== Part 27 – Pole Positions ==
The space around the Raptor wasn't filled with ships, but looking at the Dradis display, it sure felt like it was. A single, small basestar – well "small" as far as basestars went anyway – sat almost directly "below" the Raptor at a little over two thousand kilometers away, almost between the Raptor and the local sun. At this distance, the basestar would just be another point of light to the naked eye, but the Raptor's Dradis could see it clearly.
Scattered around the basestar and Raptor and separated from them and each other by thousands more kilometers were half a dozen other middling sized ships, thin and spindly, all with their thrusters pointed at the local sun and some kind of circular, kilometers wide disc below each. A panoply of smaller ships and shuttles traveled between the basestar and the mid-sized ships.
It didn't sound like much in objective terms, except there was supposed to be no one here in the first place!
"Coldcut! Get us out of here, now!" Sharon shouted as she opened her mind to do what she had come here to do.
Sharon's mental "ear" was instantly swamped with a sea of voices. It was as if she had just entered a crowded bar where everyone was talking and laughing with each other. It was too much for her to follow them all, and she could only catch snippets of conversation. But whether it was pure luck or some Cylon coding in her brain scanning for information relevant to Sharon, certain snippets of conversation just sprang out at her.
"...hear? Iota and Pink got in troub..."
"On it!" Coldcut replied, hands tapping his console as he entered in commands. "Thirty seconds to jump!"
"...God, is that a Colonial Raptor? Why..."
"Hack, they see us," Sharon announced.
"...CAP moving to intercept..." This one came from an Eight, like Sharon.
"Uh, yeah, I see a squadron of six Raiders heading towards us, Commander," Hack replied, pulling on his control stick and hitting the accelerator. "I'm going to try to hold the range open as long as I can."
"...worst possible timing. I told you the combat Constellations were stretching themselves too..."
"Colonial Raptor," boomed a voice over their headsets. It was an transmission from the basestar on the Colonial standard open frequency. "This is Pressville Zenith Point Traffic Control. You are intruding on Cylon space. State your purpose for being here."
"...suggested talking to them, that's not what I..."
Dammit! Sharon could barely think with all the voices crowding into her head. Should she respond? Sharon didn't want to give her presence away and just hearing her voice might well tell the Cylons an Eight was on this Raptor.
"...handle these Colonials ourselves..."
"Ma'am, are you going to respond?" Hack asked.
"...don't think they wanna talk..."
"No," Sharon gritted out.
"...in range. Hey! They're spinning up..."
"Ten seconds to jump!" Coldcut announced.
"...prevent them from leaving?"
"...no one cares about some stupid Colonials..."
"...not the same Galactica..."
"Five seconds to jump!" Coldcut announced.
"...Raider in a stupid accident..."
"Four!"
"...jump. It's now or..."
"Three!"
"...can't kill them out of..."
"Two!"
"...Galactica leading a rag tag fleet to Earth..."
"Frak that show!" Sharon blurted out. Of course the Cylons had watched that miniseries swiped from Armistice Station by now. Wait, did she just...
"Sister? Is that you?"
"JUMP!"
The universe vanished, then came back again, the ships of the Expedition Fleet on the Dradis display. The voices in Sharon's head vanished and she could think clearly again. And then she realized what she had done at the literal last second.
"Frak me," Sharon muttered.
"I'm sorry, sir," Sharon apologized. "I gave myself away."
"No need to apologize." Admiral Adama replied. "The Cylons already knew we had you – or at least an Eight – with us. You couldn't have known you were about to jump into the middle of a traffic hub. So it's not like giving your presence away told them anything they didn't already know." He smiled and said with a small laugh. "Except of course, your opinion on that show."
A round of chuckles went around the meeting room. The debriefing had all the other Battlestar Commanders present, albeit virtually this time as Adama had wanted the debrief done ASAP without having to wait for the others to shuttle over to the Galactica. Hack and Coldcut were also present since they had been on the mission.
"So, did you learn anything?" Adama asked.
"There were so many of them talking that I could barely understand what anyone was saying," Sharon replied. "But I think I did glean some meaning. The Cylons for the most part still don't like us, but for some reason, they were hesitant to actually kill us. I'm sure they had us dead to rights and could have shot us out of the sky to prevent us from jumping out. But they didn't, and it wasn't because I was on board."
"Ma'am?" Hack said. "The nearest Raider didn't get closer than a hundred kilometers of us. We couldn't have been in range."
"Actually, you were," Commander Applebee said quietly. "The fighters that attacked the Vesta opened fire on my Vipers with lasers at a hundred kilometers. They weren't very accurate, but they only needed one hit to kill a Viper, and each of those fighters had multiple lasers."
"I only caught scraps of conversation, but at least one of those Raider pilots was an Eight like me," Sharon continued. "She was sure she had us dead to rights, but she kept asking someone else if she should fire on us."
