A/N: Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, time for things to happen.

Chapter 3

Six shot up in her bed, easily breaking the restraints she had been placed in. As the astonished Marines trained their weapons on her, she whispered one thing.

"It's time."

Then she vanished.

Cylon-occupied Picon

"What the Hell?" Aaron Doral asked aloud as the lights in his office went dark.

"The time has come," a voice boomed. "You're task is complete and thus you are no longer needed in my plans."

"What? But we had a deal!" Doral exclaimed. "We get the Colonies in exchange for kicking the humans out."

"And until the humans found the planet Earth," the voice pointed out. "Which now it appears they will do so much sooner than anticipated. Thus, these worlds must be cleansed for their eventual return."

"But these are Cylon worlds!"

"They are now and shall always be human worlds, Aaron Doral. One day the humans shall return. And when they do, their worlds must be cleansed and ready for them."

"Please, God, I don't want to die," Doral begged. "Not like this."

"It is as it must be," God said, vanishing as quickly as He had appeared.

Across twelve worlds machines shrieked as they were consumed in a light brighter than that of an atomic explosion. All unnatural material was wiped from the face of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, leaving pristine worlds in their wake.

Battlestar Galactica

"These photos are real?" Colonel Tigh asked. "How can we be sure?"

"I watched him print them out myself, sir," Cally told him.

"Still, they could be doctored."

"Only if the Cylons gave them to him," Adama pointed out. "He seems convincing enough."

"All the human looking Cylons seem convincing," Tigh said. "You learned that the hard way, Bill."

"Don't remind me," Adama said, rubbing his chest. "Enough of his story checks out, though. Cylons haven't been known to argue as much as he has. Distribute these photos to the Fleet. Have anyone looking like this rounded up and brought to the Galactica."

"That's gonna be a lot of Cylons," Tigh pointed out. "The brig's never going to hold them all."

"We'll convert the starboard landing deck if needed. Not much other use for it right now anyway."

Tigh nodded.

"At least it's over with," he said finally. "Now we know who's who."

"I want to talk to Mr. Kelan personally," Adama said. "Cally, see about bringing him to my quarters."

"Yes sir," Cally saluted and left.

Later, Mark Kelan stood looking at one of Adama's paintings.

"It looks so much like an artist on Earth. Can't quite remember his name," he said after a moments thought. "The setting seems almost medieval."

"It's from the Late Unification Period on Caprica," Adama told him. "About four hundred years before the Colonies rediscovered space travel."

"Sounds about right," Kelan said. "But I'm sure you didn't bring me here to discuss art."

"You'd be right about that," Adama told him. "From what I've been hearing, you don't know where Earth is. Is that right?"

"That's correct. We targeted a star in the general direction of Scorpio, but didn't have the time to install anything to record our journey. Add to that the Cylons stumbling across us about thirty years ago and, well, there you have it."

"So tell me, what do you need to find Earth?" Adama asked after a moments thought.

"A radio, for one thing. If I could tune a signal from Earth it might give me a general direction, maybe even distance."

"What do you mean, 'if you could'?"

"Well, to be frank, before we left certain groups were beginning to implement encryption technologies on their signals. See, if there is one thing that exists on Earth that is far more evil than anything else, then it's greed. These groups couldn't stand the thought of their content being out in the open. They wanted to be paid for every little thing read, heard or seen. So they lobbied for encryption. 'Digital Rights Management' they called it. Only certain players would be able to decrypt the signals and even then for a limited time. My people lobbied against it, of course. We tried to convince everyone it would just lock our culture away for all eternity but they wouldn't listen. We could already be receiving signals from Earth, for all we know. We just wouldn't know it."

"I see," Adama said after Kelan finished. "Would you agree that traveling back on your original path would be another place to start."

Kelan thought, then nodded.

"Possibly. And I could try to locate a familiar star. I was never an astronomer or anything close to it, but I have programs with star charts on them. If I could just decipher them, they might help."

