Author's note: Here comes the second part and conclusion of Joshua's misfortunes.
Shane: They have. The Walkman that is not only a Walkman, but they don't keep it with them all the time. That is the reason why they always work in pair. If one is in trouble, the other can call for help, but in this case, Malcolm was busy elsewhere and unaware of Joshua's misfortune.
Guest: Nanites are tiny robots with their size measurable in nanometers. There could be many types of nanites so, do not mix replicator nanites with what the Terrans have created and are using. Their function is very different, and they were never meant to communicate with each other over great distances, to replicate, or to be able to form more complex forms. In a way, you can loosely call what the Terrans have medical nanites since their primary function is to help the host's body if needed, and nothing more.
silkef: glad you like it.
Thanks to my beta, and I hope you'll like this chapter too.
updated on 6/12/2019
Joshua woke up in a dimly lit room, on a ship he'd never seen or been before. What had happened to him was still fuzzy in his mind, probably as a direct consequence of the beating that he'd received from the CID agents. He could remember the blows and how the beating had gotten worse once they erroneously concluded that he wasn't a Terran but instead one of the twelve Cylon models. It was all because of their damn primitive test that he was in such a bad situation.
After that, everything became more or less a complete blur of quick events.
He didn't know how much time it took them, but eventually, they'd stopped with the beating and left him alone in his cell. That was when he'd promptly fallen unconscious for an unknown amount of time. When he'd awoken again, they were dragging him somewhere. He'd quickly learned they'd decided to transfer him to the Pegasus, and he knew it wasn't because on Pegasus they had stricter rules about the mistreatment of prisoners. He knew his transfer was precisely for the opposite reason.
But then, something happened that even he couldn't have predicted. During the trip from the Galactica to the Pegasus, the pilot of the raptor shot both CID agents who were keeping an eye on him, without even flinching, and then she'd quickly jumped the bird away. At that moment, Joshua knew something weird was going on, and yet it still took him several more jumps before starting to suspect what their intended destination was. Again, he had been beaten pretty bad, so his brain wasn't working at its usual speed or level of concentration.
Confirmation had come after the sixth, or maybe it was the seventh - he wasn't very lucid at that point - jump when, through the window, he saw glimpses of a Cylon baseship. He understood that the test the Colonials had performed on him must have attracted the attention of the Cylons - another confirmation on how bad Colonial security was - and they too were probably very curious on finding out who he was. The situation was possibly turning from bad to catastrophic, with him having no clue on how to get out of this predicament. He didn't know what the Cylons wanted or what they were planning to do to him to get it, but, whatever it was, he suspected that it wouldn't be something he'd particularly enjoy.
After the raptor docked with the baseship, two very lovely Centurions dragged him in a room and left him there for what felt like endless hours. To the Cylons' credit, though, they seemed to have better manners than the Colonials. They didn't dump him in a cell, but instead, he'd been confined inside a charming room, with a comfortable bed, adjacent bathroom, food, water and practically anything he could have wished for. Of course, that was except for freedom, since the doors were locked.
The doors of the room swung open, and seven people slowly entered the room, only stopping in front of the bed where he was resting.
Joshua bolted upright, watching intently at what he knew were different Cylon models. Thus far, he'd known of only the Cylon they were calling Leoben, the one the Colonials had found on the abandoned station. He knew about one more Cylon that Brian had managed to identify, but he'd never seen her.
Now he knew about six more.
"Umm… Hello," Joshua said, unsure on how to begin.
Six sat on the border of the bed, smiling. "Hello, Joshua. Or is it some other name that we should use to call you?"
"Umm… Joshua is fine."
"Well then, Joshua, I am sure that you're wondering why you're here," Six continued.
"The thought crossed my mind, yes."
"Well, once we heard the Colonials captured you and that they suspected you of being a Cylon spy, we had to do something, especially since we know you're not one of us. Do you know why the test has shown that you're a Cylon?"
He was at the point where he definitely should not tell them the truth, "No."
"So, you didn't know that you're a Cylon?"
"Umm… no?"
"And, as far as you know, your people don't know they're Cylons either?"
He knew he was starting to sound like a parrot, repeating the same word over and over, but what else could he say. "No."
Six turned to look at the others. "That explains it."
"Indeed it does," Four replied, before turning to Joshua. "Joshua, your people are descendants of the Thirteenth Colony. You're all Cylons, just like we are."
"Sure, whatever you say. As long as you don't start beating me, I'm fine with that."
"We are not going to beat you, Joshua. We saved you," Six replied in a calm and reassuring voice. "We only want to know more about your people. Maybe even meet them perhaps? Can you tell us something about your people, Joshua?"
