Captain LeBeau, the commander of the interceptor squadron, and Lieutenant Commander Thieu stared at each other across the table in shock before both lunging for the comm unit.
"Admiral Fenway?" Thieu said. "I think we've found something very important. Can you please come down here?"
A minute later Istia Fenway, Tamsin Reece, I-Chen Phuket, Florian Dashwood and a much-baffled sergeant pressed into service as a note-taker were crowded into the tiny cubicle.
"Alright, talk," Fenway said.
"We were going over the recorded transmissions from the battle and a bit before and after," Trace LeBeau reported. "There was one bit we isolated as being from the ships hiding behind that comet that's about to pass out of the solar system. It was scrambled, but once we filtered out the garbage and ran some decryption programs, we got this." She ran a recording that was mostly static. "Now, if I were human, I never would have caught it…" Fenway waved an arm for her to continue. Trace LeBeau was over three hundred and forty years old, a biosynthetic computer who had utterly enjoyed her three hundred and thirty years as a fighter pilot. She and Tamsin had grown up together, in as much as a computer could be said to grow, and had often served together as close friends. The fact that she wasn't human was no secret, although never advertised openly. "But I heard speech. Human speech. Once I knew what I was listening to I refined things a bit, and we got this."
She hit the play button for a second sound recording.
"Got a contact. Looks like one of the long-range surveillance vessels entering the system." A female voice, young, with a strange accent.
"It's Cylon." A male voice, same accent. "They're coming in on almost a complete opposite vector from us. We're still screened by the comet head, they won't have seen us. Maybe they'll pass on by."
"They weren't screened from us," Thieu muttered. Fenway waved a hand to hush him.
"Federia, power down as best you can. Make yourselves inconspicuous."
"And they speak English," Reece noted. "Which is unlikely even for humans."
"Yeah, like a cargo freighter comes with stealth systems." An older, huskier voice but still with the odd accent, the strange pronunciation of vowels. "See how much closer to the comet head you can get."
"Any closer and I'll be scraping ice off the viewscreen. We're not exactly nimble here, Captain."
Trace hit the button. "There's a couple of hours more to analyse. I'm unscrambling as I go and having the computer prepare a transcript. I can tell you a couple of things - that accent is Old North American, from Earth. So's the dialect, more or less. And this scrambler system is basic as hell. They're a long way behind us, technologically."
"But they speak English," Reece said. "Even the Kangas never really learned English. They're probably human. But where'd they come from? Is there even a ship registered anywhere called the Federia?"
"There are seventeen," Thieu sighed, "of which nine are cargo freighters. But they're all accounted for so far as the database goes. Which isn't very far - there's even a corvette named the Federia in spacedock at Procyon, being dismantled for scrap since it was too badly damaged to be worth repairing. Oh, and they use Captain and Lieutenant as a military rank, and their fighters only carry one man apiece, unlike ours. We're still processing."
"Can you get me a com-line to them on the same frequency and rig it up to be scrambled just like their conversation?" Fenway asked.
They all looked at her.
"Yes, ma'am," Thieu said after a moment. "If you think it's a good idea."
"I'd like to know what we just killed, Lieutenant, and where this little fleet fits into the equation. I want some answers. Besides, I doubt they were alone. This planet is only lightly defended and all too easy to overwhelm. I want to know what's out there to attack us. Let's head up to the bridge, and you can get me that comline. Captain LeBeau, find out what officers we have who took diplomacy and first contact courses."
"Already checked, ma'am," she sighed. "You got a choice of four - Ensign Martin Llwellyn, of the Marine Corps - he's full-time in the quartermaster's office…"
"Wasn't he the one who started the food-fight last year?" Dashwood asked suspiciously.
"Yes," Phuket said. "Got six days confined to barracks scrubbing floors, too."
