Neither of them is mine, because if they were, the Galactica would be using energy weapons!
Major Simi: Thanks for the feedback. The Daedalus class is of course pound for pound the most powerful warship in current SGC canon. That said however in all showings so far, the Odyssey has always required at least two barrages or 6-8 shots of the PBC to put an Ori mothership down. And while an Apophis flagship isn't quite an Ori mothership in terms of raw power, it's also much larger, with more staff cannons with which to pound the comparatively tiny 304.
Ari989: Close, but not quite what I have in mind. I'll have rough sketch up on deviantart in a day or so. Under the profile name IntermittentCoherent.
Laura Roslin squinted at the brightness as she awoke. Taking stock of her situation, she realized it was just that. Too bright. None of the dark, well worn walls of the Galactica's sick bay, nor even the newer but no less utilitarian feel of the Tau'ri. She wondered briefly if she was in the afterlife, and fought down a stab of panic as she considered the possibility.
"Ah, you're awake."
She turned her head sharply at the voice, her eyes wide as she considered the unfamiliar gray clad figure before her. Frowning, she forced her sleepy mind and dry throat to work.
"Who... Where?"
"Peace," he gestured soothingly. "You are safe."
"I am called Terrac." He spoke once more once she had visibly calmed. "I am in charge of the medical bay aboard the Tollan destroyer Omoc. We brought you aboard after you collapsed."
Comprehension dawned in the eyes of the President of the Colonies. It should not have been surprising, now that she thought about it. This was obviously not the Galactica, nor was it one of the Tau'ri ships. The Tok'ra also favored grays on their ship, and the Hak'tyl, from what she had seen of their ship's exterior, had a great deal of gilding.
"President Roslin," the more familiar face of Representative Narim approached as she composed herself. "It is good to see you awake. How do you feel?"
That was a very good question now that she thought of it. She felt fine. Absolutely fine! Wonder filled her eyes as she considered the implications. She turned once more to Terrac.
"The procedure was a success." Terrac spoke in answer to the unspoken question. "We managed to repair ninety-five percent of the cancerous cells in your body. Regrettably that is the most we could do. You remain genetically predisposed to the condition. You're simply too old to respond to the gene therapy we use to permanently remove the condition in our own young. Twenty, thirty years down the line, we could be looking at a relapse."
Laura goggled at him. And just started giggling. She realized she was grinning like a mad woman and that the Tollan were starting to look oddly at her but she did not care. She was cured.
"I'm... I'm sorry gentlemen." She apologized as she struggled to get herself under control. Without much success. "I..I don't mean to make fun of you or what you've done for me. In twenty years I will have reached the life expectancy of an average Caprican anyway. It's more than enough."
The Tollan nodded in understanding, and she tried a different tack.
"How long did the... procedure take?"
"Four hours." Terrac answered. "After that, we kept you under sedation for another two hours while we checked for other damage and induced muscoloskeletal growth stimulation and cellular regeneration. With your permission we would like to sedate you for a few more hours to ensure maximum benefit."
"The Admiral has delayed landings for another two hours at last count, President Roslin. You won't miss anything." Narim assured her.
"What about the planet below?" She suddenly remembered just as Narim mentioned it. "Is it Earth? The recon Raptor detected radiation."
"The constellations match the ones you have from your... map. There is some ambient radiation consistent with previous nuclear detonations. We'll know more once we're on the surface" Narim replied diplomatically.
"The radiation level is low enough that you should be safe so long as you don't stay for more than a few hours. Even in your condition." Terrac added.
"One last thing." She spoke once more, this time with a hint of shyness. "Would you mind informing Admiral Adama that I will be seeing him in two hours?"
"Not at all." Narim smiled. "In fact he came over as soon as he could after we brought you on board. He would have stayed the whole time, but he had duties to attend to. I will pass the word along."
Laura smiled back as she leaned back on the bed and let rest take her once more.
"Come on in and sit down." Admiral William Adama was already seated at his dining table when the two younger people, a man and a woman stepped into his private quarters. "Drink?"
The two nodded affirmative as they sat down, and the Admiral poured each of them some alcohol. It had already been several hours since the fleet arrived over Earth. Much of the first few hours was spent ensuring that none of ships in the fleet tried to land and cataloging the various pieces of debris in orbit. Earth had been abandoned for a thousand years after all. No telling what dangers awaited on the planet.
