Planet Leonis, Rebel Encampment

Scott woke up with the sleep still heavy in his eyes, clouding the room he was in. He reached up and rubbed his eyes for a moment until he could see clearly once again. Sighing, he reached up a hand and placed it on the back of woman's head that was resting on his chest. He ran his hand through her now long auburn hair and then down her backside. The woman twitched a bit, but then shifted her body a bit closer to him. He decided to just lie in bed for a few long minutes with the woman, enjoying the warmth that the two of their naked bodies provided under the covers. Finally, he slid his arm out from underneath her and stood up from the small pallet bed that he had made in his little hut.

On the bed, Jessica stirred, curling herself into the rest of the blankets. Scott half smiled at his old ECO and turned away from her. The whole thing as just a hook-up, he told himself as he looked in the mirror at his scraggly beard and ruff hair. Back in the Fleet, someone would have had his ass, but no one cared here where they fought each day for their lives. And that was also why Jess was in his bed. It wasn't love or romance that drove them to each other's bed each night, just the thought that each day might be their last and they should have a little fun before they die.

He stretched out for a moment in front of the mirror before grabbing his clothing that hung on the small table near him. They'd long sense abandoned their duty blues that they had crashed in for a nice set of civies. He pulled his brown work pants and dropped down onto the bed to pull his heavy work boots when Jess woke up. He turned back to look at her as she struggled to get her long hair out of her face. "Morning you." He said and stood up after finishing with his last boot.

She stretched out on the bed and smiled back to him. "You're up early." He laughed and pulled a long sleeved black undershirt and grabbed his heavy winter coat. As of late, it had become increasingly cold, especially in the mountains, so they had scrambled to find enough winter clothing before the snow came to them. It wouldn't be more than two weeks, one of the older resistance members had told him, and we'll be up to our knees in snow. He wasn't really too excited about the prospect of that much snow, but they were prepared enough for it and so all they could do now was wait.

"Wick and Hoot were out last night hooking up some claymores on turnpike." He pulled back his sleeve to look at the old watch on his wrist. "They should back by now and I want to debrief them." The pilot sipped his heavy padded coat on and adjusted it so it felt comfortable on him.

She sat up straight in the bed and leaned her back on the wall, letting the blanket fall from her to expose her body. "The turnpike? I thought the ambush was to be set up on the highway. There's more traffic there."

Scott stepped one boot up onto the only chair in the room while and pulled his pant leg up while strapping a small combat knife to his calf. "There is, but hitting the highway would step up Cylon patrols over there and we got Davis and Holzer moving up some supplies through that area." Brushing down his pant leg, he dropped his leg back down to the floor and secured his holster to his right leg and pushed his standard issue sidearm into it before looking up to her.

She looked to be in deep thought and if he knew Jess, and he knew her too well, she was running over every scrap of information that he'd just supplied her. "Makes sense, but a roadside ambush might step up patrols everywhere."

The Lieutenant checked himself over one last time to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything and then stepped over to the bed. "That's why I got to debrief Wick and Hoot. I'll see where the placed the mines and after they go off I'll send a recon patrol across the area and see where their patrols are picking up in relation to the mines."

She nodded slowly again, and he knew that once she got out of bed, then she'd be in their Ops center for the rest of the day pouring over data and reports. "Sounds reasonable to me. I'll head to the center after I grab some breakfast."

Smiling, he leaned down and kissed her quickly. "Smells like Nan is making something good. Save some for me will you?" He called back to her as he ducked down to open the flap of his little hut.

"If there's bacon, no promises." She said and he stood up from the small opening into the fresh mountain air. Looking around the camp, he saw it was still relatively quiet as most of the inhabitants had yet to wake up, or were just staying in their hovels for a little bit of warmth. He could see Nan's cooking in the center of their camp and he waved to her and she returned it with a little smile before going back to her meal preparation.

Scott stepped up from the small step in front of the door, as he had ordered that each of the hovels be built below ground to keep their profiles small so that the Cylons would have a harder time finding them, and onto what they called "Main Street". It was nothing more than a worn down dirt path, but it was the path that ran directly through the center of the camp into their main dugout bunker that housed their Ops center, armory, and garage with four half-ton trucks and two "technicals" as they called them. It had taken forty men digging round the clock nearly a month to get the Dugout, their new nickname for the bunker, built. They still had some guys working on it from time to time, reinforcing it and making it into a fallback point if need be. It was his goal to eventually have tunnels that lead from the Dugout into various points in the mountain so that they could move quickly without being spotted. All in all, he liked his little camp much more than the Serta Arms factory that the rest of the resistance was holed up in.

It had been decided that the arms factory was too valuable of a position for the resistance fighters to be coming back to each time they hit a major Cylon target. If the toasters followed them back from one of those attacks, then they frag a thousand civies without much of a fight. So Scott had convinced Commander Oriol to give him a group of fighters to set up this base and move freely and hit targets without having to compromise the main base. That had only partial worked. Their fearless Commander still had her hands in each operation they made which drove him insane. He couldn't take it much longer. She'd gotten more of them killed in her short time as the CO than he had ever done when it was just him. It wasn't like him to hold grudges, but he couldn't help it this time.

As if on cue, he watched Hoot and Wick trudge up the side of the hill and onto the Main Street towards him. Hoot was carrying a heavier .50 sniper rifle that he had "liberated" from a Colonial Militia compound a month ago over his shoulders with both arms draped over it. It was widely accepted that he was among the better shots in his small unit here. Wick, with his tattered brown jacket that was in dire need of replacement, cradled his CX4 Storm under his left arm and held a map in his right that the two men were looking over. Even from this distance, Scott could see the two men's breath and how they were visibly shaking. It had no doubt been a long cold night as they set up the mines, but each time it seemed that the pair would rather spend their nights out causing havoc than sleeping cozy in their hovels.

When they drew closer, Wick looked up and stuffed the map into his pocket, flashing a grin at him. "Welcome back, gents. Have a fun night?"

Hoot pulled the rifle off his shoulders and looped it under one of his arms. "Probably not as fun as yours, but certainly more productive." His grin was a knowing one as he punched him in the arm and the three of them walked to the Dugout. "We got some news for you too." Suddenly, the pair veered off from the path and away from the Dugout to one of the LPOPs that they had set up on the perimeter. Hoot tapped Wick on the shoulder and he pulled the map back out. Spreading it out on the top of one of the hovels, Wick pointed to a series of Xs along the turnpike he had ordered the mines be placed. Hoot continued, "We spent most of the night watching a series of convoys moving up and down the turnpike. Don't know what they are or where they're going, but they're big."

