Meleager, or "Old Mel", is a Hunter-class Escortstar nominally assigned to BSG-75, technically under the command of Galactica and Commander Adama.
Meleager has been attached to the 24th Viper Training Squadron for the last seven years. Pilots in the final stages of their training are transferred to Meleager and her two accompanying vessels for their final six months of qualification for combat landing and manuevering training, keeping the Nuggets from "bothering" the flight crews of the 'Combat Commands'...vessels such as Galactica, Pegasus, and the members of the various 120 other-some-odd Battlestar Groups of the Colonial Fleet.
Meleager is slated for decommisioning during the next six months to a year, and as such has become a low priority posting for the fleet and the needs of the Admiralty. Combined with a mid-space collision three months ago that killed or wounded a significant portion of its crew and damaged a little over a dozen various small craft, and the Meleager is notably understaffed. Nonetheless, her Commanding Officer, Major Ivana Deering, has been ordered to prepare for a transfer to command of the Spatha (a Gladius-class Gunstar) after it finishes its refit, and intends to take almost all of her crew with her, so readiness and morale remain high in anticipation of a mass-move into a bigger and better vessel.
Old Mel is quite understrength at the current time, notably due to the aforementioned circumstances. With only 416 crew (of her alotted 800), a short air group of 20 Vipers (most manned by Nuggets), and a single flight of Raptors, the ship, though maintained as well as possible by Major Deering, is not quite up to full fighting strength. While she is capable of handling the pirates that plague the Erebos Belt or even a couple of pitched wartime battles, her dearth of personnel and small craft would doom her quickly if the war resumed...unless she found additional personnel and small craft in short order.
Meleager is currently on the outskirts of the Erebos Belt, conducting training missions in the fringes of the asteroids; today is the day that Galactica retires and then proceeds to Caprica to meet up with an honor guard composed of most of the Colonial Fleet to be escorted to its final resting place in orbit as a 'living museum'. The crew of Meleager, however, has already had to deal with several 'incidents'--none directly Cylon-related yet--and has had their first major 'situation' drop in on them...and it has only been three hours since most of them came on-shift.
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BSG: Escortstar Meleager
