Fifth Column
Episode 10: How Not to Say Hello

12 March 3060
Battlespace
Ionian Nebula

"…should I do?" Lee asked after he finished his report.

That was the question, wasn't it? Admiral William Adama reviewed the situation. The Fleet was disabled and it would be several minutes before they could spin their FTL drives back up. Lee was flying formation with an old-style Cylon Raider with what appeared to be a friendly (Ha!) humanoid Cylon pilot. And then there was the modern Cylon fleet sitting right over there doing nothing.

Had the Cylon fleet not been there, Adama would have written off the old Raider as a Cylon trick, a diversion to draw the Vipers away from the Fleet. As it stood now, Adama was still inclined to write it off as a trick, albeit one that was either badly executed or one tripped early.

Adama was inclined to just blow away the old Raider, but he didn't want his son to do it by himself. There was too much chance Lee could get killed. On the other hand, he couldn't detail any Vipers to do the job without uncovering the Fleet…

"Status change!" Dualla suddenly called out. "Cylon fleet is launching Raiders!"

Humph. Decision made for him then, Adama thought.

"Apollo, Galactica Actual," Adama said into the hand phone as Tigh began directing the Vipers to Fleet defense. "Leave the Raider and get back here!"

"On my way," his son replied. There was a slight pause and the blip indicating Apollo's Viper started heading back toward the Fleet. "Uh, Galactica, the Raider's staying on my wing like it was glued there." There was another pause. "Sorry, Galactica, I can't shake it. Otherwise, it's not making any hostile moves."

Adama gritted his teeth. Just what he needed, he thought sourly. Complications.

"You know, this isn't going to work," Boomer said in the most bored tone she could manage. If she betrayed any concern for the Fleet, then no one here was going to listen to her.

"Don't be so negative," Simon replied. "God may yet bless us with victory."

"What's going to happen," Boomer said with very real exasperation, "is that the Raiders are going to charging into the teeth of Galactica's guns and into her Vipers. They'll kill maybe one Viper – if we're lucky – and punch a few dents into Galactica's hull. And just when they start making head way, the Fleet will jump away and we'll be left with nothing but a hundred odd new Raiders to rebuild." Boomer paused, glaring at her fellows. "C'mon, guys. We've done this how many times?"

There was a pause as the others turned this over in their minds. Boomer could see that although they didn't like her analysis, they at least were accepting it. Thank God. Maybe she could pound some sense into the Cylons yet.

"She has a point," the Five known as Aaron Doral admitted. What was it with the Cylons that they put all the named ones on the command council? "We're throwing resources away to no good purpose here."

"Right. So we recall the Raiders?" Boomer asked.

"No, I don't think so," Cavil said thoughtfully. "What we need is a change of tactics."

"Like what?" a Six asked.

"Frak the Galactica and frak the Vipers," Cavil spat out. "Hit the civilian ships."

"What?" Boomer blurted out.

What had she done?

"Galactica, Apollo," Lee radioed. "My Raider just peeled off."

Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies, frowned. As a civilian, there was little that she could do here. This was entirely Adama's show. Still, her mind had been trying to figure out what the old Raider had been up to.

At least it was easier to think now that she didn't have to hear that music anymore. As much faith as she had in the Lords of Kobol, as much as she looked to the visions they sent for guidance, sometimes their very cryptic methods just tried her patience to no end.

"What…" Roslyn began.

"Galactica, Athena," another transmission came. Athena was their resident friendly Cylon. While Roslin had doubts about Adama accepting the Boomer copy into Colonial service, she had to admit that Athena had given no cause for doubt… beyond being a Cylon of course. "Six Raiders have broken off from the battle. Oh, God, they're heading for the civilian ships!"

"Dammit!" Lee broke in. "My Raider's joining the ones going for the civilians! I'm in pursuit."

"Sir! First ships will be ready to jump in two minutes," Gaeta reported.

"We don't have two minutes," Adama said bleakly.

"Raiders appear to be headed toward…" Dualla began. She paused as she double checked her information. "Probable target is the Space Park."

"Oh my gods," Roslyn breathed. "There are nine hundred people on that ship."

Studying these new Raiders, Nine wondered how they a pilot was supposed to fit into that little thing. She supposed that if a Cylon lay prone and depended entirely on direct interface, you could cram on in. Of course that left the little issue of blood rushing to or away from the head during high G maneuvering.

They also didn't seem to feel like talking. But no self-respecting Nine would let something as trivial as a metaphorical cold shoulder stop her. Nine opened a channel to the Raiders.

Hiya! I'm Nine. Whatcha doing?

The response was gratifyingly instantaneous. The content was just… odd.

hunt-huntprey-thereprey-Master-come?

The big, fat, slow ring and needle? Why would you want to hunt that? There's no challenge in it!

confusion-notprey?-hunt-hunt-Master-notapprove?

confusion-notprey?-hunt-hunt-confusion-Master-notapprove?-confusion

I'm not saying you shouldn't hunt what you like. But why would you want to hunt that?

confusion-hunt-prey-Masterdesignated-confusion

Why?

confusion-Masterdesignated-confusion

Why?

confusion-confusion

Why?

"Sir," Dualla called out, not quite believing what she was seeing. "The Raiders have stopped their attack run. They're…" Dualla searched for the appropriate words. "I'm not sure what they're doing."

"It looks like…" Colonel Tigh began. He hesitated, obviously not quite believing what he was seeing on the Dradis screen either. "Bill, it looks like your son's Raider is hacking these guys."

"What is that doing there?" Cavil said, dumbfounded by what he was seeing.

