materials. It doesn't matter what the reason is; they're clearly extremely advanced.”
“It's clear that these newcomers have been sent to us by God to help wipe out the Colonials. I can't think that they'd be happy about their ship being attacked and destroyed for no reason,” Three gushed, eyes glinting with religious fervour.
“Maybe,” One allowed. “I fear that that assumption is jumping the gun a bit. Going from anger over a lost ship to assisting in the destruction of a species, however justified it might be, is a large step after all.”
“And, of course, if they find out the root causes of this mess, they may well view us as an unacceptable threat,” added Six. “From their point of view, we would be an unknown race that has already shown itself willing to wipe out an entire species. Regardless of the circumstances, that would have to make them nervous. They'd have to wonder if they were next on the chopping block. I know I would be.”
“This is all useless speculation at the moment,” Five said. “We're projecting our own attitudes onto them; for all we know, they might wipe out planets as entertainment. We need to finish off the Colonials first. We can return to these aliens later, when we're less distracted.”
“Agreed,” said Eight. “Let's just avoid them for now.”
“What if we can't?” demanded Three. “They could be all over this area of space. If we try skulking around and they catch us, it would be a terrible first impression. We run the risk of being blamed for the Colonials actions!”
“You're assuming an improbably large number of star systems under their control, with absolutely no evidence. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to post scouts in the middle of interstellar space to spot us and the Colonials most of the time. There's just no way...”
One broke off suddenly, eyes widening.
He didn't have time to do anything else before the unfortunate Amatsukaze converted him, the other organic Cylons in the chamber and the basestar itself into rapidly expanding clouds of superheated vapour.
* * *
“Holy shit!” someone on the flag bridge yelped as the Capricon began a violent evasive turn. “They're right on top of the jump zone!”
Under normal circumstances, Hendee would have had something uncomplimentary to say about such an unprofessional report. Normal circumstances did not, however, include translating out of FTL right into the middle of an enemy squadron parked somewhere no sane admiral would consider. The straps of his harness dug painfully into his shoulders as the battleship's manoeuvring surpassed the ability of the inertial compensators to handle flawlessly. On the plot, the neat formation of the ZOCU fleet exploded into a mad swirl of confused light codes as individual ships scattered in an attempt to avoid repeating the fate of the Amatsukaze.
“Sir! The enemy have fighters in space!”
Hendee paled. With the fleet so disorganised, those fighters could pounce on individual ships and destroy them with minimal risk. The enemy's plan became abruptly very clear.
“Launch everything! Get them off while we have the chance!” he snapped. “Point defence free; enemy fighters are priority targets!”
“Yes sir,” the rating acknowledged.
“Captain Armstrong is requesting permission to open fire, sir,” announced the tactical officer.
“Granted. New fleet orders; all ships, fire at will. Burn those bastards out of my skies.”
“Aye sir.”
“Incoming missiles!” A third voice yelled.
The Cylon ships had reacted to the surprise far more quickly than the fleshy humans the controlled the ZOCU fleet. The raiders tat had been spread throughout the surrounding space began to converge rapidly on the cluster of wildly manoeuvring ships crowded into too small a space. The organic units in the undamaged basestars, still hoping for a peaceful contact, hailed on of the closer ships, desperate to explain the accident, but the ship their attempt was either missed or ignored in the confusion in the Asp class vessel's CIC and bridge.
The sudden explosion of fighters and other unidentified smallcraft from the alien vessels left no doubt as to the intentions of the newcomers. As reasonable a reaction as it was, under the circumstances, it put the Cylons in something of a poor position. Under the stress of the totally unexpected situation, the various basestars acted alone, the organic Cylons aboard making snap decisions that were, in some cases, ill advised. Two of the basestars launched full spreads of nuclear tipped missiles, empting their hangars of fighters before they realised what had actually happened. By the time they had, it was too late.
Without time to devise proper targeting plans, the two ships had simply fired at the closest unknown vessel. Neither the Asakuran Akagi class light carrier Zuiho or the Asto Isabellan Proton, William Tell were particularly well protected. With point defences occupied burning raiders from space, neither ship managed to intercept a single missile. Zuiho, her shields down to speed the launch of her aerospace wing, vanished in a boiling artificial sun with most of her brood still on board. William Tell, her four Sarrisa mobile suits already in space, took the salvo on active shields. The warheads savaged the immaterial barrier, smashing past it to tear at the hull with fists of atomic fire. The wreck that emerged from the maelstrom was a melted ruin that glowed a bright cherry red. There were no survivors.
Capricorn fired seconds later, her armament of powerful mega particle cannons- the 'sugarbeams' dreaded by Core spacers and pilots alike- locking on to the closest basestar, ironically one of the Cylon ships that was transmitting a desperate, unheeded first contact message. The sakuradite weapons flashed once, sending beams of bright pink energy slamming into the Cylon vessel. The energy punched into the central body of the ship like a hot knife cutting through butter, and the subsequent explosion reduced the warship to a rapidly expanding debris cloud. A second basestar was the subject of the ire of the trio of Mercian cruisers and a handful of Khemetian destroyers. The smaller ships poured fire into the larger vessel, shrugging frantic, poorly coordinated missile fire off of their shields. One destroyer broke apart under the pounding, then the basestar vanished in a violent explosion.
The raiders that followed the missile volleys towards the fleet were met by swarms of fighters and other, unidentified craft, all jinking wildly in manoeuvres that should have been impossible. The alien craft and the Cylon fighters exchanged missiles with each other, and both formations were briefly spotted with the fireballs of dying fighters. There were far more on the Cylon side. Then, they were in amongst each other, railguns and energy weapons blazing. The outclassed raiders, obsessively obedient to their orders, hurled themselves to the teeth of the ZOCU fleet's firepower. A very few survived to attack their targets, and the cruiser Freya belched atmosphere as the fighter missiles struck home.
Then, the Cylon ships and raiders blinked out of existence.
“Report!” demanded Hendee.
“I... don't know sir. They've just vanished. No sign of them anywhere in sensor range.”
“What?”
“It's true, sir. They just vanished without any warning.”
“If they vanished, they could be back at any time. Reorganise the fleet, and get a CAP out. Contact Hyacinth, tell they to warm up their hyperwave. High Command will want to know about this. Then tell Lieutenant Commander Mitsuru I want to see her. I've got a job for her.”
“Aye sir.”