Title:
Teaser: Phoenix Project (Working Title)Publication History:
Published 11 June 2005 on the author's web site, RangerLord.Net, this work of fiction remains the intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved. Please keep in mind that this is an excerpt from a work-in-progress. Commentary, questions and constructive criticism are welcome at
RangerLord@Netscape.Net. Thank you, and enjoy!Teaser pulled 15 June 2005 to correct a continuity error. It'll be back up very soon!
Posted 16 June 2005 after editing. J
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Author's Note (02 July 2005):
The return of Cmdr. Cain and the Pegasus has been a hot topic among fans since the new BSG series became a reality. Although I am one to religiously avoid reading spoilers, some information about the upcoming second season still manages to pollute the material that I, and other fans, read on the SciFi Bboard and elsewhere. So, it has come to my attention that at least on the rumor level, Cain and the Pegasus are supposed to return in some form this season. That, of course, is the big “What if?” for my story. I had originally intended for this project to be a long short-story, and to be completed and released as fan fiction before the start of Season Two. However, as the story developed, it also grew in size, and now threatens to become a novel. It is also clear that I will not be able to complete it prior to the start of the new season, now some two weeks away.
I have always been a proponent of the return of the Pegasus, otherwise I would never have begun this story. I have high hopes for RDM’s re-imagining of this classic two-part episode. Nevertheless, I must consider its impact upon my story, and develop a contingency plan for adapting my work, should the Pegasus rumors become fact.
In truth, my fascination with the story from the original series “Living Legend” episodes was always about the idea of another surviving battlestar and its reunion with the rag-tag fleet of human survivors. I had no particular love for the Cain character as portrayed in the original series, and my attachment to the name Pegasus stemmed solely from its use there. When I reach the point in my story that Cain appears, I certainly will not write him with the cavalier disregard for authority that he had in the “Living Legend” story. That is, if I write him at all, given his rumored return in the new series.
So, what if Cain and the Pegasus do indeed return? Well, since my story does not depend at all upon those two names, the story will continue. Only a few names will change. In light of its story arc, the returning battlestar will likely become the Phoenix, a creature of Greek mythology that rises from the ashes of its death to live again. Actually, Phoenix is a more fitting name than Pegasus. The legendary Commander Cain will give way to another commander, also a contemporary of William Adama’s and also a commander of great skill and renown. After all, surely the Cylon War produced more heroes than just Cain.
RangerLord
02 July 2005
TEASER
10. Reunion
(Author’s Note: Lieutenant j.g. Erica “Venom” Corbin is piloting her Raptor inside the wreckage of the port landing pod of one of the battlestars destroyed in the Cylon surprise attack.)
Lieutenant Corbin retraced their path across the landing deck toward the fallen gantry crane, back to the ruined flight elevator. The pressure doors looked as though some giant hand had ripped them open, exposing the elevator shaft below. The elevator pad was in the descended position, and on the lower level the airlock doorway to the forward hangar deck was open. The deck itself was a dark cavern laying beyond that open doorway.
Flying the Raptor into that cavern was going to be a trickier proposition than getting into the landing pod had been. The slow spin of the wreck would create a limited artificial gravity effect like what a ring-ship used, but it would be gradually shifting. Erica replayed her mental picture of the pod, just before they had entered it. Given the pattern of its tumble, the major component of the spin-induced gravity would be outward toward the ends of the pod. Near the center of the spin, the gravity effect would be near zero. At this distance, Erica estimated the effect to be around a tenth of a gee. That meant that the Raptor’s fifty-ton mass would still react as though it weighed nearly five tons.
She decided to take the maneuver in steps. Using the thrusters almost constantly to maintain her position within the landing pod, she jockeyed the Raptor to a point above the elevator’s ruined upper doors. Erica figured that the more quickly she accomplished each move, the less chance she had to screw up. To her passengers she said “Brace yourselves,” and she fired the dorsal thrusters to force the Raptor quickly downward. As it dropped, she activated the magnetic clamps on the landing gear. The Raptor plunged about twenty feet and hit the elevator pad. The landing gear squatted with the impact, and the clamps locked the Raptor to the deck. The wreck’s spin immediately put a sideways strain on the gear, but the magnetic clamps held. Activating the Raptor’s external lights, she took a look at her surroundings.
