Chapter 42

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

19 Feb 3049

New Circe

The core of the SLDF Navy and attached smaller ships, would take two weeks to get back to New Circe from Nike's World. Some civilians might think that this was a bit of an over kill, to wait that long to get the fleet back home. That is, now that they had all of the trackers taken care of. But as Admiral Franks would say, "They had all of the known trackers." But what if they missed one? Or what if the Cylons came up with a new trick on tracking the human fleet? Then was it worth betting your life, or some civilians on that old information?

The Admiral and the Lord Protector said no, and so it took them a few weeks to get home again, after the mission was "complete". Well it was a back home for most of them. One of the good things about the delay. It was, that they used the HPG to get a message out to the planners on New Circe. It was a detailed list of recovered personnel and other resources from Nike's World. That gave the people back home some extra time to get things a little better set up, for the newest additions to this planet. It would not be much, but the extra time was used to have the maximum impact on those shell-shocked refugees.

The mission to evacuate the 1890's tech planetary population, and then the recovery of the Cylons modified liners jump drives, had not been without a laundry list of issues. This had been a huge mission, but there were always other things that needed to be done. If things went sideways in the home system. Three of the four warships could be rushed back to New Circe, it they needed to be recalled. Nike would take quite a bit longer to make it home.

The SLiE and Colonials still needed other missions to support the war the humans were fighting against the Cylons. Finding an old but failed Star League colony was big news on New Circe, and a huge accomplishment. The old Caspar had been around this part of space for hundreds of years. She had seen, and more importantly she had recorded lots of things. Although sometimes it was just blind luck, that she found something that turned out to be useful. Like when she had blown her Helium seals, and her small crew had to spend some time on a very tectonically active planet between extreme Ice Age events.

All of that data had been turned over not long after she had been made a "Bondwoman". It would take man-decades of time, to go through all of the files she had turned over to her human counter parts. Every so often a file would be found that held very valuable information that somehow had not been intuitively cataloged by the warship AI.

Like the star system, that the Star League Corps of Engineers had been working on before the fall. They had been working on this project for a few decades. But it was just one more almost minor project among thousands, which the Corps was working on around this part of the galaxy. The idea was to test ideas, on how to Terraform planets like this in more populated systems closer to Terra. Things were going well for a project that did not even have a name, just a twelve-digit number that a computer had given to it back on New Earth.

The Shaky system 2760's.

The normal workflow all changed, while everyone was still recovering from the Spring Party. It had taken that long for word to reach them, about what had happened to the ruling family of the Star League on far away Earth. The system had a good-sized population, but they were working on terraforming core equipment. None of them had planned on living out there for the rest of their lives, or even for another decade. The first people with that mind set and skills. They were not supposed to even start coming out this way, for another five or six years. The messenger of doom had been a LF equipped Tramp, that had diverted here. It had been while dodging what they thought, was a Rim World Hunter/Killer warship group working in this local area of interstellar space.

Still this out of the way star system quickly became a rallying point for military units and other groups connected to the Star League. They used this area to stretch their legs, get fresh air, and top off water tanks. It had not taken the SLDF in Exile long to find the old Olympus class recharge station. That was where they found out the history of this star system.

The Corps of Engineers didn't have the money of the Star League military, or DoME. So, it was not one of the new Cyclops I or one of the two million ton new Olympus Mons class station that was shipped out to this part of space. That left them with only the standard choices for orbital support stations. They had just built a "normal" recharge station from a knock down kit, which had been on hand and left over from a different project but not needed. This station became the center point of the star system, just as the Corps wanted. It now was just used in a way that the Corps of Engineers hadn't planned on.

They did not have much combat power to add to what the General could wheeled, to take back the Star League from the Usurper. The local Corps of Engineers did send all their LF and standard Carracks to help the General in his mission to liberate Terra. That was in exchange for a huge number of Star Lords he had on hand but were less useful to his military needs.

While the people of the Corps waited for the war to end. They kept working on the terraforming of the planet and help repair what they could, that was left behind in this system. They even went as far as stripping their own ships for parts, to help repair the military's battle-damaged dropships. As every dropship left that lost system? The population got a little smaller, as the passenger areas were filled with Corps of Engineers personnel.

A major party was thrown, when word reached them about the liberation of the birth world. It was just too bad that it didn't take long for the happiness to fade, as word came back in fits and bits about the political games being played by the House Lords. It was soul crushing as more reports came in about the General getting stripped of his title as regent.

When the General ordered the Exodus, the Shaky project had to react fast. They had to choose between having enough lift to get the remainder of the population out of the system, our carry all of the military equipment that had been left behind in this system. The system commander chose people, food, and other supplies as his first priority. His staff found the dozen best dropships in system, which would be the best fit for what the local Corps of Engineers commander needed. They had to strip parts off the rest of the dropships in the star system, which would not be making the trip to the nearest rallying point.

They all were able to board those newly repaired dropships, and the station was put in hibernation mode when the last of the Star Lord class jumpships had left the system. They were never heard from again. They were lost in space and lost in history, even the clans did not have records of them. A miss jump had made it so that no one would ever know about this system. Even the people who had left earlier had not made notes of this system. It was just a minor system out beyond the edge of settled space.

That is until the Casper with a small human crew had been forced to stay here and wait for a ride to its new home of New Circe. When the report was made about this system to SLiE higher command, it had not been met by a mildly positive response. It was only after they sent a team to "inspect" the report that things really got moving. When they reported back about their find and generated a more detailed report. This had started another major operation to be launched into what was now called the Shaky System.

The Shaky system today.

The expanded inspection team sent by the SLDF used a mix of Colonial transports, "normal" dropships, and an escort of a pair of Leopard CV class light jump carriers. They had found the recharging station within hours of arriving in the system. Until this third visit by the SLDF, it had not been noticed. The planet was important, but the massive space station was a piece of technology that they could lose. If the Cylons came sniffing around or a pirate band showed up, at the wrong jump point. They would stumble onto a major windfall.

