[Tabitha]

Battlestar Avalon, Ragnar Anchorage
1/11/48 0715

Danson sipped his coffee watching the forward holographic projector. It showed the outline of the Ragnar Station, but the engineering teams were still fiddling with something or another and it wasn’t a clear picture. He tried to eat another bite of the jelly roll that the new cook had brought him, but it had gone hard while it sat and he put it back down.
“Con, signal, bearing dead ahead, offset 16 kilometers Z axis, contact reports Colonial signals, possibly the Whaley sir.” The young con officer reported. The young man tapped his headset. “New report, it’s the Liberty sir, part of the Arc Royale task force.” The young officer was delighted to hear another ships signal.
“Combat, this is CNC, plot me firing solutions on the new signals, stand by with missile tubes ten through fifteen. Con signal Liberty with our designation code, interrogate their computers if they do not respond immediately. We cant take the chance that this is a Cylon trap.”
“Sir, it’s the Arc Royale, requesting to talk to Avalon Actual.”
“Ask them… no tell them to stand by.” Danson said bitterly. He pushed the intercom button to. “Captain to the bridge, set condition 2. Battle stations, battle stations, this is not a drill, all hands to battle stations prepare for ship to ship action. Gunnery crews spin up tubes, all turrets target solutions and stand by.”
“Brandt to Danson, I'm on my way, what’s the situation?” Brandt asked as he dressed.
“We are two thousand kilometers from Ragnar Anchorage, we are being hailed by a ship claiming to be the Liberty, and another ship claiming to be Arc Royale has hailed us, requesting to speak to Avalon Actual.”
“Take the call Danson, I will be a few minutes.”
“Aye sir, CNC out.” Danson replied. He picked up the handset and waited for the comm. officer to patch the call through. “Arc Royale, this is Commander Danson for Avalon Actual, what is your intention?”
“Where the frak is that old war dagget Brandt?” a salty voice asked from the other end. Danson grinned at the description of General Brandt as a dagget.
“He is on the way to the bridge sir. From your tone I take it your intentions are not hostile.” Danson said realizing how stupid he sounded, but knowing that it was proper protocol.
“Are you stupid son? Were Colonial, not Cylon! Now stand down son, we don’t need to start shooting each other, there’s too many tin cans in the area to do that for us.” Arc Royal Actual said in a condescending but moderately sympathetic manner. He knew Danson was following proper war time procedure, and that the Avalon was certainly NOT going to stand down just because he asked them to. IF they did, he intended to blast the Avalon to bits, since that would definitely be something the Cylons would do trying to trick the small task force into an easy kill.
“Arc Royale, we are code Bravo 759, please reply.” Danson said tapping his finger on the railing, giving a small indicator to his Combat commanders that he intended to challenge, and that if they did not reply properly, to consider themselves weapons free.
“Avalon we are condition Uniform 221. Welcome to Ragnar.” Arc Royal Actual’s voice seemed relieved that the challenge and reply had come and gone properly. There would be no more shooting for at least another day or so, since he was sure the Avalon was here to arm herself to the teeth. A Battlestar could take on a mind bogglingly huge amount of ordinance, and one the size of Avalon could take twice the amount. He hoped that Ragnar had enough stock to fill her magazines. He truly wanted to see that monster of a ship in battle again. Her history so far had been glorious, and with her back in the fight, even as old as she was, the Cylons would have to give up some space.
Brandt arrived only a few minutes after the Liberty escorted the goliath Battlestar into a docking facility on Ragnar. He was wearing his dress uniform, and looked freshly shaved and very much the impressive figure that his records made him out to be.

“Raul!” Brandt cheered as the commander of the Arc Royale entered the docking hatch. Before the officer of the deck cold signal to have the Captain piped aboard, Brandt had grabbed his arm and the two of them had left the Avalon chattering about things that Danson knew nothing about. Instead Danson let his mind drift to the holographic display that was now showing the colonies and the Cylon positions, as far as the Colonial spy satellites were able to report. There was a pattern developing, but he wasn’t able to identify it just yet.