Joshua said nothing.
Six turned again to look at the others. "He doesn't trust us."
"Understandable if he didn't even know that he was a Cylon up until this moment," Three replied.
"I think we should try to extract as many memories directly from his brain as we can," One added, making all others turn and look at him. "What? We are not getting anything out of him, and this is taking too long. I think that's a viable option that we should consider."
'Psycho much?' Joshua thought. That one was weird. "Umm… it is strange for me to say this, but, if I understand what he meant by that, I think I'd rather take the beating than what he's suggesting."
The others were still looking at One, with a stern or disapproving look.
Six looked back at Joshua. "You don't have to worry about One. Nobody is going to perform any invasive surgery on your brain. For now, you rest. We will talk later. I'll send some more food your way." Six rose from the bed, nudging the other to follow her out of the room.
The others took the hint and slowly left the room, closing and locking the doors as they went out.
"You freak!" Six shouted at One.
"Why?"
"Why! Because we are trying to become friends with these people, that's why! And instead of helping, you shout that you want to perform brain surgery on him!" Six barked at One.
"It is taking too long! At this pace, we'll die of old age before we're able to get anything out of him."
"We can't die of old age!" Six spat in anger.
"My point exactly," One replied, flatly.
Six was shaking her head disapprovingly. "We already got useful information from him. We now know that he and his people don't know they're Cylons, which is a better option than the other possibility your double suggested, the one in which they know what we did to the five surviving Cylons from the Thirteenth Colony."
"But we still don't know where his people are. Besides, I'm sure that his people would understand the need to extract information quickly once we explain that they are all Cylons, and we needed to find them quickly."
"Don't give me that crap! You just want to poke inside his brain!" Three added. She knew One enough to understand what made him tick.
"This conversation needs to end! There's no point in discussing this any longer. We are not going to perform surgery on him, and that's final. Besides, we don't even know if they use resurrection. The operation could end his life for good." Four was starting to feel fed up by Six and One's squabbling.
"I haven't even thought about that. From what we know, the Final Five restarted the resurrection process only after they found out the Holocaust was coming. It's entirely possible that this offshoot of the Thirteenth Colony doesn't use it, at all. If they don't even know that they're Cylons, that then becomes almost a certainty," Three added, thoughtfully.
"Fine, we're not performing any surgery on him, but we still need to make him talk. We also need to contact our people and tell them what's going on here, because–"
She acted fast!
"Your turn!" Six shouted while performing a quick-draw of the small and previously concealed gun she had on her. One's head blew, showering with blood the wall behind him. He didn't even have the time to end the sentence.
Five gave a stern look at Six.
She didn't know why, though. "What?"
"You should have waited for just a little. Maybe some of us would have liked to give a message of our own before you blew his head off," Five replied.
"No way I'm waiting for him to draw first!"
Eight looked puzzled at what had just transpired. They were at it again. Once more, they were using this awesome new way of faster-than-light communication that she, thus far, had only heard in conversation but had never witnessed firsthand. "Does everyone carry a gun these days?"
"I do," Three said.
"Me too," Four confirmed.
The others nodded, with Five showing her the one he was carrying behind his back and another one holstered around his ankle.
"I suppose this means that I should start carrying one too," Eight said, feeling dejected. She had a feeling that not all technologies were good for your health, especially if misused. Even though it wasn't damaging for their physical health, she believed it was damaging for their mental one; she was almost sure of that. It definitely wasn't healthy to go blowing up each other's heads, even with resurrection available. "Are we sure this is a good idea? I mean, One, as he is now, is already insane. Who knows what repeatedly blowing his head is doing to his already demented psyche."
The rest remained thoughtful for quite some time, thinking, up until the moment when Three finally decided to answer. "I think the opposite's true. He's already demented, so he's the best candidate for this new way of FTL communication. He can't get much worse than he already is. On the other hand, we might!"
"I agree. We should use One exclusively," Six added, grinning widely.
"Do we have a consensus?" Four asked.
Everybody agreed.
Through the closed doors, Joshua listened intently to the disconcerting conversation these Cylons were having.
There was no point in denying the truth of his situation.
They were nuts.
…and he was a dead man.
As Malcolm walked toward his room, he thought about how he'd never seen so much turmoil aboard the Galactica as he'd seen today. His mission on the Cloud Nine had been uneventful, boring even, the same as the last three times he had to go there to meet with his informant - the usually tedious job that somebody needed to do week after week regardless of its usefulness. He didn't mind doing it though since it gave him the chance to leave the Galactica for a time. It wasn't like life on the Galactica was all that exciting either.