Why had the first group not seen the massive hunk of metal, it was the missing energy collection sail. The massive four-kilometer recharging sail was not deployed. And it could not be seen in the storage bins at the back of the 1.5 Km long object floating in deep space. The SLDF could have made one of these stations, but it would have been a major undertaking for the already stretched SLiE. The plan B was to take the sail material off three of the reserve ships, and then donate it to the project. Those lost sails from the SLDF Navy reserve could be replaced slowly, as they had the time and the facilities to do the work.

Two of the dropships made their way around and down the length of the massive, dark, and cold station. The next item that was noticed, was that there were two combat dropships attached to two of the four drop collars fixed mounted on the station. The station was at the deep space end of the null gravity point and a long way away from the single star in this system. In another decade, the station might have been "legally" in interstellar space.

You might think that space is empty, but it is far from that. Also, items this far out are moving at speeds that your average person could not comprehend. Most fighter pilots of the 21st century would have loved to have been able to obtain the average speed of those objects, even if they were very small compared to a 30,000pound empty weight fighter. When something that fast hit something that is more or less stationary? It leaves a mark, no matter how much or how strong the armor it might be wrapped up in. The station and dropships had been sand blasted over the intervening centuries. There was no way to know how bad the damage was to any of the orbiting craft. That is until they could get a crew onboard the hulks, but most of it did look at least salvageable from the outside.

It was only when two of the larger SLDF ships flew around the attached dropships. That they could tell that most of the damage had not been done by some high-speed rocks and sand, but weapons fire. Sometime before the station had been left behind. These two ships had seen more than some combat, it looked like they had been dead center of a major battle that should have destroyed them. The rest of the inspection of the outer hull did not give them any additional information, other than that they could not see any major holes in the hull of the space station.

All of this data from the two scouting dropships, was sent to higher command in New Circe. The Confederate was a very nice lance carrier, but the Lion was a great mixed force carrier, that the SLDF needed very badly. Even if the larger dropship was just a hulk? It should be worthwhile to rebuilt and put back into service with the Exiled Star League. This newly scouted system was getting better and better, for Clan Wolverine. It was full of items, which the planet of New Circe could have used for a long time. That is, if they had thought to look at this red dwarf system some time over the last two hundred years?

With the outer inspection done of the Olympus. The dropships Hard Hat and White Skies docked to the open collars. If they had to? The pair of dropships would have used some of their small craft to dock to small access ports around the station. Docking on the collars would make the boarding of the million ton station both easier, and faster. At least it should have been. This time? It was going to be harder to do, than it should have been or planned for back on New Circe. The targeted station had no power. This was not uncommon, so the docking systems had been designed so that they could be operated without power. It was just that it was going to take some additional time and it would cause some other odd little issues. They were small, but still it would take some time for the SLDF personnel to have to deal with them.

The crews had to enter the station wearing full space suits. When the station crews had put the station in what was known as hibernation mode? The air was pumped out and it had been replaced with nitrogen and argon at very low pressure. This was done to protect the ships systems with the inert gasses. The survey crews were soon moving threw out the ship in bronze color suits built by the Colonials.

Colonial suits were lighter and more comfortable to wear than a Star League supplied deep space suit. They just were not that damage resistant if someone was shooting at you. In other words, they were perfect for this task. Two groups had started out with twenty people in each group, but soon they were down to five-man teams making their way around. The prime teams headed for the CIC and the Engineering department in the massive ship. They had only their built in or hand carried lights to light the way as they floated around the cold dark man-made object.

The first shift found and marked the way to key positions for later teams. They just had enough time to find the right places, open them up, mark them, and return to the two attached dropships. All before they would run out of air in the nitrogen filled million ton space station. The second shift was able to start bringing some of those systems online, using portable power supplies without getting lost along the way. They could not deploy the massive energy catching sail or use the built-in fusion power plant the station was built with. Those important items would need to be looked at and, in most cases, hours spent repairing them. All before anyone would trust, that not only would they work, but that they would not kill anyone on the station.

It was standard procedure to keep all of the battery banks on the recharging station topped off. This was the power supply needed to start bringing the station back into operation. Each of the 8 banks should have enough power to make a fully loaded Star Lord class Jumpship move 30 light years. All of that energy had not been kept in those massive banks. They had "leaked out" slowly over time that the station had spent in hibernation mode. By the end of the second day, even limited use of computers and lights had drained the first bank dry of power. The others had more charge, but they were using the weakest ones first.

During the second full day of the reoccupation of the station. The insides and outsides of the old station were literally crawling with people in copper colored suits. The crews on the outside were checking out the solar sail and its deployment mechanism. Inside the engineering section? They were working two major projects. One was helping with the possible solar sail deployment, and the other was working on getting the breathing air up to pressure and in the right mixture of gasses.

Besides the group working in the CIC. There were smaller three and four person teams walking and floating the now well illuminated halls, bays and cabins. It might have been better to start at the top and work their way down the station. That would have let them "check out" a lot of cabins in some kind of order. Instead, they had a list of areas that might be high value. It was like a kid opening the largest presents first on Christmas or on their Birthday. They had no idea when or if the Cylons would show up, so they had gone with the best odds.

The first areas to get a detailed inspection were the fighter bays, and to the shock of everyone. They were filled with aero fighter craft. They were not top of the line fighters of the Regular or even Royal units of the SLDF. But the six heavy fighters would have been right at home in a house or mercenary unit in 3025 or a Star League militia unit, before the fall of that organization. It would seem, what might have happened, is that if a unit had outdated fighters when they had showed up here. Then they would "trade" them, before heading out to fight the Rim World units. Or it could just have been that the Star League Corps of Engineers, did not have the money to spend on even second line SLDF equipment. Now, no one would ever know for sure.

