| Gray and Kelsey in the Side Room with the Hard Drive |
| Summary: | Gray and Kelsey fire up the hard drive from Piraeus…and get a bit more than they bargained for |
| Date: | Tue 29/Nov/2016 (OOC Date) |
| Related Logs: | http://battlestarorion.wikidot.com/what-s-in-the-box http://battlestarorion.wikidot.com/piraeus-unlocked |
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| Room Name |
| An otherwise nondescript room with a table, a few chairs, and some projector equipment |
| 23/Jun/2006 (IC Date) |
Kelsey is going a little stir crazy and getting otu of her bunk is exactly what she needed. The swelling has gone down and there's still a bandage running vertically on her face just in front of her left ear. She's moving with a limp, but she's used canes before and seems a pro with one. Getting wounded as many times as she has, recovery is like breakfast for her. With a flightsuit being the most comfortable thing, she wears that as they head out to meet with The Box.
After realizing the box is not actually going to explode in someone's face, it was moved to a larger room considering it has projector abilities. Same security, wider-set walls. Same table, same generator and settings. When the two arrive, the Marines outside turn on the lights and let them in. But there it is, just as if it were pulled out of the safe in the bunker.
"So how do we turn it on? I don't think shaking my ass at it will elicit a useful reaction." Kelsey keeps a good six feet away for the moment, watching it curiously.
Gray shrugs, overhearing the question. "In the bunker, stuff just…turned on. I don't know, maybe someone needs to perform a magic ritual." Gray says this as he follows her into the room. His right hand is still nicely wrapped up, probably a few days longer than absolutely necessary, but after having had to run-and-gun with a hole in it he doesn't want to be out of commission any longer than necessary due to re-injuring it. As a side-effect, he has a bag with most of his notes, books, copies of maps and the like…basically all of his musings and ideas from the last two months. This means the bag is pretty empty, but it also saves him having to set everything down to open a door or move a chair. He's in his tanks and pants; when he got right down to it, he /really/ didn't want to fight with his jacket in the cast anymore than he absolutely had to. "Maybe there's an 'On' switch?" he asks, approaching the box /very/ carefully.
With the generator already turned on, the two don't have to do much. As Gray approaches, Kelsey takes a few steps closer and leans more on the cane. While they are looking at it, a small crystal hemisphere at the center top turns over from within. For a few seconds, nothing happens. Then the crystal flashes like a camera. For a moment its hard to see anything, but as their vision fades back in, there's a red holographic keyboard projected onto the tabletop. Perfect colonial layout. In the air above the box is a bar that's slowly filling. Booting. It only takes a few seconds.
The menu appears.
DIRECTORY - Raw Data Files
THE LINES - History and Information
FORCE DISPOSTION - Machine Locations and Controlled Space
STELLAR CARTOGRAPHY - Maps
ENEMY INTELLIGENCE - Information on Machines
RALLY POINT - Sealed. Locked to Officers.
The blue coloring and shading on the hologram in front of them, the words, it all has depth. The color is something brand new to the eyes, as if it had never been imagined. A soft electric blue with shades of black on a projected, translucent background.
Gray pulls in a deep breath. "Frak." He's /never/ seen anything like this before. He's never even really /dreamed/ of a full-blown holographic show like this. The very idea that it's older than the Colonies makes him almost dizzy. "How does this even /work/?" He actually allows himself a few moments to stare in wonder: This will never be so new, so awe-inspiring, to him as it is now. He's going to take a minute to enjoy it for what it is, offering a soft smile to Kelsey.
With those moments past him, he brings out his notes…including an empty book to jot things down in. "Alright…I have absolutely no idea where we are…" And he badly wishes he could keep it that way. "…but I think we're going to need to check Stellar Cartography and Force Disposition while we're here. But it's your call…want to go in order, sir?" Not only is the technology amazing, but after the complete clusterfrak that was the last week or so…what's in here really does make his eyes go wide again.
Kelsey staggers back when she sees that pop up. "Oh my Gods," she breathes, staring at the hologram. She even tilts her head to look at it more from the side. It has depth. The cane slowly lifts and she pokes it, the cane going right through as expected. She quickly retracts it, looking nervous. She does step closer, though. "Wow this is cool." Her good leg slides the chair over for him to sit at the keyboard thing while she looks up. "Yeah. Hit cartography." A swallow. "I haven't been this nervous in a long time. This kind of tech and they've seen the stars. …We've barely left the neighborhood."
