Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters; I'm only borrowing them for a while.
I got bored of thinking about spring cleaning so back to the writing! Now I'm a pretty big fan of Farscape as well as BSG (see my newly filled in profile page for more info – yes, I've put something in at last) and it occurred to me that poor old John Crichton would be terribly confused if he came across the new version of Galactica as he wouldn't know of its existence. This is just some pure silliness that followed from this thought.
Kind of AU (ya think!), but takes place sometime after Home Pt 2 and The Peacekeeper Wars so you have been warned if you haven't seen either.
Frak versus Frell!
The sound of Kara yawning extravagantly echoed around Apollo's cockpit as they flew a late shift CAP.
"We keeping you awake Starbuck?"
"Barely! Flying round the fleet for what feels like the millionth time is hardly enough to keep me awake. I should just grab some shut eye: I can probably do CAP in my sleep."
"Well let's try and liven things up shall we and do a quick dive round the outer perimeter."
"Lords Apollo! That's your idea of livening things up? Gee, the long winter evenings must just fly by!" He tried not to rise to the bait of her teasing.
"How bout a bet? Last one back to this spot has to do the other's maintenance for a week. Perimeter only, no cutting between the ships."
"You're on!" Starbuck engaged her thrusters and sped away before Lee could react.
"Hey that's cheating, Starbuck."
"I get a head start 'cos I've only have a clapped out mark II and you have a mark VII. Still gonna beat ya tho' so eat my vapours slowcoach."
They sped out around the fleet, Kara always just keeping ahead. She flicked her viper around the last ship, but Lee was coming up fast on her inside and she had to adjust slightly to avoid colliding with him. For a split second she headed out into the black space beyond the edge of fleet.
"Holy frak!" The black space had suddenly been replaced by a swirl of blue.
"Pull up, Kara, pull up!"
"OK Apollo. Don't get your panties in a bunch. What the frak is that thing?" A strange looking vessel shot out of the blue swirl. "And what the double frak is that thing?"
"Beats me on both counts. I've never seen anything like it. So much for a boring CAP; let's go and take a closer look."
"You been smoking something you shouldn't have Apollo? What happened to Captain 'let's do it by the book and wait for orders'?"
"I think he left about the time I put that weapon to Tigh's head. Are you coming or not?"
"Right behind you, Apollo."
-
On board Moya
"Whoa! Gotta love that rush! You and Moya OK Pilot?"
"We are both fine, thank you commander."
"Umm, Pilot, are you seein' what I'm seein'?"
"If by that you mean the flotilla of ships in front of us then, yes Moya's sensors have detected them, but they do not appear to be recognisable as any ships from her memory banks." John Crichton pressed his comms.
"Aeryn, honey, you need to get up here now. Seems we might have visitors. Pilot, can you get these guys on the horn? I don't know, there seems something familiar about these ships…."
"They are hailing us already commander, and the two fighter craft coming towards us also have weapons lock on us." Pilot transferred the communications to command and a clipped voice echoed around the room.
"Alien vessel identify yourself."
"Ahh this is Commander John Crichton on the leviathan Moya. We mean you no harm. Our ship is unarmed. You gonna return the favour and fill me in?"
"I am Captain Lee Adama of the colonial fleet. My call sign is Apollo."
"Adama? Apollo? Well I'll be….your ship's not the Battlestar Galactica by any chance?"
"How the frak did you know that?" Lee was surprised into responding.
"Well it's kind of a long story, but let's just start with the fact that I'm human and I'm from earth. That interest you enough to wanna talk some more before you blow us out of the sky?" The two vipers did a swoop past Moya's view window. "Hey Vipers; cool. Is that Starbuck with you?"
There was silence for a moment. John muttered to himself.
"This is too, too weird. Must be some sort of time-reality displacement thing or may be I'm just dreaming." Apollo's voice broke into his ramblings.
"Commander Crichton, I am ordered to escort you to Galactica for further talks. I should also tell you that I am ordered to shoot you down if you do anything suspicious."
"Got ya. I thought daddy would give his OK. Me and the missus will be right out in one of our transport pods." He was really looking forward to this!
-
The crew of Galactica gathered curiously as Moya's transport pod landed. They had never seen a ship like it. A squad of heavily armed marines stood at the ready, not sure what they were going to be facing. As soon as the door of the pod opened a man appeared, a wide grin splitting his face. He was followed by an exotic looking, dark haired woman carrying a large weapon. They were both dressed from head to toe in black leather.
Lee, who had just jumped down from his viper in a rush to see this person who seemed to know plenty about them and claimed he was from the mythical earth, came to greet them. In the safety of the marine's guard, and influenced by the man's disarming smile, he shook John's proffered hand.
"Captain Lee Adama," he said by way of introduction.
"Well you're not quite what I imagined. Where's the brown velvet and the shiny boots?"
"Er, nothing like that here, sir; only standard issue colonial uniforms. May I introduce Lieutenant Kara Thrace, call sign Starbuck?" John turned towards the person approaching and his jaw dropped.
"Starbuck's a woman? I can't believe Starbuck's a woman!"
Kara thought that this guy was being really weird, but looked like he could be fun. She looked down at herself and screamed theatrically.
