A/N: We don't own any of the shows expanded upon in the following story.

Chapter 3

Galactica was near a star, refueling one of its weapons. The engines of the huge battlestar ran on tylium, however Baltar had devised a weapon which was refueled by energy from the stars. The Colonials had settled on the fifth planet of this star.

When they had arrived a year ago, they had found a race of humans that were descended from the people of Earth. Their ancestors had been brought to the planet as slaves four hundred years before. In the revolt that had freed the humans, the enslaving race, called the Briori, had been killed, and their ships destroyed. Thus, these humans did not know how to return to Earth or even where it was.

One of the patrols of Galactica, launched before it got too close to the star, was led by Apollo. The squadron had turned away from the sun, and was scanning the outer part of the system while the battlestar's sensors were temporarily blinded.

Apollo, the squadron commander, heard a beeping sound from his sensors. Something was coming into the system extremely fast. He recognized several of them. They were a Kazon fleet of predator class ships, chasing two smaller vessels.

He turned to his wing to see if she was receiving the same signals that he was. Kara Thrace, who had formerly used the call sign "Serena" had adopted her brother's call sign in his honor, when he had gone missing. She had already been a good pilot, but she had determined that his skills would not be lost. She had recorded and studied everything he had ever told her about piloting a viper, and now, her skills were quickly becoming as legendary as her brother's had been. Previously, it had been Starbuck and Apollo who were the best viper pilots around, followed closely by Boomer and Jolly. Now, this was arguably the case again, as the 'new' Starbuck was taking over the place her brother had left open when he was lost.

Lee Adama, who had married her a couple of years after his brother, Zak, died, was pleased at her piloting skills, but as she became more and more like her brother at the controls of a viper, she also seemed to take on more and more of his personality. While Karl Thrace had been his best friend, he wasn't sure what he thought of being married to a female version.

"What are you showing on your scanners, Starbuck?" He still balked at calling his wife that, but he understood that part of her tribute to her brother, if not the personality changes.

"It looks like the Kazon have found a new toy," she replied.

He shook his head at her attitude, but had to agree. "Let's shoot a tight beam signal to Galactica, then ease in to see if someone needs our help."

"That sounds good," Kara agreed. "Sending my sensor readings now."

"As soon as it's done, let's you and me do a brief shot with turbos, and get set up for intercept. Cut all power as soon as we're on course. We don't need the Kazon seeing us. The rest of you hang back, and rendezvous with Galactica when she comes away from the star."

"Okay. Transmission is sent."

"On my mark. Three, two, one, mark."

The two vipers blasted ahead of the patrol. The remaining ships continued on their way in the slow circle which would ultimately take them to their meeting with the battlestar.

Apollo watched the ships grow on his screen. He and Starbuck were flying Mk VII vipers, and the cockpits were crammed with electronic gear. "What do you make of the smaller ships?" he asked his wife.

"They're certainly not Kazon. I'm not familiar with the design…." she paused for a moment then exclaimed, "Frack! Lee, look at the writing on 'em."

He looked at what Kara was indicating, and couldn't believe his eyes. He hadn't seen strange vessels with English writing for some time. The larger of the two ships clearly had on it's arrowhead shaped section, U.S.S. Prometheus, then underneath that, it said NCC-59650. Underneath that, it had the word, Voyager. The smaller ship was called U.S.S. Equinox and what he assumed was its registry number was NCC-72381. "I wonder if they're from Earth?" he mused aloud.

"Whatever they are, we need to get rid of the Kazon. There's six to two. Those aren't fair odds," Starbuck replied.

They flew in silence for several minutes, watching ahead for the telltale dots that would be the alien ships to be discernable with the naked eye. Suddenly they heard the Kazon commander's voice over their comm systems.

"Adama of Galactica. Our quarrel is not with you. Leave here at once!"

"I don't think so, Maje," came the voice of Lee's father. "You aren't playing fair. You have them outnumbered."

"This is not your business!" the Kazon almost yelled into his pickup.

"What makes it yours?" Adama asked mildly. He was standing nonchalantly on his raised command platform, looking out at the Kazon ship.