The elevator itself showed clear signs of having been at the heart of a significant explosion. The bulkheads and deck were charred, the paint blistered from the extreme heat. Shrapnel had scored every surface, and in places there were chunks of metal still imbedded where they had struck. Inside the hangar bay, the blast doors were down, sectioning off the area around the airlock. Because of the slight spin-induced gravity, the forward blast door was now the floor and it was covered with everything in the hangar bay that hadn’t been tied down. Erica played the searchlight across the bay for a better look.
The brilliant beam revealed the harsh details of the destruction around her. She saw the twisted form of the inner air lock door, an electric forklift crushed beneath it. The crumpled remains of at least one Viper lay among the tangle of metal piled on the blast door. As she swung the light across the hangar, she stopped on the launch tube directly across from the Raptor. Its airlock doors were open, and a short way down the tube at the launch-ready station sat a Viper. By the position of the engines and the wing configuration, she knew it was a Mark VII. Positioned as it was in the launch tube, hooked to the catapult, it appeared to have survived the destruction around it. From her vantage point, she could not see the forward section of the fighter, its canopy was screened from sight by the engine cluster.
At the ECO station, Meatball cursed aloud. “Frak! We could really use a Viper about now. It’d give us some cover when we get outta here.”
From the rear of the Raptor came Lieutenant Xira’s voice, “What good is one Viper going to do us?”
In the left-hand seat, Colonel Vetter turned to look into the rear compartment of the Raptor. “It would be one more than we have right now,” he stated. Turning back to Lieutenant Corbin, he said, “We don’t know why its launch was aborted, but it should be fueled up and armed. In my opinion, it is worth checking.” For a moment he paused, looking at the Viper. Then, looking again at Xira, he continued “In the hands of an experienced pilot, it could do us a great deal of good.”
Erica nodded her agreement. Pairing her Raptor with a Viper would greatly increase their chances of getting through whatever lay ahead. She could only guess that the quiet Colonel had once been a Viper jock. The comment about an experienced pilot had to be a reference to himself. She and Meatball were just jay-gees and barely more than rooks, Dekker was a grunt, and the tactical officer from the Lightning didn’t seem like the pilot type. Erica looked across at Vetter. “Alright, sir. What do we do?”
Colonel Vetter turned to the ECO. “Lieutenant Hayes,” he said, “I’m going to need your flight suit.” When Meatball looked dismayed, Vetter went on, “Don’t worry son, I’ll return it in one piece.” As he rose from his seat, he said to the Marine, “Corporal Dekker, break out those rescue suits and get yourself, Lieutenant Hayes and Lieutenant Xira geared up. We’ll have to depressurize the Raptor so I can disembark and check out the Viper.”
While the others were busy suiting up in the cramped rear compartment of the Raptor, Venom moved the craft carefully out of the airlock and into the darkness of the battlestar’s hangar bay. Fighting the sideways force of the wreckage’s spin, she positioned it as near to the Viper as she could, then slowly spun the Raptor around so that it was facing back toward the elevator. She locked it down on the deck and checked that the magnetic clamps held. Next she began slowly lowering the cabin pressure. It was a tactic that would help to conserve some of their oxygen, although most of the cabin’s atmosphere would still be lost when she opened the side door. She let Corporal Dekker know what she was doing.
By the time that Colonel Vetter was secured in Meatball’s flight suit and the rest had been properly fitted with rescue suits by Corporal Dekker, Venom had the atmosphere in the Raptor reduced to the equivalent of two fleet-standard miles above sea level. Dekker signaled her to stand by, and led the two others wearing the rescue suits through a breathing exercise that would lessen the effect of experiencing a vacuum. Vetter cautioned them to maintain minimum wireless contact with him while he was EVA, and then he pulled on Meatball’s helmet. He made a final check of his oxygen supply, and gave Venom the thumbs up. Satisfied that his two charges were ready, Corporal Dekker gave her a thumbs up as well. As Dekker said “Brace for decompression!”, the three in the rescue suits exhaled deeply to prevent their lungs from exploding. Venom hit the remote switch to open the Raptor’s side door.
