Time: Present

Inside Cape Canerval, Florida, the mission control room for NASA was filled to the brim with government officials, and military officers of all respective branches.

Several NASA Technicians studied the Central Board as final preparations for take-off commenced.

The president was holding his breath without noticing it. Realizing his mistake, he exhaled as quietly as possible. He studied the Central Board in Mission Control. The screens had been modified to allow for multiple views of all of the spacecraft taking off simultaneously.

The new space craft were several U.S. Navy ships that had been hastily converted into viable space platforms.

Hermiod and Brage, the Asguard engineering representatives stood near a high tech console, that stood at human height. Their diminutive stature required an equivalent of a "step-stool" for them to reach the controls.

The President turned to Hermiod, already known as E.T's smart ass cousin. In fact, many of his off hand comments and arrogance of all things Asguard had fell upon stunned ears. Many humans that worked around him often referred to him as an "ASSGuard."

"Well Hermiod and Brage, this is it." Hayes said.

Brage nodded, but said nothing, while Hermiod looked at the president, "Why you humans state the blatantly obvious is beyond my superior Asguard intellect."

The president trying to be diplomatic, "We like to discuss…never mind, I just wanted to say thank you to both of you for all of your hard work."

Brage nodded once again, "The Asguard are pleased to assist Earth with it's defense, after all SG-1 has done to rid the universe of the replicators, this is the least the Asguard could do."

President Hayes smiled, he liked Brage, his thoughtful approach to interacting made it easy to like him. Unlike his counterpart, Hermiod, Brage was forthcoming and helpful and humble. "How does everything look?"

Brage visually scanned his console, "All systems are within defined parameters, or as you humans say, "We are good to go."

Hermiod shook his head and spoke in his native language and ignored the president.

Hayes inclined his head forward, silently asking the unspoken question.

Brage frowned at Hermiod and then turned to face the president. If Hayes had not spent some time with both of the Asguard he might have missed Brage's embarrassment, "Like Hermiod, I have confidence in our calculations. Many variables were calculated with a considerable amount of margin for error. We are quite confident of an incident free launch of all retrofitted vessels."

Weakly smiling, Hayes could guess what Hermiod had really said. Choosing to view the launch he turned toward the Mission Control screens mounted on the front end of the room.

The screens showed the ten separate naval launch sites.

An Mission Control announcer asked, "All stations check in, go/no go for launch."

In response all the launch sites responded in sequence.

Bremerton, Washington "Go."

Everett, Washington "Go."

Groton, Connecticut "Go."

Kings Bay, Georgia, "Go."

Little Creek, Virginia, "Go."

Mayport, Florida, "Go."

Norfolk, Virginia, "Go."

San Diego, California, "Go."

Sasebo, Japan, "Go."

Yokosuka, Japan"Go."

A Navy admiral gripped the back of a chair till his knuckles turned white.

"T minus one minute and counting."

The vice president, standing beside his boss uttered in a brief whisper, "Come on!"

At the thirty second mark the Mission Controller continued, "T minus thirty seconds and counting."

Mission Control was all quiet except the electronic hum of computers and its various machinery operating.

"Commencing, auto ground launch of all ships." After a momentary pause the unseen announcer continued, "Sequencer commencing."

Collectively the room of politicians, military, and technicians leaned forward, all their hopes and dreams.

Mission Control announced, "All ships, you are cleared for lift off.

Simultaneous broadcast of all twenty ships were being played live.

Instead of the usual fire and brimstone launch of the rather primitive space shuttle launches, the ships silently raised off the ground with unnatural ease.

Hayes smiled, "Yes!" He turned to Brage whom nodded but said nothing.

Mission control reported, "All twenty vessels of the first wave are airborne and are quickly gaining altitude, five hundred feet." A moment later he reported, "One thousand feet."

An exhale of breaths from the entire room could be heard, followed by a collective cheer, with back slapping and congratulations following.

The two Asguard looked at each other, shocked at the human's behavior in what they considered a routine launch.

Capsule Communicator, or Capcom was generally the only person who would communicate directly with a manned space crew now. During much of the U.S. manned space program, NASA felt it was important for all communication with the astronauts in space to pass through a single individual in the Mission Control Center. That role was designated the capsule communicator or capcom and was typically filled by another astronaut, often one of the backup crew members. For long duration missions, there would be more than one capcom, each assigned to a different shift team. After control of U.S. spaceflights moved to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in the early 1960s, capcoms used the radio call sign Houston.

"This is Capcom Houston to all flights, we now have control, report in."

"Roger, Capcom, USS Columbus."

"Affirmative, USS Houston"

"Capcom!" An urgent plea "This is…" an unidentifiable sound could be heard in the background, by blaring alarms, "USS Stennis!"

