"Jump complete, Commander," Lieutenant Gaeta announced, as the slight feeling of nausea subsided in Commander William Adama's stomach.
"All ships reporting in, sir," Dualla reported. "No Dradis contacts... scratch my last! We have a faint radio source, bearing two-five-one carom oh-niner-three!"
The fading tension of the FTL jump was replaced with a spike of adrenaline.
"Distance?" Adama asked, his voice clipped and forceful.
"Unknown, sir," Dualla replied. "All Dradis dishes reporting the same heading. It's distant, sir."
The adrenaline faded. At least they hadn't dropped into a Cylon ambush.
"Contact the rest of the fleet," Adama ordered. "Try to localize the signal."
"Aye, sir," she nodded. Several seconds passed, which Adama spent staring at the Dradis display. The signal was a single red dot, with a question mark floating next to it.
"Commander, eight ships confirm the same origin for the signal. All others are unable to localize it at all."
"Mr. Gaeta?" Adama asked, his voice calm now.
"Sir, if all of our ships are reporting an identical heading, then the signal has to originate outside this star system," the lieutenant replied. He bent over his own console. "There's a lot of hash in the signal."
"Supernova remnant?" Tigh pondered.
"For all we know, it could be Earth," Adama muttered.
Dualla spoke up. "Commander, we have a com request from Colonial One. It's the President."
"Put her through." Adama lifted the headset to his ear. "Madam President?"
"Commander, I was told we had detected a radio signal?" Roslin's voice was very composed, with just an edge of concern.
"That's correct, Madam President," he replied. "We haven't been able to localize it, so it's probably from outside the system. Most of our ships don't have sufficient Dradis capacity to even pinpoint it."
"I see." He heard Dr. Baltar talking in the background, then speaking closer to the pickup.
"Commander, I suggest you deploy Raptors some distance from the fleet - over one hundred million kilometers - in order to triangulate a fix. That should be sufficient."
"What makes you think that will work, Doctor?" Adama asked. The concept sounded vaguely familiar...
"It's how astronomers back in the colonies determined the distance to the stars. They'd use results from observatories on different planets, preferably as far apart as possible."
Ah! That was it.
"Where did you learn that fact, Doctor?" he heard Roslin ask.
"I've been a faithful subscriber to Modern Science since I was eleven, Madam President."
Adama chuckled. He imagined Gaeta could have suggested the same thing, but it wouldn't have come with the mental image of a young Baltar reading science magazines.
"Mr. Gaeta," he lifted his head away from the headset, "deploy three Raptors. They are to each jump one hundred million kilometers from the fleet on bearings perpendicular to the signal, in order to triangulate its location."
-
An hour later, the Commander, Colonel Tigh, Lieutenant Gaeta, President Roslin, Dr. Baltar, Starbuck, and Apollo were gathered in the briefing room. Adama tried to always think of his son as "Apollo" while on duty. Thinking of him as "Lee" clouded his judgement, and "Captain Adama" didn't do much better.
"Thanks to the information from our Raptors," Gaeta said as he spread out an overlay on the table, "we've been able to localize the source of the radio emissions to this star cluster, seventy-three light-years away."
"Is it natural in origin?" Roslin asked, one hand resting under her chin.
Gaeta shook his head. "Unlikely, Madam President. The signals don't match any known natural phenomenon. While they're too faint and garbled to have even a hope of understanding them, the most likely explanation is that they are artificial in nature. They are similar in nature to the signals we were picking up when we were several light-years out from the Colonies."
"So we're not talking about an abandoned beacon or something?" Tigh inquired.
"No, Colonel. These are consistent with an advanced civilization. In fact, it appears that they are coming from several different star systems. We've identified at least eight stars which appear to be giving off signals."
The room was silent for a moment. The notion had crossed Adama's mind almost immediately, but now it was all but confirmed. Someone was out there.
"It could be the Thirteenth Tribe," Starbuck suggested. "Maybe after they found Earth, they colonized the nearby systems as well."
"It could also be the Cylons," Apollo countered.
Roslin raised an eyebrow. "The Cylons?"