"Thanks." Gray sits down in the seat and begins carefully hunting-and-pecking at it, largely seeing what's needed to make a keystroke enter. "T…tell me about it." His voice is one part awe, one part fear, almost like he's afraid the wrong keystroke could cause the hologram to attack him. He follows Kelsey's movements, checking out the depth, breadth…yeah, he can't make heads or tails of it. If there's one bright side about being around Piraeus as long as he has, though, it's that he's gotten used to spooky stuff showing up…so it doesn't totaly debilitate him. He has a distinct feeling that there are plenty of people it would do that to, if they didn't immediately fear it would be possessed by a rogue cylon. "I…you ever wonder what they had on Kobol?" He breathes in and out, balancing being blown away with trying to focus. It isn't easy.
With Gray sitting down in front of the keyboard, as soon as his hands move for it something new appears on the 'screen' and it might be a little unnerving. 'USER: LCPL G. ANDERSON' It knows his name and he hasn't even touched it. Kelsey's eyes go wide and she moves to nudge him to draw attention there just as he hits enter to bring up charts. Or maps. Or something. It does. It forces Kelsey to stumble back and nearly tumble onto the floor - for no reason other than surprise.
The menu explodes into every shade of blue, whites, mixed with reds and rust brown at the edges of the red. Kelsey knows what it is -instantly-. Gray might also considering what he's been looking at for the Galactica. In the air over their heads, fourteen feet across, is the most detailed map of their own galaxy they have ever seen. Ever. Positions are not fudged. This is not a painting. The flow of colors is dictated by clouds of gasses and the blues and whites, if one looks close enough, by impossibly small pinpricks of light. Stars.
Kelsey, nearly having put her back to the wall, stares up at it. "Anderson" she whispers. "Are we high? …Are you seeing this? How is this possible?" The enormous spiral galaxy is beautifully constructed. There's no way this isn't accurate.
Gray's eyes go wide as the system pulls up a login for him. That…shouldn't be possible. "What…" He's stunned for a moment before he looks at Kelsey, somewhat defensive. "I've…I've never touched this before." And then he looks up at the explosion above him, and it's /his/ turn to use sacred language in lieu of the profane. "My gods…" He's suddenly trembling as the scale of it hits him: An accurate /galactic/ map? That's…that's not possible. Some corner of it, sure, but…the scale here just simply doesn't compute. The beauty of it all has him stopped solid and if Kelsey looks, she can see a tear trickling down one side of his face.
Kelsey steps closer, underneath it, looking at it more detail. "Possibly." She doesn't dare reach up to touch it, afraid it will vanish. Its being projected just above her head, though. As she moves, her eyes narrow. "Mostly. Some of this is more blurred. Maybe incomplete, but this is…" her voice trails and both her hands lift to cover her nose and mouth. She's a pilot. She see's space all the time. Never, not in her whole life, would she ever have expected to see this. Her eyes show that she's smiling, but the glassiness there betrays her mind's opinions of beauty. The best maps they have are on laminate sheets. "I just want to stare at it forever," she muses.
"…yeah. So…so do I." Gray looks where Kelsey's looking, focusing in on areas and making a note of the blurriness that she does. All he was expecting was to be able to punch some stuff up on a monochrome projected screen and then scribble down some conclusions. He's seen space, he's seen computer screens and laminate maps…but he's never seen anything like this. "So…if this is the Galaxy…" He blinks away another tear. "I wonder if we can zoom in?"
Kelsey walks around it, moving slowly. In three thousand years, space doesn't change that much. 1/10th the blink of an eye on the grander scale. Stepping towards the side, about one quarter the distance from the core to the edge, she stops. "This is our neighborhood." she lifts a finger to point. "Here." Its a miracle they don't actually feel a breeze. The map rapidly zooms in to perfect detail. The Piraeans had the Cyrannus System mapped. They can't see the planets, but they can see the four stars orbiting each other. There are hundreds of other stars and systems mapped, too.
Kelsey looks thunderstruck. There are no words. She just stars with parted lips, breathing only because her body has that habit down pat. She just stands completely still and stares. One thousand years before humanity supposedly arrived from Kobol, the Piraeans had already been in the area and mapped their stars. Their homes.
Gray almost loses his balance at the zoom as his mind tries to compensate for the percieved motion of the galaxy. He catches himself on his chair and has to sit for a moment. "…how?" Pause. "If they had spaceships…interstellar travel…why didn't they colonize Cyrannus? Or…anywhere else?" he mumbles. Granted, they smacked into some very bad machines on their first outing, so they might not have had a chance…but given the scale of what they have mapped here that's a very real question that's burning in a corner of his mind.