"There was only one Alpha Raider in that squadron, Ma'am," Coldcut added. "The rest were all Betas. Which means only one of those Raiders had a human model pilot."
"Thank you, Coldcut," Sharon said. "I'm guessing that means that's another change the Cylons have made. They're now having human models lead the dumb Raiders in combat."
"So in additional to better technology for their Raiders, they're using smarter Raider pilots now as well," Adama concluded. "And if Commander Tyrol's Academy record is anything to go by, probably more skilled pilots as well. Wonderful. Commander Tyrol, did you pick up anything else?"
"Just that there was something about 'Combat Constellations' and being stretched too thin, I think," Sharon said slowly. "That suggested to me that our theory that the Cylons are busy fighting someone else is correct. But sir? I think at least one Cylon was convinced that they didn't need these Combat Constellations to deal with us."
"Considering that you told us that the first Raiders we encountered was just a child and their dog, I imagine they don't," Commander Bryce Montague of the Battlestar Manticore said sourly. "Maybe they'll just throw a kindergarten class at us or something. Gods that would be embarrassing."
"You know, I think Commander Tyrol may have discovered something more important than the Cylons' attitudes towards us," Gaeta said thoughtfully. "And it has nothing to do with what she overheard during her aborted scouting mission."
"What? That the Cylons like to hang around in the middle of nowhere?" Montague asked sarcastically.
"Exactly!" Gaeta agreed, ignoring the sarcasm. "I was trying to wrap my head around why the Cylons would put a traffic control basestar in a place no one has any reason to go, and why anyone would bother to go there enough to that traffic control was even needed. But then I realized that it doesn't matter to us right now why they do it. What matters is that they do it at all."
"What are you trying to say, Commander Gaeta?" Adama asked.
"Check my logic on this one," Gaeta began. He pulled up an image of the basestar which looked like only one half of a starfish model. A number of smaller, more mechanical looking ships clung to its three pylons like barnacles. "The Cylons put a basestar there to manage traffic control." Gaeta pulled up several images of different spindly ships. Each one had a bulbous top section, a long spindly spine, and an engine assembly at the bottom. Some had smaller ships clinging to their spines that were similar to the ships on the basestar. "These ships kind of look like the derelict with the solid core FTL drive that we found, except they're designed to carry parasite ships externally instead of internally."
"Gaeta, those ships bear as much resemblance to the derelict as they do to the freighters in the Expedition. Or even our battlestars," Sharon pointed out. "Crew section at one end, engines at the other, and a spine for the payload in between. Over half the ships designed and built in the Colonies match that description. More if you throw out the smaller ones."
"Hmm, maybe," Gaeta replied, "but I think these might be more solid core FTL ships. They just have that look to me. And if they are solid core ships, they might well be human operated Thirteenth Colony ships which for some reason need to hover above the polar axis of stars. That's really the only reason I can think of for why the Cylons are out there. They're out there because Thirteenth Colony ships go out there."
"That's a lot of leaps of logic, Commander Gaeta," Adama said dubiously.
"I know sir," Gaeta acknowledged, "but I think I'm on to something. And that something is that we haven't been looking above the poles of stars for ships at all. If Earth ships are congregating above the poles of stars, they could be doing it in every system around us and we'd never notice. So what I think we should do is scout the poles above every star around us that we can and see if we can find any Thirteenth Colony ships running around without a Cylon escort or traffic control basestar, and then see if we can make First Contact with them."
"Huh, that actually sounds like it might work," Adama said thoughtfully. "But that's a lot of stars we're talking about Commander Gaeta."
"The Pegasus has three hundred Mark X Vipers in recon config, Admiral," Gaeta replied. "Just give the word and we'll start plotting jumps and handing out recon assignments."
"Wait, you already have all your Vipers configured for recon?" Sharon asked in surprise.
"Well, yeah," Gaeta said, equally surprised. "I started the conversion right after our run in with the first two Raiders and I realized how outclassed our Vipers are. If we can't use our Vipers as space combat superiority fighters and interceptors, then the only real job we have left for them is recon. Didn't you convert your Vipers already?"
"Um, we only just started on the Galactica," Sharon said sheepishly. "Right after what happened to the Vesta."
"Same," Applebee agreed. "I just... I just don't have as many Vipers to convert until I can get replacement pilots."
"Um, I'm putting in the work order to convert my Vipers right now," Montague added.
"Okay, Commander Gaeta," Adama said with a sigh as he squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Put together your scouting plan and send me and your fellow Battlestar Commanders the details. I think it's a long shot, but it's better than sending another battlestar into another meet grinder."
"Captain-General! Radar watch reports a fighter has jumped into the system approximately one hundred and fifty thousand klicks away."
"A fighter jumped in? Damn, that can only be Cylons then. And here I was sure we'd snuck past them. Argh, let's go see what those busy-bodies want this time."
