warhammerdriver
01-30-2007, 11:22 PM
First Contact, a Battlestar Galactica/Battletech crossover.
Chapter 1
JumpShip USS Arizona
Nadir Recharge Point, Viborg
June 30, 3052
Tensions across the Inner Sphere still were high after the Clan Invasion, ComStar’s victory at the Battle of Tukkayid notwithstanding. Nobody really trusted the Clans to honor the agreement to stop their drive toward Terra for fifteen years. As a result, contracts for mercenary companies were numerous. That’s why the 101st Airborne was in this backwater region of the Federated Commonwealth, destined for “tripwire” duty on New India. If the Kearny-Fuchida drive could be recharged and they could make the jump.
Colonel Roland Michler tossed in his bunk (as best as the zero-G restraining straps would allow), unable to sleep. The Arizona’s drive coils were acting up again, taking twice as long to charge as they would normally. As a result, he had been forced to ground two of his DropShips, the Overlord class USS Ticonderoga and the smaller Union class USS Monongahela. That put his entire BattleMech force planet side. Only the Union class USS Allegany was still docked to the Arizona, keeping his AeroSpace assets in orbit. Just in case.
Lieutenant Sandy Ellis was manning the scanner console on the bridge. Suddenly, blips appeared at the extreme edge of the screen.
“Captain,” she said, “I’ve got multiple contacts at 330 mark 5. Range is 2 myriameters.”
Fred Jones, Captain of the Arizona, drifted over to Sandy’s station and looked over her shoulder at the screen. “That’s odd. That’s nowhere near the standard jump points. Does this star have a pirate point, Navigator?”
“No sir. At least not in the data we given by AFFC”, the navigator replied.
“Very well. Somebody go wake the Old Man. Send a message to the Ti and let them know what’s going on up here. They may want to go to alert status in case this is an invasion force. And get some fighters out there to get me some recon data. Furl the sail and put the star between us and those contacts. I want some room to work with if that is a Clan force.”
BattleStar Galactica
Unknown star system (Viborg)
10 years after the Destruction of the Colonies
Colonel Paul Tigh stood at the plotting table in the Combat Information Center aboard the BattleStar Galactica, looking up at the dradis repeater screens above the table and watching the Colonial transponders that showed up on it as the civilian ships the Galactica was herding jumped into the system. When no more transponder signals appeared, he turned to the communication officer and tiredly asked the same question he had so many times before: “D, did they all make it?”
Petty Officer Anistaisa Dualla quickly counted the transponder signals on her own screen and replied “Yes, sir. All transports accounted for.”
“Good,” Tigh replied. “Secure from jump stations. Launch the CAP Vipers as soon as the pods are extended. Lieutenant Gaeta, any other contacts?”
“Long range dradis is coming on line now, Colonel. I need a few moments to …contact! Bearing 060, Range-two million kilometers. One large contact moving behind the star. Four smaller ones now as well. Small contacts are closing. Large contact now lost in stellar radiation,” replied Gaeta.
“Get the CAP in space NOW! Launch the alert fighters as soon as possible. Battle stations,” ordered Tigh.
Two Vipers, piloted by Captain Lee “Apollo” Adama and Lieutenant Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, streaked away from Galactica, and immediately turned toward the incoming unknown vessels.
“What have you got, Galactica?” called Apollo over the wireless.
His father’s voice replied over the speakers set into his helmet. “Four unknown contacts at 060. Closing rapidly. No transmissions we can decipher.”
“Cylons?” , Starbuck inquired.
“Unknown. We need you two to get a visual.”
Hammer Flight
Viborg System
“Damn, just like when the Clans came in“, muttered Captain Kent Schmidt, as he watched the computer cycle thru known silhouettes, trying in vain to match something up to the two incoming contacts. Finally, the computer projected an image of ship, with a listing of potential armament. Three engines, stacked pyramid fashion at the tail, a long, tapered fuselage, with stub wings and a vertical stabilizer. Single seat. Twenty to thirty tons mass. Unlike anything seen in the Inner Sphere before or during the Clan Invasion.
His own fighter was a new design. The Manubalista was shaped like a flying wing, with the wing tips curved forward. At the center sat the cockpit, bulging up and forward from the wing. For armament the fighter carried two medium class pulse lasers and a long range missile rack. How the Colonel managed to get four new fighters out of the FedComs, he never knew. Glad the Colonel did, tho.
“What do you make of them, Jonesy?” he radioed his wingman.
“Dunno, Boss. Sure don’t look like Clanners. No radio contact with them?”
“Nope. No contact at all.”
Galactica CAP Flight
Viborg System
Starbuck peered at the rapidly closing ships, trying to identify them. Their formation was nothing she had ever seen used by the Cylons before, but that really didn’t mean anything. The Cylons were always trying something new. “What do you think, Lee” she asked over the wireless.