All of the relevant information on classes of the found fighters was sent to the CIC on the station, and then transferred over to one of the support ships flying close by the station. Maybe someone with a big brain and too much free time on their hands, might be able to figure out what to do with a pair of Rievers and four Chippewas class fighters. The crew that was inspecting them did not have a clue on what they were worth. To them, they looked like metal waiting on the recyclers and the expanding blast furnaces.

Another team was working on opening each of the small craft bays. This took a lot longer than getting into the six fighter bays on the station. Small craft bays were a prime avenue for any attacking pirate teams, to try to use to takeover something like this station. When these areas were locked down into hibernation mode? The crew had locked them down, in such a way. That it was hard to force them open from either end of the airlocks, and the many blast doors in the corridors that had been lowered and physically locked into place.

By the end of their shift, they had been successful in circumventing the efforts of the long-gone crew. The small craft inspection teams were able to visually inspect four 200ton K-1 class Drop shuttles, and two smaller intersystem S7a class buses. These types and numbers of craft were about what one would expect to find, on the station with so little population to support in a star system. The SLiE had very few K-1s, and it was well known that more could be used. Only the coming of the Colonials and their Raptors had this issue been abated. That didn't mean that a few more would not be very welcome into the order of battle of the SLDF military.

The next two days were spent not exploring the station but working to get a steady supply of power into the station. That was how long it took to finally get the very tattered solar sail fully deployed and get more and more power slowly going into the storage systems. This was a new task for the clan as a whole. They had not had access to a station like this, for a few hundred years. Some thought it might have not been since, going all the way back to when they were recovering from Operation Klondike. It definitely had been back before they had run from the clan space.

For them to get the massive energy collecting sail deployed and working, in so short of an amount of time? That was just a testament to their skills and quick thinking while they were floating in deep space. With the slowly increase in the power available? They were finally able to start getting the air breathable again. The hull was sound, and by now this was not a surprise to anyone in the system. If it had not been fully sealed? Then the nitrogen would have leaked out into the area around the station a long time ago. The systems on this station were a lot more powerful than on any of the jumpships brought to support this mission. After all it was designed to command a whole star system from this remote location.

The supplies of water were quickly used up and had to be resupplied by the larger ships, gathered around the station. They, in turn, had gotten it from the nearby ort cloud to restock their supplies. By the end of the week, crews were floating around the station working on bringing up secondary systems. Most of the rest were working in the engineering and command areas, and they were slowly coming back online.

One area that was not even looked at to be brought online, were the over Kilometer diameter gravity deck and the smaller 150m VIP gravity deck. That one was mounted on the bottom of the million ton station. It would have been both a waste of time and energy for the short staff recovery teams to work on those two items. It would not take long for Colonial made Gravity plates to be retrofitted onto this prize. With the craft now more alive than in the last few centuries, now more crews were brought on board to help with this little project.

That was when the shocks started to come into the scratch-built command group. It was as report after report was made by the different teams were reviewed by the mission commander. First was that all of the food, clothes, and small arms were gone from the Station. In fact, there was only about 70,000 tons of cargo left in its massive 139,000ton capable cargo storage bays. More than a few hundred tons of those stored supplies had been used just to get the craft back in operations to support life. A lot more would be needed to make it fully mission capable.

All of the ballistic type weapon systems on the station had full loads of ammunition in their various ready bays. The items in the cargo bay, as it turned out were the types of items that someone would need to run the station. All of the construction or terraforming equipment was also missing from the massive cargo bays. The surveying team had filed a report suggesting that it might be down on Shaky somewhere. There was not much hope that much if any of it would be useful, due to the conditions on that unstable planet.

The next massive hit of a surprise was found in Bay 3. That bay was not just a cargo bay. It was also a 50,000ton capacity full pressurized repair facility, and floating in it? It was just a 17,000ton Lee class dropship. The crew that had found it had no idea what the dropship was. The only thing they knew, was that it was a massive Military Spheroid with lots of guns and massive engines sticking out of its butt. A few hundred images were taken of the ship, and they had been transmitted off station with more questions than answers. The station computers had been effectively wiped of all data, and it had not helped them work out what the huge dropship was. It was not known if this was intentional, or just the effect of the deep space radiation.

When the crews had finally been able to get Bay 4 opened. They found another 50,000ton capable bay just like Bay 3. This one was found empty, and they were a little let down after word had spread around about the found dropship. It took both teams three days to force open Bay 5, or as is normally called "The Main Bay" on this station. The wait was worth it. Not only was this a huge 150,000ton Pressurized repair bay, as designed. It was not empty. It was a 20,000ton Military Spheroid, but this class was well known to Clan Wolverine and its military trained personnel. They had not had access to one, after they had left the clan core worlds behind. The few that clan Wolverine had access to had been needed by the defending forces, to buy time for the fleeing ships.

Images were again taken of the Colossus class ship, and the whole bay filled with the needed equipment to make it a small yard ship. Special attention was paid to the open and what looked like ripped out components of the drive section of the war craft. Also, around the repair bay were several odd open squares like metal frame works. Some were not completed, and others were complete, stacked, and tied down to almost to the height of the repair bay. No one had thought to count them. If it was that important? Then the person who reviewed the images back on New Circe, could count them.

It was at the one-month mark that a full meeting was held for the whole project. The meeting was held in person or watching from in close orbit around the massive recharge station. Work had not stopped, as the command groups were at the status update meeting.

Commodore Milo Franks looked around the room. The meeting was being held on a Colonial ship and not the station. This was for the simple reason of comfort provided by the artificial gravity. His second in command was Barry Garner and he was seated to his right. He gave his second a nod of his head. This was his meeting to manage, Commodore Franks was there only to act as a big hammer if it was needed.

Barry nodded back to the Commodore. Barry had already found out that this man was a lot different from the first Star league commander, that he had worked with. Barry took a breath and tried to channel some of Bill Adama into his demeanor. "Okay, we need to start with the planetary investigation teams."

