Marko was in Bay 3 pulling a panel when the deck pitched under him and something deep in the ship’s spine groaned.
Action stations one jump into the cycle, the ship’s guts barely settled from the last one.
Tyrol’s voice came over the deck net, already barking.
“All hands, damage control posture.
Dabrowski, get to CIC access I need eyes on frame stress.” Marko moved.
The Board woke as he hit the ladder, amber phosphor spilling across his vision, and this time it was different.
Not a Read.
A contact plot.
Narrow.
Skeletal.
A handful of returns scattered across black, range rings pulsing outward from Galactica’s position at the center.
Most of them cold and clean the civilian fleet, holding formation.
Two hot and close, bearing down.
Raiders.
THREAT PLOT 2 CONTACTS.
ASSESSMENT CYCLING.
RANGE CEILING 4,200.
BEARING ACTIVE.
The ship shuddered.
Somewhere forward, a Viper launched.
Marko reached the access corridor outside CIC and locked his tablet to the damage-assessment feed.
Tyrol would be watching the same screen one deck down, but he’d asked for Marko’s eyes, and Marko knew why.
The Read layered over the damage schematic like a second skin, showing him not just what the sensors said but what the ship felt where the stress was building, where the next failure would land.
The first Raider pass raked the starboard flight pod.
Minor.
Armor held.
On the plot, one of the hot contacts flickered.
Threat assessment cycling.
The Board grinding against something it couldn’t classify.
It resolved clean.
A Raider.
Bearing 210, closing fast.
The second contact sat three thousand meters behind it, matching course, and when Marko’s attention fixed on it the plot stuttered.
Data cycling.
Resolving.
Cycling again.
CONTACT 2 SIGNATURE BELOW THRESHOLD 0.4.
DATA WILL NOT RESOLVE.
Recognition went through Marko like a bad weld giving under load.
He’d seen that line before.
The junction box that read wrong until he looked away.
The shape of wrongness that sat where a clean answer should be.
The Blind Spot.
“Dabrowski.” Tyrol’s voice, clipped and urgent.
“I’m seeing stress on frame 39.
You got that?” Marko pulled his eyes off the plot and fixed them on the tablet.
The Read surfaced, overlaying the schematic frame 39 buckling under repeated impact vibration, a crack propagating from a weld that had been marginal since before the Fall.
“Confirmed,” Marko said into his headset.
“Frame 39, port-side junction.
It’ll hold two more passes.
Third one cooks it.” “How sure?” “Sure.” A beat of silence.
Then: “Acknowledged.
CIC, this is Tyrol recommend we don’t give them a third pass on the port quarter.” Adama’s voice, distant and composed over the command net.
“Understood, Chief.
Apollo, Starbuck, press them off our port side.” “Copy that.” Apollo, controlled.
“On it.” Starbuck, not controlled at all.
“Somebody want to tell me where the frakkers are going next, or do I just shoot and pray?” Marko’s eyes flicked back to the plot without thinking.
The clean Raider had broken off, arcing wide.
The wrong one the contact that wouldn’t resolve held its line, bearing down on the port quarter like it knew exactly where the weak frame was.
It knew.
His pulse kicked.
The Board was showing him a threat he couldn’t act on.
He could see it.
He could feel the wrongness sitting three thousand meters out, inbound, humming against his teeth like a cracked harmonic, and if he opened his mouth and said Raider at 220, close and committed, Starbuck would roll onto it and maybe get a kill.
But if the contact wasn’t a Raider If it was the Blind Spot again, a corrupted return on something his gift couldn’t parse If it was one of their own, reading wrong because the Board’s sight fractured around Cylons and he didn’t know the rules yet Marko said nothing.
The wrong contact closed to two thousand meters.
Fifteen hundred.
Starbuck’s Viper screamed past the starboard pod, guns firing, and the clean Raider died in a brief hot flare.
The wrong return kept coming.
“Dabrowski, I need predictions, not history.” Tyrol, tight and sharp.
“Where’s the next hit?” Marko forced his attention back to the damage plot.
The Read surfaced aft maneuvering, the hull plating near the sublight array, a seam that would split if they took fire at the wrong angle.
“Aft array seam,” Marko said.
His voice came out flat and procedural.
Competent.
A lie made of correct words.
“If they strafe aft-ventral, we lose attitude control.” “CIC, you hear that?” “Heard, Chief.” Gaeta’s voice, precise.
“Recommend evasive rotation, keep our belly out of their line.” The ship rolled.
Marko’s hand caught the bulkhead, tablet swinging on its tether, and the plot flickered as his focus slipped.
The wrong contact was inside a thousand meters.
Close enough that Marko could taste copper at the back of his throat, the way he always did when the Board pushed too hard against something it couldn’t read.
Then it vanished.
Not destroyed.
Not killed.
Just gone.
The return collapsed into nothing, and the space where it had been sat empty and clean like it had never been there at all.
Marko stared at the blank space on the plot.
His chest was tight.
His pulse too loud.
CONTACT LOST.
NO RESOLUTION.
HARD RETURN WHERE NO RETURN SHOULD BE.
The Cylons jumped.
The all-clear sounded six minutes later, damage minimal, hulls intact.
Tyrol’s voice came over the net, steady and relieved, calling the deck back to repair status.
Marko logged off the damage feed.
Pulled his headset.
Stood in the empty access corridor outside CIC with the plot still glowing faint across his vision, and the space where the wrong return had been sitting like a hole in his sight.
It had come in with the Raiders.
Knew where to hit.
Bore down on the weak frame like someone had drawn it a map.
And vanished the moment the shooting stopped.
And the Board the gift that could read a frame about to fail, a man about to die, a fire three bulkheads over had looked at it and returned nothing but wrongness.
Nothing showed.
Anyone walking past would have seen a deckhand who’d just helped his Chief keep the ship together under fire composed, competent, already moving on to the next repair.
Inside, in the place he never let anyone see, he was certain.
Something on their side read the same as the enemy.
The Board had widened his sight, and widened his blindness with it, and he had no way to prove what he’d seen and no way to unsee it.
The corridor was cold.
The ship hummed, already spinning up for the next jump.
Thirty-three minutes and counting.
Marko turned and walked back toward the deck, carrying the plot behind his eyes and the weight of one more thing he knew and couldn’t say.
No name.
No proof.
Just the wrongness, and no way to unsee it.
// FIELD BRIEFING Update cycle: 7 chapters every 10 days.
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