"Impossible," Tigh growled.
"But we've never found their homeworld," Apollo pointed out.
This was true. The Fleet had launched several covert expeditions to locate the Cylon homeworld, with no success.
"Lee, the signal is coming from seventy-three light-years away," Starbuck reminded him.
"So?"
"So it originated seventy-three years ago. The Cylons weren't even invented yet."
Lee blushed. "Right."
"It also rules out any Colonial source," Adama continued. "Leaving either the Thirteenth Tribe..."
Starbuck shrugged. "Or aliens."
Roslin crossed her arms. "The Thirteenth Tribe is the most likely possibility. And this indicates that not only are they out there, but they have resources comparable to the Twelve Colonies. Possibly more."
"You think we should set a course?" Adama inquired. He'd been expecting this.
"I do," Roslin nodded.
"I agree."
Roslin gave him a smile.
"Any objections?" Adama looked around the room.
Nobody objected.
"It'll take us about a month to reach the cluster," Gaeta sighed. "I'll start calculating jumps."
TWO MONTHS LATER
Once more, Adama, Roslin, Tigh, Gaeta, Baltar, Starbuck, and Apollo gathered in the briefing room.
The news that the fleet had detected a signal from what everyone presumed was Earth had been an incredible boost to morale. Overall, things had just gone better. And they seemed to have escaped the Cylons - there hadn't been a single encounter since the failed logic bomb. Speculation was divided between the Cylons having been crippled by their losses when Sharon Valerii turned the logic bomb against them and the Cylons having picked up the signals from Earth and not wanting to face a presumably hostile Thirteenth Tribe.
Recently, however, a sense of unease had crept in. Despite coming closer, they had still been unable to decipher any coherent signals from the "Earth Cluster" as everyone was calling it. The most powerful signals were either Dradis emissions or encoded. Gaeta and Baltar had come up with perfectly logical reasons for that, and Baltar had spent two hours on talk wireless explaining them, but it still put people on edge. Half-jokes about aliens had become more common, enough that Adama had quietly reviewed the old first contact protocols.
Now, the map showed their best mapping of the Earth Cluster. It consisted of five star systems (designated Alpha through Epsilon), each of which had multiple planets and at least one companion star apiece. All were clustered fairly close together.
"I think," Roslin took a deep breath, "that it would be unwise to jump directly to any planet of Alpha Prime." Alpha Prime was the central star. "If we suddenly appeared in orbit over their capital world, they might react violently."
Dr. Baltar nodded. "I agree, Madam President. We should choose a planet in one of the outer systems, on the periphery."
Starbuck scanned the map. She extended her arm, and hesitantly pointed a finger. "Here. Delta-Bravo."
Adama considered it. Delta-Bravo was a curiosity. When they'd been fifteen light-years out, they'd picked up a lot of transmissions from it. But when they got within ten light-years, the transmissions had dropped to almost nothing. Something had happened there.
It was also the nearest star to the Fleet's current position.
"Why Delta-Bravo?" Baltar asked, tilting his head to one side.
"Well," Starbuck withdrew her hand, "judging by the level of radio transmissions, it's likely the least-populated system. The transmissions could even be from unmanned monitoring stations. Maybe they tried to colonize it, and something went wrong."
That was the dominant theory.
"If something went wrong there, shouldn't we avoid it?" Tigh inquired in his usual semi-growl.
"It could have failed for any number of reasons," Apollo countered. "The planetary environment could be unstable. The magnetic field could have failed. For that matter, maybe the colony just wasn't profitable, so they gave up and went home."
"So as long as we stay in orbit, we should be safe?" Gaeta asked, his tone that of a man confirming his thoughts.
Starbuck nodded. "And if it's an abandoned colony, they'll be less likely to see us as a threat."
"We'll do a survey from orbit," Adama decided. "Then, if conditions on the surface aren't too hostile, we'll send down Raptors."
"Agreed," Roslin folded her arms in decision.