This piqued his interest a bit. They really hadn't hit many big targets since they moved out from Serta. "How big are we talking?" He asked and the two men looked to each other.

Wick reached into his coat pocket and pulled a small book out that he used as a recorder. He flipped through the pages until he reached the one he was looking for. He looked it over for a moment longer as if to make sure he wasn't just imagining things before handing it to Scott. Wick let him read it over first before speaking. "Three of those passed last night, and if we've got the time interval down, then another convoy should be passing her in the next twenty minutes. We should be able to see the kill zone from Psy's OP."

Scott was still reading over their report. It said there was a pair of large transports being escorted by a column of Centurions ranging from twelve to fifteen. Anything with that much protection was certainly worth hitting. "Let's move then, I want to know they're going."

Nodding, Hoot and Wick led the way down a winding worn down pathway that the resistance used to get to their OP. It was a few kilometers from their main camp so it took them a good ten minute jog to get to small lookout point. The OP was really nothing more than a shadily built tree stand and a small dugout tent for the night watch to stay in. Scott had made it an SOP for all of their outer lying lookout points to have two men at least manning them at all times. Sometimes, between watches or when fighters were bored, there could be up to six men manning a post, but when they arrived they found only Psy wildling a small stick at the base of the ladder with his combat knife. When they approached, he looked up and reached for his UMP-45 submachine gun but stopped when he saw who it was. "Morning, Ell-Tee." He said while simply nodding to the two other fighters who stopped to regain their breath from the jog. "I didn't know you were coming up or I'd have put a pot of coffee on the cooker." The OPs were also forbidden to light fires, so if they wanted to cook anything or have a fire to warm their hands, they were forced to use tiny gas cookers that were notoriously underpowered. At the best of times, they would get food or beverages lukewarm and did nothing to warm ones hands. Still, it was better than drawing the attention of a squad of Centurions.

Panting, the Lieutenant walked up to the man and placed a hand on his shoulder while grabbing the binoculars from the stump of a tree near him. "That's alright, Psy, we just came to watch a little firework show." Looping the binocular's neck strap around him, he pointed up the stand. "Who is up top?"

Psy stood up facing the tree and whistled. A moment later, a boyish looking fighter poked his head out the opposite side of the stand. "Come on down, Adam." He called up to him and the boy disappeared for a moment longer before sliding down the little ladder.

Scott hadn't seen the boy before as he was probably one of the new recruits from Serta that had just rotated in. He tried to know each of the fighters under his command, but it was nearly impossible to do so at the rate that they would either be killed or rotated back to Serta. It took him a moment to look the boy over and realize he was just that. A boy. Adam couldn't have been older than sixteen with the acne still covering his broken out face and his little awkward smile. "Thanks, Adam. We're going up for a bit, and when those mines go off, send burst back to the Dugout and let them know we've hit the convoy."

Adam smiled and nodded. "Yes, sir! We can do that!" The boy seemed eager to please, which was a good thing, but it still unnerved him that he was so young. Just another frakked up thing about this little war.

He nodded and started climbing up the dangerously unstable ladder, making a mental note to get some building supplies sent to them on their next resupply from Serta. When the trio had made it to the stand, they all lied down onto the wooden floor and Hoot propped his sniper rifle up with his bipod, aiming it at the turnpike. The road itself wasn't more than four hundred meters off and was lined on each side with dense foliage. Thankfully, the tree they were in was high enough to get a view over it.

It was another ten minutes or so before Hoot tapped him on the shoulder to tell him to focus his attention to the east. The Cylon convoy was marching down the road with their two trucks lumbering slowly down the cracked pavement. Wick pulled the detonator out of his pocket and thumbed off the safety. Now that he could see the convoy, he realized how valuable it actually looked. The Centurions were marching in perfect parade ground unison in front of the pair of massive silver trucks. He quickly counted the machines and found that they had eighteen of the machines protecting the trucks.

Another minute passed before Wick quietly counted down so that he could prepare for the blast. "Five, four, three, two…" A second later, he squeezed the detonator and the mines blew in unison. Four bright balls of fire spit a terrible hail of searing hot shrapnel and death. Underneath the trucks, the ground seemed to blossom up and exploded in three separate places, two directly under the lead truck eviscerating it completely and the third catching the front end of the trailing truck, tearing it in half and capsizing it. Wick and Hoot laughed aloud and highfived over him. "We forgot to tell you we packed a little extra in there. Pipe bombs to be exact." So that was what had blown the trucks up.

Scott surveyed the damage and was satisfied with what they had accomplished. He handed the binos off to Wick to show him his handiwork who gladly accepted them. After a second, however, his smiled turned into a look of utter disbelief. "Oh my Gods." He croaked before dropping his jaw.

"What?" Scott asked and strained his eyes to look at what could have him so shocked. Wick did nothing and his body started shaking slightly. Without waiting for a reply, he snatched the binos out of his hands and immediately saw what he was looking at. His heart sank the moment he looked at the rear truck. A blond haired woman staggered out of the truck, her stomach split open by a piece of shrapnel by the looks of it, and collapsed to the ground face first. As he continued to watch, he saw more people stagger out, most wounded fatally by the looks of it. He dropped the binos onto the ground and his stomach turned. "Gods, there was people in there."

Battlestar Retribution, War Room

It was too much too fast. Admiral Ward stood up from his chair and took a quick walk around the room. He and his command staff had been in the War room for the last six hours trying to shuffle through the massive amounts of information that General Castorious had been sending them from Cylon base that they had run into down on Helios. It had caught them all off guard when the action stations had been sounded the day before. The only solid piece of information that they had gotten from the ground teams was even more of a shocker than the Cylons actually being on Helios. The base was found to actually be a downed Cylon Basestar from the First Cylon War, and the years past had covered the ship with a thick layer of ice and snow. How and why it got there was still a mystery.

"Admiral, Lieutenant Fel has sent her report up." Petty Officer Martel said as she entered the room. He was about to dismiss it when one of the words on the report caught his eye. PEGASUS. The Gods were playing a joke on him right now. Another rumor about the Pegasus going around the fleet was the last thing he wanted right now.

"Thank you, Katie." He took the file and moved to the far end of the room away from the others. Before starting on the file, he glanced up at the wall at one of his favorite pictures on the ship. It was an artistic depiction of the Battlestar Orion, the very one that had been recovered from the Aquarion Shipyards and his old flag during the famous Battle of Leonis. She was rolled to port firing away with her main guns at a pair of Cylon ships that were looming in the distance. A trio of Vipers were zipping across bottom of the picture engaging a flight of Raiders. This was of course all fiction. Nothing at all had gone this well during those nine days. Just as it was right now, everything was disarray and information was sketchy at best, and when they thought they had gotten everything figured out the Cylons would throw them for another loop. I guess war really never does change.

