Please don't forget to read the disclaimer in chapter one before you ask any questions. I bet one of you won't and will miss their answer to their question. THIS STORY IS A RENAME AND REWRITE of mine. Please R&R
A/N Just a heads up, I have changed chapter one to bring the Galactica into the story. You may have to read it first before reading this chapter.
Previously
Director Stephen Andrews and Sir Thomas Blamey were now sitting across the new Prime minister, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, and the Governor-General, Sir William John McKell, as they read the file about the Simpsons special Project. The achievements with the shuttle and Vipers had their mouths open as they read. The only thing he said was to his aid in the whole six hours it took him to read it, "Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the week," When he finished, he sat back on the lounge and sighed, "Are you telling me that we have beaten the American and Russian to the moon and no one knows about it,"
HMS Starfleet
Chapter 5
"Yes, Mr. Prime minister, we have even checked out every planet in the system," said Stephen
"With this Raptor?" said Ben
"Yes sir! We still haven't synthesized the fuel for the Raptors yet in all our crafts, but we are close. The shuttles use a type of atomic crystal power node that is way beyond our understanding. These nodes do last a very long time and are hard to synthesize or create," said Stephen.
"And here I thought that the Dalhousie Springs research center was just a glorified archaeologist museum!" said John
"That is what we are telling everyone, but the problem is that we are starting to get in over our heads, and we may need a little help," said Stephen.
"What type of help?" asked John.
"Manpower mostly," said Stephen.
"You want to contact the Americans for help?" said the governor-general
"The Americans be Dammed! I want to see the King first," said the PM. "Those blasted Americans think we are nothing but their puppets. We! will be going to England, and We! will see what the King thinks we should do!" With that, plans were made to take the PM to England in one of the shuttles
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies was a royalist who loved the King and the monarchy. There was no way he was going to the Americans unless the King ordered it. Australia was safe from invasion during the war, but it had come close, thanks to her fighting men! And a few secrets from the project! They stopped the Japs in New Guinea and secretly helped the Americans to bring the Japs to their knees.
To Menzies, Churchill was a fool. Churchill had wanted to let the Japs invade Australia to exhaust their supplies, but Australia and America didn't want that to happen. Now that the fool is out of office, the empire he knew can be reborn. Stephen gathered all the information about the Dalhousie Springs research center, the special project, and their achievements so far and headed to England in one of the ancient shuttles.
It was the fastest that Menzies had traveled to England, and it was most rewarding, even after they made a quick trip to the moon. At first, the King couldn't believe what Gordon was telling him, but after a trip to the moon and back, anything the center wanted was theirs. The airforce base and research center would be extended and become a Royal secret of the highest matter.
Stephen was to report all activities to the Prime minister, who would personally report everything to the crown. The best of the best engineers and scientists were sent to the project that made the military town bigger than any other in Australia. The technology of the ancients would help them repair and rebuild the Battlestar, with anti-gravity devices built into the ship to help it get off the ground and into space.
The Aurora-class battleship was a different matter and the easiest to get into space. The chair had taught the engineers that the Aurora-class battleships contained a secondary control center where the ship's systems could be controlled if the bridge was destroyed or uninhabitable. From this position, a single crew member can operate the ship systems from here, including tracking individuals' activities throughout the ship, scanning life signs, and controlling access to corridors. Numerous control terminals are present in the room.
The ship's bridge can control most, if not all, of the basic systems required for the battleship to function. It is located in the middle of the top side of the ship. The front of the bridge consists of several large windows, allowing for a wide field of view, while the bridge's rear walls contain numerous panels and displays for the crew.
The bridge also contains a captain's chair located near the center of the bridge. While different from a traditional Ancient control chair, from this chair, an individual possessing the Ancient Technology Activation gene can control most, if not all, of the ship's functions. Additionally, some Aurora-class ships have consoles on either side of the chair.
After many tests and studies, Captain Peter Levi Jones was selected to pilot the battleship. The Aurora-class Battleship was renamed the Invincible, and Captain relaunched the ship with his mind in 1950, just as the Korean war began. He would later say it was the most invigorating expirence he had in his life. Every movement of the ships was at his command.