Another Colonial sat up straighter in her chair. "We are still looking the planet over. We have been using Raptors and low flying dropships equipped with both DRADIS and Star League scouting equipment like the Beagle Active Probe, to gather as much detail as we can. It would seem that the software update after Troy has increased the data intake by about 35percent. As first reported, this planet is well named. We have recorded what we would have called a major ground quake on every day/night rotation of Shaky, that rates at least Mag 8.9 on the opened scale. So far, we have not found any humans or evidence of artificial construction on the planet's surface. I know that the Star League Corps of Engineers and DoME have a history and a well-deserved reputation of being able to hide massive structures, even right under the local's noses."

This statement got a round of chuckling from the members of this meeting. "We are still looking, and we are making a detailed map of the small planet. What do we know about this world? Well, it's green and full of animal and plant life that fly, swim, and walk, for now. I say for now? Because there is very little doubt that it's headed for another major ice age, in the near future, geologically speaking. We have not found anything that shows this place was terraformed. It's almost like they were trying to hide, what they did for the terraforming. We would like to have more time to keep looking to see what we "MIGHT" find."

Barry nodded to the other Colonial. "Please make sure you update your mapping data packets, on the fleet's mainframe. We want to be able to have as detailed information, as we can get just in case. You never know, we might need this planet in the future. Next is the status update of the star system as a whole."

This briefer was a Captain in the SLDF, but older than most of the 06s that held that same rank. He had been called up from the reserve not long after the level of threat the Cylons had been realized by the general public. He was in charge of the two Light Jump Carriers, their fighters, and any other combat ship in the system. He always had the look, which seemed like he had bitten into a lemon even when he was in a good mood. He also was borderline angry all of the time.

"We have picketed the system with our limited assets. And so far, we have not detected any Cylons or other ships in the system or any evidence of others. That is beside the recharge station, which this system has been so kind to give us. It would seem, that this system was not occupied in around three hundred years. As most of you know. The first team, after the Nike, reported six artificial orbiting objects in this system. We have identified them as six stripped and more or less hulks of the Star Lord Class. They have been tagged with transponders, if we can recover them at a later time. We are still looking around, with our picket patrols. A star system is a large place to hide things. We have a due in, according to the HPG message I was given. We should be getting one of the Titan class jump carriers, in the next few weeks."

Barry was tapping on the screen of a little hand-held computer that was SLDF issue. "Thank you, Captain. When you do your next alert and training exercise? Please pass to the flag any supply issues, after your last training review."

The big part of the meeting was next, and it was the one everyone was looking forward to. It was the last briefer, and the head of the station's reactivation teams. This was the whole reason that so many of the SLiE's resources had been diverted here. "I will not go into most of the information that is widely known, already. The dropships in the two internal bays are finally positively identified as a Colossus and a Lee class dropship. Both of those ships? They are Royal type ships, but unfortunately they do not seem functional at this time."

A soft rumble started going around the metal walled room from the physical attendees and the Teleop attendees. The Captain had a sly smile on her face. "Before everyone gets to excited. Query Affirmative. They both looked to have been stripped of a lot of engine and life-support equipment. In short? They are not combat ready, and we don't have the parts, out here to make them ready. As far as I know. We do not even have the parts on hand, back in New Circe. At least not in any ready to use storage warehouses that I know of."

You could feel the letdown cross the room like a wave of grey that could not be seen, but it very much could be felt. New Circe only could support a limited number of different types of dropships. That was one of the reasons, why getting rid of the two Trojan class ships was as important to the SLDF as a whole. It was from a support point of view alone. Those ships might be great and even needed, but they still might be scrapped in the end. That call would be made at a much higher level than anyone in this room would sit in.

"The two dropships on the outside of the station were both opened to vacuum. The Lion has a 5m long crack in the outer hull, and the Confederate has a 3m crack running through about the same area. The thinking is? That it looks to have happened, before and they were left behind when the Corps left. Again, the engine and life-support equipment were removed from both dropships. Not ripped out but carefully removed, and they even took the time to mark the loose wires. As some of you know already from the public reports back home. Query Affirmative. The Confederate class dropships are known to be maintenance hogs, even if it is considered to be a great raider. This type of Lion can carry two lances of mechs and a company of light tanks. We do not have enough of this class in operational service either."

The Captain stopped talking and waited for a few seconds. When he started up again, he changed topics. "We have gotten most of the station back into operation, with the backup fusion plant coming online last shift. We will need to keep having support ships bringing in food and ice, to support the station and gravity time for the health of the crew. All of the repair bays seem to be in working order, with enough parts to keep it in working order for some time. We have the station, but it is going to take a lot of support to put it into any use."

The briefer stopped talking again, and he took a sip from an open topped glass. That was something you could only do on a revolving style deck, or in an area that had artificial gravity plates made by the Colonials. "All of the weapons on the station have checked out, so far. And we will be able to start test firing each of them in a few days, as a final check out. I would like to put in a supply request for a few hundred tons of standard armor plate. I want to patch the outer hull of the station and add some reinforcing on places, that are known issue points for this design. After that? I would like to task the Hard Hat to move the Confederate and the Lion into the now open Bay 4. When we have time? We will try to get them up on shore power, and we can see what can be done with them. I think we can at least fix their hulls with what the fleet has on hand as spares. After that, it will be up to the Station to do the rest of the work."

Commodore Franks nodded and for the first time in the meeting, he joined into the meeting. He now was thankful that he had taken all of those notes when he had "talks" with his father "The Admiral" Franks. "I will pass that along to higher command. I think that it will also give you a chance to test the repair bays support systems, on something non-critical to the station and fleet. I know that in less than fourteen days, two hundred additional personnel will be coming out to man this station. We all know how important, that three more large repair bays could help our people. Query Affirmative. They would not be able to support the big warships, but all of the dropships and smaller colonial ships? They could use this. It would free up a lot of yard space, back home. Captain. Please bring everyone up to speed on what we talked about last night." Commodore Franks looked at Barry, who was tilting his head at the mission commander.