"They destroyed one of our predator class ships at Ocampa!" was the reply.

"Well then, they seem to be my type of people." He turned to his tactical officer: "Omega, contact the Kazon's opponents and offer our assistance."

"Actually, we've been monitoring," came a new voice over the comlink. "This is Battle Captain Chakotay of the Federation Starship Prometheus, and I appreciate your offer. We could handle this ourselves, but your assistance is more than welcome."

Gaeta's eyebrows rose at the battle captain's voice. It was speaking untranslated English, and the name Prometheus was well known from Colonial mythology. He noticed something on his board and called to his commander, "The Kazons are powering their weapons."

"Tell them not to," was all Bill Adama said. The enormous battlestar had a clear shot past the Federation ships, and as Gaeta pushed a button, a small piece of crystal was propelled out of the bow. The crystal was orange in color and glowed. It was about the size of a terran plum.

On board Prometheus, Rodney McKay picked it up on his sensors. "Reverse course, full power, Now!"

Chakotay didn't wait for an explanation. "Do, it Tom! Relay to Equinox!"

"Already done," McKay said, and they saw that Andy wasn't waiting for questions to be answered either.

"Now would you mind telling me why we're backing…" Before Chakotay could finish, the Kazon vessel erupted in a blinding flash. The main viewscreen compensated by dimming, but the bridge crew was left blinking to clear their vision. "What happened?"

"The other ships are targeting Galactica!" Tuvok interrupted.

"Return the favor," Chakotay said grimly.

From the front of Prometheus, a ball of neutronium, the size of a pirate's cannonball emerged, travelling at nearly half the speed of light. It passed through the Kazon shields without noticing them, then came into phase with the ship approximately halfway down it's length. The Kazon's own engine blew the ship apart when the neutronium passed through the warp core."

Galactica made short work of one more of the Kazon ships, while the remaining three quickly realized they did not have the upper hand they had supposed, and sped back the way they had come.

On board Prometheus, the bridge crew was looking at the viewscreen. Janeway turned and looked at McKay. "What were those?"

"The little glowing crystal things?" Rodney asked. "Pretty much ballistically fired, miniature ZPMs," he told her.

"How miniature?" Chakotay asked.

"About the size of a golf ball," he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger in an oh shape.

"They pack quite a punch," the battle captain commented, his eyes wide.

"One of our ZPMs can destroy a solar system if it's detonated, properly," Janeway explained.

"Or improperly," Rodney amended.

"Thank you for warning us and not taking the time to explain," Chakotay told the Iconian doctor.

"Just looking out for my own butt too," McKay said shrugging.

"That is illogical," Tuvok commented. "You have ascended, therefore, if the ship had detonated, you would, in all likelihood, not have been harmed."

"Hmm," Rodney murmured, one eyebrow raising. "Yes, well…."

"Just accept the thanks gracefully, McKay," Paris said over his shoulder from the helm.

"You're welcome," Rodney said with a slight bow.

On Board Galactica…

"What did they fire at that Kazon ship?" Adama wanted to know.

"It's hard to tell," Gaeta said, studying his sensors. "I'm playing back its launch, but I don't know what it is. Nothing we know of should have been able to do this. It's possible that it's an element we've theorized."

"That didn't look very theoretical to me," Tigh said, deadpan.

"No, it was quite real, Sir." Gaeta directed their attention to a monitor. "This is slowed down several thousand times, Commander." The screen showed Prometheus come to a stop, then it jerked backwards about a ships length. "They just launched something incredibly heavy. Their sublight engine actually came on to help hold them from flying backwards as it launched." He turned to another monitor as it showed the effect on the Kazon ship. There appeared to be nothing wrong, then a gaping hole opened in the rear of the ship. Just as suddenly, the entire ship erupted into millions of flying pieces. "Let me replay this in a different wavelength and magnified." The picture rewound, and changed color. Omega magnified the image on the tail end of the ship. All was still until an object emerged, creating the hole. It looked very much like a ball bearing.

"What is that?" Tigh wanted to know. "How big is it?"