The door slid open, and the air remaining within the Raptor swept outward violently. Everyone inside held on tight, and in a split second it was over. Colonel Vetter swung out of the Raptor’s artificial gravity, and the moment he was clear Venom triggered the Raptor’s door to close. When her console showed a green light for the door seal, she started re-pressurizing the cabin as fast as the system could handle. Corporal Dekker kept his eyes on his wrist chronograph, watching the seconds slip by. Once cabin pressure reached the two-miles-high equivalent, Venom stopped re-pressurizing. If the Colonel failed to get the Viper flying, they’d have to let him back in, and she wanted as much cushion in the O2 reserves as possible.
In the back of the Raptor, the three Colonials were taking deep breaths. “Well, wasn’t that fun,” Meatball commented as soon as he could speak.
“I’d rather not do it again,” gasped Lieutenant Xira. She had a panicked look on her face. “I thought I was dying.”
“Actually, everyone did quite well,” said Corporal Dekker. “We were in vacuum for right at 12 seconds. Being unable to breathe would have been uncomfortable, but the elastic compression of the rescue suits would have prevented embulism for about another 18 seconds.”
Colonel Vetter had used the grab rail above the side door to swing feet first out of the Raptor, making the transition into the near-zero gravity of the hangar bay with his feet in the ’down’ position. Full artificial gravity had been in effect inside the Raptor, but now he was dropping toward the blast door at a tenth of a gee. What felt like ‘down‘ had shifted about ninety degrees as he moved through the doorway. He hated to admit it, but the sudden change had sent a twinge through his stomach. Moving now as though he weighed about eighteen pounds, the Colonel landed on the debris pile ‘below’ him, and then gauged a jump to the launch tube.
He pushed off, and a moment later he landed almost perfectly inside the tube’s entrance. At least he remembered that much of his low-gravity combat training. Crouching on the wall of the launch tube, he looked toward the fighter. In the sideways gravity effect of the wreck’s spin, the catapult and launch track now seemed to be a wall on his right; the left-hand side of the tube was now an uneven floor. A short ways down the tube at the ready station, the fighter looked as though it were clinging to that wall. Vetter worked his way toward it, and activated his wireless. “I’ve reached the Viper. Stand by.”
The Colonel worked his way past the Viper’s engine cluster and wings, to the side of the fighter. Looking above him he saw that the cockpit was empty, the canopy open. He observed the pilot’s name tagged on the side: Lieutenant Derek “Shadow” Vincent. Vetter remembered the man, a recent addition to Gold Squadron; he’d come to them from a light carrier based off of Tauron. “Wherever you are now, Lieutenant Vincent, may the Lords of Kobol protect you,” thought the Colonel. “Now, if you could just tell me why you had to abandon your Viper.”
He checked the forward landing skid. It was securely hooked into the catapult, but the design would allow the Viper to disengage freely if it moved forward under its own power. Remembering what they had witnessed happening to Gryphon’s Red Squadron, he braced himself against the fighter‘s wing and the wall of the launch tube, and climbed toward the cockpit.
Colonel Vetter had to work himself down into the pilot’s seat of the Viper. The odd sideways gravity effect pushed him against the left side of the cockpit. Leaving the canopy open, he turned the switch to start the Viper’s flight systems computer. The cockpit consoles sprang to life, red lights began to flash on the engineering panel, and with three loud beeps the entire Viper shut back down. Vetter pushed himself out of the Viper’s cockpit, slid back down onto the side of the tube, and headed back into the hangar deck. As he did, he keyed his wireless microphone and called the Raptor. “Venom, Vetter. I’ve got a live bird out here, but it’s choked on a fouled primary rad buffer. I can clear it, but it’ll be five to ten more minutes.”
Back in the Raptor, Erica looked back at Meatball, then spoke into the wireless. “Colonel, won’t that expose you to a lot of radiation?”