Of course, this particular time, he'd have preferred if he'd stayed on the ship. The moment he'd stepped back on the ship, he knew something was wrong. People were talking, spitting theories left and right, and in general trying to guess what was going on. If you listened to some, it was business as usual. If you listened to others, the end of days was coming - any moment now. So, it took him some time to sort out the relevant theories and come up with one of his own.
The first thing he understood, and that he was sure was a real fact that happened, was that they'd captured a spy who turned out to be a Cylon. At first, nobody knew who this spy was, but then he met with Chief Tyrol who told him that Joshua had been put under arrest, and that probably the Cylon spy they were referring to was him.
Malcolm didn't know what to think. How could they believe that Joshua was a Cylon? What proof could have made them suspect him of being one in the first place?
His first thought, after he'd learned that the CID had been tasked with the interrogation, was to find a quick way to free him. Maybe take some weapons from the armory and storm the brig. He'd think about what to do next after releasing his pal. But then, he heard the rumor that the prisoner was being transferred to the Pegasus, which indeed considerably complicated things since there was no way he could find an excuse to go to the other ship. What he decided to do next was to go to continue on his way to his bunk where he could contact Brian. Maybe then they could mount a quick extraction. However, not even a minute later, he changed his mind. While on his way to his shared room, he heard a new rumor. People were now saying that the raptor tasked with the transport of the prisoner to the Pegasus had disappeared.
The prisoner had never reached the Pegasus.
Malcolm stormed into his room, glancing around to see if there was someone inside. There was no one which was a good thing. With the rumors and chaotic situation on the ship, it wasn't strange that personnel had gone to their posts or somewhere where they could at least listen to theories on what was truly going on.
Malcolm grabbed his Walkman, mentally instructing it to connect with Brian.
In the Intelligence Gathering Room (IGR) aboard the Prometheus, Brian and several other TIA agents were working on their consoles. The job of intelligence gathering was, for the most part, a very tedious one. If an agent weren't in the field, he would spend endless hours in the IGR analyzing data from all sources, trying to sort out important information, mostly out of heaps of garbage. Even with the advent of advanced software and AIs, agents still needed to go through all the data to make sure nothing had been missed.
And Brian also needed to prepare the monthly report of what new information they had been able to collect for his boss, Klaus. In Brian's opinion, they needed to pay more attention to the Colonial-Cylon war. However, the Council was still focusing their efforts on the various battles against the other races they were fighting. It was true that, compared to a threat like the Ori, Wraith or Aschen, the Cylons were a small fish in a vast pond, but if there was something Brian was sure of was that with machines you never knew what to expect. He'd studied the evolution of the Replicators from when they'd emerged in the Ida galaxy and then spread elsewhere, as well as researching the differences with the Asurans in the Pegasus galaxy. Although the Cylons were a different beast, he had the feeling that they could quickly progress to a point where they might become a threat even to the Terrans and the SGA. In his opinion, they should be dealing with them now rather than later, when the situation became worrisome. He knew many ships would be needed to accomplish this task if they wanted to contain the Cylons without leaving any holes that could be exploited. It would be difficult mostly because they didn't know where the Cylons were and because their jump drive gave them the advantage to disappear without a trace in an instant. He still thought the Council would wait until they were done with the other threats first before dealing with the Cylons, at which point it could be too late.
He hoped he was just paranoid.
Brian's console chirped, informing him of a communication request from Malcolm. Brian straightened in his chair. It wasn't a scheduled communiqué, which meant that something unexpected had occurred.
He opened the connection. "What is it, Malcolm?"
"Boss, we have a big problem here. Joshua was arrested under suspicion of being the spy that sabotaged the Tel'tak. They later did some testing and concluded that he's a Cylon."
Cylon spy? Brian thought. They needed to act quickly, "Malcolm, we can be there in fifteen minutes. We will beam Joshua away the moment we are in range. Do you need extraction as well?"
"Umm… it's not that simple, Boss. From what I can tell, the Colonials had decided to transfer him from the Galactica to the Pegasus, but he never reached the other ship. I heard a few rumors, so I can't be sure, but it seems the raptor carryin' Joshua jumped away during transport. Nobody here knows why or where it went. There are a few people who think the CID is involved – there were two CID agents on board the raptor – but I'm not sure about that. It doesn't make sense for the CID to do that; not while he was already in custody."
What he was hearing was some worrisome news. "All right, Malcolm. We'll start canvassing the area around the Expeditionary Fleet. Maybe we'll get lucky and pick up his transponder signal. How long ago did the raptor disappear?"