“Don’t know Starbuck”, Lee replied.
Seconds later, they four incoming ships were close enough to identify. “Oh frack, Cylons!” she yelled.
“Galactica, Apollo. Four Cylon raiders. Repeat four raiders. Going weapons hot,” Lee said. “Let’s get ‘em, Starbuck!”
Hammer Flight
“Arizona, Hammer lead. Contacts have accelerated. Please advise”, Kent radioed. In return, he received nothing but static. He quickly changed back to the frequency assigned to his flight. “I don’t like this,” he muttered to himself and then keyed the radio “Flight, let’s go weapons hot. Defensive ROE. Fire only if fired upon. Hammer three and four, make a close pass on the right one. Use your judgement on speed. Two, you and I will make a close pass on the left. Acknowledge.”
“Two”
“Three”
“Four”
“Two, go button three.” Kent switched his own radio to the frequency assigned to him and his wingman. Seconds later, he heard Jonsey radio “Two’s up”.
“Stick with me. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” He toggled his weapons systems from “standby” to “armed”, then he slowly ran his throttles forward, increasing thrust. Seconds later, he saw flashes of light from both approaching ships, and tracer streaks reaching out toward his flight. Then a tone sounded in his helmet, signaling that his long range missiles had locked on to the left ship. He closed his eyes to avoid being blinded by the missile’s exhausts, then triggered a flight of five missiles. Simultaneously, his wingman did the same.
Galactica CAP Flight
“Oh, frack,” muttered Lee as he saw twenty missiles corkscrewing toward his and Kara’s Vipers. “Starbuck, break!”
The two Vipers split, each being put thru violent, erratic maneuvers by it’s pilot in an attempt to break the lock of the missiles pursuing it. Kara was fortunate enough to avoid all but two of the missiles targeting her , one chipping away at the top of her vertical stabilizer and the other cratering her left wing. Lee was somewhat less lucky, with five missiles impacting. Three did little more than chip paint from along the fuselage of his Viper. Two, however, detonated on his port cannon, destroying the barrel and rendering it useless.
The six fighters continued to twist, flip, roll, and turn, attempting to line up shots and to avoid being shot at, causing minor damage to each other. Then one of the “Cylons” made a fatal error and banked left into both Lee and Kara’s line of fire instead of banking right away from it. Both Viper pilots triggered their cannons at the same instant, with their rounds chewing from the right wing to the left, shattering the canopy and instantly killing the pilot. Some of the rounds sliced into the fuel tank in the left wing, detonating the remaining volatile liquid and instantly converting the Manubalista into an expanding cloud of gas and debris.
Hammer Flight
“Jonesy!” Kent yelled into the microphone in his helmet as he watched in horror as the two hostile fighters destroyed his wingman’s fighter. Then the ring surrounding his holographic display pulsed gold indicating that his weapons systems had locked on to one of the strange craft. Centered under his crosshairs was the ship with one cannon destroyed. Noting that he was too close for a missile shot, Kent triggered both his pulse lasers, getting a full five seconds of fire on his target before he passed beyond it.
Stuttering beams of coherent light stitched along the fuselage of the fighter, vaporizing the skin of the ship and, with their energy not spent, entered the ship itself. Inside, the beams severed wiring harnesses, knocking out main and emergency power. Without power, the inertial dampers immediately went off line. The beams also burned through life support tubing that would normally carry oxygen to the cockpit.
Galactica CAP Flight
Lee saw the “Cylon” to his left fire it’s lasers at him and had no time to react. He watched in horror as the beams burned their way through his Viper, some even passing through his ship and exiting out the other side. Warning lights snapped on and aural warning messages filled his ears as systems went offline from the damage his fighter was suffering.
When power to his engines failed, knowing that total power failure (and possible destruction) was imminent, he frantically keyed his wireless. “Starbuck, get the frack out of here. Get back to Galactica and let them know what……..”.
“Lee!”, Kara shouted when the Apollo’s transmission ended in static. She looked around and saw the remaining three Manubalistas beginning to line up shots on her Viper, she flipped the ship end for end, then ran her throttles to the stops, jinking erratically attempting to evade.
Hammer Flight
“Last one’s bugging out. Should we pursue, sir?”
“Negative, Three. Put a salvage beacon on that dead fighter and let’s head for home”, Kent replied to Three’s question. He watched as one of the other ships in his flight fired a salvage beacon-a radio transmitter attached to a magnet mated to a modified short range missile body-at the drifting wreck that was Lee’s Viper. Once it had attached itself to the fighter, the three surviving members of Hammer flight turned and headed back to the Arizona.
Note to Bob/Miyu: Obviously this is a New Galactica crossover. If this is the wrong place for it, please feel free to move it to the correct section.