“Lieutenant, we’re already exposed just being here. I’m checking the hangar bay now for a rad suit. If I’m lucky I might even find a spare buffer.” In each section of a battlestar’s hangar bay was an emergency locker, and Vetter quickly found the one in this section. Opening it, he removed an orange radiation exposure suit and pulled it over Meatball’s flight suit. With a glance around the hangar, he returned to the stalled Viper. No point in wasting any time looking for another buffer. Despite his comment, such a major piece of equipment simply wouldn’t be lying around.
After another low-gee jump into the tube, he crawled past the Viper‘s wing and squeezed himself against the catapult until he could reach the fighter‘s lower fuselage. He opened the port side ventral access panel, exposing the rad buffer and the back end of the reactor. Drops of sweat appeared on his forehead and upper lip, betraying his worry over what he was about to do. He turned the control handle that scrammed the fighter’s reactor, shutting it down. Immediately he hit the release to disengage the rad buffer, and pushed himself out from under the Viper. Hitting the side of the launch tube, he jumped onto the fighter’s upper fuselage just forward of the cockpit. He wanted as much metal between him and the rad buffer as possible. With the reactor shut down, the buffer’s magnetic containment field would fail in a few seconds. Dropping the rad buffer took it out of the Viper’s power train, and meant that the residual energy would radiate into the launch tube.
Steadying himself with a grip on the cabling that ran along the top of the tube, he watched for some sign the rad buffer had discharged. Suddenly his ears were filled with static from the wireless, and in the dim light of the launch tube electricity seemed to dance across the surface of the Viper and all along the catapult track. That was it. He glanced at the dosimeter on the rad suit’s sleeve. Three-quarters dose, it read. Vetter sighed. There was no telling how much of a radiation dosage he’d absorbed before donning the suit. “It cannot be helped,” he told himself. “This is a desperate situation.”
He called the Raptor, but received no response other than the crackle of static. Pulling himself back beneath the Viper, he raised the rad buffer back into place, and restarted the reactor. Closing the ventral access panel, he pulled himself up to the cockpit again. Settling into the pilot’s seat, he turned the main power switch and then tried to start the flight systems computer. This time he was rewarded with a full normal startup. Flight, weapons, DRADIS, everything came online. Colonel Vetter could not help grinning. He tried to raise the Raptor again. “Venom, Vetter. Do you copy?” Static still crackled in his helmet, but it was not as severe.
“Colonel, Venom. I copy.” Her transmission was heavy with interference. “We’ve been trying to raise you, sir. Meatball has a medium contact on DRADIS. Friend-or-foe unknown. What is your status?”
“Ready to launch, Lieutenant,” Vetter said exultantly. “Do you have a plan?”
“Sir, I’ve discussed this with Lieutenant Xira while we were trying to reach you. She recommends you move the Viper out of the launch tube and hug the surface of the landing pod. We’ll move the Raptor to the pod’s entry way and attempt a more definitive DRADIS reading.”
“Copy that,” Vetter responded. “You have a go to execute.” He toggled his view screen to the rear. The Raptor was already moving into the flight elevator shaft. He’d wait another few moments until they were completely clear before firing the Viper’s main engines. “Look at yourself,” Vetter thought. “Thomas ‘Tripwire’ Vetter, back in a Viper cockpit after how many years?” It was more years than he wanted to admit. Looking again at the rear view screen, he saw that the Raptor was clear. He started the main engines, and moved the throttle forward slowly with his left hand. With his right he held the stick down and a little to the right to counter the spin effect. The Viper jumped slightly as it disengaged from the catapult hook, and then it was moving steadily down the tube toward open space. He checked his instruments. A lot had changed in appearance since the last time he’d been in a fighter, but the basics were the same. He was confident he could fly this bird. He could fight with it, too, although the targeting system was completely new to him. He could handle it, of that he was sure.
In the Raptor, Venom killed the external lights as they rose out of the elevator shaft. Behind her, Meatball called out “Secondary contact, small! Frak! It’s inside the landing bay!”
J
End of Teaser JI post my stories for all to read not only for your enjoyment (hopefully), but also so that I can receive feedback and thereby improve my writing. So, please take a moment and let me know what you thought of this story - good or bad, general or specific, your feedback helps me improve my craft. Thank you!