The Colonial acting "Captain" was a little surprise at this order. "Everyone knows about the fighters and small craft that we found already. The Dropships were not fully loaded with combat equipment. That does not mean that they were totally empty of combat equipment, ether. We have not found any tanks, fighters, or even small arms on them. We did find 24 battlemechs on the two dropships that were in the Shaky Prime's repair bays. We have fired them all up, and some of our people have checked out their diagnostic systems. That was the only way that we could find out what they were, in some cases."

Barry stopped talking and used his finger, to slide to the right digital file on his little computer. This was something that he had not expected to cover in this meeting. He slipped just a little in his word choice. "I'm not a ground commander, and we will be sending the complete list about the mechs, when we get the word to do so. If any of you have an idea about how to use them here? I am all ears. To start with we found three 35ton mechs in the form of a Falcon Hawk, Night Hawk and a Talon. Now the Night Hawk is not the same, as what we now call Nighthawks. That has caused some confusion for everyone who has seen the reports."

He stopped talking and then took a breath. "How about I just go down the list?"

He was met with nodding heads in an agreement to his statement. "Okay then! We found a pair of prototype Dragon Fires, a prototype 75ton Maelstrom, and a pair of prototypes of the 100ton Devastators. Those were the hard ones to workout, what they were. The Lynx, Cestus, Excalibur, three Shootist, a pair of Spartans, and Emperors. In a side storage area, off of Bay 5. We found a 95ton Nightstar and a 100ton Pillager. What I think higher command will like? Is the Riflemen II, a pair of Shoguns and of all things an Annihilator still wrapped in plastic. That is what we found, so far. I think that this is going to be it."

One of the second officers connected to the ground teams, before being sent out this way, let out a bit of a whistle. "I thought the old SLDF like to only field a few different types of machines in the same Regiment. That is a short battalion, and it is a mishmash of machines like what the house units like to do. Why would they have three escort mechs like a Shootist in that small of a unit? That does not make any sense, according to their normal unit MTOs. Query affirmative."

A second person was looking at the data and had been working on some ideas of her own. "They only took, what they knew they could support. They left behind prototypes and or low total production machines. They needed to maximize what they could support, long term, not the most cutting edge. That was smart, very smart, and some long-term planning. Too bad we do not know what happen to them, when they left here. query affirmative. The commander must have been highly skilled. I wonder why we have not found any tanks or aero fighters that should have been left behind for the same reason those mechs were?"

The second officer of the White Skies was flipping through images on his computer and zoomed in on something that stood out to him. "Shipping cubage. You can maybe only put 100 tons in a mercantile or Mec cube. You can put two 50 tonners in one, or a mix of a lot of stuff, but still only 100 tons. I saw a smaller version of these crates, for moving cargo trucks supporting Captain Copeland's last supply run."

She spun her screen around to show the rest of the room what was on her small screen. "I bet they reinforced them. Then they rolled in a heavy tank or some smaller ones, and then they loaded the cube onto a dropship. They might have used Bay Four. All they would have to do is load, and then stack the next cube on top of it. You keep doing this until you reached the deck head or deck mass limit for whatever dropship you are loading. That would maximize your cargo space, that you have on your other dropships. I bet you could take the wings and tail fins off the fighters and small craft, and then do the same with them. It would take longer, but I bet you could do it."

Commodore Franks nodded and raised an eyebrow. "That is an interesting idea, and it makes since. They took an idea and then used it to an unusual end. It would not be a great idea in a combat deployment. But if you were not going to need them for a long period of time? It is a good Fraking idea, and it fits very nicely with the evidence we have seen out here. Looks like Copeland's runs had an unexpected payoff." As "only" a Commodore, he was not read into all of the unexpected payoffs. As a member of the Franks family, he had heard more than a few tidbits of data.

The meeting went on for some time, but all of the big things were put out already. Every week the meetings would be held, but little new information would come out. The mechs were sent out along with the old fighters to New Circe on a supply run between the two star systems. The fighters were replaced by a pair of new Colonial crewed Avars and two lances of SLDF jump Kirghiz. The requested armor plate was sent, and now with the expanded crews. The outer hull of the station was very quickly repaired, and work was started on detailed inspection and spot repair of the two smaller combat dropships.

One by one. The spare parts were worked out and handmade, in more than one case. It didn't take long for the larger but easier repaired Lion, to be moving under its own power. It would sit at the jump point for a few weeks before it was taken out of system. The ship that had taken out the Lion had brought some groundbreaking news from home. The first test from using salvaged Cylon jump engines with SLDF computers had finally worked, on two of the test ships. This brought up a very important issue that they might be able to "fix". The Olympus class recharge station with its fully functional repair bays was in an empty, and more importantly exposed system. It would have been a major diversion of the limited heavy and light combat units of the SLDF to protect it. That was a type of diversion that would hurt the SLiE very badly.

That was when it was brought up about the captured Cylon Resurrection ship, at a high-level meeting on New Circe. The captured massive ship had been put into orbit far out system, over the Newgate mining outpost and prison as soon as it had been brought into this system. No one knew or agreed, on what to do with the "sleeping" Cylons. Even after almost two years, it was still a touchy subject, for not only the Colonials, the SLDF, and the POW's that had come over to the human side of this conflict. So far about one hundred human forms had been "awaken", as a test. But without a core program? It was not easy to predict what was going to happen with them. The recovered POW's from Troy had been trying to help, and it had "Saved" a dozen of them that had died due to injuries and accidents.

The Cylon ship was huge, at close to two million tons of mass. It was larger and more massive than the Colonial Mercury class Battlestar. The captured ship needed an equally massive jump engine. Just taking it out of the ship was a massive undertaking by a huge number of Station's crew to do the work. When the massive Cylon made jump engine was pulled from the oddly designed ship? It made it easier for the people in this system to sleep better at night, knowing that the ship would not be able to leave the system. If something happened? The only thing it could do, was use its very undersized intersystem plasma drive to move around the outer star system.

