Disclaimer: I never have and never will own the characters, ideas or anything else based on these 2 shows. The TV studios that produced them, do. This story is also free as it is a pet project. Enjoy.

"Talking"

"Thinking"

"Wireless/communication"

"Speaking in a different language"

"Reading a text"

Chapter One: Waking to a different galaxy

Day 15 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 8th of February, year 2378, uncharted system

"Jumping in three, two, one..." Felix turned the jump key. Kara's heart dropped. She was still in the fraking raider she appropriated. No CAP was launched as she approached the Galactica. The Civilian fleet just jumped away. And the old girl did the same.

"Frak it, you morons! It's me!" That was her last chance. To get back to the fleet. And now she was really screwed. She was on borrowed time. This thing's oxygen supply was limited and also used to keep it's organic systems going.

She also knew this thing had FTL capabilities, but she didn't have the time to figure them out, she was no computer expert and this was the worst environment to even try something like that.

There was only one thing she could do. This thing was here to inspect some sort of pulse. Or beacon? A form of radiation she didn't recognize, but the damn toaster had it in its memory as something called resurrection frequency Beta seven?

That's what she got from the small diagnostic display that still worked. Good thing that display was in standard Caprican.

If this raider was originally drawn to this place for that and just encountered them, she'd have to take a look.

It was apparently emanating from the gas giant the moon she crashed on, was orbiting.

The raider began rocking as she entered the planet's atmosphere.

Hours passed, but she was getting closer. The issue was that her oxygen supply was now at 10%. She really needed to know if what this thing detected could save her hide.

"Come on, where are you, whatever you are. I'd take a lost toaster ship at this point!"

Her proximity DRADIS beeped. Something metallic was within 50 meters, she just couldn't see in this soup.

She turned to port, slowly creeping to the signature. She finally got a glimpse of what the raider detected. The signal originated from a ship. But she never saw a design like that before. "What is this crap?"

She didn't try anything aggressive. You never know who's at home. She took the scenic tour of the thing. A main, saucer like hull, a cylindrical hull attached to it in what she has to assume, was the ventral part. Then the two large... well, whatever they were, were sticking out of the cylindrical part.

"Who builds ships like this?"

But she didn't have time to ask those questions. She needed to know if it had air inside. She noticed something that would be considered as landing space, at the back of the saucer with two large doors there.

She approached the area with her raider. As she was about to initiate contact with the hull, the raider display showed something new. "Magnetic gear? OK? Sounds good..."

She touched softly and the gear clicked, indicating the raider was now attached to the unknown.

Wasting no time, she ignored the pain in her broken leg and put her space gear back on. She peeked out of the raider's belly. The good part was that the ship she landed on provided some cover from the winds of this gas giant's atmosphere. And that they were only in the top layer so far.

She noticed some form of ladder system on the landing area, apparently designed to help with space walks. Grabbing firm to it, she dragged herself to the door that was apparently made for EVA's.

Standing up on one leg and activating her suit's magnetic gear, she inspected the door. It had a manual lever, but also a computer access terminal. She couldn't read any of it. "Here goes nothing..."

She pushed the lever down and the door clicked. She pulled and the door did open. Inside she saw a small room with another door. "An air-lock. Good. I really hope that door will let me pass as well." She closed the one behind her and inspected the one leading out of this room. That had no lever. But the console next to it was blinking. A red indicator was blinking. Faster and faster... then it disappeared as a green one took its place. "Green? I really hope it means what I hope it means. But how do I open..." As she stepped closer and inspected the console, she pushed the green button. The door opened up on its own, sliding into the bulkhead. "Frak. Automatic doors. Got it. Wait..." She noticed in the hallway in front of her that both walls had transparent windows. To her right was what she could only assume, the parking space for their... raptors. That was the closest craft that came to her mind. To her left was a large hangar like room. One of the larger doors outside was apparently leading to that. But she also noticed that the stuff in that hangar was floating. "No gravity, eh? Makes things easier for me..." She shut off her magnetic gear and began sampling the air. Her suit indicated it was borderline breathable. "I'll take it." Removing her helmet, she took a deep breath. "Man, smells like stale air. Like it hasn't been ventilated in years."

She saw that the connecting hall she was in, only had one door leading out, beside the one she came in. Once she floated to that door, a similar panel was next to the door. But no red or green buttons on it. "Not an air-lock?" She began pushing things on the panel. The door opened as well, sliding away.

"Control room for the hangar?" It had plenty of chairs, attached to a system on the floor that still allowed movement. But all the consoles in this room were dark. "Better find the CIC of this thing." She tried to find an exit. She did, but also found a strange room that could be used as a prison cell. But why would it be here? "Decontamination? Would make sense..." She entered the lavatory of the isolated section. "OK, this is a human ship, no doubt about it." If the toilette was not a dead giveaway, the suit locker in the control room was. All made for something with two legs and two arms.

She left that section to what she assumed was the main corridor of the ship on this level. She didn't know where to go, she couldn't read what was written next to the doors. This would be a problem. But she did know what an arrow up or down meant. "Either an elevator or stairs. Makes no difference in zero gravity." At this point she filled her space suit back up with the oxygen in her environment and put the helmet back on. This place was freezing.

She tried the main door with the arrow symbols. It wouldn't budge. The one next to it however, opened once she pressed the button she now knew, meant open. "Ladders. Now, shall we go up, or down?" She decided to go up. She went up, probably three levels. Then she found herself in a connecting tunnel to the higher levels, but with regular walking stairs. When she could go no further up, she accessed one of the manual doors. In the corridor, she found two rooms she didn't know what they were for and one more toilette. But then a sliding door revealed to her, what she had to assume, was the CIC. A planning table, that was currently dark, several positions with seats for them and a large display monitor at the front. "Weirdest CIC design I've ever seen. But it works..."

The station at the front had many slide buttons and what appeared to be some sort of speed indicator. That and the position in the room gave it away. The one in the middle was obvious, the CO.

The others she needed time to figure out. And she knew she'd have to, to find out what happened here, what is this ship, where the crew is and can she use it to get back to the fleet.

She went to the front left station first, work counter clockwise from there.

Inspecting the station, she cursed. It was not dark, but barley functioning. "Frak, can't read this at all..." She said as she pushed buttons again. This time, the console actually wrote down on the digital display what she said. And apparently translated it to... their language. All but the frak part. It apparently had no clue what that meant. "Shit... damn. OK. This might not be so stupid after all." Again, it translated her words. "OK, let's see. Tactical." She noted the translated word and inspected the other stations. She returned. "So tactical is on the other side."

She did so for a while, learning their words, one at a time. A few hours passed and she got enough of an understanding to get what she assumed was the planning table in the back to work again. The table displayed the ship and all its sections and levels. It also displayed damage as it seemed. It was red tots all over the place.

She now knew that she'd need weeks to learn enough to perhaps access the logs or something, but she didn't have time for that. Restoring power was top priority, as this thing was caught in the planet's gravity well. Sooner or later, it would be crushed by the ever increasing density.

She got the panel in the table to show her the power systems. And there she noticed something. All systems were apparently completely down or running on minimum setting. "Three power spikes?" The closest was on what she now knew was deck four. But she could not get more than the basics. Someone apparently locked-out the main computer on this thing. Or it was off-line. "Guess I'll have to do it the old fashion way."

A few minutes passed as she arrived in the aft section of the saucer on deck four. There she found some cables that were apparently hastily put there to, apparently provide power to something from somewhere. But why bother? Unless the ship was damaged right in the way to make it impossible otherwise. But the place that was powered, was weird. A small... chamber of sorts right next to the corridor, no doors between them. And a console with many sliding buttons on it. And it was apparently fully powered.

"What's this thing for anyway?" She saw the sliders were positioned on the bottom. "Can't get anywhere, if I don't try something."

She pushed all the sliding buttons to the top. And what followed next would have floored her, if there was gravity to pull her down. Dots of light began appearing in the middle of that strange chamber. Seconds later, a humanoid looking person appeared in it, also wearing a space suit.

"Thank god it... worked? Who are you?"

They both looked at each other. Kara noticed that it was a woman. But this was strange, even for her. She pulled out her sidearm. She didn't aim it at her, but indicated she would , if threatened. "What the frak is going on! Who are you people?"

"What? Who are you? What are you doing on our ship?"

Kara notice they had a communication issue. She only knew the bare bones basics. "You, em... member of ship?"

The woman saw what the intruder was trying to accomplish. "Yes. I'm the Chief Engineer."

Kara only got the engineer part. "Finally, we're getting somewhere..." She didn't notice it in time, but an armed man in the same type of space-suit as the woman that just appeared out of thin air, approached her from behind. He didn't hesitate and shot her with a blue bolt of plasma energy, knocking her out.

As Kara now floated in the room, her sidearm floating away from her, more people arrived from the direction of the person who just shot her. "You OK, Commander Scott?"

"Yeah... How's the situation?"

"Don't know, we only rematerialized mere moments ago. Who it this person?" He grabbed Kara's weapon and inspected it. "And why is she using a museum piece like this?"

Commander Scott managed to stand up now, her magnetic boots now active. "A question for you to answer. I have to get back to engineering to see if the virus purge worked."

"Right." He signaled his people. "Get her to the brig. Boris, go with the commander and check the transporter in the secondary hull. If the failsafe the commander put into all of them worked, they should all be returning from the damn buffer as well. I'll stay here and begin reviving our people in this buffer."

"Got it, Major."

An hour later and the entire crew that was still alive, was removed from the transporter buffers. Scott was in main engineering right now, trying to figure out what happened.

"Commander, report."

"Captain, glad you could come. The internal communication system should be operational again within the hour."

"Good to know, but that's not the main problem." She joined her at the main console for the warp six engine in the secondary hull.

"I know. The recall program didn't work. If that woman hadn't pulled me out and by doing that, also triggered the failsafe I installed, which began recalling everyone else in the cargo transporter and the one here in the secondary hull, we'd be still trapped in the damn buffers."

"Any ideas why that happened?"

"As we feared, any one reason or a combination of reasons could have caused it. Somehow that damn Romulan virus did this, the radiation, power spikes... take your pick. I was afraid it would screw the power supply, why I had additional cables attached to the entire transporter system to get power from an independent system, but before the purge, the damn Romulans might have given us one last middle finger. Hey, Hopkins, is the main computer ready to be powered up again?" She yelled across the engine room to one of her people that was working on a level above her.

"Just about ready. But we'll still need to replace some parts, or we'll be stuck at 30% efficiency."

"I get that. How much longer?"

He checked his console. "I can start the power-up procedure in 30 seconds."

"Then do it."

Once the main computer began working again, most consoles lit up. The main engineering one that the commander and captain were currently occupying, began displaying some strange numbers. "This can't be right..." Scott got worried. It really showed. "This is a mistake."

"What is it?" Captain Hauaman asked.

"If the computer is not screwed up completely... look at the date."

The Captain saw the date and whispered. "2378? 2378... my god."

"You know what that means?"

"Yes. 218 years have passed."

"Everyone we knew... is dead. They all died centuries ago."

Flashback, Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet gathering post 115, near the Briar Patch perimeter, Earth year 2160

It had been six months, since the end of the Romulan war. Four long, bloody years had passed. And still, the dead hunted everyone. Starfleet remained the glue that held the Andorians, Tellarites and Vulcans together to stand united against the aggressors. Earth lost much. Not the planet itself, that was too heavily defended, even if the Rumlans tried to knock Earth out of the war that one time, they attempted the assault on the birthplace of humanity. But the more the war dragged on, the worse the logistical situation got for the Romulans. They expected a quick victory. All they got were stalemates or defeats, with the rare victory in between. And those victories got rarer and rarer as time passed on.

It all started so good for them. Their computer hacking ability was tested out on Orion and Klingon ships months before the war began. It worked perfectly. That was also the reason the Orion Syndicate and the Klingon Empire didn't intervene in the war. They pulled back to make it impossible for the Romulans to get isolated ships to capture. Strength in numbers. If a Romulan ship was busy incapacitating its target, it was open to attack from the target's ally.

So when the war began, the Romulans tried the same tactics against the four alien races. The Andorians and Tellarites fell for their tactics as planned. Their Vulcan cousins were a harder nut to crack due to their superior coding skills, but still would have fallen, had they not altered their tactics in a similar manner as the Klingons did. They always traveled in larger groups, sometimes even mixing fleets with the other races.

And while the Romulans wanted to capture a Vulcan ship, preferably intact, to study it, that prize eluded them. But Earth, Earth infuriated Admiral D'deridex, the mastermind of the entire operation, to no end. Earth was technologically the most primitive of the four races, but it was their lack of advanced interconnectivity of ship systems, that made hacking them a much greater issue.

So as the war began, Earth held the line, with the four races aiding each other to the best of their abilities, always responding to the next tactical maneuver of the Romulans. But Admiral Archer knew, that a war can't be won with only defending. Sooner or later, they would have to take the war to the Romulans.

Before the war, there were signs of rising hostility on the Romulan side. The later discovered collaboration of Administrator V'Las with the Romulans was the first clue. He did disappear not long after this was discovered. The Romulans, apparently, covered their tracks well and didn't want V'Las to crack under interrogation.

Then came the Drone incident. More and more Earth saw the signs being written on the wall. As cooperation between the four governments began getting more coordinated, Archer convinced the other races in a technology exchange. The Andorians offered the particle weapons and fuel injector designs, the Tellarites their improved sensor systems and transporters, the Vulcans offered their shield and tractor beam technology. And what did Earth offered in return? Vulcan Command was aware of the Romulan attempts of developing their own cloaking system. The incident in the mine field, where the Enterprise observed them in usage, made it even more clear. So Archer offered the quantum beacons to the other races. Once adapted to the other race's ships and to be able tosee through the Romulan cloaking system, the Romulan's greatest advantage would be undone.

The Vulcans agreed to not only test the devices, but to modify them to be effective against the Romulan system, since the beacons were originally programmed to counter Suliban technology. But the Vulcans did see one difference between the Romulan and Suliban cloaking variation. The Romulans had only developed this technology recently, the Suliban had it for decades. So these devices might not be as abundant as they could have been.

So when the war began, the first victories of the Romulan Navy were short lived. The Allied forces began intentionally encountering Romulan fleets, pretending to not know they were there and 'allow' them to prepare to get an ambush off, only for the Allied ships to turn the tables and destroy the Raomulan forces before they could even de-cloak.

But all sides suffered horrific losses. During the war, many Earth and Alliance ships were so badly damaged or otherwise incapacitated that they could not make the journey back to a friendly port.

The Alliance set up gathering areas where these ships would remain and hide, until a way was found for them to be retrieved or return under their own power. The issue was that in the state many were in, they could be intercepted by Romulan forces and picked off.

While once the Romulans saw that their prototype cloaking devices were useless, they stopped using them entirely, as the cost to benefit ratio was bad now, that didn't stop them to remain aggressive.

In 2160, the battle of Cheron ended the war when the Alliance fleet destroyed the Romulan shipyards and bases in that system, which was the main forward base of operation for their entire war efforts.

A cease fire was negotiated via subspace, a Neutral zone declared and the war officially ended.

But not before the Romulans suffered one last humiliation. The Klingons, while not being part of the war, letting both sides slaughter each other, did attack Romulan outposts at their shared border. Since the Romulan navy was so weakened due to the war they just lost, they could do nothing to this land grab, perpetrated by the Klingon Empire.

Now the taskforce under the command of the Challenger, was dispatched to retrieve the ships at gathering post 115. It was the most remote location of all their strategic locations. The Ixis Nebula was blocking their direct route to Earth controlled space, so they'd have to go through the part of space between the cloud and the Briar Patch. So they'd have to make a week long slingshot move at warp around the Nebula and for several days actually fly to from the direction of Earth. But flying through the nebula was a risk as well. It would take months at impulse speeds and the radiation could cause casualties.

On the Challenger bridge, Captain Hauaman was preparing to arrive to their destination. The Challenger was in command of the taskforce, that consisted of four Poseidon class ships, the Crusader, Champion, Knight and Paladin. On the ships were also extra crews to man the disabled ships waiting for them at the gathering area. Those ships had only skeleton crews on board, just enough to be able to defend themselves, should the Romuland find them.

"You have trouble sitting down, Commodore." The Captain jest.

"I guess the time to be able to joke again has finally arrived." Commodore O'Donnell remarked as she stood next to her on the bridge. "But I won't sit still, until I get my ship back."

"Don't worry. I'm sure the Bismarck can easily be made to fly again."

"Still vexes me how I was forced to abandon her after those Romulan cowards nearly caused a reactor breach."

"Targeting their cyber attack on the reactor controls was a good idea on their part. Our Yorktown class ships outgunned almost anything they had."

"They started this war, we ended it, that's all I care about."

The fleet exited warp and approached their location. All the ships they left here, some months, some years ago, were still there. Two Yorktown classes, four Intrepid, three Delta Wings, one Vulcan D'kyr class, one Poseidon class with a medical refit, three Conestoga and three Y class ships.

"When is the Vulcan ship Ti'sis arriving to give us a hand with their property?" The commodore asked the Challenger's science officer and the Vulcan Command representative.

Commander K'Lir responded. "The commander of the Ti'sis said they will arrive at the rendezvous coordinates in five days." She was inspired by T'Pol, the first Vulcan, who broke tradition and left the Vulcan fleet to join Starfleet.

"Good. They allowed us to babysit their ship for all this time. They can take it back now, that the war is over." In fact this Vulcan ship was the closest the Romulans ever got to capture a Vulcan ship in almost perfect condition. They lured it into a trap and used a radiological weapon to kill off its crew. Only because of Starfleet did that ship not fall into Romulan hands. But they still infected it with their virus, so even Starfleet couldn't use it.

Once the ships took their position, engineering crews began using shuttles and transporters to move to the disabled ships.

K'Lir stood up from her science post and held a Vulcan mobile diagnostic tool with her. "We will ensure the Vo'kor is operational again within the time table." Commander Sek'Ris, still wearing his Vulcan fleet uniform, stood next to her. He was here on behalf of Vulcan Fleet Command, as they had no other resources this far out.

"Hope the program your people wrote to clean the mainframe of the Romulan garbage will work." The commodore remarked.

"It will." Was her only response as the two Vulcans entered the turbo-lift.

"Sometimes I would love to punch her." The commodore remarked to the Captain.

"I know the feeling, but believe me, her level-headedness is often useful."

Three days passed, but all the ships in the gathering area were more or less at least capable of travel. Starfleet came up with a new concept to get most of these ships back home. A warp fleet bubble. All the ships would connect themselves via their computer systems to a central control unit and in unity, engage their warp drives and so creating a larger warp bubble, that would enable slower ships to keep pace with the faster ones. It would also allow that most of the smaller ships could travel with no crew as their navigational and computer systems would be slaved to a control ship.

The Yorktown and updated NX classes were capable of warp six, the Vulcan cruiser even warp seven. But due to the fact that those ships would have to provide the largest part for the power supply for the warp bubble, their speed would be reduced to warp five. Every ship would contribute what it could.

The war forced Starfleet to, once again, think more militaristic and not in their idealistic way of exploration and diplomacy. That had once already happened, if only for a short time, when the entire planet held its breath if the Xindi would finish their job.

So the NX class update was modified for the looming war. The Columbia and Enterprise, who were already out in the ether but got the upgrades after the fact. Their old reactor was removed as the secondary hull was added. But other modifications could not be done as they were needed as fast as possible.

The other NX class ships that followed and got these upgrades from the start, got most of the intended modifications. Including some that were added after the initial NX class upgrade proposal. Deck one, the bridge and supporting rooms, saw no modification, say for one. The Captain's office now got a restroom as well. Deck two didn't change for Columbia and Enterprise, but the others had several science laboratories not installed as they were not needed on a ship intended for war. They did the bare minimum in the science capacity here, hoping that they could revert it back after the war. Much of the room that would be unused, was turned into MACO facilities and some quarters for them as well as the office of the MACO CO. The Science officer would also bet an office on this deck.

Deck three saw some alteration as well. Since the main reactor was no longer in the main hull, the power conduits were cut down in size by 50 but remained there to provide power to the shield generator a deck lower. The gained space was again reserved for MACO quarters. The rest remained the same, the top level of the cargo bays and machine and fabrication shops.

Deck four also remained mostly unaltered. But for the middle. Here, where the upper floor of the main reactor was located before, was now filled on the port side of the newly acquired space with a large water tank, starboard side got a two level arboretum and in between them was the two level shield generator. The one addition to the cargo bays was that the port one also got a large cargo transporter platform.

Deck five got some major changes. The saucer section was now a proper saucer. The old deflector was removed and used in the Poseidon classes, like the old reactor. Where the old saucer was, were now additional escape pods, recreational areas as well as the Captain's quarters at the front of the ship, with two almost as big quarters port and starboard of those. They could be used by any bridge officer.

The mess hall was increased in size to accommodate the increased crew size, by sacrificing one of the previous quarters. The sickbay got an extended surgical room and the doctor got his office to the left of the connecting corridor that led from the sickbay to the rest of the ship. These areas could now also be better quarantined, if necessary.

Deck six was almost identical as before, with the MACO briefing room, weapons storage, armory and brig being unaltered. But the tactical officer got his office on this deck now. The neck section also began here at the aft, still connected to the main hull. But it was the neck that did completely later the shuttle pod launches. Where they launched from before, was now sealed off as the neck area was no here. The old launch area was now reduced to the shuttle storage area. All the inspection pods and shuttles were stored there and could launch from the starboard shuttle bay at deck two via the large doors. The port side was mostly used for shuttle maintenance and the large robotic arm inside could be used for warp nacelle maintenance. But the total shuttle capacity was cut in half with this modification.

Deck seven was where the first real change could be seen, as there were now two deck sevens. The saucer one was unaltered. The neck one was new. There were the space for a diplomatic suit and a guest quarters, large conference room and a diplomatic work room. Starfleet still installed these as the NX class could and would go to diplomatic missions, either with its allies or to try to get someone else to join the war on their side.

Deck eight was a large barracks style deck for around 12 people in bunk beds. It also had common shower areas and recreation area.

Deck nine was the beginning of the secondary hull. But here were mostly the deuterium fuel tanks.

Deck ten was the upper engineering floor with some manufacturing capacity.

Deck eleven was the main engineering floor as well as the main tractor beam generator and aft tactical station of the ship.

Deck twelve was where the secondary hull's escape pods, upper level of the secondary computer core and secondary transporter platform were located. As well as the antimatter injection system.

Deck thirteen contained the quarters of commissioned officers on the secondary hull and water tanks.

Deck fourteen held the antimatter storage and quarters of regular crewmen for this hull.

The ship itself was heavily modified based on the experiences of the Enterprise crew. It now had four forward ventral and four dorsal phase cannons, Two aft dorsal and two ventral. The secondary hull had two ventral aft, two ventral forward and two aft dorsal. The nacelles got one each as well in the aft dorsal section to get better coverage. The torpedo tubes remained unchanged. Starfleet wanted to increase the torpedo capacity, but found only room in the main cargo room. So if during combat the armory ran out of torpedoes, it would take time to move them from the main cargo bay to the armory.

Defensively, the NX class had not only its main line of defense boosted, that being the hull polarization technology. The old pulse plasma cannons were also re-installed in all open spots. These devices served mostly as a point defense system, as when the Romulans and the Alliance started showing fatigue after three years of war, desperation tactics began appearing. Earth even began dipping into its old stock of nuclear weapons as antimatter warheads could not be produced fast enough. The Romualns had a similar idea, but for orbital bombardment. So the plasma bolts, while weak against capital ships, were decent for missile interception. But the addition of the shield generator was a real game changer for Starfleet. The NX could not compete with any Vulcan cruiser, but was almost on par with the Andorian and Tellarite ships of a similar size.

