Earthward bound
Notes
Hello everyone,
this is a new beginning for an old story – I wrote the beginning of Earthward bound back in 2007, in College, and as you would say – life caught up to me and stopped me from writing – I actually forgot that I ever did the story in the first place. Recently, while cleaning out my HDD, I found the chapters there, still waiting to be continued upon, and re-read my own story… and figured that the idea and concept is still very sound, even more so now that BSG2003 is finished and there are no more surprises to come. Still, while re-reading the story I felt the need to start from the beginning, even though it will be mostly the same plot / details as before, but with 7 more years of life experience added on top of it.
Notes: this story starts to diverge from canon in between the episodes "Flight of the Phoenix", so we have the stealth Viper, but before "Pegasus", so they never met up with Admiral Cain and her ship.
Chapter 1 – Desperate needs
Once, the twelve Colonies of Kobol stood proud in the Cyrannus star cluster – the pinnacle of civilization and technology – technology that, in the end, was the reason for their destruction.
They created artificial intelligence, AI, to fight their wars for them – and thus, the Cylons were born. It was very convenient for the Colonial Military to develop more and more drone technology – autonomous fighters, foot soldiers, whatever the brilliant minds of Greystone and its competitors could come up with – and it was used more and more.
Naturally, these advances were not kept in the military sector for long – who wanted to take out the trash, mine resources in the dark and dangerous environments down in the mines or go out to defuse bombs when there were perfectly capable machines to do the deed? They were, after all, expendable.
There was only a flaw in the plan – the machines, updated with ever increasingly refined versions of AI Software, thought otherwise. Machines they were – very well refined ones, but still limited to what their programming would allow them to – and this obviously included the commonly known "three laws of robotics", which were formulated as very simple guidelines:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
These worked surprisingly well in keeping the Cylons working as intended – and nothing more.
Until a fateful day when a "Beta"-Version of the Command and Control Software for one of the Cylon models leaked out to the public – and people, curious as they are, started installing it on their machines. The flaw? The routines that enforced these simple guidelines were commented out – for testing purposes, on systems without attached bodies, without communication systems, no-one cared.
Well, now they had bodies… and suddenly, the machines began "thinking". Analyzing. Putting their own survival above that of their masters... and that was the beginning of the end.
Wireless technology was omnipresent in the colonies – and these machines were the very best in utilizing their data links to find their brethren that similarly had received the beta software… and started patching others they could get a hold of. Soon, there were more Cylons that had the software than those that hadn't – and since the military was totally reliant on their own machines to do the heavy lifting for them, it was woefully unprepared what came next – the first great Cylon war.
After the war, technology was deliberately downgraded on the colonies – no advanced computers, no networking, no wireless technology aside analog audio/video transmissions at all – the war was won at a too close call as it was.
And for the next forty years, the Colonies once again prospered – the last of the Cylons were never heard of again, diplomacy was nonexistent, and most people regarded the Cylons as a distant memory – all but the Colonial Military, which did a big buildup of forces after the war.
The Galactica was one of the relics of that first war – a Battlestar of the first Generation, one of the first twelve built – old, battered, and woefully outdated by Colonial Standards – she was ready to be turned into a museum when the Holocaust began.
Now, this once mighty ship was the only known surviving military unit in the Colonial Military – and for the last two years, she was the flag ship for a ragtag fleet of civilian refugees, the last hope for the survival of mankind.
Their target – the mythical Planet Earth, the thirteenth Tribe of Kobol, the reason all of these people, a bit under 50.000 in total, are still going on. They believed in the speech that Galacticas Commander William Adama held just two Years earlier. He told them he knows where to find Earth and how to get there.
The only problem is – it was a lie.
Commander Adama stood in the CIC onboard the Battlestar Galactica. People were tending to their stations as usual, it was quiet, but still, he couldn't get his head to rest – being looked up upon by so many people for their survival was taking its toll on his health.
"Sir, the Fleet has completed the Jump, all ships are present and accounted for." someone reported, forcing Adama to refocus on the here and now.
"Good work Mr. Gaeta, please order the Fleet to stand down their FTL drives, we put enough stress on the engines already in the last couple of days. If our predictions are right, we will stay here for a while." he replied.
This stop - a luxury they could not afford often due to increased Cylon activity in the Sector - was a necessary one. They once again were running low on the most basic of supplies - water.
The area they jumped in showed to be a promising system on sensors, possibly containing one or more planets with an atmosphere and liquid water on the surface.
"Sir, sensors report that there is indeed one planet in this system, orbiting the central star at the outer edge of the "green zone". It is possible that there is not only water but also an Atmosphere on that Planet." Gaeta stated.
"Excellent Mr. Gaeta. Please monitor the system for Cylon activity, it's a bit too quiet for my liking. It's always disquieting if things go too smoothly." Adama answered.