"How is the President?" Kara asked. Both she and Lee had a soft spot for the President, having each sided with her more than once over the years. Of course, they had also sided against her from time to time. It was a clear indicator of the ties that now existed between the key personnel keeping the fleet together.
"I've just received word that she regained consciousness for a short while, before going back to sleep." The President had picked quite the time to succumb to her illness. Colonial One had transmitted the emergency just as they jumped into orbit. It was touch and go for a while, Cottle swore she had been clinically dead for at least a couple of minutes, before the Tollans volunteered their facilities and beamed her aboard their ship.
He had tried to stay with her as the Tollans did their space magic, until Lee convinced him that he was needed elsewhere. There was the fleet to organize, a no fly zone over the planet to enforce. He had already delayed debriefing the two liaisons he had sent with the Tau'ri fleet as it was.
"So... what have you learned?"
"The Tau'ri, and for that matter the Tok'ra and the Lucian Alliance... they all use their capital ships like we would use gunships." Lee began. "The battles are fought at extremely high speed. Very fast paced. Ships closed at high speed, pummeled each other with their energy weapons, disengaged, then closed again."
"What about long range combat? Don't they do standoff barrages?" Kara asked.
"They do. The Tau'ri plasma beams make excellent standoff weapons, and we've seen them use missiles as well. But even their standoff ranges tend to decrease rather quickly. When you think about it, it's not surprising considering what they have to work with. All the ships are extremely fast and maneuverable even in real space. To get more solid hits they have to close the ranges. They pound each other at almost knife fight ranges until one's shields give out, at which point the side with depleted shields tries to disengage and circle around hoping to buy time for the shields to recharge. Rinse and repeat."
"It's fast paced, but nothing we can't adapt to." The Admiral observed.
"Our viper pilots should adapt fairly easily." The younger Adama agreed. "Same with our Raptor gunship pilots. That's assuming we ever field anything even coming close to their technology base. The acceleration is... simply insane. I've heard that the Hammond could accelerate to as much as half the speed of light. All without feeling a thing."
"Guess micro-debris' a lot less worrisome if you got those fancy energy shields." Starbuck grinned.
Admiral Adama simply nodded.
"Anything else?"
"Well there's one thing that I thought strange." The older Adama nodded before he continued. "Only the Hammond had secondary energy pulse weapons. All the ships had the primary beam armament, but for secondary armaments all of the Hammond's sister ships just used what they called railguns, kinetic energy weapons. I just thought it... inconsistent."
"Elaborate."
"See they already have a heavy hitting primary energy weapon, but with the Hammond being the only one with secondary energy weapons..." Lee's eyebrows furrowed as he tried to turn his thoughts to words. "It implies that the others are the ones with the standard configuration, while the Hammond is the testbed. And that does not make sense at all."
"And that's not the only part that doesn't make sense." Starbuck quipped.
"That's not the only part that's 'inconsistent'," she gestured quotation marks with her hands at the last word.
"I don't think Colonel Mitchell realized how much I could learn from the backseat of one of their fighters," she smirked. "I think he would have thought twice if he did."
"Their capital ships are hell on turbo-thrusters, but the fighters..." She grimaced. "Take away the magic inertial dampeners, the magic stealth and the magic jumpdrives, and what's left of the basic frame is primitive compared to even a Viper Mark Two. I was looking at the instrumentation, the primary drive units at the sides never even came close to the performance of a Mark Two's Vorams. They're substantially bigger, but still a lot less thrust-to-weight, unless they kick in the centerline rocket booster, and that's only got a very limited burn time."
"Vipers can fly two hours to a combat zone, fight at the end of it, and still have plenty fuel and life support for the two hour trip back." Starbuck continued. "They have maybe two, two and a half hours and that's it. Their pilots are very good, very professional, very aggressive, quite aside from maneuvering in space as if they're in atmo, which is only made possible by aforementioned magic inertial dampeners, but they don't even have environmentally sealed flight suits."
Admiral Adama looked pensively at the two as he considered the information they had brought to him.
"What are you thinking, Dad?"
