In another part of space, another group of colonials were preparing to move out and respond to the initial message sent out from the PEGASUS probes.
Captain Logan Masters and his crew were on board Peregrine One ('DRAGON'S LAIR') awaiting launch clearance from the Battlecruiser GOLIATH's Core Command. They were on their way to investigate the TAC signal picked up earlier which gave those co-ordinates. That spatial position was Masters destination, and rather than using a probe, he decided to go personally with all of the firepower that his ship could provide.
"Core command is transferred. We are cleared to launch, Dragon" his co-pilot Lt. Sever (with the call-sign of 'Witch') called forward in the cockpit. He focused on his panel, releasing the mag lock and raising the landing gear. They were in free fall. Witch locked in their first set of coordinates. 100 A.U. outside the nebula. Dragon pushed the throttle and the Peregrine shot out of the bay. Ensign 'Spook' Giles (the PSO) as usual had to hold his stomach from the G forces as he was pushed to the back of his seat. Dragon pulled a vertical 'U-turn' sending them back over the spine of the great cruiser. Inverted they looked down at her hull passing over the 16 sets of guns, then passed the twin noses of the forward hull. He rotated the ship, the GOLIATH now parallel behind them. All sensors were active and they locked in their jump engines.
"Stand by, jumping in 5...4...3...2...1...jumping!", Masters said before hitting the initiator switch. They appeared in empty space. No moons, planets, suns, nothing. "All right, Witch, verify our position and set for the next jump", Dragon said after his eyes could focus again.
"Roger that, were right on the mark. Systems recovered and getting a fix" she answered.
"The Nova looks so different from way out here", Giles was saying looking at the reverse view on his monitor. All other scanners, both passive and active showed they were alone.
"Maybe so, lets hope we don't have to get used to it" Masters commented. He then sent the Peregrine into another FTL-jump. They arrived on the far side of the Borallis system. Well away from the planet itself. They knew there were sentinel stations or patrols here. The last thing they wanted was to be seen. What they needed was to see if there was still a Colonial probe present - according to the recently deciphered message, it should be at the co-ordinates that were provided.
Masters and his crew put the Peregrine into dark mode. Engines and sensors shut down, moving solely on momentum. Their course would put them in a high orbit of Borallis itself. The small asteroid that held the sentient Sentinel posted there would pass well below them. The closer they got to orbit the more debris they could see out of the cockpit. Giles was recording all he could of the devastation that floated over the planet. Cruisers, cargo ships, military transport vessels, tenders, along with over half a dozen capital ships from the once-vaunted colonial fleet lay in ruins. Masters was forced to use thrusters to avoid colliding with sections of ships that had been cut apart by missiles and high-yield warheads. Somewhere in this wreckage was the source of the TAC signal. But before they could use their wireless to look for it, the Sentinel would need to be removed.
Masters double checked the weapons status board. All missiles ready, nukes on standby, all freshly taken from the ITHACA inventory. The guns were full, drones, chaff and intercepts green. They passed the bulk of the ship graveyard and back into open space. There sat in close orbit the Sentinel. Silent and dark on the small rock. Antenna and sensor pallets spreading out from the hanger opening at the center. At least 20 Scimitar class Raiders waited to be awakened within that pod at the slightest hint of intrusion. If their 'rabbit' probe had not detected it during its patrol route they would not have even seen it. Fortunately the rabbit intercepted the post responding to a courier Raider at that time. That gave away its position and true nature.
Peregrine One's thrusters flared again for the merest of seconds sending them even closer to the Cylon. Masters navigated by visual alone, active scanners were out of the question, even the internal comm was off. He didn't want to risk even that electronic signature this close to the ultra sensitive Sentinel. At least , until they were directly above it. With their nose and their weapons now pointing directly down at the post, they powered up everything as fast as they could at Dragons signal. The weapons lock and high energy signature 'woke up' the Sentinel instantly, seeing its danger alerted the Raiders and opened the bay for launch. Just what Dragon wanted.
He locked one nuke on the opening bay and fired. Sever was laying down suppression fire on the incoming missiles the post sent at them, Giles was flooding the area with white noise and jamming the station. Drones flew from the under carriage to divert others. After firing the nuke, Masters switched fire control to the intercepts and assisted Witch in covering their escape. Turning and pushing the engines and boosters to full.
"The package is delivered, Dragon. Get us the frakk out of here" Giles yelled out through the open hatch of the cockpit and flight deck. He could see the missile pass into the dark opening of the Cylon hanger bay, then the flash as the explosion ripped the asteroid apart. The result of rock trying to contain a 50 megaton detonation.
"That got it!", Sever shouted happily as the station disintegrated.
