Authors Notes

Next chapter will be coming soon. Just so you know, have created basic 3d models of Earth's ships. These are viewable at the link which is on my profile, so ya can get a good look at em.

Bad news tho….

As soon as uni finishes, I'm going to a mine for 3 weeks. Coming back on about the 22nd of December. Staying for Xmas and New Years, then going back to the mine after that for about 10 days.. don't know if I'll get the time to work on the story out there. Will work on it massively once back in Jan. Have got lots of good ideas.

Thnx

Aussie

Chapter 10 – Secret Weapons

He never thought that he'd be sitting inside a cell aboard the Triton, and he had never thought that what had occurred, would happen to him. His own weapons officer in his Osprey class shuttle was one of them, and had been all along. He had spent a week inside the prison cell of the Triton thinking about that fact; how long had the enemy infiltrated their planet? Their government and so called 'secret' projects? How much planning had gone into their attack, and if so much planning had occurred, why not more attacks? Flight Lieutenant Samuel Jackson was scared of the answers to those questions and didn't really want to know the details of some of them.

When they had found him, the sole survivor of the crew of Osprey 062, they had immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had killed their navigations and comms officer, Captain Organ, and that he had jettisoned his weapons' officer's body out of the airlock. He told them of his story and they had shoved him into the holding cells aboard the Triton. He had told them of how his weapons officer, Sharon Valerii, had betrayed them as an identical copy of herself was shown over the monitor. They had just come back saying that they had no records of a Sharon Valerii in the PDO or IAO, and that his weapons officer was Jane Samuel, a Russian man from the outdated Cosmonaught program. He knew that they thought that he was crazy; that whatever had happened in the Osprey had driven his mind over the edge.

Johnson felt as though every time he told them the story of the secret base on the moon, and the two giant robots which boarded his ship, that they were believing him less and less. They hadn't said if they had investigated for the location of the base or not, but he had a feeling that they might not. Further to add to the story that Johnson was guilty of the murder of Captain Organ, and this supposed Flight Lieutenant Samuel, was the fact that Valerii had left the weapon that she had taken from Johnson in the Osprey, and had made sure that it looked like there had been an attempt to hide it.

Osprey 083 – Approaching the Far Side of the Moon

They were flying towards a site which 'supposedly' had an enemy base located in it. According to the pilot of Osprey 062, an enemy agent, their weapons officer, had kidnapped them within their ship and had threatened them with death, unless they didn't do what they said. The weapons officer had supposedly made them fly the Osprey into a crater on the far side of the moon, where a secret base had been hidden. Apparently, a 'robot' had shot the Navigations and Communications Officer of the Osprey, before leaving the pilot unharmed, and able to fly back to Earth. That's what they'd been told this morning in their briefing, and they were now going to check out the location that the pilot had told them.

They were about ten minutes away from the crater which Flight Lieutenant Samuel Johnson had pointed out on overhead maps. It was then that the navigation officer that he could see a possible foreign object on the surface of the moon, via the radar, and that it was moving. Almost immediately, the pilot brought the rotatable engines around one hundred and eighty degrees and brought the Osprey to a complete stop. The Weapons Officer was already using the ships mounted external telescopic cameras to zoom in on the area where the radar blips were occurring.

They all watched the monitor as the magnified moon's surface raced across the screen, before stopping on the coordinates which had been supplied by the radar. It was then that they saw what appeared to be four humanoid looking machines bounding across the moon's surface, away from them at an incredible speed.

"Son of a Bitch was right," the communications officer said out loud.

"Should we investigate?" the pilot asked the rest of the crew. Each of the crew contemplated the idea for a couple of minutes before the communications officer spoke.

"No, we should return with our findings, and then let armed ships investigate this," he suggested. The rest of the crew agreed and the pilot immediately put the Osprey into reverse. Once they had gathered some 'backwards' velocity, she used the small manoeuvring thrusters to turn the ship around and put the engines on full throttle.

Planetary Defence Organisation – Weekly Conference of Leaders – Undisclosed Location

Dr. Bruce Miller was one among twenty sitting at the table this week as they had met to discuss the latest events which were occurring around the globe. As well as the ten representatives of each primary member nation of the PDO, there were all of the department heads, himself included, as well as representative from the IAO and some other major organisations.