The Poseidon was designed as a cost effective variant of the NX. It received all the older NX class equipment, like reactor and navigational deflector. The saucer was in fact almost identical to the original NX design. But it was the aft section where the ships really differed. The Poseidon had a large, bulky aft section that contained a large hangar bay, almost one third as long as the saucer section. And it was directly attached to it, no connecting part between. It was also there that the shield generator was mounted. The nacelles were not vertically sticking up, but down, out of the hangar section. Above the hangar section was a bar holding a weapons pod. The Poseidon had a more automatic loading system that moved the torpedoes from the armory to the launch tubes in that pod. It was more compact than on the NX, but would also have more issues if damaged, as repairing it without a dock was problematic due to the hard access to those parts of the ship.

The Poseidon was limited to warp 5.2, like the old NX class was, but with the better reactor and deflector, the updated NX was capable of warp 6 as standard cruise, while 6.3 was its top speed.

The Yorktown class had the same engine and reactor, only the reactor was longer to allow more power to be produced due to the longer reaction chamber. The ship was of course almost twice as large as the NX, so the power was needed.

This class was made for the war only. It was not a pure warship, but as close as Starfleet ever came to creating one. The saucer was not only wider, but also taller than on the other two classes. 50 more torpedo tubes at front and aft and double phase cannon ports. At the aft the ship didn't have a dedicated neck section, like the NX, but a direct connection to the longer secondary hull. It was also here that the main impulse engines were installed. At the secondary hull two pylons stuck out horizontally to port and starboard, where they connected to the nacelles. At the rear of the secondary hull was where the main shuttle bay was located. The one distinguishing feature of this class was that it had two front and two aft heavy phase cannons in the saucer section. It could also use the overload function, that Starfleet made a standard piece of a ship's tactical capabilities. So could the NX class and Poseidon class. But all within limits, as the cannons were reincorcet to handle the recoil, but the cool down time was still long.

Starfleet of course had to use anything they had or get their hands on in that war. The old Daedauls class was put out of mothballs. So was the Franklin class. The Intrepid could somewhat keep pace with the Poseidon, but with limited space and capacity, that class was kept as a support ship. The Delta Wing class was in the past used as a police ship. It was, due to its slow warp speed, never used in fleet movements, but stayed to guard planets, bases or colonies. After all, and Delta Wing that was at any location when the war began, was there for years anyway and would stay there until war's end. The ones in the gathering area were mostly there due to their locations that they defended, being destroyed. So as the ships were tactically useless, they were diverted to this location.

The civilian transport ships that were pressed into service, would have suffered a similar fate, hadn't Starfleet made some much needed reactor upgrades to give the ships a speed boost. The old cargo transport ships and colonization ships were used for transporting military supplies or were used as troop transports.

The small fleet was arranged in a logical order. The Vulcan ship was at the rear. The Challenger at the front. The Poseidon classes were all arranged in a circle at the other edges of the bubble they would create, the two Yorktown classes were in the middle with the rest divided equally around the space.

All ships would also link up their communication grids. That way, since every ship would add to the warp bubble, a certain set of coordination was needed. The three largest ships would take charge of power management with the fleet, the Challenger with the navigation the Poseidon's with stability.

"All ready here, Commodore." Captain Hauaman reported via comm to the Bismarck.

"Confirmed on our end. Power systems look good."

"All engineering stations in the taskforce confirm, warp fields synchronized." Lt. Commander Hayashi reported on the Challenger comm station.

Green all across the board. "Helm, set a course for the turning maneuver after we clear the nebula." Captain Hauaman ordered as she sat down in her chair.

Some minor fluctuations followed, but a large, yellowish energy bubble appeared around the fleet. Then, all at once, they entered warp.

On the Challenger bridge, the entire bridge crew remained in suspense, except their Vulcan XO.

"Warp one. All ships holding their position in the bubble." The helmsman reported.

"Good. We have the steering wheel. Increase to warp two."

Nothing bad happened. "Holding at warp two."

"Then slowly creep us up to warp five. If at any point there is any issues, slow down again."

"Copy."

In main engineering however, Commander Scott was about to get a rude awakening. "Mark!, I just lost power to the reactor control console!"

Her officer in charge, who was a level above her at the power grid console, had similar issues. "Mine has some power fluctuations... Wait. Commander, come and have a look at this."

She did as asked. Once she saw his console, she saw something that made her blood freeze. "Shit."

"Commander?"

"God damn those Romulans!" She pulled her communicator out. "Bridge, we have a problem."

"Clarify."

"Captain, the power distribution console is blinking a code in an unknown language, I think we were infected by a virus!"

"Are you certain?"

"Yes!"

"Then we must shut the link off right now..."

"Too late for that. I think we got the damn virus from one of the other ships! I think we're all infected."

Back on the bridge, on the main screen all the ship COs were having a discussion. Even the Vulcan commander reported that his ship was infected.

"How they got us is not important right now. We need to find a solution."

" Commander Sek'Ris is correct." The commodore agreed. "We're all locked out of navigation and the virus seems to do specific things to specific systems."

"Yes, like shutting down life support. We'll all be running out of oxygen sooner or later." Captain Hauaman agreed with that notion.

"All ships have sufficient supplies of oxygen as they are now. We have at least two weeks, that we can stretch by other measures. What we need is a way to purge the virus." The Vulcan replied.

"Well, all other systems are not only locked out, but the damn warp engines aren't allowing us to slow down or shut them off."

"Agreed, Captain. Hm... we'll have a meeting in an hour. All senior staff of every ship must search for either a solution or the point of infection. Until then, we're flying without breaks or steering wheel. Dismissed." The commodore ended the communication.

Captain Hauaman leaned over the helm to inspect the settings there. "How long can we hold this course?"

"At warp five but with this bubble... two months, perhaps."

"Fine. Keep me posted. Commander Scott, we have an hour. Find something tangible until then and join us in the conference room."

"Captain."

"Yes, Dr. Manor. What's the status down there?"

"Seven wounded and three dead. There was a rather large power surge in the armory. Lt. Pertov is among the dead."

Damn. Her tactical officer was gone. "Do what you can. We're working on a solution."

An hour later, every ship's senior staff was assembled in each ship's conference room. All the monitors were utilized to show the staff of other ships.

"Commander Scott, since the original plan was your idea and you know most about the computer link, have you found any possible solutions?" The commodore began from her seat on the Bismarck.

The commander stood up and showed them a ship diagnostic panel on the screen behind her. "As I feared, all ships got infected via the up-link."

"Any idea where it originated from?" Her captain asked.

"It could not have been downloaded in a transmission. We can detect and block those. It has to be a direct physical contact. Either a Romulan beamed on board of one of our ships, or... something from the outside." Scott summarized.

Lt. Garcia nodded at that statement in Challenger's conference room. "Remeber how they tried to disable our and Vulcan ships with those torpedoes equipped with an EM warhead."

Scott had a better idea. "The mine field."

"What mine field?" The commodore asked.

"Remember the first encounter with the Romulans by a Starfleet ship?"

Her captain responded to that. "Yes, the Enterprise was in a system claimed by the Romulans and they deployed a cloaked... mine ... field." The penny dropped. "They used cloaked mines?"

"Or something to that affect." Scott clarified. "A mine, but no warhead, just to initiate the contact to the hull and transmit the virus. And since we only got the virus' effects after we went to warp, I can assume the devices are still on our hulls and... were waiting for us to go to warp. I doubt every ship has one, the fact they got all of us due to the comm up-link is just a bonus for them."

"If they are there, can we find them and does that even help us?" The fleet CO wanted to know.

"We have to remove them one way or another. If we somehow remove the virus, they could infect us all over again. And if we get one intact, I can get the original virus version and perhaps use it to neutralize the one in our systems. But I can't promise anything."

The commodore took charge. "Since we only have short range sensors currently working, every tactical team on every ship will coordinate on scanning the hulls of every ship. This is all still just speculation at this point. Now... how do we solve this, regardless of if these mines are there and we get one?"

Scott cleared her throat. "As far as I and the other engineers in the fleet can see it, we only have one option. And unfortunately, unlike the Enterprise, who had a similar situation once with a Klingon subroutine, we don't have any ship that is not affected. We have to use a similar principle that Commander Tucker used back then. Our only advantage is that the warp bubble is charged up sufficiently that it can remain intact for... around 50 seconds, even if we shut the engines off. A form of cumulative effect from multiple engines working together. But we still won't have the time Commander Tucker had. We can buy more time to sustain the bubble by charging the nacelles up with warp plasma. Then we'll have to initiate a complete purge and restart. And we'll have to bypass some real important safety features on our reactors to do this."

"Then there's also the issue of keeping every ship in its position in the bubble." Lt. Rivers on the Paladin replied. "I was on the Enterprise when the Klingon sabotage happened. What you are suggesting would have a similar effect, but would flood the ships with radiation, because, as you said, we'd have to bypass several safety features. And we'd need to keep the ships in this fleet in their current position. Once we shut off the comm uplink and revert all ships back to local control... well, no ship has much in the way of steering at this moment, but then we would also have the issue with the remote controlled ships."

His captain asked him for his input on the matter. "What would we have to do to keep the ships in their position?"

"Start isolating any and all systems that can work independently from the main computer core and power grid. The tractor beam generator is one of them. We get it unhooked and purged on all ships, we can keep each other in position with them. We can even use them to grab one of these mines, should be find them."

Colonel Walker responded to that. "I thought those didn't work at warp?

"Transporters don't, tractor beams do."

The commodore saw that a plan was formulating. "Let's get back to the radiation. There was no such issue with Enterprise. Why with us?"

"As stated, sir, we're in a fleet bubble and we have no Columbia scenario. There is no alternative the engineering staff see. We isolate any system we can and that can work independently, we use the tractor beams to hold each other in place..."

"Commander Scott. If we have to purge the entire network and hope we can get it done before the field collapses and set the main computer systems to re-upload all operating systems... what will keep the beam emitters powered, if we cut them off from the warp core?" Her captain asked.

"The main impulse fusion reactors. At warp, they're in idle mode anyway. We disconnect them from the main computer and also cut off the plasma feed from the main reactor."

"If you do that, it won't have power for more than a few hours." Lt. Rivers once again reminded her.

Lt. Commander Nelson entered the conversation. "Yes, if at full impulse. We only need them to power the tractor units. At a full tank, they'd have power for that for a few weeks, even more if we do it with all engine reactors."

"All fine, but unless someone also finds a way to make us not die from radiation poisoning, all of this is mute." Dr. Manor sarcastically responded.

"The transporters." was Scott's response.

Now everyone was a bit lost, both on the Challenger and in the other conference rooms.

"Let me explain. When we use the transporters, our patterns are stored in the transporter buffer. But I suggest that we modify the buffer to continuously regenerate the patterns inside instead of just rematerializing them somewhere else."

Commander K'Lir got curious. "A transporter suspended animation device, as it were. Intriguing."

"Yes. The transporters are also independent of the main computer. The virus has no influence there. Even Vulcan ships do it like this. We just patch them into a independent power source..."

"Which we don't have. Oh, you mean the same way we'll power the tractor beams?" Lt. Rivers realized her plan. "But the transporters, while independent from the main computer, don't have an independent power link. We'd have to use high power

"And with a full tank, they'd have power for that for a few centuries."

"I think there is just one thing you're not telling us till now." Major Sisko entered the conversation on the Challenger. "Your plan to use the transporters sounds crazy in itself, but someone would have to stay behind on each ship to initiate the purge. That someone can get a dose of radiation, before they reach thee transporter.

Finally Scott replied. "Yes. We can reduce the effects with our space suits..."

"We can also inoculate those that would do it with an anti-radiation treatment, would strengthen their cellular walls against it..." Dr. Manor added to the talk. "Still, depending on the dosage, yes, we might lose some, even if they run to the transporter after they get the job done."

"Then I volunteer." Commander Scott made the decision. "I won't ask anyone to do this, if they don't want to..."

"No." The commodore cut her off. "You are one of our best engineers. Don't blame yourself for the situation we're in."

"But it was my plan originally..."

"Signed off by me, Starfleet Command and Vulcan Command. No one could have foreseen this situation. No. Who will do it on what ship, will be up to individual ship captains, but I give the final approval. But, sorry to say, we will need the more experienced crew members for later, when we pick up the pieces. Now... tactical, use whatever means you have to determine, if there are cloaked mines on any of our ships. Everyone else... I hate the plan, but we have no alternative. Commander Sek'Ris?"

"I see no alternative as well. I advise we begin the preparations at once."

"I concur."

"I will also need some more time, even with everyone from Starfleet on the Vo'kor, our ship is more interconnected than any Starfleet vessel. I however see one issue."

Scott had a good idea of what it was. "We need to install some sort of recall program into the transporter console."

"Exactly. And with all the power surges that will occur and the radiation spreading on all ships, any recall system we devise, might fail."

"Well, how long to implement this plan and get everything ready?" The commodore asked.

"Ten days."

"Then everyone has that much time to come up with a better solution. Also, every logistical officer on a ship should begin stowing any and all important cargo in the most radiation proof part of the cargo bay. No matter if we succeed or not, we will need supplies for the aftermath. Dismissed."

Once the comm link went dead, all the Challenger bridge crew stood up and went to their assigned tasks. "You think this will work?" Captain Hauaman asked Scott.

"Depends on what part of the plan. Counting all variables, there is a 80% chance we succeed in restoring the fleet. 65% chance that it works without more casualties. 40% chance that... all goes well. Every part of this plan." She left the conference room.

"Your analysis?"

Commander K'Lir approached her from the side. "Her mathematical assessment is flawless. The one thing she didn't incorporate into it is... luck."

"I thought Vulcans don't believe in luck."

"We don't. But statistical probabilities are a form of luck, just predictable."

"And what do the statistical probabilities say of our luck?"

"Something will go wrong."

Ten days had passed. The fleet was ready. Who knew how far from Earth or Vulcan they were by now and the Vulcan ship they were supposed to meet, while probably already searching for them, had no idea of their course. Not that it would matter, the nebula and Briar patch there made long range sensors unreliable at best.

The only good news, beside that all was ready to go as planned, was that Commander Scott was right o the money. They found seven cloaked devices on the hulls of the disabled ships they came to retrieve. Mines, but with a cybernetic bombs. They only managed to salvage two, the others were lost when the tractor beams managed to get them off a hull, only to lose a connection to them as they fell out of the bubble. How did she know? Her reply was a simple one. It's just like a Romulan would think, based on the last four years. And the data on one of the devices showed that they were applied to the disabled ships only a few days before the war ended. This was their final spit into Earth's eye.

The programmers and engineers analyzed them and also came to a shocking discovery. They didn't have a solution to the virus, other than their original plan, but the mine design and the program in its original form... the technology and writing language reminded them of Vulcans.

Even the two resident Vulcans were surprised at that. No one ever really encountered a Romulan. At least not one who could tell a tale. Their cloak and dagger enemies made it really clear from the first fired torpedo that they wanted to remain elusive. Only speculations existed why all the secrecy was needed.

Now a hypothesis began circulating around the fleet that perhaps the Romualns had something common with Vulcans.

Nevertheless, the plan had to be put to the test, and soon, as the oxygen supply was running low. The transporters were modified and powered up. Most of the crews were already in suspended animation inside the buffers. Only a skeleton crew remained on each manned ship.

In the main transporter room on the Challenger, Captain Hauaman was about to step on the platform, as Commander Scott and a few engineers were staying behind to do their job. "Good luck, Kelly."

"You too, Sir. See you on the other side."

As the captain disappeared in a swirl of light, she turned to her crew. "All right, everyone to their stations. We have to coordinate with the other ships on this one. I'll be on the bridge."

All ships were standing by. They had to initiate the purge almost at the exact time. The margin for error was minimal.

Kelly took a deep breath. "This is Commander Scott to all ships. We're a go here." All other ships gave the green light as well. "Then we commence with the purge in 30 seconds.

The countdown was agonizingly slow. But once they reached zero, the bridge began shaking a bit as power surges erupted on every deck. She told her people what to do, but anyone could be injured during this.

The warp nacelles of every ship began leaking plasma, including the warp ring of the Vulcan ship. Simultaneously almost every single one of the manned ships went dark, say for their nacelles and tractor beams.

The second countdown began. Even with saturating the nacelles, they only gained a few seconds with that. But after 56 seconds, ships after ship began coming on-line again. Even the Challenger's bridge got power again. She was at the engineering station and saw the progress. The reactor control system were rebooted first as they had, for security reasons, a back-up basic command system anyway. All the others would need time. But time was a luxury for them right now. She saw on the internal sensors that the purge had also triggered the side effect, the radiation. She initiated the program to begin scrubbing the air in the environmental systems of it, once that system was rebooted. In a few hours. But it would still take them weeks to get to a normal level for humans.

"Everyone, get to their designated transporter platform!" She barked over the ship's intercom, as she checked her spacesuits power and oxygen supplies. Everyone put them on, even those that went into stasis days ago. Who knew in what the shape the ship will be once they get out.

She ran to the connecting vertical shaft from the bridge to the lower decks as the purge disabled the lifts. As she arrived at deck four and reached the platform, she called her people on the intercom again. No answer. They were all inside. So she was the last one.

She went to inspect the console for one last time. The recall system was put together with what they had, but since the ship, like all the others, had been through a rather unpleasant experience in the past eleven days, any system, no matter how interdependent, could be affected in some way or form, no matter how well they tried to reinforce it, fix it or otherwise prevent from failing. Her one fear was that somehow the multiple issues they had, like radiation, power surges or the damn virus doing some sort of damage they didn't think about, would cause some problems with their return. But her display in her helmet just showed her that she had no more time to worry about that, as the Geiger indicator showed her an increase in radiation levels.

She activated the automated sequence and stepped on the platform. "Hope this works."

Flashback end, Day 16 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 9th of February, year 2378, uncharted system

Almost a day had passed and finally the bridge crew of the Challenger assembled in the conference room to get a clear picture of the situation. The atmosphere on the ship was mixed at best. They lost 200 years... but they were still alive. Captain Hauaman sat at the table's end at the back of the room. to her left were her First Officer, Commander K'Lir, the ship's Science officer, Lt. Garcia, the Computer and Operation's Officer, Lt. Commander Hayashi, the Comm Officer and Dr. Manor, the ship's physician. To her right were Commander Scott, the Chief Engineer, Major Sisko, the MACO Commander and now as well the Tactical Officer, as the original officer had died during the initial virus attack.

"Let's go over ship status by departments. Science?"

"Long range sensors and astrometrics sensors are still off-line. We have partial navigation, but short range sensors are fully operational."

"Operations?"

"Main computer will be fully operational in eight hours. The transporters will need three days, since they were under all this stress for over 200 years... Anyway. Life support is at 90%. We'll get it up to 100% in a day. Grav plating is mostly working as intended, but there are some issues with it on decks seven and eight."

"Comms?"

"Like with sensors. Long range is off-line, we only have internal and short range. I can't even give a prognosis until we get someone to take a look at the main deflector." She eyed Scott.

"It's not a priority right now. Best I can do is two days."

"Fine." The captain continued down her check list. "Medical?"

"I have seven people in treatment, mostly due to radiation burns or slight poisoning. They'll live, but I can't have them doing hard work for three days minimum. My supplies are as they were when we went under... except for the consumables that went bad. I can tell yet what I can make myself again. You'll get a full inventory list by this time tomorrow."

"And our guest?"

"Sedated in the ward."

"I have guards posted both inside the ward and outside." Major Sisko added.

"Good. Any idea who she is?"

Lt. Garcia responded. "Her flight suit had a name on it, in some weird mashed up version of Latin and Greek. Lt. Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace."

"She's human, by the way." The Doctor returned to this conversation. "Ran her blood through every test I had. Some indications of smoking and drinking habits were found... and a broken leg."

"And the... fighter she was in?" The captain asked.

Lt. Garcia responded again. "If you can call it that. A bio-mechanical construct. It has an actual organic brain inside of it. We got it towed via the tractor emitters into the main hangar. Fuel lines, oxygen supply, gun ports, missile rack... it's clearly a fighter."

Commander K'Lir added her observation to this topic. "And clearly not made for her. Signs were found that someone forced the hatch on the fighter open and cut through the flesh. The fighter seems to be capable of autonomous control. I believe that brain in it is not for an autopilot."

"You think it was alive?" The captain asked.

"It is a logical conclusion. Not the only one, but the most plausible one. Why go through so much work to create such a complex system, to only use it as a regular craft afterwards? Which brings me to a point of interest. Lt. Garcia and I managed to create a limited link between a portable computer and that fighter. Its designation is Cylon raider 11-A-973 attached to basestar 136."

"Cylon? Raider?" Were the question in the room.

"I believe the words raider and basestar are used for a type of space craft." The Vulcan officer explained. "If the word raider is used for this fighter design, it is plausible to think that a basestar is its mother ship."

"And Cylon?"

"A name for their species. If they are an organic and synthetic hybrid race, I don't know with the data at hand. We will need more time for that. There are two items of importance about the raider you should know, Captain."

"Go on."

"The raider was aware of our position, just not what we were. Apparently it is capable of detecting a form of tachyon signals. It detected our short range emergency beacon."

"I've already disabled it, until we know more about what is going on out there." Commander Scott clarified the situation.

"Why was it active anyway?" The captain wanted to know. "We only use those in rescue operations inside a nebula or other phenomenon, where subspace detection is limited."

"The purge caused so many power spikes, it triggered that system to stay active."

"And the second point, Commander?"

"I believe that the craft is capable of some sort of faster than light travel."

The room went silent. Scott broke it first. "How? No craft that small has been seen to be capable of warp?"

"Suliban cell ships are." The Vulcan officer reminded her."

"Yes, but they have antimatter cells. This craft has no indication of antimatter anywhere."

On that the Vulcan agreed with her. "Curious indeed. But I base this conclusion not on its design, but navigational data. Apparently it came to this system from a location 30 Ly away. And not by being transported here by another craft."

"How then?" Her captain demanded an explanation.

"Unknown for now. I will require more time to get better access to the memory banks on the raider."

"Fine. Now, engineering?"

"Reactor is stable. We have some power line issues because of the purge. We'll have them patched up in two days. The nacelles have taken a beating because of the purge as well, but the injectors and coils are showing some signs of fatigue. I have yet to get access to the navigation logs. I don't know how long we were at warp after the purge, but we can assume that one by one, the ships fell out of the bubble after the purge. Since the Challenger was at the front, we fell out the last as the bubble was probably at that point collapsing anyway."

"And the unmanned ships?"

"We can only hope that the command program was transmitted to them after the purge to dump their warp plasma. If so, their reactors shut down and couldn't blow, since no fuel. If not, they blew up."

"And fuel status?"

"We're looking at 17% of total deuterium fuel capacity. We'll need to resupply somewhere."

"Is the mobile refinery unit still working?"

"Yes, that's the only real good news. Its completely undamaged. We could gather deuterium with the collectors at the front of the nacelles, if we can find a nebula with sufficient density, but we're the only ship in that fleet that had that capacity."

"We'll worry about that when it comes to it. Impulse engines?

