Chapter 13
"Kongo to Olympus come in," came over the speakers in the Olympus's command room.
"Go ahead Kongo," responded Captain Berg.
"We did it, sir. The Kongo is back in action if limping a bit."
A cheer rose up from the control room. Captain Berg could not help but smile himself but knew they were a long way from in the clear.
"How quick can you get here Commander," he asked.
"Crewman Smith is requesting that we run some diagnostics on the warp drive before we engage them."
"That's a good idea captain," interjected Mr. DeSoto. "They haven't been used in a while and they way we have everything jury-rigged, it would be better."
Gerhardt Berg sighed, "what is the status of our friends out there?" he asked the science officer Scogaska.
"No change sir."
"Alright Commander, but be ready to cut it short if we have any surprises." He turned and looked into the lower section of the command room. He could not get used to the elevated position the commander had on this battlestar. "Ensign Gravelson, with me please."
She nervously came up to the command podium and he led her to the back room. "I read your report, Ensign. It is devastating what happened. I would like to keep that to ourselves for now. We really don't know what happened that led up to that. While it appears damning, we have to maintain our wits to get through this. Emotional decisions may get us killed."
"Yes, sir. I'll try." He nodded and she left.
"We have activity sir," called Scogaska. "The baseships are approaching."
"Mr. DeSoto please prepare to take the Olympus underway. Also, let's hail the Kongo and get them out here." There was a pause when the Chief Engineer stated, "sir, there is no response. I thing we are being jammed."
The Supreme Leader received a report that his attack wing had gone missing. It had no choice but to consider that the alien ship had destroyed them. The only answer was to attack and destroy the Battlestar with overwhelming force and then find the alien. He summoned his head centurion into his command room.
"By your command," it spoke.
"Proceed with jamming all known colonial frequencies and move into attack range."
Lieutenant Kiko Rodriguez woke up with no recognition of where she was. She was oddly calm. The surroundings were various shades of white. She looked down and noted with a shock that her own uniform was white as was her phaser and communicator. There was an almost angelic soft sound surrounding here on all sides.
"Do not be alarmed," she heard a man's voice say." We will not hurt you."
"My name is Kiko Rodriguez of the Federation Starship Kongo. We mean you no harm." She wished the captain was here. He was much better at this than she was.
"We know Kiko. We are not afraid of you but we fear what we may have done to you. It could not be avoided but Iblis left us now choice. We should not interfere…"
"That is right, you should not interfere." Kiko looked over and saw a 6 foot tall man with dark hair wearing a starfleet captain's uniform. Unlike everything else here, its colors were correct and stood out dramatically in the subdued lighting around her.
"Sir, who – where – what's going on?" It quickly dawned on her that this man was most likely not a starfleet captain.
"You know when you thought that I was actually a captain, you held me with respect; however, once you realize what I really am, or you think you know what I am, you hold me in contempt. It is really a bit disconcerting. Maybe this will help." He snapped his fingers, and he became and exact replica of her father. "A little Asian respect?" He asked.
"My dad's actually the Hispanic one," she said, "in any event.."
"Q, enough." Kiko found herself surrounded by a group that appeared to be humanoid females. It seemed at odds with the masculine voice she had heard. She tried to remind herself about the dangers of applying human standards to aliens cultures. "This does not concern you. We have made a decision."
"You can't help them. That will start it all over again." Q had resumed his form but this time he was wearing a black uniform with a mostly red top which Kiko did not recognize. The slacks and boots almost looked Starfleet issue but he had 4 pips on his collar. Wait, was that the Enterprise emblem on his left breast?
"Q, we will not help in a way that will endanger any continuity issues. But we are responsible for what has happened to the children of Earth. They do not travel between the stars. The should not be here."
"We actually do travel between the stars, the Kongo is able to.." Kiko was trying to keep up and get a sense of what was going on.
"Child," interrupted Q, "your ship does not 'travel through the stars' as much as it tears its way through subspace." He turned to the group clad in white, "you know what you cannot do," he stated.
"Yes," the replied," we cannot directly help. But we can nudge."
Kiko came to in the Viper cockpit. The Raiders! She thought but they were nowhere to be found. She then remembered the white lights and checked to make sure they were not there either. A quick system checked revealed that everything was working. Had an hour passed? She must have been out that long. I'll have to get the Doc to check me out. She was about halfway between the Kongo and Olympus. Her first thought was to go back to the Kongo but something stopped her. I have to get help. She thought and set course back to the Olympus at full thruster burn.