As Raptor 1 flew over snow-capped mountains, Helo felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He'd expected the planet - still designated Delta-Bravo I - to be a barren wasteland or something. Instead, it was gorgeous. Thousands of square kilometers of pristine wilderness. Oceans, forests, mountains, marshes, open plains... it had everything. It was definitely on the cool side, mind you. Most of the planet's land area was taiga, tundra, or ice sheets. But it was still a lovely planet, under a bright blue sun.
So where were the people?
Up ahead lay the city he'd been sent to investigate. It was pretty big. The architecture was different from Colonial styles, more flowing. But he could discern no movement. No spacecraft taking off or landing. No cars or trams or people just walking.
They couldn't have just abandoned this because it was unprofitable. Yet the atmospheric scans hadn't picked up anything. No toxins, no pathogens, nominal levels of radiation.
"How's that beacon looking?" Starbuck called back. She'd volunteered to be his pilot for this mission. They were closing in on a faint signal coming from the city. It was the only transmission from the planet that could be detected from orbit. The rest of the signals had been coming from the debris field that apparently surrounded Delta-Bravo. Gaeta was still trying to decipher them, but to Helo, they hadn't sounded like static.
They'd sounded like screams.
"Getting stronger," he replied. "Adjust heading, eight caroms to starboard."
As they got closer, Helo began to discern what looked like people in the streets. Only they weren't moving. He rechecked the seal on his helmet, then noticed Starbuck doing the same.
There were hundreds of bodies in the streets. Most were badly decayed. It reminded him of Caprica. Maybe someone had dropped a neutron bomb?
"Lords of Kobol," Starbuck whispered. "Galactica, Starbuck, we are in sight of the city."
"Copy that, Starbuck," Dee came back. "What do you see?"
"Hundreds dead," Starbuck replied. "Still no sign of radiation or toxins."
"Keep your suits sealed," Dee advised. "Proceed to the signal. Galactica out."
The signal led them to a crashed shuttle near an intersection. Starbuck set the Raptor down smoothly, and the two of them stepped out. As they did, Helo noticed that while most of the writing he could see was in ordinary Caprican - they were at the intersection of 12th Avenue and 10th Street - some was in a language he didn't recognize. Evidently, the Thirteenth Tribe had seen linguistic variations like the other tribes.
The shuttle had seen better days. Reserve power was still on, but much of the equipment had been smashed, and he thought he saw bloodstains. This was starting to feel like a horror movie.
In the center of the room stood a console of some sort. On top was a transparent plastic disc that was clearly meant to mate with the console. Curiously, Helo rotated it into place. When he did, two metal hinges swung up to hold it in place, and the whole apparatus glowed blue.
A hologram appeared above the console. The technology was well in advance of anything the Colonies had. The hologram was of a young woman in a blue uniform. As she spoke, images similar to what they'd seen hovered in front of her.
"These are just a few of the images we've recorded, and you can see... it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable." She sniffled. "It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression." She began to sob. "Well it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped... everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die."
Helo's jaw had dropped. Thirty million? It wasn't the death toll from the Colonies, but it was hundreds of times the entire population of the Fleet. And they hadn't died in a war. It had just been some social experiment gone horribly wrong.
A snarling sound came from offscreen, and the woman's head snapped to the right before centering. "I have to be quick," she said in a small, terrified voice. She tried to compose herself before continuing. "About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness." More snarls and crashing sounds came from offscreen. "They have become... well they've killed most of us. And not just killed..." her voice broke again, "...they've done things."
Helo saw that Starbuck's eyes were the size of dinner plates. His were probably just as big.
"I won't live to report this," the woman sobbed, as the snarling grew louder, "but people have to know. We meant it for the best, to make people safer." Another snarl, this one even closer. "God!" The woman drew a pistol, firing it to the right. Then, she put it to her head, before a - was that a person? - something tackled her and pulled her down, from out of view. She screamed and screamed and screamed until Starbuck turned off the recording.
Helo felt like throwing up. Somehow, he'd gotten used to the notion that the Cylons had murdered billions of his species. They (with the obvious exception of Sharon) had become the epitome of evil. But their evil was a cold, calculating, impersonal sort of evil. This... this was something different. Savage. Brutal. Animalistic.
What had the gods led them to?