The report wasn't all too long, it just had the best worst news he could have hoped for. They believed that Captain Atlas and Lieutenant Falls were alive, which was a good thing, but if the Pegasus had them then why hadn't they made contact with him? Joker was a good pilot and an even better officer if he hadn't given Cain their position, then there had to be a good reason. Ward stretched his back as it was sore from sitting for so long and then tried to massage out his lower back before turning around. "Lieutenant ****, send for Commander Espino, I have a mission for her." He nodded and then moved to phone on the wall to make the call up. There wasn't much of a lead to go on, but if someone could track down the Pegasus, then Espino would be the one.

It was just another perk of having the most advanced stealth Battlestar in the entire Fleet under your command. The older Argus-Class Battlestars were long outdated and in dire need of replacement. When the Nyx had been brought under his command, he figured there was more of her class but soon realized that the Nyx itself was one of the projects for the science teams to work on. They'd finally worked out the final kinks of the ship only a few months before the attacks and had sent the plans back to Pinnacle station to what he could only assume was to build more of the shadowy ships. If any more had been built before the Fall, then he didn't know of it.

An hour later, Commander Espino came through the door to the War Room looking sharp in her black intelligence uniform with her dark black hair pulled back into the sock bun, the hair style most women in uniform tended to prefer. The golden pins on her jacket stuck out like stars against the void, three of them in total. First were the standard senior flight wings from her time as a pilot, and next to that was her Stealthstar Qualification Badge and nestled underneath those pins was the Shadow Flotilla insignia. The Shadow Flotilla was a dedicated stealth unit, consisting of six Argus-Class Stealth Battlestars, and Commander Espino was on track to take command of the unit once the Nyx-Class was brought into active duty. His shoulder always felt lighter when she was around him for he spent his entire career in the CIC as a duty officer. As a duty officer, one would receive fewer commendations as the Viper and Raptor jocks simply because of the fact that the pilots were the heroes and rest of them were just support roles. Sometimes this caused a little bad blood between the two, but for the most part it worked.

"Commander." Ward said when he saw her. "How are you?" They spent a few minutes making small talk before Ward got down to business. She listened vigilantly as Ward recapped the events of the Captain's mission and his missing before going onto Lieutenant Fel's last rescue attempt.

She sat looking over the material that he had come up with for her before she said anything. "You want me to hunt down the Pegasus?" She asked finally.

"I want you to go looking for my pilots." Ward corrected her. "I'm not fully convinced that it was the Pegasus that grabbed our men, and if it was I want you to figure out why they haven't made contact with us."

Espino pursed her lips with her long slender fingers for a moment as she thought. Always the thinker, he thought to himself. It was probably why she made such an effective intelligence officer. "Do you think that Cain is holding them against their will?" She finally asked.

Ward shrugged and wanted to tell her that he wouldn't put it past Cain to do so, but he held his tounge. "I'm not sure, but there has to be a reason for them not reporting in."

"They could be dead." She stated the obvious and most logical answer, as they two pilots had been missing for so long, but he didn't want to accept defeat. If there was a chance that they were still alive, then he'd continue this lead.

Nodding in agreement, he replied. "They could be, but I'd rather hold out hope for their survival."

The Commander raised her eyebrows and looked away. "Of course, sir. So you want me and my crew going on a search for a ghost ship and two pilots that have been missing for several weeks?" Her tone was sarcastic and disapproving.

"Yes, it sounds like a long shot, but I need something to boost morale after recent events."

She shook her head, not understanding why she should risk her ship for a pair of pilots. Ward was losing his edge on the argument. "We won, sir, why do we need a morale boost?"

The Admiral had had enough with the Commander. She was a good officer, but she didn't know how to hold her tongue and follow orders sometimes. "We found Cylons on Helios, our patrols are still too scared to move in fear of the Cylon beacons, and now the Hopeful, the key to our success at Cylon base, has been crippled. That's why, and if finding a couple of pilots can boost our morale, then I need you to do it."

Espino just gritted her teeth, still not liking it at all, but she knew that he was right. Morale had plummeted in the last few weeks, and not even defeating the Cylons on Helios could fix that. "I can do that, sir." She grudgingly accepted.

Satisfied, Ward's voice went back to being soft and friendly. "Good, you jump in six hours to the wreckage that Lieutenant Fel found and begin your search from there. Do what you have to, but I need you to be back over Helios before our assault starts in three weeks."

She nodded and stood from her chair. "I'll get it done." She snapped a lazy salute and walked out of the room. She might be low on discipline, but she was one hell of an intel officer. For that, he'd put up with her for a while longer.

Battlestar Oceanus

"How many did you get?" James asked the rebel leaders that had assembled with him in one of the Oceanus' weapons lockers. There were three men before him, Specialist Kyle Owens, the one that had sprung him from his cell, was among the leaders. Apparently rank had nothing to do with the rebel's leadership. Along with the jammer, was a Junior Lieutenant Royce Cullen, the Oceanus' Landing Signal's Officer, and Staff Sergeant Carson Willow of the Oceanus' Marine Detachment. Immediately after leaving the cellblock, the rebels had taken James and a barely conscious Jacob away from the area and closer to the starboard flight pod where Ashur was preparing to flush several of the rebels out of the flight tubes as an example. The number of prisoners hadn't been confirmed as of yet, but they knew there was at least ten, including Danni Hale, the real backbone of the resistance leadership on the Oceanus.

The Staff Sergeant cleared his throat with a small cough before answering James. "Here in the weapons locker we've got nine marines and twenty-one crewmen." He gestured back to the rear of the large locker. The rebels were arming themselves with rifles, shotguns, SMGs and grenades. It was all so odd to him. These people out here, the Fearless included, clearly had a different set of worries than the Retribution and her Fleet. He didn't like helping wage a war between two human factions, especially during the apocalypse, but right now he really didn't have a choice. It was either that, or rot in a jail cell for Gods know how long.

The Captain sighed and rubbed his temples. He was still sore for the punishment that Ashur had forced him to endure over his time on the ship. "And what about Ashur's strength?"

The three leaders looked to each other for a moment and finally the Staff Sergeant shook his head. They obviously didn't have a clue. "We can't say, but we know they've got to have at least six on the execution squad. As for the others, it's hard to say." Well these three were going to be a wealth of information.

