Authors Notes located at the end of the chapter

Reply to Reviews: Ivan K. Good Timing. I had just finished writing this chapter as I got your review asking for more updates. Lol.

From the Stars

Salvation

Chapter 4

Fleet Admiral Lee 'Apollo' Adama – Command Ship Demetrius

I had been sitting here for at least an hour, thinking over the events which had occurred when we decided to leave New Caprica last time. It had been an extremely difficult ordeal, and once we rescued the survivors from the Cylon occupation, it didn't get any easier. We didn't manage to rescue all of the survivors, some didn't make it to the Raptors, and there were those who didn't want to leave; like Baltar. I didn't know what possessed them to stay, but some did. Starbuck had told me in the months after the rescue that some of the people on the planet had just let the Cylons rule them, they had accepted their new life and didn't want to go back to space to be pursued. Simply put, living on New Caprica with the Cylons, instead of being pursued through space, held a higher guarantee of staying alive, in their eyes anyway.

It didn't sink in that those people may actually have been right until four months after leaving New Caprica. We were constantly pursued, in force, by the Cylons after we fled. It was Tigh who came up with the strategy which probably let us lose the Cylons: We jump. For almost two months, we jumped as often as we could, sometimes dozens of times within a single day. We often made our stops in the space between systems, instead of stopping in systems themselves, drastically reducing the chances of the Cylons finding us. Somehow, they still managed to do so, pushing us even harder into deep space. A number of ships broke down, and in the early days jumping, we simply abandoned them and transferred the personnel off of the ships. It took less time, and the less time we were situated in the one location, the better off we'd be. Of course, we stripped the ships for parts and took the FTL drives with us, repairing them on the go, allowing us to have a quick fix for any further ships that broke down. This actually proved to be very beneficial for the fleet, although not everyone agreed upon that fact.

The Cylons had jumped six Basestars into one system in their pursuit of us after we fled New Caprica. It was obvious that they wanted us dead and would not let us go any further. Every time, they jumped in extremely close, and immediately launched a full spread of nukes. It was fairly evident that they did not want us to escape, and that they were pulling out all the stops to eliminate us. Those opposing the idea to dump the ships that broke down, strip them, and move on didn't understand what we did; that the Cylons were pulling out all their resources to eliminate us and that we needed to escape them once and for all. In those first few instances after New Caprica, if we had not jumped the minute that we did, the entire fleet could have been vaporised from the sheer firepower that the Cylons were sending in our direction. I'm fairly sure that the Cylons didn't expect us to jump as often as we did fleeing them, and that could have one of the factors that allowed us to evade them.

We found an answer to our problems concerning evading the Cylons in the form of a drifting Battlestar, the Athena. Immediately the old man had deduced that it was a trap. We'd been discussing the possibility of the Cylons using recovered Colonial craft from the Colonies against us, but thought that it would never likely happen. Still, we had to have a look. A drifting Battlestar was the find of the century and we couldn't dismiss it based on a far-fetched idea. It turned out that it wasn't as far fetched as we had thought. A number of marine strike teams entered the Battlestar only to find it completely empty of life, but littered with dead centurions all over the ship. What was more startling was what we found in the sensitive areas of the ship – part biological, part mechanical cylon components hooked into the main areas. It was the find of the century. With help from Sharon, we managed to understand how the main FTL computer and FTL drive of the hybrid Battlestar operated. The Cylons used a different concept that we hadn't even thought of for their FTL drives, and once we applied it to our systems, we were able to boost our FTL capability to match that of the Cylons. The talk among the commanding officers was that once we upgraded all of the FTL drives of the ships in the fleet, we'd be able to loose the Cylons for good. Which is exactly what we did. It wasn't easy, we needed to keep the fact that we had acquired additional FTL capabilities hidden from the civilian population, in case there were any Cylon agents still in the fleet. We realised that the Galactica or the Pegasus usually distributed the jump coordinates to the fleet, and that many pilots no longer checked them. We decided to use this to our advantage. Chief Kalek and his crew made the rounds to all of the ships, pretending to be conducting FTL maintenance, when in fact they were upgrading the FTL drives of all ships in the fleet, it was then announced for a reason that would remain classified until later, that the fleet needed to make another series of continuous jumps. This, would, hopefully take us away from the Cylons, since we were making hundreds of jumps, but this time, covering a much larger distance with each. We destroyed the Battlestar completely before we left, not even leaving behind any wreckage, so as to not alert the Cylons that we'd been in that location. We'd guessed that the Cylons had lost track of the Battlestar, as it appeared to have been abandoned for a long period of time.