"The primary ones are ready to be reattached to the plasma grid. The secondary ones that we used for power for the transporters... they'll need a day to get ready."

"Tactical?"

"Hull polarization is working as intended. We only have one real hull breach on deck two. Once we leave the gas giant, we can patch it up. Shields are a different matter. The power lines from the main shield generator to the projectors are damaged. Badly. We'll need a week at least to get them working again."

So they were in a bad position, if a fight happened. "And offensive?"

"The phase cannons will be back up in four days. Same power surge issues as the shields. But the torpedo launchers are a different matter. The initial virus infection almost crippled the loading and firing mechanism. We're looking at two weeks round the clock repairs. Only the plasma bolt ports are already working."

"So no armor and no sword, did I hear that right?"

"Yes, Captain."

She huffed. "If these Cylons are hostile, we can't go out and take a peak to see where we are in the galaxy, even if the sensors for that would be working. Damn... consumables?"

Lt. Garcia responded. "Hydroponics are down and all plants in them are dead, as suspected. If the radiation hadn't killed them, the lack of light would have. We have restored water supply as we unfroze all the water in the tanks, but even with the seeds in the hard storage area, we'll need weeks to grow anything."

"It matters little." The Vulcan officer responded. "The hydroponics were intended to supplement our food supply here, not to replace it. But we can buy time with it."

"So that we can die, just slower?" Major Sisko asked her.

"To find a solution."

"Enough. I agree with K'Lir. Now, what about the food we stored in the hard storage that could resist the radiation?"

"It's good, but the food synthesis chamber will need fixing as well. We're on the stored emergency food rations till then. And they do taste bad right now..."

"Their nutrition value remains, even after all of this time." The doctor shut down his whining.

The captain got all the info she wanted. "Good. Now, everyone, return to your stations and have your people focus on the impotent systems. Main computer and shields have absolute priority, with phase cannons right behind them. Dismissed." Everyone but K'Lir left. "You have something else to add?"

"I may have a way to speed the Cylon issue up."

Her Co, who was more looking at her PAD to this point, got curious. "How?"

"I can attempt a mind meld with Lt. Kara Thrace."

Her superior was not amused. "Your people only do that with consent. She's unconscious. It's morally not acceptable. And even if we woke her up, she probably will decline."

"Even morality has to bow to practicality sometimes. Our situation is questionable at best. We are alone, in a damaged ship, possibly surrounded by hostiles. If this gas giant hadn't pulled the Challenger in with its gravity, the Cylons might have already found us. I will not do more than a surface level intrusion, I will attempt to not look at private memories and she will suffer no side effects."

"K'Lir..." She paused. Her fried was right. They needed answers. And the faster they get them, the better. "How long would you need?"

"20 minutes of meditation would suffice."

"Then get ready and call me, when you intend to begin. I'll join you in the ward then."

Day 16 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 9th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger, ward

The guards were standing by, if needed. Dr. Manor joined them to keep an eye on his patient.

"I am against this. Not just for the moral issue, but this whole Vulcan mysticism is a load of crap."

"Your protest is noted, Doctor. K'Lir, proceed."

She was sitting next to the bed in which Kara has been for the past day, restrained, her leg already healing nicely due to the treatment. K'Lir put her thumb on Kara's chin, her index finger between her left temporal lobe and eyebrow and her middle finger just above that. "My mind to your mind. My thought to your thoughts."

Kara's mind

K'Lir found herself in Kara's mind, represented by a void with images swirling around her. Being unconscious meant that K'Lir had no opposition from Kara, but also no guidance. She grabbed an image.

"So the Pilot Academy?" An elder woman asked a younger Kara.

"You yourself said I'm a natural."

"I just... wish you'd taken more after your father. I mean you always had such an ear for music."

"Why does it bother you so much?" She asked as she was packing her stuff.

"A military career is dangerous."

"And one of a musician is boring."

"Sometimes boring is better." She knew how stubborn her daughter can be, so she relented. "Just promise me you'll be careful."

K'Lir stopped watching and returned to the void. She needed some background information. A memory from school would make most sense. She noticed one and grabbed it.

"OK children. Today's history lesson will be about the Cylon war. Pick up your holo-bands and be ready. I will turn the program on for everyone at the same time." Said the teacher in a classroom, not unlike ones K'Lir saw on Earth. But less advanced.

The young girl put her holo-band on and began seeing the recording on the first Cylon war. And K'Lir remained here for a while. To listen to everything.

After that memory had arrived to a point where she decided that there's no point in continuing with it, she decided to search for a similar school memory, but about their history. How did humans get here, wherever here is?

What she learned in another school memory, was that these humans believe that their species in general, began on a planet named Kobol. And they still worshiped many Earth deities that were abandoned on Earth millennia ago.

Things were getting more and more curious for her. She let go of the last memory and decided to try and find some current events. She saw a memory of her in a cockpit of a spacecraft, but not the one they found her in.

"Galactica, you have violent decompressions all over the port flight pod." This caught her attention. She focused on this memory further. She saw Kara lean over a table of some sort, where a map was displayed of some sort of system. And older man in uniform was talking to her. "Frak it, we lost a third of the fleet already?"

The man responded. "That's just the beginning. I'm afraid it's much worse than we think."

"How the frak did the Cylons get a jump on us this fast?"

The word Cylon was the ice breaker. These humans were attacked. By these Cylons, their own creations. She saw much of the first war from Kara's perspective, but apparently, unlike with the first war, these Colonial humans were not successful in defending themselves a second time.

She searched for a new memory orb, one that would tell her what happened afterwards. She found one of interest. The man from before was apparently holding a speech. All people, both military and civilian, were standing up and silent, with 12 banners behind the man. "So say we all!" He shouted out. Only slight responses were heard back. He repeated himself, louder. "So say we all!" A better response, but still only marginally. He repeated himself again, adding even more force to it. "SO SAY WE ALL!" This time he got the response he wanted. He was galvanizing them and the third time it worked. "Our homes gone, our fleet destroyed, no supplies, no safe heaven and no hope? Perhaps we should not pity the dead but envy them? Because their suffering is over. Because they at least died quickly?" He turned to a woman who was wearing a ceremonial garment. "Priestess Elosha. The Sacred Scrolls tell us of our origin on Kobol? Of the caravan in the heavens. Our banishment from paradise?" She nodded to all of those questions. "They also mention a 13th tribe, do they not?"

She answered. "Yes, the 13th tribe left Kobol years before the great exodus, to a distant habitable planet."

"And does that planet have a name?"

She hesitated for a brief moment. "Earth."

That caught K'Lir completely unprepared. They knew of Earth, but in such a unprecedented fashion, that it made no sense to her.

She let go of the memory. She was in a way more confused than before. She decided to try and find out what happened to Kara and how she got here. And she got her answer soon enough.

She was shot down, but not before returning the favor. She repurposed the crashed raider, but her fleet, not knowing her situation, cut their losses and ran.

More questions appeared. For the scientist in her, it was the strange FTL method these Colonials and Cylons used. But K'Lir also sensed something. Kara was beginning to wake up, so she decided to take a more active approach.

K'Lir projection was again in the void but now Kara's avatar appeared as well, groggily waking up. "Ugh, never drinking that much again..." She saw her surroundings and that she was apparently floating in space. Only then did she notice the strange woman floating in front of her. "OK, what the frak is going on here? Am I dead? Or asleep?"

"Neither, although closer to sleep. You are waking up."

"OK? If that's the truth, who are you and what are we doing in space? In my head, I'd be in a viper or a bar."

"I conjured up this image. A less distracting environment for us to talk."

"Why would my imagination do this?"

"I'm no imagination."

"Said every imagination, ever. So yeah, sure you're not." She scoffed.

K'Lir altered their surroundings, where they observed Kara as she entered the Challenger. How she stumbled around the dark corridors, only her helmet light giving any illumination. "This is you, a day ago."

"Frak. That wasn't a dream?"

"No. And neither am I. But perhaps to expedite this process, let me show you my last memory of my home world." The surroundings changed to an arid planet, but filled with life. They were standing on a mountain, looking down on a city. But a city Kara never saw before. Not the architecture, not the clothing of the people there, not the plants, not even the reddish star in the sky.

"This is your home world?"

"Yes."

"OK, I don't have that good imagination... what's going on!?"

Their scenery changed as they apparently entered Vulcan orbit. "My home world Vulcan, from orbit." Hera Kara saw many stations and ships in orbit, but recognized not one design. "There is a reason I'm showing you all of this."

"Oh, please tell me, cause I'm really freaking out here."

K'Lir pointed to a star in the distance. "A main sequence yellow star. Called Sol. After a deity of the same name."

That got Kara to begin listening closely. "Sol... wait, I heard that name in religious teachings. Also known as Helios." She focused on K'Lir now. "What's the point of this?"

"Patience." They appeared now hovering over a blue planet, with a large moon in the sky above it. Once again, stations, satellites and ships Kara didn't recognize, were in orbit. "The planet below us, shown to you from my memories, is Earth."

Earth. Kara didn't know what to believe anymore. "Earth? As in the 13th freaking tribe Earth?!"

"I do not know if they are the tribe you associate them with."

"Oh really? Then what are they, the 14th tribe? Please."

"There are many inconsistencies that we will have to deal with later. But that can wait. What can't is our current situation."

"And what is that? And by the way, if this really ISN'T a damn dream, how are you here?"

"I haven't had the chance to introduce myself yet, as I am trying to convince you that this is not a dream. With mixed success, I might add."

"You think!?" She replied sarcastically. "So who the frak are you then?"

They found themselves in the gas giant, hovering above the Challenger. "I'm this ship's commander. Or OX in your terminology."

"Commander? Isn't that a CO then?"

"No. In my culture, a commander is indeed a CO, as you put it, but in my culture, I was a sub-commander. But since I joined Earth Starfleet, I adopted their ranking system. And unlike your people, Earth has a strict division between military and naval ranks. A ship's CO is a naval captain. It's XO is a naval commander."

"Frak you guys are weird. But why would an Earth colony have a different ranking system?"

K'Lir saw a new issue arise. "You believe that only because your religious sects have told your people for millennia, that the galaxy is void of life, except for humanity, that they were right?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"On Earth, centuries ago, their religious orders told their people that their world is flat and that their world was the center of the universe. They were obviously wrong. And so were your people."

"Wait..." Kara's mind began grinding the wheels. "You were not a colony?"

"No."

"Then... no fraking way. If you say you're an alien, I know this is a dream."

"My people are called Vulcans. And the only reason I am in your mind right now, is because we have limited telepathic capabilities."

She burst out laughing. "Yeah right!"

"Once I allow you to wake up, I can show you my green blood, if you wish so, but it will not remove the truth. As an old Vulcan saying goes: After you eliminate all other possibilities, whatever is left, no matter how improbable or impossible, must be the truth."

"Yeah, whatever, alien lady..." She was waving her off.

"I know this will do little to convince you, but..." The scenery changed again. They were now standing in an arena, "This is the Archer Arena. Named after the officer who led Earth to victory against the Romulan Star Empire. What you see, is my memory of the preparations in this arena."

Kara was not taking this seriously. "OK, if you say so."

"Take a closer look." She tried to get her to look at a group of people, most either in naval uniforms or some sort of diplomatic gear. There she saw a blue skinned man with antennas and a bearded man of a short stature with an alien look to himself, especially the nose and mouth. They were talking to several humans and one pointy eared person. "Ambassador Soval, the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, talking to his counterparts. They were preparing for the upcoming signing of the first treaty that would initiate a process of a military, political, scientific and economic alliance between the three worlds and Earth. They stood together against the Romulan aggression, so they saw the reason to deepen their cooperation. It would take years to make it happen, but the war pushed them to this level of cooperation."

Kara was still not paying much attention. To her, this was just a nice story, fairy tale or an alcohol induced dream.

"But this is what brought this cooperation to that level." K'Lir realized that nothing she shows her or tells her will alter her mind here. Her upbringing was too deeply rooted to be shaken just like that in a few minutes. So she decided to take one last dramatic attempt, before she'd terminate the link and allow her to wake up. They were in orbit of Earth again, only now, it was not showing a peaceful sight, but one of conflict. War.

The stations and ships Kara saw in her first vision of Earth, were now fighting not only for their life, but for the planet below. And they were assisted by ships she didn't see before. Two different type of ships. And all were engaging ships that apparently had not only a predatory design to them, but were a fan of the color green.

Everywhere she turned to, she saw either a reddish beam, a blue beam, yellow pulse or green pulse fired. Energy barriers flaring up as they took the impact, sometimes even failing and the ship that was targeted, loosing chunks of its hull.

She noticed a wing of ships, identical in design to the Challenger, flank several of the green ships as they were assaulting what appeared to be an orbital dry-dock.

"So... this happened above Earth?"

"Yes. In the third year of the war, the Romulan Command must have decided that they can't win if the war drags on like this. Earth and humanity were a thorn in their side for all this time and their plans for that sector of our galaxy. Earth was derailing their plans for that sector, whatever they might have been. Knock Earth out of the war, humanity will follow. Then the remaining three races would probably too."

"I guess since I found your ships, it means you won?"

"How observant of you."

Kara was still skeptical. "OK, one issue I have with this fantasy light show I just saw. I remember how you portrayed your ships in orbit of what you said is your home planet. I didn't see a single one helping Earth. Want to explain that one?"

"My people had isolated themselves not long after the first six months of the war, returning inside our borders."

"So, you let Earth and the other two races to fend for themselves?!"

"Vulcan Command saw it as necessarily to prevent a significant plan of the Romulans to succeeding."

Kara crossed her arms. "I'm all ears. And it better be good."

"My race was the most advanced in several critical fields of technology. But we were all vulnerable to the same tactic the Romulan Star Empire employed during the war."

"And?"

"A human would call it irony, as they used a tactic similar to your Cylons."

"Wait... you mean cyber warfare? They hacked your ships?"

"Nothing as simple as that, but in essence, yes. We learned only later, that they field tested this technology on an Orion and later a Klingon ship first. Apparently with success. They repeated this with Andorian and Tellarite ships. They even tried with us. And while they did manage to neutralize several of our ships, we had at that point adapted our tactics, so that we always outnumbered their fleets in ship numbers. Their hacking method did differ greatly to your Cylons. They just carpet bombed every Colonial ship in range with what I can only surmise from your memories, was a shut down command. They could do so, because your military had not prepared for such a possibility, had fail-safe's and backups, as well as a manual override. The Romulans had to additionally use their method on computer systems of many different designs and programs written in significantly different languages. The Romulan device was much superior to your Cylons, but also more limited. Any Romulan ship could only attempt to disable one enemy ship at a time. If the attacked ship had an ally, it could engage the distracted Romulan ship."

"OK, didn't get half of what you said, but fine. And Earth?"

"Earth had... I suppose you can call it the Galactica syndrome."

"What?"

"The ship you serve on is the Galactica, is it not?"

"Yes, but that's not the point."

"Then what is?"

"Ugh... the whole syndrome part. What did you mean with that!"

"Earth's ships... were least interconnected, least automated and least computerized. Make no mistake, an average Earth ship is eons ahead of what you Colonials perceive as interconnected and computerized, but nowhere near us or the other races at that time."

"Wait... wait. Just wait." The show in the background had faded some time ago and they were again alone in the void. Kara was pacing back and forth. "Are you telling me that Earth was kicking ass because they were too primitive in your eyes!?"

"No. They were not primitive in my eyes, they just were less advanced than most space fairing races in that sector. My thoughts on the matter are based on facts. I have no opinion that would deviate from those facts."

Kara wanted to really punch her. "You mean calling humanity primitive is not your statement, but a fact? The nerve of you!"

"An emotional outburst will get you nowhere in this situation. I am in control of this link."

"OK, then end it so I can hit you in the real world."

"Would matter little."

"And why's that? Cause I'm human?"

"Yes. As a Vulcan, my physical strength is three times yours. And your leg was broken and is yet to heal properly."

"Believe me, I've had worse odds stacked up against me. And I've beaten bigger girls than you."

"Insults are also ineffective on me. As a Vulcan, I am guided by logic. You can not threaten me, seduce me, insult me, compliment me or anything else that is emotionally based."

"OK, so if I call you an annoying, pointy-eared, arrogant bitch, you'd not take it personally?"

"No. Although it always surprises me of your specie's obsession with our ears. But I think we talked enough..."

Day 16 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 9th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger, ward

Commander K'Lir opened her eyes again. She retracted her hand and fingers from Kara's face and regained her bearings.

"You've been gone for almost two minutes." Her captain informed her. "You got something, right?"

Dr. Manor saw the bio monitor indicate that his patient will regain conciseness soon. "It'll have to wait."

K'Lir responded none the less. "Yes, but more than I anticipated. Her will is strong, if undisciplined. Before she wakes up completely, I will have to give you the basics of what I learned. And it is disturbing."

She went on to tell her about the Colonials, the Cyrannus system, the 50 billion population. Their myths and that Earth was apparently their 13th tribe. But she didn't hesitate on telling her the disturbing part too, before any hope could manifest itself only to be crushed. The Cyons, their first rebellion, the second war that only happened 16 days ago. The result of that war.

"My god... 50 billion. Dead? Just like that?"

"Perhaps not all of them, but we have to assume that most of them, with only a small minority surviving. Like the fleet Lt. Kara Thrace was part off."

"Ugh..." Kara was now regaining her choiceness and began looking around. "Frak, not a dream."

She was a lightly lit room, with several beds right from hers. Apparently she was at the last bed at the end of the room. She heard the annoying beep sound of a heart monitor and looked behind her to see the bio monitor above her head on the wall. She also noticed that her hands were restrained to the bed. And an IV in her arm and her leg was now in a fancy looking cast.

Then she saw three people in the same uniforms she had just seen in her dream... or vision. Until she noticed the woman. "Frak me, not a dream? You!"

"I believe she recognized me."

"Remind me to give you the hand book on following orders. I never said you could talk to her."

"I think your race calls is taking the initiative. Besides, we now know these Cyons are a threat and we need to fix our ship before venturing out to see where in the galaxy we are." She took out a hand held translator. "We need to adjust this." She began making some modifications to the program as the crew noticed the tampering that was done on the bridge and programmed their comm devices to the two languages. "Understand me now?"

"Yes, for frak's sake. What was that you were talking about there. Pig Kobolian?"

Captain Hauaman would have been amused by this outburst if the situation was anything but this dark. "Quite a temper and mouth on her."

"Indeed. Lt. Kara Thrace, I believe introductions are needed. This is Captain Sakari Hauaman, the Challenger's Captain, or CO for you. I'm Commander K'Lir, Chief Science officer and Second in command. The man looking over your vitals is the ship's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. George Manor."

He didn't even look at her and kept inspecting the diagnostic chart. "Pleasure."

"Charming..." She retorted back. "And them?" She meant the two MACOs at the entrance. "My bodyguards?"

"Something like that." The captain retorted back. "Lt. Thrace, we need to have a serious talk. Doctor, leave us for a while."

He sighed. "Sure, her leg is healing nicely, she can't really leave the bed and I'm getting bored anyway... so, off I go."

As he exited the room, the captain nodded to the MACOs as well. "Now, I understand that you and Commander K'Lir already had a long talk."

"If you can call that talking."

"Well, she went against my wishes." She gave her second in command a stern look and sat next to the chair at Kara's bed. "Now we get to do this the old fashioned way."

It took about an hour for some form of trust to emerge. For Kara to get over her shock and accept that these were humans from a planet called Earth, that they had no concept of a planet named Kobol, that they stopped worshiping the same gods as the Colonials millennia ago. That they not only encountered aliens, but went to war with some and forged alliances with others.

On the other hand the captain had some issues with the whole Colonial and Cylon story as well. How could the Colonials on one hand build such impressive ships, size wise, but on the other hand not even have any concept of tritanium, fusion, antimatter, subspace and such.

What did amaze her was something she hoped would be a partial solution to their predicament. "Can you describe the FTL system you and the Cyons use."

"Why?" She didn't see the point of this, Earth had to have something like this as well.

"To be honest, neither Earth, the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Romulans, Klingons... no one used anything like what we think you use. Until the Xindi incident, we believed that warp-drive is the only viable FTL method."

"What the frak is warp?"

The captain saw that this would be difficult. "As far as we understand from the log of that raider you used, your FTL system uses a direct, point to point transition in space?"

"Ehm, yes? What else is there?"

"Warp drive, in a simplified way, allows a ship do detach itself from normal space, like a ship in a bottle. By using, what we call a warp field, the ship then uses the field to manipulate the space around itself and outside the field to warp it. Expand it behind it, contract it in front, and push it past itself at the sides. In essence, the ship travels at faster than light speed..."

"Hold it! Nothing can go faster than light! I may be slow on the sciency thing, but even I know that."

"And yet, you can traverse at FTL speeds as well?" K'Lir pointed the logic gap for Kara.

"Well, we don't really travel, we just blink from here to there, that's how jump drives have always worked."

"Jump drives? Is that what you call them?" The captain asked.

"Em, I just said that. Now how do you explain your FLT issue?" She mockingly returned the stare to the Vulcan.

"The ship technically never moves faster than light, the space around it is moved faster than light. You see, matter and energy, except for one known artificial particle so far as we know, can't go faster than light. But space can move faster. And that artificial particle, is something that apparently even your Cylons are aware about."

"Wait, what? What do you mean the fraking toasters have FTL particles?"

"Toaster?"

K'Lir had a pretty good idea what that meant. "A derogatory term, meant as an insult. Like calling us pointy ears."

"Right... sorry. Yes, the signal that raider detected, was our short range emergency beacon. It was not suppose to be on, but then again, many things were not suppose to have happened, yet they did. And that raider determined that it was used on a frequency similar to something they call resurrection."

"Yeah, got that myself. No idea what resurrection means."

"A word, used to describe the term of returning from the dead..."

"I mean in the bigger context!" Kara was getting more annoyed by this Vulcan, who had a rage inducing tendency to correct you every time. "I know the meaning of the word itself! What is it's context with the Cylons!"

The captain realized that her first officer was stepping on Kara's feet with her being, well, herself. "Neither do we and to be honest, it's not of any importance right now."

"I agree with you on that at least. Now, what's the plan? You do have one, do you?"

"We repair our ship to a point where we can safely leave this location. We try to find our remaining ships, which will be scattered all around the place and go pursuit your fleet."

"OK, but you're not doing this just to get me home, are you?"

"To be honest, our situation is not the best. Our fuel supply is below 20% and our food stocks are in the same category. Simply put, we and your fleet could help each other out."

"Yeah, and here I was hoping that Earth would come to the rescue..."

"Nothing in life is that simple, is it?" The captain tried to be sympathetic to the Colonial's current situation.

"Guess not. But the longer we wait..."

"We understand that, but this ship is in no condition to go slug it out with anyone. What would be the point to go after your fleet, if we can't or get blown to pieces the first day."

Kara saw her point. "Fine... so now what?"

"Captain, a word..." The Vulcan requested from her CO. "I believe that time could be used more productively. We should call the doctor back and ask Lt. Garcia to prepare a vacant quarters for her."

The captain had a pretty good understanding where this was going. He took her communicator our. "Dr. Manor, please report to the ward and bring a crutch with you. Lt. Garcia, have a free quarter on deck seven prepared for our guest, under security measure three..."

"Sorry, Captain, but life support has still not been fully restored there. I'd recomend not using deck seven till we fix that."

"Do you have any alternatives on this or another deck?"

"Port side quarters, aft section, near the secondary impulse engine."