Eyeing how Kelsey managed to work the device, Gray asks "So…we touch it to move it?" Touching the thing that apparently has no mass, no physical form? He looks it over and swallows.
"It may have been ideal for our people, coming from Kobol, but may not have been for them. Especially if they had a smaller fleet or even a single ship." Kelsey is very taken with it, single hand over er lips, breathing her words into it as she stares. "Kobol is on here. Earth is on here. Every legend, if it has any truth, its on here. Somewhere." She looks over at him, unbelievably excited with a heavy twist of terrified. "Corporal.. they came to Piraeus five thousand years ago. They didn't even come to Piraeus from the planet that their people originated on. They probably have colonized other places. Their descendants could be anywhere. Given ten thousand years, technology like this, and space travel, how many habital worlds could you find?" The scale of it is staggering. "How do I- how do I make it big again?" she lifts both hands and sort of looks like she might be trying to push things together. It works. Awkwardly. It'll take practice.
Gray blinks at the second motion. "Ok, fair point." He's also taken with this…even if there's a distinct feeling of incoherence in what he's saying…and thinking. "Ok, ok, fair point. Uh, mind if I try that…zooming as well?" he asks before picking another, vaguely near-to-Cyrannus system to zoom in towards. "Right. Their descendants. Earth. Kobol. Stuff…places…people we don't know about. Answers…and we don't even /know/ the right questions to ask." He then staggers slightly and lets out a sob. "Five years ago…" he mumbles again. "If we'd had this before the war…" Places to run. Plural, not singular. Possible allies out there in the beautiful, multi-coloured mists of the galaxy before them. It takes him another moment to compose himself on the pain of /that/ revelation.
Kelsey steps back as Gray moves to try the play with the map. As he stands, the map lifts to be just above his head. She frowns, realizing she will have to reach higher to touch things. Being short is not fun sometimes. But there's so much running through her head.. "We don't even know which questions to ask to get us to the questions we should be asking. I feel like a scared little girl standing on the shoulders of a God." Especially how they came about getting this. When he sobs, she hobbles over and puts her arms around him to hug tight as she can bear. There's a kiss to his cheek, too, then pulling back to look up, face sadder than she can remember it being. If only.
Gray nods as Kelsey reaches over to comfort him, returning her embrace as well as he can with a hand in a cast. Her kiss on his cheek is gently returned, and then he looks up at the galaxy…feeling horridly insignificant beneath it slowly turning above them. "I feel it, too. We're lost…" He breathes in and out, trying to comprehend the scale of this as it keeps striking him from different angles. His face is deep in a mixture of sadness and thought. His good hand reaches out to squeeze Kelsey's.
Kelsey thinks about the idea of being lost as she stares at that. Sixty officers. Its humbling. "So much sacrifice. We live, we die. We laugh, cry. This will continue turning. I wish someone could have shown this to the wing. Its our future. Its out there. We'll survive the war. The stars are our home. Our ocean. Our ancestors may not have even been from Kobol originally." then something hits her and she looks over to Gray, then to the box and keyboard. She moves away with a squeeze of his hand, and uses hers to bring up the menu in the middle of the galaxy. 'USER: LT K. WESCOTT' Weird. The bottom of the menu flashes.
RALLY POINT - Target location for surviving human forces.
Kelsey doesn't hesitate. She pushes the arrow keys down to it and quickly slaps enter. She's skipping force dispositions. Right now this has consumed her.
"Yeah…" Gray agrees. "It…would've made this easier to handle. Somehow." He hopes. As Kelsey jumps into action, Gray gives her a bit of space. "You type, tell me if you need me to move something." Pause. "I've got stuff to put in as well, when you're done." The deep, deep moment having passed, Gray wipes away the remnants of his tears and swallows. It's time to go to work.
Kelsey hits enter and suddenly her hair flips as she swivels her head to look for something. She doesn't have to go far. At least its the same quadrant of the galaxy. Rising from the chair, she low-points so as not to confuse the system. "Look." At the edge of a spiral, at one of the most distant points from the core of the galaxy, there it is. A single star has a transparent red sphere surrounding it, blinking in and out. Even being in the same quadrant, its far.