As far as I, or anyone knows, we were successful in losing the Cylons. We haven't heard from them or seen them ever since. We jumped continuously for a month. This time, we didn't need to leave any ships behind as we could easily replace their FTL drives on the go. A month was all that we could last, until we needed to stop for supplies. After that, we continued on at our own pace. The military eventually began to lose personnel to the fleet, seeing as there were no Cylon attacks. But, we had learned our lesson from New Caprica, we didn't let the military fall into disrepair easily, and as a result of losing personnel, we were able to begin to train some more. Eventually, enough personnel were trained that we could fully man both the Galactica and the Pegasus for the first time since the holocaust. Of course, the ships weren't fully manned, because there was no need for them to be.

For three years, we journeyed to astral body M-8, the nebulae which we'd seen in the tomb of Athena, hoping that we'd find Earth. A lot had happened in those three years. Sharon Valerii was dead. She revealed to us the reasons why the Cylons wanted to reproduce with humans about two years after we'd fled New Caprica: the synthetically created cells which made up the bio-cylons died after a while – the process of regeneration of cells within the body was not sustainable. Each time that cells were recycled within her body, it was not done nearly as efficiently as it was in the human body, and after seven and a half years, the body reaches its limit and can't sustain itself any longer. They believed that if they were able to produce offspring with a human, that this imperfection could be overcome. It was the entire reason why the Cylons could download their consciousness into a new body – to be able to live past their body's expiry date. It was happening to Sharon, and there was nothing that we could do about it. We watched, as she slowly spent a month in pain, dying, with nothing that we could do about it. Some on the Galactica had warmed to her, even though she was a Cylon, while others, like my father, kept a close watch on her. She had spent the entire time on Galactica locked up in the brig, and never allowed to be let out, until the old man granted Helo the right to ease her suffering. All I know of the incident was that they both left in a Raptor, and only Helo returned.

In the entire time, no one had told her about Hera, the human/cylon hybrid which Roslin kept under close watch at all times. Truth be told, originally I didn't like the fact that they'd decided to keep her alive. When I'd seen how fast she learned, and how good with computers she was, it scared me half to death. But in the years until now, I had grown a great fondness for her. She was, of course now, in her twenties, and fully aware of what she was. As far as we know, she is like the light at the end of the tunnel for the Cylons, and we had to keep her safe. That was the reason why she was not on this mission, but instead on Earth. Her existence must be kept secret from the Cylons, to keep her safe. She had grown up as a human child, and was happy to live a human's life.

When we jumped into a particular system, we had found that there was a large amount of wireless interference, and thought that it was nothing, just some localised radiation which was interfering with our communications. However, when we jumped into the next system, we experienced the same phenomenon. The same with the next system, and the next, and the next. It was thanks to Colonel Gaeta that we discovered that there was a high likelihood that the interference was artificial in origin. We didn't know what it was, or have the slightest clue on how to interpret it. Some in the fleet, like many members of the military, which was about half the fleet now, suspected that it was the Cylons returning. The other half, was much more optimistic. They believed that it was some form of signal from Earth, as we were in the vincinity of it. Roslin's cancer had relapsed since we left New Caprica, and she was literally on her deathbed. I was never one for scripture, but apparently my father was. It was Roslin's last wish that we find the origin of the interference.

