== Part 12 – Hello Again ==
"Status report!" Admiral Adama demanded as he charged into the CIC, Sharon right on his heels.
"Two unidentified bogies jumped in at a hundred and fifty thousand klicks," Colonel Slate reported, turning away from the holographic situation display to report to the two flag officers. "Threat Assessment pegs them as either shuttles or large fighters, probably the latter. Their exit vectors are carrying them straight towards us and they're both burning a constant six gees just to avoid overshooting us. They'll be in the outer edge of our engagement envelope in..." Slate glanced at the clock. "...fifteen minutes."
Sharon looked at the bogies' current velocity numbers on the display and did the math in her head. Adding in the time it had taken her and Adama to reach the CIC, the bogies' exit velocity from FTL jump must have been... pretty damn fast. They had to be burning huge amounts of fuel to be maintaining that much acceleration for this long, but they showed no signs of stopping. They'd be hitting typical combat speeds just about inside the Colonial's engagement envelope.
"Viper status?" Sharon asked.
"CAP is moving to intercept," Slate reported. Sharon could see that from the display. Their initial positioning when the bogies appeared must have been less than idea, but from what she could tell, they should still be able to intercept the bogies well short of the fleet. "Ready Vipers are in the tubes and ready to launch."
"Don't launch just yet," Adama told her.
"Sir?" Sharon said, confused. Launching the ready Vipers was SOP for this situation.
"How likely are these to be Cylons?" Adama asked, ignoring her question and staring hard at the bogies' icons in the display.
That's right, Sharon realized. These could be Earth ships.
"Uh, not sure, Admiral," Slate replied. "We're having trouble imaging them which is consistent with Cylon ECM during the war and post-war border encounters. But their exhaust signatures are showing no signs of a tylium, but large amounts of hydrogen and helium ions."
"They came out of jump with an exit vector pointed at us," Sharon said thoughtfully. "That must mean they just arrived and must have spotted us from across the system. They're coming in close to see who we are."
"Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have decided to put the refueling station here," Adama murmured under his breath. Then louder, "Has Commander Gaeta left yet?"
"Sir, his shuttle is cycling through the airlock right now," Petty Officer Gates replied.
"Call him and tell him to get the Pegasus back here ASAP," Adama ordered. Gaeta had left the Pegasus at the planet to continue investigating the farming settlement while he reported to the Admiral. "Who's on CAP?"
"That should be Cage and Fencesitter with Hack and Coldcut flying EW support," Sharon replied. She had always been good at remembering schedules. She glanced over at Slate. "That's assuming no last minute changes?"
Slate just shook his head.
"Get Cage on the line," Adama ordered. Lucas "Cage" Brubaker was the Galactica's CAG. There was no doubt that if he was flying CAP, he was in charge. "I'm about to order him to do something that could very well be suicidal."
Two Mark X Vipers and a Raptor hurled through space away from the Expedition Fleet on an intercept course with the bogies. They were coasting, not accelerating, saving their fuel for when they would really need it. The bogies were still well outside visual range, but Lucas could already see the bright, flickering pin pricks of their exhausts. Coldcut had already informed him and Fencesitter that getting directly behind the bogies at any close range was going to be a really, really BAD idea.
Those lights had been there the entire time the CAP had been moving to intercept them. How much fuel did these things have?
"Cage, this is Expedition Actual." The call raised Lucas' eyebrows in surprise. The Admiral was calling him direct instead of going through the Commander? This had to be big.
Then again, if this was a first contact with the Thirteenth Colony, it was a capital 'B' Big.
"Expedition Actual, this is Cage. Over," Lucas replied.
"Cage, I want you and Fencesitter to shadow the Bogies and stay on them for as long as you can," the Admiral ordered. "But under no circumstances are you to fire first without my express orders."
Well frak, Lucas thought. If the bogies were allowed to fire first, that was likely to mean that he, Fencesitter, the Raptor Crew, or any two of them together were going to die before they even knew they were under attack.
"I know I'm asking a lot of you," the Admiral continued. "But we can't afford to start a war with either the Cylons or Earth because of a misunderstanding or an itchy trigger finger. So until we know for sure the bogies are hostile, all weapons are to be kept on safe."