James thought for a moment on what their options were. He was in no way trained to lead troops in combat on the ground or upon a ship; that's what marines were for. However, the idea of it all seemed simple enough. Capture the critical systems and you've got the rest of the ship in a vice grip. "Alright here is what we're going to do. Staff Sergeant you're going to take your marines and head for the CIC. It should be lightly guarded without Ashur there, and most likely the Colonel will be there. If we can get him, then that'll give us a leg up in this fight." James looked over to the Specialist. "Specialist, I'll need a distraction when we reach the deck. If we all go in guns blazing, Ashur will just blow them all away without giving it a second thought." He pondered his options there as well. With a few deck goons he could certainly make a mess of the deck without showing a preemptively giving away his assault. "Take a couple of your knuckle draggers and make some serious noise for us. When he's not looking we'll open up."

Last thing he had to do was take the engineering sections. If Ashur still had those decks, then he could still scuttle the ship if he feared it was falling to the rebels. "Lieutenant Cullen, take whomever you can find and capture engineering. It's vital that Ashur doesn't get those decks. Understood?" The Junior Lieutenant nodded slowly without saying a word.

Then that was that, they were ready to go. "Everyone know what they're doing?" They all confirmed his orders and repeated them back. It was odd to be in command not in the seat of a Viper, but he somewhat liked it. What he really yearned for was to get back to his squadron so that he could fly again. "Then let's get moving. We don't have long before they blow the airlocks."

James stood from his crouched position and started back into the weapons locker. A few of the rebels gave him sideways glances, probably not trusting him fully or were worried about following his lead, but none of them said anything. He came to a rack of weapons and ran his hand down the length of it. Right then, it hit him that he had no idea what weapons he should bring. The only times he'd fired a weapon was during training and that was rarely something other than the standard issue sidearm.

A hand clasped his shoulder and reached out to take one of the P90s in the rack. It was shoved heavily into his arms before the figure stepped past to lean heavily on the rack. "Try this, plenty of ammo for you to spray around. You and me both know you can't shoot for shit." Jacob Falls held his side as he grinned at him. He looked absolutely awful. Bandages covered his head and body from where Ashur had beaten him mercilessly.

James reached in and took several of the fully loaded magazines and stuffed them into a tactical vest near him. "You look like hell. You're not planning on sitting this one out though are you?" Jacob grabbed a CX4 Storm and a vest as well to begin loading up. He was a much better shot than James and he knew it.

"You think I'd pass up an opportunity to put a bullet in that Colonel's head?" He was serious too, even through the smile he had, James could tell that he would kill the man.

"I hoped you say that. We got to move though." The two pilots had been thrown onto a foreign and hostile ship, and were about to start a war. Just another day in frakking Fleet.

Patrol Frigate Horizon

"Jump complete we're beginning our scans now." The CIC personel worked like a fine tuned machine in hunting down the beacons. Jump, scan, shoot, repeat. It's all they seemed to do these days. "Scan complete. We've got one beacon on the DRADIS time to target is two minutes." Talvert just nodded to his officers for approval. He had ceased to care around their fortieth jump, but his crew didn't mind. They were all stuck in this mind numbing routine. The two minutes slid past and the Horizon fired one of her long range missiles destroying the small beacon.

"Stay on station for nine more minutes and then jump to the safe zone." Talvert ordered as he watched the debris of the beacon float away in all directions. It was now standard operating procedure to see how quickly it would take the Cylons to respond to a destroyed beacon. They were beginning to get slower and slower, but they always did respond.

"Aye, sir." The officer called and thus the wait began. Nine minutes ticked by as the CIC crew silently worked at their stations. No Cylons appeared. The Horizon's crew was no doubt praying that they wouldn't show up. To show that they had finally gotten the better of the Cylons and worn out the machines.

Maybe they won't come after them this time after all. Talvert thought to himself, but as if on cue, the DRADIS chimed with a new contact. A collective sigh went out throughout the CIC, they'd all wanted this small victory, but it wasn't this time. Next time. He thought.

"Major, it's a single Raider."

"What?"

"Yes, sir. One Raider bearing right down on top of us."

"Arm point defense weapons and prepare to fire."

"Aye, sir."

The Raider suddenly veered off as if it realized the odds that were stacked against it. The point defense guns still tracked and prepared to fire, but the Raider dropped a weapon just before the Horizon's guns fired. The weapon streaked through the dark space so fast that the Horizon's guns couldn't track it. "Frak, all hands brace for impact!" The Major called through the intercom, but the shockwave never came. The weapon detonated, but caused no physical harm to the vessel.

"Multiple DRADIS contacts! FTL is non-responsive!" Reports began firing from all sides of the CIC as he klaxon was blaring. Talvert strained his ears to try and sort out the vital information from the chaos within the compact room. "Sir, I'm picking up twenty-three Raiders and three Heavies bearing down on us."

"Launch the Vipers and bring the point defense systems online. Get the snips down in engineering working on figuring out what is wrong with the FTL."

"The Vipers will be out gunned four-to-one. They'll be torn to shreds."

"Then tell them to stay close and behind our triple-A . Any stragglers that break through are all theirs." "Send out a general distress signal. We're too far from Helios for them to help, but one of the pickets might be close enough to support us."

"Krypter, krypter, krypter. Any Colonial vessels in range, this is the Patrol Frigate Horizon request immediate support we've been ambushed by a sizeable Cylon force and require assistance."

Raiders are coming into range, sir."

"All batteries open fire!" The Patrol Frigate's guns fired throwing up a small flak cloud to deter the oncoming Raiders. The first few flew directly into the shrapnel and were torn to shreds. Several Raiders veered off and maneuvered around the fire. Talvert quickly ordered anti-fighter missiles to be fired. A pair of missiles plumbed from the front of the ship and slammed into the oncoming Raiders. THe Vipers quickly engaged the remainder and were caught in a tight dogfight.

The Heavies punched straight through the flak field, their thick armor taking the small fire like it was nothing. "Frak! Track those damned heavies and hit them with some missiles. That ought to put them down!" However, before the missiles could be fired, the heavies launched a payload of their own. The missiles slammed into the side of the frigate and tore through her armor, venting several decks and causing the ship to spin uncontrollably.

"We've lost all propulsion. Weapons can't track now, sir." Talvert cursed his luck and looked to the DRADIS. Two of their four precious Vipers had been destroyed, and without the flak to cover them, the remaining Raiders would be all over them in a matter of seconds. It looked like this was the end for them. "Raiders are launching another volley, Major, we can't take another hit."