The Korean war revealed Viper 2 to the world for the first time. Not only was the Viper fast, but it also had the most kills and could easily outfly any other world-leading Jet fighter. Every communist country in the world, including a few of our friendly ones, wanted to get their hands on it. The Invincible mapped the front lines of the battleground for the commonwealth and even sent a few conventional weapons onto the Chinese front line to stop a few of their advances.
1953 saw the Korean war finish, and the Invincible resumed mapping the solar system. Stephen often asked why they were repairing the Battlestar, and their answer was simple enough. "We have been lucky that the Gou'ald or these Cylons haven't returned to retake or destroy the planet. Hopefully, this will not happen, but if they do? We like to be ready," and Stephen and the PM agreed. As one person could control the Invincible, they started to train a crew of 500, so they could help to operate the systems at the same time. The resources from every commonwealth nation were poured into the project, and thousands of top scientists in all fields were sent to Australia.
Sadly the King died, and his daughter resumed the throne. Queen Elizabeth secretly arrived at Dalhousie Springs Royal Airforce Base during the Queen's visit to Australia in 1954. Just in time to witness the next step of the commonwealth's journey into space. The pilots had taken the Queen and her husband in one of the shuttles to the Battleship Invincible station behind the moon for a visit to inspect the ship. Then she was given a ride to the moon, where she used a personal ancient forcefield device that acted as a space suit. As the couple walked on the moon, the young Elizabeth picked up a moon rock. Visitors would always see this rock on her desk all through her reign. It would be placed in a museum after her death in 2022.
After returning to Earth a few days later, the whole base suddenly went into panic mode as sirens blared around the base. Every military personnel started running to man anti-aircraft guns, and pilots ran to their planes. A colonial Raptor suddenly appeared and fell through the atmosphere at a very alarming rate. The craft headed straight down to the base before Invincible or anyone else could react, or even a single plane left the ground, and landed hard on the runway. As the smoke began to escape from the craft, fire crews came in and dragged three people out, and poured foam over the craft to make it safe. Then they were then taken to the base hospital to be treated for their wounds.
The Dalhousie Springs research center Hospital
Australia 1954
Two weeks after Queen Elizabeth had left Australia, and after the arrival of the Alien craft. The highest-ranking officer from the small craft, a female, was still in a coma, and it was uncertain if she would pull through, but the other two survivors were in a coma for a week and told the story of what had happened to them and the ship. Stephen was reading the Australian Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) interrogation of the two survivors.
The two colonials told a story of an attack on their colonies by their enemies called the Cylons. After 40 years of peace, they made a surprise and brutal attack that killed billions of people. They told their interrogators that their ship and another called the Galactica were defending a large civilian refugee fleet from these Cylons. As soon as the last of the fleet jumped away, they tried to jump away as well! But the Cylon nukes had generated a wormhole and were sent to a system they didn't know.
The first was Lieutenant Mary "Crash" Thrace, Viper and Raptor pilot of the Battlestar Thunderchild. Service number 7556215792853201. Her call sign, Crash, resulted from crashing her Viper or Raptor down a little too hard. She asked a question. The first question she asked was simple, but their answer shocked her. 'I would like to know which planet of the Colonies that I am on. I do not know what happened or how I ended up here. I was under a Raptor when the whole ship shook, and I blanked out. The next thing I knew was waking up in the hospital bed. Once she was told that she was on Earth, she told the story of Kobol and that its thirteenth colony was only 4,000 years old.
The interrogator didn't tell them how the project started when they found the Sword. But they responded that this Earth was much older than four thousand years old, and had just learned that the planet and its descendants were more than ten thousand years old. The Lieutenant was returned and confined in her room.
