Epilogue: Down from Olympus

Battlestar Galactica

Orbital Patrol over New Caprica: Year 3, Day 154

William Adama: Commanding

Captain Samuel Anders was bored to tears.

He was currently in CIC as the Officer of the Watch for the Dog Watch and it was uneventful, as every watch had been for almost three and a half years now.

During the initial return from Caprica by Pegasus there had been a minor miscalculation on the second to last jump. They had been a mistake in the drift calculations and they had jumped six parsecs off course. It was an extremely minor miscalculation still within the margin of error but Pegasus and the fifteen ships alongside had jumped into the midst of a dense nebula. The heavy metal content of the nebula made DRADIS almost useless and required Pegasus to scramble raptors to get their co-ordinates.

One of the raptors found a planet within the stellar cloud and Lee's curiosity was piqued enough to perform a few scouting runs of the surface. There found an atmosphere rich enough in oxygen to be breathable, liquid water and enough vegetation to warrant further scouting. However, they didn't have the time to make more detailed scouting runs as they had to meet up with Galactica before the Admiral and the President declared them lost and continued on towards Earth.

They did reunite with the Fleet and unleashed chaos upon the Admiral when he spoke not to his son but to his mentor and friend. The next few days were spent discussing what happened on Caprica, the Cylons' "surrender" and the reunion between Pegasus and her new fleet. Lee, Kara, Kendra and Karl had spent some time in hack while Admiral Cain, The Old Man and the President settled the fallout of the Pegasus mutiny.

Truthfully, neither the President nor the Admiral wished to punish the officers of Pegasus for the rescue but felt Lee had left them without any choice. Cain and his tribunal gave them the chance to both let the matter go and not lose face if only in their own eyes.

Once Lee was reinstated as the CO of Pegasus the commanding officers of the now larger Fleet decided on their next course of action. The Fleet jumped back to the planet to begin both repairs and a more thorough study of the planet that some had already dubbed "New Caprica." They also took a more detailed census of the sixty-four thousand plus people that now populated almost eighty ships.

The name stuck and several weeks passed in orbit before Cain and Adama brought a course of action to the President. Pegasus, under Lee's Command, would lead a small taskforce on to hopefully find Earth while the remaining Fleet would settle (temporarily) on New Caprica.

The other ships in the task force would be the Daud, the Kimba Huta, the Monarch and the Lucky Daggit (one of the two tylium refining ships that the Judah had in her fleet.) The three civilian ships were picked for the purpose of making the task force as self-sufficient as possible as no one knew how long or difficult the journey to Earth would be and manned only by volunteers.

Meanwhile, the people left behind on New Caprica would use the nebula as a refuge and the Heavy Raiders they'd commandeered from Caprica to make additional rescue attempts in the hopes of either finding more people on the Colonies or perhaps rendezvous with other ships that had jumped out of the systems in the hours after the Attacks only to return and find the Cylons gone.

The President had agreed and then began organizing both settlements and the call for volunteers for the search for Earth. Nearly three months had passed before they were ready to leave and the President decided to coincide the launch of the expedition with the ground-breaking ceremonies for the first large-scale building project on the surface which were some modest housing units.

The ships jumped away and life on New Caprica went on.

After six months, the first housing units were completed and people began moving out of the ships that had landed on the surface as well as the tent city they had erected on the shore of the Roslin River.

Two months after that, as they were coming out of a rather harsh winter, a surveying group had found decent sized deposits of copper and iron in the mountains near New Caprica City. The buildings were beginning to go up more easily and the economy had begun to normalize after several months of bartering.

Three years after the first settlement on the surface put down tent stakes; they had two actual boroughs ("Little Aquaria" and "Delphi-town") a logging camp and mill, a row of shops, a hospital and a government building affectionately called "City Hall."

While most resources were devoted to the settlement, the ships in orbit were not merely idle. Six weeks after Pegasus jumped away, Judah jumped back to the Colonies and spent nearly a month there. They found a few hundred more people on Aerelon and Tauron.

After that, they jumped back to the Colonies every two months and attempted to hail any surviving ships. Three more Colonial Ships had been found; the Abnoba, Freyr and the Kintaro were Mercury Class Battlestars that had been on deep probes at the time of the Attacks and had survived by using hit and run tactics much like Pegasus had under Cain.

The ships had reunited a few months after the Attacks and would return to the Colonies periodically to make runs on the outer supply lanes of the Cylon Occupations Forces before jumping back out of the system. About three weeks after the Pegasus and their fleet had jumped away, the three battlestars returned and found the Colonies essentially abandoned. The Judah found them in orbit over Picon several weeks later.

Sam looked up at the DRADIS display, while the picture was still interfered with slightly, they'd been able to fine tune their DRADIS over the last three years and now didn't have to scramble Vipers over every floating piece of rock or metal that floated by.

The officer sighed at the (relatively) clean DRADIS and let his attention wander around CIC. Sr. Lieutenant Anastasia Dualla was currently at Flight Ops updating the CAP roster for the next week. About ten months after Pegasus jumped away, the President had finally taken the steps to re-normalize the government, she then reinstated the Lower Senate of the Quorum and brought the Fleet to Condition Four for the first time since the Attacks.