There was nothing that they could do now aside from pray that they survived long enough for a Colonial vessel to support them. At that moment, when his entire ship and crew's life were at stake, he could only think of one thing, the promise that he would be breaking. He could hear her voice ringing in her ear clear as day. "Fine, but I want you there in two months." She had said to him.

"I will be, I promise. Nothing in the worlds could stop me from being there." He told her and had kissed her. I guess I'll be breaking that promise now.

As quickly as he could, he snatched up the intercom. "All hands abandon ship! Abandon ship! I say aga…" The Cylon missiles crashed into the side of the ship before he could finish his order. He was brutally thrown across the CIC under the force of the impact and crashed into the bulkhead. His head became fuzzy and the last thing he thought heard before the blackness consumed him was his XO. "Do it now!"

"Out of the way!" Megan called as she rounded a corner and quickly came upon a pair of crewmen on their way to the hangar deck. They both quickly stepped aside to allow her to run past them before continuing on. Running was her favorite way to clear her head, normally she would prefer to be able to run somewhere more scenic, but in their current place, the inside of a Battlestar would have to do.

Planet Leonis, Listening Post/ Outpost Three overlooking turnpike ambush area.

Scott's heart sank as he watched more people stagger from the trailing truck. Why were there people aboard those trucks? Were they prison transports? Maybe it wasn't at all a loss. Maybe those were Cylon collaborators. He wouldn't know until he got down there and found out. "Hoot, give us an over watch. Pick off any remaining Centurions on our approach and keep an eye on the road for reinforcements." The sniper nodded and peered through his scope before firing one of the heavy 50 caliber rounds at a Centurion. Not even a machine designed to withstand gunfire could stop one of those big bastards from getting through.

The Lieutenant slid down the ladder, followed closely by Wick, and made his way to the shortwave communication unit the OP had. He pushed Adam aside with ease and took up the wireless. "Dugout, this is Actual, I need six fighters at OP 3 now with medical kits. We might have wounded incoming." He didn't wait for the acknowledgement, but rather dropped the handset and started towards the turnpike. He stopped to stoop into the small tent which had all the standard medical supplies. He pulled a collapsible stretcher from it and thrust it into the boy's hands. "Psy, Adam you're with us. Keep your eyes up and heads on a swivel." Without another word, the four set off at a run towards the turnpike.

It took them no time at all to reach the edge of the road and the four of them kneeled nearby behind a grouping of trees. Pulling out his sidearm strapped to his leg, he slid an explosive round into the under barrel in case they ran into any Centurions. It was notoriously hard to drop one of the toasters if you were anywhere but close range, but the explosive round tended to do the trick quite well if you hit them in the right place.

Motioning the fighters forward, Scott stepped out of the tree line and onto the road. He felt uncomfortably exposed, but the trucks and debris would give them some cover if the shooting started. Besides, they had Hoot on over watch keeping an eye out for any hostiles. Every now and again, there was a crack from his sniper rifle signifying that there was still Centurions still around. They pressed on nonetheless, to search the trailing truck for survivors. They stacked up on the jagged torn open edge of the truck and prepared to enter it. Scott flashed a silent countdown on hand before slipping into the truck. He was hit instantly with the rank stench of blood, and nearly slipped on it as the slick crimson liquid was everywhere. He covered his mouth and nose in an attempt to save himself from the smell before continuing on. He turned to Adam whose face was pale white as if he were about to empty his breakfast all over the ground. "Stay outside and watch for any threats." He boy nodded, more than happy to not have to be in that vile place.

Scott stepped over a corpse and continued inwards. Most of the faces were blackened from the blast or disfigured from the shrapnel that was thrown around, but even then as he looked around he saw a resemblance between many of the people. Families? Twins? It was odd but he pressed on. As if he was reading minds, Wick broke the silence that had settled inside the truck. "They all look the same." Scott again stepped over a pair of corpses of identical blond women and shook his head. "Every frakking one of them. The men all look like each other just like the women do. There's no frakking difference."

His heart picked up as he confirmed each of the bodies that were around him. Blonde hair, blue eyes for the females, a few of them had dark hair and eyes, but those were all the same too. The men either had blond hair green eyes or were dark skinned, but each held the same face. "Get out." He heard himself say. "Get out of here now." The three fighters bolted from the truck and back out into the turnpike. His heart was racing, but his mind was moving faster than ever before. "Grab one. Put one of them on the frakking stretcher and we'll have the docs cut them open to find out what the frak they are."

Adam was looking wide eyed at the others. He hadn't seen; he didn't know what they now did. A gunshot sounded and the boy staggered forward. A dark red circle began forming in the center of his chest as his eyes widened more than they had a second before. A second shot sounded and his head exploded, splattering his brain all over the side of the overturned truck. His body fell and a crippled Centurion dragged itself a few feet forward with its arm before raising its other arm to fire. Scott raised his sidearm and fired into the damaged machine. The explosive round destroyed what was left of the machine, but before he could check on the boy there was a flash of something to his side. He tried to look to see what it was, but he was hit in the chest so hard it felt as if he'd been hit with a sledge hammer. He flew backwards to the other side of the six lane turnpike and slammed into the ground, scrapping his back and legs terribly on the pavement. Through his daze, he saw a man walk up to him, but it wasn't one of his fighters. The man picked him up by the collar with one hand and lifted him straight off the ground to hold him in the air. It looked to be no effort as all as he held up. It was unnatural to say the least, but then he saw his face. It was the same as those in the truck. The blonde hair and green eyes, they were the exact same as every other one. "Your race is weak. One little slip of my hand and I could snap your neck. You'll die just like all the others did." Scott struggled against the man's grip, but couldn't break free. The man grinned and cocked his head to the side slightly. "One thing that humans do not lack is the will to keep fighting even when they've been defeated."

Scott felt down the side of his leg for his knife. It was still there and he gripped the hilt of it. "Maybe that's because we know we haven't lost yet." He pulled the knife from its sheath and stabbed hard into the man's chest. His grip instantly loosened as he twisted the knife to try and tear his vital organs, if he had any, to finish the kill. He ripped the blade from his chest and drove it back down into the man one more time. "What are you? Tell me and then I'll let you die."

The man started laughing, blood bubbles forming in his mouth as his lungs began to flood from the wound. "Can you not tell? We're the next step in evolution. Humanity's time has come and gone." He began coughing more violently now as he drew closer to death. "And when this body dies my mind will be transferred to a new one. You can't kill me, but I will come back and make sure I end your miserable life."