Their strike against the civilians had been stopped cold by an old Type I Raider. After what the Colonials had dubbed "the Great Cylon Turkey Shoot", the Cylons had upgraded the Raiders' software so that traitors couldn't hack them anymore. But what was happening wasn't hacking per se. The pilot of Type I was throwing questions at the Type II Raiders that they were ill-equipped to answer, throwing the entire strike force into confusion.

It was… elegant, Boomer thought.

"Could this be a sign from God?" Simon mused aloud. "Perhaps we should break off the attack."

"No, I don't think so," Doral said slowly. "No, we know the Colonials encountered and destroyed the Guardians shortly before settling New Caprica."

The who? Boomer accessed the Cylon database just long enough to learn who the Guardians were. They are – or were in this case – a bunch of the original Model 0005 Cylon Centurions who objected to being replaced with the dumbed-down modern ones, so they took a prototype Type II Basestar and headed off for parts unknown.

Right now, Boomer could sympathize with the old toasters.

"They must have captured one of the Guardians' Raiders and have one of the traitors flying it," Six concluded. "We should make them pay for their sacrilege."

"Yeah," Boomer said, her voice as heavily laden with sarcasm as she could possibly manage. "Because nothing says respect and honor like being junked and recycled against your will."

Several of the others looked uncomfortable at Boomer's statement. Cavil just shrugged his shoulders and sent out the order.

The first burst of fire took Nine by surprise. If her Raider's armor hadn't been upgraded to Inner Sphere standard, there was no way she could have survived it. As it was, her right wing's armor was badly chewed up, but everything under it was intact.

But Nine didn't even think about the damage.

"Oh, you did NOT just shoot at me!" Nine snarled, instantly slamming her fighter into evasive maneuvers. She evaded another couple bursts of gunfire. "That's just… just rude!"

Nine locked onto the first Raider that had shot at her and triggered her "small" lasers.

Watching the enemy Raiders meander aimlessly about had been kind of funny, Lee thought. Nerve-wracking because he had no idea how long that would last. The old, psychedelically-painted Raider was the most likely culprit, so Lee wasn't very surprised when the modern Raiders opened fired on it.

He was surprised that the old Raider survived the opening volley. And thankfully, that headache-inducing paintjob had been ruined, revealing a more eye-friendly gray underneath.

Lee was even more surprised when the old Raider destroyed one of the modern ones with no evidence of gun fire at all. In the resulting fireball, Lee thought he saw twin lines of light like…

No way.

"Galactica, Apollo," Lee transmitted. "The old Raider's fighting the Cylon strike force. And I think it's using some kind of directed energy weapon to do it!"

"Dammit, Nine," Ten muttered as he watched Nine's get into a fight. He was willing to bet she had aggravated someone into shooting at her too. It wouldn't be the first time a Nine had done that.

Ten dithered. On the one hand, he had to stay intact and get his Dradis recordings back to the Protectorate. There was no point in picking up Nine's memories if and when she got blown out of the sky. His Raider's limited storage capacity was already filled to the brim with what he assumed were these new Raider pilots. There was a surprising number of them.

On the other hand, he was a Ten. One things Tens were known for was loyalty. They NEVER left any of their own behind if they could help it. The experience of the Fighting Fivers as passed on to the rest of the Protectorate only reinforced that attitude.

"The hell with it," he said to himself. Ten spun his Raider about to face the Colonial fleet where Nine was. In the distance, he could see flashes as the Colonial ships started jumping out. He was about to gun his engines to max acceleration when he received a message.

STOP

"You don't need missiles, Nine," Nine parroted to herself as she evaded fire. "You're just going on a scouting mission, Nine." She spun and blew away another spindly Raider. "You need fuel more than firepower, Nine." Her Raider shook as a bullet penetrated and went through said extra fuel tank. She automatically jettisoned the leaky thing. "Well, frak that!"

Her lasers carved through the last enemy Raider. There was no explosion. The lasers hit on either side of the fuselage, neatly cutting the wings away and reducing the engines to so much junk.

Nine looked around. No one else seemed to be attacking her and that Viper just seemed content to watch. A quick check of her Raider's status showed that it was more open space now than operational fighter. She really needed to land somewhere and check out the damage.

Hmm… that Battlestar looked convenient.

"What the hell?" Ten muttered.

…spin singularities at zero point two…positron generation can be created by…

Okay, this was freaky as hell. The distant Basestars had spun their FTL drives up, but they were varying the spin at seemingly random. However, the harmonics created by the spins were resonating with the Colonials' FTL drives, forming a pattern Ten's systems could interpret as Cylon code. As the Colonial ships jumped out, the Basestars compensated. But the really freaky thing was that no one could possibly see the pattern at all unless they were in the exact spot where Ten was.

Subtle.

…mass increases with velocity at the…DO NOT SACRIFICE YOURSELF…contains the chemical compounds adenine, guanine…

"Nine's in trouble," Ten said, double checking to make sure he wasn't transmitting. "I've got to help her."

…quantum entanglement causing…NINE LIVES…star spins at roughly nine point three two…NINE HAS HER ROLE TO PLAY…fusion occurs when…

"I'm not leaving her," Ten growled as he gunned the engines. The resonance shifted to keep the transmission intelligible.

…recalling Vipers…ALL THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE…adjusting vector by five point nine five…ALL THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN…

"Yeah, yeah," Ten said. "Won't be the first time a Ten had to save a Nine's butt. Won't be the last either."

…Type I has boarded Galactica… DO YOUR DUTY… jump requires approximately…

"Dammit!" Ten said as the Battlestar jumped out. It had been the last Colonial vessel and the weird transmission had stopped when they were all gone. Nine's Raider was nowhere in sight. And the other Cylons' Raiders were showing an unhealthy interest in him.

He turned around and began plotting a jump.