"I believe we have an astronomer in the Fleet who may be of some assistance. I'll see that he's sent over," Adama told him. "Now, if you'll excuse me, we're about to make the final preparations for a jump out of this system."

"Eh, a 'jump'?" Kelan asked.

"FTL. Faster than light," Adama explained.

"I've heard mention of that. How exactly does it work?"

"Accompany me to CIC and I'll tell you," Adama said as they walked out. "The important thing to remember is, when we do jump don't move a muscle."

"I can do that," Kelan assured him.

Colonial One

"Not again," Laura Roslin said as she collapsed into the Kamala induced vision.

She saw a planet, or rather a moon. What struck her as odd was the fact that no light shone on this moon. No stars in any direction she peered gave a hint of being a parent star. And, to her amazement, the moon was not orbiting a planet, as was natural. By all appearances, it just hung in space.

The image vanished. Now she found herself in a ship of some kind. She could see people ahead of her, calling out, but she could not hear their voices. Other than that, her vision was limited as the interior of this ship was pitch black.

"Madame President?" Billy asked, breaking her out of the vision. "Are you alright?"

"I don't know," she told him. "I had another vision. But it wasn't religious like the others. I saw a moon, but then I was in a ship. I'm sorry, what did you need?"

"We're about to make a jump," Billy told her. "I thought you should know."

"Thank you, Billy."

Around the Galactica, the ships of the Fleet winked out, the Galactica winking out last.

And immediately they were nowhere.

CIC

"What a rush," Kelan said once his senses had returned to him. "Is it normal to feel turned inside out?"

"Most who experience their first FTL jump feel like losing their lunch," Adama told him. "It's perfectly normal."

"I…see," Kelan said, swallowing.

"Report?" Adama asked Lt. Gaeta.

"Checking, sir," Gaeta responded, checking his computers. He did a double take at what he was seeing.

"Mr. Gaeta?" Adama asked again.

"Sir, I'm not sure, but the computer is putting our position as…nowhere," Gaeta said, shock in his voice.

"What? That's impossible," Tight growled. "You can't plot a jump to the middle of nowhere. Lieutenant, you didn't frak up the numbers, did you?"

"No, sir. We ran the numbers three times. We should be on the outer edges of a small solar system."

"Star system," Kelan interjected.

"Excuse me?" Tigh growled again.

"Forgive me, just a little pet peeve of mine. Forget I'm here."

"Anyway, as I was saying," Gaeta continued. "We should be on the outer edges of a sol…star system right now."

The sudden bleeping of the Dradis caused Gaeta to check his computers again.

"Dradis contact. Very, very large Dradis contact. It's not Cylon. Whatever it is, it's huge."

"Do we have a Viper in the tube?" Adama asked.

"Yes, sir," Dualla answered.

"Launch it," Adama ordered. "I want a visual on this contact. And have the alert fighters on standby."

"Yes, sir," Duala said as she relayed the orders.

Kara scanned the space in front of her. Her Dradis was screaming that a huge contact lay directly ahead, but, for the life of her, she couldn't see anything.

"Galactica, Starbuck, I'm not seeing anything out here," Kara radioed.

"Dradis says it's right in front of you," came the voice of Adama. "In fact, you're almost on top of it."

In front of her, Kara could see stars beginning to wink out. Reaching down, she flipped on her running lights.

"Frak!" she yelled, realizing a large shape was indeed in front of her.

Pulling up on her control stick, she veered as quickly as possible to the right of the object and moved away. Moving around to the other side, she could make out what could only be a planetary body.

"Um, Galactica, I'm not believing what I'm seeing out here. I don't know how, but this seems to be a planet of some kind."

In the CIC, everyone looked at each other. Only Mark Kelan could think of anything to say.

"Huh?" he asked no one in particular.

A/N: And there you have it for the moment. The Cylons are out of the picture, for the moment anyway. And now the Fleet is in the middle of nowhere. What is to come for humanity is anybody's guess.