The rage boiled up inside of him as he jammed the blade into his throat several times, watching as the life escaped from the Cylon. "Come and get me you frakking toaster. I'll just kill you again." The machine died, and Scott picked himself up off of the ground before retrieving him side arm.

The wireless comm cracked in his ear as Hoot's fire began to pick up. "Cylon reinforcements coming in from the east down the turnpike! Looks like their at platoon sized strength! Get out of there now!" He didn't need any convincing. His body hurt badly now from being thrown across the road, but he pressed on into a jog back to his fighters. Three more fresh Cylon corpses were around Wick and a wounded Psy. They threw one of the smaller female Cylons onto the stretcher and strapped it down before taking off as fast as they could into the woods.

When they reached the LPOP, they stopped for a few seconds to allow Hoot to slide down the ladder and join them. He couldn't do anything but gawk at the dead Cylon on the stretch for a few moments. Scott took a few deep breaths to regain his composure and assess the situation. The reinforments that he had requested were just now showing up. The fighters were fitted with their full kit: weapons, grenades, sidearms and tactical vests. He nodded to them and ordered two stay behind to destroy the LPOP. "Strip it of everything we can still use, and then blow the rest. Leave it as a nice little present for the Cylons to discover when they come poking around here."

The pair of fighters that he had tasked nodded and moved quickly to begin stipping the small LPOP. Scott then turned his focus back to the dead Cylon. "Send a runner ahead of us and tell the Commander we're bringing something big back to her. Medical teams need to be on standby." Nodding, another of the fighters took off in the direction of the Serta Arms Factory.

Psy, with his arm dangling down by his side with blood now gushing from it looked in no condition to keep up moving. The medic that he requested was already working on his wound and so he left the two to it. "We're heading back to Serta with this one." He pointed to the dead Cylon while briefly looking over its grotesque features. She had been killed with a shot through her upper breast that had no doubt ruptured her spinal cord. The blood, if it could even be called that on a machine, had soaked through her clothing and matted her black hair down to her face. "Let's move quickly and quietly." Hoot, Wick, and the remaining fighter all nodded to him just before taking off through the woods.

They reached the facility in no time and were past the security checkpoints without stopping. Since they were carrying a stretcher, the guards figured it was a critical wounded they were bringing back and waved them by. If only they knew. Scott thought as he pushed through the group of civilians in the atrium of the factory. They were in medical before he knew it and they dropped the corpse hard onto the operating table, startling the two doctors within.

"It's dead." Scott said, pulling the sheet from the Cylon's face to let the doctors need a look. "I need to know what's different about this."

THe first doctor, and elderly man with a scruffy white beard pushed past Scott to look at the machine. "What do you mean? This is a woman! What happened?"

"I put two in her chest, Doc." Wick said from the back of the room, still panting from the run back to Serta. "Dropped like all the rest."

The doctor looked from Wick to the corpse and back again. "You killed her?"

"It, Doc." Scott said, prompting the second doctor, a younger man maybe in his forties, to intervene.

"You keep saying it. Why?"

"Because it's not human."

"What makes you say that?"

"I guess she and her thirty identical twins could be human."

"Identical twins?"

"We hit them in a convoy moving through the turnpike."

"Yeah, her and her buddies were all identical. Three or four sets of them."

The two doctors looked down to the body again and began whispering to one another. "Nurse!" The elderly doctor called out. "Get this into the surgery ward now. We've got an autopsy to perform."

Commander Oriol's face twisted as she looked down to the corpse. Scott watched as her expression turned from confusion to straight and blind anger. Her eyes shot up to Scott's and without taking her eyes from him, she ordered the rest out of the room. The two locked eyes and neither broke. "You gods damned fool. You frakking bastard!" She belted out only a fraction of a second after the door closed behind Wick. "You bring a frakking Cylon into my facility!"

"A dead one, Commander." He spat at her taking a step closer to her. "We killed more than two dozen of the bastards out on the turnpike. All identical and I need your medical teams to tell us what's different about them."

She raised her and to his face, but held back as though she was about to hit him. "You don't get to make demands of me, Lieutenant. You're forgetting your place. I am the senior officer here."

"Lead from the rear? Isn't that your motto, sir?" He'd had enough of her.

This time she didn't hold back, she lashed out and struck him across the face. "I'm in command here, Lieutenant, not you. You may not like it, but I still have the power to strip your command from you for someone more…" She pursed her lips for a moment before she came up with the right word. "Compliant."

Feeling bold, Scott wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and looked back up to her. "But remember what I command, sir." He was threatening a superior officer and acting in blatant disregard of the chain of command. Two court marshaling offences in the Colonial military, but then again they weren't the Colonial military anymore. It was cutthroat out here and they each had to survive as best they could, and this was his way. "You've given me the best and brightest we have. The seasoned veterans of our forces here. You don't really have a leg to stand on."

McKnight was expecting a tounge lashing followed by a pair of MPs coming through the door to take him into custody. After that, it would likely result in a schism within the resistance forces here. He was already preparing the speech he'd give to his supporters when she spoke. It was a calm and menacing tone rather than an infuriated one. "I don't?" A wicked smile grew on her and she turned about and walked from him. "This facility, Lieutenant, is the last bastion of humanity. I can't have anyone of my top officers having any sort of sickness, whether that be of the body or mind. Your foolish move to bring a live Cylon back here wouldn't do much for your cause." Scott cocked his to the Cylon about to protest. "What would we ever have to do if Lieutenant Scott McKnight brought back a live Cylon, only to have it break free from its restraints and attack you. You only survived once we put it down with a few shots to the chest. There would be no way I could leave you in command after an incident like that." She faced him yet again, shooting a steely glare his way. The threats sank into him like a combat knife from a Centurion. He flexed his hand in anger, cracking his knuckles as he went. She'd won this time and she knew it.

"Anymore outbursts such as that, Lieutenant, and I'll have you back here counting ammunition stores for the rest of time. Do you understand me?" Gritting his teeth, the Lieutenant nodded as he tried to hold back his anger. "Now get out of my sight. I don't want you back here unless it is absolutely necessary." Scott stormed out of the room, flinging the door aside as he went.

Commander Nita Oriol had won this round, but he wasn't done. She wouldn't stay in command long if he had anything to do about it.

Battlestar Oceanus, Hangar Deck

And there she was. Danni stood in front of the nine other rebels and defiantly yelled at the Admiral. He reached out and slapped the woman hard making her fall to the deck, but she got right back up and began yelling again. He couldn't hear her, but he could only guess what she would be yelling about. Ashur only laughed and turned around signaling for his firing squads to take their position. James looked over Ashur's forces and saw that his rebels, although they weren't marines, had the numbers. There were six on the execution squad and four more guarding the rebels.