"Why the hell is it so far out? There has to be a hundred planets closer. Maybe even a thousand." Kelsey moves over towards it and then looks back towards Cyrannus. Then back. "I've lost all relevence of scale. I cannot-" hands raise a little, "cannot brain this scale. We're talking parsecs at this point. That could be five hundred. That could be ten kiloparsecs." She looks back to him. "Make this thing brain for me. How far is the Rally Point?"
Gray frowns as the rally point appears and pauses. "Stupid question, does this thing have a 'help' menu or manual file?" He shakes his head. "Yeah, I'm thinking not." Pause. "We don't need it to think for us…how big is this room and how far across is the galaxy? Total, I mean? If we put it back up to the full display size and measure from…well, let's use Cyrannus…" He's /carefully/ trying not to ask where Piraeus is. "…then we could compare that. It's just fractions."
Kelsey looks over at him and blinks. That's smart. "Sorry. My cheerleader brain just completely took over and refused to math." Its like an old lizard brain. Her hands lift and she tries to compact stuff. Once it goes back to the 'small' fourteen-foot diameter hologram, she looks across the room, then to Cyrannus. Then to the RP. Back again a few times. Her hand lifts, resting over her mouth. Other arm crossed beneath her chest, she just stares at it. "Our galaxy is fifteen kiloparsecs across. Roughly. Like, give or take a couple, I think." Eyes dart back and forth. "We're looking at, Gods." She sighs. "That's gotta be about five to six kiloparsecs." Kelsey flicks her eyes back to Gray. "Maybe sixteen thousand light years." Those blue eyes look nervous. Very nervous. Its a staggering number for the pilot.
Gray nods as they check the map back and forth. The numbers sort of mis-connect in his mind. "Sir, I hate to ask, but…what's maximum jump distance for the Orion?" He's getting a feeling that the answer is going to be /painfully/ far below that. After a moment, he pops his other questions. "So…we've got that. Uh, let's see if we can play around with what we've got on the Twin Rocks and Galactica's little side-trip in here next to those enemy force dispositons." He has a theory and he doesn't like it. "Also…I want to be careful, but if I could feed in all of those wacky charts Galactica had, I'd be curious if anything pops. I mean, the stuff all looked unfamiliar and off /our/ charts, but that doesn't mean this set won't have some possible matches."
Kelsey looks at Gray. This is the point she doesn't want to think about. "Full up, we could probably jump the ship and fleet there in maybe six months? it would be a one way trip. I mean, we could maybe do it. Nobody has ever jump-tested huge distances before, though for a good reason." She just stares at him. "You jump and don't know what is there when you land, you jump into a black hole or star you'll never know it. You're just dead." Her stomach turns. "But if you left the galaxy vertically, and jumped to a section of space you knew to be outside the galaxy… theoretically…" That's an uncomfortable look. Like she ate a lot of expired food. "Nobody knows what the limit of a jump drive is." She looks back to the distance between the two locations. "Yeah, load up the force dispositions. We'll see if we can track where Galactica went."
Gray actually looks a bit surprised at the out-of-the-galaxy thinking there. It's not warm-and-fuzzy but he didn't come in here expecting warm-and-fuzzy, either "Not to mention that we've got passable maps. Old, but possibly useful." With that, he goes back to the menu to pull up Force Dispositions. As that starts loading, he pulls his bag over and pulls out some of his notes to get Galactica's last known jump location.
Kelsey shakes her head. "These are more than passable. these are amazing. The route from Cyrannus to the Rally Point looks like its been well-mapped. The question is how. I mean.. this would take tens of thousands of years. Pilot speaking, here, not an astrophycists though." The hand rubs at her face. "Or a LOT of pilots not an impossible amount of time." Finger taps on her lips. When the force dispositions are called up, she's about to say something. Her hand falls from her face and she drops the cane. "Oh my Gods, no," she breathes.
The map of the galaxy continues to rotate. As it does, the three dimensional structure begins to fill in with an angry red set of hashing. The entire core is completely taken over along with a large percentage of the galaxy's other side. Thirty percent or more of the other side. Mostly the sections that are blurry are either under control of the machines, or inaccessible because of them. Cyrannus is probably a full kiloparsec from the closest tendril of red exploration.
"Probably a ton of pilots. In the bunker, they said that they'd gone out exploring…" And then so much of the map turns an angry red, like someone just spilled a can of paint in the middle of the air.
Gray suddenly feels ill. All of this hope, all of this possibility… "We're frakked." That's his first reaction, and it comes out despite some attempt to censor himself. He swallows /hard/ and steps back to avoid punching anything valuable or invaluable. "Frak." Giving himself a moment to regain composure, he looks back up at the chart. "Ok…first point I'd like to try and get up there: Galactica's last jump location." He pulls it out from his pile-'o-notes and reads off the coordinates from that briefing.
