Chapter Text
The Cylons were created by man.
They were created to make life easier on the twelve colonies.
And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their master.
After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared.
Nobody has seen or heard from the Cylons...
In forty years.
Battlestar
Andrasta
The engines' roar slowly faded as the Raptor climbed. Outside the ungainly little plane's canopy the sky faded from smoggy gray overcast to pale cream blue and finally the infinite, perfect blackness of naked space. The pilot gave the stick a gentle tap. Thrusters barked and kicked the plane into a lazy roll about its long axis. The vast, milky expanse of Canceron slowly came into view until a precise burst of thrust arrested the roll and locked the planet in place overhead.
"You want to sit up front, sir?" The pilot twisted in her seat just far enough to catch the Raptor's payload bay in her peripheral vision.
Behind her, the plane's sole passenger punched his harness. He was a rugged looking man, but handsome and clothed in drab gray-green Canceron service dress. His shoulder boards bore lieutenant's stripes and a small, tasteful collection of subdued decorations adorned his breast. "Don't mind if I do," he said with a thick, drawling accent endemic to the planet below.
He carefully made his way forward, ducking low and keeping a hand against the bulkhead. He wasn't a particularly tall man, but he'd learned long ago to never completely trust the overhead on a plane this small. A bruised forehead would hardly be a good first impression.
He slipped past the pilot and strapped himself into the open left-side seat. It wasn't quite as comfortable as the rear, though of course it was meant to accommodate a flight suit and emergency pack, but the view was unparalleled. "Sam Tyler," he said cordially.
"Copperhead," said the pilot. A brief nod was all she offered. With all four appendages occupied wrangling the fifty ton spacecraft Tyler didn't begrudge her brevity.
"Copperhead," he mused to himself. It was hard to get a good read through her helmet, but she seemed young. Young, but completely confident behind her controls. "There's gotta be a good story there."
"Afraid not, sir." She shrugged apologetically. She glanced... Not at him but at least in his direction. But she never quite let her instruments leave her field of view. "I just have red hair under this bucket."
"Enough with the 'sir'," said Tyler. "'less that dart on your collar's lying we're both lieutenants."
"I'm pretty sure a Canceron lieutenant is higher than a Colonial one, sir."
Tyler shrugged. She was right, but he didn't let his surprise show. "Ya'll're playing host on your boat, I figure that makes us even." He flashed her a folksy smile and gestured out the canopy at a rapidly approaching point of light. "Speaking of, that'd be her, yeah?"
Copperhead nodded. "Battlestar Andrasta."
They were still a ways out, but the Battlestar was almost a mile long and angled just so to catch the sunlight. She was long and lean. Her bow tapered like an assassin's dagger before terminating abruptly in a chisel tip adorned with crimson unit markings. Her midships was slender with obvious recesses for her flight pods to tuck into. Five engine blocks each the size of skyscrapers surrounded her stern and underwrote her hullform's promise of speed. She looked less like a mobile castle and more like a single seat interceptor grown to amazonian proportions.
"Hot damn that's a big ship."
Copperhead let out a proud chuckle. "She's forty years old," she said. "But she'll fly rings around anything in the fleet."
"Forty... she see much action in the war?" asked Tyler.
The pilot shook her head. "Armistice happened just after she commissioned. She never got to cut her teeth."
They were close enough now that Tyler could see the hallmarks of wartime design. Exposed gunmetal ribbing kicked points of light and bathed the deep recesses between in inky shadow. Heavy armor plating wrapped around her bow, her back, and the leading edges of her flight and engine pods. The surface was scoured to an almost bone-white after decades of baking in harsh, unfiltered sunlight. Her turrets lay semi-submerged in their armored casemates, six in her fore gallery and four in her aft. Tyler couldn't see them, but he knew her flanks had to be encrusted with small-caliber flak batteries.
A pinprick of light drew his attention to a spec of sand blue flying formation with the Battlestar. After a moment he realized it was one of Andrasta's Vipers flying CAP. "She's got her fighters up?"
"Standard procedure. No amount of flak can match fighters in the air." Copperhead chuckled. "Besides, routine patrol means all Raptors all the time. Gotta give the fighter jocks something to do or they get bored and antsy."
"Well we can't--"
"All planes, Andrasta, all planes Andrasta." The wireless crackled to life. The voice was tinny but clear and tautly enunciated. "Emergency recall. Come on home. Come on home."
Instantly whatever rapport he'd built up vanished into laser focused professionalism. Copperhead reached over and flipped a battery of switches on an instrument box that looked decidedly aftermarket. "Andrasta, Raptor ten-one-seven, be advised I have the liaison officer aboard."
"Copy, ten one seven." The voice paused for the briefest of moments. "You are cleared for priority approach. Speed one seven five, command approach. Checkers green, call the ball."
"Copy." Copperhead flipped another switch. "CNP uplink... accept. I have the ball."
Meanwhile, Tyler noticed the spec of blue off their wing had grown into a fully discernable viper and was closing at what seemed damn close to a collision vector. He could tell Copperhead was task-saturated, but couldn't bring himself to look away. "Lieutenant, our ten o'clock."
She grunted something inquisitory and glanced out the canopy but said nothing.
"Little close ain't he?"
"Computer's got it," said Copperhead. Tyler belatedly realized that, while her hands were on the stick and throttle, her grip was loose and her muscles slack. She allowed the controls to move her like some kind of marionette.
"That's downright unsettling," he muttered.
The pilot smirked. "Fleet technology," she said. "Can't bring planes back this quick without it. Not without combat landings and even a Raptor can't take that abuse forever."