The old veteran took a few seconds to organize his thoughts before replying. The Tau'ri and their inconsistent technology base were an interesting puzzle in of itself, of course. But in the greater scheme of things, that was only a piece of a much larger puzzle.
"Nothing but the long term survival of our people."
Gravel crunched under Laura Roslin's feet as she bleakly surveyed the landscape around her. All around as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but utter devastation.
They were standing on a small rise overlooking a riverbank. Off to the distance was what used to be a bridge. Ahead of them, across the river, stood the devastated remains of what used to be a massive city. Towers that once stood tall were now little more than decaying ruins. Their top and middle portions eroded by time, their exposed skeletons dominating the skyline.
"How long?" She all but croaked as she fought the tears.
"A thousand years, give or take." The Tollan scientist replied after fiddling with a device on his wrist.
Laura nodded. She had known intellectually what they would find, but nothing could have prepared her for what she felt now, standing here and seeing everything with her own eyes.
Suddenly an anguished cry off to the side drew her attention. Colonel Tigh was down on his knees, crying out his dead wife's name. He had executed her himself back on New Caprica for passing secrets to the enemy. Ironically in exchange for his freedom.
"Saul." The commotion had drawn the Admiral's attention as well.
"I killed her, Bill. Killed her myself." Saul sobbed. "She was the last one. The last of the Final Five."
Around him the others of the Final Five clustered. Their faces downcast, their own memories obviously jogged by having set foot on their homeworld.
She turned her gaze to the Admiral just as the wireless set in his hand chirped.
"Starbuck to Galactica Actual." Starbuck spoke into the wireless set as she approached the remains of the Viper. It was the main reason they had selected the river bank and the rise that overlooked it as landing zone. The beacon they were tracking was only a few minutes walk into the forest. It had not taken long before bits and pieces of Viper became visible. The Viper had obviously been disintegrating in midair as it lost altitude. Before long, a furrow became visible, created when the Viper plowed into the earth, coming to a stop in a clearing.
"Report."
"We've located the crash site." She said as she circled the crashed Viper. Most of it was gone, what remained of the aft sections in pieces behind it, and the fore section mangled during the crash. The cockpit canopy was broken and melted in several places but clearly still in closed position. The cockpit it was meant to protect, however...
"Cockpit's empty."
Galen, a Number Two Cylon who had chosen to accompany her held up a piece of debris he had found and stepped over to show it to her.
"Found part of the body number, still readable... seven-five-seven-Nebula-Constellation."
Kara's thoughts raced. 8757NC was the Viper she had been flying when she disappeared. It was the marking on the same Viper she was flying when she rejoined the fleet. But clearly the two were not the same.
"Copy." The Admiral's reply came over the wireless but Starbuck never heard. She had a far away look as images and memories long repressed assaulted her.
She had followed what she had thought to be a Heavy Raider into a storm of some sort, only to come face to face with a massive starship hiding inside it. But she had only had a minute to digest what she had found, as she found herself blinded in the flash of an FTL jump.
Somehow, when the ship jumped, she had been dragged along rather than be crushed. She would have been thankful at that if only the jump had not somehow also dismembered her Viper's engines. They just were not there anymore. Worse, the sudden loss of plasma containment and rupturing in the fuel lines had resulted in a rather spectacular explosion, and as the ship had jumped directly into the upper atmosphere, there was no place else for her to go but down.
This was where the memories got hazy. Any other pilot would have outright lost consciousness, but not Kara Thrace. Dazed and concussed, likely with other internal injuries as well, she never the less fought to regain control of the craft. Wrestling the RCS into some semblance of stability so she could punch out. For one brief moment she had succeeded. Not long enough to make good her ejection, but long enough to see a glimpse of the beautiful world above? Below her?
The image that was seared into her addled mind as she cleared the cloud cover just plain took her breath away in its beauty. But Gravity and air resistance were still in control and she continued to tumble into the atmosphere, burning up as she went.
That should have been the end of the line for her. Or at least, rapidly approaching it. The wings were long gone. Mostly with the engine, and what remained afterwards had since been sheared off. The RCS was gone as well, the reservoir for the propellant also since breached along with the life support systems.
