If those frakking worms had not taken her pistol away, she would have shot them first and asked questions later. It had taken her all her willpower not to grab the most annoying one of them and smash him into a bulkhead. They seemed physically weak and she could have easily taken on several of them at a time. A fine mess she had gotten herself into. Cut off from the fleet, her Viper in pieces. But things could be much worse. At least she didn't have to deal with a bad knee this time.
The Colonials have been able to travel through space at faster than light speed for centuries, but they had never encountered any non-human life. Most people from the Twelve Colonies believed that all human life originated on Kobol and that there was no other intelligent life out there. There were a few people in the fleet who did believe in non-human life. Most of those people belonged to a group that called itself the Disciples of the Doctor, an underground religious organization that had originated on Cloud Nine and spread across the other ships over the past two years. Starbuck thought they were a bunch of crazy lunatics, but at least they were not causing any major trouble.
The Colonial Defense Force had of course First Contact protocols, just in case they would encounter any other sentient beings from other worlds. However, instructors at the Colonial Fleet Academy would usually rush through them, push them toward the end of the curriculum, or not teach them at all. In the past few years before the Fall of the Colonies they had not even been part of any exam. Starbuck vaguely remembered that there was such a set of rules for conduct in a first contact situation. But when she had been a cadet she had missed the day the topic was covered, since she had been in detention for pulling dangerous stunts with her viper during flight training the day before.
She just wanted to get back to the fleet. Let the admiral deal with any aliens. Maybe she should try to take over the ship. The controls were probably completely alien, but if she managed to figure out how to fly a Cylon raider, she could probably fly this tub as well. But something inside her kept telling her to calm down. Before the fall of the Colonies her actions affected only herself. If she frakked up, she got thrown in the brig or it cost her a promotion. At worst, it could cost her own life. But now things were different. She, like all the other viper pilots, was responsible for what was left of humanity. A single mistake could mean the extinction of the human race. It was already hard enough protecting the fleet from the Cylons, they didn't need another enemy.
She was shocked by her own thoughts. Was she getting old? Or was she growing up? As much as she wanted to, she could not let her emotions get the best of herself. She needed to consider the safety of the fleet. She owed it to Sam, to Lee, to the admiral, and everybody else who had become her family over the past few years.
Yes, those worms were true aliens. The ship she was on appeared to be a civilian ship, some sort of freighter. But maybe they had a military, a fleet, something that could defeat the Cylons. The thought occurred to her that if she could lead the worm aliens back to the fleet, they could trade technology and supplies with them. Maybe the worms could introduce Admiral Adama and President Roslin to their leader, this Emperor Worm they had mentioned earlier, and work out an alliance.
And Lords know what else was out there. There might be thousands of different types of aliens. The Colonials just have never encountered any of them. No Colonial ship has ever been more than a few jumps away from the Colonies. There has been no real space exploration program. The job of the military had been to protect the Colonies from the Cylons since the first Cylon war, and before that the Colonies had been too busy fighting each other. Civilian space travel had been limited to mining, cargo hauling, and passenger travel between the Colonies and outposts in the Cyrannus System. None of the neighboring systems contained any habitable planets. Most companies that had been able to afford modern and well-equipped spacecraft had not considered it worth the risk to send an expedition out into the unknown. Adventurers who had tried anyway seldom came back. The exodus of the refugee fleet had been the farthest expedition since the founding of the Colonies.
Some people in the fleet claim that the Colonials first contact with an alien race had happened two years earlier, in the midst of the presidential election. During that time, a raptor piloted by Racetrack had misjumped on a rescue mission to Caprica and accidentally discovered a habitable planet. The planet was inhabited by a man named Slartibartfast. However, Slartibartfast, who had claimed he and his people had designed and built the Twelve Colonies, had looked and acted like a human, albeit like one who had a few screws loose. The general consensus among the survivors in the fleet was that Slartibartfast was a crewmember or a passenger of a ship that had jumped beyond the red line many decades ago and landed on Magrathea. He was considered mentally deranged, a heretic and a blasphemer by most Colonials. Except by a few officers and scientists, who mostly kept their opinion to themselves. His story about the origin of Earth and the Twelve Colonies had incensed the religious fundamentalists, who had called for his immediate execution.
Author's note: Chapter 3 will be a flashback, since the events in it are set two years before chapter 1. When I got the idea for chapter 3, I had already posted chapter 1, that's why the events are not in chronological order. I want to thank all reviewers for taking the time to read this story and for posting comments. Constructive criticism and suggestions to improve my stories are always welcome.