"Frakk!", Giles was saying as he saw two Raiders emerge from the carnage, both sped away from them and vanished in the flash of their jump engines.
"I see it", said Masters. "Going to get reinforcements, no doubt. We have to make this fast. Spook, send a full power IFF signal on the Peregrine TAC channel 1 - directional mode to those co-ordinates we were given - now!"
"Roger that Dragon, sending", Giles replied, broadcasting the general 'enable' signal for anything utilizing their dedicated inter-fleet comm channel. Somewhere nearby on the outskirts of the graveyard the Colonial probe sent by the PEGASUS came to life. As it received the signal, it filtered it through the Identification: friend or foe catalog and followed its programmed response instructions sending but a single scrambled burst transmission.
"Holy Frakk, we got a response!", Spook said and sent the message to Masters' cockpit monitor.
It was in coded form at first, but Spook put it through a decryption routine and the symbols slowly filtered into a recognizable form. It read: 'HOURS CAN SEEM LIKE DAYS BOJAY 2 DRAGON, BORALLIS RENDEZVOUS POINT SIX-FIVE-EIGHT MARK EIGHT-FOUR-FIVE' HAPPY HOUR ARM DAY + 230'.
"Ok I see it. It's an embellishment of the original transmission, but what does it mean?" Sever asked her C.O.
"I'll tell you later, set coordinates for the Alley". Dragon quickly scripted a response in the same word puzzle format they had received then passed it onto Spook for transmittal.
"Send our acknowledgment message to the probe and get ready to jump", Dragon ordered wanting to vacate the area before more tin heads showed up.
The signal was sent, the probe vanished leaving a energy spike on Spooks active sensors letting them know their return message was on its way to who ever sent it. The message it would carry would be coded in Dragons 'book code' beginning with PFOM, then a series of numbers, then BOTW (Book of the Word) then more numbers, then PFOM again, rotating through a series of letters and numbers covering these two books he and Bojay, the friend he believed was alive on the PEGASUS would recognize and remember.
When (or if) he deciphered it, it would read: CEO 2 COMMANDER OF BATTLESTAR, FROM COMMANDER OF COLONIAL FLEET CONTINGENT INVOLVED IN RECENT BATTLE. DRAGON SAYS TO B GLAD YOU AND I NOT IN CLUB. FOR FACE TO FACE ENCOUNTER MEET AT CO-ORDINATES 264-311-079 IN MANDAHAR SYSTEM. PEREGRINE 1 WILL BE AT RENDEZVOUS POINT. DISPATCH REPRESENTATIVE IN PEREGRINE 5 TO MEET DRAGON AT ABOVE CO-ORDINATES ON DAY 317 HAPPY HOUR. NEW TAC CHANNEL PROTOCOL FOR INITIAL CONTACT IS FIRST HALF OF TAC 2 SECOND HALF OF TAC 1 ROTATIONS. HOURS STILL LIKE DAYS. MESSAGE ENDS.
"Engines ready Dragon, we're good to go", Witch reported, then strapped in tighter.
"Hit it, Dragon, a Base Star just came out of jump" Spook shouted, then Dragon pressed the initiator and the Peregrine vanished before the Cylons could scan them. Or so he hoped.
Back on the PEGASUS, Captain Sanders at the Core Command Console noticed that the Borallis probe had just returned from it's mission. He also noticed that the probe had indeed received a message. It was being transmitted. He saw the first few characters - and knew that they had hit pay dirt. He waited for the full message to be printed out, then he headed out to see Cain.
As Cain and Tolen were sitting in an adjoining conference room going over the weapons manifest, Sanders entered the room with a large smile.
"We've just gotten a message back from them", Sanders announced to Cain, holding up a printout form, "The probe has jumped back and has transmitted a relayed message from a ship of Colonial origin to the PEGASUS".
"You brought it here immediately?", Cain asked. Sanders nodded, handing Cain the form. The form was prefixed CEO - initials for 'Commanders Eyes Only' - before the PFOM designator.
Cain looked at it and saw that it was in the same code setup as what Syke had devised - and it was using the Peregrine Flight Operations Manual as one of the code keys (the Book of the Word was the second code key). A copy of both books was with Sanders and he placed it down on the desk so that Cain could decode it.
As Cain started working on the decode, Tolen said, "The fact that the Peregrine manual was used must mean that this is indeed the others involved on those other in-system missions and that this Captain Masters is alive". He walked over to a wall-mounted communicator and paged Captain Syke to join them in the conference room.
Syke was up there in a few minutes. By that time, Cain had decoded the message. After quickly reading the contents, he passed it around to the others.