Kelsey stares at the red and the whole core being red. Its.. troubling. She lifts a hand, though. "No, no, it could be worse." The map rotates as the whole of it begins to settle in. "That's what, about one sixth of the galaxy. This also assumes a lot - like that they didn't run into a predator race of aliens or something." She's doing her best to keep calm. "It also does not mean that the machines will come anywhere near the colonies in the next ten thousand years. We have no reason to think we are fucked - just that we aren't fighting a frakking galactic war. Maybe just a local one. We can win a local one. Or if we have enough Lines, then look at something bigger." She swallows hard. "I do not want to hear you talking about the end of the worlds, though. We are not fighting the Piraean's war." Yet. Frak all. Not yet.
When he plugs in Galactica's last confirmed jump location, its moving around the tendril of red, but isn't far from it. Its close enough that it looks like they could have kept heading that direction away from Cyrannus then they would have been in deep shit.
Gray thinks, trying to find some reassurance in there as well. "And it's…I've heard theories that we couldn't even hope to survive in the core. Too many…stars going boom." Which suggests that their odds of clearing out the Core, even given a few decades of full-on war, would be pretty lousy. So much for that. "Yeah, I know. I'll want to check those files when we're done with this."
When Galactica's last location pops up on there, he gestures at the chart. "Knew it! Frakking knew it!" Ok, he might not have /known/ it, but…well, /something/ about that situation had smelled. And when comparing notes on the Bunker and the Galactica evidence, so much had rhymed…/so/ much… He shakes his head. They wouldn't have even needed to jump further: The map is three thousand years old, so the idea that the machines had overrun a few more bits of the galaxy is painfully believable. "Alright, /that/ report is going to be fun to write…" he mutters. "I just wish those dipshits had told us where they thought Earth was so we could cross-reference that."
"Ok…next question, where are the Twin Rocks?" Gray asks. "And did Rance ever spit out anything more useful about where Cardboard Rock might be? He said he had a rumor…but then he declined to elaborate when I pressed him."
"Yeah. The core of the galaxy is a no-fly zone for the wing. The other problem is gravity at the core. Its a lot stronger. There's time dilation. It moves much slower in there. What would feel like a couple days heading in there and hitting a target might be weeks. Or months. Possibly even years." The thought has her suddenly look back at the position for the Rally Point. Furthest from the core. There's something to it, but damned if she can figure that out. Note to self: Let Tactical or the CAG know. Spidey Senses Tingling. "Keep in mind that the last known coordinates of Galactica are known. It does not mean that it was as far as they got. Like you said, other charts and scribbles may reveal something." But then she looks back at him and blinks. "Who the frak is Rance? And, no I have no idea where the Twin Rocks are. Pilots are explicitly not allowed to work with much navigation in order to protect Piraeus' location."
"I've got coordinates." Gray pulls out his notebook from that mission; it's got the coordinates Rance gave him. "Rance is a skinjob I got to talk with while on the ground on Leonis. He gave me a lot of intel; I haven't been able to sit for a full debrief yet. Something about a battle got in the way." And with that he punches in the coordinates, based off of navigation from the Twelve Colonies and not Piraeus as far as he knows. "And I know. Remember, I'm on the Galactia Working Group as well…" He sighs. "I'd want to try and cross-reference those charts for anything that matches. I mean, I think someone was off their rocker with those charts, but if someone had told me there was a galaxy-spanning civilization out there three months ago I'd have said /they/ were off their rocker." Beat. "And if they went deep into the red? With a civilization that's had at least five thousand years to sit around playing Triad and overran half of the galaxy in the meantime? Who knows what they'd find."
Kelsey looks at everything above, nodding slowly. "Got it." Skinjob. Friendly. She's dealt with enough of that to take it at face value. She continues looking at whats overhead and the distances. "If they went into the deep red… Gods." Kelsey sighs and wraps her arms around herself. "They didn't get half, though. Not even an eighth." She looks around at the map, stepping to the side. "They've had the time, but the Colonies are on the safe side. For now." She pauses, but it extends. "Unless the Cylons make contact."
