Operation Exodus

1:9 Firestorm Part I

Admiral's log

It's been five days since we found the Battlestar Trinity near Destarious depot. They lost almost half of their crew, and she is badly damaged from their fight with the Cylons. From Commander Gerard's logs, I can see that they have fixed a great deal of the ship since the end of the Cylon attack two months before. They managed to destroy two baseships during their first and only contact with Cylons.

The Quorum is still trying to get the upper hand in military decisions. They did not like that we risked two of our Battlestars to save one badly damaged one. They are like many civilian politicians: short sighted. They also protested when I sent the Battlestar Caprica two days ago in search for that Gunstar group and not to mention their reaction to our upcoming mission to save the survivors in the colonies.

Operation Firestorm is essential for us to save as many civilians and military personnel in the POW camps as we can before we have to leave the colonies. We will start by hitting Aerelon and Caprica. Aerelon because of those two Battlestars and support ships that are sitting in orbit of Aerelon's moon, and the large amount of military personnel on Aerelon itself; our latest Intel from the stealth raptors indicated that there are a little less than 200,000 survivors. It would seem that the Cylons are extremely efficient in the extermination of all human survivors on Aerelon. Better word came from Caprica with over 1.25 million survivors and counting so far, plus half a marine division under the direct command of General O'Rilley. General O'Rilley has started a new campaign against the Cylons and seems to be making their stay on Caprica a not so pleasant one. He and his marines have taken a few military bases, including one of the main bases in the Tyr area; allowing him to arm and supply a much larger group of survivors.

We have succeeded in finding a really large amount of ships all around the Cyrannus system. It was strange that the Cylons didn't destroy them all, but it does not mean they won't start destroying whatever remains after they find out what we have done when this operation is over. So far, there have been only minor skirmishes with Cylon raiders on some of the sites.

We have found eighty large civilian transports, each capable of housing over 5,000 people, along with fifty additional ships from ranging from old liners, mining ships, and a few others. We made a lucky find with six Colossus class heavy military transports. Those monsters will really come in handy, since each of them can carry 10,000 passengers and an added plus as they are armed and I'll admit that it's mostly with point defense weapons, but they are capable of landing on a planet which is a bonus at this point. There were eight Argo ships, four smaller and four larger, and they will be a great addition to the food production of the fleet. There were two older Cloud type units; Cloud 1 and 2, which were the first two from the Cloud class of luxury liners.

Civilian ships were not the only ships that we found and rescued to join the new fleet. Twelve Tiger II Destroyers were also found. Those ships are as strong as a Columbia II battlestar; the only drawback is they don't carry fighters, so they will need fighter support. Six of these are in relatively perfect shape, but the other six need some work. I plan to assign them as part of the secondary fleet once they are repaired to guard the civilian fleet once we depart.

A third Hephaestus class mobile dock (constructstar) Starbridge has been located at the Horus Manufacturing Company shipyards; as with her sisters the Hephaestus and Forge already in service, she is an excellent addition. Taking that these ships, usually called Constructstars, are capable of holding Two Mercury class Battlestars or between four to six Gunstars, it will be more than a welcome addition. Fortune favored us as she was not alone. We also found three additional Cradle class mobile docks hiding at Horus as well. They are smaller and are only capable of sustaining only one battlestar at a time, but they are capable of holding anything from a Gunstar to the Nova class Command Battlestar, and it will also boost our repair and production capabilities at a time that we need them the most. We have more than enough civilian volunteers from the civilian ships to help in manning these ships, and they are being transferred to those new dock ships as I write this log.