Battlestar!

Chapter 1: The Hunted

"Come on Zero!" Kaitlyn says impatiently, "we are gonna be late for drills!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm coming! Let me get my suit on!" I yell back at Katelyn. SHe is soooo impatient sometimes! But I can understand we have 3 minutes till Krell drills start. Wait what?! THREE MINUTES! I start freaking out. Finally I get on my white and black officer suit and charge down the hall to the airlock/launch bay of the Battlestar Dawn.

"You're almost late again Zero!!" Fang hisses at me.

"Yes yes yes I know!" I say back.

"If you weren't one of our best pilots I think the commander would have killed you by now!" Luna says.

"She might even though i'm good if I keep this up!" I Gulp as the Viper engineer looks at me. She sizes me up like she does every time i'm late.

"How is the eye treating you, Zero?" is all she says to me.

"It's fine, it's -uhhh- working perfectly today!" I say, kinda awkwardly.

"Good, good, alright teams get into your Viper Units!" She yells at us, "Almost all of them have been fixed up since the last fight with the Krell." I run towards the launching bay for the viper squadrons. Vipers are 22 feet tall and about 5 feet, the torso is, across. They have heads but the cockpit is in the torso. The heads just have 2 cameras and wiring. They are all equipped with heavy mech rifles unless you're an officer, then you get the missile pods and the Thermal shields and the Katana. Vipers are specifically designed to take out Krell units. The Vipers neural link to their pilots and pilots transfer all their movement to the viper.

It makes it hard to get out of a bad situation but you can eject from the Viper. It will explode and sever the neural link to the pilot. There are 3 Viper Cassis; Stryder, Atlas, and Tank. The stryder is a lightweight low armour, high movement Viper. The Tank is the Heavy slow moving High armour, and the atlas is the medium unit. I jump into my black and neon green stryder named K-725 or Kat as I like to call it. Everyone in Team Karma uses Stryders, almost no one doesn't use them. The speed makes up for the low armour on almost every level, its great for dodging too.

"Okay Kat you ready for some drills?" I say

"Yes I do believe I have adequate repairs, and enough fuel to function properly in a test scenario." Kat says matter of factly. The viper deck is a long hallway on the inside hull of the battlestar. There's a catwalk and then there are specific hangers for each viper. The catwalk is level with the viper cockpit making it easy to enter it. Once the pilot enters the viper it's loaded into the launch tube. The viper will turn around the doors to the hanger will close and it will lay horizontal in the tube. Then the launch commander (or Viper tech) will give the OKAY for launch and the Tube's attendant will will launch the viper. It's usually done in about 10 seconds.

"As proper as always, okay!" I pick of the radio and turn it on, "Squad leader Zero Ready for launch!"

"This is Viper tech, Riggs: Zero you are a GO for launch!" The radio turns off.

"Launching!" The familiar rush happens as i'm ejected into space in my viper. My setting.

"Kaitlyn, Fang, Luna, you launched?" I say into the squad radio, "I'm out and ready for combat!" Even though this is a test scenario. . .

"This is Kaitlyn, I read you 5 by 5!"

"This is Fang, I can still hear you! Which is surprising. . ."

"This is Luna I read you loud and clear,"

The new pilots, or Nuggets, launch after us. Because we are all officer pilots, we need to supervise the nuggets while they are training. There are 5 ranks of Pilot, Nugget (Newbie), Squire, Knight, Officer, and then Ace. Requirements for getting up to the next rank depend on your skill set.