"What have we learned from the, occupants, of the ship which appeared in our system a week and a half ago?" Dr. MacGuwyre asked.

"According to all of their stories, they've told us that they're from the Twelve Tribes of Mankind. Their home worlds have apparently been wiped out by an attack from an enemy race which they call Cylons," someone answered.

"Did one of them not say that they were the first of a fleet of ships to be arriving here?" Dr. MacGuwyre asked to no one in particular.

"Is that the one that you had tortured?" Miller posed to MacGuwyre straight away. She just looked at him before replying,

"He was the pilot, and appeared to be in command, and would not talk… We had to do what was necessary for the continued survival of our race." Miller just shook his head.

"What if he had been an American Citizen? Or Chinese, British, Indonesian for that matter? You wouldn't have had the guts to do that to him, in fear of retaliation," Miller replied.

"But he's not. He does not belong to this planet, so laws such as those do not apply,' MacGuwyre replied. Miller just snorted in reply.

"But his people will retaliate once they find out what's been done to him… and others," Miller replied. "If he is telling the truth. Then we've made another enemy which is more technologically advanced than us, which we can't afford."

Earth Ship Boreas – Location in 'deep' space

The Boreas was a Poseidon class cruiser, and it, along with the Ama-Tesaru were the first Earth constructed spacecraft which had been this far away from Earth. They had left Earth's orbit a few days ago and had completed a series of jumps away from Earth. They were to test a new technology, which, if it worked, would add a whole new dimension to space travel for smaller craft than the Poseidon class ships. Even if it failed, Commander Amanda Douglas knew that the research people would have a field day with the information, if they survived.

The Boreas was Australia's contribution to the newly emerging Earth fleet of cruisers, and had been involved in the original skirmish in Earth Orbit between them and their new enemy. After having repairs completed, and a few minor upgrades, she was ready to go again, and this was one of her first orders of duty for the PDO since the attack.

The Ama-Tesaru had been constructed both in Japan and in Switzerland, and apart from the Solaris and the now destroyed Arawan, it was the newest version of the Poseidon.

"Commander, Baleen 025 is away," the communications officer said to her. Their mission Parameters required that a Baleen class cargo ship hooked onto their rear section and came along, as it was the only ship, apart from the Triton of releasing the probe. He watched on the 'top' radar screen as he could see the Baleen moving in position behind their ship. He could see that the Ama-Tesaru was at a safe distance behind them, and that the large satellite that was in pieces in it's cargo bays was being put together very quickly. They had believed that it would only take half a day, no more to put the pieces together and make sure that everything was working correctly, but so far, it had been three hours and they looked like they might be finished soon, judging from the size of the radar readout she was looking at.

Five Hours Later

Commander Amanda had spent her time between looking out the front viewing panel, amazed at how different the stars looked, and looking at the radar screens to see how their progress was going. They were nearly ready now, as she could see the radar blip for their probe, the radar blip for the satellite that had been constructed on the spot by seven Osprey class shuttles was ready and in position. The Ama-Tesaru was a safe distance away, on the edge of their immediate radar range.

"Mam, by all accounts, we're ready to go," the communications officer said to her. She looked up at the radar screen as the Baleen class shuttle moved off, after delivering its last piece which was held in it's cargo bay into space. It was travelling at its fastest pace towards the Ama-Tesaru, where it would hide behind it's shields so that the radiation didn't kill the crew. He looked up at the monitors overhead as they all switched to a view of the respective pieces of the technology that they were about to try out. One monitor had the view of a typical satellite, which was running on Fusion power rather than solar or battery power. It was large by all means, but it still looked like an Earth Satellite. Another monitor showed their probe. It was perhaps the largest and most advanced probe that had ever been constructed by man kind, but it was still an unmanned probe. It was twenty metres long, and seven metres across. It housed a large engine on it's back, a new type of hyperdrive on it's front, a couple of sensor and radar packages, a communications package, and a nuclear fusion reactor. The rest of it was just pure computing power which it would need for it's mission. The other monitor showed a rather rectangular, ugly looking construction which the Baleen had just dropped off in front of the Boreas.

