A/N: This is my first BSG fic so be nice. Also, if you're trying to avoid spoilers, don't continue since I've incorporated most of the elements from the as yet unaired (in the US anyway) second part to "Kobol's Last Gleaming". Hopefully this'll be the first part in my alternate second season storyline. And, as always, I don't own BSG. NBC does (odd, considering it was once owned by ABC)
Battlestar Galactica
'Kobol's Destiny'
Prologue
Through the vast void of interstellar space, the small craft traveled. No record existed as to its origin or of how long it had spent traveling through space. Those answers were locked away within its internal computers awaiting the day they could be accessed again.
And so it traveled, slowly and silently towards a star not unlike the one of its origin.
Four light-years away on a world orbiting that star, a battle was taking place. It wasn't a battle for land or resources, but of survival.
She could feel the footsteps of the approaching Cylon warriors. She was running as fast as she could, but the Cylons being machines meant they never tired, as she was quickly doing. Yet she ran with all her heart in the direction of the ruins. She was one of only 47,000 humans left alive in the Universe.
Less than one light-year distant, another battle of survival was taking place. Commander William Adama, the last battlestar commander left in the Universe, was slowly dying. Lodged in him were two bullets, put there by one of his top Raptor pilots, now revealed to be a Cylon agent.
Baltar's detector didn't work, he thought as he blacked out from the shock of the wound.
Eighteen light-years away yet another battle was taking place. Not one of survival, but one of revenge.
Lieutenant Kara "Starbuck" Thrace had had enough of the blonde lying before her. She'd snuck up on her just as she'd retrieved the Arrow of Apollo. The blonde had essentially sold out humanity for machines. She was quite surprised, then, when she learned that the blonde was herself a machine. And now she lay there, the Arrow impaled through her chest. Already the object was merging with the Cylon's circuitry. Circuitry which allowed it to communicate with its many clones.
Close by, Lieutenant Karl "Helo" Agathon watched in shock as someone he thought dead killed on of his many tormenters. For nearly two months they had pursued him, watching him, all the while using him as an experiment. The results of that experiment sat next to him. The Cylon he'd thought to be Lieutenant (JG) Sharon "Boomer" Valerii had admitted to being pregnant, something that was even more shocking. But it really didn't matter at the moment. Now they had a way off the planet. Or so they thought.
At that moment, though separated by 18 light years, the Cylon known to Dr. Gaius Baltar as Number Six suddenly seized before him. He could tell from her look that something was dreadfully wrong, but was still bemused by what he saw for she had been tormenting him for two months, appearing at random and even physically hurting him. To see her in pain now was quite amusing.
"Gaius, it has begun," she whispered and passed out.
"Dr. Baltar!" a surprised Cally screamed from the entrance to the ruins.
Baltar looked around him. The building had truly become ruins once more, where they had been like new mere moments before. He looked down only to see that Six was still lying there, motionless.
"Who's that?" Cally asked, gasping for breath as she came up.
"A Cylon," he managed to whisper. She could truly see her. It really hadn't been a chip in his brain.
"We've got to hide," Cally said, quickly forgetting the prone Cylon. "There's two toasters after me."
"No, something's about to happen," he startled her by saying. "She showed me."
"What…?" Cally managed before the ruins were bathed in light.
Outside the two Cylon Centurions paused, their intricate programming trying to make sense of what they suddenly saw. What their scanners showed as debris was suddenly filled with immense power.
Inside, Cally watched, stunned, while Baltar looked on in surprise. Six had been right this time. What he had seen mere moments before was actually coming to pass. Humanity was about to learn its destiny.
The light revealed itself to be emanating from a stone that had moved close to Six's hand. Slowly the stone moved a little more, revealing more light. Suddenly the stone shot out and behind the two stunned humans. The light continued to glow, but it was apparent that something within was causing it.
Slowly, a pedestal emerged from the opening. On top of it sat a rather small globe.
"Kobol," Baltar whispered.
"No, I think that's Earth," Cally whispered back.
The globe was intricately detailed. They could see the outlines of continents, ranging from a massive one to a small island continent. Baltar could even spy a continent on the bottom of the planet, something he'd never before seen on a habitable planet.
The globe began to rotate, as did the light emanating from the pedestal. It was slow at first, but quickly picked up speed. The two humans could do nothing but watch, afraid of what might happen next.
Suddenly, a beam of light shot up from the globe and into the sky. Traveling faster than light had any business traveling, it quickly moved through Kobol's star system and out into deep space. There, it kept going, traversing the four light years between Kobol and the small craft in a matter of minutes.