Next was Senior Chief Petty Officer Tyre Traegle, serial number 7775643209870523, and he was the chief mechanic specialist and was responsible for the maintenance of the Vipers and Raptors aboard Thunderchild. He had promised the Admiral's Brother to look after her and to fulfill this promise, he had to go against her orders to leave the ship. Instead, he put on a flight suit, grabbed a second suit, and headed for the CIC, where he found the Admiral out cold on the floor. After checking her life signs, he placed the suit on her and brought her to the Raptor.
The rest of the crew were either dead or had left the ship. So when he reached the Raptor with the Admiral, he spotted the Lieutenant, who was also out cold but still alive. He placed them both in the Raptor and left the disabled person Battlestar. He said that the pilot of the Battlestar had managed to place the ship in orbit of a planet before he died. He told his story about landing on that planet, only to find what was left of the crew dead from radiation.
After searching the system they were in, he couldn't find life sign's to help him with the Admiral and Lieutenant. So after jumping the Raptor to the closet system. The Raptor then detected three unknown craft return into the planet's atmosphere, so he followed them and quickly landed on the runway. As he was not a pilot, he brought the craft down too hard on the runway, but they survived.
"So what do you think?" asked Kevin
"I am not sure. We know the story about the Sword but don't know if they were brought forward or back in time. It is the same with these people! They were either brought forward or sent back in time, that, or they are from another group of colonies that have Cylons for an enemy as well?" said Stephen
"We know there are more earth out there by the ancient records,
but these people are certain there is only one," said Kevin
"We know the word Earth could mean different things to many races in the universe. We let talk with this Chief Petty Officer Traegle again and see what he had to say," said Stephen
"I doubt that this Admiral can tell us anything different," said Kevin
"No, but I still would like to talk to her when she comes too!" Stephen's phone than rang on his desk. Picking it up, "Yes," he listened and replaced the receiver. "Look's like we are going to get that chance. The Admiral just woke up," and they headed to the hospital ward.
The story that the woman told Stephen and Kevin was the same as the young Lieutenant. The woman had no idea where she was, "Hello! I am Director Stephen Andrews, and I am in charge of this base. This is Admiral Kevin Manolis! Can you tell us who you are? And where you come from?"
"My name is Admiral Athena Adama, and I am the commander of the Battlestar Thunderchild. My service number is 666784329850098. I am from the twelve colonies of Kobol. As to the craft I was in, I can not tell you," Stephen passed her a picture of it burning on the runway. "That is one of our Raptors, and I do not know how I ended up in it or even here! I know I am not in the colonies as the ship navigation computers said we were in unknown space?"
"Well, Admiral! You are on a world we call Earth," said Stephen
"Earth! As in the thirteenth colony, Earth?" said Athena.
"Sorry, Admiral, That is the same answer Lieutenant Mary Thrace and Chief Petty Officer Tyre Traegle gave us. I don't know if we are your Earth, but we both believe there could be many planets out there called Earth. So why don't you tell us the story about your colonies and this thirteenth colony?" said Kevin.
Over the next few days, Athena told the two the same story of Kobol and how the 13 tribes and how they were forced to leave. What she knew about the 13th tribe was they left two thousand years before the other 12, in a very different direction than the 13th. Athen then told the story about the first and second Cylon war and how it was one of horror, with billions of beings wiped out in a single day. She then told them of a refugee fleet under the command of her half-brother in the Battlestar Galactica, and at that moment, she had no idea if they had survived or even where they were.
TBC
"Okay, thank you for your reviews. But I couldn't let these reviews go without saying something.
palgober comments
I enjoyed the first version of this but have always been annoyed by several glitches in your sense of scale, the tunnel being 6000 feet tall, the valley being 10000 feet deep the highest point in Australia is only 2228 meters tall (that is 7000 ft ) in the mountains.
Answer; You're missing the point of the story. The base is all underground. Yes, the highest point in Australia is 2228 meters. In this story, the base was underground, not above.
gavo2o I liked and followed this one last time, and I like and follow it again. As an Australian, I've got to say the thought of Australia winning the space race before anyone else even starts great.
Answer. Me too! Aussie Aussie Aussie! Well, the commonwealth at least.