Neither Stargate nor Battlestar Galactica are mine, because if they were, BSG would have had an actual ending instead of the pale excuse for an ending that it got.
After struggling with the draft for months on end(literally) I've decided to release the epilogue as a two-parter.
Also, anybody want to take a stab at identifying the cameos we've been getting? I'll publish a full list at the end of the second part.
So without further ado...
Admiral William Adama strode determinedly after the Tau'ri junior officer as he led the way deeper into the Odyssey. Following behind him was his Executive Officer, Saul Tigh, himself followed by representatives from both the civilian leadership and the Cylons.
The last few days had been hectic as Cylon, Colonial and Tau'ri alike went over their newly acquired ships with a fine tooth comb, checking for possible traps, assessing damage and generally evaluating their spaceworthiness. The general hardiness of the Cylon centurions meant they paid little attention to such niceties as environmental sealing or life support. Given the complete lack of shields, each one had to be checked and rechecked to make sure they were fit for habitation by living, breathing humans.
"So what really happened back there?"
The question had been a long time in coming, but his previous attempt to ask had been derailed by Boomer's sudden arrival. Then it had been one thing after another. The attack had to be planned, personnel selected and ships provisioned. Then he had had to deal with the aftermath of the wildly successful operation. Once the first ship had been pronounced to be satisfactory, the civilian transports then had to be coaxed into offloading their passengers onto the vastly more spacious and heavily protected Baseships.
But now, finally things had settled enough that the Admiral could delegate all the things that needed to be done to his junior officers and he could devote his undivided attention to seeking the answers he sought. And he was not alone. With him was his Executive Officer Saul Tigh, along with the President, Vice President, his son, representatives from the Quorum and the Cylons. Even Baltar had gotten wind of the gathering, lurking along behind the Cylons.
He watched, expectantly as the Tau'ri officers traded looks, communicating wordlessly among themselves. Finally they all turned to Doctor Jackson, who simply sighed.
"We'd better get seated," he muttered as he led the gathering out of Colonel Davis' office and down the hall to a conference room.
Once everyone was seated around the conference table, he began speaking.
"When a species has sufficiently evolved, they ... no longer require physical bodies. This is what is commonly known as ascension. They ascend to a higher plane where they exist eternally as beings of pure energy, with greater knowledge and power."
He held up his hand just as several members of the party was about to speak up. "If you'll let me finish, I'll answer as many questions as you want later."
"Now where were we... Ah yes. Now even as advanced and as powerful as they are, there are still limits on what they can do. And there are still rules to follow. One of those is a restriction against interfering in the affairs of lesser evolved beings. In our affairs, as it were. We believe that is what occurred here."
"Are you saying these are gods?" A Cylon sputtered, finally able to speak now that Daniel had stopped.
"No, no. Not gods." Daniel shook his head emphatically. "In fact that's another one of the major rules. They cannot let the less evolved worship them as gods. As for actual gods, who knows? There's more than one higher plane of existence. The higher you go the greater your power and understanding of the universe. Perhaps there's even a plane above all these where gods reside. "
"All this talk of higher level beings is interesting I'm sure," Doctor Baltar spoke up. "But how does it relate to Kobol and its descendants. And by that I mean those in the Cyrannus sector and on Earth below?"
Daniel sorted through the folders in front of him and lifted one up.
"This is a preliminary report from the archaeological team we left on Kobol. We haven't gotten around to reproducing copies for you yet, though rest assured we fully intend to. And you're also free to send people to the planet check the evidence and their findings. Anyway, our lead archaeologist believes she has a fairly close approximation of what happened."
"Like most other planets where humans reside, it was the Goa'uld who brought humans to Kobol. But, unlike other planets where the human seed populations were taken from only one tribe, on Kobol several Goa'uld brought humans sampled from several different tribes."
"Why?" President Roslin asked, now engrossed in the tale.
"The evidence suggests they were trying to breed a superior strain of human. Humans were a fairly recent discovery as potential hosts for the Goa'uld parasites, about five or six thousand years. They were trying to tinker with it a bit and see if they could breed the traits they desired. Beauty, strength, maybe even paranormal abilities."
"Like pet animals?" The President's disgust was palpable. The Tau'ri simply shrugged, long familiar with the depravities of the Goa'uld.
"This proceeded for several generations. While the seed populations dwelt for the most part, in their own settlements spread out all over valley where the Goa'uld capital was located, the products of the breeding program themselves became the slave race that maintained and worked in the Goa'uld capital city itself. Then one day the slaves escaped."
"Good for them." Colonel Tigh grunted, with nods of agreement from the Cylons.
"By then, about four thousand years ago, the Goa'uld administrator of the time had been putting the slaves to work building ships for him. He called himself Pelops. I don't know if the name rings any bells for you. But we've encountered his work elsewhere. In any case, the slaves revolted, killing him before escaping through the Stargate. Upon arriving at their destination, they buried the Stargate there to prevent pursuit."
"They escaped to Earth? To the planet below?" Lee clarified.
"That is correct. The Stargate we captured aboard Medusa still had traces of soil from the planet's surface. So we're reasonably certain it's the same Stargate the Thirteenth Tribe's ancestors buried when they first arrived."
"This Stargate, marvelous device from the way you describe it by the way, sounds ridiculously simple to operate." Gaius Baltar spoke up.
"It is." Colonel Carter agreed. "Six coordinates to define a point in three-dimensional space plus a seventh to define a point of origination. Each of these represented by specific glyphs depicting constellations on the dialing mechanism. You just punch in the six out of the thirty-nine glyphs on the dialing device, and press the origination point. Every stargate has a unique address represented by these six glyph combinations, and once entered correctly, the stargate will create a wormhole connection to the stargate specified by the address."