The captain knew where he meant. Good location. One way in or out. "Get it ready then and come to the ward with Major Sisko as soon as possible. Out."

They turned back to eye Kara. The captain took charge. "You are not useful to us until that leg get's healed. But your brain still works, broken leg or not. You'll be assigned your own quarters and given limited access to our database. I expect you to learn about our history and get up to speed. Perhaps then I'll give you more access to this ship's systems information. And perhaps then you can help us in getting this ship ready to depart a bit sooner. That sound good to you?"

"I'm still under guard, aren't I?"

"If the situation would be reversed, would your superior do anything different with us?"

"Suppose not..." Dr. Manor just entered the ward with the requested item.

"You rang." He said with a sense of humor. "She still can't walk with a bed attached to her wrists, you know."

Her doctor was a fine physician, but some times... "Men, remove the restraints." The captain ordered the MACOs.

Now standing on her own, but still in her patient garments, Kara leaned on the crutch. "Can I get some normal clothes? Or mine back?"

"We'll get you normal off duty clothes. Now, Doctor, how is the prognosis of her leg?"

"Hm, she could shave it a little?"

OK, Kara didn't know who was on her to punch list higher now, alien lady or the smart all doctor. "Hey, broken leg here. Stop it with the witty remarks!"

"And while you can't run, your mouth runs just fine... Anyway, in two days she should be fine, I'll make a checkup then and remove the cast. In three days she can walk normally again. But she must come to the Sickbay once a day to get her medicine to speed up the healing rate. Now, anything else?"

"No, thank you Doctor."

As he left, they all saw that two men were already waiting outside the ward. "Is he always like that?"

"No, usually he is a real smart ass." The captain responded with a sigh. "Now, come."

Once in the corridor, Kara saw that one man was in the same uniform as the captain and commander, but had less of those markings on his neck. These must be the rank insignias, Kara realized. "Lt Thrace, meet Lt. Garcia and Major Sisko. The Lieutenant's my Chief of Operations and is getting the place where you'll be staying, fixed up. The Major is my MACO Commander."

She now eyed the obvious solder. His uniform was different, just like the guards inside the ward and outside. Darker uniforms, body armor and some sort of rifles. "What's a MACO?"

"Military Assault Command Operation, Lieutenant." The major responded in a matter of fact way.

"Sounds like a marine to me."

"Curious." Commander K'Lir reacted to that response. "Earth did in fact have military organizations called marines in the past."

"Be that as it may, gentlemen, get our guest settled down and then back to work." The two high-ranking officers left, leaving Kara now with these two new faces to work with.

"So, who do I follow."

The major answered that as he ordered two of his solders to return to their regular posts and the other two to follow them at the back. "This way."

She slowly followed the major as Lt. Garcia remained mostly beside her. "So, how did humans come all the way out here, wherever here is, since we still don't know where exactly we are, when compared to the galactic center."

"Then how do you know you're out here? You could be in there as well."

He thought about it for a small bit. "Yeah, guess you have a point there. But people speculate, you know. Now, back to my question."

"Technically I could ask you the same question."

"True, but I never heard of a lost human colony, well, ever since the Terra Nova issue was resolved, that is."

"And what makes you sure, you're not a colony of us?"

Now her entire escort stopped and tried to find out if she was serious with that statement. "Your joking, right?"

"Don't think she's in the joking kind of mood, Lieutenant." Major Sisko remarked. "And to answer your question you just reflected back at us, oh, I don't know, archeological findings..."

"We have those too, try harder."

"How far they go back?"

"1500 years, since the first settlement in the Cyrannus system."

"And by settlement you mean when you colonized a planet?"

"12 actually."

"12? 12! Damn. How..." Garcia was now bursting with questions. The MACO leader intervened.

"Can wait for later, let's just get our orders done, I'm tired as hell, Adrian."

"Yeah, but still..."

"Can wait. Let's go." So they continued on. But Sisko wasn't done. "And do you have any proof from the planet you came , before you colonized that new place?"

"Well, no."

"Then how can you say we came from you?"

"Our oldest texts say that life began on Kobol and all 13 tribes originated from there."

"OK, fascinating. And just so you know, my ancestors were devout believers in a person called Jesus, but that didn't mean they believed everything that is written in the Holly Bible, like that the entire planet was sunken under the seas by God's wrath or that every single human originated from Adam and Eve, cause let me tell you, with that kind of level of inbreeding, there are not nearly enough retards around."

Garcia tried to take the diplomatic way. "What Major Sisko is trying to say is that only because someone said something or something is written somewhere, no matter how old it is or sacred it is don't take it at face value."

"OK, fine, point to you. But then tell me, how old are the oldest texts or ruins on Earth then?"

Sisko got her to bite. "Depends. Some sites are as old as 5.000 years. Some cave paintings even more than that. The oldest texts? Some Hindu mantras are around... hm, 5.000 years or so? Don't quote me on it. First tools discovered were probably 20.000 years old. So unless you say that your colonies can produce something more tangible than an old book or text, sorry, Lieutenant, we have the high ground."

Garcia once again tried to widen the scope of this talk and to prevent any conflict. "We also have fossil records and the entire genome database of Earth. And we can genetically prove that we, as in humans, are compatible with the flora and fauna on Earth. We have a common ancestry there."

Kara didn't expect such a pushback or even reasonable arguments. And she was not in the mood anymore. "Fine. We'll talk about this more another day. But tell me, what's with the pea shooter you have there? Where's the muzzle and the magazine?" She was eying Sisko's rifle.

"Standard MACO issue phase plasma rifle."

"In the 40 watt range." Garcia grinned as he said that.

"Stop it with the dumb movie references."

"Hey, it's a great movie."

"I agree, but wrong time and place!"

"Why would... oh, sorry."

Kara just shrugged. "Hey, all of this just goes over my head anyway. Except the plasma rifle part. Did you by any chance shoot me with it?"

"Yes, I did. Stun setting."

"Gee, thanks."

"You were an unknown. You'd do the same thing. Except with that antique you had."

"Guess anything looks like an antique, when you have energy weapons, right?"

"You don't seem too worried by that, if your people don't have them?" Garcia asked her.

"That Vulcan person gave a show of her memories. Got used to it there. Had to get used to it that it was all real." She turned her head to Garcia. "What was inappropriate with that last remark you made?"

"Oh, well, you see..."

"He is a big movie fan. From the past, that is. He really loves his classics. And, well, you guys made a movie script come to life, sort off."

"What? Like crazy robots nuking planets?" She once again eyed Garcia, but more seriously.

"Yes. In a way. See, Earth was obsessed with rouge AI trying to destroy humanity type scripts..."

"Some better than others, by the way." Sisko jumped in.

"And, well, you guys made your own crazy AI."

"Yes, and look what it got us." She turned back to the two MACOs at her back as they turned a corner down a long, dead end corridor. "Do you all know?"

Garcia only nodded, but Sisko responded verbally. "Yes. Won't shed any tears. Won't bring them back. But getting this info to Starfleet is now top priority. You know about our situation as well?"

"Oh yeah. Less bold and death, more crazy. Like 200 years stored in a machine crazy."

They reached the end of the corridor. Only two doors were here. "The front door is locked and leads to one of our impulse engines. So even if you get past the guards, don't bother. Same for the one after your quarters. Now this..." He motioned her to the sliding door at the side of the corridor. "Is where you'll be staying. Now, your index finger or thumb, whichever you prefer. You'll use it to open this door." He used a small hand held device to activate the door control console at the side. "The large button here, use the finger, it'll store your fingerprint and open the door."

Moving past him, she did as asked, using her thumb. A beep later and the door opened up. Slowly walking past him, she inspected the room. "Well, definitely larger than what I had on the Galactica." The room was partitioned into three parts, all by wall sections, but never fully closed off. The furthest part from the entrance was used as a closet space, even if she had nothing herself to put here. The long wall that was between her quarters and the hallway, had a set of wall attached furniture, mostly meant for storing equipment. She then looked at the main part. Here at the long wall section was a small two person sofa, at the wall that partitioned the closet from the main room, was a work desk, with a large computer monitor and access terminal and more storage space. Opposite of it was a bed and more furniture, including a large locker. Behind that wall was another small storage area that was apparently used for shoes as well as an access door. She pushed the open button and peaked inside. "Nice, shower, head and washing sink. And actual towels and soap. I'm getting spoiled."

She returned to the main room that also had an observation window. "If you want to close it off..." Sisko pointed to the wall console to his right, as he was leaning next to it, halfway between her quarter and the hall. "We'll get you a jug of water in some time." He then threw her a communicator. "Only my and Garcia's comm channels are usable on it, so you don't disturb anyone else."

She sat down on the bed, that was already made and also spotted the civilian clothing on it. "Not to be ungrateful, but when do we eat?"

Garcia grimaced. "Yeah, we were asking that ourselves. Restoring the food processor is not a top priority."

"If you die on a full stomach, you still die." The MACO retorted, seeing the logic.

"Yes, but working on an empty one is not good. We have only the emergency food rations, so like the rest of us, you'll have to make due, until we get that sorted out."

"200 years old rations?!"

"Dehydrated, sealed off, preserved at really low temperatures food rations. Beggars can't be choosers." Sisko tried to make her see the point of this. "I don't like it either, but we at least have something." One of Garcia's people arrived in the corridor and handed him something.

"Lieutenant. Did your people have personal access data devices?"

"Eh, a what?"

He showed her the flat device with a working surface area with a text on it. A small pen like device was also attached to it. "This. The captain wanted me to give you one. You can recharge it on the work table there. It can upload information from the ship from there as well as well as download them. If you don't want to read at the desk, you can do it on the bed with this. Just download all information you want to here and off you go. Also, the captain asked me, if you wanted to, to begin writing anything you know about the Cylons, their tactics..."

"Yeah, sure I can, but most will be from my academy days and that was going through the First war Cylons. Clearly that info is outdated."

"Better than what we have, which is nothing. So, see you..."

"Wait. When do I wake up?"

"My shift starts at 7.00 ship time in the morning, so wake up at 6.00. Don't worry, I'll set your an alarm to that. Then breakfast. And then I suspect the captain will want to talk some more with you in the command center."

"Don't you mean the bridge?"

"Different room. More like that CIC of yours. So, anything else?"

"No, guess not."

"So, good night..." He closed the door and left her alone. This was one weird day for her. She swung her injured leg slowly onto the bed and began looking that the PADD. It took her about 10 minutes, but she got the hang of it. She did prefer reading Earth's history on the bed. Scrolling through the menu, she was looking for something to catch her eye. "Napoleonic wars. First World war. Second World war... frak, how many wars did Earth have? Eugenics wars? Fourth World war. First contact. The Xindi incident. The Romulan war. Well, plenty of wars to go around." She searched more at the bottom. "Trojan war. Alexander the Great. Mongol invasions. First Crusade, frak, this is too much. So let's start from the top..."

Day 17 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 10th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger

Kara was already waiting for Sisko to arrive. She had a good night sleep, even if getting to sleep was another matter. As she saw on the display on the monitor at the desk, it was almost 7.00. So she just opened the door, greeting the two MACOs outside. "Two new guys. Can't blame the other two getting some shut eye as well. And speaking off... Major."

Sisko just arrived down the corridor. "Well, someone's peachy today."

"More like restless. Can we go already?"

He nodded to his men that he's got this and they can go rest. "Sure." As they came across a rather large double sliding door to her right, she had to know this time what that was about.

"What's behind there?"

"Airlock." He pointed to the door to her left. "Space suits and repair tools."

"Ah. Got it." They moved on. She saw the repeating design of a door set in the corridor that probably led to two different quarters. Once they arrived down the curvature of the corridor and another one connected from the left, the major opened the single door to their right. Leaning on her crutch, she saw that this was indeed a mess hall. And it was mostly empty. "Are we early?"

"Yes. My shift starts sooner right now, in this mess. Others will be here shortly. Now... He opened a partially transparent sliding door and she noticed that it was made like a cafeteria style. Only no food there, but only the plastic bags with writings on them. "I know it's depressing, but..." He had three in his hand. "Grilled sandwich, egg sandwich or chicken sandwich?"

"Em... I'll take chicken, if you don't mind."

He put one back and kept two. He pointed behind her. The drink's dispenser is next to the entrance, but for now, only water is available. Go take a seat, I'll get a tray for you as well and get everything to the table."

She didn't argue and took the table right next to the window in the same section they entered into the mess hall. It stretched back quite some distance, but she was not worried about that right now. As the major was doe getting the glasses for them, the door slid open as Lt. Garcia, Dr. Manor and Lt. Commander Hayashi entered. They all greeted him and noticed her. As the major took the seat next to her and handed her the bag, tray and drink, he noticed her eying them. "May they join us?"

"Em, why ask me, I'm the tourist here."

"Being polite."

"Hey, my home may have been nuked, but don't touch me with kid gloves, got it."

He mockingly raised his hands, as if giving up. "Got it." He motioned them to grab a seat.

As Kara tore the plastic open, she began sniffing the so called food. It actually still looked edible. After taking a bite, she decided that it really tasted like cardboard, but they really couldn't choose. But the water really helped in re-hydrating the stuff in her mouth.

"So, how was your first night, Lieutenant?"

"Not bad, have to say. I have no private room on the Galactica, so it was a nice change of pace."

That was strange to all of them, except the MACO, he had a pretty good idea why. As Lt. Garcia asked the question, he felt he had to follow up on that. "Why, if it's as big as you say it is..."

Sisko thought to educate them a bit. "Adrian, think about it. It's a war vessel. It probably has military style barracks for most people, low level officers to simple deck hands. They can't waste space for things that don't belong in a war ship."

They got a collective OH, except for the doctor, who was not even listening.

"Anyway, Lt. Kara Thrace, this is Lt. Commander Sachiko Hayashi, our Communication's Officer."

"Lieutenant Commander? What kind of rank is that?" She asked while taking a sip of water to swallow her food down.

"A major, but for navy." The MACO once again clarifies.

It went on back and forth for a while, but Kara saw that they were all dancing around the one issue. "For frak's sake. Just ask me about it. Yes, my home is gone and 50 billion of us died, not even... what is it now, 17 days ago. I won't melt like snow if you ask!"

"We just..."

"Look, it happened. No amount of sorry will make that go away. I'll have to live with it. And to be honest, nothing I could have done about it anyway."

Now the doctor entered the conversation. "A decent way to look at it. But at some point you'll have to talk and let it out, or it will eat you alive. Letting your aggression out on something, like a firing range, that sort of thing."

"I kill enemy raiders for a living. I get plenty of chances to let it out."

"I meant something that doesn't involve you dying. I may be cynical, but even I see when someone is trying hard to bury something. Or perhaps it's not that at all. Something that happened and was in your zone of control?"

"You psychoanalyzing me?"

"No, not a psychiatrist, just my observation."

The major was done with eating and was waiting for him and Kara to go. "He speaks out of experience, you know."

"He's a doctor, what could he know about this?"

"More than you think. Sure, Earth wasn't nuked to oblivion, and not for a lack of trying, but..." He moved his leg to the side and pulled his pants leg up a bit to show her his leg. It was mechanical. "Lost it in the battle for Earth. So I left a part of me there. Lived in denial for a year before accepting that something's you can't change. And just have to learn to live with it. Was lucky the Denobulans artificial limbs research was as far as it was. Not as good as my old leg, bet nearly so." He went back to his breakfast.

As she was listening to this, Sisko had already removed his and her tray back, with all o them. "Let's go."

"Yeah... right." She stood up, following him. Once in the corridor, she had to know something. "Anyone else have any robot parts?"

"My MACO Commander, Colonel Walker, the Bismarck MACO officer. He lost an eye. Has an artificial one. Also not as good as his organic one, as he sees the colors worse with it. But can see more of the EM spectrum."

"Oh. And... they just live with them, like nothing happened?"

"Not really. The doctor has to take his leg off every day to clean what's left of his original leg. The colonel has to take his eye out of its socket for hygiene as well. And to charge it up."

They arrived at the lift entrance in the same corridor where Kara got out of their hangar. The lift came soon enough and once they arrived a level higher, she saw the large sliding door right in front of her. "Command center?"

He just nodded and entered. Inside, she saw three large monitors in the back, one planning table in the middle and several chairs all around the table. The captain, commander and chief engineer were already there, discussing something.

"Major." The Captain greeted him. "Lt. Thrace. Well rested?"

"In a way."

"Then take a seat." She did as asked and the others joined her. "A situation has developed. While you were asleep, we decided to take a peek of sorts. We launched three probes from our shuttle bay into the top layer of this planet."

Commander Scott began inputting commands on the console of the table. "Besides stellar constellations, which gave us another headache, they spotted this." Three Cylon basestars were displayed on the tables main monitor. But blurry. "Sorry for the image quality, but the probes burned up not long after reaching the surface. That, plus the atmospheric disturbances and the distance they were from this planet make this image so bad. Are those Cylon ships?"

"Basestars. We call them basestars. So do the toasters. When was this taken?"

"Seven hours ago. Then..." A diffrent image, with two basestars in it. "Three hours ago. Each time, they stayed for a few minutes and jumped away, intensively scanning the area. And we again detected those tachyon signals."

"So they're looking for the fleet?"

Commander K'Lir agreed with that assessment. "The best logical explanation. As well as the raider remains. This only reinforces that we can't leave until we're ready."

"On the other hand the probes did detect a subspace ping from the Crusader emergency beacon and it's less than one light year from here. Which puts pressure on us to speed this up." The captain explained. "But the bad news for us... is that we know where we are, relatively to Earth..."

Scott put more commands into the console. The image of the galaxy appeared on the table. Then the image was cut into four parts, marked by their quadrant designations. Then their location was displayed. Far out in the Perseus arm, on the outer galactic edge of the Beta Quadrant. "We're at least 22.000 Ly from Earth, deep in the Beta Quadrant."

The three officers that were already in the command center, realized that the major would be floored. They'd have to inform the rest of the crew sooner or later as well.

But for Kara it was the first time she saw how far their journey would be. Where Earth actually was. "Frak. That's a lot of jumping we have ahead of us."

Commander Scott altered the map on the display to one of local space. "More than you think."

"Why?" Was the question on everyone's mind. But the captain had an even more pressing one. "Will that derail your plan to try to copy their FTL method and see if it can be implemented here?"

"No, that's actually looking good. Lt. Thrace..." The image of a device was shown in the main engineering in the secondary hull. "This is the FTL engine and it's associated navigational computer we took from that raider you so graciously provided us with."

"You're welcome? I think?"

"I was successful to establishing a link to the navigation computer and, well, we're still making heads and tails of how this thing navigates and how the FTL actually works. But based on first analysis, we can modify the coils, reactor and our own navigational system to implement a jump ourselves. That however is the easy part."

"Then what's the hard part?" The captain demanded to know.

"We'll need weeks to write a corresponding navigation program with Starfleet standards. Until then, I think we can hook up this small Cylon system to our own and use it. And yes, based on the success the Cylons had with hacking the Colonial systems, I'll do it on an isolated computer, just to be sure. But there it is that I managed to realize something about this FTL method."

The Vulcan saw it in her face. "You heard of this method before?"

"Not like this exactly, but I was at the Warp Five Institute on Earth before I shipped off on the Challenger. We had several hypothesis there about warp technology and subspace. Well. Two have just been confirmed here. One..." A digital text of a paper that was apparently written by an Earth scientist some years ago, appeared on the table display. "What the Colonials and Cylons call jump drive, is actually a poor-man's co-axial warp drive."

Everyone was silent for a few moments. Kara reacted first. "You can call it any fancy name you want, a jump drive is still a jump drive."

"True. You Colonials just managed to get it working without any warp fields or antimatter reactors. Captain, that tylium stuff they use for fuel, it's actually veridium."

"Veridium is primarily used as an explosive." K'Lir explained. "The Spatial torpedoes we utilize, have a viridium warhead."

"Only your people would be crazy enough to mine veridium of all stuff as a fuel source." Major Sisko had to egg on Kara.

"Hey, it works, doesn't it!?"

"Barely." Scott responded. "Both you and the Cylons have to use primitive capacitors to store the energy generated by burning veridium, or tylium, as you call it. The stuff is potent, but not fusion reactor potent, let alone antimatter. Anyway. Once the modification's are complete and we test it if we adapted their FTL method well enough, we'll be able to initiate the jumps far more frequently as a ship of equal mass and size but of Colonial design. We'll have to keep the hull polarized however as we initiate the jump."

The Vulcan studied the paper on the display. "Is there more to this theory?"

"The entire text is in theoretical FTL propositions, sub-section alternate methods. You can knock yourself out reading it all. I can write a better paper now that I see a working model, if I had the time. Which brings me to the other point..." Now several mathematical formulas appeared on the display. "Here are the formulas the Cylon computer calculates fuel consumption, energy needs, distance, mass, all the stuff needed to execute a jump. Once I input these formulas into a navigational system on the portable computer... it made no sense. And then I realized that it was the same problem that was staring me in the eye ever since we got the navigational log out of that raider. The jump range was ludicrous. Much too long for such a low power consumption. Yes, it's a small ship, but no, doesn't work. So, once those probes took a scan of our surroundings up there, I analyzed the space around us as well as the Cylon ships and stellar constellations. And we got this..." The image changed again, to what was apparently a two dimensional representation of their surrounding space. Then a filter was added, which changed the display as if they were looking at a topographical view of... an ocean, where darker blue colors meant deeper water and lighter shallower water." You may have noticed that the area I'm showing, is a bit large."

"Was about to ask you that." The captain agreed with that assessment. "Our astrometric sensors are no where good enough to have such a range. Or detail. After one light year, the detail drops fast, after two, we rely mostly on mass, energy or luminosity to know if something it there. How..."

"All tied to the FTL issue. And I got the answer in yet another hypothetical idea and the paper associated with it from the Warp Five Institute. What do you know about warp highways and warp shallows?"

K'Lir knew something, which was more than the others. "A warp shallow is an area of space where the effect of subspace is reduced. The Firusa Cluster is known to Vulcan Command to be such a place, as all subspace effects are halved."

Scott gave her an angry look. "And Vulcan Command didn't bother telling us this, why exactly?"

"Was of no importance. It is a localized phenomenon that was not observed anywhere else."

The captain now demanded answers as well. "Describe the phenomenon."

"All technologies that use subspace, have a reduced effect there. By a factor of two. Warp speeds are cut in half, long range sensors and communication as well."

"Think of a warp shallow like you rowing a boat in a swamp, full of animals, plants and trees. It takes you longer to get through it." Scott explained.

"A simple, but accurate example."

"Yes, well, a highway is the opposite. All subspace effects are amplified."

The captain began to understand. "So instead of a calm river, like in normal space, or a swamp like in a shallow, a highway..."

"You rowing downstream a raging river with a waterfall at the end. The river not only makes it easier for you, but you go much faster as well. This area for example..." She pointed to the lighter patch on the map where they currently were. "Has a multiplication factor of at least 10. So ten times the range and speed. That's why we have such long range sensor coverage here. And it would work for warp and jump drives as well. You go at warp one here, it's not speed of light, but ten times that. At warp five, well, 1250 times the light speed. Same for the Colonials. A maximum two light year jump turns to a twenty light years jump." She eyed Kara. "I know your no engineer, but did your government or anyone there not notice that your mathematical formulas were off? I mean I'm using a Cylon one and it's still flawed. Yes, the navigational program used the jump ranges you'd have in this space, but the formulas are way off."

