You still have to account for it in your calculations. The safety interlock prevented the jump the first time
Battletech Battletech/Battlestar Galactica Crossover - Lucky 13th (the rewrite)
- Thread starter LordSunhawk
- Start date
No, on sb and ffn
Chapter Four
Chapter 4
It was tense in the dimly lit CIC of the Battlestar Galactica as the old warhorse hung in space surrounded by the rag tag fleet of refugees from the 12 Colonies of Kobol. Not that it was ever precisely relaxed, especially since the genocidal attack that had utterly shattered the Colonies and forced the few small remnants of survivors to flee. But tension had spiked ever since Racetrack’s Raptor had returned prematurely, and then spiked even more as scuttlebutt leaked out that they’d not only misjumped but had found Cylons.
The newly minted Admiral Adama was aware of the rumors, even as he mentally reviewed the debriefing that Racetrack and Skulls had given just an hour or so before.
That they misjumped was clear enough. They’d misjumped in orbit of a possibly habitable planet, at least going by the images caught by the Raptor’s recon cameras. And that planet evidently was already inhabited.
But Adama wasn’t so sure that it was inhabited by Cylons.
The ships imaged by the camera were like nothing he’d ever seen, and extremely different from typical Cylon design philosophies. There was nothing organic about them, they were functional, mechanical, but something that he could instantly grasp the logic of.
The lack of a canopy was a strong indicator that they were likely to be Cylons of some sort, but the proportions were wrong. That plated structure in the hull of the unknown fighter had what looked like an ejection blow out panel that, if his old eyes weren’t deceiving him, should be the right size for a human to eject from a crippled bird.
Why would Cylon’s need that?
Moreover, while the words were incomprehensible at the resolution level of the tactical cameras on the Raptor, Adama had never seen a single Cylon craft with any warning labels or written markings on them. But the unknown craft did have them, in the sort of places he could imagine them belonging as they corresponded to similar locations on a Viper.
But he had to make a decision. On the one hand he couldn’t leave this location, the expedition he’d ordered back to the Colonies had only this as the return point, if he left they’d be abandoned.
But he also had to honor the threat that these possible Cylon’s presented. If they managed to track Racetrack’s Raptor back he would potentially have Cylons crawling all over the Fleet well before the expedition could return.
Decisions… decisions.
“Signal Pegasus, they are to escort the rest of the civilian fleet to…” he frowned down at the plot. “Here.” he set his finger on a location about a single jump distance further along their present course. “Galactica will wait for the expedition to return.” he looked up, meeting his XO’s gaze.
Acknowledgements came from around CIC, and about 3 minutes later, with a flash of energy, the rest of the fleet had jumped away, leaving the old girl alone.
-----
It had been a tense week. Unfortunately they had three days left to wait until the expedition returned. Galactica’s crew were on edge, although regular Raptor flights between the two detached elements of the fleet had kept both up to date on the situation.
Then tension spiked. “Emergence!” came the call from the long range DRADIS station. “New contact!”
CIC went to full alert. Major Tigh looked up sharply from where he had been reviewing reports, even as the door to CIC slid open and Admiral Adama walked in, summoned by the alarms that were now blaring.
“Status.” Adama barked.
“Sir, one large unidentified contact, doesn’t match anything in the warbook. They are at 1 Hectar, and aren’t moving. Mass wise they appear significantly smaller than us”
“Sir, picking up five smaller contacts detaching from the main one.” came the call from the DRADIS station.
Adama looked up at the repeater display, showing the situation. Two of the new contacts seemed to fall into formation with the main one, while the other three started spreading out into an evident screen.
“Launch all Vipers and form up in a screen. Helm, bring us about.” Adama’s voice was calculating.
On the display the contacts started changing aspect. “Sir, they are changing heading and beginning to close.” came a terse report.
Out of the corner of his eye Adama spotted the communications tech frowning and fiddling with his equipment. So he stepped closer. “Lieutenant?”
“I’m not sure, Sir, but I’m picking up signals well off of standard wireless frequencies, but they seem to be directed at us.” the young man replied, frowning at his controls.
Adama frowned at that. “Keep on trying.” he said, even as the DRADIS operator spoke up.
“Sir, I’m picking up what appears to be a very small emergence signature, smaller even than one for a Raider, centered about a metric behind the main contact, but Sir, it’s somehow continuous.”
Adama frowned even more, glaring at the plot and thinking furiously.