For several months the Military ships had been overcrowded, even on Galactica, which had been undermanned from the beginning, had to resort to things like hot bunking and the pilots were on such an extended rotation that viper pilots could expect to get no more than one CAP a week. Admiral Cain ordered the old girl overhauled and refitted, including getting rid of the museum and returning the Starboard Flight Pod to operational status. Once that was done, the CAG was able to bunk his pilots properly but getting them flight hours was still next to impossible.

With the Fleet at ConFour, Officers and enlisted on active reserve status were allowed to go on inactive status. This allowed officers and enlisted to be rotated in and out, leave time was reinstated beyond the weekend passes they'd grown used to and there were even a few officers here and there that mustered out all together to start civilian lives on the surface. Most notable among them was when Cally announced her marriage to Billy Keikeya last month and learned she was pregnant with their first child.

The President along with Admiral Cain and Admiral Adama then restored the Joint Chiefs when they promoted Commander Burgess from the Judah and Commander Yamamoto from the Freyr. Eventually they reopened voluntary enlistment, Galactica then became the de-facto Academy and War College. Sam and Jean had been living on Galactica since they jumped to New Caprica and they were among the first to take the opportunity. Their leadership roles in the resistance made them prime officer material and each thrived in the Fleet.

Today, Sam was the Commanding Strike Officer; he commanded three Marine units and took a spot in the watch rotation. He finally entered the flight program last month and was looking forward to completing his raptor training. His wife, meanwhile, had entered the Flight Program and became a viper pilot.

She was currently leader of Galactica's Green Squadron and had been given the call-sign "Point Guard." Sam always found that funny as it had been his position on the C-Bucs while she had been a winger.

Like Sam, Dee had taken the opportunity to advance her career. She qualified for OCS on her first attempt and had risen through the ranks, she now served as the Flight Officer. Her romance with the President's Chief of Staff had fizzled about a year and a half ago. Sam was pretty sure he'd noticed Hot Dog sniffing around, which pleased Sam as the CAG's bitching about loosing Kat to Showboat all those years ago was pretty damned annoying even years later, especially years later.

He crossed the deck to Flight Ops and leaned on the console, Dee looked up from her roster and gave him a nod, "When's the next CAP away Lieutenant?"

She checked her papers then said, "They should just be underway now, sir. It's Hardball and Duck."

Sam nodded and returned to the Tac Table before asking the com officer to put the pilot chatter on the speakers. He soon heard Seelix and Tucker's voices through the tinny speakers as the two pilots bantered back and forth and he let the noise lull him slightly.

&

Bill Adama followed Saul out of his cabin and re-assured his long time XO and friend that the place would not fall apart during his ten week medical leave. Saul's knee had been bothering him for nearly a month and Cottle finally informed both he and Bill that he was taking the matter into his hands and was forcing Tigh into arthroscopic knee surgery. "We'll be fine Saul, Captain Anders will hold your place. Before you know it you'll be back in CIC terrifying the crew with your smiling face."

His old friend merely grumbled and hobbled away with the cane Cottle made him use until after the surgery. The last thing the Admiral heard as Tigh rounded the corner towards the port flight deck was, "Frakking Cottle."

Galactica's CO snorted quietly and then turned towards CIC. On his way he noticed the lights in the corridor flickering, he stopped to inspect the light but before he could even think about calling maintenance a two man team arrived and got to work. He continued on towards CIC but only got a few feet before the klaxon started, "Action Stations! Set Condition One throughout the ship! Repeat; Action Stations, this is not a drill!"

Despite the fact that the crew hadn't even had a battle drill for six weeks (the next one was due in about three days) and that they hadn't legitimately gone to Condition One since the Gideon had suffered engine failure and went into a decaying orbit ten months ago, the officers in the corridor sprang to action instantly. Far from the panic that a part of him worried about, everyone around him with speed and professionalism to get the ship battle ready.

Adama moved towards CIC at a quicker pace than before, when he arrived he stepped over to the Tac Table next to Sam, "SitRep?"

Sam was on the horn with the CAP, "Stand by Duck." He turned to the Admiral, "One ship just jumped into orbit, we received Colonial Transponders identifying it as Pegasus. Our CAP is twenty seconds out from visual range."

Bill noticed the giddy looks on the faces of every officer around him; he couldn't stifle the grin twitching on to his face either. Three and a half years was a long time to be without your son. "Galactica/Duck; visual contact, it's the Pegasus."

"Galactica/Hardball; confirmed visual."

The petty officer at communications spoke, "Sir, we're receiving a hail from Pegasus Actual."

The announcement ushered a roar from the crew, over the din Bill yelled out, "Put them on."

A whistle of feedback quickly quieted everyone enough to hear Lee's voice through the speakers, "Galactica this is Pegasus Actual. I bring greetings from Earth."

He picked up his receiver and replied, "Pegasus, what took you so frakking long?"

Laughter could be heard on both battlestars, "Apologies Admiral, I'm afraid my wife wouldn't let us come back without getting souvenirs first-" Lee cut off his would with a gasp, and Bill was certain he heard a very familiar laugh belonging to his daughter-in-law as she questioned his late wife's breeding status.

He saw Sam chuckle out of the corner of his eye. He turned to the smirking marine and said, "Get a raptor prepped."

The officer nodded and called the flight deck while Bill turned back to his conversation with his son, "Commander, I'm coming aboard for an inspection tour before we go down to the surface to report to the President."

"We'll be waiting sir."