"We have theorized about an element we call neutronium. If it exists, and that's a big 'if', it would be formed in the heart of a neutron star. Mining it would be incredibly difficult. I'm not even sure how you'd go about it."

"Where did it enter?" Adama asked.

"I can't see an entrance hole, but I can tell you this, the entire ship starts to react to its presence about the time the projectile should be halfway through. If I had to guess, I'd say it was phased to get through the shields unimpeded, then it de-phased in the middle of the ship."

"How big?" Tigh asked again.

"About six inches diameter."

"Battle Captain Chakotay wasn't kidding when he said they could handle it themselves," Adama commented.

"Hardly," Lee Adama said as he walked up beside his father. Kara was right beside him.

"That's a powerful weapon they have," she said.

"We held our own pretty well too," Tigh said, drawing himself up to his full height.

"Yes, we did. Well, I suppose we should meet our possible allies," the commander said. "Omega, contact Prometheus and tell them we'd like to meet. Leave it up to them whose ship it's on."

Gaeta turned and contacted Chakotay.

On the Prometheus…

A meeting was set up, and Adama joined his wife, son, and daughter-in-law in a raptor. They watched as Prometheus grew in the windows of the shuttle. Adama was surprised to see that there was really no armor to speak of on the starship. There weren't any point defenses either, although he could see the energy weapon array on the top of the arrowhead shaped section. He had seen it in action during the battle, and they had been quite effective, although nowhere near as effective as the weapon that had destroyed a predator class ship with one shot.

What was very strange, however, was that he was certain there had been point defenses. He remembered the energy bolts firing from different weapon's installations around the ship's superstructure. Now, he could see absolutely no sign of them. He turned to his son, who was acting as co-pilot. "Do you see the point defense installations, Lee?"

"No, Father, I don't." The younger man hesitated a bit before continuing. "Kara and I did a flyby before returning to Galactica. It was real weird. As we were coming in close to the ship, I saw a gun sort of shimmer, then disappear. It wasn't retracted. It just disappeared."

"What are we getting into here?" Laura asked under her breath.

The doors on the back of the ship were open, and Kara skillfully piloted the raptor into the hold. Standing near the front wall were three people. A tall, dark-skinned man, and a lighter colored man and woman. They stepped up to the exit door of the shuttle and waited.

Kara looked around, taking in all of the shuttlebay, not that there was much to see. There were three shuttles against the port bulkhead, and there was some type of crane assembly suspended from the ceiling, but other than that, there was nothing in the room.

"We can breath the air," her husband was telling his parents, as she turned her attention to the door.

"Kinda figured," his father said as he hit the door controls.

"Welcome to Prometheus," the woman said, as they stepped to the deck. "I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway." At the slightly confused look from Adama, she added, "You could say I'm the 'peacetime commander' of this ship."

"You have a peacetime commander?" Laura asked, surprised. "It sounds wonderful that such a person could be used."

"It is," Janeway answered. "This is Battle Captain Chakotay, and Commander Tuvok, our head of security." For now, the fact that Prometheus was actually three different ships was being kept on a need to know basis.

"If you'll follow me, I'll show you some of the ship. Commander Lawson and Doctor McKay of Equinox will join us in the Captain's Mess," she continued as she led them out of the shuttlebay.

The tour was strange to Adama. They saw what was called the phaser array, and photon torpedo tubes, but Janeway didn't refer to the mysterious point defenses, or the gun that had destroyed the Kazon.

When they sat down at a table in the Captain's Mess, a steward brought glasses of water and mugs of a dark, steaming liquid.

Kara watched as Janeway took a sip and smiled at the steward, then tasted it, and found to her surprise, that it was coffee, and a very good roast at that. Janeway noticed the young woman watching her and commented. "I love a good cup of coffee."

"So do I," Kara answered, "but I'm kinda surprised to find that you have coffee."

"I'm surprised by a lot of things," Adama interjected. "For one, we are speaking untranslated English with each other. We speak it the same, and we write it the same, a fact that the names on our ships attest to, yet I've never seen any vessel like this."

Chakotay commented, "We've never seen one like yours. I find our similarities to be strange as well. We're on the other side of the galaxy from Earth, and we find a ship that…" He stopped as he saw all four from Galactica staring at him "Did I say something wrong?"