Frak frak frak...
"Understood, Expedition Actual," was all Lucas said, letting no sign of his actual feelings into his voice. "Weapons on safe."
"Expedition Actual out."
A clock was running on Lucas' HUD, counting down the time to interception. It was almost time, and as far as the clock was concerned, the Admiral's orders changed nothing.
"CAP, you heard the Admiral," Cage transmitted. "Set weapons on safe and standby to execute a hard turnover on my mark."
"Well that's easy for me," Hack replied dryly. "I don't have any weapons!"
"Turn over in three," Cage began, ignoring the banter. "Two. One. MARK."
The Vipers and Raptor flipped end over end, until they were nearly facing back the way they had come, and lit their main thrusters. If they were going to stay with the bogies, they had to match velocity and direction of travel with them. And that meant arresting their forward velocity first before they could start following the bogies.
Lucas could see the specks in the distance that were the ships of the Expedition Fleet now that they were in front of him. The bogies were coming up behind him and had the perfect opportunity to kill the entire CAP if they decided they didn't just want to breeze right past them. This would normally be a suicide move against a known hostile and SOP called for a "soft turnover" under these circumstances, keeping the guns on the enemy while using the weaker RCS thrusters to kill forward velocity. But with the Admiral's orders, there was no point in keeping the guns on the bogies, so Lucas had called for a hard turnover which used the main thrusters for deceleration.
"I'm starting to get a clear Dradis picture of the bogies," Coldcut announced. The Raptor wasn't decelerating nearly as hard as the Vipers; it couldn't. But at least it came with an inertial shield, or else Coldcut wouldn't have been able to do his job under high acceleration given how he was seated in the Raptor. "Uh, this is weird. I'm actually seeing two different designs here. Bogie Alpha sorta resembles a Cylon War era Raider, but with slightly swept forward wings, and with four main thrusters instead of two. Bogie Beta is designed along the same lines, but it's smaller and has a much narrower fuselage. It's kinda hard to see more, that exhaust is playing merry hell with the Dradis returns. Maybe they're using it as part of their ECM suite?"
"If they can keep their thrusters going this long non stop, I don't see why they wouldn't," Fencesitter replied, his voice completely normal despite his Viper burning a good eight gees. If there was one thing Lucas was ambivalent about the Mark X, it was that it incorporated a full inertial shielding system like the Raptor. Earlier Viper marks had their accelerations limited by their pilot's ability to tolerate gee forces, but a Mark X could run its engines flat out and its pilot wouldn't feel a thing. That was great for pilot endurance, but the system didn't do a thing otherwise to increase combat performance, and its mass would have decreased combat performance if the engines hadn't been made more powerful to compensate. Some people thought the trade off wasn't worth it, especially since the Mark X didn't have the fuel reserves to accelerate full out for very long anyway.
Also, Lucas had spent his first five years in the service flying Mark VIIs. In the Mark X, his hind brain kept screaming at him that he was standing still and was about to be shot out of the sky no matter how hard he maneuvered.
"Bogies will be passing us in three," Cold Cut announced, "Two. One. Mark."
Two ovalish shapes zipped past the Vipers and Raptor and into Lucas' view. They weren't particularly close, but still in the naked eye range. Lucas' HUD dutifully placed easily visible targeting brackets around each fighter. Even as he watched, the rate the bogies retreated from him slowed perceptibly as his Viper accelerated towards them and they decelerated at the Vipers.
They really did look like Cylon War era Raiders, Lucas thought, except for the changes Coldcut had noticed and the smaller cockpit on Alpha. Beta... didn't have a cockpit. Lucas felt his skin crawl; he had seen that show too.
"Okay, people," Lucas said professionally. Whatever he might feel, he wasn't going to let it affect his job performance. The rate of separation between them and the bogies was slowing almost to zero, and Lucas began to dial down his acceleration so that he wouldn't overshoot the bogies. "Get gun cameras on these guys and..."
Lucas broke off as the bogies flipped over themselves and began accelerating towards the fleet. And they were moving on divergent courses.
