After Action Review

By Nopporn Wongrassamee the Evil Author

Summary: Three sets of bad guys get together. We all know how that goes.

Disclaimer: Transformers belong to Hasbro. Stargate and BSG belong to…

Deep space

Cylon Expeditionary Fleet

Some time after a boy bought a used car

Something was wrong.

The Number Eight model Cylon popularly known as "Boomer" was stirred out from a good self pitying brood. She sensed a thread of concern making its way through the Eight subnet and by extension from the other model Cylons.

For some reason, the Cylon network was designed with virtual subnets. Each subnet was dedicated to one particular model of Cylon wherein memories could be traded, the first steps of consensus voting established, and weird gossip and private jokes about other models exchanged.

Boomer herself was loathe to actually link herself to the net. While she couldn't isolate herself entirely – not on a basestar where every ship movement was decided by vote – Boomer participated as little as possible. This was because she hated Cylons in general, hated herself for being a Cylon, and most of all, hated that other Number Eight who had more or less stolen her life and friends aboard the Galactica.

The New Caprica fiasco hadn't help.

More than anything now, Boomer just wanted it all to end. Unfortunately, suicide was literally not an option. The Cylon resurrection net would ensure that she'd keep coming back to this miserable life. Not only that, any actual attempts might make the others think that she had gone defective and "box" her, a fate Boomer understood to be worse than real death.

So in the end, Boomer isolated herself. Boomer was aware that the other Eights were concerned about her. It had become a popular topic among them, theorizing what exactly was going on in Boomer's mind. On the few occasions that she had looked in on those debates, it had startled Boomer to see how utterly naïve and inaccurate a majority of those theories were.

Still, this new concern Boomer sensed didn't seem connected to her. Compelled by her own curiosity, Boomer reluctantly linked into the net. It took mere moments to determine what everyone was worried about.

Fifteen minutes ago, a new Cylon basestar had jumped in. At first, everyone had assumed that it was simply more reinforcements sent up to replace the losses at New Caprica. As time passed however, the new basestar had refused to communicate. There was no ID, no net connection. There wasn't even an empty carrier signal. And attempts to contact any individual Cylons on board had also been met with silence.

Visual inspection of the basestar's exterior showed that there were no Raiders in any of its launch bays. There was also some kind of abstract logo etched on the pylons, a sharp and angular face or mask that was definitely not Cylon in origin. That wasn't to say the silent basestar was completely emissions free. It was pumping out a lot of power in the form of DRADIS scans for some reason.

The consensus among the Cylons was that someone was going to have to physically go aboard and see what was going on. But there was a problem here. Boomer observed scornfully that no one was actually willing to go and the fleet was short of expendable humans.

The deadlock might have continued forever if yet another ship hadn't suddenly jumped in. And everything about that one was just… alien.

For a start, the energy signature that signaled its transition from FTL was all wrong. The ship was also big, bigger even than the Resurrection ship which had been the biggest ship in the Cylons' records until now. And the newcomer's ship was of a configuration never seen before.

To Boomer, it looked like a giant jock strap.

The net immediately exploded with speculation. Was this an Earth ship? Was it from a completely alien race entirely? Some wanted to attack just on principle. Others argued for trying to talk first. The talk first crowd one, if only because there was nothing to lose by it. Just in case though, weapons were prepared and Raiders readied to launch.

A neutral greeting was sent out.

"All hail the Ori," came the reply.

"ALL HAIL MEGATRON!!!" the silent until now basestar suddenly replied.

"Carter!"

"Sir," Colonel Samantha Carter, USAF, replied happily. "You came to see me off?"

"I just wanted to pay my respects to the best second in command I've ever had," General O'Neill told her. "After all, God only knows when you can get back from Atlantis."

"Thanks, sir," Carter said, flattered.

"Not a problem."

"Actually, sir, I was hoping to catch you before I left," Carter said. "I know this probably won't have any bearing on my new position, but I have a couple of questions about the report on these new robot aliens."

"You mean the Transformers?"

"Transformers?"