"Oh my Gods when did that happen? Frak it Lee! I'm a woman!" The man called John grinned back at her. She gave him a thorough once over and liked what she saw. She smiled back at him provocatively. The dark haired woman stepped into her line of vision, a flash of steel from her grey eyes clearly warning Kara off.
"Hey, just 'cos I like to window shop doesn't mean I wanna buy the goods," Kara said casually, taking a step closer to Lee.
"Umm, yeah this is my wife, Aeryn." Aeryn gave a wary nod, hands cradling her blaster. "She's the sensible one; won't go anywhere without her weapon: even sleeps with it which certainly makes my life interesting. Used to be in the military herself."
"The colonial fleet?" Lee questioned with a sceptical raise of an eyebrow: Aeryn didn't look like any type soldier he'd ever met.
"No, completely different type of military. You would not want to play war games with these guys."
"Your caution is understandable Mrs Crichton, but I really am going to have to take that weapon while you're on board Galactica. I can assure you that you'll be quite safe if you're unarmed." Lee accompanied these words with one of his sweet, genuine smiles that lit up his eyes. Aeryn relaxed under its influence and smiled at him in return, the action softening her face amazingly. It was now Kara's turn to scowl at the other woman as she felt an unexpected stab of what she knew was jealousy at someone other than her receiving one of those rarely given smiles.
"I understand, Captain, but if you don't mind I'll return it to our transport and then neither of us has to worry about it. And please call me Aeryn or Officer Sun: even John hesitates to call me Mrs Crichton." Her voice was deep and attractively accented, as if the language wasn't natural to her.
While Aeryn stowed Winona and her own weapon, John looked at the ship around him.
"Not sure this is how I remember it. I recognise that viper, but not those ships," he said, pointing at a raptor and Apollo's mark VII.
"You've been on the Galactica before?" Lee asked warily.
"Not exactly. It was a kinda cheesy sci-fi TV show back on earth, maybe twenty five years ago. It was all about these people from some distant planets trying to find their brethren on earth after their own worlds were destroyed."
"We're on the TV? People on earth know about us?" Starbuck asked incredulously.
"Yeah, except in our version Starbuck was a blond guy who used to sleep with lots of beautiful women, smoke cigars and cheat at cards." John grinned at her.
"Well that's still about right. Only the sex of the sleeping partners is wrong!" She grinned back. He pointed at Lee.
"And Apollo was this goody two shoes guy, the commander's son, who was just like the perfect hero, son, warrior, whatever. And you all wore velvet costumes. You kind of became gay icons." Kara spluttered out the water she was drinking.
"Apollo a gay icon? Oh I am so going to have fun with that!" Lee glared daggers at her.
"I don't pretend to understand any of this for a moment. Can you explain it at all?" he asked Crichton, trying to get the conversation back on to a more serious note.
"Well I've been on Moya for a while after I got caught up in a wormhole doing some flight tests in the space around earth."
"Wormhole? Was that the big, blue swirly thing?" Kara was interested again.
"Yeah. I used to be able to control them, but I kinda lost the skill; been avoiding them pretty much since that happened. I can still sense them, but I don't know where in time or space they go any more. We only came down this one to escape from the Scarrens.
"Scarrens?"
"Meanest darn critters in the whole damn universe; basically your worst nightmare as an enemy."
"Yeah, we kinda know how that feels."
"Oh no they're a whole barrel load meaner than those big chrome robot Cylons. You guys have it lucky."
"Unfortunately things have changed recently. The Cylons have evolved and now look human and the latest versions of the chrome toasters are pretty deadly."
"Frell me!"
"Frell?"
"Oh you'd probably say frak. Frak me, frell me; all pretty much means you're fucked, but you can't say that on national television. Cylons look human? That must be a real bummer. How can you tell who's a Cylon?" He thought for a moment "Hey, you don't think I'm a Cylon do you?"
"The thought had occurred to me, but you're a sadly misinformed one if you are: I'm pretty sure that every Cylon knows that Starbuck's a woman! And quite frankly you're just a bit too weird."
"Yeah, well you don't have to be mad to work here but if you are it helps. And Aeryn isn't a Cylon. Course she's not a human either: she's a sebaccean." Lee and Kara looked at Aeryn in wonder: she seemed pretty human to them.
"OK, I think we need to take this elsewhere, rather than discuss it in the middle of the hanger deck."
"Is it time to meet daddy?"
"Yeah, I think it is, but I wouldn't mention the velvet uniform to him if I were you!"
"Oh his was great: all blue and sparkly silver bits."
Lee couldn't help it; he started to giggle at the image this conjured up. He turned to Kara and could tell from her face that she had the same mental picture as he did. The pair of them just started laughing and couldn't stop.
"Oh stop it Lee, I'm gonna pee myself in a minute!"
"Oh Gods, I'm not going to be able to keep a straight face when I see him," replied Lee, wiping his streaming eyes, as he leaned on her for support. John and Aeryn exchanged glances and just looked at them quizzically while they tried to recover enough to face the commander.
Author's note: So what did you think? Is this fun enough to carry on or just plain crazy?