We'd spent a month, tracing the interference back to an origin of three systems. Simply put, the stronger the interference was, the closer we must have been, and we used this to pinpoint these systems. Unfortunately for us, there was a large amount of radiation passing through the general area, from a supernova, and it was interfering with our jump drives. We couldn't risk to explore the systems, but a number of personnel volunteered anyway. So, with minimal possible losses, we allowed three raptor crews to jump to each of the systems and scout them. Two returned. One, with good news. They'd found a habited world, not a habitable world, but a habited world, and made a quick pass over it. From what they could gleam from their Raptor sensor suit, the development patterns and chemical residue in the atmosphere suggested human occupation, very under developed human occupation. I remember the time, it was a time for celebration throughout the fleet; we'd found Earth. There was only one problem, we couldn't get there for the foreseeable future because of the radiation which was passing through the area. If we were to attempt to jump there, we'd risk the chances of losing half the fleet. We decided to wait it out, and perhaps send voluntary raptor recon patrols, but that idea was stopped in it's tracks when the second recon patrol we sent out never returned.

Eventually, after a month, we figured out how to operate our jump drives within the radiation, and we made the jump to Earth.

It turned out that the people of Earth were very primitive. From what we could tell, from our historical records, their development was on par with Colonial history just after the Lords of Kobol had led us to the Twelve Colonies, and even then, we were more technologically advanced. It was even more of a shock when we learned that the planet was divided into hundreds of nations, some of which were at war with each other, and that the lifespan of Earth humans was roughly equivalent to half of our own. Just getting them to cooperate had proven to be hard enough. They hadn't handled the news too well that they weren't alone in the universe, let alone that there was a technologically superior race out to kill us all. They really didn't respond too well when we revealed that we'd created this race, and that they had the ability to look human and create biological systems to perform specific tasks. We had told them almost everything, and they, as a race, had acted much like humans, which was comforting. They panicked, but then eventually adapted to the new situation. We had told them everything we could, except one fact: that Hera existed. Her existence needed to be kept a secret, even from the Earthers. They didn't need to know what she was, just that her name was Hera and that she was raised as a Colonial. But we had made a large amount of progress since we first arrived at Earth. Now, the united Earth government was cooperating with us, and we'd accelerated much of their technological advancement.

I looked out the window, and could only help but think what would be at New Caprica when we got there. We were now just a few jumps away, based on our upgraded FTL technology which had been installed on every ship constructed since we had arrived at Earth. It allowed us to transform the return journey from three years, down to just a couple of months. It helped us that this fleet didn't need to stop for supplies as often as well. This time, we were not running away from our homes, we were returning to them. I knew that in the last couple of days, I had been getting anxious about the return to New Caprica, moreso now than ever. We had one day to wait until the first recon mission would leave and jump into the general area of the planet, and I didn't want to know what we'd find. I hated the fact that since the old man had passed away five years ago, I had always doubted myself. On the entire journey to Earth, when I was the commander of the beast, I had the admiral to look to for advice, to call me up on my mistakes. Now, I didn't have that, and I don't think I ever would, not in the same capacity. He had been my superior officer as well, but now, the only superior officer I had as the Colonial Fleet Admiral was the Colonial President, Anders, and Director Tyrol, the head of SpaceNav on Earth. After all, I was the highest ranked surviving military officer out of everyone on Earth, and the Colonials, who had a large amount of combat experience in space. Sure, there were people qualified for my job from Earth, but none of them had actually seen space combat before, only simulations. So, therefore, I was best suited to the job, and we'd all agreed, I was best suited to lead this fleet back to New Caprica and the Colonies.

Authors Notes:

Whaddya think of that chapter? I think it was kidna ratshit. Not even in character. I had a hard time coming up with another character for the Earth side, and I had a hard time writing Apollo in this sense (explain what had happened), so I've decided that's the end of this story and the rest of the backstory will be delivered in the next story, when things actually start happening. (ie, the first chapter will be dealing with the recon of New Caprica). I believe that the chapters already in this story are enough to get the ball rolling so we can dive in, and you, the reader, can understand what's going on. I really couldn't get into this part of the story, as I believe this part of the story I'm telling has gone on long enough, and I'm eager to actually start exploring the characters and their situations, rather than just describing them.

Trust me when I say that skipping ahead to the next story like this is for the best – you'll see what I mean

Therefore, this story's ended, and the next one will be up fairly soon. Look for the Title "From the Stars: Part 2 of 3: Return to the Colonies" or something similar. Expect it no later than 12th July, 2006.

Cheers.