"Yeah, my staff wanted a faction neutral term to refer to them as a whole," O'Neill explained. "And 'Tansformers' is a hell of a lot catchier than 'Cybertronian' or whatever."

"Oh, okay," Carter said, digesting this bit of trivia. "Anyway, I was wondering if anyone's looked into the, um, Transformers' abilities to assimilate advanced technology."

"Pardon?"

"It's just that one of things the Transformers can do is to just look at a machine, and then mimic it to the point where it's impossible to tell the difference between the genuine machine and a disguised Transformer," Carter continued. "That's an incredible level of detail which doesn't quite jibe with their estimated level of technology."

"So you're saying my analysts are off?" O'Neill asked. He paused to consider. "I don't suppose I could persuade you to take a desk job in the Pentagon?"

"No, sir," Carter replied, smiling. "What I'm really wondering is that, if the Transformers scan technology more advanced than their own – some of the Asgard technology in the Apollo comes to mind - can they mimic that as well and thus effectively upgrade themselves? If they can, it would suggest an assimilation ability on par with the Replicators."

"Huh, I don't think anyone else has thought of it," O'Neill said thoughtfully. "I'd hate to think what those Cons would do with Asgard, Ancient, or even Ori technology."

The aliens must have been pissed off, Boomer thought.

They fired some sort of spinal mount gun. An impossibly powerful lance of plasma speared out to strike the offending basestar. It missed. Equally impossibly, the basestar in question had actually dodged the shot, accelerating out of the way as a rate not even a battlestar – and certainly no genuine basestar – could match.

But if the strange basestar could dodge the aliens' energy blast, the Resurection Ship it had been sitting in front of could not. It exploded into a fireball from just a glancing hit by the beam.

The Cylon reaction was only natural. Everyone opened fire on the alien ship.

They might as well have been spitting at it. The alien ship was protected by some kind of invisible forcefield that absorbed missiles and bullets. As far as Boomer could tell, no damage was being done at all. And the aliens apparently agreed because they were still trying to kill that supermobile basestar.

Except that couldn't be a real basestar. Aside from its maneuverability, that single transmission it had sent carried a single ID marker that was wrong, wrong, wrong!

The alien finally scored a hit with some smaller secondary energy weapon that was probably their equivalent of a point defense turret. It did nothing however as the "basestar" had somehow acquired its own forcefield. And then another impossible thing happened.

The fake basestar… transformed, for lack of a better term. Pylons swiveled, folded and unfolded. One turned into a head, another a tail. The rest became clawed limbs and spread wings. The Cylons and unknown aliens found themselves facing a basestar-sized dragon.

Its ID marker had named it "Trypticon".

Trypticon reared its head, and spat out a plasma bolt that to the Cylons, appeared identical in every way to big ones the unidentified aliens had been firing. And the aliens apparently, weren't as good at dodging. Their ship visibly staggered. Their forcefield must have fluctuated because a few cylon missiles leaked through, not that they did more than cosmetic damage.

Suddenly, Trypticon swooped in. The dragon was suddenly on top of the alien starship and the shield seemed to fail completely. Trypticon clawed and tore into the alien vessel with a ferociousness that would have done credit to any natural animal. And then it happened.

Several Cylon missiles hit Trypticon.

It was a complete accident of course. Trypticon's charge had taken the Cylons by surprise. The missiles had already been fired at the alien ship. Trypticon's had merely gotten itself in the way. The damage inflicted on the dragon appeared to be just as cosmetic as it had been against the aliens.

Trypticon however, appeared to be in no mood to be understanding. It let out an inarticulate roar of outrage over all communication channels. Then it spat fire at Boomer's ship.

The plasma bolt was slower than light, but not by much. There was no dodging it. For just that instant, Boomer knew she was dead. Without the Resurrection Ship, there was no coming back now if she died, especially if all the real basestars were destroyed too. Fate, the gods, or maybe even the Cylon God, had decided to grant Boomer her wish. Boomer was prepared to welcome death with open arms when she was hit with a familiar gut wrenching sensation.

Her basestar had jumped, running away.