"Not sure, Boss. An hour, maybe an hour and a half ago, tops."
It was a lot. In that time, the raptor could have jumped several times, and the new transponders that all agents had could broadcast a signal for only a few light-years. "We'll start with the search. You, Malcolm, try to find out as much as you can on your end. Maybe they have some theories on what happened that can help us in our search."
"Will do, Boss. I'll make contact the moment I know something. Malcolm out."
Brian closed the connection and bolted from his seat and out of the room. There was no time to waste. Every minute that passes made the area they'd need to search bigger.
Ba'al had become a very pragmatic symbiote, and he could even recall the precise moment when it had happened. It was the moment when he had no choice but to do it.
It was the sudden rise of the Tau'ri that had forced him to change. Up until that moment, he'd been the same as any other Goa'uld. A delusional egomaniac who thought nobody could ever face the Goa'uld Empire and survive to tell the tale. But, while his brethren had continued indulging in their delusions of grandeur, he'd started to analyze the difficulties they were facing. The Tau'ri were on the rise, there was no question about it, but they alone were still a small fish in a large pond - a pond ruled by the vast Goa'uld empire. However, he'd also noticed something the other Goa'uld hadn't. They were all under the impression that the Asgard weren't fighting them and instead were using their Protected Planets Treaty as a way of limiting their influence because they didn't have the necessary strength to oppose them directly. While this was probably true, Ba'al had started to think about the reason why that was. Why weren't the Asgard storming the Milky Way galaxy with their powerful warships capable of blasting theirs with relative ease? He knew the Asgard were far more advanced than them. That alone was telling him that the Asgard should have been able to fight them more effectively, but since they weren't, he'd concluded that they must have problems of their own in their galaxy. That also suggested that somebody powerful enough to give even the Asgard pause had to be there. Someone that could prevent them from diverting their resources towards the Milky Way galaxy. He also knew that conflicts couldn't last forever. It was only logical to think that, eventually, there would be a victor. No matter if the Asgard won or if the other side did, the Goa'uld would have to face a mighty foe in the future.
His fear had become a reality when the Tau'ri had helped the Asgard fight their long-lasting enemy, the Replicators. By doing so, they had freed them from the chains that were limiting their reach into other galaxies. It was a bad situation, and it was the reason he'd sided with the monster known as Anubis. That and the fact that, if he hadn't, the psycho would have tortured him until he changed his mind.
Unfortunately, he'd bet on the wrong horse, which had become apparent very quickly, especially after he found out that a race from the Andromeda galaxy led by an Alterran had sided with the Tau'ri and Asgard. That was the exact moment when he understood that it was time to change the scenery, as well as become very pragmatic and cautious. From that point on, he could no longer let his ego decide what his moves would be. Because, if he did and tried to rule over some planet in a ridiculously vain attempt to recreate the Goa'uld Empire once again, he would end up like his brethren or clones - dead, buried and long forgotten.
Currently, he'd just been long forgotten, which was fine by him.
But he couldn't pass an opportunity such as the one that had recently presented itself. The Colonies were untouched territory, with the only problem having to deal with some robotic race called the Cylons. There were still some things he didn't know, though. Some lost colony of theirs - the host didn't much know about it because the government was keeping it secret – was somehow involved. He knew Admiral Cain's taskforce was meeting with the Expeditionary Fleet that was tasked with finding the fabled Thirteenth Colony. They had helped them repel the initial Cylon attack that would otherwise have wiped them out, which was why they wanted to find them, but not much more than that was known about them.
Fortunately, he wasn't with the taskforce anymore. After he'd flown the raptor back and landed on the Pegasus, he'd immediately been tasked to return to the Colonies with the news of the newly discovered world, about the people they'd found on it, and the availability of Tylium in the system. The Colonies were using the material as their primary chemical fuel. They were using it almost for everything, and they could never have enough of it.
Once he'd returned to Picon Anchorage and had delivered the news to some big shot, he'd started thinking on ways to stay in the Colonies. The first thought was to find a different host while killing the current one, but he knew that leaving a trail of bodies wasn't very stealthy. He also couldn't leave his current host alive. There would be too many facts the pilot would be able to tell to allow that. No, he had to find a different way to stay.
What he did was to go to the bathroom and simulate a slip on the wet floor - the bathroom floor he had made wet - and in the process, he accidentally broke the host's right ankle.
He'd enjoyed sensing the host's pain.
Once he'd done that, he only needed to keep the host's body from healing until the doctor on the station completed examining him and placed his foot in a cast. At that moment, he'd stopped being eligible for active duty and was put on Medical Leave for at least a month.