"Frak! They're splitting up!" Lucas exclaimed. "I'm on Alpha! Fencesitter, take Beta! Hack, pick one and stay with it!"
"So, they didn't shoot the CAP," Sharon commented. It irked her that the Admiral had used her people as guinea pigs like this, but at the same time, she understood his reasons. It still irked her. "I guess that means they aren't hostile?"
"They could be unarmed," Slate suggested.
"Take a good look at those wingtips and tell me they're unarmed," Sharon told him, pointing at the video feeds from the Vipers' gun cameras. The bogies were dodging and weaving as the Vipers both tried to keep them in their sights and avoid getting toasted by the exhaust from those thrusters, but Sharon could still easily spot what looked suspiciously like gun barrels sticking out of the wingtips. And Sharon was sure the boxy things next to the barrels were missile racks, albeit small ones.
"If they're peaceful, maybe they'll talk to us," Adama said. He picked up a mic. "Put me on open broadcast."
"You're on, sir," Gates replied.
"Unknown spacecraft, this is Admiral Lee Adama of the United Twelve Colonies of Kobol," Adama said into the mic. "We come in peace and would like to talk. Please respond."
Several seconds passed.
"I'm sorry, sir," Gates finally spoke up. "There's no response from the bogies."
Sharon leaned forward and studied the tactical display. "It looks like Alpha is heading towards us," she announced. "Beta's heading for the station."
"Jake, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I'm doing my job, Harv," Jake replied over the radio. He was a civilian construction worker, the veteran of many a microgee construction project, and he knew what the hell he was doing. "If this tank isn't secured, the asteroid's microgravity will eventually pull it down and damage all the piping and wiring connected to it, maybe even twist some girders."
"We're at action stations, Jake! You know what that means! Get back to the ship now!"
"I'll go in when I'm done," Jake snapped back. "I just need five more minutes."
"You ain't got five min... oh frak!"
Jake's delicate work suddenly stopped when the entire girder assembly that he was latched to suddenly vibrated.
"Frak! Who did that?" Jake demanded angrily as he turned around to look for the source of the disturbance. "I'm working hee..."
Jake trailed off when he found herself staring into flat eye slit with a red light bobbing back and forth in it. It was attached to the body of what looked to Jake like a giant frakking headless bird with its wings wide spread and talons clutching the nascent station's exposed skeletal structure.
Later, Jake would be glad that his construction rated space suit came with automatic waste disposal functions.
"That thing can walk?" Slate exclaimed in shock. Beta had pulled right up to the station, unfolded its lower thruster assembly to reveal gripping claws, and then latched onto the station's exposed girders like a bird landing on a tree branch. As the Colonial officers watched the video feed, Beta turned away from the construction worker that shouldn't have been there and began hopping from girder to girder, examining anything that caught its curiosity. "Why would anyone make a fighter that can walk?"
"Add it to the list of questions we'll ask them later," Sharon told him as her eyes flicked over to Alpha. It was swooping in and around the ships of the fleet in no discernible pattern while Cage continued to chase it. It constantly jinked and changed direction, as if dodging non-existent fire. If this kept up much longer, Cage was going to have come in to refuel while Alpha showed no signs of running out. "Have one of the ready Vipers prepare to replace Cage out there," she told Slate.
"Unknown spacecraft," Adama said, trying again. "If you are reading this message, please give some sign in response."
Still nothing.
These were Cylons, Sharon was sure of it. The designs were far too similar to what the Colonials knew to be anything else, technological oddities aside. But of course, they weren't talking to the Colonials, just as they hadn't bothered talking for forty years before they moved to Earth. Not officially anyway. Well, there were unofficial channels that no one in the Fleet but Sharon knew about.
Cylons could talk voicelessly, mind to mind although it wasn't their preferred method of communication. It wasn't telepathy, but it was a pretty damn close imitation of it, especially when sharing memories. But Cylons couldn't outright read each others' minds, only what any one of them decided to transmit. Sharon pretty much never used this ability, even when socializing with Cylons back home. And she had kept her mind closed off during the entire voyage from the Twelve Colonies for fear of giving the Fleet's position away to any listening Cylons.