Ryan Domiano had been delighted to hear that the damaged engine was repaired and his turret was able to fire, though only in a forward arc. It was better than a blind spot. The Liberty had taken some damage to her under side and one of their turrets had blown its magazine, destroying the fire control station beyond repair, however the turret itself was still in good shape. It was not the same model turret that the Defiance needed, but it had been bodged onto the rails of the lost turret and welded there. The gun would target anything in the forward arc, with a gun axis of thirty degrees, giving the Defiance a range of fire that covered the entire forward quadrant and leaving only a 47 degree blind spot on the port side. That was horrible in all but the most extreme situations, but he considered the total destruction of the colonies about as extreme a situation and he was likely to ever face. The Liberty was about the same size as the Defiance, however, she was newer and built on the Voltaire platform, not the older Hutchins chassis so even though they were assigned as the same class of ship, the Liberty was actually about a third longer in the beam, and two under side turrets by design. Of course, now it had one, but that was still more than the Defiance could claim. What Ryan was thrilled most about was that the turret they received had upgraded their guns on that side to the modern 58.8 cm gauss rifles. That slug was easily able to carry enough mass to do serious damage to the Cylon picket ships that Defiance was designed to engage, while offering the Defiance the advantage of range, since the guns fired faster. The velocity of the 58.8 cm projectile was nearly on par with the massive 256 cm rounds that the Avalon could fire in her main guns. Those projectiles were sickeningly fast, reaching an amazing .43c in speed by the time they left the dorsal barrels. Those rounds actually had the ability to slow themselves down when they arrived on target, for use against space stations and planetary defenses, where that much speed would produce too much penetration, and not enough energy transference. But in ship to ship combat, the speed with which the projectile could arrive at its target often determined whether the target was able to retaliate before its destruction. His own 58.8 cm projectiles would carry a speed of nearly .4c which meant that he could fire two salvos before the Cylon return fire could reach him, since the Cylon Corvette’s guns were known to fire energy bolts which, being plasma balls, could not be made to fire faster than .19c, or else they would rapidly release their energy back into the firing rails and blow up. Energy weapons were odd like that. The friction of launching them often determined the speed with which they could be deployed. That speed often made them unwise choices when it came to ship to ship warfare, which was exactly the point of the Corvette class ship. In essence, the Cylons had missed the entire point of the Corvette class ship when they changed over from projectile weapons to the energy guns they insisted on using now. The Colonial Navy had tried switching to energy weapons, but had already realized the limitations of energy based guns, and had abandon them in favor of the gauss based weapons that were staple to the Colonial Fleet. About the only energy based guns in the fleet were the anti-aircraft batteries on the modern Battlestars, since the blast effect of the plasma balls was much more effective than the explosive shells of the faster firing multi barrel guns of the older Avalon. The debate was still raging amongst the crews of the fleet, but in his mind, the debate was definitely over. The Battlestars with the slower firing energy based defense turrets were mostly floating around in pieces having assumed orbits near whatever gravity well they were destroyed in, while the Avalon and even the Galactica, which employed both energy based and the projectile based guns was still alive. He grinned, thinking how wonderful it would be to get the Galactica and the Avalon together. Of course, the Galactica had left the home systems, reportedly to take refugees to a safe area. Word had reached them the day after she had left, and so they were not able to reach her commander to request that the Galactica remain in system, to assist with the defense of the Colonies. In fact, it seemed that her captain was under the impression that the colonies were lost.
Domiano couldn’t accept that. The Sentinels had launched, that meant that surely the Cylon home systems were slag. Without their home planets to support their war effort, they would be in just as bad of shape as the Colonies were now. As far as Ryan was concerned, both the Cylons and the Colonials were about equal. If anything, the Colonials had some small advantage, since they were able to re-supply and reinforce easier than the Cylons, who were at least three jump points away from the closest friendly graving yards. That meant that any ship that the Cylons lost to damage, or destruction, was not going to be replaced or repaired any time soon.