Author: Cyclone
Feedback: Please be gentle.
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.
Rating: Nothing worse than on the shows, except maybe language.
Spoilers: Up to Symphony of Light for Robotech, with a few ideas picked here and there from other sources. For the other... you'll see.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: A navigational error throws the SDF-3 into the middle of another war.
Author's Note: Beware the vorpal plot bunny.
"All fighters, take position," Captain Maximillian Sterling, CAG of the SDF-3 Pioneer, said coolly. He wasn't like most combat pilots, never had been. He was quiet, unassuming, and outwardly modest, traits which belied the fact that he was a veteran combat pilot and an ace several dozen times over. A few people had made the mistake of thinking that his laid back nature meant he would be easy to intimidate. There weren't many of those; being married to a Zentraedi ace that most Zentraedi were in awe of did have its perks.
"Deploy smokescreens," he ordered.
Rick may have allied his small fleet with the Colonials, but the Pegasus and her crew were still unknown factors, and the REF pilots were still under orders to remain in fighter mode when they could be witnessed by the Colonials.
After all, they didn't want to start a panic.
Under cover of smoke and concealed from sensors by their shadow cloaking devices, over five hundred Shadow Legiosses reconfigured their Alpha portion to battloid mode. They clung to the hull of the drifting Mercury-class battlestar and began firing their massive Beta thrusters, slowing the ship down.
What the hell is going on out there? Admiral Cain wondered. The DRADIS was completely blank, and smoke obscured the battlestar's exterior. Whatever it was, it was something these supposed Earthers wanted to hide. That, in turn, made it something she wanted to find out.
Earth. What a crock. They may have advanced technology, but so far, she hadn't seen any evidence that they were fairy tale heroes from the promised land.
That they would use smoke in space had to be the strangest thing Cain had ever encountered, but it was informative in its own right. It wasn't hard to figure out that they must have some sort of advanced stealth technology -- the blank DRADIS screens were a testament to that -- and the fact that they still used smokescreens to hide whatever it was they were hiding probably meant that their stealth system wasn't going to fool the Mark I Eyeball.
They might be allies now, but as far as Admiral Cain was concerned, these Earthers were still unknown factors.
"Pegasus, Galactica," the female voice crackled over the wireless as the Pegasus's motion relative to the rest of the ships slowed to a halt. "Do you require medical evacuation?"
"Pegasus Actual," Admiral Cain replied, speaking into the wireless handset and motioning for her communications officer to kill the speakers. "Med-evac to where?"
"Galactica Actual," Adama's voice crackled in reply. "Your people will be med-evacced to the Earth ship called the Wright. It's a tender and mobile dock, and it has better medical facilities than any other ship in either fleet. Admiral Hunter is offering the use of the Wright's facilities to repair the Pegasus."
Cain considered that for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was low, "Do you trust these people, Adama?"
"Do you trust me, Admiral?" came the quiet reply. "As a fellow officer, I am asking you to stand down. Let me take the watch, Admiral. Let us help you tend to your people."
"Move it! Move it! Move it!" bellowed Master Chief Brian Niles. "We've got med-evac coming in! I want this hangar cleared in ten minutes!"
The Wright's little-used aft hangar bay was already cleared of veritechs, but it was still littered with ordnance racks, gun pods, and even a few storage-folded Cyclones. They were even locking down the hangar's computer terminals, just in case. Dr. Grant and her medical teams were standing by, and they had even flown over Galactica's chief medical officer, Dr. Cottle, and a bunch of other Colonial medics and nurses.
This was definitely not the best time to discover if there were any potentially fatal differences between Earth people and Colonial people, but they had little choice.
"Captain!" Simon called as he stormed onto the bridge of the former Colonial Independent Freighter Serenity, now the Colonial Medical Transport Serenity.
Captain Reynolds looked up, "What are you doing on my bridge? Don't you have patients to see to, doc?"
"I need more serisone," he demanded. "I've got two patients in the hold drowning in their own fluids."
"You've already got all the meds we have," Reynolds shot back. "We're only ten minutes from the Wright."
"Without more serisone, they won't last ten minutes!"
"Well, there's not a frakking thing I can do about that! I can't give you what I don't got, now can I?!" Reynolds snarled. "Now get your ass back to the hold and..." He jabbed a finger into Simon's chest with each of his next words, "Do! Your! Job!"
"Uh, Mal?" the pilot called as Simon -- the not-quite-doctor who was in the middle of his clinical rotations when the Cylons nuked the Colonies -- left the bridge.
The captain whirled and snapped, "What, Wash?"
"I think you need to see this for yourself," Wash said, pointing out the front viewport. Curious, Mal looked.
The Wright's aft hangar loomed in front of them, doors open, with an LSO waving them in and medical crews standing by.
And not a single one of them wearing EVA gear.