Once it reached the craft, it wrapped itself around it, giving immense power to its small sublight engines. In what one would call a wink, the craft vanished, passing beyond the realm of normal space into what scientists termed "hyperspace". A journey that would have lasted another two hundred years was finished in a matter of minutes.
On Kobol, the craft suddenly reappeared before Cally and Baltar. They watched with a combination of shock and awe as the craft came to life.
What they saw was puzzling. Neither of them had ever seen anything so small before. Baltar himself had read about craft as small as what he saw, but they had all been probes sent out in the distant past to map the Colonies' home system. How such a craft had come to Kobol was beyond him.
And yet, it was quickly coming to life. Small servo motors whirred and began removing what appeared to be protective shielding around the craft. Cally's eyes went wide. She'd never seen anything that could change so smoothly. It was almost fluid. Folding up like a fan, the craft's main shielding disappeared from view, revealing its interior. Even that puzzled Cally as all it appeared to be was a computer's keyboard, oddly arranged in the Colonial Standard format. Another device did appear to be a gun, but she couldn't be sure of that.
A screen came on and Cally watched as the computer apparently booted up.
How can a computer be so small? she thought to herself.
The boot up sequence had all been in Colonial Standard Caprican, but Cally had ignored that, not being the computer genius, but rather the socket wrench type of girl. What she saw now, though, shocked her and Baltar both. The gun device was moving. It panned around, once pointing itself at Baltar's chest, prompting the scientist to think it was going to kill him, but it had quickly moved away. It settled on pointing toward a wall some five hundred feet distant.
It glowed and a beam of light shot out, but never quite made it to the wall. Instead it expanded and radiated upwards. What the two humans saw next almost made them jump back in horror.
It was a man.
Chapter 1
Battlestar Galactica: Two-light years from Kobol
Colonel Saul Tigh couldn't believe it. His commander and best friend lay before him, medics trying desperately to stabilize him so that he could be moved to sick bay. Nearby, Colonial Marines were still trying to subdue his attacker, Sharon Valerii.
It had been a shock when the pilot had walked into the CIC, fresh from destroying the Cylon Basestar that had been orbiting Kobol, and suddenly pulling a gun on Adama. Tigh had tried to stop her, but wasn't in time as the gun fired twice.
"Dad, don't die. Please don't die," he could hear Adama's son, Lee "Apollo" Adama, whisper. Never in his entire life had he heard the younger Adama refer to his father as anything other than 'Commander' or 'Sir'.
"Lee, maybe we should led the medics do their job," he said, grasping Lee's shoulder and trying to tug him away.
"No, I have to be with him. I'm all he has left," Lee protested.
"We still have a ground crew to worry about on Kobol, not to mention the threat of a Cylon counterattack. I'm going to need you, Lee. You're the CAG."
Lee stared at Tigh for a moment, slowly remembering where he was. Slowly, he let go of his father's hand. He continued to stare at Tigh as he stood up.
"So what happened before…"
"Doesn't matter now, Captain," Tigh told him.
Cylon-Occupied Caprica
Kara stared at the dead blonde, trying to figure out how the Cylons had created her. A movement out of the corner of her eye broke her train of thought.
"Who's there?" she asked, grabbing for the gun that wasn't at her side.
"Starbuck, it's just me, Helo," Helo told her as he emerged from the shadows.
"That's impossible. Sharon told me she left you behind. You should be dead."
"But Sharon's right…here," he began, suddenly realizing what everything meant.
"What?" Kara began as the Caprica version of Boomer emerged from the shadows.
"What the frack! Sharon, how did you get here?"
"It's a long story, Kara," Helo told her. "Or rather, a short one. She's a Cylon."
"What? No fracking way."
"It's true. And, uh, Kara, she's pregnant."
Kara just stared at Helo as she began to laugh at the thought.
Kobol
The man took a breath. Cally and Baltar stood stock still, not sure what was going to happen next.
The man opened his eyes and looked around. When he saw the two humans, his expression became one of total confusion.
"What the hell?" he asked in perfect Caprican. "Don't tell me it didn't work."
"What didn't work?" Cally asked.
"You mean this isn't Earth?"
Baltar jumped back in surprise.
"It's real," he whispered.
"What do you mean 'It's real'? Haven't you people ever heard of Earth before?"
"Only in myth," Cally told him.
"Ok, timeout here. Would someone tell me what's going on here?" the man demanded.
"Certainly," Baltar said. "This is the planet Kobol, birthplace of humanity and you, apparently, are from that planet's thirteenth colony, Earth."
"What?" the man asked incredulously and began to laugh. "Surely you're joking."
"No, of course not," Baltar told him.
"This is ridiculous," the man said and turned to his computer. He punched a few buttons on the keyboard.