Chapter 1
JumpShip USS Arizona
Nadir Recharge Point, Viborg
June 30, 3052
Tensions across the Inner Sphere still were high after the Clan Invasion, ComStar’s victory at the Battle of Tukkayid notwithstanding. Nobody really trusted the Clans to honor the agreement to stop their drive toward Terra for fifteen years. As a result, contracts for mercenary companies were numerous. That’s why the 101st Airborne was in this backwater region of the Federated Commonwealth, destined for “tripwire” duty on New India. If the Kearny-Fuchida drive could be recharged and they could make the jump.
Colonel Roland Michler tossed in his bunk (as best as the zero-G restraining straps would allow), unable to sleep. The Arizona’s drive coils were acting up again, taking twice as long to charge as they would normally. As a result, he had been forced to ground two of his DropShips, the Overlord class USS Ticonderoga and the smaller Union class USS Monongahela. That put his entire BattleMech force planet side. Only the Union class USS Allegany was still docked to the Arizona, keeping his AeroSpace assets in orbit. Just in case.
Lieutenant Sandy Ellis was manning the scanner console on the bridge. Suddenly, blips appeared at the extreme edge of the screen.
“Captain,” she said, “I’ve got multiple contacts at 330 mark 5. Range is 2 myriameters.”
Fred Jones, Captain of the Arizona, drifted over to Sandy’s station and looked over her shoulder at the screen. “That’s odd. That’s nowhere near the standard jump points. Does this star have a pirate point, Navigator?”
“No sir. At least not in the data we given by AFFC”, the navigator replied.
“Very well. Somebody go wake the Old Man. Send a message to the Ti and let them know what’s going on up here. They may want to go to alert status in case this is an invasion force. And get some fighters out there to get me some recon data. Furl the sail and put the star between us and those contacts. I want some room to work with if that is a Clan force.”
BattleStar Galactica
Unknown star system (Viborg)
10 years after the Destruction of the Colonies
Colonel Paul Tigh stood at the plotting table in the Combat Information Center aboard the BattleStar Galactica, looking up at the dradis repeater screens above the table and watching the Colonial transponders that showed up on it as the civilian ships the Galactica was herding jumped into the system. When no more transponder signals appeared, he turned to the communication officer and tiredly asked the same question he had so many times before: “D, did they all make it?”
Petty Officer Anistaisa Dualla quickly counted the transponder signals on her own screen and replied “Yes, sir. All transports accounted for.”
“Good,” Tigh replied. “Secure from jump stations. Launch the CAP Vipers as soon as the pods are extended. Lieutenant Gaeta, any other contacts?”
“Long range dradis is coming on line now, Colonel. I need a few moments to …contact! Bearing 060, Range-two million kilometers. One large contact moving behind the star. Four smaller ones now as well. Small contacts are closing. Large contact now lost in stellar radiation,” replied Gaeta.
“Get the CAP in space NOW! Launch the alert fighters as soon as possible. Battle stations,” ordered Tigh.
Two Vipers, piloted by Captain Lee “Apollo” Adama and Lieutenant Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, streaked away from Galactica, and immediately turned toward the incoming unknown vessels.
“What have you got, Galactica?” called Apollo over the wireless.
His father’s voice replied over the speakers set into his helmet. “Four unknown contacts at 060. Closing rapidly. No transmissions we can decipher.”
“Cylons?” , Starbuck inquired.
“Unknown. We need you two to get a visual.”
Hammer Flight
Viborg System
“Damn, just like when the Clans came in“, muttered Captain Kent Schmidt, as he watched the computer cycle thru known silhouettes, trying in vain to match something up to the two incoming contacts. Finally, the computer projected an image of ship, with a listing of potential armament. Three engines, stacked pyramid fashion at the tail, a long, tapered fuselage, with stub wings and a vertical stabilizer. Single seat. Twenty to thirty tons mass. Unlike anything seen in the Inner Sphere before or during the Clan Invasion.
His own fighter was a new design. The Manubalista was shaped like a flying wing, with the wing tips curved forward. At the center sat the cockpit, bulging up and forward from the wing. For armament the fighter carried two medium class pulse lasers and a long range missile rack. How the Colonel managed to get four new fighters out of the FedComs, he never knew. Glad the Colonel did, tho.
“What do you make of them, Jonesy?” he radioed his wingman.
“Dunno, Boss. Sure don’t look like Clanners. No radio contact with them?”
“Nope. No contact at all.”
Galactica CAP Flight
Viborg System
Starbuck peered at the rapidly closing ships, trying to identify them. Their formation was nothing she had ever seen used by the Cylons before, but that really didn’t mean anything. The Cylons were always trying something new. “What do you think, Lee” she asked over the wireless.