From across the hanger, James saw Kyle give him the OK and he knew that they were all in position. This would have to go off without a hitch if they were going to save all of them. The pilot looked over his shoulder to Jacob, who was still heavily bandaged and the two men grinned. Even if he was beaten and bloodied, he would still rather have Jacob at his back than anyone else. He raised his P90 and tracked the first on the squad. He had instructed for the rest of his team to take out the executioners first and save the others for the ensuing fire fight. He took a long deep breath as he sighted in the man's chest on his red dot scope. From across the hangar, a call went out for everyone to scatter. He didn't look, but he didn't have to to know what was happening. The Specialist had feigned dropping sensitive ordinance onto the deck as he was trying to load it onto a Viper. The commander looked away, as did half of the marines to see what had happened. From across the way, knuckle draggers scattered and took cover. A few of the marines even began to move, but the ruse was about up. He squeezed the trigger and fired a short burst, the marine's body shuttered for a second and then dropped to the ground. The deck exploded into a hellstorm of bullets a fraction of a second later as the rest of the rebels opened fire. The marines dropped quickly as there was no cover near their position. Ashur quickly ducked back into a small open walkway with a pair of marines who returned fire. Several of the rebels made a break for their comrades against the wall, but were cut down by the accuracy of the marines.

"Stay down!" James called to them and they settled down. Owen's knuckle draggers had joined the fight now, taking a trio of marines by surprise and surrounding Ashur's position. Before he retreated into the hallway, the Commander stepped out into the open with his sidearm and fired several rounds at the imprisoned rebels. James jumped up to fire on the commander, but stopped as he retreated into the hall.

One of the rebels charged into the open hall to catch the commander, but as soon as he turned the corner he was caught with a hail of bullets. "After him!" Another yelled, but James stopped him before he could turn the corner and suffer the same fate as the previous rebel.

"Free them!" He called out to the rebels and made sure the deck was clear. Those that hadn't taken up arms with them now cowered in the corner, frightened by the recent shooting. The Captain ran over to one of the Viper's and climbed up onto its wing so that they could all see them. "Any of you who are willing to join our cause and take this ship back from that tyrant are welcome to do so. If not, return to your quarters and wait until this is over. No harm will come to you." A few of the pilots and deck goons came out from their hiding place to take up arms, but the vast majority didn't move.

Specialist Owes ran across the deck to the Viper. "We've got wounded, sir." James jumped down and followed him back to the rebels who were to be executed. On the ground, Danni was lying with her hands clutched over her stomach to try and stop the bleeding. A few rebels were breaking open a first aid kit, but they all knew it wouldn't be enough.

James dropped down to his knees near her. "Ashur." She gasped through the pain, and he took her hand to comfort her. One of the rebels jabbed her with a needle to slow the pain. "He shot me. That frakking bastard shot me." He looked down to the wound a saw a single bullet hole in her left side just below the ribs. Her hand began shaking violently in his and he placed his hand other hand upon her head to soothe her. "Kill that frakker for me. Kill him and take the ship back."

He brushed a bit of her hair away from her face and behind her ear. "I will, Danni, just hold on. We're going to get you to a doctor." He looked up to Owens who was standing nearby. "Who's the CMO on board?" Owens only stared at the wound and he figured that this was his first time seeing any sort of combat. He couldn't let him zone out now. He still needed the man. "Owens!" He yelled and the man looked back up to him.

"Doc Howard."

"Go get him." Owens nodded and took one of the rebels with him to find the doctor. There was still more pressing things to do, but at that moment he was still too worried about her. He focused back down on the wounded Danni. She gritted her teeth hard as they threw a field dressing over her wound. "How the tables turn, right?"

Danni looked down and back up to him while trying to laugh. "Please don't make me laugh, James. How bad do you think it is?"

The shot itself looked pretty bad, but he'd seen worse during Sideswipe. Pilots had come back with gaping holes in their chests as one of the more popular tactics of their adversaries was to aim directly at the cockpit and hope to kill the pilot and take his craft from him. He'd seen pilots endure horrific wounds and come out alright if the doctor was good enough. "You'll be alright, Danni. I've seen a hell of a lot worse wounds on people that were a hell of a lot less stubborn than you." The words were supposed to be optimistic, but what he didn't tell her was that he'd seen people die from wounds that weren't nearly this bad.

She smiled at him and the gripped his hand tightly, but it didn't last. The smile disappeared from her lip and she locked eyes with him. "I'm scared, James." The cold sweat was running down the side of her face now and he could see that she truly was. He couldn't even lie to himself, he was terrified. Not just because of the fighting that he was soon to do, but he was scared that she wouldn't make it through. It had only been a few weeks that he'd known her, but he felt close to her already. Maybe it was because she was the only one that cared what happened to him when he was first brought aboard.

"You're going to be fine, Danni, I know it." She still wreathed in pain, but she still tried to compose herself enough to nod. It was a weak one, but it was there. She'll be fine, he told himself.

From down the deck, several of the rebels came running towards them. Reluctantly, he released Danni's hand and stood up, keeping his eyes on her until the medics finally arrived. It wasn't the doctor she needed, but she also couldn't be operated on here in the hangar. They picked her up and placed her onto a stretcher to take her away. She stole one final look back to him before the medics took her away. The rebels came to him out of breath and panting. He told them to settle down and regain their breath, but one tried to force the words out between breaths. "Sergeant Willow has secured the CIC, but the Colonel was able to retreat before they could capture him." Atlas cursed silently. They'd missed their shot to take both the Admiral and the Colonel. "We haven't heard from Lieutenant Cullen either, sir."

It seemed the bad news was piling on now. If they'd lost engineering and Ashur was able to reach those sections, then he'd rally his support their turning this into a bloody compartment to compartment fighting. He wanted to see this mutiny done and over within an hour with a decisive capture of the ship's critical systems. It was too late for that now. "I'm heading for the CIC. Lock down this hangar and make sure we can hold this place."

Planet Leonis, Resistance Encampment

"I'm telling you, she's not fit to lead." Scott threw his combat knife hard into the oak tree outside the main encampment. It had been decided that the arms factory was too valuable of a position for the resistance fighters to be coming back to each time they hit a major Cylon target. If the toasters followed them back from one of those attacks, then they frag a thousand civies without much of a fight. So Scott had convinced Commander Oriol to give him a group of fighters to move freely and hit targets having to compromise the main base. That had only partial worked. Their fearless Commander still had her hands in each operation they made. He couldn't take it much longer. She'd gotten more of them killed in her short time as the CO than he had ever done when it was just him. It wasn't like him to hold grudges, but this time he couldn't help it.