At first the massive jump drive was taken to be studied on the slowly expanding "Station". It was very valuable, but higher command knew there would come a time that it would be better used somewhere else.

With the successful integration and testing of the first capital Cylon jump engines into a SLDF Navy ship, ideas flowed. Some of those ideas were flawed, but some of the others might have sounded just a little crazy. After a lot of computer time and about half a day of SLS Nike's undivided attention, a plan was put into action that would use the latest recovered assets. The engine was pulled out of the classroom and wrapped in a thin skin of armor plate, that had been recovered from a wreck a few hundred light years from this system. Then it had been pulled out of the cargo bay on "The Station" for one more and maybe the last test of the device.

The massive Cylon made device was too big to fit in one of the cargo bays on the modified Riga class ship called SLS Yukon. It could be moved, but after all it was 120,000 tons of engine. It was not something the SLDF Navy or the SLiE normally moved around in interstellar space. The Yukon was not traveling alone, but with three ships of colonial manufacture. They were carrying a variety of items, but the most sought-after was the Colonial made gravity plating. It was the total production for the last three months, along with all of the stock held in the reserve. They would be using a lot of the skill learned by the Styx and Zephier's crews to carry this off. The massive Cylon engine had to be attached to the flat part, near the nose of the warship. Each of the jumps would only be about half as long as was possible for the weakest jump engine in this little convoy. The shorter jumps were hoped to make it easier on this one of a kind engine. Some of the engineers thought that they were whistling in the wind, but the ex Cylon POW's from Troy had not been able to identify any issues with carrying the engine in this way. Then again, no one had tried to move something like this before.

The Yukon was letting the Hard Hat take the massive Cylon engine from its hull. The drive with its thin armored covered box still intact, was slowly pushed toward the station. The Olympus class recharging station has an open area under what most people called the "hat". The hat was the largest gravity deck put into widespread use. It was in this opening below that ring. That the metal box was first pushed into, and then quickly attached to the hard metal surface on the top, bottom and on two of the smaller sides. This looked easy for the team to accomplish, only because of the skill of the tug and the crew she deployed.

The rest of the small convoy quickly unloaded their cargos of material and personnel. They then went into both the station and to the other nearby ships, that were still in this system to support this now expanding mission. The Destroyer/Carrier would spend four days in this system. She was to be acting as the bad guy, for the local defense force to train against, before the warship was heading out on another mission. The crew of the destroyer knew that the next mission was not going to be as interesting as the one they had just supported.

While the ships were having their little wargame, hundreds of personnel were swarming over the hull of the station of every hour on every day. It did not take long before the empty area of the Olympus was completely enclosed with a growing thickness of hard metal. When the newly closed off area was airtight? A dozen precut valves opened, and a breathable mix of gasses was slowly let into the armored shelled covered engine. When the pressure did not drop by any measurable amounts. The heavy hatches that were cut into the metal to connect the new engineering area to the rest of the station were opened for the first time. These were only the first steps of a long process, but it was progress.

When Robert was jumping out, as the Captain of the Styx again, to help out with the evacuation of Nike's World. The station was almost ready for its first test jump. It was a long and drawn out testing regiment. After all the Olympus was not designed to move around a jump point, much less move a few light years. These test jumps were only a foot note in the reports trickling out of this system, but the notes were reviewed by a lot of very powerful people. When the SLS Styx jumped into the L1 point over Nike's World. The Lord Protector was on "The Station". She looked down at the planet that looked to her to be their senior leader and she smiled.

The evacuation plans had fallen back to Plan C, as soon as the Cylons had shown up in such a large number at Nike's World. The area set aside for what was being called the Victoria City-State, was growing like crazy. They had almost three years to slowly get ready and plan for what needed to be done. Between that and the experience gained from working with the Colonial City state, they had done a lot of work. Also, it helped that this new City State spoke the same language, and they had a shared history with the old Star League. This cut down on a lot of the issues, that had come up with the Colonials in the early days of setting up that City State.

That didn't mean that they did not have any problems with these new additions. It was just that they should not have as many, major ones. As the Colonial ships started coming back as soon as they were loaded. It meant that instead of one wave of new citizens, as was originally planned. It was broken up into smaller waves, just one after the other like they were an ocean. There was a long delay between the last Colonial ship arriving at New Circe, and the massive load that was going to be coming in on the SLDF Navy ship and dropships.

The smaller waves of new arrivals did help with the working out of a few bugs in the planned operation, before the final wave of over 300,000 people and animals landed on their heads. She was thinking that Commander Copeland was going to be very happy, that he only had to get the three dropships back to this system. Then those three dropships and their cargos were going to be someone else's problem. The three dropships would put down in the new City-State in one huge influx of cargo and personnel, and the locals would start working them into the new homes.

Those three dropships would not be ready for any more missions, for some time to come. The planners said that the first major improvement to the rest of the SLiE and SLDF would be in less than six months, from this group. It was hoped that they would start filling in even more of the Infantry and artillery units before they could pick-up high-tech skills. The Colonial supplied VR was going to cut into this expected training time, at least that was the hope.

The SliE needed trained people as well as farmers and Ranchers. The few Colonial transplants and "Bondspeople" taken from the Cylons were already filling in, and in some cases. They were replacing lost Wolverines in the combat units. The rest were very helpful, as long as they did not have to deal with mechs or power armor.

Jennifer turned from the massive window and walked to her hangar. She might be the leader of the people on the planet, but she also had to maintain her skills at the stick of her chosen weapon. For the next two weeks. She would be spending twenty hours a week at the controls of a space fighter. She was lucky, and she didn't have to worry about being down checked. When she took this job? She had been put on the reserve roster. She now had a Tomahawk with her name in block letters under the cockpit. As it happened it was the same fighter her grandfather had flown when he had been the Lord Protector, until he had retired. While she was just able to focus on the joys of flying, others were having to work.

