2145AK (After Kobol) it has been 100 years since the second Cylon war. The Colonials have returned to the 12 colonies. The Cylons have been, consumed in their civil war. Most of the radiation on Caprica has dissipated, but there still are hot spots where the Cylon nukes hit nuclear power plants and military installations. A complete survey of the system would have to be done to determine where the colonials would start re-building first.
"Admiral," the commander of the Battlestar Hestia said, we have entered orbit around Caprica. To which Admiral Thorn replied, send out survey teams to each of the colonies. When they return, have everyone assemble in the ward room. Lt. Andy "Skipjack" Anderson and his "co-pilot Lt. Ed "Rover" Strange arrived at Picon and started scanning. The planet was still hot; the cities and vast areas of the countryside have not yet recovered. Some areas, with higher levels of radiation, were pocked marked with craters. Ed said to Andy that must have been where the Picon shipyard or anchorage came down. Let's get this done and return to the Hestia.
Dr. Richards, the lead scientist, stood at the podium, we have gone over the data acquired by our survey teams. We can set up settlements on Caprica, Tauron, Gemenon, Aerilon, and Aquaria; All the other colonies were still too radioactive to have any permanent human present on them. We can take the radioactive debris from those planets use it for fuel in fission/fusion fast breeder reactors, these plants would run flat out; venting the excess heat into space, this way after 50 years or so the remaining colonies should also be habitable.
A lot has changed since they left the "Cyrannus star system" and resettled on Avalon. Partly to their meeting several alien races, the religious sect lost most of their sway over society. After all the Lords of Kobol were supposed to of created the universe only for them, and they have met several other species both alive and dead. When the religious leaders from Gemenon felt their power slipping away, they began enforcing religious laws on other colonists without regards to the Articles of Colonization. Riots broke out; the religious leaders never realized the growing percentage of the population that no longer believed in the Lords of Kobol. Some of the leaders tried to start a civil war but when they saw the percentage of the population that no longer supported them they quickly consented to a total re-write of the Articles of Confederation, This resulted in a separation of church and state. Now several different religions are practiced, the two main ones being "The Lords of Kobol" and "The One True God". But the largest percentage of the population was now atheists, jokingly believing that the Lords take care of those that take care of themselves.
This lead to a renaissance in the colonial society, people were amazed how religious dogma had held them back. In 2165 AK a scientist put forth a theory on dark energy or quantum vacuum zero-point energy and how an electromagnetic field can be manipulated with gravity waves and changed into a zero-point field releasing massive amounts of energy. With all this extra power their jump engines turned into hyperspace engines. When a ship arrived at its final destination, it sent the coordinates back to the starting location. A jump station was built at both locations with a master controller at the final destination whose job it was to keep ships from exiting hyperspace at a same physical location, thus creating a link. Once set up, this allowed instant travel from one point in space to any another. And as long as they stayed in known space there was no chance of exiting hyperspace into a celestial body.
As called out in the new Articles in 2175 AK a convention was held at Avalon with all colonies in attendance this included Caprica, Avalon, Tauron, Gemenon, Aerilon, and Aquaria. All the other colonies could not be colonized until the radiation was reduced. The new colonists from Avalon would be encouraged to resettle the outer colonies first. Most of these worlds suffered little from the nuclear attacks by the Cylons, and with the new zero point energy, they could be Terra-formed to a point to rival the other colonies. Also, these colonies would be administered by the central government, and once they became self-sufficient, they would be allowed to have full voting rights. One of the reasons humanity was almost wiped out was their ancestors never explored past the Cyrannus system so explorations fleets would be sent out to explore new worlds, to expand human civilization.
Back on Avalon President Aldridge and his advisers met with Dr. Richards and Admirals Thorn, Marcus and Silverman. Each of you gentlemen will be given the command of a squadron that will be comprised of one heavy cruiser and three destroyers.
Dr. Richards, would you please acquaint the Admirals and some of my advisors, who may not be aware of some of the details about the ships. Dr. Richards stood up and said, as some of you may have known with our old FTL drives just before we jumped a shield was created this is what the bright white light was. We never had the power before to sustain this phenomenon. We always had to let it fall through to the actual jump. We can now sustain the first part of the jump procedure. Hence, a shield was created around the ship. Adm. Marcus then asked about the beam weapons, to which Dr. Richards replied. Well as you know we had Plasma type weapons in the first Cylon war, but they so drained the vessels energy to a point that it was helpless after the beams were fired, but now with the zero point energy development we have excess energy, and this allows us to install beam weapons on all our ships. And these weapons will enable us to reduce our Viper complements. Where before we had a finite number of projectiles for our point defense weapons now we are only limitation is by the ships power. Therefore, you will be able to sweep enemy fighters from space and there is no range restrictions. If you can see it you can hit it. You will find that our main limiting factor now is the targeting computers and how fast they can switch from one target to another. Due to our recent discovery of zero point energy, you almost have a limitless supply of electrical power; they will also have reaction less drive engines for propulsion when not in hyperspace. These are called Q-Thrusters, and will give you a top speed of 45% of the speed of light. Any faster and the time dilation problems kick in.