Everyone in Mission Control paused, all eyes turning to the screens. Searching for any sign of distress. All twenty ships could be seen rising into the air, sunlight filtering below, creating a halo around the top portion of the ship.

Static followed over Mission Control's speakers, "Equipment malfunction! Mayday! Stabilizers failing! Losing attitude control…" Orders were given in the background, "Helm! Emergency power!" Officer of the day screamed, Another voice yelled, "Damage control teams to thirteenth mid-deck! Seal off and inspect compartments two through twenty four!"

At the mention of the USS Stennis, a Nimitz-class a former, nuclear-powered supercarrier the other radio check in's ceased.

The ship shook visibly, listing to port, her bow dipped ten degrees. The camera registered it all, an explosion from the port side flared explosively, expelling metal and bodies alike.

After another violent shaking, the ship broke in half separating the forward part of the ship from the aft section. The two separate halves fell toward the Earth at a height of two thousand feet.

Hermiod spoke in a whisper, not consciously intending his words to be carried throughout the room, "Oops." So quiet was the room that Hermiods' ill timed words might have well been broadcasted by a speaker phone.

President Hayes turned to Hermiod with a scowl, while Brage looked up at Hayes, after scanning his instruments that were tied into all space ships internal systems for monitoring. With an innocent and shocked expression he announced, "Gravitic generator four was misaligned, the misalignment caused an electrical fire and explosion. The explosion sent an electro-magnetic pulse, resulting in a cascading failure of all electronic equipment throughout the ship."

After a moment of shocked revelation NASA technicians and supervisors scrambled to respond to the catastrophe.

Hayes yelled over the confusion, "What about the other ships!"

"All other ships have reached orbit and are rendezvousing with the Daedelus and Prometheus."

"Abort the other launches! Have those other ships complete a level by level visual inspection of all equipment." The president replied as the Mission Controller quickly keyed his microphone.

Tony Harris, CNN Anchor reported, "And good afternoon again, everyone. I'm Tony Harris."

"And I'm Betty Nguyen. We do continue our live breaking news coverage of this deadly Naval Space Ship crash of the USS John Stennis in Bremerton, Washington this morning."

Harris began, "And on this busy news day, two kidnapped journalists are free this morning in Gaza. Howard Kurtz is following those developments. And our weather center is tracking hurricane gaining muscle in the Caribbean."

Nguyen took her que, "But with us now from the scene of this crash that we've been telling you about -- some five thousand crew involved in the crash, we understand one person did survive -- we want to go to an area very near the scene of the crash. Susannah Frame with affiliate TV station, KING5, joins us by phone. Susannah, what have you learned so far as to what may have possibly caused one of this planets' newest orbital defenders to go down?"

Susannah Frame, a KING 5 investigative reporter face and upper torso where pictured in a stock photo, off to the right of the screen, her angelic carved face and beautiful white tooth smile belied the serious of the disaster.

Her short cropped blond hair and blue eyes gave her a pixie-like beauty, "The Department of Defense has been surprising close lipped about this tragic event. Clearly it is too early to determine or even speculate about a cause, but what we have heard from witnesses who have been out here and from a news briefing that we have had, this retrofitted "Space Carrier" for lack of a better term, apparently developed a problem, whatever that problem was, was known immediately when this ship was taking off. And the witnesses that I have spoken to this morning said that they heard what sounded like a loud boom, an explosion of some sort, and one man said that he saw a flash of light from over the bay on the edge of the shipyard, followed by a lot of smoke. The ship then broke into two separate pieces, near the center of the ship. Each half plummeted over two thousand feet, the forward section has partially sunk in the Naval Base's port, while the aft section landed some two thousand feet from where it was docked, killing all warehouse workers inside. I've also heard reports that when the first responders got on the scene that this ship was engulfed in secondary explosions and smoke shrouded the area; therefore, it is very difficult to get to the crew to check for survivors. The ship was reported to be powered by ten miniature fusion reactors, which for some reason did not detonate. If they had, most of Bremerton would have been leveled."

Now, I would like to mention, because it's happening right now, this happened a little bit after eight o'oclock this morning, and all air traffic was stopped. And I just saw the first plane take off since this first happened. So it does appear that air traffic is resuming, but right now a terrible scene.

It is presumed that a total of five thousand crewmen and women have died on this flight. One crewmember has been confirmed alive, but is in critical condition right now at the Bremerton Naval Hospital. The crewman's name has not yet been released."

Harris interrupted, "OK, Michelle. Tony Harris with Betty this morning. Just a -- just a quick question. Can you sort of set the scene there for us? We understand the ship goes down shortly after eight a.m. -- oh, about eight oh seven this morning. Describe the scene, what you saw, what you saw happening around you when you arrived at the scene.

