"Affirmative, Callisto. Maneuvering into position now. Will advise when we have hard seal. Recommend we contact the Valkyrie and request immediate additional Raptor support." Bedrock takes the yoke and pilots it towards the undercarriage of the nearest ship, looking for the ship-to-ship transfer hole.

Battlestar Valkyrie brig




Lt. Everette looked long at her contemplating the situation. Searching her eyes he nodded slowly and said, “I believe you, Chief. I’m going to tell the Admiral that I see no reason to keeping you under arrest – on one condition. There is still a murderer out there and I need to catch him before he kills more people. I want you to tell me everything I want to know concerning the activities on both flight decks. I expect a short report weekly and ASAP if something of importance happens. Do we have a deal, Chief?”

Gemenon Prophet




Bedrock turned the Raptor around and slowly drifted towards the Gemenon Prophet searching for the transfer hole. After a few seconds which passed like an eternity he finally found it and yanked the Raptor around to match speed with the drifting vessel. With a rough chafing noise the Raptor docked with the Gemenon Prophet and Ensign Wade proceeded to open the hatch. “Sir, there is no gravity on board. I thought you might want to know.” Checking his sidearm and oxygen on his suit he gave Bedrock an “OK” sign with his fingers and jumped through the hatch headfirst.

Inside people and all kinds of lose items floated through the corridors of the vessel. Your scanner show a minimum amount of oxygen left on board and everyone appears to be unconscious.

The Bull snorted. Damned civilians getting tossed into this. Right well it had to be done might as well do it right, trap or no.

"Lieutenant Abrams, get us over there and hook up to the Gemenon Prophet, I want marines on hand to escort the civilians into secure rooms and kept there until they can be debriefed, and yes that includes members of the Quorum that might happen to be aboard. I also want ever gun manned and ready to fire at my command. If this isn't some kind of trap I'll be very much surprised. I also want our vipers flying patrol around us." McLeod was all business and it was times like these he hated the most. He wanted to be everywhere and have his hand in everything, but that would be counterproductive.

"Lt. Make sure that the marines get those civvys off that tub as fast as possible. Assign two squads of Marines to do a sweep of that tub to verify there is no hostile presence aboard. Keep em in radio contact. I want to know immediately if things go south."

CIC Destroyer Herakeles

The CIC immediately got into action orders getting relayed and executed. The Herakeles took course for the Gemenon Prophet and slowly moved parallel to the floating vessel. It would take another 10 minutes at least to dock with the other ship else they’d risk destroying both vessels.

The Raptors got ready for take off with the Marine Squads on board and everything went as smoothly as Major McLeod had expected, yet it was too slow for his taste. Time was not on their side and there was still that nagging feeling that this was a set up.

Bedrock affixes his helmet in place and checks oxygen as well. "I hope you've brushed up on micro-gravity maneuvers." Bedrock pushes himself through the hatch, feeling the lurch of microgravity.

"Wade, start waving people into the Raptor. I'm going to look for anyone who can't carry themselves."

Gemenon Prophet rescue mission
„Aye, Ell-Tee.“, replied Wade and immediately set off to carry people into the Raptor.

In the meantime Lt. Bedrock drifted further down the corridor towards the bridge of the Gemenon Prophet. He reached the sealed doors that led inside and peeked through the window. What he saw froze the blood in his veins. The stations were blood splattered and no one seemed to be alive.

"Lords above us." Bedrock drew his sidearm. "Wade, there's blood. Weapons out. They may have turned on each other, or..."

Or something attacked them. Killed them. Something seven feet tall with the eye of a demon.

"Or anything. Proceed with the utmost caution." Bedrock then attempted to open the doors.

How many people are going to tell me how to do my frakking job today?

Her voice is clean of any trace of her irritation though as she replies, "Already have. We should be getting them any second now. Deadbolt and I are going to fly out a bit to get better visibility. We'll coordinate the Raptors and keep a watch for tricks. You focus on getting as many of those people out as you can."

She flies out with her wing to a standoff position where she can see all three ships clearly, as well as surrounding space with as little obstruction as possible.

"Okay Deadbolt, I'm gonna play traffic control for a swarm of Raptors, so you take the scans."

Bridge of the Gemenon Prophet

Intelligence+Repair Electrical Systems vs. #7 (1d8+1d8=11)

The door was locked but it took Bedrock only a few seconds to bypass the security. With a noticeable clacking sound the door unlocked and opened automatically. Bedrock slowly drifted inside the bridge. There was blood virtually everywhere and traces that made a fight obvious only that the crew didn’t seem to have much of a chance to defend itself. Most faces where frozen in a look of surprise and disbelief.