Once he reached the host's apartment in the capital city of Picon, the real planning would begin - a detailed plan on how he was going to infiltrate the Colonies. Of course, his first thought had been to take their leader, their president, as his next host, but that had been his ego talking, and he'd promised himself that he'd be more careful in the future and not rush things. Besides, the Colonies needed his help to fight the Cylons, and there wasn't much he could accomplish if he took a politician as his next host. Not if he was planning to uplift the Colonials, and he did intend to do just that. Elections were also coming. Not much point in taking a host that could very well lose the presidency in less than a month was there?
It would be foolish of him to do that.
Since the president wasn't the right choice, he'd started thinking of whom he could take that could help him uplift the Colonies without raising too many suspicions. Searching through their global network, he'd found that, even after the fall of Caprica, Graystone Industries retained the primacy as the biggest R&D company for the military. They were currently residing on Picon, in the company's only surviving research facility. The company was still doing almost 70% of the total military research and development, with doctor Robert Desai as one of their leading scientists who worked on developing entirely new theories and their possible application. Indeed, the man was the best candidate for what he was planning to do. Such host would give him the much-needed knowledge on the Colonials' current tech level, as well as the needed access to their advanced research facilities.
That was also why, at that exact moment, he was standing in his current host's bedroom, with an unconscious Robert Desai that he'd kidnapped earlier this morning lying on the bed in front of him.
Ba'al forced his current host to take the syringe standing on the nightstand that he'd previously filled with an overdose of what passed as the most potent recreational drug in the Colonies. He could sense the terror that his host was feeling as he must have understood what he was forcing him to do.
He was glad.
Ba'al stuck the needle in the host's arm, injecting the entire content into his vain. Almost immediately, he began sensing the euphoria the drug was causing to the host. Too bad that he didn't have the time to savor the man's last moments of life. He needed to leave the body now while he still could. He exited the host from his mouth - so that he would leave the least of evidence possible - and leaped on the bed. He proceeded to the back of his next host's neck and quickly went inside.
Ba'al's new host woke up abruptly, immediately standing upright in the bed. Ba'al could sense the surge of new knowledge and memories flooding his mind, and the terror and confusion of his new host. He could now see through his new host's eyes as his former host crumbled onto the floor. Shortly after, the man began convulsing. Ba'al knew the overdose he gave him would kill him soon and that whoever found the body would think the man had simply OD-ed.
Just another junky who didn't know when to stop.
There was something curious about his new memories. There were many important things that his previous host didn't know. Graystone Industries had recently come into possession of some pieces of hardware from an unknown spacecraft. And from the memories of the host, he knew that those had belonged to a Tel'tak. This discovery could greatly help him fake the development of new technologies. Too bad there were only pieces of the ship and not the entire thing. With a whole Tel'tak at his disposal, he could have faked the development of everything that he wanted. Instead, with only a few pieces, he would have to get creative.
He hated this research crap, even though he knew most of it on a genetic level. He always gave the research and development to some other, lesser Goa'uld like Nerus. But he didn't have that option now. He would have to do most of the tedious work alone. Still, maybe he could use the bunch of scientists working in Graystone Industries to do at least some of the menial work while he worked on the problematic parts he knew the Colonials wouldn't understand. Robert Desai was going to become the lead scientist in the Colonies - one even more famous than Gaius Baltar. Only after he laid the grounds for the next massive burst of new technologies would he go for his next host. It would probably be the president of the Colonies, whoever the person might be at the time.
It was time to leave the dead pilot's apartment, and see his new place of employment, the Graystone Industries' research division on Picon.
It was time to begin uplifting the Colonies.
Adama was slowly losing his patience. He'd been at it for ten minutes now, and he had other more important things that he needed to deal with. But Cain with whom he was speaking over the comm was trying to stall. "Admiral, there's no point in waiting for the raptor to return."
"Admiral Adama, it's been only twelve hours since we've lost contact with the raptor. We should wait for at least a few more days to see if it were only a faulty jump that's causing the delay."
Adama rolled his eyes in frustration. The missing raptor didn't jump erroneously, something Cain knew very well. She just wanted to stay here for as long as possible so that she could make repairs to her ships and maybe then restart their previous - and endless - discussion about Roslin's decision to keep the shield generator with the fleet.
This also hadn't been her first attempt. First, she wanted to send a raptor back to the Colonies and ask for the fleet to wait until the craft returned with new instructions from the president. She wanted them to stay here for possibly up to two weeks or more if the raptor had for some unforeseen reason been delayed. She was insane if she thought that such a simple ruse could ever work.
