A/N: Chap twenty review responses are in my files. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Twenty-One: Alien Language

August 22, 2013 (Day 39 CH)

"No DRADIS contacts," Michiala said from her station. "Then again, we couldn't see them last time, either."

Delapina looked to their guest, Brenda Laird. The woman had her arms crossed under her chest with a pensive look on her face. She was separated from her children and now from those who had rescued her. He understood why she was nervous.

"So, what can you tell me about them?" he asked the young woman.

"I don't remember them coming aboard the Scylla," she said. "I must have passed out. We were running out of air and hadn't eaten in days. When I woke up, we were in a white-walled room hooked up to an IV as if I were back in a hospital on Caprica."

Her eyes took on a slightly distant gaze. "They used sticks, just like Admiral Potter did in your hangar. The sticks seemed like they could do anything. But I don't think they realized I was watching. They tried to keep it hidden. Their doctors didn't speak any language I'd ever heard of. They wore masks and gloves, and every time they came or went, it was through a decontamination chamber."

"Did they hurt any of you?"

Laird shook her head. "They saved our lives. They fed us good, fresh food. Nuts, vegetables and fruits I'd never heard of before, but were delicious. Bread and a soft cheese and…they saved us. After the Pegasus came and took my husband and the other men from the ships, and shot some of the families for protesting, I thought we were done."

Commander Delapina tried not to think about Admiral Helena Cain's choices. The woman was a hard-ass of the first order, and he considered it a great boon to his career that he never had to work with her before. But intentionally shooting civilians, even during a time of war, was a capital offense in most cases.

"I don't think the others noticed everything, like how the room got bigger one day," Laird continued. "They tried to pretend nothing happened, but one day it took twenty paces to cross the room, and the next it took sixty. It was suddenly large enough to divide into living spaces for us. They gave us all clothes, and even chocolate, but never let any of us out of that room. I was the first person to leave it. But…they led me to a closet, and when I walked out of the other side, I think I was in a different ship."

"Why do you say that?" Delapina's XO, Horace Saspit, had more than ten years on Delapina, but had never had the drive or ambition to reach above lieutenant commander. He looked at the young civilian with a grandfatherly smile.

"Different uniforms, the corridors were shaped different, with different paint. And they sounded different. Almost like a different…accent to their language. I learned a little bit of it. I think…I think they're lost, Commander. Just like we are."

The door to the CIC opened and Lieutenant Charles "Snake" Carsons strolled in, a data chip in hand. "Copy of my cockpit recording as ordered, Commander," he said after a brief salute.

"Pop it in, Snake," Delapina ordered.

Snake came to stand by the commander, as did Brenda Laird, while the cockpit recording of the incident forty minutes ago began to play on one of the two working overhead monitors. The footage was shaky, taken from the perspective of the pilot. They saw brief glimpses of the distant Cylon base star, along with dozens and dozens of small spots that were enemy raiders, all coming toward them.

Then they saw a strange streak of almost white light, and for one frame the alien ship was both beside Snake and far in front of them. Delapina slowed the recording down to make sure, since the cockpit recorder ran at nearly half a million frames per second on average. For the ship to still appear in two places in one frame meant that the ship was not just going faster than light, but well over it.

The resulting release of energy suddenly made sense. The billow of plasma vaporized half of the base star and severely damaged the remaining portion, sending it flaming and tumbling away before its' own shattered interior exploded. The shockwave of the energy released scattered the raiders, destroying many and sending the rest scampering away.

"What the hell was that?" Snake said.

"A Relativistic Kill Vehicle." Saspit said it with his jaw gaping in awe. "One of the many things we played around with during the first war. The problem was we couldn't get the energy and speed ratio mix right. The amount of energy needed to approach even a fraction of C was so great we could launch a thousand heavy nukes and still have enough left over to build a battlestar. How in Hades can those people do a linear acceleration past C like that? It should not by physically possible."

"Any more possible than fitting three people into a cubic meter of space," Delapina said, thinking of their small shuttle.

"Or making a quarantine room bigger," Brenda Laird pointed out. "I know it sounds crazy, but I really do think they're Lords of Kobol."