Bedrock instinctively floated towards the communications unit and checked the status of the ship. There was no power shortage – the ship had been ‘turned off’ manually. Warning Wade that they would have juice in a few seconds again which would re-establish the artificial gravity Bedrock initiated the commands to activate the reactors again. Depending on how long the deactivation of the reactor was it could take up to several minutes before the ship was fully manoeuvrable again. Just before Bedrock wanted to report back to the Valkyrie he noticed that something had been torn out of the communication console. He reached down and with his lights managed to get a better look what was missing. Someone had removed the black box recorder which would have revealed at least technically when and how the ship has been obviously hijacked. Someone knew what he was doing.

"Yeah," Chief Solas said, nodding. It's not like I have a choice, she added quietly to herself. And to be honest, she would do just about anything to get out of here. She wasn't adverse to helping Everette; someone had set her up for murder again, and this time, she could do something about it. "Yeah, it's no problem. I'm glad to help."

"Callisto, Bedrock here. Signs that this was a surprise attack. I don't see any survivors. The ship's recorder has been removed. We are working on restoring power so that the ship can be guided back to the Valkyrie."

Bedrock then gets Wade on the comm. "Wade, try to remember exactly what you've touched and when. Without the flight recorder we'll have to reconstruct what happened here so this ship must be treated with care."

Bedrock then continues his search.

Callisto replies to Bedrock, "No survivors? I know I saw movement in the portholes, Lieutenant. You're saying everyone on the ship is dead?"

"If there are any survivors, they're in hiding. The gravity was off - it's possible that a body drifting might have been what you saw..."

Bedrock drew his sidearm and double-checked his ammo load, tapping the barrel twice - an old superstition, for when he felt alone in the land of bad things.

The colonel nods slowly, surveying the dispersion of the CAP line with a practiced eye.

"This must be treated with utmost suspicion, in my opinion, sir. Crippled civilian vessels behind the Line? Unlikely."

He examines the disposition of the fleet for a moment more.

"I recommend increasing the CAP and moving the Calypso and the Phalanx in closer to support the Herakles in the event that this isn't as simple as it seems."

Battlestar Valkyrie Brig



„Good.“, was all Lt. Everette said and for a moment it felt like he had set her up. He walked to the table where the Corporal was sitting and unlocked the bars. “You can go, Chief. I’ll report to the Admiral ASAP.”

As she walked out of the brig he added, “You did the right thing, Chief.”

Starboard Flight Deck Battlestar Valkyrie

All hell had broken out in her absence. 2 Full Squadrons had been launched and the deckcrew was preparing another 2 Squadrons for emergency Alert 5. It took her only about 20 seconds to assess the situation and conclude that things where going south. People were bumping into eachother and had trouble adjusting the missile loaders for the Vipers. Most of this because they weren’t familiar with the Mk IIs. The loading mechanism of the Valkyrie was designed specifically for the Mk VIIs and should save time in emergency cases. Now it looked like she had to do some modifications in order to make it work for both designs. Frakking brilliant.


Gemenon Prophet bridge




„Roger that, Ell-Tee. Most of the people here are unconscious but I think they’ll make it. Did you say there was an attack? I can’t see any signs of a fight back here.”

With his sidearm ready Bedrock slowly continued his search on the bridge. Every member of the crew has been shot by large calibre rounds. It was hard to tell if those were colonial or zylon origin.

Callisto frowned at that and squinted at the massive hull of the ship in front of her. The motion had seemed purposeful to her...but maybe she'd been reading into it? Making it what she wanted to see?

"Bedrock, if you've got life support back on in there, keep moving. There's two other ships. If they can be reactivated like that maybe we can save them all. There'll be time to work out what happened once that's done."

"Roger, Callisto. Do you have an ETA on the other Raptor squads? Wade, start carrying the survivors into our bird. I don't see anyone up here. Anyone alive, at any rate. So I'll join you shortly..."

Simon brushes his gloves fingers over the controls. He then checks the exits to see if they've been forced, reasoning that if they haven't been then the black box must be on board.