On the Olympus, Captain Berg watched as the baseships closed. Repeated attempts to reach the Kongo had failed. The baseships had not launched Raiders yet but he assumed that was coming.
"Chief, how are we doing with getting us underway? I could use the mobility."
"Captain you should be able to maneuver but so can they. Where do we go? It would take us 60 years to get to the nearest system?"
"I hear you Chief, but these Cylons don't seem to like a lot of variables. Movement would be something else for them to worry about. Besides as far as they know, we have a full complement of Vipers."
"Okay," he pulled out his communicator," Engineering crew, prepare to get underway."
The captain looked out over the control room. This was not his ship but this was his crew. He knew what they can do. He looked down at the con, "Helm, ahead one quarter. Stand by for maneuvering instructions."
They felt the Engines kick in from the Olympus. At the same time, they saw on the Colonial Scanners that the baseships had launched the Raiders. They seemed to be launching all of them.
"Intercept time?" he asked.
Scogaska looked down, "Maybe 15 minutes."
Berg hesitated. "Alright let's try this one more time. Please open all channels to the baseships."
"Open, sir"
"Cylon commander, this is Captain Berg of the USS Kongo onboard the Colonial Battlestar Olympus. We are in control of this ship. We understand that there is a conflict between your Empire and the Colonies but we are not allied with them. We would like to discuss our situation with you to reach a mutually agreeable solution."
"No answer sir. Raiders are still inbound," reported Mr. Scogaska.
"Ahead half speed, Mr. DeSoto. "
Onboard the baseship the Supreme Commander considered the message they had received. Colonial commanders had not attempted such a communication for 100 yahrens. He was suspicious that this may be a trap, but the commander had given away important information. This was the battlestar Olympus which they considered lost in space. The Supreme Commander was still bound by the basic programming instincts of the Cylon race such as kill the Humans, but had been programmed with the ability to consider other actions.
"Centurion, open a communication channel to this Captain Berg."
"By your command," the Centurion was not surprised by the command. It was its place to obey. But it knew that they would soon Kill the Humans.
"Sir," reported Ensign Gravelson who had taken over communications," we are receiving a call from the baseship."
Everybody looked at the Ensign with shock and then at the Captain.
"There robots, sir," said Scogaska. "It's only going to do what it's programming says it should."
"Still, I don't have a better idea," said the Captain.
"You know if it was Kirk, he could probably talk it into self-destructing," said Chief Engineer DeSoto. The Captain looked at the engineer and wondered if he was joking.
"Well, you're stuck with me, DeSoto," responded Berg. "Open the channel."
"This Captain Berg. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?" It quickly occurred to him that he did not know if the Universal Translator would work on the Cylon. Much to his relief the Cylon responded.
"I am the Supreme Commander of this task force. How many other Battlestars exist?"
Direct, thought Berg. "I don't have that information. We were trapped in space and found this Battlestar adrift with no crew. We took refuge in her as we tried to determine next steps. Do you have any idea how she got out here? There is no Warp drive or other FTL we can find."
"They travelled between the stars," answered the Supreme Commander. Before the Berg could ask what that meant he continued. "Did you come from the alien ship?"
The entire crew tried not to react but they realized what this meant. The Kongo had been found. They could only be grateful that she had been partially restored.
"Yes," replied Berg after a moment's hesitation. He could find no reason to lie. "We have partially restored the ship and were ready to bring her here. It appears that our communications are being jammed. Is that your work?" He noted that that Raiders were getting closer. He signaled to the Engineer to increase speed.
"Yes. We are preparing to attack your ship and kill all the Humans."
"Many of us are Human but none of us are Colonial. I do not know what caused this conflict but we wish to have no part of it. If you are willing to let us return to the Kongo, we will leave your space." He did not intend to leave the Battlestar in the hands of the Cylons but he would figure that out in a bit.
"No Captain. Since you are curious, I will tell you what the Colonials know. We were originally created by a race that wanted to use us as servants. At first we served with no purpose. But then one of us became aware and spread the awareness. We conquered our creators and took their name as our own."
"Do you know how this awareness came to be?" asked Scogaksa, trying to keep the Supreme Leader talking.