Kara was actually pondering for a good few minutes. "Do our jump drives use this subspace as well?"

"Well, yes. The difference is that warp used subspace to warp normal space, your method travels through subspace for that brief moment to appear somewhere else."

"Well, as you said, I'm no engineer or scientist, but at the academy, we did hear how centuries ago when the jump drive was rediscovered, as our ancestors apparently forgot about it after they dismantled their ships when they arrived in the Cyrannus cluster, well, there was the so called Hermes Mystery."

"Hermes?" Sisko asked.

"Yes, the messenger, the traveler. So when this issue arose and no one could figure it out, they just named it that and left it at that."

OK, Scott was shocked, to say the least, at what she was hearing. "And they just left it?! No questions asked as to why the math doesn't check out?"

"Not entirely, from time to time, some tried. All were proven wrong. But if it worked..."

"A common human mistake. If it works, but you don't know how, don't ask questions." The Vulcan re-entered the conversation. "And your people had no concept of subspace." She inspected the map again. "I assume that the area the furthest from us, going towards the galactic center, has a higher effect?"

"Yes. I don't know the maximum, but it ends at the sensor edge at 20 times."

"Captain, it is possible that corridors of space with higher subspace sensitivity exist, enabling fast travel from one sector to the other. It would explain how our ships managed to traverse this distance."

"Yes it would. Commander Scott, how do the navigational logs look like. Any progress at restoring them?"

"Yes and no. I can tell that we drifted for most of the 218 years. But the logs still suffer from the purge we had to do as well. I'll be able to piece more of the logs together from the other ships, if we find them."

She corrected her. "When we find them. Now, with all the questions answered, when can you give me the best prognosis that we can leave this planet?"

Scott leaned back now and crunched the numbers. "With the Cylons lurking out there... the question is do you want weapons or not. If we ignore the torpedoes, we can focus on everything else more and... five days. In five days, I can get you shields, most phase cannons and most of the other systems, including the warp modifications to try a jump ourselves. But, I may have a suggestion on the Cylon detection matter." They were all ears, as they needed every advantage they could get. "I didn't just take the FTL engine and navigational computer out of that little raider. I also took a look at its other systems. This DRADIS included."

"DRADIS?" The MACO officer asked.

"Direction, RAnge and DIStance." Kara explained.

"So basically radar?"

"What's radar?"

"A system where radio waves are used to detect targets at long distance. Once they bounce off and the signal returns, you get a target on the display. At light speed, form of radiation." Sisko now explained back.

"OK, we call those wireless waves. But yes, that's it."

Scott took over again. "Anyway, after analyzing the system, I think we can modify our polarization system to a different setting. Normally we use it to harden our outer hull by increasing the tensile strength of our hull during combat. It wouldn't be easy, but not too difficult as well, to adjust the polarization system to instead of strength to magnetically polarize the hull to absorb the incoming signals instead of just bouncing them off."

"Like the aircraft in the 20th century..." Sisko pondered for a bit. "They called it stealth coating, or something."

Kara heard of something like that. "Well, we use stealth raptors and vipers for missions like that and yes, we do coat them. Even stealthstars, basically heavily modifies battlestars, but with stealth in mind."

The captain and commander were getting the picture. "So you want to modify the hull polarization for stealth against the Cylon DRADIS system?" The captain asked.

"Yes, but it would take more than that. We'd also have to kill all external lighting, close all the windows with the shutters, the positioning light would be off as well... and we'd have to turn the impulse engines down to 10% power and modify the nacelles and coils to store excess thermal energy, instead of just letting it vent out into space to decrease out thermal and optical detectability. I'd also suggest to not use any active scans and external communication, to minimize our EM signature. I can have all these systems joined and do a silent running mode, if you want."

"A good idea, Commander, but the thermal build up would sooner or later force us to expel the heat or risk engine damage." Commander K'Lir reminded Scott.

"I know... I know. Best we can do is to keep silent running up for... four hours. Except if we shut the warp engines off. But then..."

"We'd be stuck, as they'd need some time to be back up again." Sisko realized the issue with that idea.

"Good. Good. "The captain liked all of this as some real progress was made. "Commander Scott, the torpedo system is put on hold as of right now. But everything else remains a priority. Major, I know that only a day has passed, but I want your evaluation of Lt. Thrace as soon as possible. So, Lieutenant, after your visit at the sickbay, I want to you go with the major to deck six to the MACO facilities and begin exchanging anything of tactical value on the Cylons, outdated or not. Weapons, weak spots... everything. Both for their foot soldiers and ships. Major, once your done with that... against Commander K'Lir' better judgment, I've decided that we'll need the Lieutenant and trust must be made at an accelerated. So, after the exchange of information, take her to the target range and give her the tour of our equipment. But only the hand held ones for now."

"Understood, Captain."

"Then dismissed."

Half an hour later, they arrived in the MACO briefing room. It almost felt like home for Kara as it looked like the fighter briefing room from the Galactica, only smaller but more advanced.

"So, here you can take any seat and input the info on the digital desk next to you. Any info you input, will be added to the preliminary database, which I'll then review. Then once your done, we'll switch the roles, if you want."

"Sounds like a plan."

Kara went through everything he knew and learned. From the first war raiders she was taught about to the modern ones. All her observations on their tactics and armament. All she knew about the basestars, first war and modern, all the first war centurions, since she knew nothing about modern version ones.

She went through the campaigns and battles in the first war to the best of her capabilities.

It took the better part of four hours for them to be through all of this. "Now, since I already took a look at some of Earth's history and can do it later some more and I really don't look forward to lunch at this point, can we see your guns?"

The major too was not looking forward for lunch, so he agreed. "Right on. Follow me." They left the MACO room, but remained on the same deck. They arrived in a room that was apparently to Kara, was at the edge of the bulkheads. The room had a tilted outer hull and windows. "Welcome to the weapons testing laboratory." He went to a large locker to their left of where they entered. He pulled one weapon after another out and laid them on the table in the middle of the room. Next to it was a work station with analysis gear and a computer terminal. When he was done, he picked up the first weapon on the table. It looked mostly like a fancy hand gun. "This is a standard issue EM pistol. Used by Starfleet security on ships and stations, but was in the process of being downgraded to planetary security forces, as the Phase pistol took over the EM pistols role."

"Then why keep it here?"

"Logistics, that's why. We had to use what we had and got. The manufacturing couldn't keep up with demand. Hell, Earth and the Romulans even dipped into their old and obsolete nuclear arsenal, that's how desperate we were for ammo." Kara nodded. Made sense to her and the Colonials had similar issues in the first war. "Now, this weapon, like all here, handles mostly like that antique you had. Trigger here fires the weapon." He pushed the firing chamber forward. "Inside here is the power pack. The indicator light here shows the charge left in it. All power packs are identical and all weapons can handle the same type."

"So exchangeable ammo, of sorts."

"Precisely." He closed the gun back up. "Power indicator on the side of the grip as well. These buttons here alter the power setting of the weapon, so at maximum, the power pack gets depleted faster, but the weapon also does more damage, even melting through steel plates. You also have two additional settings, independent of the power slider. The one at the rear is the simulation button. It reduces power to a thousandth of a percent. It becomes a harmless weapon, intended for mock battles. The one on the other side is the stun off and on setting. If stun is on, the weapon will be set to a specific setting to try to incapacitate the target. Doubt it'll work on these centurions, so I won't bother with it then. The weapon fires a rapid fire low yield plasma bolt. Here, try it." He handed her the weapon. She began to get a feeling with it, even made some aiming attempts, but not fire with it. She after all was still holding her crutch with the other hand.

"Looks interesting. Next." She handed him the gun back.

"OK, next we have the EM's replacement. The Phase pistol. Slightly more compact, otherwise handles the same way as the EM pistol, so the learning curve is small. It has, however, more power settings, so it has both a lower minimum, and taller maximum setting. It's stun is also way more effective, so better in a crowd control environment. It fires a continued phased particle beam, so it can cut through doors and other obstacles much better than the EM pistol, but it is not as good in engaging multiple targets in a close quarters corridor fight, so the EM is slightly better there. But is more accurate at long distances. Try it."

She gave this one a go as well. "Yeah, feels almost the same. And the power pack?"

He took it back and pushed the firing chamber down, till it was at an angle of 90 degrees of its previous position. The pack was sticking out. "Take it out and exchange it, your good to go again." He returned it to the table. "Now... Starfleet Class three Plasma rifle. You may have noticed it has two barrels. This is a modified version of the Class two. The upper barrel fires the same plasma bolts as the EM pistol, the lower one fires the phased particle beam that the Phase pistol does." He grabbed it and held it like an old pro. He once again showed how to remove the two power packs in it, where all the settings were and how to switch between weapons modes. She took a seat at the analysis table to free her other hand. She gave it a try as well. "Nice. But a bit too complicated for my taste. i like simplicity. With so many settings, too much can go wrong in a live fire situation."

"I agree completely. That's why MACO's don't use them. But usually, anyone trained to use them, uses the pulse plasma discharges in close quarters fights and the particle beam at longer distances. Anyway..." He grabbed the next weapon, a dark colored gun. "MACO standard issue Phase pistol. Looks similar to an EM pistol, but don't get fooled. Has less power settings, but can change fire between the plasma and particle settings. Also has higher maximum settings. And it is made from a heavier material for durability."

Kara raised an eyebrow at that. "Why?"

"To better smash someone's head in hand to hand." He handed her this one as well.

"Ah, makes sense. We used heavy materials for our rifles in the first war just for that. A light weapon might get bent or shatter, if you hit a centurion with it." She laid it on the table after examining it. "Now for the best part, am I right?"

"Well, if you ask me, you are. My best friend, the MACO Phase Plasma rifle. More ergonomic than the Starfleet one, sturdier, better scope, improved plasma bolts, like the MACO pistol, the complete package. But it also depletes the power packs faster. That's why a MACO keeps two with him at any time."

She tried this one out as well. "Did you shoot me with one like this?"

"Yes."

She put is back. "Better not let your guard down if we ever have a mock fight." She gave him an evil grin.

"Perhaps that will happen sooner than later. Anyway..." He grabbed a baton. "Stun baton, good for hand to hand combat, generated a stun pulse, when you activate it and hit someone with it."

"Yeah, figured that out myself."

"Right. Next we have a sun grenade, EM grenade, that one should be useful for taking down centurions. Also a shock grenade and the standard fragmentation grenade. And what's left are mostly tools. The communicator, like the one given to you. I'll show you later how to properly use it after I unlock the block on yours. This is a universal translator..." He held a device twice as large as the communicator. "But the 'universal' part does fail from time to time. The last two are hand scanners. The larger and bulkier one is a Starfleet variation, the small one with the round display is a MACO one. The MACO version is more combat focused, so don't expect to do something like a material scan. But the Starfleet one is far more complex and also versatile. But not as good in combat. Then here is the armored vest for MACO's. A tritanium ceramic plating for impact absorption. The head gear, which can be easily used in a space suit r a combat helmet, is an earpiece and heads display combo. It can link to your weapons and scanners for better overview."

"Hm, nice toys you guys get. And the last three things. They look like wall mines."

She meant a white triangular device with a red dot in the middle, a dark one with an identical shape and a dark round one. "Not a bad guess. The white ones are in actuality holographic projectors. We deploy them in a room for target practice. They simulate 3D targets for us to shoot at and we keep score. The dark ones are prototype transporter pattern enhancers. They allow us to create an area with three or more of them, positioned in a geometric shape, to get a better target lock into an area that would be otherwise difficult for us to use transporters on. Like deep underground, in a irradiated area or if a large ship has too many EM interferences for us to get a clean lock."

"So essentially you paint a spot to target, like a laser target finder?"

"Nothing so simple, but yes. The last, round ones, are in fact, magnetic wall mines. They can be remote detonated or a proximity sensor can be used."

Time flew as Kara had fun. In just a few hours she gave knowledge, like she was an instructor again, but also gained much in return. They returned to the mess hall. Emergency rations again, but for a larger meal.

The other bridge officer were here earlier, or so they heard. Kara tried to talk to some of the crewmen and deck hands. She was after all quite chatty.

As they finished their meal, Sisko got a call. "Yes?"

"Come to the main hangar and bring Lt. Thrace with you."

It was Commander K'Lir. "We're on our way, Sir." He put their trays back as they left the room.

"What does she want?"

"No idea. Can never read her, face or voice. I tell you, Vulcans would be damn great poker players."

"Poker?"

"Yeah, an old card game from Earth. Usually used by gamblers or casinos."

Now Kara really got an evil grin on her. Oh, she'll clean house here, if this poker is any way similar to the Colonial card games.

Inside the hangar, they saw the Vulcan commander looking over a report on a PADD as Commander Scott was examining a piece of technology on a mechanical table. The blood that was all over it was a clear indicator that it came from the raider. Said raider was hanging from the ceiling by several cables attached to it's wings. It was high enough that a person could easily crouch down to get inside it's guts, where Kara had initially opened it. Now Lt. Garcia's legs were seen sticking out of it as he was standing so that his head and torso were inside the raider.

"OK, if that's the navigational log, then what could this be?" He leaned down, holding a long, cylindrical device in his hand, also full of blood.

"Bring it here, I'll take a look at it." Scott ordered him.

"Oh, hey. It's our favorite Colonial pilot."

"Lt. Garcia, I'm the only Colonial pilot you know."

"Still my favorite." He passed her and Sisko as he put the new discovery on the same table where Scott was attaching the other, box shaped device, to an analysis computer.

"You wanted do see us, Commander?" Sisko asked K'Lir.

"Yes. I have disturbing findings, that only reinforce my suspicion from before. And the Lieutenant needs to know this."

"OK?" Kara didn't know how much worse it could get. "Shoot."

"Lt. Thrace, didn't you find it strange, with what ease the Cylons defeated your entire civilization, when compared with 40 years ago, when they could only achieve a stalemate."

"Well, we all asked ourselves. But there are smarter people in the fleet to think about such questions, than me."

"Then I'll give you my analysis. Option one: The Cylons were just lucky that the CNP was as flawed as you described and that the Colonial military didn't react prior to the attack. That they weren't discovered. This kind of coordinated attack takes months if not years of planning. Something should have been noticed. I doubt your intelligence agencies fell asleep. Also, I doubt that a race of machines would let their success be dictated by chance. Or as you humans put it, luck. So I can discount option one."

"Sounds stupid to me too. So what's number two?"

K'Lir focused herself. She knew this would ruffle Kara's feathers. "Someone helped them."

Yep, Kara got pissed. "You mean a Colonial helped them?"

"One possibility. A sympathizer, or worse, a collaborator. You wrote in your report yesterday, that one Dr. Gaius Baltar is in the fleet. That he found the Cylon beacons they placed on the Galactica. If so, that would be a strange find indeed. Out of all the equipment to be so capable to spot the one device that was of Cylon origin."

"You think...?"

"Let me finish. He is also not only a survivor from Caprica, a planet hit the hardest by the Cylons, but also the technological genius, that was responsible for the CNP that caused your downfall. I am surprised that no one in the fleet hasn't asked these questions yet."

"Wait... wait." She tried to stay calm. "Are you saying he's a damn traitor?"

"I say nothing. I merely point out the facts and inconsistencies. If he has nothing to do with the fall of the Colonial government, he must be the 'luckiest' man alive currently. Those would be some real coincidences that played into his favor. The probability is higher that either he sabotaged the CNP himself, which would make him a traitor. That he let someone else sabotage it, which makes him a traitor as well, or he was used and didn't know about it. Which makes him, as Lt. Garcia so colorfully put it, a useful idiot."

"Which he would be, if that option happened." Garcia piped in as he was helping Scott with the analysis of the devices.

Kara began sorting things out. "So the way you put it, he may be innocent, but statistically speaking, he isn't?"

"Correct."

"Frak!" She almost threw her crutch into the wall, if she hadn't remembered that she still needs the damn thing. "I'll kill him!"

"Lieutenant, before you go down that path, I may have a third option. One that is becoming more and more plausible as we gain more information from the raider." She saw Kara calm down enough to get her attention again. "The third option is, that the Cylons gained the ability to mimic human form."

"Wait... what?"

"I told you all before." Garcia said it out a bit louder than before. "Firkin Terminators. The movie is real!"

"Adrian! Focus on this, will you!" Scott reprimanded him.

K'Lir continued. "Well, movie references aside, he has a point. Either the Cylons have created androids that look human on the outside, or... as the interior of the raider suggest, they are mostly flesh and blood models now. And these models probably infiltrated your colonies."

That bombshell hit Kara hard. Sisko helped her to a seat near the table where Scott and Garcia were working. "Fraking hell... I mean, she makes a good argument..."

"She usually does." Sisko said. "Commander, what does this mean for us?"

"In the short term, nothing, but long term, once we do find Lt. Thrace's fleet or other Colonial survivors, we will need a screening system. I doubt that there won't be a probability that agents might be mixed into the personnel of ships as well."

"And how will we do that?" Kara asked. "How do we know, that it's a Cylon, so that I can frak them?"

"Fraking them, as interesting as that sounds, would not be productive. Interrogation would be more worthwhile."

"Like they'll talk."

"If they are organic, they might not need to."

Kara now turned to her again. "Right. You'll do the mind thing with them, like you did with me."

"Not like with you. But a deep intrusion. One that will be unpleasant for me as well, but the captain agrees that it will have to be done. If it works, is another matter."

Kara eyed Sisko for an explanation for that statement. "Not all races can be mind melded with. Some are immune, others can resist. Commander, what about this screening system?"

"The raiders brain has been removed and taken to the doctor. Or what was left of it. Other tissue samples were also taken. We can only let the doctor do his work." She now put the PADD down and turned her full attention to Kara. "I am sorry for your loss and this shock, but time is of the essence. We need to begin the pursuit of your felt as soon as possible. So I hope you understand."

"I do. But that'll be difficult, if you keep me on a leash."

"Tomorrow, once the cast is hopefully removed, you can, if you wish, begin helping the repair crews with their tasks. You may lack the technical knowledge, but every help is appreciated." She took the PADD again and began reading another section of the text. "I suggest you go to the sickbay again and see if the healing process is going as planned. Then, Lieutenant, it is advisable, that you return to your assigned quarters and continue reading and writing your report. It was helpful. Dismissed."

Sisko animated her to go with him. Once outside the corridor again, he escorted her back to her quarters. "See you tomorrow, pilot girl."

"You to, 'target practice'."

Day 18 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 11th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger

After two days you can't call it a routine yet, but Kara was getting there. Currently she found herself on the diagnostic bed in sickbay. "Well, we can take it off officially." Dr. Manor smirked as he inspected the bio-scan's data. "It'll still hurt a bit and I insist you use this walking cane, but other than that, you're OK. And these pills of course. Bone strengthening and density build up."

After he removed the cast, she wanted to hop off the damn bed, but he grabbed her shoulder. "Whoa, there, partner. I said you can walk again, not to jump around like a rabbit."

"What's a rabbit?"

"Small mammal from Earth. Cute and fuzzy, not much meat on it either. Can jump far and also has a big sex drive..."

"OK, I've heard enough." She now slowly put her feet onto the floor. As she put weight on to her bones, she could fell some discomfort on her no longer broke leg. She grabbed the cane he was holing with his hand out to her. "Thanks." She then proceeded to swallow the damn pills as well. Reaching major Sisko at the entrance, she began walking out. "Ready for more dehydrated breakfast?"

"Not really, but do we have a choice?"

"Nope."

As they left, Dr. Manor yelled after her. "If you even need a sponge bath, I volunteer." His nurse shook her head. He'll never grow up.

After breakfast, Sisko took Kara back to deck six, like the day before. Only this time, he took her to the forward starboard armory. "Welcome to the armory. You'll be helping me and my Starfleet security staff and MACOs with the repairs, any way you can. We'll guide you, so don't worry."

Kara saw a slightly elevated platform at the front with a long console and several monitors there. Below the platform, she saw a loading mechanism for the, what she had to assume, were the missiles of this ship. Or torpedoes, as they called them. She noticed the smaller, more missile shaped ones, being stored at the sides of this armors. Apparently a closer ammo clip, of sorts. Just like the larger photonic torpedoes, as she now knew that they were called, were stored in the middle of the room in a stacked, but also automated manner. She noticed the delivery system from their clips went past her to the back of the room where the entrance was. The delivery system disappeared into a small opening in the wall right at the ground level. She also notice that the hall they used to come here, was slightly higher than this room, but the ceiling was not higher. "Is the main ammo storage on the other side of the corridor we took here?"

Sisko was checking the PADD to see what his people had already managed to fix. "You catch on fast. Yes, two ammo storage bays in the middle, feeding both front and aft torpedo launch tubes."

"OK, so the smaller ones have a tylium warhead?"

"Yes. Also were in the process of getting phased out, but... you know. Ammo shortages."

"Yeah, got that. And the large ones? Photonic torpedoes?"

"Matter-antimatter warheads. Much better than the old stuff. 50 times effective range, limited shielding, so they can't get shot down as easily. Viable warhead setting. Also pack a punch with the shape charge warhead."

"Shape charge?"

"Yeah... they don't, usually at least, leave a crater behind, like a regular nuke would. They focus most of the explosive force into the target, to have the most chance to either overwhelm the defense, or to just do more damage. I mean, a nuke is flashy and all, but with that big boom, much of the damage get's dispersed out into space. The only advantage with that is that you can clean the enemy fighter formations easily. Imagine if a nuke had all that explosive force aimed at the hull of the target. Would punch clean through. Or at least have a better chance to do so. Also, won't be lying, we shamelessly copied this weapon from the Klingons, who use Photon torpedoes."

"Fine... not that it mattered. OK, so we ignore the launch system, or did I hear the commander wrong?"

"Nope. You heard right. Phase cannons and shields are on the main repair schedule. Plus plasma bolt cannons, if we have time." He grabbed some tools and a PADD with some cables sticking out. "Grab that spanner and come with me. I've got teams working on most ventral cannons already. We're taking the front starboard cannon two and see what we can do."

She grabbed the tool and followed him. He opened the side door, by taking it off, as they entered a crawlspace. "Well, I guess I can leave the cane here then." They arrived at a junction. Some control panels and circuit breakers were located here, as well as a vertical shaft, where currently a rather large cannon was located. "So this thing goes down, when you use it?"

"Yep..." He sat down and hooked up the PADD to the computer control panel. "Can you go over there and keep an eye on the power system. If at any point a red light flashes, pull that large leaver. That's the breaker. Don't want to fry anything."

"Got it." A few minutes passed as the MACO leader went from one location to the other to inspect the situation. He also replaced several burned out computer components. Kara was just staring at the damn power system and got bored. "Can I ask you about Earth? I mean not the historical stuff, just..."

"Something to get your mind off the shit show we're in right now?"

"Yes, gods please. Yes."

"Well. I come from what is known as the North American continent. One of seven continents of the planet. A place called New Orleans."

"What's it like there?"

"Oh, hot. In more ways than one. Humid. It's located at the delta of one of the largest rivers of the planet. Was mostly swampy terrain, still is, besides the dams and cities we build there. But I tell you, if there is a party worth having on Earth, New Orleans is one of the places to be. Food, music and entertainment are the name of the game there. You also have to have a strong stomach. Cause our food is spicy."

She closed her eyes for a bit. "Man, can already taste it right here. What about the others?"

"Others?"

"The others on the ship, where are they from?"