And so she sat there, Viper burning up around her and frankly out of options. She had never been able to eject. The unstable high speed trajectory, coupled with the superheated air around her craft would have made that suicide. When the end came it was in a flash of white light.
Ok. Not quite the end, she found out later. Her next hazy memory was looking out from what seemed like the inside of a coffin. She would have panicked, if she had been even halfway coherent. As it was she just stared at the two hooded figures outside that seemed to be in some sort of discussion. The... coffin... was in an upright position, or at least only slightly tilted, making it easy for one of them to turn towards her and gaze at her through the transparent material. The face was hooded, but it seemed to urge her to go back to sleep, which she was in no condition to argue against.
When she next awoke the ... pod? ... coffin? was open and she fell down to all fours as her legs gave under her. Her flightsuit was in tatters around her, clearly burned through in places to uncover her pale skin. She needed to clean herself up, and somehow, she knew where to go, stumbling along on long unused legs. When she was finished a crisp, new flightsuit was waiting for her, just the right size.
All this and still no sign of her mysterious benefactors. She knew for certain now that they had somehow snatched her out of her burning Viper. Saved her from certain death. Still, she somehow knew what she was supposed to do, and where she was supposed to go next.
Her feet led her to a large open space with the far side showing an image of a beautiful blue planet. A Viper Mk II sat with its gleaming white and red trimmed paint job. Next to it was a hooded figure.
"The time has come for you to rejoin your people."
The hooded figure spoke before she could articulate the questions that had been running around in her mind.
"Who... What?" Mentally recovering herself, Starbuck tried again. "Who are you?"
"That does not matter anymore. What matters is that your time away from your people is at an end."
She silently digested this before asking again.
"How long have I been gone?"
"Two months by your reckoning."
So long, she thought. Why had it taken so long?
"It took a while to find your fleet in the vastness of space." The hooded figure seemed to read her mind.
"Is this Earth?"
"Yes. One of many that its inhabitants have named such."
She puzzled over the alien being's words, but she no longer had time to ask any more questions.
"Now go."
As the alien spoke the image of Earth disappeared in a bright flash. Only to be replaced by an image of deep space. A nebula, if the clouds of gas were any indication. Her alien host was also starting to fade.
"Your people need you to guide them."
"Will I ever find Earth again? Will I ever see you again?" She thought as she hurriedly sealed her helmet and climbed into the Viper's cockpit.
"Yes. Perhaps."
With a jerk Kara forced her attention back to the present. She had found her way back, alright. She had lead her people here to Earth. Only to find nothing. Nothing but desolation and devastation.
"What do we do now, Kara?" Galen's question cut into her thoughts.
"We head back. There's nothing more for us here."
Roslin looked at the impromptu dig site as if it was a pit of vipers. It may well be. What had been the crest of a Centurion's metallic head sticking out of the ground had become something more. Upon excavation the Centurion had turned out to be a model never used by the Cylons. Further investigation had found the remains of humans scattered around it.
The Tollans had just finished running their instruments over the artifacts, and the verdict was clear. The human remains were separated from the Colonials by almost four thousand years of genetic drift, but had almost none from the Cylons.
Those were human form Cylons buried with the Centurion.
"This changes everything." She looked to the side to find Zarek, along with the Cylon model One calling himself John.
"This was the home of the Thirteenth Tribe, they called it Earth, and they gave their newly invented resurrection technology and genetic material to make the Cylons of Cyrannus humans like them, in exchange for peace." John smiled bitterly. "That single act of kindness drove my brothers insane. They had known nothing but war, and could not understand, so they masterminded the Plan."
"When the Quorum gets their act together..." Zarek spoke.
"We have to head them off," she agreed, hardly believing she and Zarek were agreeing on something here and now. "Keep a firm grip on what's going to happen. The Cylons are our cousins. That's clear now. We can't afford to stay apart. The other Cylons are still out there. Still hunting us. Both of our peoples."
"We have to get the Cylons on the Quorum. Full representation as descendants of the Thirteenth Tribe." Zarek continued. "You put forward the motion and I'll play dissenter. We steer them to the middle. They'll never know what hit them."