"Huh," Mal muttered. "Wonder how they do that."
"It's nice to actually have some other qualified doctors on board for once," Dr. Cottle muttered gruffly as he and the Earth doctors -- led by Jean Grant -- tended to the Pegasus's wounded, assisted by most of the fleet's all-too-small supply of medics and nurses, a number matched by the Wright's own medical crew. The Earth medical officers had been paired off with Colonial medics and nurses on the off-chance that the similarities between the Colonial people and Earth's people were only skin deep.
"Believe me, I know what you mean," Jean shot back with a wry smile. "I was the only xeno-qualified doctor in our last campaign for far too long."
"Hmph," Cottle harrumphed. "Little need for that here. If we weren't so short-handed, we wouldn't need any help." He snorted and added, "Unless you've got a cure for cancer on these big ships of yours."
"Depends on how far it's progressed," Jean replied.
Cottle stiffened, "I beg your pardon?"
"The Tirolian cloning technology we've salvaged included a lot of information on controlling cell growth and cell division," she elaborated absent-mindedly, keeping her focus on the patient she was tending to. "With that, we can control most forms of cancer in the early stages. If we had one of our hospital ships here, we could even clone the patient a new body and transfer the mind over, but we only do that as a last resort. It gets tricky if the cancer is familial."
"This is unprecedented," a Number Three said. "Two basestars were eliminated as if they were nothing."
"Well, I'd say it's time to set a precedent, wouldn't you?" pointed out a Cavil model.
"We need to consider what this means," a Number Five pointed out. "What else might these so-called people of Earth be able to do?"
"What we need is decisive action," the Cavil replied. "This weapon of theirs can't be as effective in close. Ten basestars should be able to dispose of them. Send twenty."
"We can't spare that many," a Number Six said. "We need more information first. They must have a weakness. If we discover it-"
"If we discover it," the Cavil interrupted. "Mark my words. If we wait too long, we're going to regret it."
"Admiral, Commander," Admiral Hunter nodded to both Cain and Adama.
"Admiral," Helena nodded back in reply as Adama did the same. They stood in her office aboard the Pegasus, which now rested snugly in the collapsible scaffolding of the Wright. The damage had been extensive; she barely had enough crew still fit for duty to set up a functional -- if barely -- two-shift duty schedule, which was going to be hellish for the crew. She had also lost one of her best potential sources of intelligence when the brig was breached during the battle, spacing Lieutenant Thorne, several of his assistants, and the Cylon prisoner.
She had already reviewed Adama's report on the Galactica's activities since the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. It seemed awfully convenient to her that Earth was suddenly both confirmed to exist and off-limits to the fleet, but they needed the Earthers too much.
Especially if they were going to take out that unknown ship the Pegasus had been tracking. This was going to be a long session.
Dr. Grant wiped her brow and sighed, "Is that the last of them?"
"They're all stable," Dr. Cottle nodded.
"Good," she said, peeling off her surgical gloves and heading for the door.
"Where are you off to?" Cottle called.
"I've still got one more patient to see to," she said, waving back at him as she disappeared down the hall.
"...and then we board and seize the ship. From the data Commander Adama provided us with, my marines should have more than enough firepower to take the ship."
Helena frowned at Hunter skeptically. She couldn't believe the plan he had proposed. It was insane!
Yet... he seemed quite confident. She glanced back at the outline of the plan Hunter had sketched out, and she couldn't see any obvious flaws in it, assuming Hunter's equipment worked as advertised.
Except, of course, for the fact that it relied on the Cylons dancing to their tune.
"It's a bold plan," she finally said. "You really think we can pull this off?"
"Audacity, Admiral," Hunter replied. "Always audacity. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you have to take chances if you wanna win, and the bulk of the danger falls on the Pioneer, the Xerxes, and my marines. Trust me; they can handle it. We just need to pick a target to hit and get some close recon on this mystery ship; I'll have one of my fighters check it out."
"Reconnaissance reports possible Cylon activity in an asteroid belt not far from here," Adama suggested. "Could be a tylium refinery."
"And how's my favorite patient?" Jean asked with a dimpled smile.
The infectious grin spread across her patient's face as she teased, "Isn't it your job to tell me?"
"Well, let's find out," Jean said, turning to the diagnostic computer. "The lab work should be back by now." Her smile faded as her face twisted in confusion. This shouldn't be. She had just spent several hours treating Colonial patients, and none of them -- none of them -- had these results.
"What's wrong?" her patient asked anxiously.
"Nothing, Sharon," Jean shook her head, trying to make sense of it as she turned back to her patient.
"That's not nothing," Sharon half-accused, shaking her head worriedly.
"Nothing bad," Jean amended. "It's just... I don't understand why you have protoculture in your blood."
"'Protoculture'?"
Author's Postscript:
It's becoming a game of "Spot the Cameos" now.