"You know where Earth is?" Laura asked, her voice very small.

"Chakotay and I are from Earth," Janeway answered.

"I am Vulcan," Tuvok said as he saw Lee looking at his ears.

"The United Federation of Planets consists of many different worlds," Chakotay explained. "Earth is just one of them."

"My people were originally from a planet that was destroyed almost a century ago," Tuvok continued. "We now reside on a planet called Ida, along with the remnants of the Klingons, another race in the Federation."

"We have a legend that we were originally from a world called 'Earth'," Adama said, "thousands of years ago."

"I don't understand how you would speak English if you left Earth thousands of years ago," Janeway said.

"It's the general language of our people spoken for millennia," Laura said. "I used to be a teacher, before rising to the position of president of our people."

"So for thousands of years, your people have spoken English?" Janeway was shocked.

"English as a language has only been around for a relatively short time," Tuvok argued.

"That's not the case," Andy said. "I've spoken English for over three hundred thousand years. So has Doctor McKay."

"Three hundred thousand years?" Lee almost choked on the coffee he was drinking. "Maybe we don't speak it the same." He looked around and said, "Three hundred thousand years is a long time for us. A very long time. No one lives anywhere near that long."

"It is for us too, and most of us don't live that long either" McKay said, stepping into the room with his wife, Jennifer. "I'm Doctor Rodney McKay and this is..." He stopped when he saw Kara.

"Oh my," Jennifer said after a moment. She turned to Janeway and motioned to the computer terminal on the wall. "May I?"

"Certainly, Doctor."

Rodney had slowly seated himself, all the while staring at Kara, so Janeway made introductions. "As Rodney said, he is Doctor Rodney McKay, and this is his wife, Jennifer. Jennifer is a medical doctor, and Rodney is a scientist."

Jennifer returned to the table and sat down beside her husband. She calmly reached up and pressed up on his lower jaw, closing his mouth. "You're gawking, Rodney," she said.

"Yes, but…" he stopped. He really didn't know what to say.

"I understand, but let me check a couple of things first, okay?"

"Fine," he told her. "Just do it quick. This is crazy."

"Is your name Kara?" she asked the young woman. "And yours, Lee? What has Rodney tongue tied, is that we think we know you. Would you mind if I checked something?"

"I'm certain I've never met you," Kara said. She looked at her father-in-law, asking if she should cooperate. He nodded in the affirmative, and she asked Jennifer, "Will it hurt?"

"I won't even touch you."

"Ok," Kara said. "Go ahead."

Jennifer picked up her tricorder and scanned the Adamas. As she suspected, Kara and Lee were Ca'Ra and Li, the ancients that she knew. "This is going to sound crazy to you, but your DNA matches some of our friends."

"How is that possible?" Laura asked.

"Well, yours and the commanders, aren't on file, Madam President, but your son and daughter-in-law, now… they're a different story."

"Are your friends clones?" Lee asked.

"No, and neither are you," Jennifer answered patiently.

"You're them," Rodney wasn't quite as patient, "Or they're you, whichever way you want to look at it." He turned to Chakotay and Janeway. "The bottom line is this. We know these people. They're the remnants of the twelve tribes of Kobol. Ca'Rel told us about it when Daniel and Vala found out about their past… The tribes are probably still fighting the Cylons."

Kara was staring. "You knew Karl?"

"I know Karl. Both of him," McKay said.

Lee was getting very confused, then something McKay said hit him. "Wait a minute. You know Kara's parents too?"

"Doctor McKay, I think we need to stop this line of inquiry right now," Janeway said sharply.

"Why?" McKay asked, bewildered why she would want it stopped. "Oh," he suddenly said. "I see. The thing is, Captain, I've had a fair amount to do with time travel and alternate universes. I don't think we're doing anything to alter the timeline here. Li told me what happened at this meeting, and we're actually going pretty much along the lines he said it went."

"Therefore, any changes in the timeline were made when Li told you about it, not now," Tuvok said.

"Right," Rodney agreed.