After she understood that the Fleet wasn't going to wait, she began insisting that they needed to wait for the raptor gone missing because, in her personal opinion, the raptor hadn't jumped intentionally, but rather it had been because of a malfunction. The idea not only was ridiculous but even if it were true that the raptor had jumped because of an electronic glitch, which it wasn't, twelve hours was plenty of time to repair any damage if it could ever be fixed. If it wasn't possible, they could wait here for years, and the result would remain the same. And that was only under the false assumption that the raptor had malfunctioned, something Adama was a hundred percent sure wasn't what had happened. There were only two possibilities here. One, the raptor was jumping back to Colonial space, in which case the CID agents were the one responsible. Or, as the second option, the raptor is on its way to the closest baseship if the Cylon spy had somehow taken control from Boomer. Even though he didn't like any of these options, he knew there was no door number three to pick. The raptor was going back home or toward the closest baseship, and there hadn't been any malfunctions as Cain was suggesting, period.
"Admiral Cain, the Fleet's jumping in twenty minutes. You can jump with us, or you can stay here and wait for the missing raptor, it's your choice, but this is my final decision. Adama out," Adama said, quickly motioning to Dee to kill the connection. There would be no more discussion, and if she decided to stay here, there was no way she could later catch up with them, which was okay with him.
Adama sighed. His blood pressure was on the rise again, and he hadn't dealt with Gaius Baltar yet. He wasn't predicting any problems, but even the thought of talking with the self-absorbed man with a god complex was enough to make his blood pressure skyrocket. "Doctor Baltar, how is this going to work?"
Gaius raised his head from the console he was looking at. "Uh, yes, Admiral. Just one moment."
Adama raised an eyebrow. The doctor had two hours to finalize his latest contraption, yet he was still making him wait. "Whenever you're ready, Doctor." He was sarcastic, but he doubted that the doctor had noticed.
"All right; I'm all done," Gaius began saying while turning. "Well, this navigation system I've come up with is completely separated from the rest of Galactica's systems, so there's no need to worry about a virus infecting it… and maybe giving us the coordinates for the next jump inside a star, ha-ha" He attempted to make a joke, and he even laughed. He wasn't funny, at all. Sailors weren't the right people to listen to anecdotes about faulty jumps. After coughing awkwardly, Gaius decided to continue. "Anyway, our next jump will take us twenty light-years from here. The new system can easily calculate the coordinates for such a jump in a little over one hour. As you know, the time it takes to calculate a jump raises almost exponentially with the distance. For a jump of around fifty light-years, it will take the system almost ten hours to calculate the coordinates. I don't think that we'll ever use longer jumps than that."
"Doctor, why are we not testing a fifty light-years jump instead of just twenty? I thought we were trying to test the system's limits," Adama asked.
"Yes, we are going to do just that, but the new navigation system isn't the only thing that needs testing. No one has ever before tried to jump twenty light-years and nobody has ever tested the jump capabilities of old ships like the Galactica and several other even older ship in the remainder of the fleet. We need to see how our jump drives fare with shorter jumps first. The power requirements will also rise when we make longer jumps. Not by as much as somebody would think, mostly because most of the needed energy is used during the formation of the rapture in space, no matter how distant the destination point is. But there's still an increase in the power requirements, and that's what we need to monitor closely."
"So, what do we do once the new nav-system gives us the coordinates?"
"You simply input the coordinates into the jump drive manually, as well as broadcast them to the rest of the fleet."
"Very well. Dee, send the fleet the coordinates once the Doctor gives them to you, and notify them that we're about to jump."
"Yes, sir," Dee replied, broadcasting the message for the Fleet to prepare. "The Pegasus is also requesting the jump coordinates, sir."
"Good." Cain must have understood there wouldn't be any more discussion. "Start the clock, Mr. Gaeta."
In thirty seconds, the fleet jumped away.
From this point on, there would be no more contacts with the Colonies.
Brian was starting to worry. They'd been searching for Joshua for more than an hour now, and they still weren't picking his transponder signal, which wasn't even that difficult to understand why. The subcutaneous transponders all agents had wasn't built with long-range in mind. Instead, it was made to be the smallest possible, and with a shielding coating that would prevent its discovery against most scanning methods. Still, the Terrans knew that having the ability to detect it at longer ranges could be of great comfort to the agents. Because of it, the transponder would intermittently boost its broadcasted signal every five minutes, creating a single spike that could, in theory, be detected at a distance of up to ten light-years. Of course, the transponder wasn't the only piece that was important in the detection process. The receiving end was as crucial as the transponder was. Unfortunately, the Prometheus wasn't the newest ship in the Terran arsenal, and it hadn't gone through any noticeable upgrades to its sensor suite in quite some time. The new Copernic class exploration vessel could probably pick the small implant's signal at an even greater distance than ten light-years. As it was though, the Prometheus could maybe hope to detect the signal at no more than four light-years away. Even worse, since the spike would occur in a five minutes interval, they couldn't travel at their max achievable speed if they didn't want to skip the signal during the search.