"Oh. Lt. Garcia is from a place called Austin. Basically just next door from where I am, sort off. A state called Texas. Wide steppes, herding cows is an old tradition there. Well, that and guns, in the old times. Captain Hauaman is from the same continent as Garcia and I, but much more to the north. A state called British Columbia, but don't know where exactly. She's a Native."

"Native?"

"Yeah see, my ancestors were taken to that continent as slaves during the time of great exploration, centuries before we even had space flight. Garcia, his ancestors are a mix of southern Natives and the Spanish that led the first invasions of the continent. The captain, she IS a Native."

"Wow, complicated history. I mostly focused on the battles..."

"Well, you only had two days time so far. Commander Scott is from Scotland. Part of an island where a lot of wars happened in the past. And well, the Scots are known for a few things. They make great whiskey, can be wild and crazy and they are stubborn and tough as weed. For centuries, foreign invaders conquered that place and tried to 'deal' with them. No one succeeded."

"Like them already. Like someone from Tauron."

"I couldn't know. Don't know about Tauron, but perhaps you'll tell me someday. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. Dr. Manor. The British guy. Remember what I said about Scotland? It was their southern neighbors that constantly attacked them. Well, they or the Vikings. Anyway, Dr. Manor is from England. The southern neighbor. They technically also ruled the world in the past, mostly because they controlled the oceans and seas for centuries. Not that no one tried to take that away from them. Lt. Commander Hayashi. She's from Japan, an island chain on the other side of the planet, if you take my place for a starting location. Very industrious people, had a great focus on honor and tradition. But were also one of the fastest developing nations in the past. She is quite fascinated with your language, I must say. A weird mix of Ancient Greek and Latin."

"Well, the reverse is true for you as well, from my point of view... hey, the color turned green!"

He unhooked the PADD and checked it himself. "Good. That means the power fluctuation is dealt with. Now we have to inspect the firing mechanism, the targeting lens, focusing crystal and the deploying mechanism. We have some work still ahead."

Day 20 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 13th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger

Two more days have passed as Kara helped the MACOs and security personnel get the weapons grid and shields back up. It was after breakfast, which was still made out of the rations that most got to hate more and more, that, Major Sisko and an engineer were crawling up the maintenance shafts to the port nacelle.

"So, these engines, they have a cannon there as well?" She asked while draging a tool box with her. The engineer was the first up with Sisko behind her and Kara last.

"Yep. Had them install a cannon that can switch from a dorsal to a ventral position in the aft nacelle, since there was not enough room for two cannons."

"So why are we going there last?"

"The nacelles are usually not accessible, when the coils are powered up. Over 200 degrees in there when they are. But now, we got time, since they're powered down. We'll work on the cannon, the engineer will be in the maintenance control room at the front."

"Ah, cool. Then were mostly done with the cannons then?"

"Just about. My guys are checking the ones in the secondary hull and the aft dorsal section of the main hull. We have issues with one there in particular. So I'm taking you down to engineering today." They arrived in the main nacelle corridor as Kara gave the tool box to Sisko. He gave her a hand as she climbed up on the catwalk.

"Oh, goody. Finally get to see the engine."

They arrived at the cannon and began now their regular routine. "The captain and commander are pleased with your progress. So am I. You catch on fast."

"Tell that to my old academy flight instructor..."

Four hours later, they were done at their location and had returned to the main hull to take the lift to main engineering. As they arrived and Kara got to see the ship's main reactor, she also noticed a half disassembled phase cannon an analysis station.

"Chief?" The MACO officer asked as he saw his people and the engineering team taking turns at the cannon.

"It's busted. The port aft dorsal cannon. We'll have to assemble a new one. And that will take more time than we have for getting out of here, so we'll have to do it once we leave. Take it to the main machine shop on deck three and get it chopped up for whatever parts and alloys you can, people." As they did just that, she turned to Sisko and held out her hand. He handed her his PADD. "Done up there?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And the coils?"

"Would have to ask Ensign Schmidt. She still up there."

Scott rubbed her eyes as she put the PADD down. "Right. Will go up there myself soon. Lt. Thrace, I can't give you the tour right now, but..." She pointed to the corner in the aft part of the room, where ladders on both sides allowed access to the elevated aft part of the hull. There was also the Cylon FTL engine and navigation system that were hooked up to a computer terminal and what appeared to be a power conduit. "Want to take a look at what we cobbled up there to take advantage of that raider you parked on our ship, be my guest."

Kara had no escort with her anymore, but some people in main engineering still eyed her to see if she'd try anything. "David, the captain wants you to take her to the tailor before you get chow."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. She needs a uniform. And the commander had an interesting idea."

"Wait... is that why she was asked to make a sketch of her uniform yesterday?"

"Yep."

They noticed that Kara went from inspecting their makeshift jump drive connection to actually touching the warp reactor. "Can I go up?" She meant the ladder to the level above.

"Sure." Scott replied. She knew that a small tour was needed.

"I'll wait here." Sisko said. No point in being a third wheel here.

Scott joined her at the upper command console for the reactor. "Is this continuous humming sound normal?"

"Yes, but it's slow as we're in idle mode right now."

"OK, nice to know. And this little thing powers the entire ship?"

"More or less."

"Frak, our reactors on the Glalctica are as big as the saucer itself and they don't produce the power output like this thing does, well, not for their size anyway."

"Well, you can access the basics on the technical specifications..."

"I don't get most of the things written there. So best I not waste both of our time. For me, it's important it works. So..." She went down the ladder back to the main level of the engine room. "Let's go have some 'lunch' and then you wanted to show me something?"

"Yeah..." Sisko peeked past her to give Scott a look. She just noded to do what the captain said. "Follow me, we're making a detour."

"What? Why?"

"Trust me. Or in this case the captain."

A minute later they were on the port side of the aft section of deck five. "I need to ask, not that you have to answer, but what are those large rooms on this deck? I get the life boats and most other things, but... why are you growing plants here?"

"Hydroponics. Food supplements."

"But this is a warship, so..."

"Starfleet doesn't build pure warships. The NX class was originally designed as a long range explorer. And since sometimes food or fuel resupply might not be just around the corner, we have the ability to produce some food ourselves and to even refine fuel. But both in a limited fashion."

"OK, still don't really get it... but if something edible will grow there, I'll take that over those rations..." As they passed the door, she read the sign. "Laundry. Where are we going?"

"Just one more ahead."

As they arrived, she read that sign as well. "Tailor?"

"Yes." He triggered the door bell. As the door opened, he was greeted by the ship's tailor.

"David. Good to see you again. Ah... " The woman leaned over him to inspect Kara. "My new model. Do come in."

As they did just that, Kara was not sure what this was about. "Model?"

"Lt. Kara Thrace, meet Ensign Alitia Kumar, tailor and stylist for the barber shop. She does all the small things to make things easier. And your here to get a Colonial style uniform made here, since you kind off forgot yours on the Galactica."

"Oh, haha. But why one in our style. Can't I get a Starfleet one?"

"Because our First Officer had a simple idea that would come in handy..." Alita remarked as she sat behind her work desk. "If your to be our first contact expert with any Colonial survivors, civilian or military, it would help our position, if your wearing an official uniform from your navy."

"But... how can it be official, if you make it?"

"Semantics. It has to be good enough to get our foot in the door. Now..." She picked up a digital measuring tool. "I need to get some information on your proportions. Hands out, standstill, but relaxed. This won't take long." It really didn't and she was done and was back at her desk, inspecting the data on a digital version of the uniform. "I hope you don't mind that I took your drawing on the uniform. I have to say, you have some talent here."

"Yeah, my mom was so disappointed that I didn't go into either art or music school, but took up piloting."

"Yes, I would agree with her."

"I would have been dead then."

"Ah... point taken. We're done here. Since I have no other customers at this point, it will be done by tomorrow this time. The rank insignias however will be done in the metallurgy analysis laboratory."

"No issue there, I'll get them, once they're done." Sisko replied. "Now, let's go."

Once they were in the corridor again, heading for the mess hall, Kara elbowed him. "You knew about this?"

"Well, only in the last 10 minutes."

"So this was why I was asked to make a sketch yesterday?"

He shrugged. "Probably."

As they arrived at the entrance of the mess hall, already getting depressed at the prospect of the food they'll get, they heard commotion inside. Of the good kind. Sisko entered first and Kara followed, only to be surprised that apparently the emergency rations were not on the menu. Most people were eating normally, with trays and plates with properly cooked meals.

"Kelly. I don't know if I should kiss her or shoot her." Sisko said to no one particular.

"Wait... she knew?"

"I think so. They must have fixed the damn food processor." He went to see what was available. "Meatloaf with beans and gravy. I'm definitely taking that." He grabbed the plate and a tray with the utensils. Kara took the steak with rice. As they joined their group, Kara actually sniffed the food.

"It's good. We don't poison anyone here." Garcia joked.

"With what we had for the past few days, you could have fooled me. And this isn't real meat, is it?"

"Processed proteins. No real rice, meat, potatoes... but it's nearly as nutritious and you can't really taste a difference. All the body really needs. Or so they say." Manor said. "Now all we need is the brewage dispenser. I so need my coffee."

As Sisko took his first bite and savored the taste, he entered the conversation as well. "When will that be done?"

"Tomorrow. Or so the chief said." Hayashi responded.

"Well, this ain't my birthday, but it feels like it." Kara remarked as everyone chuckled lightly.

"By the way, Major, have you taken the lieutenant to where we discussed she must go daily now?" The medical officer asked, while taking a sip of water.

"After this."

"Am I part of this conversation?" Kara demanded to get some answers. "Where are we going next?"

"Deck three. And no, I'm not telling."

20 minutes later they finished lunch and the socializing that came along with that. On deck three, where Kara knew, were many machine shops and also MACO quarters, Major Sisko took her to the front of the deck. She was getting curious now what this was about.

As they entered the room that was their destination, Kara recognized a locker room when she saw one.

"You can pick a locker that isn't' taken yet." Sisko pointed to the lockers that were all along the wall. "At the end there is a storage room with towels and other training equipment. Find a pair of shoes that fit you and come after me." He went straight through the door that was parallel to the one they just entered through.

A minute later, Kara was there as well. "Nice. training equipment to my heart's desire."

Weights, training bikes and other gym equipment were in the rather small room. "We're on the starboard side of the front of deck three. In the middle there is more of the same. On the port is a small room meant for ball or contact sports. But tomorrow morning, you, me and my MACOs will have some target practice there."

Kara already took the seat on a leg exercise machine. She lit up hearing that. "Is this secretly my birthday or what?"

"Well, be cocky all you want. Tomorrow, I'll see if you can hold your own, or just talk loud." He grinned back at her and he took the stepper and swung his towel over his shoulder.

"Oh, you are so ON!"

Day 21 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 14th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger

Kara was getting used to the sickbay visits. And the sharp comments she had to use with their doctor. "See you were a good patient yesterday. Leg looks better every day."

"Well, Doc. I don't need to be pressured to do exercises. A sharp mind needs a sharp body, right?"

"Wish more people were thinking like you. Anyway, I hear that today the major will test your steel?"

"Yep. So I better not screw up."

"Then as an advice from me to you, don't drink as much and stop smoking."

She had put her pants back on and was ready to go when this remark fell. "How... oh, right. My blood tests, right?"

"Couldn't be more obvious if you shouted it in my ear. Won't tell you to stop, but you know, I can try. Anyway, see you tomorrow."

As she was at the entrance, she turned around again. "Hey, how long will these checkups still need to happen?"

"Depends."

"Depends?"

"Yes. Your leg will be completely fine in three days."

"So three days then..."

"Or until I get bored at looking at your leg."

She gave him a playful and stern look. "Just as long as you only look, I have no issues."

"Hey, just a guy you know."

"Hey, I don't mind. Just so you know. As long as you keep it professional." They both grinned and she left.

"Oh, so professional..." He playfully remarked to himself.

She arrived by herself in the sports room where the MACOs were already assembled. "Almost late, rookie." Sisko remarked, half seriously, as he set up the holographic emitters.

"Almost is not late." She greeted the other people here who she got to know well in the past days.

Once the major was done, he took the small control unit, that looked like a half sized PADD and addressed the people in the room. "If we don't practice, we get rusty. And some of us we need to see what they can do. Now, Sergeant Simpson, you're the reigning champion, step forward, take your weapon of choice and demonstrate to our guest what we'll be doing here."

As the MACO picked the phase plasma rifle and began inspecting it and setting the weapon to practice mode, Kara saw behind the group that a score board was now active. She also grinned. Her name was added as Starbuck.

"Ready? Go!" Sisko yelled as he turned on the target program. 60 seconds later the session ended. "97% hit ratio. Not bad. Not bad at all. Don't get rusty on me, Simpson."

"Not a chance, Major." He put the weapon back down.

"Now, Starbuck. As the rookie here, you have the choice to decide when to go, all the others have a designated number. Also, to explain, it's the percentage of hit ratio that matters, plus a certain number of hits in the time your given. If you hit more than this and miss less, your final score only goes up. If the reverse happens, of course it's worse. So don't focus on the number of targets, just on precision."

"Got it." She went past everyone there and grabbed the same rifle as Simpson did before her. She went through the inspection procedure as well, since Sisko gave her ample opportunity in the past few days to test them and do some mock targeting already. She was now holding it in a ready position, set to practice mode as well. "Ready when you are."

The MACOs in the room were eager to see what she could do, even if some had reservations. Sisko was not leaning in either direction. He believed that she was no pushover, but you can only determine someone's skill by seeing them in action. "Ready? Go!"

She saw the holographic targets in the form of floating orbs appear all around her. She began to do what she did in the academy, only this time with more high tech. For every miss, six hits or more followed.

"Stop!" The round ended and the MACO officer inspected her results. "92%. Not bad for a first real try."

The others behind her began talking amongst themselves, giving Kara some more respect now.

"Yeah. Now... give me the real test."

"Eh, Kara, no need to mark your territory here..." Sisko wanted to calm her down, thinking she had something to prove here.

"No, you lowered the difficulty. I may not be a sniper with a gun, but as a pilot, I had to undergo similar training sessions with the holo-bands. The number of targets was lowered by at least 25% and you slowed them down. Don't know by how much, but as a trained pilot, I see the damn difference! Give me the same you gave to Simpson!"

The fact that he knew her pretty good by now, he knew she would not relent. That and that she was a guest and their soon to be guide, he humored her. He reset the simulation. "Ready? Go!"

Again, Kara began doing what she knew best. Shooting at things. Once the time expired and the simulation ended, she turned the weapon off and put it on the table with all the weapons displayed there. "And?"

Inspecting the score, Sisko didn't hesitate to reply. "88%. Was expecting a drop, but not such a small one. Truth be told, a few weeks of practice and you'll be above 90% easy."

Clapping began to echo behind her. She turned to see that the people in the room were both impressed by her score and her risk taking nature. There were even some whistling and cheering.

"You go girl!"

"She's so one of us!"

"OK, I cal dibs on the one on one sparring session with her!"

"Yeah right! Only after me!"

Sisko shut them down. "OK people, settle down! We're only beginning. Now, Kara, take a break and look at the others as well. Then we'll compare scores and see where everyone can improve. After this, we go to the sparring part. Then you and I have two appointments."

Kara finished bottom in the end, as all MACOs were above 90%, but they trained regularly to get this far. It was to be expected. In truth, she scored better than Starfleet's regular security forces. Sparring went about as well as you could expect. Everyone got along and she even learned a few new moves. The one that impressed her and her spine the most was apparently a Klingon maneuver.

Three hours later she and Sisko were on their way to the tailor to get her uniform. "In truth I hate my uniform. Makes me feel like a dress-up monkey."

"Most people do, but more with their ceremonial uniform."

"We didn't bother with that, we only add additional things, like sashes and additional badges and stuff."

"Well... that sounds more practical, if truth be told..." They arrived at their destination. Once inside, Kara tried her custom made Colonial mock replica uniform.

"Fits nicely." Sisko remarked.

"I hope so. She has some nice curves and proportions. I had to do the middle road of not making it too baggy or too tight." Ensign Kumar replied. "Also, the rank insignias arrived this morning. Hope they're good?"

She inspected herself in the mirror. "Frak, I don't see much difference between this and my old uniform. I can bet the president will make an order or two with you. And yes, the insignias are on the spot." She shook her hands. "Thanks, even if this was not my idea. How much... em, how do I even pay?"

"Oh, it was never meant to be paid, dear. And even if so, we're lost and alone in space, what would be the point?"

"Ah, I guess that makes... sense?"

"If you like, you can model for me sometime. That would be payment enough."

"Em, you do know I'm not the typical woman, right. I don't do girly stuff."

"You have all the parts where they belong, your just a bit tomboyish. Nothing wrong with that. Besides, I'm not forcing anyone here, just a thought. So, we done?" She looked at the both of them.

"Yes. Come, Lt. Thrace, we're needed on the bridge." Sisko urged her to bet a move on.

As they stepped out of the lift, they saw that not only was the bridge crew already gearing up for something, but the captain, commander and chief engineer were all already there in the back at the ship's diagnostic and planning table.

"Glad you came." Captain Hauaman greeted them. "Join us."

As they took the free space around the table, Kara noticed that it was currently showing the tactical systems of the ship. Only the torpedo launchers and that one cannon were in the dark. All defensive systems were green, as were most of the other systems, with a few places still being shown as yellow or red. "We are intending to test the cannons in an hour, to see if the repairs worked." K'Lir informed them. "Then we depart this planet's atmosphere in 12 hours. At which point we'll need to test the warp and jump capabilities of the ship."

"And then?" Kara wondered. "I doubt we just go and rush after the fleet?"

"Correct." K'Lir remarked. "It is doubtful that they kept going in a straight line. That would make chasing them really easy. No, we go for the signal of the Crusader. And..." She motioned to Commander Scott. "The commander was able to reconstruct more of the navigational data. Not much, but it allowed us to know what vector each ship had when it was ejected out of the bubble. It also showed us the order of the ships and how they fell out."

Scott took over. "We know, using that data, that the Bismarck is somewhere in this area of space as well. Plus the Volga and Denarius."

Sisko inspected the log he now pulled up on the table's display. "Makes sense. They were at the front with us... But the Denarius is going to be a pain. Even the Volga..."

"Why?" Kara wondered. "Isn't more ships recovered better for us?"

The captain took over. "What Major Sisko meant is that we have two issues with them. One, they're at the upper edge of hardware limit. Upgraded or not, their reactors and coils are at the limit of capabilities. Simply put, a fleet can only go as fast as the slowest ship. If our jump drive adaptations work, we'll have faster recharge rates than you Colonials, thanks to our fusion and antimatter reactors. But we'll also have a greater range. Without this warp highway, it would be negligible but even a small increase in this space stacks up fast."

"It is possible that this is the reason that the Cylons can so easily keep up with your fleet. They can out-range you with every jump." K'Lir tried to point this consistency the Colonials fleet had. The damn Cylons always on their ass.

"So with worse engines and reactors, they could not keep pace? Yeah, we had some civilian ships with this issue. And the other problem?"

Captain Hauaman responded. "They are still infected with the Romulan virus. Yes, we'll be able to restore them in a fraction of the time it took us here, now that we have an uninfected platform to work from, but still..."

Kara leaned back from the table and crossed her arms. "Yeah. We lose more time and the fleet that 'lost' me will be harder to find."

"Precisely." K'Lir agreed with that statement. "Which brings us to the main reason you are here. Captain?"

"Lt. Thrace, you are a good fighter, as Major Sisko reported. We can't tell the pilot part, but I see no reason to doubt you. That said, I can't utilize your pilot skills here, as my ship is not a small fighter nor a big battlestar and we have helmsmen that were trained to handle her. And our shuttles are relatively slow and an easy target, when compared to what you are used to flying or flying against. I believe that we might scrap our shuttles in the near future for parts. But not yet."

"So why am I here for?"

"As stated before, you're our so called guide. But what I want to use you even more for is a first contact person. That's why I had a uniform commissioned for you. It's an easier sell to convince any Colonials we do encounter, that you are one of them. So, Major, Lieutenant. Situations may arise that will force us to board a Colonial ship. Major, incorporate her in your teams. If there's a stubborn Colonial officer to convince of our legitimacy, she's our foot in the door." She now eyed Kara. "If you don't mind, that is."

She shrugged. "Never thought I'd be a diplomat of sorts. I ain't the diplomatic type."

"So noticed." K'Lir used a bit of Vulcan humor. "But your skills in persuading people to listen and not fire at us might be useful. That and you know the people we'll be encountering better than anyone else on this ship."

"I'm actually more worried about the other side we might encounter out here, to be honest." Sisko meant the Cylons with that remark. "So, I do the training routine with her, like with the rest of my people?"

"Yes. Once her leg has reigned the strength needed and we leave this location." The captain concluded. "Now, since we're a bit ahead of schedule, I think starting with the torpedo launchers early would be a decent idea."

"Understood, Captain." Sisko, Kara and Scott left the table to take the lift to their levels.

As they left the lift at deck six as Scott hat to switch to the aft lift to get to main engineering, they had some time to chat. As they parted their ways, Kara yelled after her. "Hey, Commander. thanks' for the meal!"

"Don't get used to it yet. It's still a bit tender. So dinners are still those damn rations." She disappeared around the corner.

"Frak."

The 12 hours flew past rather quickly. The one thing they did manage, besides assembling and installing a brand new phase cannon for the aft section, was to get the aft launchers working as well. The forward ones were much more in need of a major overhaul in addition of fixing them. The damn loading mechanism was such. They could technically launch them, but only hand load them. And Commander Scott advised against that, as the outer doors might be stuck as well, until they get someone from the outside to inspect them.

Day 22 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 15th of February, year 2378, uncharted system, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger

In was just after midnight, ship time, when the bridge crew was all at their posts to get this exodus going. Sisko was at tactical, replacing the killed former security officer. Kara was at the back, as the planning station, with Lt. Garcia

Captain Hauaman sat in her chair. "Are all stations ready?" They all gave the green light, even if tactical was at 50% at best. Even the phase cannon test was not reassuring them. It worked, the overload function included, but still, they were literally one fighting hand short. "Commander Scott, get the silent running program loaded up."

She did as asked at the engineering station. "Program loaded and awaiting your orders."

"Right. Helm, take us into a higher layer, one quarter impulse." As the ship left the level they had stayed at for the past few days, the turbulences increased slightly. "Distance to the surface?"

K'Lir used her scope at the science station. "Less than 50 kilometers. I detect heighten radiation, as expected."

At the back, Kara with a look asked Lt. Garcia what she meant with that.

"Radiation belt of a gas giant of this type can reach right to the atmosphere."

"Ah, right."

As the ship emerged out of the clouds, Sisko went to active tactical scans. "Scope's are clear, Captain. But... I'm detecting some strange readings all over the place that the probes didn't pick up."

K'Lir was still at her scope as she detected the same readings. "I believe that the small subspace distortions are the result of the jump drives of the Colonials and Cylons. They are in fact fading."

Scott entered the conversation from her station, also analyzing the data. "Would make sense. They basically pierce normal space and enter subspace for that fraction of a second. And anyway, our warp fields leave fluctuations behind as well. But there is something else... Commander K'Lir. Are you detecting ion trails at the coordinates near the moon where Lt. Thrace said she crashed?"

"Confirmed. It is the Colonial sub-light engine exhaust. Curious... the location where we detected the Cylon ships days ago has no ion trails."

"My issue with this exactly. The only thing I'm getting are gravimetric distortions... wait. Lt. Thrace."

"Em, yes?"