Before anyone else could respond to that statement, Delapina's headset beeped. "Asteria, Watchdog. Tally alien bogeys. Count three ships; repeat, three ships. Two smaller ones, one dome each like what we saw before. Third is larger with two domes. Two hundred thousand meters at coordinates 22.34 carem 45.89."

"Might as well be ten SUs out, Commander," Saspit muttered. "We can barely steer with the distribution of our engine pods."

"Con, do your best," Delapina called over his XO's shoulder.

"Aye, sir. Sublights one and two on one quarter thrust to coordinates 22.34 carem 45.89. We may have to make a few loops to get there."

"Asteria, Watchdog. Three bogies have left the largest ship. CBDR. No, wait. Bogies have slowed and are flashing lights at us. I think they're knocking, Commander."

"Show them the door, Watchdog," Delapina said.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, here we go," Saspit said dryly.

"Can…can I come with you, Commander?" Laird asked.

"Yes, Mrs. Laird, I think that would be a good idea."

Once again he found Major Barris there with a contingent of marines. Despite what happened last time, Delapina could only nod. The rest of the hangar stood by in tense silence. They'd all heard of what happened with the Cylon basestar and now the whole ship was caught up in a tug of war between hope and dread. What if the aliens were worse than the Cylons? What if they were Cylons?

The elevator came down holding three of the odd, small sleds, which once again lifted without any evidence of propulsion from the elevator floor and moved into the hangar. The first one's door opened and Delapina tensed for whoever might come out. Probably Potter.

Instead, two little girls climbed out.

"Mommy!" the larger one screamed. They both ran full tilt right into the arms of a suddenly sobbing Brenda Laird. Delapina stood, beyond flabbergasted, as more children climbed out of a sled that could only physically have held one person, numbering almost twenty in all. The last to climb out was Admiral Potter.

The other two sleds opened up to reveal equally impossible numbers of children. Some, Delapina noted, looked pale and drawn, as if sickly. Most stood around the sleds, staring about the hangar with wide eyes.

Potter walked directly to the commander and had the grace to give a sheepish smile. "Surprise," he said in Caprican.

"Admiral Potter, why are these children here?" That wasn't what Delapina wanted to ask. He really wanted to ask how the children all fit into those tiny sleds. It was one thing to have a civilian talk about something being bigger on the inside than on the outside, but it was something far different to see it in practice.

"Our engines make them sick," Admiral Potter said. "Children at bigger risk. Need to be here. More will come."

"Damn I wish we could communicate better," Saspit muttered.

"We're running low on food and water. More importantly, this is a war ship," Delapina said, hoping Potter understood.

Fortunately, the young so-called admiral nodded. "More food come. Water not a problem. Can make water. Please, people need to be here or will die. Your people."

Delapina looked at where Brenda Laird was holding her two pale, sickly daughters. "How many?" he asked Laird.

"Two hundred, twenty-seven," she said without hesitation. "The other one was the Cylon spy who died."

Potter shook his head and pointed back to the kids. "Less. Timmy Chanko died. Why we did not wait. Engines make them sick faster than we thought. More coming, soon."

"Commander," Saspit said, slipping once more into the grandfatherly persona that made him such a liked but weak XO. "We lost half our crew. We have space available. If these aliens help with food and…"

"It was never in question, Horace," Delapina admitted with a tired sigh. He looked to Potter and nodded. "Bring them all."

Potter turned and made a circular motion with his hand. Abruptly, the three sleds were simply gone with pops of displaced air. Some of the children cried in alarm. Saspit walked to the nearest phone. "CIC, this is the XO. We need the quartermaster in the hangar deck ASAP."

As the Asteria made a slow, looping approach that was the result of only having sublight engines on the port side of the ship, the odd, impossible little sleds returned again and again, each time bringing twelve adults or twenty children, until soon over two hundred weary civilians were camped out in the middle of the hangar deck.

What really piqued the commander's interest, though, was the three-ton crate that some of the hangar crew found tucked away in an empty Viper bay. When the marines reported it, ready for a bomb or enemy soldiers, Potter (who had remained aboard the entire time) said, "Food. Water. Clothes."