"Just as I thought. Not enough time has passed. It's only been a hundred years and the journey was supposed to take over three hundred. It's obvious we didn't break out of Earth orbit."
"'We'?" Cally asked.
"Yes, me and the others. We were fleeing Earth to colonize another planet," he told her.
"Fleeing?" Baltar asked. "From what?"
"It's a long story," the man told him, turning back to his computer.
He began punching buttons. Cally watched, curious. Baltar only looked at the fallen figure of Number Six which still lay where the globe and pedestal had emerged.
So you were real all along, he thought. You were here yet only I could see you. Clever. At least now I don't have to worry about you anymore.
"Damn!" the man suddenly yelled, breaking Baltar out of his reverie.
"Sorry," he apologized to Cally.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"The hard drives have been corrupted," he told her, "which is impossible considering all the shielding we put in place. But why wasn't my hard drive corrupted?"
"Hard drive?" Cally asked. "What's a 'hard drive'?"
"A storage device," he told her, somewhat agitated. "How can you not know what a hard drive is? How else do you store your data?"
"Um, we use memory tapes," Baltar told him, coming to Cally's defense. "They're the most practical thing we have."
The man burst out laughing.
"Memory tapes?" he asked, still laughing, "The twenty-second century and you've been reduced to using memory tapes?"
"I don't understand what you're getting at," Baltar told him, trying to remain calm.
"You're serious," the man said and stopped laughing. "Who are you people anyway?"
"We're from the Twelve Colonies of Man," Baltar told him. "Surely you've heard of us."
"No, we left Earth long before anyone else even got to Mars."
"You don't understand. The Twelve Colonies were colonized over two thousand years ago."
And the man turned white with horror.
Colonial One
Laura Roslin stared out the window at the ships that carried the remnants of humanity. Theoretically she was still their President, but technically, as far as she could tell, she wasn't. Commander Adama had ordered her arrest after she'd ordered Lt. Thrace to jump to Caprica, but Captain Adama had convinced Colonel Tigh to allow her to remain on her ship, especially after the joyous return of Lt. Valerii from Kobol. She was, however, forbidden to make radio contact with any other ship in the fleet. She was cut off.
Her assistant, Billy Keikeya walked in. He looked terrified. Despite being cut off from the fleet, he still found out things for her. Whatever it was that he'd found out now, he was as white as a sheet.
"Madame President, there's a rumor floating around that Commander Adama's been shot," he came out and told her.
"What?" she asked, not wanting to believe it.
"There're saying it was Valerii. She just walked up and shot him," he told her.
"But why?"
"They're saying she's a Cylon."
Roslin slowly rose from her chair. She didn't want to believe what she was hearing. She suddenly fell back in dizziness. The Kamala extract was choosing a good time to hit her with its side effects.
She didn't see Billy before her now. Instead she saw…Kobol?
No, it was Earth. It was blue with the brown of continents. Clouds swirled around the globe, bringing rain to the areas they touched. But something was wrong. She saw what appeared to be weapons platforms. It wasn't unusual as any sensible civilization would have a means to protect itself from an outside threat, but these platforms were pointing directly at the planets surface.
And alien invasion? No, aliens would use ships instead of putting weapons into orbit to bombard a planet. These were there by the choice of the people on the planet.
One of the platforms came to life and launched its deadly cargo towards the planet. It was obvious now. The civilization on this planet was fractured and one side was striking at the other.
Still other platforms came to life and launched their missiles towards the planet below. Small pricks of light began to appear where missiles had already struck. Thankfully, to Roslin's fevered mind, they weren't the mushroom clouds of a nuclear attack. It didn't mean the attack wasn't deadly, though. The Colonies new of biological warfare, unfortunately, as such weapons had been used in the distant past when the Colonies fought each other.
A movement on the planet caught Roslin's eye. Someone on the surface was launching a counterattack, or so it seemed.
No, it was a craft. Slowly it rose, passing beyond the planet's atmosphere and into orbit. While it passed beyond the planet's limb, Roslin watched at the weapons platforms continued to divulge their missiles, some attempting to go after the orbiting craft.
After what seemed an eternity, the craft came around the other side of the planet. When it seemed to be pointing at her, it fired its main engine and broke free from the planet's orbit. Several missiles tried to bring it down, but failed and the craft quickly moved away from the planet before shutting its engine down.
"Madame President!" Billy shouted, bringing her out of her trance.
"I had a vision," she told him. "A planet, an escaping craft."
"I've got to get the doctor," he said, trying to leave.
"No, bring Elosha. She'll know what it means."
"Ok," Billy relented and went to find the Priestess.