Thirteen

Chapter Fifty-Five

Hidden Gems

Pacifica Commander Ariadne Zoetrope looked up from her maps on the bridge when her tactical officer, Lieutenant Baltazar Herimon, shouted down to her, "Unknown ships on intercept course to Cylon basestars!" She looked up at the DRADIS tracking system and saw that two-dozen small vessels were moving at an astonishing speed towards the five basestars located at the Picon shipyards.

"Are they heading towards us?" Zoetrope asked.

"Negative, Commander. All ships are heading towards the basestars!" Herimon answered.

"Dresden, try to contact those ships if you can!" Zoetrope ordered her communications officer, Lieutenant Beata Dresden.

"Aye, Commander!" Dresden replied and tried to hail the ships. "Sir, they've been sending a signal, but it's on a different frequency than we're used to."

"Which one is that?" Zoetrope asked.

"Colonial fleet command frequency, ma'am. Secure codes check out!" Dresden replied.

Zoetrope thought for a moment, then said, "Send it through to my console!" Dresden nodded and did as ordered. The commander of the Pacifica picked up the headset and said, "This is the Colonial battlestar Pacifica, Commander Ariadne Zoetrope speaking. Who is sending this signal?"

"Commander, this is Lieutenant Kara Thrace, call sign 'Starbuck', formerly attached to the Galactica. We're here on a mission to attack the Picon shipyards."

Zoetrope replied, "Standby, Starbuck." She turned to Herimon, who was hearing the conversation through his own headset, and said after muting her own headset, "Check our records to see if she's legit." Herimon nodded and ran the check, while Zoetrope returned to the conversation, "Those ships are not Colonial, Lieutenant. May I ask who they are aligned with?"

"They are from the Interstellar Alliance. It's a long story, Commander, but we'll fill you in ASAP as soon as we trash these basestars." Starbuck replied.

Zoetrope glanced over to Herimon, who nodded at her, indicating that Starbuck's ID was legit. She didn't completely trust the signal yet, but her gut instinct told her to go along with this for now. "Okay, Starbuck. Do what you have planned, then we can take over."

"Commander, we didn't come in alone." Starbuck said, and Herimon perked up as he saw more indicators go off on his DRADIS console. The Argo and the rest of the ISA fleet jumped in on the other side and began to move to attack the basestars and the shipyard from the rear. "Those are also part of our alliance. Believe me, Commander, we're just as shocked to see you too."

"Starbuck, they're almost within range of the first wave of raiders." Helo said.

"Activate the jammers." Starbuck ordered. The jammers were designed to block the Cylons from transmitting the computer virus that had disabled many of the Colonial fleet ships during the Cylon attack on the Colonial worlds. Starbuck didn't know how these twelve had survived, as all had been reported lost. Part of her worried that this could be a trap, so she kept a good distance from the battlestars just in case.

The Whitestars raced into the oncoming raiders and took them out like a sickle mowing down wheat, plowing their way towards the basestars, who were having to split their attention between the smaller, more mobile Whitestars approaching from one direction and the larger cruisers of the ISA approaching from the other.

A message came in from the Argo, and Starbuck took it as her Whitestar was just finishing up an attack run on one of the basestar's spokes, wiping out raider launch bays and missile launchers in one fell swoop. "This is Captain Okita, Starbuck. Recommend we do what we can to take these basestars out and leave the ground attack for now. If we can bring back these battlestars, Adama will be very pleased."

"Agreed, Captain, but we should be careful. We don't know if these battlestars are all they seem."

"Understood. We're almost within range of the nearest basestar. Recall your Whitestars and we'll smash it to pieces."

Starbuck did just that, and the Argo, along with Independence, drew within range and opened up with their quantum discharge cannons on their bow, which began to slice into the outer hull of the basestar. The basestars tried late to launch nukes at the oncoming ships, but Thunderbolt fighters along with the Vipers assigned to the two Victory­-class destroyers put paid to them long before they were able to come within reach of the capital ships.

As the battle wore on, Commander Zoetrope began to be won over by these unknown ships, mainly realizing that if they could do what they were doing to the Cylons, they could easily do to her ships. She watched as one basestar after another was destroyed by Starbuck's Whitestars and the other ships that had jumped in on the opposite side of the shipyards. Her plans had been to make a suicide run on the shipyards and take out as many basestars as the fleet could, but she was more than grateful that the dozen battlestars remaining didn't have to get involved in this battle.