CIC Battlestar Valkyrie

The Admiral nodded briefly acknowledging the Colonel’s suggested order and the crew proceeded relaying that information to the other ships. The situation seemed to get slowly under control although the launching of the Raptor’s and Viper’s was awkwardly slow. If this had been an attack they would’ve been seriously frakked – someone had to give an explanation for this substandard reaction time of the crew. The Admiral made some mental notes to address this topic ASAP once the situation was fully contained.





Armistice Line

Callisto cursed once again under her breath before she started to coordinate the Raptor and the Viper Squadron’s to do their frakking jobs. “ETA 3 Minutes, Bedrock – I’m going to make one more sweep across the blindside towards open space, some thing doesn’t feel right about this.” Callisto just nodded to Deadbolt who immediately joined her side to give her cover in case of a surprise attack.

In the meantime the Squadron’s had been finally fully deployed and what appeared to be a crowd of confused chicken quickly reformed to a task force with deadly precision. Reflexes were kicking in and adrenaline brought the crew back on line and contained the situation within a few minutes. Slowly relief was spreading as several minutes without fighting passed. This seemed to be a “just” a rescue mission after all.

Gemenon Prophet

Lt. Thanatos “Scarface” Davies volunteered to lead a small strike force of marines to make a quick reco-nmission inside the Gemenon Prophet. His small squad of 5 experts were all fully geared for the worst case. Lt. Bedrock managed to re-establish Life support short after the Squad boarded the Gemenon Prophet – yet Lt. Davies had a strange feeling that something was not quite right. Carefully the Squad proceeded to check out the Ship Deck by Deck.

15 Minutes later the Squad reached the area where Lt. Bedrock and Wade were waiting and nervously “holding” the bridge until reinforcements came while the Raptor crews evacuated those passengers in dire need of medical attention. Fortunately most of the passengers just passed out without hurting themselves – nothing more than a few bruises and scratches.

Within another 15 minutes the three stranded ships had been brought on course parallel to the Armistice line – now they only needed to find out why by the gods these ships had jumped into the sector in the first place...

Starboard Flight Deck Battlestar Valkyrie

Captain Callisto and Deadbolt had barely signed their flight protocols when a young Deckhand named Harris told them that the Admiral was expecting them for a full debriefing in his quarters. "He seemed kinda pissed, Sir.", added the young man before he sped away to do whatever seemed more pleasant than meeting the Captains gaze.

Gemenon Prophet

Than carefully approaches the bridge, leading his squad, and wary of the possibly nervous flight crew that were meant to be there. Once it is clear that they aren't going to be too twitchy with their trigger fingers he swaps his assault weapon to his left hand (still active since his ambidextrous) to have be ready to shake the officiers hand.
"Lt Bedrock, I'm Lt Davies, callsign Scarface. My squads done a sweep on our way up through the decks, but we haven't seen anything unusual yet. What did you find when you arrived here?"

It didn't feel like the right thing, necessarily. It felt like she was spying for Everette, like her choice on how to discipline her staff had been taken from her. Grumbling and in a sour mood, she was already irritated when she arrived on deck. The whispers and rumors circulating around her made her scowl all the harder.

But seeing the birds back on deck eased some of her anger. Work was exactly what she needed right now. It was the one part of her job that Everette hadn't just ruined for her. She snagged the flight protocol from a deckhand and checked to see if they had reported any issues.

"Captain, Deadbolt." She greeted them the same way she always did, with an easy, half-absent air. "Any trouble with the birds out there?"

Colonel Erasmus continued to survey the deployment of the ships under his command. The Admiral seemed to have everything well in hand, but the CO felt like he was being sidelined during the first command situation on his new ship, a situation that irked him.

Strangling off his growing resentment with years of professionalism, he strides to the CAP station and looks over the shoulder of the junior officer stationed there. He too notices the slow dispersal of the Raptor and Viper wings.

"Admiral, with your permission, I'm going to call the deck, find out whats holding things up."

CIC Battlestar Valkyrie

"Permission granted, Col. I'll be in my quarters and expect the CAG ASAP for a full report.", the Admiral said leaving the CIC to the Colonel.

In the meantime Deckhand Harris answered the call on Deck, "Yes sir? What can I do for you, Colonel?", the young boys' voice sounded obviously intimidated.

"As soon as we went through the hatch, I noticed blood, and everyone was either alive or unconscious. I made my way to the cockpit and noted that the flight recorder had been removed. The crew had been shot by large caliber rounds, of unknown origin. I'm glad you're here, Lieutenant. Something evil is afoot on board this ship."