Gray nods. "There's still the third world…but if we can get a description of /anything/ rumored about that, we…someone…can start feeding information in here to narrow down the list of possible candidates." Not that they're likely to be able to /do/ anything with it anytime soon, but… "If we can cross-reference that with any rumors or evidence from friendly skinjobs, captured data, and so on there might be something actionable in there." But for now they're at least /not/ in deep trouble as far as he can tell. Well, not /that/ deep of trouble. "Alright, do we have anything else we can do with the map?" They've run down the Galactica data, checked the Rally Point, and covered what he has on the Cylon worlds. "If not…Enemy Intelligence or The Lines next? I'm thinking Enemy Intelligence." The Lines might be a brighter note to end on. Comparatively, at least. He's also note even /thinking/ about touching the raw data unless and until everything else can be looked over. /That/ part of this is /definitely/ above his pay grade.
Kelsey shakes her head. "That's high end classified, Lance. Leave it for now. No offense, but you don't want to know the location of their homeworld. If you knew? You'd be pulled from combat. Leave it for Tactical. That's a.." pause "light order." Kelsey takes a few more steps around, still hugging herself tightly. There's a lot of anxiety there. The woman moves to stand beside Gray and hols her place there, still looking up. "Pull it up. Enemy Intel. Let's see what they got."
Gray nods. On the one hand there's a reason he re-phrased that. On the other hand, even now he's not sure he's not a candidate for being pulled from combat. "Alright, enemy intel it is…" he says, carefully moving his one good hand to hunt-and-peck at the keyboard to swap…files? File sets? Displays? Before reaching out to Kelsey with that hand to offer it to her. "Here we go…"
Kelsey reaches for it, but her hand drops at what appears. She ends up stepping closer and taking his hand as the hologram takes shape above them. She squeezes hard when the first…
The model of Centurion is superimposed on the far left. A human form is shown there beside, but if half the size. They're fighting 11' machines. They look similar but lack the same helmet or guns for arms. Instead they hold a rifle, unknown, in their hand. They have eyes an skulls like any other. The red eyes stares out blankly.
Next to the Cenutrion finds a far more advances Raider. A similar shape but with twin guns supplemented but missile racks under the wings.
Next to that are the transports, but these look almost identical to the Cylon Raiders.
Last, to the right of the hologram over their heads, they see something neither have seen before. It looks like a straight combination of battlestar and basestar. Flight pods cover each arm and provide a huge number, potentially doubling capacity. Its incredibly efficient. The tri-shape remains intact but something looks wrong about it…
Each item gets Gray to stare in a mixture of awe and fear: Each type of opponent is clearly "second generation" in some fashion or another: Bigger, sleeker, more efficient. The carrier unit looks…well, it looks like the machine engineers decided to blend human and machine technology in some ways. It's not a perfect fit for being Cylon, but it's close enough to presume.
"Well, the Centurion looks like what the Piraean Special Forces guys described as their enemies. The second-gen ones they ran into late in their war." Deep breath. "The others…" Gray stops short of offering an opinion and just shakes his head for a second. "Let me try and zoom in on the rifle. See if I can get any additional information on it." Once he's done that he'll check the other parts.
Kelsey looks over all the information with wide eyes. They're huge. "Raiders. Transports. Major fleet vessels. Gods, that basestar must be massive." There's her own awe and trepidation there. The pilot in her is nervous but the rest is quite enthralled with the deluge of information.
When he reaches up to tap on the rifle, it zooms in and separates the rifle, going into an exploded engineering schematic. Kelsey wouldn't know what to make of it, but Gray can pick it out. It looks like a heavy bore rifle. It fires a different round than the Colonials HMGs, but just a fraction smaller. The rate of fire is on par with the best LMGs ever produced in experimentation. 950+ rpm. The bolt design is ingenius, too, giving every bit of recoil to be absorbed into the gunner. On a human it would be uncontrollable, but for a Centurion with hydraulic arms, its perfect. No aiming devices needed. No bipod. Its simply a light machinegun built for abuse.
Gray, frankly, is drooling just a bit. Ok, not literally, but the details on the chart are enough to make any Marine's mouth water. Yes, it's /unusable/ by a human, but…who cares! It's really an amazing gun. "I wish I was /capable/ of playing with that…" He turns to Kelsey, feeling a bit like a kid in a candy shop. "There anything you want to take a look at while we're here?" he offers as he zooms out from the gun and back to the other information.
Kelsey looks over to him with a low smirk. "Boys and their guns. Though I suppose I can't say much. I do enjoy my little Brrt Machine." The 20mm minigun in the Predator's nose is always a welcome sound on the battlefield. She crosses her arms under her chest and looks back, shaking her head. "No, I'm good for now, Lance. What else."