As soon as the battle was over with, Starbuck hailed Pacifica. "Commander, we recommend that you and your fleet come with us. The remaining Colonial fleet is outside the system, and we can take you there."

Zoetrope agreed and the Whitestars formed up, two to a battlestar, and helped escort them into hyperspace. Okita took Argo and the rest of the cruisers on another course, just in case that the battlestars were a Cylon trap. Starbuck knew it was dangerous, but if these battlestars were what they said they were, then the Colonial fleet would grow exponentially from what it was now.

When they jumped back into normal space briefly, Starbuck turned over command of the fleet to Helo and went over to the Pacifica. She was taken to the CIC, where she got her first look at Zoetrope. She was a tall, thin woman who wore an eye patch, looking almost like a pirate. Her long black hair also added to the piratical look, but her air was anything but. "So you're Starbuck, eh? Not exactly a regulation uniform you have on, is it?" Zoetrope asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No, Commander. I'm part of what's called the Rangers, or the Anla'shok in Minbari, serving as Colonial liaison with them. Like I said, it's a long story, but Admiral Adama and President Roslin will fill you in when we get to Babylon 5."

"Roslin? Wasn't she the secretary of education?" Zoetrope asked.

"She was, ma'am, but she's president now. She's had to learn the hard way to be head of state, much like Admiral Adama had to learn to become head of the fleet."

"Bill Adama, head of the fleet?" Zoetrope laughed. "He's certainly come up in the universe, hasn't he? Good for him! I've always liked him, even though the other battlestar commanders looked down upon him because he commanded one of those old battlewagons. Well, since I command one of them myself, I have a soft spot in my heart for them."

"Commander, how did you and these ships survive?" Starbuck asked.

Zoetrope sighed and said, "We retreated and got the hell out of the system, thinking that if we did, we could meet up with some other battlestars and counterattack. The only way we managed to survive was that I had managed to find a way to counteract the computer virus. Well, not me, but someone I know."

"Who?" Starbuck asked.

"Merlin?" Alwyn asked when he arrived on board the Pacifica with Galen and the others. When Zoetrope had told Starbuck of the presence of the technomage, she immediately called the two technomages over to find out about him.

"One in the same, my old friend!" Merlin replied, his long white hair and shiny royal blue robe made him look exactly like the stereotypical wizard. In fact, Merlin had chosen his name because he had fallen in love with the mythos of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

"I always wondered what became of you after the last convocation back on Soom. You never did make it to the temporary shelter on Selic 4!" Galen asked inquisitively.

"Like Alwyn, I didn't want to run and hide from the Shadows! I wanted to fight, and I did, in my own way. When the Shadows and Vorlons left, I decided to explore the territory that the Vorlons had abandoned. Let me tell you, the Vorlon defense systems were tricky at first, but I managed to overcome them!" Merlin said with a laugh.

"How did you encounter the Colonials and why didn't you tell anyone about them?" Alwyn asked.

"My ship had been heavily damaged by the Vorlons weapons systems when Commander Zoetrope and the crew of the Pacifica found me. In exchange for their secrecy, I offered to help her as best I could. I had just helped her convince the others in this fleet to put in the protection I had devised for any possible Cylon virus and had helped install the firewalls when the Cylons attacked." Merlin answered.

Zoetrope added, "We managed to find a wealth of armaments at Pragen Anchorage, just outside the system. We were able to beat off quite a few Cylon attacks along the way, and we had decided to mount this attack to see if we could take on a larger enemy. We had no idea that Galactica had survived, or else we would have tried to meet up with her and join her!"

Starbuck replied, "Admiral Adama will be very happy to see you. Hell, he may faint when she sees you!" Zoetrope laughed along with Starbuck at the thought of Adama fainting at the sight of these battlestars coming to Babylon 5. Starbuck had, for a brief period of time, had her faith in the Lord of Kobol shaken, thanks to the events shown to her on Kobol, but ever since she had talked to President Hollifield on the way back to Babylon 5 shortly after those events, she had begun to realize that there was a force in the universe even greater than they knew, and certainly greater than the Vorlons and Shadows had ever had been.