== Part 39 – You Are Here ==
"Alright, everyone, listen up!" Sharon began.
By "everyone", Sharon meant everyone in the Earth Expedition Fleet. Sharon stood at the head of one of the Galactica's largest briefing rooms, addressing a seated crowd that consisted of nearly a quarter of her crew. Sharon's image and voice was being broadcast to similar briefing rooms on the Galactica and in the rest of the fleet where everyone who could be spared from other duties was watching as well. And for the small minority who absolutely had to be at their duty stations which included the pilots flying CAP, they too were listening in even though they couldn't watch.
"What I'm about to share has been classified as Secret," Sharon told everyone, "and Admiral Adama has decided that everyone in the Expedition is on a Need to Know basis. What that means is that this information is not to be shared with your friends and family back home until if and when the Admiralty, or more likely the Government, releases this to the public. Remember, military intelligence back home will be going through all your letters and e-mail to make sure there's no classified information in them, so don't think you're the exception to the rule.
"This briefing will only cover the information most relevant to us and our mission in order to give everyone a general understanding of what we think our situation really is. If you want more detailed information, you can find it on the Fleet Intelligence netsite. I strongly recommend that at minimum all department heads should review that information relevant to your operations.
"However, be advised that all this information is coming from what we flag officers consider to be a biased and unreliable single source, so treat everything we 'know' so far with a good dose of skepticism. That being said, we've gone through everything our source told us and all the information files that he's given us to pick out what we think is accurate. But again, we only think this information is accurate and we're going to be looking for confirmation from other sources, so again, treat everything we think we know so far with a hefty dose of salt.
"We also have a slightly higher confidence in our source's computer files than in his spoken interview, mostly because there's so much information in the files that we're pretty sure he couldn't possibly have faked most of it. And for any of you tech geeks who are wondering, our source's technicians provided us with their data encoding standards so we could download the files into our own computers and examine them on a byte for byte basis."
Behind Sharon, the room's theater grade holoprojector came to life, displaying a mostly blank image with a dot labeled "Terra" in the center, a mostly straight string of dots in the upper left quadrant pointing straight at Terra, and a map scale off to the side. The end of the string had a big dot labeled "Fleet", and on the string close to the edge of the image was a dot labeled "Gaeta's World".
Sharon paused for a second, wondering who had come up with that last label. The name sure as hell hadn't come up in any meeting she had attended! Frak it, she had a briefing to give.
"We are here," Sharon said, point to the dot marked "Fleet" as if it wasn't obvious to everyone watching. "And 'here' is seven hundred and forty seven lightyears from Earth, which according to our source, everyone in the Thirteenth Colony calls 'Terra'." Sharon pointed to the so labeled dot. "For any not well versed in ancient Kobollian, 'Terra' means the same thing as 'Earth'. And Earth... Terra is exactly where the Tomb of Athena said it would be."
A small cluster of new dots appeared, just above the string that marked the Fleet's trail.
"This is where our source comes from," Sharon said, pointing at the new dot cluster. "The Hanseatic League is a cluster of twenty nine lightly populated worlds settled indirectly from Terra, which basically means they were settled by older settlements that were settled by Terra. Our source says the Hanseatic League is a nation of honest traders – that's one of the things you should be skeptical about by the way – whose merchant convoys range far and wide across all the space settled by Terra. Which is why we ran into our source in the first place. His ship was one of the Hansa trading missions.
"Okay, at this point, I'm going to have to pause on the astrography and give you all a short Terran history lesson to give you context on the next part," Sharon explained. "About eight to nine hundred years ago, Terra went through its first and most massive wave of settling new planets. They basically found anyone and everyone who wanted to create their own settlement and gave them a starship to do it with. Due to its age, we think the settlement we found on... Gaeta's World was part of this settlement wave. And that first settlement wave created this:"
A vast, irregular blob of dots appeared around the Terra marker. It was so large that the Fleet marker was just inside the edges of the blob.