Susannah's voice responded quickly, "Certainly. I got here about twenty five minutes after the ship went down, and when I arrived.."

"Great." Tony remarked.

Susannah continued, "The entire base was cordoned off by security forces on base and local policemen. There were some ambulances that were going down toward the port, but the ambulance traffic, sadly, did not continue very long. And shortly after that was when the coroner's van arrived, which was certainly our earliest indication within the first hour after this happened that this was serious and that there was a near total loss of life.

After that, steady flow of emergency vehicles, as far as out here on the main road, they have now opened up two lanes of traffic. Most of the emergency vehicles out on this road are now gone, but, sadly it's a lot calmer, a testament to the lack of survivors."

Tony nodded, "Yes."

Susannah continued on as if she had not been interrupted, "And early on, a big rush, and now it's just sort of a calm after the storm, so to speak. All base personnel have stopped their duties and are now out here helping and they are, I'm told, setting up a temporary morgue in a warehouse."

Tony grimaced, "Oh boy, I'm hearing what appears to be -- what sounds like wind in the area, which makes me think about the weather conditions at the time of the crash. What can you tell us on that?"

Susannah's voice continued, "Actually this morning, just a little bit of a breeze, a little bit of wind. But this morning, around the time of the crash, there was some rain. Our meteorologist at KING5 said that there was nothing severe in the area. So, from looking at our weather map, nothing severe that would indicate that weather would have been a problem.

Tony continued his line of questions, "Any -- any evidence that the -- this could have been the more radical terrorist attack?

Susannah immediately responded, "I do not believe there is any evidence to point to foul play at this time. It is far more likely that these emergency refits had some design flaw that had been overlooked. The new space carriers sport four type of engines, a series of nodes for anti-gravity vertical take off and landing, sublight thrusters for navigating space, emergency thrusters, and a massive hyperspace generator. It is far more likely that one of these systems failed during lift off. Of course, until an official statement is released…"

The broadcast dolled on for another hour, till an official statement by the White House.

Later that day, the Anti-Unification Coalition claimed responsibility for the destruction of the USS Stennis and claimed their would be more terrorist attacks as long as the world maintained unity.

"This is Jim Levy, live for CNN." The newly hired CNN reporter from the original alien incursion and attack on downtown Atlanta spoke from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72).

"I am aboard the newly refurbished, USS Abraham Lincoln, one of Earth's newest Naval Space Carriers. As you can see the bridge has been encapsulated in a transparent bubble courtesy of the Colonial Government." He turned to an African looking male in middle age. "Standing with me is Major Boomer, did I say that correctly?"

The ebony viper pilot nodded solemnly to Jim and faced, albeit hesitantly the camera, "That's correct."

"Despite Major Boomer's Earth like appearance, he is in fact a Colonial Viper Pilot from the Battlestar Galactica, the Colonial version of the USS Lincoln. He is here as part of an advanced group, in an advisor role on space warfare tactics with the newly formed fleet."

"Tell me Major Boomer, how does it feel to have finally reached Earth?"

"Relieved, but like all of our brothers on Earth, I wish we could have met under different circumstances."

"And how does it feel to be aboard one of Earth's newest Space Carriers?"

Boomer grimaced slightly, "Ugh, fine, fine."

"You seem to be reluctant, is their something you would like to share? Perhaps…" He was interrupted by Starbuck whom came just into camera view.

"I think I can speak for Boomer when I say, being in this rickety tin can you call a space ship scares the hades out of me!" He finished with putting a cigar into the corner of his mouth.

Boomer's eyes went wide and glared at Starbuck.

Jim Levy chuckled, "For those who have not had the pleasure of meeting Major Boomers colleague, this is the recently promoted Major Starbuck. Incidentally, it was Major Starbuck, a highly decorated fighter pilot in Blue Squadron whom is credited with first contact with Earth, quite an honor after his people searching for our fair planet. Tell me Major Starbuck, anything else you would like to add?"

Boomer stuck his hand out to stop Starbuck but it was pushed aside as Starbuck took center view on screen, "Yeah, once this war is over, I'm going to sue that coffee business for stealing my name!"

Several chuckles could be heard throughout the bridge.

Starbuck was flustered, "If I hear one more joke about my name…"

Jim Levy actually smiled broadly, "Ugh, of course, what I meant was any more comments on the up coming battle with the Cylons and Goa'ould."

"Yeah, we're gonna kick the pogee's out of them!" Someone off screen could be heard mumbling something and Starbuck smiled, "Crap…yeah, we're gonna kick the crap out of those tin cans and gallmonging snake heads." Turning to the camera Starbuck smiled widely, showing his pearly white teeth, "And you can quote me on it!"

Boomer put his hand to his forehead and massaged a building headache.