"Ok, Lt, lets see what we can find out."
He turns to his squad members who have drifted into the room,"Right, we need to find out what happend here in as much detail as possible. Obviously we won't be able to get a decent time sequence as the bodies will have all moved about in the zero-g. However, I want as good a time of death for each individual as possible, although I expect them to all be at the same time within our error margins. Someone get into their computer system, I want a record of who was meant to be on duty and whose bodies we actually have here. ALso there last recorded logs on the main system, both from the bridge/command and any possible records from the drive and engineering sections. Information on the weapons, check the calibre as close as possible, and look for any residue that might indicate where each shot was fired from or how far away the attacker was. That might be able to give us an idea of how many attackers there may have been."

"Once we have a crew and passenger list we'll need to ascertain where all the crew who weren't on the bridge were at the time we think the attack occurred, as well as any passengers who might have had the seniority or interest to have been invited on to the bridge. I know being a civilian ship they don't have a guarded bridge/CIC as we do, but I'd hope they didn't allow anybody up here at any time."

Turning back to Bedrock, he replies to his last statement first, "I'm afraid I have a bad feeling about this as well Lt. I don't think it's coincidence that these ship have appeared here, and quite possibly that they appeared now, just as we are in the area. However, we will have to deal with that as and when we have more solid information to go on and a more substantial object for our concerns. Right now, is there anything else you can think of to add to what we should be looking for here on the bridge?"

Great. Frakking great.

Callisto turned away from the retreating duty officer and gave the Chief a thin, strained smile.

"Nothing mechanical at least," she assured Solas. "Everything else was frakked to hell, but the actual machines look to be working fine."

She sighed and forced herself to relax a little.

"Sorry. I'm just about to march to a nice ass-chewing on top of everything else. Didn't mean to spill it on you though. Nothing to report, engineeringwise. You guys are taking great care of my babies."

Her smile was smaller, but more genuine, when she gave Solas a companionable pat on the shoulder and headed past her to the 'debriefing,' as the Admiral was calling it.

Colonel Erasmus salutes the Admiral as he leaves the bridge then turns his full attention to the comms unit in his hand, his voice cold.

"I want to know the situation down there, Mr. Harris. I want an explanation for the delay I see in the CAP launch."

Armistice Line, uncharted space

The Herakeles Raptor’s quickly took both Colonial Heavies into inspection initiating the docking procedure with the Herakeles to re-initialise the engines. The marines found most of the passengers unconscious with the crew killed just like on board of the Gemenon Prophet. Someone or something had managed to catch the crew by surprise and then jumped to this location. It only didn’t make any sense at all.

An emergency engineering team was deployed to help facilitate the repairs on board of the Colonial Heavy which was about to dock with the Herakeles.

The engineers immediately started a routine procedure to take stock of the situation and find a reason for the systems failure. They were unaware of the large array of hidden explosives which had been hardwired to the Powergenerator…


The Squad started to search the bridge for any signs Lt. Davies asked to look for. The computer specialist started to work through the damaged system and tried to get at the passenger list or any other valuable data that could help find answers.

Alertness+Perception vs. #11 (hard difficulty) (1d10+1d6=8)

Intelligence+Technical Engineering vs #7 (1d6+1d6=6)

The team seemed to be busy for a while before they got any results.

(ooc: Both rolls failed – Specialist will get a retry vs. #9 but that’ll take some time)



Starboard Flightdeck Battlestar Valkyrie

"We're... having trouble with the missile-loading system for the Mk IIs, Sir.", stammered the young man. "The Chief was missing, no one knew what to do, Sir." frak, shouldn't have said that!, cursed Harris to himself.

"But we're getting things done, no more delays", he hoped the XO wouldn't bite his head off.

"Nothing leaps to mind, Lieutenant. I'm no detective, I'm afraid."

The Colonels jaw clenched. The Chief Engineer was missing? What kind of lax operation was the previous CO running where senior officers could duck out during combat operations?

"Very well, Mr. Harris. Have the Chief report to me when she returns to her station." His voice is clipped and cold.

He Waits a brief moment for the Deckhands response before slamming the receiver down, earning a concerned glance from the junior communications officer. Ignoring her, Colonel Erasmus absentmindedly strokes the deep scars on his cheek for a moment before picking up the receiver again.

"Put me through to security." He orders.

"That's alright Lt Bedrock, none of us detectives in this line. I just probably have had more dealings with IG while I was a marine than you have as a pilot."