Operation Exodus

1:11 Plans in Motion

Olympia Station Meeting Room

Five days after Operation Firestorm

There were dozens and dozens of officers sitting and waiting for the important meeting to start in the Olympia station meeting room. The commanding and executive officers from all the military ships were participating in this meeting. The only civilian present was Jason Campus from the Quorum of Twelve.

Admiral Stryker entered the room followed by Admirals Thorn and Sounders. After they sat in their places, Admiral Stryker started speaking, "ladies and gentlemen, as you all know by now, the Cylons destroyed Caprica: whether it was by mistake, or on purpose we don't know. They are aware of our military strength in ships, but not of our plans. Our losses during the evacuation of our people from Aerelon and Caprica were thankfully minimal with the loss of one Gunstar. We saved over a million people, including a large amount of colonial fleet personnel, and we recovered several military assets; including two battlestars, various support ships, and the defense grids from Caprica and Aerelon."

Admiral Stryker stood and started walking around, "now, the question is what do we do now? What is the next course of action? The answer to that question is this; we will proceed as planned to Avalon. We must move our main civilian fleet out of here to safety. After many hours of discussion and planning; Admiral Thorn, Admiral Sounders, and I came up with this. Twelve of our Battlestars and both of our Warstars will stay behind to do one last attack in colonial space on the Cylons. We will attack the Cylon forces at Picon, which will strike into the heart of the remaining Cylon forces in colonial space. If we succeed; we will destroy their secondary resurrection hub and their command basestar, hopefully this will cripple the Cylon forces in the colonies for some time to come and maybe even keep them from sending a large force to try and follow us to Avalon. The rest of our military units will proceed together with the civilians, shipyards, and our other assets to Avalon.

"Twelve of our Main line Battlestars and our only two Warstars? Are you mad Admiral?" Delegate Campus asked angrily sputtering in shock at what he was hearing.

"Yes, Delegate Campus, I am. I also forgot to mention that we will take all three of the Cradle mobile docks, one of the Hephaestus docks, the re-captured troop transports, and the Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Division as well," Admiral Stryker said.

The face of Delegate Campus lost all of its color after hearing that. It was quite obvious that Delegate Campus was furious.

"The quorum will not allow this Admiral!" Delegate Campus said loudly.

"Delegate Campus, I do not have time to argue with you or the other delegates. You are here only because I allow it, and you will not interfere with a military decision," Admiral Stryker said calmly and unblinkingly.

"No, but if military decisions put the civilians into danger, then yes!" Delegate Campus said.

"I assure you delegate, you have more than enough military ships to be protected; hundreds and hundreds of vipers and raptors. There's Unity and Eternity, the strongest and largest units ever built by the Colonial Navy which are fully armed, and besides Admiral Sounders will lead all of you back to Avalon safely. Once we are done with the attack on the Cylons, we will rejoin the civilian fleet," Admiral Stryker said.

"And what if the Cylons attack the main fleet, and the military assets assigned to protect the fleet are not enough?" Delegate Campus asked.

"They will be enough. This mission is very dangerous; we saw that they had over fifty baseships in one fleet, plus two or three command versions and that big one, but we planned this operation very well Delegate Campus. Add that to the fact that our attack will draw all available Cylons forces to us and away from you," Admiral Stryker said, and then turned to address all those in the room.