Brian knew that, without limiting the region of space where they had to look, the chances of finding Joshua were small. So, he'd started thinking on how to define the area they needed to check. His idea was that a real Cylon spy had probably taken the raptor. The Cylons must have found out about the Colonials suspecting Joshua of being a Cylon, and they probably wanted to find out more on how that was even possible. So, he tried to think like the pilot of the raptor. He or she would want to find a Cylon baseship in the region, but without knowing its exact coordinates, the only thing the pilot could do was to jump to a predefined rendezvous point. Somewhere where the Cylon operatives had been told they could expect a baseship to be. And since there's not much logic in placing such a location in the middle of nowhere – or at least he hoped that was the case – he predicted that the rendezvous point would be inside a system. Without the ability for FTL communication, the Cylons must have devised a list of star systems where a baseship or at least a picket would be.
The second assumption he'd made was that the rendezvous point would be behind the current position of the Expeditionary Fleet relative to the Colonies, and not ahead. It was a lot of assumptions on his part, and he didn't particularly like making them, but he needed to limit the search area somehow, or they were only wasting time.
And, this time, he got lucky.
"Sir, the long-range sensors detected the transponder's spike originating 3.7 light-years away," the lieutenant operating the sensors station notified his captain.
Pendergast quickly shifted in the captain's chair, glancing at his display before turning back to look at Brian who was standing just behind him. "You were right. The signal is coming from inside a star system."
"I was lucky, that's all. I'd recommend a stealthy incursion in the system, Captain, but I suppose you were already planning to do just that."
"I was, yes," Pendergast replied before turned to look forward. "Helm, plot a course that will take us out of hyperspace on the other side of the planet relative to the signal's position and cloak the ship the moment we are back in n-space."
"Aye, Captain."
Minutes later, the Prometheus burst back into normal space with the planet between them and the Cylon baseship, quickly activating their cloaking system. It was one of the few upgrades that the oldest Terrans spaceship had gone through before its current long-term mission had started. Without it, it would be difficult for them to spy on the Colonials without being noticed, as their mission demanded of them.
Cloaked, the ship circled the planet, quickly entering visual range of the Cylon ten times larger baseship.
"It looks intimidating, doesn't it?" Brian said as he watched the now visible ship on the main screen.
Pendergast grinned. "Looks, yes. Is, not so sure about that."
"Still, we should continue keeping a low profile. For one, because I have no intention of making contact with the Cylons at this point, and second because we still don't have a viable defense against their jumping capabilities. They could send hundreds of raiders on a jumping frenzy, trying to get inside our shields." Brian was still thought that discretion was needed. When they found out everything there was to know about the Cylons, only then an introduction would happen and not before.
"I thought our scientists concluded that a jump couldn't happen inside a solid object? Something about the rapture in space not being able to form?"
"True, that's the theory anyway, but I'm not worried about them jumping inside our ship, but rather next to it but still inside the shields' bubble. Except for the Auroras that have Alterran based shields, our other ships form a perfect sphere, and that means there's room in-between. There's also the fact that the Prometheus isn't the newest gal on the block, is she?"
"No, she isn't," Pendergast replied. It was true that the Prometheus was far from on par with current Terran shipbuilding standards. "How do you want us to approach this, Captain?"
"Do we have Joshua's exact coordinates?" Brian asked and promptly received a nod from the sensors officer. "Good. Do we know if he's alone?"
"Not without going active with our sensors, sir," the same officer replied.
"Okay, that could be a problem if we're to retain a stealthy approach," Brian said, scratching his head while thinking.
"Not necessarily, sir."
"What do you mean?"
"Sir, we have both passive and active sensors that are Asgard in origin, and they work through subspace. They detect the subspace noise translated from normal space all energy emissions create, no matter how small. We know the Cylons, the same as the Colonials, don't have FTL communication or sensors that work through subspace. Then it's not too farfetched to think that they have no way of detecting Asgard active scanning."
"That's some very clever thinking, Lieutenant," Pendergast said, before turning to face Brian. "What do you think? Should we risk it?"
"I don't think that we have a choice. We are not going to engage them in a battle to free Joshua, so..."