Amanda Douglas gave a nod at the communications officer after seeing that the Baleen class ship had made it to safety. Immediately, the communications officer started talking into the microphone into the engineering section. Shortly afterwards, a long cylindrical looking arm popped out of the lower front section of the Boreas, pointed at the box shaped device in front of it.

One of the laser-point communications arrays on the Boreas pointed itself at the probe and began scanning it for it's own communications array. Once it had found it, light bursts were sent back and forward from the ship and the probe.

The long armlike pole which was sticking out of the front of the Boreas began to glow white hot as energy built up in it. Suddenly, a bright flash of light burst out from the front of the probe, and the box in front of the ship jolted. Almost instantaneously, what looked like a bright slit appeared in front of the box, easily larger than it and looking as if it were ready to consume it.

Amanda Douglas was lucky that they had closed the blast doors over the observation port in the bridge, and that they were all watching it through the monitors, or else she would have been blinded.

"Mam. Word from Engineering. If we're going to do this, we'd better do this now," the communications officer relayed to Amanda. She took it in and gave the order to send the message to the probe to activate. They all watched on the screen as the large engine on the back of the probe fired, sending it forward towards the bright slit. It quickly approached it and dived straight headlong into it, the slit closing shortly afterwards as the engineering team and the science team aboard the Boreas said that they couldn't keep it stable for much longer.

What they had done was to use the Boreas's power generation capabilities to power a new 'mobile' hyperspace generator which was in front of the ship. With that, hopefully the probe would travel a couple of light years, and use it's own hyperdrive to exit hyperspace at a predetermined point which they had picked out. From there, it would accelerate to it's maximum speed, which the developers had made sure was very fast, and record all data it could. The jump using the mobile hyperdrive wasn't as effective as the hyperdrives they were currently using, but it was almost as good. The ship had the exact location of the satellite they had just released, and as soon as it calculated that it was at it's own hyperdrive's maximum range, it would automatically turn around, jump back to the location of the satellite, and download all it's information into it. From there, it would use it's conventional engines to head out on a new vector, surveying the surrounding space and sending the information back to the satellite.

The Boreas and Ama-Tesaru would leave, and come back in two weeks, hopefully to find data on the satellite which had been uploaded by the probe. Then, that would confirm that their new mobile hyperspace generator could work. If that was the case, ships such as Falcons, Ospreys and other fighters would then have the capacity to travel great distances, that is, if they could be properly shielded from the radiation; if that could happen it could change a lot of things for the PDO.

Colonial Viper 'Blackbird'

Kara Thrace was bored out of her mind as she sat in the blackbird, all primary systems powered down as she drifted at thousands of kilometres an hour through space, to both save fuel and not be detected. The Galactica had had a weird DRADIS reading on the extreme DRADIS range, and thinking that it could be possible Cylon activity, the 'Blackbird' was sent to investigate. The blackbird was the fist of now three hand constructed Colonial Vipers whose hulls were created out of carbon composites so as to minimise visibility and detection on DRADIS. So far, on her limited DRADIS range, she couldn't see a thing.

Half an hour passed before Starbuck was startled into sitting ­fully upright in her seat, as she thought that she had seen something flash past the light reflecting off of a 'nearby' moon. She looked around, but couldn't see anything. It wasn't until another five minutes had passed when she got the shock of her life. Flying above her, in the opposite direction, under no power what so ever, was an entire squadron of Cylon Raiders, heading towards the Galactica and the rest of the fleet.

Her first instinct was to radio into the Galactica and notify them of the situation, except that if she did that, she would risk being detected by the Cylon Raiders, and there wasn't anything she could do if they discovered her, as the Blackbird was weapon less. She couldn't turn the craft around, as then the engine exhaust would make her visible, and could possibly make her show up on the Cylon's DRADIS. She couldn't wait until they were out of range, and then flip the ship around and overtake them, as they would most probably notice her if she was flying on the same vector as the Raiders.

"Frack!" she exclaimed while punching her hand down onto the control console in front of her. She reasoned that the Raiders were most likely launched from a BaseStar, so she decided that she would wait till the Raiders were out of range, and then ignite her engines and go looking for the enemy's BaseStar. It was the only productive thing that she could do, which wouldn't lead to her death.