Helios Gamma well past Ophion

Captain Hewitt let out a little breath. He didn't know that he had picked up a habit of holding his breath before each jump, which would take them someplace that they might "bump" into anyone. It didn't even have to be Cylons, even humans made him do this.

They were well away from any star or planet, and HH had selected this location to make sure they didn't startle the group they wanted to visit. "Okay Morton, bring us in close and steady. Let's make sure that they are still here."

The ship's XO and second in command barely contained a snort. He didn't need to be given any commands, as the covert warship slowly moved towards the last known location of the target they were looking for. Morton had a mental bet on whether the target was still there, and if it was not. Another set of bets would be on, if it was missing because of Cylons or internal issues?

A few hours later. HH was looking at scenes that by all rights, should have been listed as a major industrial accident in space. It was centered-on a wreck of a sub light Botanical cruiser class ship. It had been hit hard by the Cylons, using weapons that were just short of nuclear ordnance and left for dead. Around the long ship were half a dozen other spaceships attached at odd angles to the longer cruiser. The only way you knew that it was still alive, were the few lights coming from the cruiser, that made up the central structure and a few other attached ships. It didn't take long to contact the train wreck in space and get clearance to dock. It would seem that they were still alive, and the XO had lost his mental bets.

The Sand

The first thing that hit HH when he exited the docking hatch was the smell, but it was quickly followed by the heat. It must have been nearly 120 in the docking bay, and that was a clear sign that things were going badly for this homemade space station. This deep into space, it was hard to vent excess heat. Vacuum is one of the best insulators known to man. Spaceships generate a lot of heat, and that was not counting the body heat the crew produced.

HH kept walking and he tried not to let his face change, as he walked up to the man waiting on him. "Mike, good to see you're still alive."

Mike Kay was the leader of this group of ships and survivors. "HH good to see the Cylons have not found you, yet. What can I do for you?"

The two men turned and started walking down the main corridor of the sub light ship. HH could feel the sweat starting to run down his spine as they walked. HH pitched his voice low, so that no one could hear them talk. "So, Mike. How is it going?''

Mike slightly turn to look at the warship's captain. "Could be better. We found what remains of a fuel tanker. She had one whole tank still holding pressure and full of fuel, and two others that had measurable amounts, despite the damage. For once, fuel is not an issue for us. If you have any extra food? I can trade you some fuel for it. How about you?" He had seen a change in the officer since the last time they had crossed paths.

HH did not react to the look or the information that had just been given. "We're good on fuel. We found a small post 1st war depot, and I have the wife moving 500 meals into the docking collar. They're old, but they tested as being good. We opened one to make sure the self-test on the packaging was still working. It would seem that they are."

Mike about tripped over his feet, and his voice got a little too loud. "Really!" His voice dropped down a few octaves. "What is it going to cost me?"

HH kept walking down the hot corridor. "We will call it even, for you helping those kids. I think we will call it, looking after the Health and Welfare of spacers." One of the key legal requirements of the Colonial Navy, was to look after the health and welfare of ships on the space lanes that supported the whole Colonies of Kobal. "How goes the rebuilding?"

Mike dropped the idea about the "free" food. "Not as fast as I would like. We have made up our own backup hydroponics lab, but we still need some more work to get Number 1 dome ready." All of the domes had been "cracked". After Mike had found this ship. He had started inspecting the ship and its dozen domes. Within a few weeks he had started to do a detailed survey of the ship, thinking about how to fix it with what they had on hand.

"If you have 20 or 25 space rated crew that I could borrow for a while? I can get almost all of the outside work done in a few days." Mike pointed to a nearby hatch window, as a way to explain what he was talking about.

HH looked out into a dark area, which took him a few seconds to realize that it was the inside of one of the wreck domes. He had that number of crew, but he was not going to let this man know that or anything related to Ragnar. "I can have 15 people ready, to take to space in a few hours. Do you want to cycle your suits threw my engineering department for recharging?"

Mike slowly turned to now look closely at the other man. Very few things were free, in his mind's eye. "Now, what is that going to cost me?"

HH was walking a thin line. He was directed to scout and help any humans, which still might be alive in Colonial space. But he was not to reveal anything about Ragnar, at least not yet to those outside of his ship. Mike pulled out a thin stack of pages, from his cargo pocket. "I need you to keep an eye on anyone of the people in these images. All of them are dangerous, but some are more so than others. Do not kill them, but you need to put them someplace safe and under suicide watch. That is the important part, if you know what I mean."

Mike took the sheets of paper, and he looked at each of the different images. What HH was asking, was not that much to ask for at first glance. But if you think about it, it was a lot to ask when you add in the details. "Okay, and yes. I would like to rotate my suits for recharging and safety checks. Let's go to my office and talk some more in private, and we can catch each other up."

HH was still on shift when 15 of his crew, being supervised by 5 of Mike's people went to work. All they had to do was go to different marks on the 4 nearby domes and pull off what they needed, without breaking it. Then they would "fly" it back, and then put items marked down as blue 1 were blue 1A was marked on the right dome. Some of the supplies pulled from Ragnar before the small warship had left, had been basic battle damage repair items. This was a good mission to knock the rust off the new hands, and get some work done to help this little pocket of survivors.

Early the next day HH went back to Mike's office. It was a long walk, but it had the best views of the dome they were working on. The hatch was open and HH walked right into the office of this "station's" commander. "So, how did it go?"

Mike about levitated out of the chair he had been sitting in while looking into the dome. "FRAK! Man! Don't do that to a man of my years." Mike made a gesture like he was having a heart attack. He held it there for a few seconds, before addressing the other officer. "Your people were great! I thought they would need two days and a few hundred-man hours, but your team got all of the work done in one long shift!" My people spent the rest of the night running diagnostics and fixing some issues that were missed or repaired poorly. We are just waiting for the icemen to show up."

