Starbuck took a shower and got a few hours of sleep. A debriefing with Admiral Adama and Colonel Tigh followed. Commander Lee Adama from the Pegasus was also present. He was overjoyed to hear that his friend and off-and-on lover Starbuck had returned and shuttled over aboard a raptor. When Starbuck mentioned that there was another fleet of survivors from the Colonies and that the worm aliens knew the location of Earth, President Roslin was called in to attend the debriefing as well.
"Who is this Commander Crichton? I've never heard of him", Tigh asked.
"As far as I know he was the highest-ranking officer aboard the Pacifica after their CIC got blown up. He might have even been from a different ship. Fact is that he saved the Pacifica and everyone aboard and became her Commander pretty much by default", Starbuck answered.
"What about the new fighters, Apollo asked." As a former viper pilot, the commander of the Pegasus had this question burning on his mind since he first saw footage of them.
"We found them when we discovered a space station from Earth and managed to reverse engineer them. I've been training pilots for the past two weeks, so we can put together a squadron of them."
Starbuck told her superior officers everything that had occurred in the last two months, as well as what she had heard about how the Pacifica had survived and gathered a fleet of her own.
While Roslin was the most excited about the large number of survivors rescued by Crichton's fleet, Admiral Adama was ecstatic that he would soon have 3 Battlestars at his disposal, as well as a base of operations. Besides that there was the mystery ship Moya, Gods knew what new tactical opportunities that would open up.
The plan was, that on the following day Starbuck and Worm Guy would return to Babylon 4 in their Starfuries, followed 10 minutes later by the Galactica, while the Pegasus remained with the civilian fleet.
After the debriefing, Starbuck, Apollo, and some of their friends went on to celebrate. They sat down around a table and ordered drinks.
"I've got to teach you guys a new game". Starbuck said with a cigar between her teeth. "It's called poker."
Then she pulled a deck of rectangular playing cards out of one of her pockets and began shuffling. She was glad to be back on the Galactica. Finding Crichton's fleet had given her hope that there would be more survivors and now she could share that hope with her friends and the people she considered her family.
She had learned how to play poker from the worm aliens. During her time aboard the Pacifica, Starbuck had tried to teach Poker to John Crichton, Horace Atwood, and a few officers. Pretending he didn't know Poker and hiding his surprise that she knew, Crichton had played along. To her surprise, Crichton had often won at Poker, but she always beat him at Triad.
Crichton had been wondering how she knew poker, but never asked her. He didn't want her to know that he was suspicious of her until he had more evidence. He had also found the label from one of her Cuban cigars, which she had won from the worm aliens in a poker game. He had considered confronting her after her return from the training flight.
Crichton suspected Starbuck to be an agent of Scorpius, and Starbuck suspected that Crichton knew more about Earth than he let on. But neither one was able to act on those suspicions. There was just not enough evidence to prove anything.
Back aboard the Pacifica, Commander Crichton had sent Viper patrols out to search for the two missing Starfuries. Starbuck and her new wingman were long overdue to return.
"Pacifica Actual, this is patrol three. We have found debris of multiple Cylon raiders.", one of the pilots reported.
"Patrol three, did you find any debris of our Starfuries?", Crichton responded"
"Negative, Pacifica Actual.", the pilot replied.
Crichton sent a salvage freighter and two raptors to the coordinates where the debris was found. The goal was to pick up the debris and sift through it in order to find anything the patrol vipers had missed. Then it would be melted down and recycled into parts for the new Starfury squadron.
About an hour later patrol two reported that they had come across a patrol from the Galactica. The pilots from the Galactica had told them about Starbuck's whereabouts and that they are planning to join both fleets tomorrow.
Crichton's plan has always been to find the Galactica's group of survivors and prevent them from finding an unprepared and underdefended Earth, then slip away with his family aboard Moya and leave his fleet in the hands of another capable leader. It seemed that now he had come a step closer to turning that plan into reality. Crichton knew that he would have to take orders from Adama from now on, since Adama outranked him. He hoped he could keep his and his wife's origin a secret until they would be able to slip away.
The crew members of the Adriatic, 5 in total, were ecstatic. The planet just a few million kilometers ahead of them showed signs of being able to support human life. It had been weeks since the Adriatic, a lightly armed civilian transport and the Carina, a salvage and repair flattop, had been separated from their Raptor escorts and gotten lost inside a radioactive star cluster. The crews would have perished, if a strange man calling himself "The Doctor" had not arrived on the Adriatic two days after contact with their escorts had broken off. He had suddenly materialized inside the Adriatic's main cargo bay aboard a spacecraft that resembled a wooden box. After overcoming some initial mistrust from the Adriatic's captain and proving to him that he was not a Cylon, the Doctor had helped the crew of the Adriatic to locate the Carina and guided both ships out of the star cluster. He also supplied both crews with food and radiation medication and gave them the coordinates of the nearest habitable planet. Then he had entered his box again and disappeared the same way he came. Both ships had spent the time since then trying to find the Battlestars and the rest of the fleet, while running dangerously low on fuel.
