Chapter 21: We don't have all day, you know

"We'd better set course for Gurconda Prime," Tamsin Reece said.

"Where's Gurconda Prime?" Lieutenant Gaida asked.

She froze. "Oh, bugger. Hold on a moment. Lieutenant Duella, can you get me a line to the fighter closest to the Galactica? That'll be the squadron leader."

"One moment." She did so. Tamsin took the proffered comset with a nod of thanks.

"Lebeau, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear, Reece. What have you fallen into this time?"

"Tell you later."

"That you will, Tamsin. What's up?"

"If I read you off some coordinates for recognisable stars, can you figure out the navigational system and translate Gurconda Prime into a coordinate set for me?"

"It's worth a try. Reel them off." Tamsin held a hand out for the Galactica's navigational charts, and didn't get them. She sighed. "Look, our coordinate systems are totally useless to you. I can't just point and say 'it's thataway', and this is the simplest solution. I only need a few stars to work from."

Gaida looked at Adama. He waited several seconds before nodding. The navigational charts were handed over.

"You'll need to know which stars are which," he said. "Our names will be meaningless."

"I just need a few unusual ones that I can recognise. I know Avarin's night sky very well, and I know my stellar navigation. Captain LeBeau has the stellar database for the entire galaxy in her navigational software so she can use these stars as fixed points in space to work out a system for translating the coordinates. I could probably do it myself if I really tried, but doing this at high speed is a bit out of my league." She flicked through the charts and read off coordinates at high speed, referencing a blue giant, a brown dwarf and three binary systems as well as the Avarin solar system.

"You got that?"

"Yeah. Got the system, too. It's a twist on the old system the Yanks used to use back when they were still running things out of NORAD - late twenty-first century old. They've just changed the origin reference point, that's all. Used to be Terra, not some planet way out on a different spiral arm. Probably their home planet. One moment. Got a pen?" Gaida was looking distinctly insulted.

"Reel it off." She jotted it down on the edge of a chart before tossing the paper back.

"Who were the Yanks?" Duella asked. "What kind of a name is that?"

" 'Yankee' was a slang term for people from the United States of America. NORAD was their military control facility for the Air Force and Space Corps, underneath Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. The Kangas hit it with a very effective nuke"
"Underground facilities usually survive nuclear attacks, if they're deep enough," Adama said in a tone that implied poor design. "Oh, most of it survived - but the exit shafts didn't, and so neither did the air shafts. We never found out whether they starved, suffocated or died of dehydration - in six hundred years we've never bothered to dig them out. But they kept broadcasting weak signals through a few intact wire aerials for a while, and then they stopped but the power didn't, and we knew they were dead." She shrugged. "Rescuing a bunch of buried dying people wasn't too high a priority in the face of picking up the pieces after a nuclear strike on almost all of America's major cities. The Kangas plastered one side ofTerra much worse than the other, and America took the brunt of the attack."

"These coordinates make for a long jump, sir," Gaida said. "The longest we've ever done."

"Well, it is a fair hop," Tamsin acknowledged. "But it's also the most heavily defended spot in the sector."

"Work it out, Lieutenant," Gaida was told.

"Do the tables even cover that?" One yeoman asked quietly as Tamsin flicked through the charts, frowning as if something was teasing at her memory.

"I'll calculate the jump, sir," Gaida said, "Then disperse coordinates to the fleet."

"Heellooo!" Captain LeBeau called over the com. "I do so hate to sound grumpy, Tamsin, but could you please get these people moving? We don't have all day, you know."

Tamsin sighed and took the com back off Duella. "Trace, do me a big favour, please."

"What?"

"Shut up for a bit." She handed the phone back. "If she starts to rant, feel free to tell her to stuff it. I doubt she'll be really offended."

Roslyn raised an eyebrow. "You don't think so?"

"I know Trace very well - since I was twelve, in fact. Very good fighter pilot and all the tact of a bull in a china shop. She'll wait while we sort this out… Sweet mother of Christ, you work out the jump vectors on paper?"

"Well, we can't use computers," Gaida said. "The Galactica's computers aren't networked."

"Why on Earth not? If you know how..."

"The, ah, the Cylons infiltrated our computer networks." Baltar looked almost ashamed. Roslyn noted the phrase 'why on Earth not'.

"By sabotage, right? So why cripple your ship-wide computers if the circumstances are unlikely to be repeated? I mean, wouldn't you notice a walking hardware shop roaming the ship and borrowing computer terminals?"

"Galactica dates back to the first Cylon Wars," Lee Adama explained. "Back then, not networking the computers was the only way to keep them secure. The Cylons infiltrated all the integrated networks, so we got rid of them. The Second Cylon War…" He fought to keep his face calm. "The Galactica's the only ship that survived long enough for it to really matter."

"Well, we network our computers all over the place, and the Cylons got nowhere. What kind of firewall programs did you use?" She caught Baltar's gaze. "Anti-hacking programs? Shunt routines? Protection algorithms? Please tell me you've at least heard of these things?" Baltar's mouth opened and shut soundlessly. Tamsin banged her head on the table and, with remarkable tact, changed the subject. "Why do you need that batch of equations?" She asked Gaida. "Alright, my math classes were a long way back, but I don't remember seeing that section in there."

He frowned. "I'm trying to work this out." Reece took the hint but kept flipping through the sheets. "Trace," She took the phone back, "Remind me again - Takeshita's Fourth Theory..."

"Who's Takeshita?" Lee asked as a bunch of equations that were absolutely meaningless to all the Colonials in the room came over the speakers. Baltar grabbed for some paper and started scribbling.

"Got it," Reece said, comparing the Colonial jump tables and her scribbles with practiced ease. "Right. I think I just proved it wrong."

"WHAT!" Everyone wearing an earphone winced.

"If I'm reading this right, these people use a totally different drive system. They never discovered..."

"Then how can we keep together..."

"We'll just have to improvise..."

"Crud, give me two seconds…"The two of them talked right over the top of each other, not bothering to finish their sentences.

"What are you talking about?" Commander Adama asked.
"Takeshita's Fourth Theory dealt with the impossibility of quantum teleportation in a linear universe. Problem is, your jump tables use equations that prove that theory wrong."

"How else can you achieve FTL travel?" Tigh asked.

"We use multi-dimensional drives. Basically you shift into dimensions where everything is much closer together - oh, hell, that's a really lousy explanation. I'll give you the maths later, but it took me five years to wrap my head around them so you may need some time. Unfortunately it also means we'll have a really interesting time trying to escort the fleet anywhere - and half our missiles… oh shit." She grabbed the phone. "Trace, stow all the MDMs. They'll be like blank warheads."

"Shit. That's half our armaments."

"MDMs?"

"Multi-dimensional missiles. They disrupt drive fields. One of those can take out even the biggest capital ships. And if the Cylons use the same drive principles you do, they're next to useless now." She paused. "Unless - you got much in the way of nuclear warheads I could borrow? Preferably deuterium-based fusion ones. I might be able to improvise something - there's one modification we tried before that might work..."

"You use nuclear warheads on your fighter craft?" Roslyn looked stunned.

"Well, of course. What else would we use? They're good for light tactical missiles. The heavier stuff is different, of course. For those you want something big."

The entire bridge was staring at her as if she were a different species, and she seemed totally oblivious. Reece shrugged. "What? Kangas take a lot of killing, and we didn't plan to lose."

Author's note: It's finally here, a longer chapter! About time, too. Much guilt here.