To illustrate, he walked to the crates and popped it open, revealing oddly anachronistic woven baskets filled with fruits, vegetables, nuts and breads.

The stressed quartermaster saw the food and almost fainted at the sight. It was the only good news the poor woman had had since the holocaust. Delapina watched the whole thing with so many questions burning in his mind it was almost impossible to concentrate. He'd come to realize that the aliens, whom he still didn't know what to call, had some form of teleportation. It was the only thing that could explain the repeated disappearance of the sheds as they dropped people off. It was also the only way to explain the crate.

The Colonials used jump drives because it was not possible for them to generate the energy necessary to approach the speed of light without the energy and mass ripping their ships apart. The jump drive was a sometimes dangerous end-run on the laws of physics, in which they momentarily moved space itself, rather than their ships. But these aliens obviously had some method of manipulating mass and energy, since there was no way they could do what they did otherwise.

After all the civilians were transferred and sorted into the billets once occupied by Delapina's dead crewmembers, he, Saspit and their guest went to the CIC. It was there where Potter started pointing at their little monitor again. "Survivors like you," he said, repeatedly at each spot around the system he pointed to. "Get them. Need your help."

"Admiral Potter, this ship has no maneuverability; it is not fit to gather anyone until we have a chance to do some repairs," Delapina pointed out.

Potter nodded—it seemed obvious he could understand far more than he could say. "You come on my ship. Talk to them."

"Didn't he say his engines made people sick?" Saspit said.

Potter shook his head. "Children more vulnerable. Okay for weeks. All time we need to save people. Your people."

The worst part is, Delapina could see exactly why Potter wanted him—it was the same reason he used Brenda Laird. He needed a native speaker to communicate clearly. Having a uniformed speaker would do even better. He considered sending Machiala instead, but dismissed the notion. Right now, they needed to get the ship where it could at least fly in a straight line. Saspit may not have been the best XO in the Colonies, but he was an able engineer.

"Horace, I'm going to go with him." He finally decided. "Machiala can stand as your acting XO. Get those engine pods configured and execute as many repairs as we can until I'm back."

"You sure about this, Chrys?"

"Not even remotely," Delapina said with a dry smile. "But from what Mrs. Laird told us, there are a lot of desperate, frightened people floating on the edge of the System. Maybe we can still do some good."

After that conversation, he went back to his quarters to pack his old, standard issue fleet duffle bag with a week's worth of clothes—some of which were not exactly clean, plus his personal toiletries. He locked the cabin down, tossed the keys to Saspit, and then nodded to Potter. The young alien admiral fell in beside him, not bothering to say much.

Back at the hangar, things were blessedly starting to get back to normal now that the civvies were squared away. Major Barris stood near a raptor with a single marine, a young woman whose name escaped Delapina at the moment.

"Commander," Barris said with a snap salute. "Sergeant Dania Festis will be accompanying you."

"Regulations?" Delapina asked with a wry smile.

"Looked 'em up myself, sir," Barris said.

"Sergeant, you have your gear ready?"

"Sir! Yes, sir," the young sergeant snapped. "In the Raptor, sir."

Delapina glanced at Potter to gauge his reaction. The young man seemed to understand the situation and shrugged. "Okay," he said.

Delapina led the way into the Raptor which would transport them to the alien ships. The young marine stowed herself in the back, while Potter moved forward and took the co-pilot's seat. He was looking about the cockpit with wide, excited eyes, as if everything was new to him. He leaned forward with a delighted expression as the hangar crew towed the raptor onto the elevator that would take them to the flight deck, and laughed at the weightlessness once they started.

Once on their way, he pointed to the largest of the three strange, alien craft. Specifically, to one end. "Go there," he said, just to be clear.

Delapina nodded and flew the raptor toward the indicated area of the ship. Aside from gun placements, which looked not too dissimilar to the KEWs the Asteria used, the hulls were perfectly smooth. However, as he got closer he saw that in fact the domes were geodesic in design, using smaller triangular plates locked together to form the larger dome. He couldn't say why that little fact made him feel better. The overall shape was alien, but the construction details were familiar.