-----
Over a million kilometers away from Galactica the leanly arrogant form of the Black Prince-class Heavy Cruiser HWS Constitution thrust towards the massive battlestar at about 1g constant acceleration. Rather lazy, insofar as her class were capable of easily sustaining 1.5g for prolonged periods or reaching 2.5g in combat.
The Black Prince class were pure gunships, mounting batteries of the largest class of naval autocannon, naval particle projection cannon, and naval lasers, paired AR/10 launchers forward and aft and a substantial point defense fit of mixed extended range PPCs and ultra-rapid fire laser anti-missile systems. Granted, said anti-fighter defenses could best be described as ‘adequate for leakers’, but that was what the pair of Forrestal class carrier dropships in close formation were for, not to mention the trio of Storm assault dropships currently in screen formation.
Captain Dacre was secured to his station with a crash harness, even though the mighty warship under his command was under thrust, thus giving the semblance of weight. The rest of his bridge crew were the same, as were any other crew members whose duties didn’t require them to be up and around. Captain John Francis Dacre IV ran a fairly tight ship in that regard.
A veteran of the Hayfield Incident, the Redsburg Incursion, and the Great Chase of ‘36, not to mention countless anti-pirate patrols and incidents, Dacre and Constitution had a solid record within the Hegemony Armed Forces, and Dacre was not going to risk that record by being lax about the basics.
Even so he was frowning. “We are transmitting that contact packet we were given, Comms?”
“Aye, captain, we are.” came the prompt response from the comms console.
“Quite inconsiderate of them to ignore us then, what.” he growsed, frowning as he looked at his displays. The only thing the, admittedly quite massive, contact had done since he’d jumped in had been to turn to face him and launch a number of, admittedly fast but extremely light interceptors.
He glanced over at one of his repeaters showing the launch readiness status of the ASF wings carried within the two massive 75,000 ton Forrestals. All six catapults were green on each of the vessels, meaning he’d have the first two squadrons of ASFs up in less than 5 seconds of him giving the word. He then looked back at the display. If those little interceptors tried to close he’d order the launch. They might be tiny little things, but even tiny little things like that could be slinging an Alamo, and he had no interest in his beloved ship being hit by one of those.
“There’s nothing to it but to keep on trying.” he finally said, nodding to the comms officer. “For all the good it is doing us so far.”
“Sir, should we try different frequency ranges? Been blanketing all the military and civilian frequencies we use, but who knows what these people use?”
“Capital idea, Comms.” Dacre chuckled slightly, not mentioning that he’d brought that up during his briefing and had been told to just use his best judgement. He loved it when his subordinates gave him a good reason to mention them in dispatches for something good. “Do it.”
His comm officer glanced over at her commander, one eyebrow twitching a little as she, like most of the rest of the crew, knew he’d probably thought of it first and was just playing along, but she did it, as ordered.
It was tense in the dimly lit CIC of the Battlestar Galactica as the old warhorse hung in space surrounded by the rag tag fleet of refugees from the 12 Colonies of Kobol. Not that it was ever precisely relaxed, especially since the genocidal attack that had utterly shattered the Colonies and forced the few small remnants of survivors to flee. But tension had spiked ever since Racetrack’s Raptor had returned prematurely, and then spiked even more as scuttlebutt leaked out that they’d not only misjumped but had found Cylons.
The newly minted Admiral Adama was aware of the rumors, even as he mentally reviewed the debriefing that Racetrack and Skulls had given just an hour or so before.
That they misjumped was clear enough. They’d misjumped in orbit of a possibly habitable planet, at least going by the images caught by the Raptor’s recon cameras. And that planet evidently was already inhabited.
But Adama wasn’t so sure that it was inhabited by Cylons.
The ships imaged by the camera were like nothing he’d ever seen, and extremely different from typical Cylon design philosophies. There was nothing organic about them, they were functional, mechanical, but something that he could instantly grasp the logic of.
The lack of a canopy was a strong indicator that they were likely to be Cylons of some sort, but the proportions were wrong. That plated structure in the hull of the unknown fighter had what looked like an ejection blow out panel that, if his old eyes weren’t deceiving him, should be the right size for a human to eject from a crippled bird.
Why would Cylon’s need that?
Moreover, while the words were incomprehensible at the resolution level of the tactical cameras on the Raptor, Adama had never seen a single Cylon craft with any warning labels or written markings on them. But the unknown craft did have them, in the sort of places he could imagine them belonging as they corresponded to similar locations on a Viper.
But he had to make a decision. On the one hand he couldn’t leave this location, the expedition he’d ordered back to the Colonies had only this as the return point, if he left they’d be abandoned.