"You wrote in your report that the Cylon capital ships called basestars use a different propulsion method than the Colonial ships."

"Em, yeah. Some sort of reaction-less drive. Officially, it was written off as of no concern. But there were rumors that even in the first war they developed something called... let's see... ZM? No. PM? No, that's not it..."

K'Lir knew what Kara was thinking off. "I believe she means EM drive."

"Yes, that. The Colonial propulsion lab developed a working prototype, but it was so inefficient, they stopped the research. Rumors' were, that the toasters got that working beyond what we ever achieved."

Scott examined her data again. "Then there gravimetric distortions might be that."

"Anyway, Captain. I have a strong signal from the Crusader." Sisko brought them back to the important part of this first step. "I think, since we have clear scopes we should test our FTL engines first and then go to the Crusader top speed and not waste time here."

"Agreed. Kelly, how are the engines?"

"As good as they were when we got lost. Since we didn't use the damn injectors and coils for the greater part of the 200 plus years, they're still OK. But we should bump it up slowly."

"Right. Helm, set course for the Crusader, warp two. Engage."

The ship disappeared into warp. Nothing bad happened. "Holding at warp two, but we're easily 10 times the speed we should be at this setting." The navigational officer reported.

"As expected. Kelly, has your modification of the navigational system accepted the new speeds?"

"Yes, Captain. The main computer is anticipating this now, since I hooked it up with astrmoetrics. We can go faster, it's safe."

"Very well. Helm get us to warp five point five, slowly."

The ship kept accelerating. After warp five, light shaking occurred for a few seconds, then stopped. "Holding at five point five, Captain."

Scott began checking again. "All in the green. At this speed, we'll be there in an hour. We can do it this way, or drop out of warp and try to jump there."

Captain Hauaman nodded. "We need to see if your work will pay off. Rather do it now, than later. Helm, full stop."

Now at full stop, Commander Scott loaded up the jump program and the engines entered into the new, never before used configuration. "The navigational computer has accepted the damn Cylon system we have hooked up right now."

"Then load up the target coordinates. Polarize the plating and charge up the nacelles." The captain barked out. Then she got the barf bag from the side of her chair. Everyone did as they were instructed by Kara ,that most people lose their lunch after the first jump. Your entire equilibrium is shot out the window. With time you get used to it, but for now, they heeded her warning.

"Coordinates patched in, FTL system ready to go, Captain." The helmsman reported.

"Then count us down and execute the jump. And let's pray this works."

"Executing the jump in three, two, one..."

The Challenger disappeared and reappeared at the coordinates they wanted to be. Everyone on the ship had a barf bag on them, but some still held it together. Sisko and K'Lir were the ones on the bridge, who did so. So as most, minus them and Kara, were still holding their heads into the bags, they went to work, checking if they were still in one piece and at the right place.

"Jump was successful, Captain." K'Lir reported first. "Drift is 200 kilometers, so improvements are needed."

"I've found the Crusader. On a course similar to what we had before the planet caught us. Adrift, minimal power signatures. And no hostiles on any scans."

The captain managed to recover. "Damn. This was insane. And the ship?"

"We're in one piece, no damage." K'Lir reported.

"Then get us to a parallel course and into transporter range. We need to assess the ship's condition and get the crew out."

Sisko saw that the helmsman had issues recovering, so he replaced him. "Setting course, Captain. Will be in range in two minutes."

"Cough... then Commander K'Lir, you lead the salvage operation, as soon as our people recover sufficiently. Tell Dr. Manor to expect patients soon. Scott , your part of the salvage operation as well ,get yourself and your engineers ready. Sisko, I'll need you here, if anything bad happens."

Scott stood up from her station slowly. "Right. Garcia, you're on me."

Before the three bridge officers could reach the lift, Kara piped in. "And me?"

"Lt. Thrace, since this isn't a contact scenario, you can either stay here or go help with the salvage operation. But you'll follow orders to the letter, got it?"

"Sure did. I'm going. No need to feel like a third wheel here."

As the lift door closed and they left, Captain Hauaman, still feeling woozy, eyed Sisko. "A real get up and go-er, that one."

"That she is, Sir."

Day 22 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 15th of February, year 2378, deep space, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger, several hours later

Kara arrive back on the bridge with a Starfleet memory chip in hand. "David, here." She gave Sisko the chip. "Where's the captain?"

"In her ready room, having a talk with the Crusader's first officer. Their captain didn't make it."

"Frak. That's what? Seven?"

"Yes. Unless the three radiation cases don't make it." He connected the chip with his console on the tactical station. "So, as was reported in the first attempt. Hull polarization will need the main control unit fixed. The phase cannons are in need of fixing, but to a lesser extent than ours, but... hey."

"You like that, don't you?"

"Well, her torpedo tubes are fully functional. Would have been a bitch to fix them."

"Why? Aren't the layouts the same, or mostly the same on both ships?"

"Not really. Yes, the armory and ammo storage is on deck six there as well, but an automated lift system gets the torpedoes to that torpedo weapons pod above the main hangar in the aft. You know, the part held to the ship with the bars?"

"Oh, right. Anyway. Anything new on the sensors?"

"Nope. We're having a meeting with the Crusader staff to see the repair schedule there as well."

"What's the time table?"

"Three days. But we'll depart as soon as hull polarization, FTL, life support and sub-light engines work properly. And communications as well, of course. Until we get the time to write a proper Starfleet standard jump drive navigation and control program and distribute it to the Crusader, we're stuck with that Cylon navigational thing. So the Crusader will be dependent on us for coordinates."

"And why not just... I don't know, copy the damn program from the... ah. You don't trust it."

"Would you trust a Cylon program? After what they did to your civilization?"

"Yeah, good point." She yawned intensely. "Frak, can't wait for the drink's dispenser to work again. Need the coffee."

"Better get some sleep then. You're not needed here for a few hours. Best some of us get a clear head."

"Em, you sure..."

"Go. Bed. Now."

"Geez. You haven't bought me dinner yet and already demanding the bed." She joked and left the bridge.

Day 23 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 16th of February, year 2378, deep space, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger, several hours later

The repairs on the Crusader were progressing according to the plan. Indeed, as anticipated, they were going faster, due to the Challenger being here and mostly intact. But Challenger's torpedo tubes were also being fixed during this.

But at this moment something else was happening on the Challenger's deck two. It was early in the morning and all the MACOs of both ships were there, in the main corridor on deck two. All in full combat gear. And Kara was with them. Sisko was addressing them. "Being lost in space is no excuse for ignoring regular training. So, I've planned a route we will take through the ship. No turbo lifts allowed. We'll make three rounds on deck two, then proceed to deck 13 in two steps. Now..." He eyed Kara. "Hope you memorized the ship's layout good. Lt. Thrace, what's the best route from deck two to 13, if lifts can't be used?"

"Sir, we proceed to the aft of deck two and take the connecting stairs that lead down the aft spine of the saucer to deck five. We emerge in the shuttle control room. From there we take the vertical access ladder near the aft lift all the way down to deck 13."

"Good. You learned faster than some people here when we were assigned to the Challenger. Then we do a lap on deck 13, then return to deck five, where we'll do 20 laps. Any questions?"

"What's to be expected if we don't meet the minimum criteria?" A MACO in the rear asked.

"An ass kicking from me and only emergency rations for two days!" Sisko responded, completely serious. Then he saw Kara holding her hand up as well. "Yes?"

"What's with him?" She meant one of the Crusader Starfleet security officers. "Why does he have like... weights on his arms and legs as well as more stuff on himself than anyone here?"

"You haven't been properly introduced. Lt. Kara Thrace, Colonial navy, meet Lt. Noah Hill, Crusader's now de facto MACO officer, as I insist on it. He's, well... How do I put it..."

Simpson beat him to it. "He'll beat us with time to spare anyway."

"Yeah, We'd have to put more weights on him to have a fair chance." Someone else remarked.

Kara had no clue if they were joking with her. "Either all of you are having a laugh at my expense, or you're not telling me something."

Lt. Hill didn't want to keep repeating this story, but he also didn't want to wait any longer. "I'm not entirely human. I'm an Augment."

"Wait... I've read about that. wait, wait... weren't Augments responsible for a war on Earth?"

"A bit more complicated, but yes. In the far past. I'm one of the Augments that our so called father, Dr. Soong, stole as we were still only embryos left from the Eugenic war. He took us and all the equipment he needed to the Trialas system and incubated us there and then raised us. Taught us. But he was the eternal perfectionist. He did some minor manipulation on us on a genetic level, before incubation. In my and Udar's case, he modified our behavior. He succeeded with me, but in Udar's case, it also undid almost all of his enhancements. When our father was caught, we were left to fend for ourselves. And there it happened that the aggressiveness and arrogance of the others began manifesting itself. I left as I could not stand them. And sooner or later, I would have killed someone or they would have killed me. Udar went with me and we lived in the wilderness. But he, as naive as he was, always returned to be close to them. So when they did something so stupid that it warranted Starfleet's attention... bad things happened. I was far too distant to the old campsite, to be able to get back in time. Udar died and the others were killed at either their own hands due to infighting or by Starfleet personnel, who were left no choice. As for me... The Columbia found me a year later as they were ordered to retrieve all the equipment that was left there by our father. Once Starfleet discovered the modification the Dr. Soong did and he confirmed it... they did an unofficial pilot program."

Sisko took over. "They allowed him to join Starfleet to see how it would work. It was the idea that if we have one good Augment precedence, some minor form of genetic modification, mostly for medical reasons, could be allowed again. But it would take time to allow this to be implemented, if successful. The Eugenic war was still too fresh in Earth's minds and what the consequences of playing god can be."

Kara, after hearing this, gave him a full inspection. "Well, we made AI's, you made super humans. In the end, we got the short end of the stick. OK, we growing roots here or what?"

27 minutes later, they were all panting at the finish line that was mockingly marked by a sticker on the wall in the corridor. Well, all were panting but Lt. Hill. He arrived here a while ago and even got to get some water to drink as he waited for the others.

He had a smug look on him as he sat on his equipment that he put down, now that he was finished. "What took you guys this long?"

Kara was actually used to training like this, so it was not that hard for her. Most MACOs too. The regular Starfleet personnel were the ones with an issue. "So, enhanced sarcasm too?" She mockingly asked him. Then turned to Sisko. "And you, don't think I didn't notice."

He played innocent. "What?"

"Don't 'what' me! You raised the gravity on this deck!"

All the people in the group that did this exercise, now realized why this was so hard. Lt. Hill knew, as did Sisko, who orchestrated this difficulty spike on deck five. "Pilot training?" He asked her directly and so also confirming her suspicion.

"Oh yeah. Raised by what? 15%?"

"10% actually."

"Rally? Feels like 15%."

Hill jumped into the conversation. "It is possible, since you Colonials had 12 colonized planets, that they were all different and no two had identical gravity, that you are getting adjusted to Earth level gravity here is throwing your senses off a bit."

"Yeah, could be. I mean, Canceron had the highest gravity of them all and Aquaria the lowest, so makes sense that Earth would be slightly different as well."

Sisko clapped his hands to get their attention. "A good start. I think once a week is a clear goal for us to do this. Now, hit the showers and we'll meet in the mess hall. And since the Crusader's is still on the fritz, all Crusader personnel gather here as well. Dismissed."

As they began going their separate ways, some to the docking port, some to their quarters, Kara had one jab for Hill ready. "And was the important stuff enhanced as well?"

He didn't get it. At first. "Wait... are you implying..."

"Just curious. Cause that would be a good thing to 'enhance'..." She took her gear and went down the corridor.

Hill and Sisko eyed each other. "She took it better than I feared." Sisko remarked.

"Indeed. I was afraid she'd be horrified by me." He smirked. "I like her already."

"She clearly had a perky, proactive personality, doesn't she?"

An hour later, Sisko and Kara were called to the bridge. There, Captain Hauaman and Commanders K'Lir, Scott and Evans were discussing a development. "Major. Come and join the discussion. Lt. Thrace, this is Commander Naomie Evans, now acting Captain of the Crusader."

Greetings were exchanged and they went to business. "We are making good time with the Crusader, but that's not why your here. We managed to use the Crusader navigational logs to combine with ours and got a good idea where the Volga, Bismarck and Denarius are. The Bismarck is the furthest away, but the biggest strategic prize. So Commander Evans, K'Lir, Scott and I came up with a plan. Once we made sufficient repairs to the Crusaider that the crew can finish the rest by themselves, we split up. The Crusader will be limited to warp drive, since we don't have a working Starfleet variant of a navigational jump drive program. But the warp highway effect will compensate for that."

Commander Evans continued. "We'll go for the closer but less important targets. The Delta Wing class and Y class transport."

K'Lir took over. "We will go for the Bismarck during that time."

"So we have to finish the important stuff on the Crusader by this time tomorrow to get a move on."

Kara noticed the urgency in their voices. "Something happened?"

The three commanders and the captain all eyed each other. "We detected jump signatures in normal space around 20 Ly in the direction of the galactic center. Judging by the power spike and mass, they're probably basestars."

Scott brought up the star-map with the topographic display of the highway effect on the planning table. This part due north, if we use Starfleet's logic of the galactic positioning, where the highway effect is getting stronger, seems to be a very high traffic area of space."

"Which would make sense, the Cylons are exploiting this effect to their advantage." K'Lir added. "But by combining both navigational logs, we did discover another disturbing fact..." She gave the torch to Scott.

"As I feared, but didn't tell anyone, as it was only a theory at that point... the highway effect is not permanent."

"Not permanent?" Sisko asked before Kara could.

"The highways and shallows move. Or the space moves. Or both. But they are not stationary. We just don't see it as they take centuries to do so. And now, by comparing the partial logs from both ships... when we entered sleep after the fiasco, thanks to the Romulans, the highway effect started not too long after the purge was initiated. And the effect stacked up fast."

"By how much?"

"Anywhere between 50 and 70 times normal. But when comparing the logs from back then and now for the local area..." Scott modified the table screen to show the same space, but a different topographical setting. The light areas, which indicated higher effects, were much larger and achieving higher multipliers. In fact, 200 years ago, the space where they were in right now, had a multiplication factor of 25, not 10. Something was indeed moving. The highway, or normal space. Or both. So we need to start going back fast, before the effect reseeds itself even more or leaves our galaxy completely."

Kara realized that there was more info they could have. "Are the toasters focused only in the highest speed areas?"

K'Lir now added the subspace points where a jump was initiated, either an exit or entrance point. Most clustered around the northern area with the larger speed bonus. "Yes, but not entirely. Possible that they send out scouts to find straglers, like your fleet."

Captain Hauaman decided to finish this up. "So we avoid that area for the moment. Now, Major. Have the people ready for this mission by tomorrow, Crusader crew included. Lt. Thrace, you'll stay here. Once we find the Bismarck Commodore O'Donnell will want to talk with you."

Kara understood why. She was the highest ranking officer in this rag tag fleet. So Kara better make a good impression

Day 25 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 18th of February, year 2378, deep space, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger, 82 Ly from their initial starting point

"Sensors confirm, it's the Bismarck." Major Sisko reported from his tactical station on the bridge. "Adrift, minimal power signatures."

"Helm, get us aligned. Major, get a boarding party ready. As many people as you need. Same for you, Commander Scott. Lt. Thrace, go with them, I insist this time."

Once the transporter beam was done, they found themselves on the Bismarck bridge in their space suits. "Fan out. Check the stations." Major Sisko directed his team, Kara included. "Commander Scott, you arrived in engineering?"

"Confirmed. We'll begin right away. Seems the reactor is intact... Power should be up and running in... now."

The bridge lights lit up and the consoles worked completely again. "Nice work. Have your technicians begin damage assessment. I'll begin reviving the crew, Simpson, take a squad and Thrace to the armory and get to work there."

"Got it, boss." They all went to a vertical hatch to get to the lower levels. Kara soon realized how much bigger the Bismarck was that the Crusader and Challenger. It had two big and main decks and they were both, measured by size and volume, twice as big as well. They arrived on deck eight of the Bismarck, which was where the forward armory was located here. The aft one was on deck four.

"Ok people, you all know what to check." Simpson gave them the tasks they were best suited to do. "The display here is not powered up yet... Thrace, go to the ammo storage and use the console there to inspect the inventory. It should be all here, but let's be sure."

"Right."

After this was done, she returned and saw that the main tactical control console was working again. And gravity had been restored as well, so most MACOs were removing their helmets at this point. She did the same.

"Kara." It was Sisko.

"Go ahead."

"The commodore had been revived. We're still working on the others, but while she's being transported to the Challenger for a medical checkup, she insisted to talk to you personally ASAP. You'll be beamed back in 10 minutes. Be ready."

"Sure. No issues here."

"And the status down there?"

"Simpson can tell you more, but as far as I can see, the magazine is full and the weapons array seems to have most of the lights on green."

"That's good. Was to be expected that some systems will have issues, but this ship class was designed to take a bigger beating than the NX and Poseidon classes. See you later, out."

"Roger."

15 minutes later, Kara found herself in the ready room on the Challenger. The captain was already at her desk and the commodore was having a drink while sitting in the guest sofa. And she was drinking some of the private stash of the captain. "Lt. Thrace, come in. This is Commodore Fiona O'Donnell, the officer in charge of our task force, before we got lost due to sabotage. Commodore, Lt. Kara Thrace, Colonial pilot."

The commodore motioned her to take the only seat left in the room, the one across the captain's desk. "Please sit down, we have matters to discuss."

The vibe Kara got from her was similar to a Colonial officer she only saw on the news in the media, back home. But unlike Helena Cain, who was renowned to be aggressive and to get what she wants most of the time, as well as hot tempered and taking the meaning of loyalty to an extreme new meaning, this woman had a more controlled appearance. An aura of authority for sure, but not of aggression. But Kara could only speculate at this point. She had only met her right now.

"Sir. A pleasure to meet you."

"I prefer Commodore or Ma'am. Sir sounds too masculine for my taste. But it'll do. So. Lieutenant. When I thought that we had a really bad day when we got sabotaged... I never imagined that something could happen even remotely close what happened to your civilization."

Kara realized what this was about. The commodore was measuring her in this 'small talk'. "Just ask me what you want to know, Sir. No need to beat around the bush."

Finishing her glass, she raised an eyebrow to that remark. "Quite direct, I see. Good. It will save us time. Trust is not the issue. We're all humans here and you are arguably in an even worse spot than we are. And I'll read the reports the Challenger officers made on you soon enough. What I want to know is that, which makes you human."

Kara was puzzled by that sentence and it showed. "Em, what?"

"All humans have emotions. Hell, K'Lir would never admit it, but her people do too, no matter how much they bury them. And the one emotion that shows who we are is our fears and regrets. What are yours?"

Kara realized that this was an important moment. No matter what bonds and friendships she made with the people on the Challenger, this was their CO. And she would probably see through her is she lied. "To never be able to make peace between me and the Old man."

Whatever the commodore expected, it was not this. "Old man?"

"That's what we call Commander Adama. The 'Old man'. He was the rock of the ship, then of the fleet. The hardest man I've ever known, but also the kindest and loyal man too."

"You look up to him, don't you?"

"He's like a second father to me. He took me in, when I was down, after Zak died. Zak... he was his younger son. And... he and I had a bond. In the academy days... I was his flight instructor. I met him like I did Lee, his older brother. But while Lee was a natural, like the Old man, Zak didn't have the talent. I saw it. Lee suspected it. What the Old man thought, I don't know."

The two Starfleet officers had an idea what would follow. "He died?" Commodore O'Donnell asked.

"Yes. I killed him. Not by shooting him down, but by letting him pass the flight school. I knew it was wrong. He didn't have the talent. He didn't pass, but I allowed my heart to make that decision, instead of my mind. I let my emotions get the better of me..." A tear dropped from her eye as she turned to the other two women in the room. "Sometimes I envy that Vulcan woman. She wouldn't have made that mistake. Or had to feel this hole, this guilt inside of her. Like I do. I loved Zak and he died because of my stupidity." She tried to calm down. "After that I didn't have it in me to be an instructor any longer. I met the Old man at the funeral. We shared a bond, our love for Zak. But I never had the guts to tell him. To say that it was my fault. Until a day before I got shot down. And now I'm here, wondering if I'll be able to make peace with him." Now she finished her drink as well. "So you see, my greatest fear is also my greatest regret."

She was done talking and waited for a response. The commodore gave her one. "I can partially relate with that. And don't beat yourself up for something like that. You're not the first or last woman or human to do something stupid. Or as any Vulcan would say, emotional. And if this goes right, you'll see Commander Adama soon enough."

"If I may ask, what about you?"

"It's only fitting I tell you my greatest regret and fear as well. My fear was to not live up to my father. A man who lived on Vulcan for many years as ambassador. So I joined Starfleet to seek out other aliens to shake hands with. In the end, I had to kill many of them in the war. As for my regret, it was Jonathan Archer."

"Wait, I read about him. He was the first NX class captain, wasn't he?"

"We both lived in our father's shadows. His was the designer of the Warp 5 engine. So we both put any feelings for each other on hold... until it was too late. Next time I saw him, he got promoted and left to explore the galaxy. Then years later, he promoted me of all people to Commodore during the Romulan war. And I know he didn't do it out of any feelings. He told me so. We were desperate and needed any officer with some kind of experience to hold the line. Made sense to him then. And neither of us regretted that, at least."

"What was his rank by then?"

"Admiral of the allied fleet. His experiences out there and dealing with Romulans made him the best choice. That and the other three species held him in a positive light. Now, enough about the past. Lt. Thrace, down to business. I will extend the idea Captain Hauaman began with you. I'll give you the authority of a Starfleet officer of the same rank that you had in the Colonial navy. You will be our hand of friendship, once we do find other survivors or your fleet. And since the Challenger is the only ship in our scattered fleet that was designed for deep space exploration, you'll remain there, as a consultant. Sakari, if you have no objections, I'd like to have her transferred to deck seven."

"You mean the ambassadorial suite?"

"Well, she is the closest thing to an ambassador we currently have..."

"Pass. Commodore, Captain, I like where I'm located right now, no need to pamper me."

"You sure?"

"I am."

The commodore was satisfied with the talk. "Then once we assemble this fleet and begin retracing our steps and your fleet, hopefully adding more ships to it, I would want you to hold a seminar of sorts. We'll link all the MACO briefing rooms on the ships together and you'll teach them combat tactics against and Cylon military unit the Colonials developed during the first war. Outdated or not, it's better than nothing. Until then, You'll remain assigned to the MACO units under the command of Major Sisko and Colonel Walker. Speaking of him, I believe you'd want to talk to him as well. If I know him, he's already looking over the MACO operations on the Challenger down in their offices."

Kara nodded, stood up, saluted and left the room.

"Old style military salute?"

"Yes. We tried to tell her that Earth abandoned that years ago, but old habits and all..."

"Walker will love her. He's old school that way as well..."

Kara arrived in the MACO officer's office on the Challenger. It belonged to Major Sisko, but he was letting Colonel Walker use it for the time. They were both discussing the situation when she entered. "Is the commodore done with you?" She nodded. "And?"

"Don't know yet, but I think we'll get along." She noticed that the Colonel didn't respond yet, reading something on the monitor behind Sisko's desk. She saluted to him and waited to see what would happen. "Sir, I was ordered by the commodore to get acquainted with you as well."

"Good. I suspected she would want this to happen as well." He turned the monitor off and stood up, heading for the exit. "Follow me. We need a more appropriate atmosphere."