The two man talked some more, and Mike started to point out different things in the dome. The massive "sun" was on but without an atmosphere to scatter the light, everything looked… cold and with sharp shadow lines. Outside of the collection of damaged ships attached to each other, a new ship jumped close by. Most people didn't know about how a botanical ship regulated the heat for her crew and kept all of those plants alive. But it was due to some special engineering. Most ships just had a lot of radiators mounted on the outsides of the ships, and then used water pumping threw them to cool themselves.

On ships like this, those radiators ran into the domes and not on the exposed sides of the great ships. The air in the domes was a lot better at "taking" the heat, then empty space was. Mike had been bringing in ice to help keep his people from roasting to death after they had found this ship. Today was just another of the schedule drop offs of ice. The crew of that ship had been dropping off ice around Colonials space since before any of the current crew were born.

HH watched as the ship landed in a landing bay, that used to transfer people directly into the domes for whatever reason they made the trip. When the inner hatch opened, HH watched as 100 tons of ice was moved between the two locations. He noticed right off the bat, that the artificial gravity was turned off in that area of the dome. That was because there was no way 4 men could have moved that much mass under anything like normal gravity by hand. HH could tell that they had done this before, as they moved the "cube" out of the hatch and to a nearby "box". Not one of them had noticed that the top of the Dome was now air "tight".

This box was something the new owners had fitted to the sub light garden ship. The 100ton ice cube was loaded onto the box, and the crew "walked" back to their ship. When the hatch was closed behind them, and locked. The metal ice filled box was lowered until it touched the metal radiators. Due to thermal shock, you did not want hot or warm metal touching something that was -150 Fahrenheit. It did not take but a few minutes before HH could see the ice start to sublime. Soon it started to shift in the high walled metal box. He about jumped out of his boots when he felt the air move out of an unseen vent at his ankles.

Mike felt something and he quickly walked over to a nearby head high vent. "Oh, by the gods! This feels good!"

HH would take the man at his word, but he did not feel any difference in the temperature of the air moving around his ankles. In less than an hour, the 100tons of ice was reduced to a metal box about a tenth filled with clear liquid. Most gasses were 500 times less dense in solid form than in their gas form. That is why you have to be careful when you deep fry a turkey. HH had to oversee some training of first aid being given to the locals, and he could not stay watching the ice melt.

At the end of the first shift, HH was back in the command section of what most people here called "The Sand". He was stopping by, before he went back to his ship for the night. He was expecting to leave this group of survivors late the next day. When he entered the command center, he noticed that all eyes were on more ice being brought into the dome.

Mike almost had a tear in his eye, as two more of the large cubes were brought into what HH knew was "The Dome. "That is going to be the last ice today. I paid with extra fuel, to get them to get another full load for tomorrow. This should give us enough pressure in the dome to check for any leaks."

Even HH could tell that the light was different in the newly repaired dome. He had no idea what to say, so he just got down to business and let the leader know about his plans to leave the station. The pair also did a little house cleaning of small issues. The largest was a gift from Mike. It was a recovered fuel pump that HH needed for his port wing mounted drive pod. It was more or less the payment for all of the help and supplies that HH and his crew had given to "The Sand".

When HH left his ship, the next morning. He noticed something different as soon as the hatch way connecting the two vessels opened. First was that the temperature had noticeably dropped, and the smell was less powerful. As he moved around the ship, he noticed the mood of the people had improved over night. He even saw a smile on one of the people he passed in the corridor, and those were very rare to find after the Cylons attack.

When HH walked into the command center, again without being stopped at the hatch. He made a note to address this security issue to Mike. HH walked all the way to stand beside Mike, who was looking down at a larger video screen showing more ice being moved into the dome. That seemed to be the center of attention for the whole command group.

HH broke the ice. "At least you won't have to worry about having enough water for showers, after importing all of that ice. I can tell that the temperature dropped already. Getting all of that heat pulled out of the metal from the rest of the ship, is going to take a while yet."

Mike had a toothy smile. "The convection currents will only get stronger and cool things down faster. We might have to break out the coats, when the temperature drops below 80 in the rest of the ship for the first time. The plants will love having all of this warmth to grow with."

"You are going to have to crank up the power, to crack all of that water to get O2 to breathe." HH was fishing.

Mike smiles a knowing smile. "The ice they collect out by Ophion, is 80 percent Carbon dioxide ice and only about 20 percent water ice. When we get to about 7 psi? We will move some of our younger plants and put them into the beds nearest the radiators. We also will start pumping some of that CO2 into the algae vats. The high concentration of CO2 should increase the yields explosively. As the plants and algae grow, they will convert the atmosphere to something breathable for the rest of us. I don't know how I can repay you. It was going to take me two or three months to get to this point, and I didn't know if we would make it are not."

"Just pass along those images and a warning about those people, and we are good. I might need to send a few groups out to you, which might need some food. Oh, and you might want to plant some of these when the soil and temperatures are right."

HH passes over four packs of seeds that had strange writing on them. Mike takes them and looks at the image of some strange plants with writing he did not understand. When he flipped each packet over. He notices that the back had an attached card, that explained what and how to get the best results out of the seeds. Mike had no idea that these seeds had come from a very long way away. Colonel Bellamy had dipped into his own hydroponics supplies, and he had given HH a dozen packets to be used to help any groups that might have a chance.

Mike puts the packets of seeds in his pocket. Seeds, no matter what they were, had a value greater than fuel.

HH looked at the mass of jumbled metal as the ship moved away. It was time to move to the next group that Captain Hewitt had found. That one would be harder to deal with. Pirates' surprisingly were not that trusting in others. HH and his crew had helped to improve this groups chances. Hopefully if they helped enough different groups in the area, some of them would survive. At least long enough that they could be moved to Ragnar. Like with seeds, you never know what will take root and what will wither and die.

Notes

How do you use the cargo space to ship Mechs, tanks and the like high density and oddly shaped items in the most efficient way? I took the idea of TEU used to ship high end sport cars and boats today.