Gray smiles back to Kelsey. "I'm curious about the advanced basestar…I'm wondering if there's anything there to hint at the damage Galactica suffered…" which he gestures to in order to pull it up, out of one part macabre curiousity and one part admiration. "After that, onto the Lines." Which he's looking forward to.
Once they've finished with this section, Gray moves over to pull up the last major section: The Lines. One of the most enigmatic areas of the whole war, really. "Ok, here we go…" Tap.
Moving on to the Lines, Kelsey takes a step back as their shoulders and heads all appear in front of them at life size. They all have blank expressions. Though the Ones seem to be younger than anyone has really run into. The One is even wearing a pilot's atmospheric flightsuit by the looks of it. Most of them are dressed in military garb, too.
The readout begins scrolling. 'After the Genoa Sea Wars humanity developed The Lines in order to protect humanity from the outward threats that some in the unified government insisted were out there. Design led by Dr. Kahlid al Rafeek, the Twelve Lines were carefully constructed over the course of twenty-four orbits. When they were completed in construction, the call went out for humanity to donate their memories and cognitive abilities for scanning into a large database. Candidates were screened thoroughly and millions rejected. Hundreds of thousands were taken in, memories and experiences each incorporated into the Line that best fit the psychological profile for the goals intended. When it became clear that the Twelve would be capable of far more, they were given freedom of choice. Convinced that humanity must never repeat the mistakes of the past, The Lines were incorporated into society. Despite a century of suspicion, they gained their humanity and rights. They also began the first interstellar travel teams, sent to the stars for the first time since humanity had landed on Ys'ral. Commanded by humanity's own military, they were sent to the stars to find habitable worlds and strike out for observation posts to warn of impending threats. The Lines became the frontline guardians of humanity and served with pride alongside humans of all stripes. It was considered a high honor to be chosen for these patrols and missions and not all Line members were of the right mindset. Having become individuals apart from their own lines, they blended into society with their own strengths and weaknesses.
When they died, their consciousnesses were downloaded into a repository of memories that others could access and learn from. This permanent death was celebrated on both sides, services never having been forgotten. Work was eventually begun to emplace human forms into the Lines as individuals, with the potential to extend human life. This work was left incomplete as of the invasion.
End Overview'
Gray stands back slightly, taking the text in. It's…well, it's not more than he's run into before in some sense, but it /is/ fascinating. "For now…" Gray taps the image of The One. "…let's see what we've got on him. Then I've got one more thing I want to check." Technically the other item is two items, but they're related.
The One pops up closer and it goes to a full body view of him. The guy rotates once and comes back in view to face the two. The text scrolls in the air to the view's right of the One.
Wisdom
Designed first to incorporate the best and most brilliant strategic and analytical thought processes for leadership. Ones were designed to lead and speak-for the Lines when it came to public representation. They are considered the most diplomatic end of the lines, capable of highly intelligent problem solving abilities and the command ability to put their ideas into action. Once the Ones were incorporated into the militaries and services those were known to rise ranks quickly and retain a very calm exterior in action. One in three starfaring missions was commanded by a One.
To a person, they are solitary figures who have rarely married and seen service to be of the highest compliment to their abilities. Those who chose to have families often raised children who would go on to have successful careers that would follow in the One's normal paths. There is a One currently serving as the President's Minister of Defense.
End Overview
Gray stands back, reviewing the file on One. As seems to be normal, he's got almost more questions than answers out of this. "I'll…we'll need to make sure someone goes over the rest of the files in depth. And…wasn't our only run-in with one of these guys a raving lunatic? Or was that just a rumor?" He jots down a note to himself in his notebook, however…one he doesn't want to forget: 'Resurrection versus consciousness repository'. "Alright, now for that thing I want to check…" He pecks away at the keyboard for a moment, working to pull up a search/find function. Then, he enters two words in turn to see if /anything/ comes up under them: First, 'Kobol'. Second, 'Earth'.
Kelsey reads it, standing back in the same place. She just stares at the One's face. "That's one way to put it. He shot up the Mess. Killed a lot of Air Wing members. I was barely an Ensign. I'd just transferred up from Deck." A sore subject. "He was trying to kill Ceres, the Nine we had."
The search yields only one result.
Captain Harris Kobol
Legend: One of three ships Captains sent from humanity's last homeworld, Erfrik. He was given the largest colony vessel with orders to settle a new world or several if possible. No further information.