But he also had to honor the threat that these possible Cylon’s presented. If they managed to track Racetrack’s Raptor back he would potentially have Cylons crawling all over the Fleet well before the expedition could return.
Decisions… decisions.
“Signal Pegasus, they are to escort the rest of the civilian fleet to…” he frowned down at the plot. “Here.” he set his finger on a location about a single jump distance further along their present course. “Galactica will wait for the expedition to return.” he looked up, meeting his XO’s gaze.
Acknowledgements came from around CIC, and about 3 minutes later, with a flash of energy, the rest of the fleet had jumped away, leaving the old girl alone.
-----
It had been a tense week. Unfortunately they had three days left to wait until the expedition returned. Galactica’s crew were on edge, although regular Raptor flights between the two detached elements of the fleet had kept both up to date on the situation.
Then tension spiked. “Emergence!” came the call from the long range DRADIS station. “New contact!”
CIC went to full alert. Major Tigh looked up sharply from where he had been reviewing reports, even as the door to CIC slid open and Admiral Adama walked in, summoned by the alarms that were now blaring.
“Status.” Adama barked.
“Sir, one large unidentified contact, doesn’t match anything in the warbook. They are at 1 Hectar, and aren’t moving. Mass wise they appear significantly smaller than us”
“Sir, picking up five smaller contacts detaching from the main one.” came the call from the DRADIS station.
Adama looked up at the repeater display, showing the situation. Two of the new contacts seemed to fall into formation with the main one, while the other three started spreading out into an evident screen.
“Launch all Vipers and form up in a screen. Helm, bring us about.” Adama’s voice was calculating.
On the display the contacts started changing aspect. “Sir, they are changing heading and beginning to close.” came a terse report.
Out of the corner of his eye Adama spotted the communications tech frowning and fiddling with his equipment. So he stepped closer. “Lieutenant?”
“I’m not sure, Sir, but I’m picking up signals well off of standard wireless frequencies, but they seem to be directed at us.” the young man replied, frowning at his controls.
Adama frowned at that. “Keep on trying.” he said, even as the DRADIS operator spoke up.
“Sir, I’m picking up what appears to be a very small emergence signature, smaller even than one for a Raider, centered about a metric behind the main contact, but Sir, it’s somehow continuous.”
Adama frowned even more, glaring at the plot and thinking furiously.
-----
Over a million kilometers away from Galactica the leanly arrogant form of the Black Prince-class Heavy Cruiser HWS Constitution thrust towards the massive battlestar at about 1g constant acceleration. Rather lazy, insofar as her class were capable of easily sustaining 1.5g for prolonged periods or reaching 2.5g in combat.
The Black Prince class were pure gunships, mounting batteries of the largest class of naval autocannon, naval particle projection cannon, and naval lasers, paired AR/10 launchers forward and aft and a substantial point defense fit of mixed extended range PPCs and ultra-rapid fire laser anti-missile systems. Granted, said anti-fighter defenses could best be described as ‘adequate for leakers’, but that was what the pair of Forrestal class carrier dropships in close formation were for, not to mention the trio of Storm assault dropships currently in screen formation.
Captain Dacre was secured to his station with a crash harness, even though the mighty warship under his command was under thrust, thus giving the semblance of weight. The rest of his bridge crew were the same, as were any other crew members whose duties didn’t require them to be up and around. Captain John Francis Dacre IV ran a fairly tight ship in that regard.
A veteran of the Hayfield Incident, the Redsburg Incursion, and the Great Chase of ‘36, not to mention countless anti-pirate patrols and incidents, Dacre and Constitution had a solid record within the Hegemony Armed Forces, and Dacre was not going to risk that record by being lax about the basics.
Even so he was frowning. “We are transmitting that contact packet we were given, Comms?”
“Aye, captain, we are.” came the prompt response from the comms console.
“Quite inconsiderate of them to ignore us then, what.” he growsed, frowning as he looked at his displays. The only thing the, admittedly quite massive, contact had done since he’d jumped in had been to turn to face him and launch a number of, admittedly fast but extremely light interceptors.
He glanced over at one of his repeaters showing the launch readiness status of the ASF wings carried within the two massive 75,000 ton Forrestals. All six catapults were green on each of the vessels, meaning he’d have the first two squadrons of ASFs up in less than 5 seconds of him giving the word. He then looked back at the display. If those little interceptors tried to close he’d order the launch. They might be tiny little things, but even tiny little things like that could be slinging an Alamo, and he had no interest in his beloved ship being hit by one of those.