Wick pulled the knife from the tree and handed it back to the Lieutenant. "Preaching to the choir man."

"I know. I know." The conversation ended there and the two men continued throwing the knife at the tree for a bit before dispersing around the camp. Scott walked down the small row of tents and hovels that made up their little camp.

Before he could reach their main dugout, Jess popped up out of the topside flap and ran towards him. She said nothing, but grabbed his arm and continued running to the top of the nearby hill where one of their lookout positions was. The lookout was no more than one hundred meters from the Dugout and was to be used as a last line of defense. "Jess, what the frak?" She still said nothing despite his protests and continued running. Finally, they made it to the top of the hill where a pair of fighters were sitting in their tree stands, baffled at the two officers who had just crashed their way through a forest to get to the top of the hill. This OP, being so close, was much different than the others. There was a small trench dug around the base of the two tree stands that were occupied, forming a semi-circle around the hill to make a strong defensive position. Generally, there were about eight fighters here at all times, but now there were ten of them sitting lazily around the camp.

"Just wait." She said and kept her eyes fixed on the sky. Scott said nothing, but rather just looked up at the sky and kept thinking that his former ECO had lost it. Behind them, three more of the fighters that worked in their Ops center followed them up with binoculars and handed one to Jess. Maybe she hadn't lost it. "There!" She screamed and pointed into the sky. Scott strained his eyes to look at where she was pointing but saw nothing. After a minute or so, he saw it. A massive fireball was forming around something that was entering the atmosphere.

Immediately, he snatched the binos from Jess and trained them on the fireball. It was a ship, military by the looks of it, but not big enough to be a Battlestar. A Gunstar maybe? As he watched it rapidly enter the atmosphere, he saw a squadron of Raiders escorting it down to the surface. "There's Raiders all over it. Is it one of theirs?" He asked, but could plainly see it wasn't a Cylon design.

"No, it's one of ours. We picked up her distress signal as she entered the system. Apparently she was still broadcasting it when she jumped. They were talking about a Cylon ambush, but the transmission was all garbled. We think she's the Horizon." Jess took the binos back and looked as the ship streaked across the sky. They both had to be thinking the same thing.

Turning back to the Ops personnel, he quickly shot out orders. "Get me a medic, two of our half-tons, and six shooters per truck. Jess, you're in command until I get back. Where's Wick?" The two Ops nodded and ran off back down the hill.

"Back in the camp somewhere. You want him with you?" Jess asked as they kept their eyes on the falling ship. They probably had another five minutes until the ship fully crashed to the ground, and judging by the Raider complement, the Cylons wouldn't be far behind. They were going to need to move fast.

He motioned for them to head back down the hill. As they trotted down the slope, he replied. "No, find him and tell him to grab as many RPGs and HMGs as he can so that he can set us up a little anti-air screen. This is going to be down to the wire. Toasters will be all over us in a matter of minutes. It's going to be a frakking miracle if we get out of this one in one piece." They made it into the center of the camp where the fighters were already loading up on the half-ton trucks. He reached into her large side cargo pocket and pulled out the small data pad that she always had on her. "Triangulate the crash site and guide me in."

She nodded as he climbed up into the passenger side of the lead truck. "Good luck." She said and squeezed his hand tightly. "Make sure you come back to us." Jess smiled tightly and started to let go, but seemed to be reluctant to do so. Finally, he pulled his hand away and slammed the door to the half-ton shut.

He didn't really know what to say, but just smiled to her. "Don't worry. I will." Across from him, Hoot slammed the driver side door shut and fired up the engine. The man hit the gas and the lumbering truck began barreling down the small dirt ways. Time was short, but they needed to get those survivors if there were any before the Cylons did.

Battlestar Oceanus, CIC

James reached the CIC with no real problems. From the mixed reports that he had received, the fighting around the ship had been sporadic aside from the firefight on the hangar deck and apparently the fight that had gone south for the rebels near the engineering deck. From what he had put together from the retreating rebels and the personnel in the CIC, Lieutenant Cullen was dead and those that were sent with him were now scattered as Ashur and his loyalists fell back there.

Not many of the officers on the Oceanus had jumped sided with the rebels when they had attempted to seize control. Lieutenants Hale and Cullen had been the first two to declare their loyalties. Three Ensigns, all pilots, had joined up in the hangar deck and another lieutenant had also joined on. It seemed that Ashur made sure his officers were well taken care of, for that was all that had joined on. With Danni critical and Cullen dead, there weren't any senior personnel left leaving him in command of the rebels.

Stepping up to the command table, he pulled the PA from its holster and glanced about the CIC. He knew almost none of these officers and crewmen, and they gave him distrusting glances but none said anything in protest to him taking over. It seemed, however, Dani had placed enough faith in him for the rest of them to trust him. He clicked the side of the PA, causing the overhead speakers to flare to life as he brought the mic up to him mouth. What was he supposed to say to them? They didn't know him, and he certainly couldn't pretend to know what they were going through.

"Attention all hands of the Battlestar Oceanus." He started; it was odd hearing his own voice projected throughout the ship. "This Captain James Atlas, temporary commander of this vessel until order can be restored." He clicked the PA off for a moment to give himself sometime to think and to let the news sink in to the crew. "About an hour ago Commander Ashur brought fourteen of his own crew onto the hangar deck to be shot for treason. They received no trial, but still the Commander forced them up against the bulk and prepared to fire. A dozen brave souls armed themselves and halted this atrocity from happening, but in the process we began something that was intended to be a quick and relatively bloodless change of command into munity." Again he clicked off the PA, throwing his head back and sighing deeply. He hated his position, he looked like an opportunist taking command of the rebels like this, but there were no other officers left with them. Just him. "I'm bringing this news to you as plainly as I can, for I will not lie to you. We are taking this ship by force. Commander Theodore Ashur is a tyrant and a mad man that needs to be relieved of command. Now I will not ask you all to take up arms against your fellow crewmen, but this ship cannot be freed from his tyranny without support. If you're willing to see the mad man fall, then join us in our fight. If not, then return to your quarters and no harm will come to you. May the Lords of Kobol look upon us all in this dark hour. Oceanus Actual out."

Clicking the mic off, he tossed it onto the command table. It was time for him to wage a war in which he had no experience in. He was about to fight his fellow man for control of a ship he knew nothing about. The Gods would truly need to be on his side now.