"Sorry. I'm…sorry." He didn't mean to bring up that sore subject.
Gray swallows hard at the sight of that file. His first thought is to jump for joy at having the Colonial scrolls backed up (even if they're incomplete), but then a coin drops in his mind and it Does. Not. Compute. His face goes…just a little blank as he tries to sort through this. "So the planet was named after him? Or did something get mangled to frak in the scrolls?"
Still, at a bare minimum, it's a /glaring/ hole in their historical knowledge…and their timeline. The gears keep turning. "That would've been…five thousand years ago?" It's long enough to wedge a Colonial-grade civilization rising and falling in the interim. Or they could be /horridly/ wrong…and it raises a VERY unpleasant question about whether there's a chain of evidence linking Cyrannus back to Erfrik. You can hear him breathing deeply, trying to process this calmly…and then sort-of distract himself for the moment with another puzzle.
"Erfrik. Never heard of it." Beat. "Let's…search Erfrik on the map." He punches that up, also looking for further information. Boy, does he have a bad feeling about /this/ one. "Also gotta wonder where the third ship went." That'll be a puzzle for another day, probably, but it does raise its own suite of hopes and fears.
Kelsey stares at the file. That small little file. Her eyes go wide and she suddenly looks uncomfortable in her own skin. Its as if any little touch to her would send her crumbling down. There's a slight trembling to her. "I should have stopped looking at this a long time ago. A long time ago. I- No. Lance, please stop. Stop." She shuts her eyes and turns away.
But its already coming up. The whole Galaxy. The position is shown a good ways off, nearer to the core (though not by much, just further around by a quarter) and a decent distance away. Its well within the red Occupied Zone. There's no hope of getting there. Judging the distances Kelsey gave, it would be near impossible to fight their way in there.
Gray swallows. "Alright…" He goes through and logs out quickly, just jotting another note about this in his (oh-so-lovely off-hand) handwriting…and then immediately turns to Kelsey. "Right." He looks down at his notes, back up at where the display was, and then to her. "I…I'm sorry, Lieutenant." He extends his good hand to her, now feeling sheepish about how aggressively he'd gone tearing after the information. «I didn't mean to break you…» "I had to look." He pauses for a moment, pondering what he needs more: An official debrief or a drink. He kicks that thought aside after a moment, though, and steps over to offer a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Kelsey waits until its gone and shut down before she does anything. She see's the hand from the corner of her eye and takes it. There's a quick squeeze before it drops. "Yeah, I know. No apology needed. I should have schooled myself out of this. I, ah…" She takes a long sigh. "I'm in the pool, now. I can't be taken alive." Kelsey turns a bit to look back at him. "And neither can you. Right here, right now, that needs to be an unbreakable law." This is a lot to process, but the officer seems to have taken her on autopilot. "I'll inform my squadron commander and your CO. You will kill yourself or be killed before you are taken as prisoner. There are no exceptions to this, Lance Corporal. I hope you understand the gravity of your- our curiosity. We'll be lucky if we aren't both pulled off the line." She looks down, then back up to him. "Report to Major Gray in Tactical. Right frakking now. I'll issue orders to secure this …thing. Tell Major Gray that I'm securing it until he develops a list of individuals who have access. You do not talk about anything you have seen here without his permission." She finally seems to stop shaking. "Is that clear, Lance Corporal?"
Gray takes a deep breath. "I…yes, sir." He looks Kelsey in the eye and nods. He was already planning to 'self-classify' considering what he'd come across, pending any orders to the contrary. "That is understood." Beat. "For the record? I'd already asked my squad for that /before/ I came in here. Having that as a direct order should make it easier if it comes to that, though." The risk of being pulled off the line was something he'd pondered throughout the evening. He'll take it if it comes, though, with two regrets: First, not being there for his squad; and second, not being able to chase anymore of this down in the field. He pauses for a moment, however, before heading for the door. "Lieutenant…I…obviously can't give you orders. But if…if you need anything? Let me know. If nothing else, we're both frakked in the same way on this."
Kelsey nods slowly, a little more personable. "I appreciate it. Thanks." No rank. "I'm just in the same boat as the ECO's now. Ejection is no longer a real option." She ghosts a humorless smile and nods before moving off. Gods, how to write these memos…
Gray offers an uneasy nod. "Yeah, me too. Alright, I'm off to see Major Gray." He says this with a knot forming in his stomach: The paperwork for both of them is going to be a complete and total nightmare. Still, once his notebooks are gathered back up, he offers a salute before departing.