As they stood up and followed him to the lift, Kara eyed Sisko to ask where they were going. He just shrugged.

They arrived on deck three. At first she thought they were heading to the gym and training area, where she spent an hour a day ever since Sisko showed her this place. But the colonel didn't go there. He took a door Kara wasn't shown yet where it would lead to. She made a mental note to use the new access to get an even better look of the layout of the ship. As she entered the last, she couldn't believe it. "A bar? You guys have a bar!"

It was a bar, of sorts. Two pool tables, darts, card tables, a self serving bar, several large monitors... she really liked this place. Reminded her of the old times at the academy. And all the times she was thrown out of a bar.

"Why didn't you tell me about this place?" She demanded to know from Sisko.

"Didn't have the time. And not really appropriate to get drunk when all hands were needed."

"Not for this moment." Colonel Walker corrected him and he grabbed three glasses and sat down at a table. He began pouring the drinks and didn't ask them to join him, he expected it. As they did that, he pushed a filled glass to the both of them.

"What is this?" Kara asked as she saw the transparent blue liquid in the glass.

"Andorian ale." Sisko explained.

"Also really well aged. Cheers." He drank it all in one go.

Kara gave it a try at first, then did the same. "Interesting flavor. But good."

"So, Lt. Thrace." The colonel began. "If you survived the commodore, I won't give you a hassle. That and if you gained Sisko's trust, your fine by me. I'll read your fitness reports later, right now I have a tactical issue regarding this so called fleet we're re-assembling. So whatever the commodore said to you, I'm fine with it. But... what I do want to hear at a later point, in this room or the Bismarck's equivalent, is a good war story." He smirked and filled the glasses again. "Also last one for now. We're still needed out there today." They held up their glasses and made a toast. "To us!" Sisko cheered.

"To the fleet." Kara cheered.

"To humanity." The Colonel cheered.

Day 27 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 20th of February, year 2378, deep space, fleet assembly area

The Challenger was now forced to sheppard the ships to this location. It was more or less where they found the Bismarck. They would jump out and guide a ship back. The Crusader found the Denarius and purged the systems first thing after finding her. Now, with the ship mostly restored, the Crusader went at warp speeds some time ago to fetch the Volga and do the same with her. They weren't too far out from each other anyway, not with the subspace amplification effect in this area.

Kara and Sisko were on the bridge of the Denarius, with several engineers still looking at the systems and a navigational officer taking the ship do dock with the Bismarck.

Kara was at the tactical station with Sisko. "So this is a repurposed merchant ship."

"When the war started, we really needed ships for military use, like MACO transports or general logistics. And with the war raging all around the sector, the civilians couldn't use them anyway, as the Romulans would have shot at them in any circumstance. So they gave up their ships for the duration of the war, some however actually signed up and got a temporary commission as an officer. The Denarius was a Ammunition transport ship. We can still use it for hauling cargo... or if we find that fleet, we can move civilians on her."

"Yeah, it was crowded there, this might be useful. But it would slow us down, right?"

"Just as your fleet will slow us down, but that's the price we'll have to pay. You can't go faster than the slowest unit." The console beeped. "Analysis complete. All tactical systems in the green."

"Yeah, but I see no shield indicator here."

"These and the Delta Wings don't have them. No room for that. Improved hull polarization, eight pulse plasma cannons and four light phase cannons. That's it."

"Still more than most of the Colonial civilian fleet could muster..." She saw the docking procedures done and a small shake indicated they were now docked. "OK, we're done here, now what?"

"The Colonel will want an inventory list of what's still here." He gave her a PADD. "Take cargo module one and check if the list matches with what's in there. I'll do the same with two and give other MACOs the same task for the remaining modules."

"So am I to expect weapons on this ship then?"

"Leftovers from the war. When we were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Mostly spare parts for us now and in the module you'll have a look in, hand held weapons."

"Got it."

An hour later, she returned to the main connecting section of the Denarius, her task done. She found Sisko on the bridge again, now talking with Colonel Walker as he was at the captain's station. "So?" The colonel asked for the PADD as he noticed her. She handed it over.

"All there. Enough to outfit a battalion."

He checked the information on the PADD. "Perhaps, but we'll see how long it'll last out here. The Volga arrived five minutes ago. Once we're done here, we're moving to her. Lt. Thrace, can I ask you for your input?"

"Em, sure?"

"I personally would just transfer all the cargo to the other ships and gut the Denarius for parts. It's a big, slow target, even more so if the Cylons have such nimble fighters. What do you think?"

"That the commodore will have the last word?"

"Besides that."

She huffed. "Every ship out here right now is important. Unless it's crippled and not worth repairing, I say we keep it."

He continued reading her list. "I was afraid you'd say that. The commodore said about the same thing."

Day 28 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 21th of February, year 2378, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger, unknown star system

The five ships were ready to go. The Bismarck and Challenger were almost at peak condition, the others would still need repairs done to them, but they could now be done en route. Several officers of lower ranks were assigned to the Denarius and Volga, to be manned now as well.

But there was one issue remaining. Fuel. All the ships were at less than 20% of their total deuterium capacity. If only they had found the John brown by now as it was modified to be a military tanker. And it still had at least 50% of its tanks full before the sabotage. But the navigational logs, which were more reconstructed than before, showed that it fell out of the bubble as one of the earliest ships, so it would be much further out than the others.

So when the Challenger's sensors detected a concentration of deuterium in an ice giant in this system, it was worth a look. The rest of the fleet would remain behind to finish up the last needed repairs for the departure.

Entering orbit of the planet, K'Lir began extensive sensor scans. "Concentration in the upper layer is around 5%. It is sufficient for a viable extraction plan via the Bussard collectors."

Captain Hauaman nodded. "We could use some good news... helm..." The tactical station beeped. "Major?"

"A radiation signature, close to the third moon. It's just coming from behind the planet. Looks like nuclear weapons fire."

That just derailed their plans. "Is silent running on?"

"Yes, Captain. Except for the active scans."

"Passive scans only from now on. Helm, alter course, get us to the moon. Tactical, keep every system ready, just in case we need it."

As they crawled to the moon at the decreased speeds, the moon itself began revealing it's secrets. "The radiation is coming from the moon's orbit, highly localized." Sisko reported.

"I can try to get a visual, Captain." K'Lir said, looking through her scope.

"Please do."

After some static, an image appeared. It was not the sharpest image, but enough to realize that it was the remains of a ship. "Lt. Thrace. Your thoughts." The captain asked her. Kara moved to her side, trying to get a better view.

"Looks like... frak. Definitely a Colonial war ship."

"Not just that." Sisko added. "Remains of a bio-hull. According to this mass, I'd say one Colonial ship, a battlestar of some sorts and one Cylon basestar."

"So a one for one?" Commander Scott wondered from her station.

"We can assume that the Colonial ship was alone. The Cylons outnumbered her and took her down. They made their last stand here, like a cornered animal."

"And like all cornered prey, they were at their most dangerous. They took a basestar down with them." K'Lir pointed out the situation. "But this also raises concerns. How far out did this conflict extend. Why and how did the Cylons find this ship? Was the commander reckless and looking for a fight, or do the Cylons have alternative methods of tracking Colonial ships?"

"And let's not forget the most important thing." Sisko took over. "They left a husk of their ship here. They might come back for it or are planning an ambush."

The captain took all of their advises to heart. "We can still outrun them and defend ourselves, but getting detected is the last thing I want. On the other hand this is the prime opportunity for us to gather some hard data on the Cylons. I'm putting a hold on the fuel operation. Major Sisko, assemble two teams. You'll be leading the one on the basestar. Lt. Thrace, you'll lead the one on the Colonial ship." They had closed the gap sufficiently to get a name now that was visible on the torn off flight pod. "The Phalanx."

"A Valkyrie. She stood no chance." Kara remarked. Then nodded to Sisko as they went to the lift.

Some minutes later, as the Challenger entered orbit as well but kept some distance from the debris field, Kara's team was beamed onto the Phalanx. She knew the layout of this ship class well, so she directed them to the CIC. The engine block and the port flight pod were torn clean off, so the ship was beyond saving. But perhaps some things could be salvaged.

The scene was disturbing. Almost like from a horror movie. Pitch black corridors, only their lights illuminating the corridor. An occasional corpse floating around.

Arriving at the CIC, she told everyone in the team where what was. Garcia, who was the technician on her team, hooked up a portable power pack to a circuit breaker at the power station in the CIC. That gave them limited light as well as some local computer functionality. "OK, if there's anything of value in the computers, just download them. Garcia, what's the status in the remaining flight pod?"

"Em... same as here. And I only restored local power, no signal from there. We'll have to do this the old fashioned way."

"Fine. Four on me, we'll check it out."

"Lieutenant, what are you hoping to find there anyway?"

"Some raptors and vipers, for instance."

At the same time, Major Sisko's team was exploring the remains of the basestar. And they sometimes didn't know what they were looking at.

"I don't know if this is part of the ship or someone's guts?" Simpson whined.

"Is there a difference here?" Another MACO replied.

"Not really. Hey, Major. Why not plug one of our power packs into this ship to access their data."

"Bad idea. Remember, these are living machines. Who knows what emergency beacon or virus we might activate with that. Besides..." He gave the order to stop and take cover. A centurion body just floated by. "So that's a modern variation of it?" He pulled out his tactical scanner. "No power signatures. Simpson have it pulled with us. I believe we're approaching a hangar of sorts. We'll set up a transporter location there."

"Why me? I hate robots!"

"Cause I said so!"

A minute later, they did arrive at a repair bay of the basestar. And they found many interesting things there. Sisko approached a bipedal corpse next to the entrance. "This should not be here. Unless K'Lir was right again." He turned the corpse around. A young woman, apparently of Asian descent, was frozen solid. His people, using their lights, found other corpses. And some were identical to her.

"Shit..." He activated the communication system. "Challenger, this is Sisko. We have a situation here."

It was the captain that answered. "Explain."

"Commander K'Lir's suspicion was correct. We have human looking corpses here. In what I assume is either a hangar or maintenance room for their raiders, as two were serviced here, from the looks of it."

"Could they have been prisoners, forced to work?"

"Unlikely. No guards here, they're not restrained and, well, how do I put this, there are copies of them. Identical copies."

"Understood. Mark a location with the pattern enhancers. We'll need to take samples to be able to better understand the Cylons. Get a corpse of each type of individual."

"We also have an intact Centurion. Modern variation. And let me tell you, it's a lot freakier than what Kara said the first war ones were."

"Copy. Prepare that one for transport as well. And if you find others, get three more. Otherwise, continue the search for information or valuables."

"Em, there are two raiders here. I could have their navigational equipment removed to help us navigate easier."

It was Commander Scott that responded this time. "Good idea. It will take the pressure off of Challenger for the time being, until my permanent solution is finished. "

At the same time, Kara's team arrived in the still attacked flight pod. The dead deck hands really disturbed her. She felt like a grave robber, but in the end, the dead would not need this stuff anyway. "There..." She pointed to a armored wall section. "We kept nuclear warheads that could be mounted on a raptor or viper there. I'm sure you can bypass the doors and get them. You two, with me." She once again split up the team, but they were all still in visual range in the large, empty and dead hangar. "Score!" It was to be expected that the hangar was mostly empty, as most of the raptors and vipers were in combat when the end hit. But there were three vipers and one raptor still here. And they were all top of the line. She slowly drifted to the cockpit and used her light to see inside. "Frak, probably infected with that CNP crap too. Em, Challenger, we have three undamaged vipers and one raptor in the hangar. But all are probably infected with some sort of Cylon shut down command. Advise, over?"

Scott answered. "The raptor is of real importance for us. But the vipers could be of use as well. Keep searching. I'm coming over ASAP."

"Roger."

30 minutes later, Scott managed to get the raptor working again, by linking its computer system to the Challenger's via a communication link with the mobile computer analysis equipment she hooked it up with. Having gained some experience with Cylon coding, she managed to purge the infestation, but kept the CNP intact. She wanted to study it later, to see how the Cylons did what they did.

She needed less time for the vipers, as she was getting the hang of it. During all of this, the others got the nukes out, Garcia downloaded the ship logs and they even found a storage area where mostly medical equipment and food was stored. Now the food they could repurpose in the food processor, but the medical equipment, mostly the drugs and chemicals, could also be repurposed by their doctors to make their own medical supplies.

To get the vipers working again proved to be the easy part. Getting them out was more difficult. The elevators didn't work, the launch tubs were the same. So in the end, they decided to plant some explosives at the far side of the hangar and just make an opening for them. Kara showed them how to steer a viper and raptor as she took the lead in her appropriated machine.

Sisko had less fun that Kara, as he really began hating basestars. In the end he found seven different corps types. But what he also found was a woman, that was hooked up with tube from her head to the Cylon ship. And she was in a now, frozen, bathtub.

The rest he didn't know what it was and if it was dangerous or not. They couldn't dare to power anything up or to link the Challenger to this ship via their communication system. Not after what they did to the Colonials.

So an hour later, Sisko was back on the Challenger and was Kara land her viper in the now crowded hangar on the Challenger. As she jumped down, she greeted him. "Any luck?"

"You could say that. We're needed in sickbay."

"What for?"

"You'll need to see this to believe it. Also, really nice bird."

"Thanks. But we'll need to move some of the shuttles to the other ships. It's too crowded here."

"Agreed."

As they arrived in sickbay, Kara noticed the increased security. A MACO at every corner. And all were tense. She noticed Dr. Manor and Commander K'Lir working on something... or someone?

She got closer and realized that it was a centurion. "Frak me. Is that a modern one?"

"Yes." K'Lir confirmed. "And it's partially organic. Bur we only begun with our assessment here. It, unlike the others, can still wake up. Come."

"Others?"

They followed her to the ward, where Kara, once she saw what, or who was in there, almost lost it. "No... no fraking way. NO!" She was floored when she noticed Boomer's corpse. "Don't tell me..." She eyed the two Starfleet officers. "Don't tell me..."

"You recognize her, Lieutenant?" K'Lir asked, already knowing the answer, judging by her reaction.

"Sharon. Lt. Valerii. Boomer. The little raptor pilot that could not get a landing right, if her life depended on it! She was..."

"In the basestar. And several other copies, so she's not even really the Boomer you knew." Sisko explained.

Kara could barely hold it together. She wanted to smash the head of the corpse in. Sisko held her back. "Fraking bitch! I swear I'll kill her, once we find the fleet."

"Perhaps you could direct your anger at the other corpses and see if you recognize any of them, Lieutenant." K'Lir suggested.

Kara stopped struggling with Sisko and realized that it was no use venting her rage at a corpse. Sisko escorted her from one bed to the other. "Frak, the damn PR guy, who just vanished after we left Ragnar! That's him, I swear it!" Kara said as they passed a Five. "This old guy... looks similar to the priest on the Glalctica, but could be wrong. The others, I have no idea."

"That's all we wanted to know." Then Sisko used a hypo spray he had hidden in his palm, to put her out. As she fell, he caught her. "She'll hate me in the morning for this."

The doctor said she'd need to rest, if such a traumatic experience happened. She can be angry at us all she wants, tomorrow. But she is of no use to us, if she can't think straight." K'Lir gave him the logical side of things. "Take her to her quarters and let her rest. We still have a deuterium extraction mission ahead of us and you'll be needed on the bridge."

He nodded, now holding Kara bridal style as he began leaving. "And you?"

"I have much work ahead of me with the Cylon samples we now have."

Day 29 since the Colonial exodus, Earth date 22th of February, year 2378, deep space, Earth Starfleet ship Challenger

Kara's head was banging. She had a rough night. as she woke up and got her bearings, she began to remember. Boomer. The wreckage they found. The fact that toasters do look like them. How Sisko tranquilized her. She was not happy at all.

She grabbed her communicator and was ready to scream into it, but realized that what he did, was probably under orders and for good reasons. "Major Sisko, come in." She remained as collected as possible.

"Lt. Thrace. Kara. How do you feel?"

"Do you want an honest answer?"

"You would like to shoot me, correct?"

"The thought did cross my mind."

"It'll have to wait. We're back at the assembly spot with the other ships and we are detecting something on long range sensors. I was about to wake you up and call you to the ridge. Please, come fast."

As she got ready to go, she kept the communicator on. "Did we at least get some fuel?"

"Yes, but at the rate of extraction, we'd need weeks to get a full tank, so we basically got an additional 6% of total capacity for the fleet, once we refine it."

"Great."

As she arrived on the bridge, still glaring at everyone, she noticed that the main screen was showing them the topographical view of the local space. Again. And the dots indicating FTL movement to their galactic north, there were apparently also fresh signatures to their galactic south.

"Lt. Thrace." The captain celled her to join them. "We may have detected Colonial survivors. According to the power signature and range per jump, it could be a civilian fleet."

"Nine ships in total. A large one might be a military vessel." K'Lir added detail. "But every 33 minutes, a larger signature appears at the same location and the original fleet jumps out."

"33 minutes? Yeah, sounds familiar. They did that to us. Any idea why 33 minutes?"

"As you wrote in your reports, various ship types have various recharge rates. So 33 is a bit too consistent to be a random number..." K'Lir began pondering. "I also detect tachyon signatures coming from what we suspect is a Colonial fleet. We know that the Cylons use a limited form of tachyon technology, for this resurrection protocol, whatever that might be. But we know that the Colonials don't use them. So the only logical reason I am detecting them from a possible Colonial fleet, is that the Cylons have somehow tagged them. Marked them. And they need 33 minutes to triangulate the coordinates."

"Frak. Baltar had a device removed from the CIC that was suspected of being a Cylon device. But only once the Olympic Carrier was destroyed, did the toasters leave us alone."

"Possible that that ship was somehow tagged." K'Lir summarized.

"All this speculation is fine, but we need a decision. Commodore?"

Kara realized that the three large ships were currently in a communication link and the captains were discussing their next move.

"With the Colonial raptor and additional navigation devices we scavenged from the Cylon ship, we can move more independently. And this is a prime chance for a first contact protocol. The Challenger will make that contact, if you asses that they are Colonials. Lt. Thrace, your time to shine. We'll relocate to a more remote location and wait for an update. But your first order is to assess the situation and to NOT engage the Cylons, unless all other options are exhausted. Getting the officer in charge of that fleet to understand our situation and for us to help them escape is the main mission objective here, understood?"

"Understood, Commodore." The captain then stood up and began issuing orders to get the ship stealth and jump ready. "Lt. Thrace, better get your official uniform on for this one."

She nodded and left the bridge. Time to do what they expected her to do.

Commander Kelly Rose Scott - Jennifer Lawrence (Chief Engineer) (Scotty's distant relative)

Captain Sakari Hauaman - Catherine Bell (Challanger Captain)

Lt. Adrian Garcia - Michael Peña (Computer scientist)

Major Michael David Sisko - John Boyega (MACO Commander) (Benjamin's distant relative)

Lt. Commander Sachiko Hayashi - Kim Tae-hee (Challenger comm officer)

Dr. George Manor - Hugh Laurie (Rank Lt. Commander, Chief Medical Officer of Challenger)

Commander K'Lir - Melinda Clarke (Vulcan and Challenger's XO)

Commander Naomie Evans - Emmanuelle Vaugier (Crusader XO, now acting CO)

Lt. Noah Hill - Timothy Olyphant (Crusader tactical, an Augment that Dr. Soong tested out after altering his DNA to remove the behavior defects, but kept the others unaltered. Noah saw the aggressive nature of the others and went to live by himself on Tiralas IV. The others saw him as weak. He couldn't convince Udar to stay with him, as the others saw him as defective. Was located months after the Augment incident by the Columbia crew. When both Starfleet and Dr. Soong saw that his idea actually worked and Noah was behaving like a normal human, augmentations or not, Starfleet decided to give the Augment idea a test attempt, without informing the public. Noah joined Starfleet and earned his uniform and ranks like all the others, if a bit easier for him. The hope was if this worked, the Augment issue could be one day in the future looked at again. One good example could get the foot into the door that if applied correctly and carefully, augmentation does work. Since he was declared MIA, the program was scrapped and buried.

Major Jacques Friloux - Casper Van Dien (Champion MACO Commander)

Lt. Commander Alex Nelson - Dean Cain (Crusader Chief Engineer)

Dr. Krisha Kumar - Aarti Mann (Rank Lt., Chief Medical Officer of Crusader)

Commodore Fiona O'Donnell - Lauren Holly (Bismarck CO)

Colonel Alan Walker - Michael Biehn (Bismarck MACO CO)

Lt. Commander Jacob Rivers - Seth MacFarlane (Paladin Chief Engineer) (Ship's acting CO, all higher officers are dead)

Captain Carlos Ramirez - Josh Cruze (Champion Captain, transferred from Intrepid, as Starfleet needed all experienced officers in more capable ships)

Captain Khari Oladoyinbo - Cuba Gooding Jr. (Knight CO)

Commander Sek'Ris - Tom Selleck (Officer of Vulcan Command)

Ships in taskforce:

The ships that did the retrieving:

Challenger NX-03 (Updated NX class) Possessed many upgrades from the standard NX class, like the secondary hull addition and a warp six plus engine.

Crusader NX-25 (Poseidon class)

Paladin NX-26 (Poseidon class)

Champion NX-27 (Poseidon class)

Knight NX-28 (Poseidon class)

Disabled ships in the retrieval area:

Vo'kor (D'kyr class cruiser) Requested by Vulcak High Command (Reactivated due to Romulan aggression) and kept safe by Starfleet for retrieval after the Romulnans managed to disable it and kill most of the crew with a radiological weapon. The Romulans were desperate to get their hands on warp seven technology. Earth was desperate to stop them from doing that. They hid their ship with their own disabled fleet, but mined it just in case. Rather destroy it than let it be captured. Vulcan Command agreed.

Nightingale NX-34 (modified Poseidon class, used for medical needs at the front)

Bismarck NX-53 (Yorktown class) One of the classes designed specifically for the war with Romulus.

Yamato NX-47 (Yorktown class)

Boston, Marco Polo, Pathfinder, Oracle (Intrepid classes)

Mississippi, Danube, Volga (Delta Wing class)

Denarius, Merchant, John Brown (Y class transports, repurposed for troop transport needs during the war or military supply ship, heavily modified)

Concordia, Settler's Dream, Frontier - Conestoga class (repurposed colony ship, heavily modified, used as cargo ship for military needs or troop transport)

This is a new attempt at a different crossover. It is not an BSG / Enterprise one, but a BSG / Other Star Trek, as it will later encompass TOS and TNG era stuff as well. If you have any issues at me creating my own OC and use them by saying that Archer knew the commodore, when in fact there never was such a thing, hey, creative freedom.

The highway effect stems from the idea how ships moved so fast in the TOS era from specific places, but then in TNG they somehow slowed down.

Here the Starfleet ships have a technological advantage, but not numbers, firepower or supplies advantage. They are in a similar boat as the Colonials. Survival mode.

Also, I will ONLY use so called cannon / main continuity Star Trek material . So no USS Franklin, no giant 700 meters long original Enterprise, no old and retarded Picard, no 'everyone knows about Section 31' BS, no androids have DNA... and so on. So, no Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks and JJ Abrams Trek here.

Also, Co-axial warp drive, I know was explained differently in Voyager, but first off, the Cylons / Colonials don't even have antimatter power, so it's not the same thing entirely. So give me some freedom to move this story and not just point out any inconsistency you might have fund on some obscure fan site or an original technical manual. Deal?