"So, as long as you know you're not overstepping your bounds, we won't change history, correct?" When McKay nodded, Tuvok went on. "You are overlooking one thing, Doctor. Each thing that you say changes what Li will tell you in his future, thereby, altering what you remember from your past."

"But if…" McKay started.

Suddenly, Lee Adama groaned and put his head down on the table. "When we talk about this in my future, will I tell you that I get a huge migraine from this conversation?" he asked.

Rodney raised his index finger. "Yes. Yes, you will," he said with a smug smile.

On Jord...

Once the meeting came to a close on Prometheus, Galactica escorted the Federation ships back to its adopted world.

Several more meetings were convened in the town hall in the capital of Jord. The general consensus was that the Colonials had somehow been missed when the Iconians left their timeline years ago. The Jordians, however, were a different matter. They definitely came from the current Earth. Their leader, John Evansville, took the command staffs of both ships, as well as the Adamas on a tour of their world.

In an underground bunker, Evansville showed them the 37s, a group of seven people who, though dead, were perfectly preserved. Janeway was fascinated with the machinery, and who was in it. She wiped away the condensation on one of the chambers, and saw a woman in a flight jacket. As she continued further down, she saw that there was a nametag on the jacket, reading "A. Earhart".

"A. Earhart," Janeway breathed. "This is incredible."

"You know her, Kathryn?" Laura asked.

"Not personally, but she disappeared from Earth over four hundred years ago. She was a pioneer in aviation, and a personal hero of mine." Janeway pulled out her tricorder, and scanned the woman. "Chakotay," her voice was almost silent. "She's alive!" Kathryn scanned the other six people. "They're all alive! They're in stasis!"

"Are you sure?" Chakotay asked, hardly able to believe it.

"Chakotay," she admonished, "if you see a bat'leth, do you know if it's been used?"

"Ok," he said. "What do we do?"

Janeway turned to Evansville and said, "It's your call."

The Jordian leader was dumbfounded. "We have always thought they were dead, just frozen. We had no idea they were alive. Can you wake them?"

In response, she tapped her comm-badge. "Please send the doctor down," she asked.

"That may be a bit of a problem," McKay's voice came back. "I'm having a time getting the remote emitter to work correctly." He looked at the console he had been working on again, and made a change. "I can try it, and also, Jennifer is here, if you want her."

"Thanks, Rodney," his wife said at the slight.

"It's not that they don't want… You're great at your job… You know what I…"

His voice trailed off as Janeway said, "Send them both, Rodney."

He tapped a few controls and his wife and the mobile emitter he had been working on disappeared from sickbay.

In the subterranean vault where the thirty-sevens were in stasis, Jennifer and the Emergency Medical Hologram appeared.

"Please state the nature of the… Where am I?" Clearly, the doctor was not on board any part of Prometheus.

"You're in a vault on the planet Jord," Jennifer explained. "What can we do for you, Captain?" she asked Janeway.

"I want you both to check these people in stasis. I think they can be revived, but I want to be sure."

Jennifer walked to where Janeway still stood beside the stasis chamber of Amelia Earhart. She looked at the flight jacket and turned to the captain. "Is that really her?"

"It certainly looks like her," Chakotay said, stepping closer. "It would certainly explain why people never found her after she disappeared."

"Indeed," Tuvok said.

"Wanna fill us in?" Kara asked.

"Amelia Earhart went missing as she was flying over the Pacific Ocean on a circumnavigation of the Earth," the doctor supplied.

Janeway's eyebrows went up. "I wasn't aware that you had access to all of the historic documents, Doctor."

"Of course, I do," he replied. "You never know when you will discover a cure in the historical archives. Something that someone missed at the time might save lives in the future."

"That makes sense," Chakotay offered.

"So how did this Amelia Earhart get here?" Lee asked no one in particular.

"She was one of the people abducted to start a race of slaves," Evansville explained.

"Excuse me," Jennifer said quietly from a console on the other side of the room. "Could you please double check me, Doctor? I think we can revive them."

The doctor hurried to where she was standing, and ran his eyes over the screen. "Most definitely," he agreed. "It shouldn't be hard at all."