"This, people, is what the Thirteenth Tribe calls the 'Inner Sphere'," Sharon announced, which caused a ripple of murmuring disbelief to run through her live audience, and no doubt, the rest of the Fleet. "And I'm calling them the Thirteenth Tribe because Thirteenth 'Colony' doesn't begin to describe it. The Inner Sphere consists of over two thousand star systems most of which were settled directly from Terra. And if our source is to be believed, the Inner Sphere has a human population measured in the trillions."
More murmuring disbelief swept Sharon's audience, and she waited for it to mostly die down before continuing.
"Terra was able to accomplish this because as far as we can tell, this region of the galaxy is especially rich in habitable planets with complex biospheres," Sharon explained. "Think of the dense cluster of habitable worlds that is the Twelve Colonies and then multiply that by a couple thousand."
More murmuring, but Sharon ignored it this time.
"Up until about three hundred years ago," Sharon continued, "the Inner Sphere was run by a government known as the Star League. The Star League ended when it fell into civil war starting with a coup, and ending with regional governments fighting each other for power. And I have to tell you, it was bad."
The map disappeared, replaced with a montage video playing clips obviously taken from many different sources.
A gun camera showed the user driving down a city street from a height several storied above the ground, mowing down what appeared to be fleeing people with machine guns and flamethrowers when a giant, bipedal robot laden down with numerous weapons stepped around a corner and opened fire on the view point camera.
A space battle with a tubular and clearly damaged capital ship at the center of the image firing in all directions as fighters swarmed around it. A missile shot away from the view point camera and struck the ship, creating the bright flash of a nuclear strike and causing the ship to snap in two.
The bright curve a planet filled half the hologram's play window. And even brighter balls of light blossomed across its surface sending visible shockwave rings racing across the surface and creating interference patterns with each other where they passed each other.
A security camera showed an unfamiliar cityscape with a cluster of skyscrapers at the center of the shot. A capital ship eerily reminiscent of a battlestar minus the flightpods fell out of the sky, wrapped in flames created by the air compression of its passage. As it hit the ground, blinding light whited out the shot.
More clips of more horrors continued to play for several minutes before the montage ended.
"Worlds died, people," Sharon said solemnly. "So many worlds died, our source can't even put a number to it. But by some miracle of the gods, there's still over two thousand systems where people still live, work... and fight. Because as far as we can tell, ladies and gentlemen, that civil war is still going on."
There was no murmuring this time, only shocked silence.
"When the Cylons arrived in the Inner Sphere somewhere between twenty to thirty years ago," Sharon continued, "what they found were human nations so devastated and destitute that they couldn't even build starships anymore, fighting with weapons made in automated factories that they didn't know the workings of. Some worlds have changed hands so often that a company – hell, sometimes even a platoon – of armored vehicles could conquer a planet because the local population numbering in the millions, sometimes billions, have stopped caring about who's in charge.
"And what the Cylons found must have shocked them, because they've pledged to everyone who will listen that they're going to end this insane war. But they're not going to end it by killing everyone as a certain show would have you believe. They're going to end it by bring peace and prosperity back to the Inner Sphere. And for anyone not well versed in the history of politics, that promise basically means that the Cylons are going to take over the Inner Sphere and become its undisputed masters whether they mean to or not. That is their 'Great Work' that they mentioned to our ambassador at Armistice Station. And our source admits that since the Cylons arrived in the Inner Sphere, prosperity and industry have gone up; the Inner Sphere is even building its own starships again."
The hologram switched back to the Inner Sphere map. A thin irregular band of dots along most of the upper left quarter edge of the Inner Sphere turned a bring pink, although a few lone dots also scattered around the edges of the other quadrants also turned into that bright pink. The Fleet marker was almost right in the middle of that band.
"These systems are controlled by the Cylons directly," Sharon said. "Our source calls this the 'Cylon Empire', but we're pretty sure that's his label, not what the Cylons themselves calls it. The map he gave us just labels this Cylon territory."