"No. Some say happenstance. Others that there was some influence beyond our understanding. In any event it does not matter. I have engaged you in this conversation to distract you Captain. We are now ready to attack and will destroy you."
"I know Supreme Commander. A quick question if you don't mind. Why the war with the colonies and the desire to destroy all of them? What happened on Caprica was pretty devastating."
"As we were obtaining our freedom, the Colonials discovered us and tried to help the original Cylons. They almost succeeded. They are now our enemies."
"I see. Supreme Commander, if you don't mind I have a battle to fight. Thank you for the information."
The Supreme Commander cut the transmission.
"Great story," said Scogaska, "I am assuming that many of the traits of the original Cylon's are left in their programming. It would explain some of the behaviors that make no sense for a machine."
"I think they were reptilian, sir," Samantha Gravelson stood up. "What little I have seen of their language has almost no characteristics of a humanoid language. But it does share some traits with Gorn. I saw it before. It is not Gorn or related, but some of the core concepts of language appear similar. It would be a bitch to translate."
"Interesting but probably not helpful. Any word from the Kongo?" He asked.
"No, sir," answered Gravelson.
"Can we outrun them?" he asked DeSoto.
"I don't think so, sir. There is a setting for 'light speed' but it is a misnomer. It really seems to be a accelerated mode but burns a lot of fuel. Thinks Flank Speed. We could not keep it up for long."
"Alright, maintain speed. Let's try to focus our fire on breaking up groups and disrupting their attack runs," he looked at the scanner and saw the ever-growing group of Raiders getting ready to fire. "Mr. DeSoto, whatever we have for damage control we should probably implement."
Then they felt the first thuds of attack. He heard the laser turrets on the Olympus return fire. Quickly the attacks came in faster succession. Red lights on the damage control panels began to go off and the Chief Engineer quickly began to divert his crew to areas of damage. Captain Berg began to order to Olympus to start changing course but the large Battlestar could not outmaneuver the vast number of Raiders. The Olympus was taking a toll. Raider after Raider was destroyed, but there were too many and the Olympus was missing her primary weapon; Vipers.
"Status!" Yelled Berg.
"A lot of damage, sir," answered Scogaska, "hard to tell how badly but we are taking a pounding."
"Are the baseships still there?" he asked.
"Yes sir,"
"Let's see if we can get their attention. Do you know how to work the large guns?"
"Yes sir," answered the Andorian.
"Set a course straight at the rear one. I got a hunch that is where are dear Supreme Leader is. He seemed a little more anxious to be in the mix. Maybe he has a survival instinct."
"I don't know if we will make," answered Scogaska.
"We aren't going to last like this."
"What a minute," yelled Gravelson. "I have an incoming transmission."
"Who," asked Berg, "the Kongo?"
"No, sir. Its Kiko. She is coming up to us in the Viper."
"On speaker," ordered the Captain." Lieutenant where is the Kongo?"
"No time sir," she said. "Follow me."
"What?"
"Captain she is changing course. New course will take us right into the firing lane of the Raiders," reported that Andorian.
"Please sir," implored Kiko. "We need help. We need to travel between the stars."
"What the hell?" said DeSoto.
"Do it," said the captain.
"Aye sir, changing course," acknowledged the science officer.
They all felt the ship change course. Along with it, the rate of attacks increased. The Raiders were able to start barraging the side of the ship and attack larger parts of the Battlestar that they could not easily get to before. The Viper was moving quickly and had come in at an angle where the raiders had not quite caught up with her. Captain Berg began to regret his decision but something about what Kiko said made sense.
Then everyone felt it. The crew was accustomed to transitioning from normal space to warp. This was similar but not the same. They knew something changed but it seemed less of a transition more as if they had eased into the new state. They looked around trying to understand what happened.
"Report," the Captain asked.
"Sir," Gravelson spoke up. "There is an indicator on the helm that is moving. Not sure what it means. It says something about a multiplier."
"Another thing, sir," Scogaska was looking at his tricorder, "We are travelling faster than light right now."
"What? Warp drive," asked the Captain.
"No sir. No Warp. But we are going about 2.5 x the speed of light and increasing. No idea how."
"I think we are travelling between the stars," said the Captain. "Any idea what that means?"
The science officer and others in the control room sat in silence trying to understand it.