“There’s nothing to it but to keep on trying.” he finally said, nodding to the comms officer. “For all the good it is doing us so far.”
“Sir, should we try different frequency ranges? Been blanketing all the military and civilian frequencies we use, but who knows what these people use?”
“Capital idea, Comms.” Dacre chuckled slightly, not mentioning that he’d brought that up during his briefing and had been told to just use his best judgement. He loved it when his subordinates gave him a good reason to mention them in dispatches for something good. “Do it.”
His comm officer glanced over at her commander, one eyebrow twitching a little as she, like most of the rest of the crew, knew he’d probably thought of it first and was just playing along, but she did it, as ordered.
Several author's notes.
First, in regards to Kerry's language, you'll learn more about just why she talks like that and why its tolerated.
Second, in the last chapter I did some research on BSG distance units, and a 'Hectar' is roughly 1/9th of a Parsec, which in BSG is an AU (Astronomical Unit) or the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Yeah, BSG measurements are weird.
First, in regards to Kerry's language, you'll learn more about just why she talks like that and why its tolerated.
Second, in the last chapter I did some research on BSG distance units, and a 'Hectar' is roughly 1/9th of a Parsec, which in BSG is an AU (Astronomical Unit) or the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Yeah, BSG measurements are weird.
namar13766
Well-known member
Are you going to post the new designs like you did in the original story threads back on SB.com?
Ship Designs
In order of Appearance.
Doomsought
Well-known member
As opposed to an RL parsec which is the length of a right triangle with the short end being 1 AU long and the far angle being 1 arcsecond.
Solid update. Minor fix though, Tigh is a Colonel not a Major.
namar13766
Well-known member
I keep spotting that the Introduction year is 3145 in these TROs. Does this mean that it’s around the Dark Age by Battletech timekeeping?
Adventwolf
Well-known member
No a lot of programs for making custom ships simply base what tech is available on year. So it is easier to just use the furthest year to make it easier to see all the tech and equipment.
Still think that if you need to justify cursing like that then either do it first or don't try to make it a major part of why they exist. Again cursing every other line just comes off as edgy and lazy writing. Cursing is fine and can be expected but the amount you have her doing and to everyone is what is exacerbating. Even if she is friends with everyone that will be there it is not a good look for her or for the military for allowing such a disregard for proper respect and bearing.
Also for TROs to get them to line up you can just copy and paste them into a Code option and they are good to go.
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namar13766
Well-known member
I was asking because in the original story it was about 3050 when the New Circe FC happened. About when the Clan Invasion was happening if I remember right.
Adventwolf
Well-known member
And I am telling you why the date is the way it is. The program gives tech based on year. So to have everything you need to input the farthest one possible which is 3145.
this is happening in 3040 this time around.
Lord knows what the Colonials will make of the Clans. Or the Fall of the Star League and Succession Wars.
PainGod85
Member
I would like to add your scale for ASF speeds is off. One Aerotech hex is a BT map, ~500 meters across. As such, one hex of movement equates to 180 kph. This is specifically for CAS.
(162 kph top speed is something we exceeded at some point during WW1...)
Other than that, very nice so far, watching now.
(162 kph top speed is something we exceeded at some point during WW1...)
Other than that, very nice so far, watching now.
That's interesting -- their sensors can pick up the transmissions, but it sound like their communications equipment can't actually be switched over to those frequencies.
Fortunately, the Hegemony-in-Exile is not so limited. Overall, it sounds like Galactica has more advanced technology in several key respects, but the refugee fleet is handicapped by the fact that they're flying museum pieces and civilian ships with scratched-together maintenance and systems that are locked down against Cylon intrusion.
And the fact that their only technology expert, Baltar, is a traitor.
What do we know about the Hegemony in Exile?
That's an artifact of MML. The actual 'speeds' in ASFs and such are actually acceleration rates, with each +1 of 'speed' being .5g acceleration. So, for example, the Sparrowhawk IV at 10/15 can maintain 5g of constant acceleration, or 7.5g at maximum thrust... and then yes, for CAS you have to multiply things out, thus 'safe' speed for a Sparrowhawk IV is 1800 kph.
namar13766
Well-known member
Which is why getting Gravity Effects Technologies is going to a real gamechanger for anyone who gets it. Spread it among the THIE's enemies and then things are going to get interesting.
They're supposedly more democratic and give more than lip-service to "consent of the governed" than the actual Terran Hegemony.
They also believe that Blake was responsible for the Star League Civil War, not Kerensky. And they might also have the Minnesota Tribe as members.