The captains of both ships had agreed to land on the planet and attempt to find a fuel source so they could continue their search for the fleet. They had also considered the option of settling down should they not be able to acquire fuel and should the planet support human life. Both ships were running with skeleton crews, with five people aboard the Adriatic and seven on the Carina. Both ships would normally have more than five times as many crewmembers and, since the fall of the Colonies, would be crammed with civilian refugees. When the fleet had to cross a radioactive star cluster, all passengers and non-essential personnel had been offloaded to the Galactica and the Pegasus, which were the only ships that had appropriate radiation shielding. Had the Adriatic and the Carina made it back to the fleet, they would have taken everyone else back aboard.
"We are picking up a signal from the planet!", the young man operating the comm systems shouted in excitement.
"Is it Colonial?", the captain of the Adriatic, a woman in her forties from the planet Picon, asked.
"No Ma'am, it's from an Earth ambassador named Jeffrey Sinclair, who is apparently stranded on this planet.", the comm technician responded.
"An ambassador from Earth?", the captain asked.
"Yes, he is requesting to be retrieved from this planet. Apparently he has been stranded here by pirates. The message seems to be playing on repeat. Should I reply?"
On a perfectly ordinary late afternoon in early autumn on the Planet Lamuella, a radio that had been on low power mode for the last five years suddenly came to life. Jeffrey Sinclair almost sliced his thumb off.
"This is the colonial transport ship Adriatic calling Earth Ambassador Jeffrey Sinclair. Do you do you read me?", a voice from the radio said.
"I read you loud and clear, Adriatic. This is Ambassador Sinclair calling from the planet Lamuella.", Sinclair responded.
"Ambassador Sinclair, we are unable to detect any major cities or spaceports, but we have located the source of your signal. Can you give us directions where to land a shuttle close to your location?", the voice requested.
"There is a wide clearing near the village where I'm currently living. You may land there.", Sinclair responded.
In order to conserve fuel, the captain of the Adriatic decided to keep both ships in orbit and land with her chief engineer and another crewmember in a shuttle. Her goal was to find fuel and supplies and in turn she would offer to take Ambassador Sinclair along. She was hoping Sinclair would lead them to Earth, where they could meet up with Admiral Adama and the fleet.
Sinclair had almost given up hope, after being stuck on Lamuella for five years, and settled into his role as the village's sandwich maker. According to the space pirates, who had inadvertently rescued him after a failed time travel attempt and then stranded him here, the war he had been trying to end seemed to have been lost and the Minbari, a race whose culture he had come to appreciate, had been nearly wiped out. The time line had been altered, due to him not being able to travel back and ensure that everything happened the way it should. Sinclair did not know what had become of his friends on Babylon 5, or Earth, or the rest of the Galaxy. He didn't even know what year it was, since the Heart of Gold, the ship the pair of space pirates had stolen, had been in transit between time as well as space during the brief period of time he had spent on it.
Sinclair remembered, the Heart of Gold had been gone for about an hour and a half when he had finally woken up. After starting a campfire, Sinclair had gotten hungry and decided to make himself a sandwich from the food that the two space pirates had left him. At least he had food that would last him some time and he could use the shuttle as shelter. As Sinclair was starting to prepare his sandwich, he was discovered by a boy named Drimple. Drimple had never seen a sandwich before, and so Sinclair made him one as well. After both had eaten their sandwiches, Drimple lead Sinclair to his village and introduced him to his family and the other people who lived there. Old Thrashbarg told people that Sinclair was the Sandwich Maker, who was sent by the Almighty Bob to make sandwiches for the people in the small community. And so Jeffrey Sinclair, Earth Ambassador to Minbar and former commander of Babylon 5, became the Sandwich Maker. A title he held for five years, until the two colonial spaceships arrived and took him back to the stars. He had nothing better to do other than making sandwiches and waiting for rescue. Lamuella did not have a spaceport or any spaceworthy ships. He was far away from any major city, if there even was one on that planet. His shuttle was only able to make it into orbit, which did not help him much until the two ships arrived.
Author's note: This chapter ties up some loose ends from the BSG episode "The Passage". We also learn what happened to Jeffrey Sinclair after he had been stranded by Zaphod Beeblebrox and Tricia MacMillian. Louanne Katraine survives the trip in my timeline, since the Faru Sadin(the ship Kat loses in the show and tries to find while absorbing a deadly dose of radiation) is escorted by the Pegasus and not Kat's Raptor.