However, when he saw the hangar, any warm feelings that might have come from a familiar element of design in the alien ship faded. The so-called hangar was ridiculously small, so much so he began to wonder if the Raptor would even fit.

"That's a small opening," he noted aloud. "Won't it kill our engines?"

"No, made engine field small. Okay. Opening fine." Potter grinned and made an inch space with his fingers.

"Sergeant, strap in, this might be a bumpy landing."

"Yes, sir."

Slowing down to just a few meters per minute, Delapina inched the Raptor into the brightly lit hangar. He could see the three sleds on the far side of a room which barely contained the raptor itself. There was no evidence of an elevator or a larger facility at all—the entire hangar consisted of a single room.

He looked at Potter, who was already moving toward the door. He fumbled about with it a moment before looking to the young sergeant. "How you open?"

"Sir?" the dutiful marine asked Delapina.

"Go ahead, Sergeant. I'm doing my post-flight checklist."

The sergeant showed Potter how to open the door, and despite the rudimentary hangar, they did not all immediately decompress and die. The commander finished his checklist, grabbed his duffel, and followed the two out of the raptor.

While Potter and his people were met by armed marines, Delapina was met by a tall, shapely woman who looked close to his age and carried it well, a shorter, squatter woman with frighteningly frizzy black hair in a familiar gray cloak, and a beautiful, stately woman with light brown hair and dark, piercing eyes. She wore a long, blue-and-white striped dress with a white apron over it, in stark contrast to the first woman who wore a uniform identical to Potter's.

"Dinah Patterson," Potter said, pointing to the first woman. "She…commander of ship. Like you. That Miriam Margoline. She speak better. That Andromeda Tonks, doctor."

"Good day, Commander," the woman with the frightening black hair and nose wart said in passible Caprican. "We need to check your health. Will not hurt. Okay?"

"Check my health?" Delapina asked, confused.

"So you don't make us sick," Potter explained.

"Fine," Delapina said, nodding to make sure his meaning was clear.

The beautiful matron stepped forward and touched his forehead with a stick.

She did the same with the startled marine before stepping back and saying something in a truly alien language. Delapina's gut twisted at hearing confirmation that these were not Colonials. He only spoke three languages, but had training enough to recognize all forty three living Colonial languages, and the twelve original variants that preceded them.

"Okay, you clear," Harry said with a smile.

"What did she do?"

"You healthy," was all Potter could say. "Come now."

He led them through a door out of the plain, dull-white walled room and into a surprisingly crowded hallway. Festis walked right on his heels looking about with wide dark eyes. The ship's commander, Patterson, walked with them.

Many of the people were in uniforms similar to Potter's, but just as many weren't. The array of clothing styles defied description, ranging from something as ordinary as a suite and tie to a strange, violently orange dress a man wore over his slacks. They stared back at the two Colonials with the same fascination Delapina himself felt.

Finally they arrived at a series of huge black boxes built right into a wall, each surrounded by a shimmering ring of red light. Potter pointed to the first box. "Through here." He then stepped through the ring and into the open box as if to illustrate.

With a glance around, Delapina followed with Festis a step behind. The door closed behind them, and for a split second they were in darkness, until the back wall opened onto another hall.

Delapina realized then what Brenda Laird meant. They were on a completely different ship.

The halls were narrower, with inward curves at the top. The finish was not as smooth. Most importantly, though, the halls were not nearly as crowded. Those he saw wore a different uniform, one with a full waist jacket rather than the half-jacket Potter and his crew wore.

They walked through the ship until they came into an area that just screamed CIC. In the middle of it, a tall, broad-shouldered black man in uniform stood from a chair set off one side that could look at the whole room, and offered his hand with a grin.

"This Marcus White, ship commander," Potter said. "This his ship. We go find your people."

Delapina stared from the large commander to Potter. "You're the admiral in charge of all three ships?"

Potter nodded with a young-looking smile. Delapina looked again to the older, harder, more-experienced looking commander, who suddenly started laughing as he understood what the Colonial was saying, even if he didn't have the words to say it.

Potter, too, understood and rolled his eyes. "Older than look," the man said. "Save your people now, right?"

Delapina laughed himself. "Right."