Each of the two monitor pilots' fighters had been equipped with external ordinance suited for their mission: Mark 3 External Fold Boosters. Unlike the Mark 1 booster that had seen trial-by-fire in the Varauta conflict, or the faster and longer-ranged Mark 2, the Mark 3 was a reusable system. The difference lay not in the design or ability of the fold-engine itself - indeed, every Mark 3 in current use had been built around the core of an existing Mark 1 - but in the presence of extensive cooling systems and liquid heat sinks designed to keep the lightweight components of the miniature drive from overheating fatally. While the system's range or frequency of jumps couldn't hope to match those of the larger starship installations, it was ideal for cases where deploying fighters independently was called for.
The procedure for their use involved a capped trigger and the entry of the desired target coordinates into the mounting fighter's flight computer, and it was as Coda was doing the mental mathematics that presaged that act that he realized his error.
"Two, warm up your fold pod and squirt our logs to Command ASAP."
"Command...? FUCK! FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck fuck..."
Coda wasn't particularly thrilled about the idea of his superiors reaction to their failure to report right away, either, but there was nothing he could do about it. "Clear channel, Two."
"Right... burst away."
Faster than light communication signals were, of course, another function of existing fold engines, though the power demands to route a massless particle through superdimensional space were far below those required for physical transportation. Short-ranged FTL comms were only marginally larger than the sort of radios that would be required to transmit across interplanetary distances anyway, while interstellar versions tended to have effective ranges that ranged from dozens of light-years to almost infinite... but required the attention of full fold-drive installations to operate.
Across the distance between Alpha Cucurbita and Hestia transmission delay was only a few seconds, and Admiral Voychek a decisive man. The reply came a bare minute later: "Pumpkin Lead, fold to the bogies' perimeter and establish contact; do not fire unless fired upon. Identify their origin and mission. Pumpkin Two, hold your position and relay to us. Third Division is folding out to Grid Eight-Three band Point Four in two minutes from... Mark. ETA four hours. Confirm."
"Pumpkin Lead to fold to intruder perimeter and establish verbal contact under Rule-Of-Engagment Two. Query intruder origin and objective. Understood."
"Pumpkin Two to hold position and provide communication relay between Pumpkin Lead and Dragon, understood."
"Good. Watch yourselves, Pumpkin. Dragon out."
Coda took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Here goes nothing," he said, and flipped the switch.
There was a short burst of rainbow light from outside his cockpit canopy, and he saw - could feel - a ripple travel back from his hands towards his body as his fighter dove briefly into the unnatural spaces that lay outside the corporeal universe... then popped back out only a few hundred kilometers from where that lonely Ghost had died at the hands of a panicked alien rookie.
Then he switched his transmitter to band 228.3 and tried to pitch his voice to the intruders' accent of his native tongue. "Unknown fleet, this is Second-Rank Officer Coda Parino of the United Nations of Earth Space Defense Forces. I am ordered to ask where you are from. I am ordered to ask what you want."
The wingpair that had intercepted the Ghost hadn't gone far, and had swerved towards him when he folded in, but they cut their engines and coasted after he sent that, and, after a chorus of "FRAK!" from half a dozen different sources, there was a long moment of silence.
Then the carrier that had mothered the closing fighters answered. "Officer Parino, this is Commander William Adama of the battlestar Galactica of the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. We seek safe harbor from the Cylon destruction of our homeworlds."
Refugees. That explained the escort patterns, anyway.
"Wait one, Commander Adama, I must report," Coda said, in the particular Zentradese tense reserved for a junior addressing a senior outside his chain of command, then smacked his control panel's 'upload' key. The plane's computer compressed the conversation's logs into a signal burst and sent it to Pumpkin Two, who would in turn relay it to Hestia.
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
The procedure for their use involved a capped trigger and the entry of the desired target coordinates into the mounting fighter's flight computer, and it was as Coda was doing the mental mathematics that presaged that act that he realized his error.
"Two, warm up your fold pod and squirt our logs to Command ASAP."
"Command...? FUCK! FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck fuck..."
Coda wasn't particularly thrilled about the idea of his superiors reaction to their failure to report right away, either, but there was nothing he could do about it. "Clear channel, Two."
"Right... burst away."
Faster than light communication signals were, of course, another function of existing fold engines, though the power demands to route a massless particle through superdimensional space were far below those required for physical transportation. Short-ranged FTL comms were only marginally larger than the sort of radios that would be required to transmit across interplanetary distances anyway, while interstellar versions tended to have effective ranges that ranged from dozens of light-years to almost infinite... but required the attention of full fold-drive installations to operate.
Across the distance between Alpha Cucurbita and Hestia transmission delay was only a few seconds, and Admiral Voychek a decisive man. The reply came a bare minute later: "Pumpkin Lead, fold to the bogies' perimeter and establish contact; do not fire unless fired upon. Identify their origin and mission. Pumpkin Two, hold your position and relay to us. Third Division is folding out to Grid Eight-Three band Point Four in two minutes from... Mark. ETA four hours. Confirm."
"Pumpkin Lead to fold to intruder perimeter and establish verbal contact under Rule-Of-Engagment Two. Query intruder origin and objective. Understood."
"Pumpkin Two to hold position and provide communication relay between Pumpkin Lead and Dragon, understood."
"Good. Watch yourselves, Pumpkin. Dragon out."
Coda took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Here goes nothing," he said, and flipped the switch.
There was a short burst of rainbow light from outside his cockpit canopy, and he saw - could feel - a ripple travel back from his hands towards his body as his fighter dove briefly into the unnatural spaces that lay outside the corporeal universe... then popped back out only a few hundred kilometers from where that lonely Ghost had died at the hands of a panicked alien rookie.
Then he switched his transmitter to band 228.3 and tried to pitch his voice to the intruders' accent of his native tongue. "Unknown fleet, this is Second-Rank Officer Coda Parino of the United Nations of Earth Space Defense Forces. I am ordered to ask where you are from. I am ordered to ask what you want."
The wingpair that had intercepted the Ghost hadn't gone far, and had swerved towards him when he folded in, but they cut their engines and coasted after he sent that, and, after a chorus of "FRAK!" from half a dozen different sources, there was a long moment of silence.
Then the carrier that had mothered the closing fighters answered. "Officer Parino, this is Commander William Adama of the battlestar Galactica of the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. We seek safe harbor from the Cylon destruction of our homeworlds."
Refugees. That explained the escort patterns, anyway.
"Wait one, Commander Adama, I must report," Coda said, in the particular Zentradese tense reserved for a junior addressing a senior outside his chain of command, then smacked his control panel's 'upload' key. The plane's computer compressed the conversation's logs into a signal burst and sent it to Pumpkin Two, who would in turn relay it to Hestia.
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."