Tyler could only nod. Watching the Raptor fly itself was... creepy. Not to mention having Vipers off each wing flying so close he swore he could reach out and touch them. Doing it all while screaming towards a deck that looked smaller and smaller by the second made his hair stand on end.
Thrusters fired in staccato bursts. The computer trimmed the plane's velocity by fractions as the deck raced up at them. Copperhead twisted her hand around the throttle and threw a lever with her finger. "Gear coming down," she announced. Hydraulics whined and something loud and mechanical thunked below them. "Locked. Three green."
The raptor crossed the flightpod's cowling. Overhead floodlights bathed the cockpit in a pulsing sodium-yellow glow. The plane set down with a bump. The two mains touching almost simultaneously, oleos compressing more from inertia than the weak flight-pod gravity. Copperhead pulled the throttle back with one hand and guided the nose in with the other.
Tyler reached for a grab-handle on the canopy framing and steadied himself as the fifty-ton plane settled onto the runway just inboard of the painted centerline. His harness cut into his chest as the Raptor caught the magnets and rapidly decelerated to a dead relative stop.
"Andrasta, Raptor ten-one-seven down. Maglocks secure." Copperhead pulled the throttle all the way to its stop and flicked two covered switches. "Engine arm off." She continued her checklist, seemingly unphased by the rapid, rhythmic thump of planes landing behind them transmitted through the deck.
"Raptor ten-one-seven, priority tow," a new voice crackled over the wireless. "Actual wants the liaison officer in CIC ASAP."
"Uh, copy." Copperhead didn't hide the surprise in her voice well. "Standby for tow." She glanced at her passenger and shrugged. "Looks like you're meeting the skipper early."
---\\_^_//---
Tyler stepped into the combat information center. The basic layout was familiar. The commander was in the center, surrounded on all sides by junior officers standing by to relay information and receive orders. On every ship he'd served on that's where it ended. On Andrasta that was only the central dias. The pattern repeated two, sometimes three times. Dozens of people radiated outwards in all directions. Subordinates of subordinates relayed information up or orders down, all of them answering ultimately to a single voice.
He squared his shoulders and made his way quickly through one level then the next. He stepped onto the central platform. Before he could say anything a woman bent over a plotting table waved him over.
She was tall and gaunt with black hair worn back in a braid shot through with steely gray. Her features were sharp and straight, more dignified than attractive. She looked completely at ease in the center of CIC. The devices on her collar and the piping on her uniform only confirmed the obvious: she was the commander.
"Lieutenant Tyler, CSG." He said with a salute.
She returned the salute with a quick, but crisp, gesture of her own. "Jennifer Kayleigh, welcome aboard," she said. "Apologies for the haste, moments ago we received a distress call." Her thick accent purred with upper-class Virgonian brogue, the kind that seemed straight out of a children's storybook.
"Understood, ma'am," said Tyler. "Who's--"
"Mancuso, two days out of Canceron." Kayleigh thrust a printout into his hands. "Fourteen-hundred seventy-eight souls aboard."
"She reported mechanical trouble," said a junior officer. Her accent was generically cosmopolitan, but Tyler would bet anything she was Tauron, or at least Tauron diaspora. Her skin was tanned, her hair was black and wavy, and behind her wire rimmed glasses her eyes were a striking cobalt blue. An intricate geometric tattoo curled up the front of her neck and just kissed her lower lip. "Sounds like engine failure. She's making headway and reported no injuries."
"Yet," Tyler scowled at the printout's terse lettering. "This alert is almost five hours old. Where is she?"
"Could be anywhere in here by now," the Tauron motioned to a large grease-pencil circle drawn on her plot. "Best guess she's somewhere in here." She tapped a finger against a much smaller, narrower arc she'd shaded within the probability region.
Tyler squinted at the chart and felt his heart sink. "That's gotta be over a day away."
"Day and a half." The Tauron crossed her arms. A smirk crossed her lips and she glanced aft. "On normal propulsion."
Tyler followed her gaze. An officer stood at the rear of the dias. He was a big man, more broad than tall with obvious muscle filling out his frame. He looked amiable, charming even with a strong jaw and pronounced chin. But the flint in his eyes promised he'd happily throw the first punch if the situation warranted it. He was the XO, he had to be. "The board is green," he announced, "All decks rigged for jump."
"Thank you, Colonel." Kayleigh squared her shoulders and planted her feet. "Execute jump."
"Execute jump, aye," barked the Colonel. "Captain Shira, execute jump."
"Execute jump, aye." The Tauron--Shira--ripped her phone from its cradle. The main circuit chimed and her voice echoed through overhead speakers. "All decks, prepare for immediate FTL jump." She withdrew the jump key, carefully located its twin neon-blue prongs in their sockets, and gently slid the key home with the heel of her hand. "Clock is running! Ten..."
"Nicholas Aaron," the Colonel offered Tyler a hand.
"Nine..."
"Tyler, Sam Tyler, sir."
"Eight..."
"This your first jump, Tyler?" Aaron asked quietly
"Seven..."
Tyler nodded. "'fraid it is, sir."
"Six..."
"You'll want to sit down for this."
"Five..."
All around Combat officers were closing down their consoles, securing their personal effects, grabbing for handrails with taut knuckles.
"Four..."
Tyler reached for a handrail of his own and wrapped his fingers tightly around it.
"Three..."
"Tyler," said Aaron. He was standing, but with his feet solidly planted and his weight resting against a plotting table. "Don't hold your breath."
"Two..."
Tyler nodded. A breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding hissed through his teeth.
"One..."
He pulled his core taut, his body instinctively tensing like he was about to take a punch.
"Jump."