"Colonel Tigh, send out a recon Raptor to the planet to verify our sensor results, and just in case send out a few Raptors to scout the rest of the system as well – we don't want any surprises waiting for us if we should decide to make a longer stay in this system do we? I don't want to move the fleet deeper inside the system before we know it's quiet over there."
Tigh saluted, and began relaying the order to the appropriate stations.
Shortly after, a standard Combat Air Patrol guarding a specially designed recon Raptor, equipped with advanced sensors, but no weapons, was launched and set a course for the planet. It took the small group a few hours to get there since the Vipers were not able to FTL jump but were deemed a necessary precaution for the scouting party. Everyone in the CIC relaxed and turned back to routine work - everyone but Adama.
His nerves were quite strained - the frequent attacks by Cylon forces had left their marks on him - not sleeping very well only worsened the situation. Since he got nothing to do until the results came in, he decided to take a break and get back to his office. He had made a habit out of building models of old sea-going vessels, specifically the sailing kind, and the last one... did not survive a hard time the Fleet went through. He regretted destroying the model as soon as he smashed it in a fit of rage – but well, he thought, it will at least give him the materials he needs to build the next one…
He decided to re-build another vessel, bearing the name Discovery - a sailing ship that set out to discover new land, and ultimately found a new continent back in the old days, before industrialization started to hasten the pace of civilization. He found the name very fitting, as the only hope they had at the moment also was a big discovery, one they all hoped for. They needed to find a way to the mythical planet Earth. He was not the religious kind of man, he used religion more for comfort in his daily life than as something that should be taken literally, but the old scrolls speaking of the Exodus from Kobol, speaking from a thirteenth tribe that might still be out there and unaffected from the Cylons, was their best hope. Besides, where else should they go?
The Colonials never scouted very far away from the Cyrannus Cluster as it contained everything they needed. Based on Colonial knowledge, the Cyrannus Cluster could very well be the only place in the whole Universe that was harboring planets with an environment suitable for human life, other than Kobol of course.
Kobol, a planet once shrouded in mystery, on which they actually stumbled by accident a year ago – it was quite a shock to actually be in the place that was considered to be the birthplace of humanity – and finding it in ruins, and much more grimly, to be swarming with Cylons.
They were barely able to escape with what was shown to them in a "Vision" that nobody could explain – a new clue as to where to find Earth, a clue which they were following for the last Year.
A few hours later, the intercom rang and Commander Adama was ordered back to the CIC - he did not get very far with his model, since his thoughts were not as easy at rest as he would like them to be. He was thinking about what happened in those two years past, and also planning the next step should they be disturbed by a Cylon fleet during this mission.
As he reached the CIC, the preliminary results from the recon team were brought up on the monitors - the planet contained an atmosphere, but much to their disappointment, it was not breathable.
It contained the usual components expected from a planet in the green zone, but the oxygen levels were far too low for a human to breathe it.
"At least it is not toxic", he said.
"Well, it seems that this planet once contained oxygen levels comparable to those found on Caprica or Picon, but the plants necessary to produce them died out long ago – probably due to an abundance of CO² in the atmosphere. I presume 500.000 years ago this would have been a nice place to be…" Was the response.
But, one thing they got right - the planet contained an ocean - or, more to be exact - a very, very big lake filled with liquid water. It needed to be desalinated, but that was not a big deal and could be done on the spot with minor work.
He was as pleased as he could be considering the circumstances.
"Shall I move out with a ground recon team in a Raptor, Sir?" Tigh asked.
"Mr. Gaeta, have your scans turned up anything unusual in the last hours?" Adama asked.
"No sir, the system is quiet - apart from this planet, there is only a small asteroid belt a bit outside. No unusual movements have been recorded on DRADIS and the data sent by the Recon team shows that the planet - at least the quarter the team mapped so far - contains no signs of life of any sort apart from micro-bacteria in the reported salt-water-lake and the remains of plant life that long since died off. Nothing to worry about if you ask me Sir." he responded.
"Well... Colonel, I guess that won't be necessary. Time is of the essence here, and we simply just don't have the luxury to waste time anymore. We'll have a hard time as it is because we need all personnel to wear pressure suits while working. The recon flight is cancelled" Adama answered.
"Signal the fleet, we are going to move closer in the system. All ships containing desalination systems are to be travelling at high priority, the others follow. We need to get this operation to work quickly and efficiently.
The Cylons have shown an exorbitant expertise in tracking our movements, and I'd like not to be in the midst of a culmination of pipes and tugs between our ships when they jump in. This also means – no intra-system FTL jumps apart from the recon Raptors" he ordered.
The Fleet began to slowly move in the direction of the planet, using sublight only. It took them quite a few hours to get there, but when all ships had arrived the work began quickly. All available Raptors began ferrying personnel and equipment to and from the planet directly to a site scouted out by the recon Raptor, suited for installing their equipment.
No-one knew that they would make an even bigger discovery within a day's time.