"He's also got a missing foot," Reece said. "Lost it in combat, and he's the unlucky one in fifty-five thousand who can't take transplants. Even ones cloned from him. I had him in sickbay last week for a check-up and a physical." Reece was the senior medical officer on the planet, among her other duties, and had an encyclopaediac memory for her patients. "Lieutenant Shinghua Wu," LeBeau continued, "Who passed the course on paper but has been heard to say tact is a mutual agreement to be full of shit"
"I've met her," Fenway said. "If we ever need another interstellar war, I'll send her to do the negotiating. No. Who else?"
"Commander Atarani. Your XO on the Alabama."
"No way. He's great at routine and terrible at anything else. Besides, I want to have a head diplomat who can look after themselves in a fight, if they're not friendly. And how come there's only four?"
"It's a very unpopular course," Dashwood said. "It's never been needed since we stopped trying to talk to the Kangas, so most people don't take it and do something like biochemistry instead."
"Who's the fourth?" Phuket asked.
"Tamsin Reece."
Reece's jaw dropped. "Yeah - three hundred years ago! When I was at the Academy on Midgard. I was nineteen, Trace, and the rules were different then. Besides, I only took it so I'd have an easy class in between maths and military law in the morning."
"Suit yourself, but the four of you are the only ones who have any idea what the legal, ethical and military protocols are for first contact. Admittedly a lot go out the window since this lot speak English and could be human, but still…"
Thieu shook his head. "She's our only military doctor. Can we spare her?"
"For routine things, the orderlies, nurses and corpsmen have everything in hand," she said. "And for the surgeries and the like, you can call on the civilian doctors. I lend them a hand often enough that they won't mind repaying it too much. But if you do intend to keep me being a diplomatic, you should request another CMO." She shook her head. "What am I saying? I hate having to watch what I say all the time."
"I can think of one very good reason it should be you, Tamsin," Fenway said. "I doubt anyone else on this planet has as good a grasp of the need to hang onto secrets. I can trust you not to reveal things that would be imprudent. Even the Intelligence officers wouldn't know what to say and what not to in that regard."
"You mean not to tell them what we can and can't do, what our forces are like…"
"How wretchedly vulnerable since we started demobbing after the Kangas lost their homeworld…"
"Where we think the Kanga remnants fled to," Reece said slowly. "If any of these people know where to find them…"
"Then we could be in the shit well and proper. Those blasted politicians have run our military down so much in the last twelve years we're hardly fit to fight another war. We're so out of position it's not funny. Whatever else you do, Tamsin, don't let them know that. Now get me that comlink, Thieu."
Minutes later they were standing around on the bridge with a recorder rolling. The strangers' conversation was broadcast on the main speakers.
"But I still say we could sneak in, around the backside of the planet…"
"If I could make missiles like that, I wouldn't be so stupid as to leave a blind spot covering half a planet," someone else replied.
"We need those supplies, Captain," a third voice said. The voices were distorted and crackly, far poorer than the Terran Fleet were used to; their equipment was meant to give clear communication. "The Fleet's…"
"I know what state the Fleet is in," a male voice ground out. "And we wait for orders, clear?"
Trace made a motion to catch Fenway's eye. "That's the guy in charge, I think," she said. "I think his name is Adama."
"Alright. Thieu, you ready?"
"Speak and you're on the air, ma'am," he said, turning to face her and taking his hands off the keyboard. "It should work. It's really not all that complicated a scrambler to set up." Reece let a flicker of amusement cross her face at his arrogance, but she was the only one.
"Captain Adama?" Fenway said into her microphone.
"Who was that?" The voice said after a moment.
"Admiral Istia Fenway, Terran Fleet. Mind telling me what you're doing in my solar system hiding behind a comet?"
The silence on the airwaves could have stunned an ox.
Author's note:
Yes, the chapters are short as the story kicks off. They get longer now.
Oh, and I forgot the disclaimer: Own nothing, claim nothing, don't bother to sue, you can't get blood out of a stone.