“Don’t know Starbuck”, Lee replied.
Seconds later, they four incoming ships were close enough to identify. “Oh frack, Cylons!” she yelled.
“Galactica, Apollo. Four Cylon raiders. Repeat four raiders. Going weapons hot,” Lee said. “Let’s get ‘em, Starbuck!”
Hammer Flight
“Arizona, Hammer lead. Contacts have accelerated. Please advise”, Kent radioed. In return, he received nothing but static. He quickly changed back to the frequency assigned to his flight. “I don’t like this,” he muttered to himself and then keyed the radio “Flight, let’s go weapons hot. Defensive ROE. Fire only if fired upon. Hammer three and four, make a close pass on the right one. Use your judgement on speed. Two, you and I will make a close pass on the left. Acknowledge.”
“Two”
“Three”
“Four”
“Two, go button three.” Kent switched his own radio to the frequency assigned to him and his wingman. Seconds later, he heard Jonsey radio “Two’s up”.
“Stick with me. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” He toggled his weapons systems from “standby” to “armed”, then he slowly ran his throttles forward, increasing thrust. Seconds later, he saw flashes of light from both approaching ships, and tracer streaks reaching out toward his flight. Then a tone sounded in his helmet, signaling that his long range missiles had locked on to the left ship. He closed his eyes to avoid being blinded by the missile’s exhausts, then triggered a flight of five missiles. Simultaneously, his wingman did the same.
Galactica CAP Flight
“Oh, frack,” muttered Lee as he saw twenty missiles corkscrewing toward his and Kara’s Vipers. “Starbuck, break!”
The two Vipers split, each being put thru violent, erratic maneuvers by it’s pilot in an attempt to break the lock of the missiles pursuing it. Kara was fortunate enough to avoid all but two of the missiles targeting her , one chipping away at the top of her vertical stabilizer and the other cratering her left wing. Lee was somewhat less lucky, with five missiles impacting. Three did little more than chip paint from along the fuselage of his Viper. Two, however, detonated on his port cannon, destroying the barrel and rendering it useless.
The six fighters continued to twist, flip, roll, and turn, attempting to line up shots and to avoid being shot at, causing minor damage to each other. Then one of the “Cylons” made a fatal error and banked left into both Lee and Kara’s line of fire instead of banking right away from it. Both Viper pilots triggered their cannons at the same instant, with their rounds chewing from the right wing to the left, shattering the canopy and instantly killing the pilot. Some of the rounds sliced into the fuel tank in the left wing, detonating the remaining volatile liquid and instantly converting the Manubalista into an expanding cloud of gas and debris.
Hammer Flight
“Jonesy!” Kent yelled into the microphone in his helmet as he watched in horror as the two hostile fighters destroyed his wingman’s fighter. Then the ring surrounding his holographic display pulsed gold indicating that his weapons systems had locked on to one of the strange craft. Centered under his crosshairs was the ship with one cannon destroyed. Noting that he was too close for a missile shot, Kent triggered both his pulse lasers, getting a full five seconds of fire on his target before he passed beyond it.
Stuttering beams of coherent light stitched along the fuselage of the fighter, vaporizing the skin of the ship and, with their energy not spent, entered the ship itself. Inside, the beams severed wiring harnesses, knocking out main and emergency power. Without power, the inertial dampers immediately went off line. The beams also burned through life support tubing that would normally carry oxygen to the cockpit.
Galactica CAP Flight
Lee saw the “Cylon” to his left fire it’s lasers at him and had no time to react. He watched in horror as the beams burned their way through his Viper, some even passing through his ship and exiting out the other side. Warning lights snapped on and aural warning messages filled his ears as systems went offline from the damage his fighter was suffering.
When power to his engines failed, knowing that total power failure (and possible destruction) was imminent, he frantically keyed his wireless. “Starbuck, get the frack out of here. Get back to Galactica and let them know what……..”.
“Lee!”, Kara shouted when the Apollo’s transmission ended in static. She looked around and saw the remaining three Manubalistas beginning to line up shots on her Viper, she flipped the ship end for end, then ran her throttles to the stops, jinking erratically attempting to evade.
Hammer Flight
“Last one’s bugging out. Should we pursue, sir?”
“Negative, Three. Put a salvage beacon on that dead fighter and let’s head for home”, Kent replied to Three’s question. He watched as one of the other ships in his flight fired a salvage beacon-a radio transmitter attached to a magnet mated to a modified short range missile body-at the drifting wreck that was Lee’s Viper. Once it had attached itself to the fighter, the three surviving members of Hammer flight turned and headed back to the Arizona.
Note to Bob/Miyu: Obviously this is a New Galactica crossover. If this is the wrong place for it, please feel free to move it to the correct section.