"No, I suppose we're not," Pendergast replied. "Lieutenant, I want you to use the active sensors, just long enough to get a clear picture of where Joshua is and if there's some Cylon in sight of him. If he's alone, you don't wait for my order. You beam him right away."
"Yes, sir."
Six, and Three were on their way to see the Terran they'd saved from the clutches of the Colonials. Six had insisted, and Three had wholly agreed, that it was better if they were to talk to him alone, without the rest of the entourage comprised by the remaining Cylon models numbered One through Eight. They thought that Joshua, or whatever his real name was, would be more comfortable talking to just the two of them — especially without One blurting out how they should perform live brain surgery on him to extract what he knew. It was stupid to say something like that while he was present, even if they were planning to do it, which they weren't. But then, Six remembered that One was a psycho and a sadist who thrived on watching other's reactions to similar revelations.
He wasn't the diplomatic type.
"You still think the Terran agent will open up to the two of us?" Three asked. She shared Six's belief that they should instill some friendly rapport with the Terran, but she wasn't sure if the Terran agent would ever trust them enough to tell them where his people were or, at the very least, how to contact them.
"Not if we start threatening him we'll open his skull," Six replied, pissed. There was a good chance that One's remark had cost them a lot of goodwill points in the eyes of the Terran spy. If not impossible, now it was going to be much more difficult to become friends. It was never a good thing for the other side to think that some of your members were insane.
"But what if he doesn't come to his senses? What if he never tells us where his people are?"
"Then we open his skull and extract the knowledge we need the hard way," Six added.
"Good, I was starting to think that you were ready to spend the next several months trying to get something out of the man."
"No, if he doesn't tell us what we want to know in the next few days, we are opening him up like a tin can."
As the two Cylons were reaching Joshua's room, they abruptly stopped, both clutching their heads in considerable discomfort. It wasn't precisely acute pain, but it wasn't enjoyable either.
"What the hell. It feels like my head is ready to explode!" Six said.
"Mine too," three added. The next instant, the feeling began subsiding before it completely disappeared.
"It stopped. The back of my head hurt for a few seconds," Six said, clueless of what could have caused it.
"Mine too. If I have to guess, I would say the part of my brain where the cluster of nanites responsible for the resurrection process was where it hurt."
"I hadn't thought about that, but I think you're right. Some interference, maybe?"
"How should I know? We still don't know anything about how resurrection works. But, if both of us felt it at the same time, it definitely should be environmental. It couldn't be a glitch if both of us felt it."
"We should ask the others if they felt it and see if the ship's systems detected something."
"Let's talk with Joshua first, and then we'll deal with whatever this was."
The room was just up ahead, and it took them less than a minute to reach it. Reach it, open the door, and find out that the room was empty.
Joshua was nowhere to be seen.
Okay, this is awkward.
Of course, Joshua - or rather Peter, as that was his real name - was incredibly relieved he'd been saved after all that he'd gone through. But relieved was also a word he didn't like to use in the current circumstance. Of all the moments they could have saved him, they'd done it by beaming him in the middle of the bridge, just as he'd gone to the bathroom.
It wasn't the way to show up in front of your boss, the captain of the Prometheus, and the rest of the freaking entire bridge crew!
Thank God, I haven't leaked in the middle of the bridge!
Buttoning up his pants with speed even photons would have envied, Joshua promptly straightened up and pretended as if nothing happened. "Umm, hi, Boss! Thanks for the save."
Brian thought that everybody should pretend as if nothing strange had occurred. He knew he was going to. "I'm just glad that we could reach you in time. I was worried about what the Cylons were doing to you."
"Actually, except for one of them suggesting opening my skull to find out what secrets it holds, they were much more cordial than the Colonial interrogators ever were. Even while they thought I was from the Thirteenth Colony, the CID agents weren't very gentle. Once they began suspecting that I was a Cylon, well, after that, things quickly went for the worse. But, on the bright side, I can happily inform you that the nanites are doing a great job at healing injuries and lowering the pain."
"Good, good, I'm glad," Brian began. "Well, you know the drill. Go see the ship's doctor and get checked out, and then take some time to rest before writing a full report on what went down."
"Sure thing, Boss," Peter replied, gladly moving out of the bridge, even though it was to visit the doctor.
Pendergast turned to face Brian. "So, are we done here?"
"Not yet. Since we are here, why don't we leave a nice tracking device somewhere on their baseship? Please beam one in some secluded section of the ship before we leave. I'm going back to the IGR."
"Good idea."
Brian nodded before leaving the bridge. Maybe this entire ordeal could turn out to be a positive thing if they could track at least one of the Cylons baseships.
Who knows where it could lead them.
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