The heavy cruiser will have an old sty[e FTL drive as backup, but not the destroyers. The ships zero point energy generators should last anywhere from five to ten years depending on how long you spend in hyperspace and how long you spend in battle.
Adm. Thorn took the shuttle over to the shipyard where the Gideon was receiving its final touches; this would be Thorn's flagship. Adm. Thorn walked into CIC and said status Commander Richardson, who was the Gideon's CO. Well, the yard technicians are just finishing up aligning the hyperspace modules. We should be good to go by the end of the day. Commander Benson Thorn's Chief of Staff walked in, Benson what are the status of the destroyers, Adm. They have been ready for a few days we are just waiting for yard did finish up with the Gideon. Adm. I was told by Fleet command to inform you that we will have several technicians from research and development, they will be working on a new kind of computer it uses photonic modules in place of silicon chips. The power requirements of these computers will be much less that our old ones and much faster. They would like to keep one bank of point defense weapons to run tests on. Okay, Benson I would of liked to be involved in the original conversation. But I guess I've got to except that those egg heads over at research and development live and work in a world of their own. Just make sure that they know if I want those weapons back I will have them promptly. I can't control the orders that they get from research and development, but they may find it difficult working from their quarters. Commander Richardson, Commander Benson, have all senior officers and my staff meet in my briefing room in one hour, I will go over our mission's objectives.
One hour later in Adm. Thorn's briefing room, well gentlemen lets first go over the big picture on what we and the first and third squadron will be doing. The first fleet under the command of Adm. Mackey will proceed down the Virgo arm of the galaxy, Adm. Martina will go in the opposite direction, and we will proceed to a point on the edge of the Virgo's arm. Each of the squadrons will build jump stations at locations of sufficient resources or those systems that our researchers deem to warrant in-depth exploration. We will build a jump station at the edge of the Virgo's arm. From there we will proceed via hyperspace to the Pegasus arm. You will all keep Commander Benson informed of any significant developments in your commands. At this time, I would like to turn the floor over to Captain Winters. As you all know myself and the six technicians under my command, are from R&D. Our primary responsibility is to perfect the computer systems for firing the point defense beam weapons. Also, we will try to get a better understanding of how far we can have instant communications via the jump stations we create along the way. But also I would like to remind you that we all consider the Gideon to be our home for the duration of this mission, so if we could help you in any way please just let me know. Also, Sgt. Reiter whose responsibility is to monitor the hyperspace engines and the drain on the zero point energy generators would be available to stand watches in your engineering spaces. Adm. Thorn and then stood up and said, All right, gentlemen, we got a full day tomorrow so let's adjourn this meeting for now.
At 0600AM sharp, Adm. Thorn entered CIC. Commander has the rest of the squadron checked in, yes Admiral all ships report ready all systems are green. The Gideon and the rest of the squadron entered hyperspace and proceeded to the edge of the Virgo arm of the galaxy. It was a two-day journey and although uneventful they did find one system that warranted a jump station. It had an asteroid belt that was very rich in iron and rare minerals; it also had a habitable planet that was suitable for colonization. Capt. Winters asked for a meeting with Adm. Thorn, as you know Adm. Thorn, when we are in a warp bubble, is very hard to stay in approximation with other ships. Plus there is the problem of more than one ship collapsing their warp bubble at the same time and same physical location. It is very inefficient to always to have one ship proceed ahead and then transmit its coordinates back to the rest and have the squadron travel one at a time to the new location. Therefore, we have to find a way to communicate while in hyperspace. We have done some research with two ships entering hyperspace and traveling to a specific coordinate and exiting hyperspace only to find out they can be up to a light year apart as you could see this is not satisfactory for fleet maneuvers. I have several procedures that fleet research and development would like to be tested to resolve this problem. With this Adm. Thorn interrupted, you know I was a very much against all of this from the very beginning I wanted to take a Battlestar squadron and let all these other items be tested and developed back at the colonies. But I was over ruled by the Admirals at Fleet Headquarters, they caved in, to the pressure from the politicians, we may have got rid of the priests but we still have the dam politicians with us. We still did pretty well so far but of course, we are still in known space this will become a problem after tomorrow when we jump into the void. With this Capt. Winters smiled and said I noticed you used jump and hyperspace interchangeably they are not the same thing, and this could lead to communication problems, later on, is just something we have to be aware of I realize it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks. With this Adm. Thorn interrupted Capt. Winters I know you and your people think mostly of yourselves as scientists and engineers, and you will find that I can be very accommodating, but don't push your luck. The next day at 4 o'clock the Gideon exited from hyperspace. Commander Richardson did a scan of the area in front of them and determined that the number of celestial bodies/solar systems per hundred cubic light-years was less than ten this constituted the void since using the word void was a misnomer as space is never truly empty. Adm. Thorn set up a video conference to the captains and XO's of all the ships. The Gideon will proceed approximately 100 light years into the void; we will stop and transmit our location back to the rest of the squadron then you will proceed one at a time to our location. The Gideon will be transmitting a subspace beacon; you will see if you can detect this by scanning for distortions in the space-time continuum. I request that during these tests you go quiet turning off any equipment you have except for life support and the hyperspace engines. With this, the Gideon left on the first real leg of their voyage.