Well, the Cylons were here now. Probably. So Sharon cracked open her mind, not enough to give her presence away, but just enough to eavesdrop on whatever the Cylons might be saying to each other.
"Wheeeee..." The sound of laughter. The feeling of excitement. The sense of novelty. The impression Sharon got was...
"They're playing with us," she said aloud. Then Sharon blinked and realized that she had said that out loud.
"Huh, you may be right," Adama said thoughtfully. He used the mic again. "Unidentified spacecraft, please respond."
"Phhhttt!" The mental raspberry was stunning in its immaturity. And the mental voice didn't match any Cylon model than Sharon knew back in the Colonies. "Come on, silly! 'Unidentified spacecraft'? Can't you see who we are? If you're too stupid to recognize us, why would we ever want to talk to you? Isn't that right, Fido?"
"Rawr." A general sense of agreement and acceptance was there, but no coherent words that Sharon could make out.
"Talk to us, dammit!" Sharon muttered under her breath. And then she realized that not only had she spoken that aloud, she had also accidentally transmitted it on the Cylon mental link. Frak. She had given herself away.
On the display, Alpha suddenly stopped jinking around, and started accelerating straight for the Galactica.
"Huh, something's changed," Slate said. "It's almost like they heard you, ma'am."
"Oh wow oh wow oh wow!" Alpha said gleefully. "Are you an Eight? I haven't talked to an Eight in ages! Hey, Fido, is this an Eight?"
"Rawr." Confirmation. Recognition. Again, no words that Sharon could make out. It was more gut level feelings. Beta didn't seem capable of complex language.
"It is an Eight! Wow! So nice to meetcha!" Alpha reached the Galactica and began looping around the Battlestar. "Why are you with a bunch of stupid Colonials?" Alpha decelerated to a stop by the starboard flight pod.
"What's it doing now?" Slate wondered.
"'Galactica'. Oh wow, is it that Galactica? You brought a museum ship all the way out here? It's so shiny!"
"Examining the nameplate it looks like," Sharon answered as she struggled internally to keep her conversation inside the ship from getting outside the ship.
"Unknown spacecraft, please respond," Adama said again, his voice resigned with the knowledge that he was unlikely to get a response.
"Oh, quit it already! I don't wanna talk with you. Hey, Fido, get over here! It's the Galactica!"
Beta launched from the station, heading towards rendezvous with Alpha. Fencesitter dutifully chased after it.
Bogie Beta burned towards Alpha and the Galactica for far longer than any Colonial craft would have, especially given the short distance. Did these guys accelerate everywhere they go? Fencesitter wondered.
"Fencesitter, Cage," the CAG called over the radio. "How's your fuel looking?"
"Looking good still," Fencesitter replied. "I'm a little low, but I can stay out for a while yet."
"That's because you got to sit still for a bit," Cage replied. "I'm almost out. It's a good thing Alpha stopped by the Galactica. It's going to make it easy to switch in a fresh Viper."
"Great," Fencesitter replied. "Beta and I are on our way to join you. I should switch out toOH FRAK!"
A solid wall of metal appeared out of nowhere right in front of Fencesitter's and Bogie Beta's path. Both instantly hit their retros, Beta swinging the main thrusters on its legs forward to add to its deceleration. But Beta was in the lead and had already built up too much velocity, and thus plowed the metal wall resulting in a brilliant fireball.
Fencesitter was luckier, and perhaps, more skilled. He didn't just fire RCS thrusters to arrest his forward momentum. He twisted his Viper around while the RCS thrusters automatically kept the deceleration thrust direction the same – thank the gods for the automated control systems - brought his main thrusters to point ninety degrees off from his base vector, and cranked his main thrusters to the strongest possible burn he could get. As a result, his Viper swerved aside at a whopping fifteen gravities, and barely managed to miss the edge of the wall by mere meters. And it only took his entire remaining fuel supply to do it.
As his Viper tumbled away now powerless, Fencesitter set his SOS beacon and then looked back to see what he had almost run into. He immediately understood what had just happened.
The Battlestar Pegasus had just arrived.