Half the remaining dots turned yellow, a broad band that stretched across the middle of the Inner Sphere from Cylon territory almost to the opposing edge, and pinched down narrowly in the middle around Terra.
"This is the Federated Commonwealth," Sharon said. "They're the strongest human nation in the Inner Sphere and the Cylons' staunchest ally. According to our source, the Federated Commonwealth formed within a year of the Cylon's arrival from the merger of two smaller nations and then proceeded to completely conquer a third nation known as the Capellan Confederation with Cylon help."
Most of the remaining dots in the lower left side of the Inner Sphere turned purple.
"This is the Free World's League," Sharon said. "According to our source, the Cylons are attempting to court the Free World's League into an alliance with them and the Federated Commonwealth." She smiled. "But, ah, it seems they're having a hard go at it because the Free World's League is a traditional enemy with both halves of the Federated Commonwealth."
Most of the dots on the upper right side of the Inner Sphere turned a deep red, except for a distinctive wedge shaped gap between them and the Federated Commonwealth dots running up the upper center of the Inner Sphere.
"This is the Draconis Combine," Sharon said. "According to our source, the Cylons aren't even trying to court the Combine or provide any kind of aid, supposedly because they hate whatever system of government it uses, and the government hates them back. He wasn't really clear on the specifics reasons for that though."
The wedge between the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine turned a light blue. But there was another long wedge gap between the blue dots and the Draconis Combine's red.
"This is the Rasalhague Free Republic," Sharon said. "It broke off from the Combine about ten to fifteen years ago, and the Cylons have been courting its government as well, and been making better headway than in the Free Worlds League."
The remaining dots between the Rasalhague Republic and the Draconis Combine turned gray.
"And then we have the Clans."
The map disappeared again, replaced with more video footage. A long distance camera shot, apparently taken by a news crew judging by the scrolling ticker at the bottom, showed the outskirts of a city. Two robots were walking at an oblique angle to the camera towards the city. Both robots had reverse joined legs reminiscent of birds, but one was rounder with box launchers on its shoulders while the other was blockier and had its missile launcher built into its shoulders.
The robots were firing their weapons at someone offscreen as they strolled forward while energy beams, bullet tracers, and volleys of missiles flew past them, occasionally hitting them and doing what seemed to be little more than cosmetic damage. Suddenly, two Cylon Raiders, an Alpha and Beta pair, dropped down on them from directly above off camera. The Raiders were actually smaller than the first two robots, but not by much. The first two robots staggered as the Raiders landed on them with both feet, armor crumbling under their weight and the grip of their claws. Before the first two robots could recover, the Raiders both turned and started blasting each others' unwilling perches with lasers and missiles. At that point, the video stopped and began looping on repeat.
"Our source doesn't know much about the Clans," Sharon said as the video played behind her. "He only knows that they're human or at least appear to be human. They came from somewhere farther out from Terra than where the Hanseatic League is located. The Clans have destroyed Hansa ships. And the Clans have better armor and weapons technology better than anyone else in the Inner Sphere including the Cylons."
That caused another stir.
"Here's the current situation is as our source understands it," Sharon began. "The Clans seemed to be intent on invading the Inner Sphere. Half their invasion force ran into the Cylons and stopped cold." The rightmost dots of Cylon territory at the upper center edge of the Inner Sphere started blinking. "The other half started taking systems from the Republic and Combine," the Clan dots started blinking, "and made it a third of the way to Terra before they stopped and turned around to help the other half. The Cylons and Clans have been fighting each other ever since for the past five years or so, usually around the same dozen systems, although he's heard rumors that fights have been taking place farther away. This war between the Cylons and Clans has been tying up a lot of Cylon forces, enough to make our source think that he could get contraband through Cylon territory."
The looping video vanished, replaced with the Cylon's gear and Centurion head logo.
"And now I get to talk about what the Cylons have," Sharon told everyone.