Gaius Baltar watched the President, Vice President and Cylon leader speak in hushed tones as he sat perched upon a large boulder. In the distance he saw Starbuck emerge from the treeline, the Two at her heels. Off to the side, the impromptu dig site was turning out ever more remains, both human and robotic. A short distance away, the Colonel had finally quieted down, though he still had that devastated look as he sat on a different boulder. What now, he thought to himself.
This is where we part ways, Gaius. He turned to look at her and gaped at the shapeless cloak that she wore in place of her usual slinky number. She smiled faintly at him as she pulled up the hood. Her face disappearing beneath it.
Our penance is done. The prohibition has been lifted. Before he had a chance to consider her words and attire Gaius realized that other cloaked figures had appeared in the clearing. All of them in shapeless cloaks, features concealed beneath their hoods. Speaking out one by one, and yet all in unison as well.
Twice before we heard your ancestors cry out for succor and twice before we gave it. The first time, we instructed slaves to flee through the Astra Porta and to seal it behind them by burying it beneath the ground. Gaius realized he was not the only one who could see them. Cloaked figures were standing next to Starbuck, Caprica, the President and many others, even the Final Five. And they could all see, even the Tau'ri. They all listened wide eyed as the figures spoke further.
The second time, we taught the survivors of a ruined world to travel the stars and led them to a place of safety. Gaius realized that the cloaked figures were starting to glimmer. The previously drab gray cloaks were now a gleaming white.
For this we were sanctioned, cast out and doomed to be tied to your peoples, watching you until the day you stood together as one. That has now come to pass. Gaius watched, spellbound as the figures started to blur around the edges. Around him the others, Colonial, Cylon and Tau'ri alike were the same. They were now so luminous that anthropomorphic features such as arms and legs were no longer distinct.
We are the lords of Kobol. Worship us not for we are not gods. We are Furlings. The first of our people to ascend. Finally they were now little more than balls of light, floating upwards and fading away.
Boomer walked purposefully towards the Raptor she had prepped. Finally, all the preparations were done. Pausing, she smiled at her passenger as she helped her climb into the cabin. Before climbing in herself, she took one last circuit around the Raptor, checking for any damage.
As she sealed the cabin, she gave everything a good once over. Making sure everything was properly stowed and secured. The Raptor started moving just as she strapped herself in. The platform it was on rising through the airlocks and to the launch bay, just as she had programmed it to.
By then she was finished with all her checks and the Raptor gracefully lifted off using her ventral RCS thrusters. As she slowly throttled the main drive open the Raptor began to accelerate out of the cavernous launch bay and into open space.
In only a few minutes she engaged the FTL drive for her first jump. A very short one. Jumping from inside gravity wells was always a calculated risk. Gravity wells tended to be always in motion, and the rotation always screwed up the FTL vectors. Errors that tended to compound the farther the jump was. Orbiting a singularity as the Colony was, however, she did not have much choice. Slowpoking her way out of the gravity well would eat up a good chunk of her Tylium reserve. And with how far she had to go, she would be needing it.
The usual practice was to jump just far enough to get out of the gravity well, and calculate a more stable FTL vector from there. This is just what she did, and as the Raptor emerged from the jump just outside the Gravity well, she flipped the little craft around.
The view was breathtaking even to the naked eye. The entirety of the surrounding space was littered with debris. What used to be planets and moons torn asunder when the local star went nova and then subsequently turned into a singularity. Locked in a stable orbit within the debris field was the Cylon mobile homeworld. The Colony.
She paused, gazing at it wordlessly she began to program the FTL drive for the first of several jumps. It was huge. Built around the ship the Final Five had used to travel from Earth, and subsequently expanded upon. The original design had not even included an FTL drive, and the Final Five had simply made the one thousand lightyear trip at relativistic speed. Over the years, the entire ship had been expanded as the Ones prepared to commit genocide. Permanent docking bays for the old Baseships were the first ones added. Followed eventually by slipways for the new ships, along with cloning banks and habitation areas for the Cylons and fabrication plants for the Centurions and Raiders. All at the behest of the Ones.
Jump
The Ones. They could spout off all they wanted about wanting to see gamma rays, hear X-rays and smell dark matter, and the sheer beauty and savagery of this place they chose was a statement in of itself. But in the end, they were little more than children, lashing out in wounded pride against parent figures who in their twisted perceptions had wronged them. And they had co-opted the consensus in pursuit of that grudge.