The message read: '2 COMMANDER OF BATTLESTAR, FROM COMMANDER OF COLONIAL FLEET CONTINGENT INVOLVED IN RECENT BATTLE. DRAGON SAYS TO B GLAD YOU AND I NOT IN CLUB. FOR FACE TO FACE ENCOUNTER MEET AT CO-ORDINATES 264-311-079 IN MANDAHAR SYSTEM. PEREGRINE 1 WILL BE AT RENDEZVOUS POINT. DISPATCH REPRESENTATIVE IN PEREGRINE 5 TO MEET DRAGON AT ABOVE CO-ORDINATES ON DAY 317 HAPPY HOUR. NEW TAC CHANNEL PROTOCOL FOR INITIAL CONTACT IS FIRST HALF OF TAC 2 SECOND HALF OF TAC 1 ROTATIONS. HOURS STILL LIKE DAYS. MESSAGE ENDS'
Cain waited until everyone present had absorbed the message, then turned to Syke.
"They've definitely been listening in on the communications if they know we have Peregrine Five. What's the significance of the 'Days and hours' phrase, Captain?", Cain asked, "and I noticed that you had used something similar in the rendezvous probe's follow-up message.
"It goes back to a discussion Captain Masters and I once had after we finished up at VTT", Syke explained, "If you're sitting through a lecture at VTT hours can seem like days, and if you're talking to a beautiful woman, days can seem like hours. Time - like all things - is relative, and in this case can mean the opposite of what you might think. So most of what's in those messages means the opposite of what is there. Like the coordinates, and times, we'll have to reverse them to be correct. Happy hour at the Golden Arrow bar was at 22:00, but our opposite would be when it opens, 14:00."
"hen day 317 would actually be 53, from 'Arm Day', Armistice Day? Plus 53... that's just 2 days from now!", Sanders replied after looking at the wall chronometer.
"The Mandahar System is fairly close to the Colonies, but not too close", Cain mused, "but we now know that Captain Masters is alive and will be at the rendezvous in" - he paused, looking at the wall chronometer - "precisely two days and five hours from now".
"They're not letting on too much of who they are", Tolen commented, "so either they are still not one hundred percent sure of who we are or they are trying their best to foil any attempts by the Cylons to decode it should they intercept the transmission".
"Probably the latter. But I know who they are", Syke answered, "That reference to 'not in club' was referring to our last night in the O-club at the Picon base where we were on TDY. He and I were both cleaned out in cards by Starbuck - I mean, Lt. Thrace. We both swore that we would not go into an o-club again if she was playing. If Dragon had been captured, he would have said something else and that would have made me suspicious".
Cain nodded, reassured by Syke's answer. He turned to Sanders.
"What do you make about this 'TAC protocol' part of the message, Comms?", he asked. Sanders heard the 'how' in the question by the tone of voice.
"The new TAC rotation frequency protocol will be easy enough to program in. My guess is that they will not be at the exact co-ordinates, but will either communicate over the wireless when they detect our jump to the co-ordinates, or will be listening for us should we decide to go a little 'inexact' ourselves", Sanders answered.
"And it will be a rotation protocol that the Cylons won't know about, if they have indeed compromised the established rotation protocols", Tolen added.
"Those others must evidentially think so, if they are letting us know about this new one. Well then, we will have a place to make a rendezvous", Cain decided, "Captain Syke, you and Ensign Dutch will accompany the Peregrine crew to the rendezvous point. Make your plans accordingly", he finished, handing Syke a small circular disc in an envelope. Syke knew that it was a personal message from him to Masters' commander.
Nodding his understanding, Syke watched while both Cain and Tolen stood up and left the briefing room, leaving him alone there with Sanders.
"Do you have your cipher pads ready, Comms?", Syke asked Sanders.
"Yes, they are all ready for you to take, along with a list of probe jump-points in this sector", he replied, "which means that if there is a threat of capture, you must destroy then as they could point the way for the Cylons to find us".
Syke nodded. The other colonials would definitely need to know where to send their probes for any further communications, but if the list ever got into the wrong hands...
"When you're ready to depart, I'll personally deliver it to you. I guess that you'd better let Dutch, Hunter, and Sims know about the mission", Sanders said. With that, he left the conference room.
Syke sat there alone for a few minutes, thinking about the message and various possibilities for disaster. If this was an elaborate trap - though that personal note reference from Dragon to him made it unlikely - he had better make sure that the auto-destruct on the Peregrine works properly. Getting captured - either with or without the cipher pad and jump-point co-ordinates list - was a possibility that must not be allowed to happen, given his knowledge about the PEGASUS and Silver Spar Wing. He stood, then taking the message form with him, he left the conference room and headed back down to his office. He was going to have to let Razor, Hondo, and Coffin know that they were about to embark on a potentially risky mission...