Jump
She had first realized it when the Threes had been boxed. The Consensus was supposed to be the final arbiter, and yet the Ones had unilaterally proclaimed the Threes flawed without even a semblance of consultation. Using criteria that none of the others save the Ones' lackeys could find valid.
Jump
As she reviewed her memories of New Caprica she began to see a pattern. He rarely ever spoke as the Fours and the Fives, more often the latter rather than the former, continually escalated the abuse and oppression. And yet, his approving smile was all you needed to see to know whose lead they were following. The whole idea of moving in with an entire army of Centurions had been his to begin with!
Jump
And then there was the ambush. Again that was all him. She would forever mourn the losses of that day. But it also gave her an opportunity. One that she seized at very high risk. In the end she got the information she needed, and every minute since then had been spent preparing to make her move against the self-avowed atheists.
Jump
Atheists her perfectly cloned ass! The way the Ones ranted and raved about the flaws of humanity and how deserving of punishment they were, it was worse than religion. But it did not matter any more. It was all going to be over soon.
Colonel Saul Tigh fought the urge to fidget as he sat on a jump seat aboard Raptor 307. He was not sure what made him uncomfortable about flying in one now when he did not feel so before. Perhaps it was because he now knew the truth. That his first memories of learning to fly this craft were all false. All the missions flown during the Cylon War, all those medals, Officer Candidate School, the Brennik, fighting the Cylons hand to hand. That last one forced another bitter chuckle from him... He had been getting a lot of those lately... All of it false.
He morosely gazed at the Admiral once more. Once again wondering what exactly he was doing here. He would have been perfectly fine on the CIC of the Galactica. Instead his old friend had dragged him along on some pretense to talk with the Tau'ri. He was not sure what more was there to talk about. Earth had been found! And it was a wasteland!
Saul, it's okay. Everything's in place. We'll be reborn...again. Together.
That one was real. The recovered memory was as vivid as if it had just happened yesterday. Suddenly he was back in the apartment building lobby. Trying to dig his wife... Ellen... out. Utterly failing, and having no choice but hold her hand as they waited for the end. An end that came soon enough.
Is that how it worked? They program you to be my friend? Emulate all the qualities I respect. Tell me jokes...and I laugh at them.
That one was also real, and had in fact happened just yesterday. His old friend had later admitted that he had already expected Earth to be uninhabitable, but that it was still a different matter entirely to see it with his own eyes. He had almost literally dived into his stash of Ambrosia when he got back. And, once sufficiently inebriated, gone to Saul in an attempt to goad him into helping him commit suicide.
Thankfully one of them had managed to keep a level head. Others had not been so lucky. Dualla had put a gun to her head. After apparently having a dinner date with Lee one last time. The younger man was devastated.
"Hey! What's with all the ruckus up there?" He bellowed as he realized that Racetrack and Skulls were suddenly chattering excitedly. Bill looked up as well, curious.
"An Eight piloting a Raptor just jumped into the fleet's perimeter." Skulls explained.
"I take it they didn't just blow her out of the sky?"
"No sir, they didn't." Racetrack replied smoothly. "She asked the Tau'ri for landing instructions straight off."
"What about us?" Admiral Adama asked the pilot.
"Still on approach, sir. Fact, she's queued in right behind us."
"Good." Saul grumbled. "Lets us get to the bottom of this."
By the time he and Bill stepped off the Raptor, the unknown Raptor was just clearing the energy shield that maintained the atmosphere in the landing bay. He winced as the actual landing was rougher than usual, reminding him of another Cylon that had at one time been inserted into the fleet. Once the Raptor had powered down, he and Bill stepped over to join the gathered Tau'ri officers and security marines.
When the hatched opened, the Eight already had her helmet in her hands. He took one look at her, and suddenly, he did not know how, but he knew.
"Boomer?"
It was when Boomer stepped aside and made way for her passenger to disembark that he really stopped short. The pale hair and face was unmistakable, and yet her features also had a different cast to them. As if she had suddenly been rid of all the demons that had plagued her and by extension their marriage. It then hit home to him just how far they had come. That it was always her all throughout multiple lives.
"Ellen."