"Six points? Pardon me, but, that's slightly excessive. You only need four points to define a point in space." Baltar argued.
"That may be so, but its creators did design it with a six plus one coordinate system and that's the way it's used now."
"Who built them anyway?" Natalie, now almost fully recovered, wondered aloud.
"The Ancients did." Doctor Jackson replied. "An extragalactic race of humans who have long since ascended."
"And that neatly looped us back into talk of ascended beings." John, the representative One grumbled.
"Indeed." Colonel Davis agreed with a wry smile.
"Look, I understand you people use seven day weeks to measure dates?" Daniel asked.
The Cylons and Colonials agreed uncertainly.
"Well, so do we." Taking note of the surprised looks he got, Daniel continued. "So do most other human cultures we've encountered. Imagine that."
"That's... fascinating." Gaius Baltar was at a loss for words.
"For some strange reason, the number seven is hugely significant to the vast majority of human cultures in the galaxy. Someone far back in mankind's collective history had a deep regard for the number and passed that on to their descendants, even as these descendants spread throughout the stars. It may have been these Ancients, since some of them did intermarry with the earliest humans, but we don't really know anymore. The specifics are lost to time. Anyway, we digress." Daniel paused to gather his thoughts before continuing.
"So, back to Kobol. The slaves revolted, the capital was abandoned, and the Goa'uld overlord killed. Somehow none of the other Goa'uld came back to retaliate. We think that by then they were far past caring about what happened on Kobol. We know for a fact that Yu for example, one of the Goa'ulds with identifiable stelae on Kobol, had by then already established his primary holdings on the other side of the galaxy."
"Kobol doesn't natively have Naquada. The mineral around which most Goa'uld technology is built on. Whatever Naquada Pelops was using for his operations, he would have shipped it from elsewhere. Somehow none of the other Goa'uld thought to scavenge around the capital. We think they just wrote Kobol off, same as they did our planet after our ancestors rebelled. It was at the far end of their territory anyway. This allowed the remaining transplanted populations to grow and advance. Over a period of roughly a thousand years, they scattered all over the world and their technology developed to an industrial age. The past under Goa'uld domination forgotten and the valley in which the old capital was located abandoned. And then disaster struck."
"How?" The President asked, spellbound by the tale the Tau'ri archaeologist was weaving.
"An asteroid hit the planet. The natives hadn't advanced yet to the point of having any sort of defense. The damage was catastrophic. Tidal waves engulfed most of the coastal areas."
"If they're any way like us, a good chunk of the major population centers would have been built along the coasts." Lee Adama grimaced.
"A large fraction of the global population died. The planet plunged into an artificial ice age. The survivors started fighting among themselves for the dwindling amount of resources available. Land, food, even human breeding stock."
"That bad. That means they were still fractured along nation-state or tribal lines, no unified government." D'Anna theorized.
"If there was one, it probably collapsed in the aftermath of the impact." Daniel agreed. "As the fighting continued, more and more died, worsening the already precarious situation for the survivors even more. Eventual extinction was all but assured. Finally, several groups of survivors crossed over the mountain ranges into the long abandoned lands where the Goa'uld capital had been. There they found the uncompleted ships Pelops had been building."
"Those ships should have been lying idle for centuries!" Boomer exclaimed incredulously.
"Things built with Naquada tend to last. Stargates have been around for tens of thousands of years. Most of the Ha'taks flying around now were built hundreds of years ago. The Goa'uld built them to last. We think this is when the second case of interference occurred. The ships of course were incomplete. But the basic frames were there. They added to it, expanded it, sealed it up to be spaceworthy and somehow added the FTL drives. But it wasn't any type of FTL drive Pelops or his Goa'uld brothers would have used. It was a type of FTL drive commonly used by the Furlings. Confirmed by our contacts with other races who were their contemporaries."
"You're saying these ascended Furlings helped our ancestors complete the galleons, gifted them with FTL technology and helped them escape this world?" Galen Tyrol summarized.
"And paid the price for it." Daniel nodded.
"They were punished for interfering, when not interfering would have killed off our ancestors." Ellen Tigh muttered, trying to wrap her head around the idea.
"How were they punished?" Tom Zarek asked.
"Typically the punishment is to be forced by the Others back into mortal form. Or occasionally allowed to remain incorporeal, but be bound in some way."
"Bound?"
"Bound." Daniel repeated, not having any other word for it. "Their powers limited in some form. Some are bound so that where a particular group of mortals go or stay, there they also go. Or stay."
"That sounds like what happened here."
"We think so too." Daniel agreed.
"What about Athena?" Lee suddenly spoke up. "And what about the aliens that rescued Starbuck?"
"Err... no information about those. Unfortunately." Daniel answered apologetically. "If I were to hazard a guess, Athena could have been one of the tribal leaders who played some sort of pivotal role the specifics of which is lost. Possibly one involving self sacrifice. As to the aliens Major Thrace encountered, no idea at all. We can only hope they eventually come forward to identify themselves."
There was silence as the gathered people processed this.
"It all makes sense now." Ellen Tigh suddenly spoke up. "Now that I think about it."
"We were never able to develop FTL. Not even close. Hundreds of experiments on a dozen theories. Nothing. And then my father submitted a proposal that went in the opposite direction. Instead of shortening travel times over interstellar distances thru FTL, he proposed to extend the lifespan of crews on interstellar voyages."
"Using cloning and resurrection." Cam clarified.
"And artificial stasis technology." Galen added.
"It was as if voices were speaking to us in our heads." Saul spoke, his face openly disbelieving what he was saying. "Telling us where to go, what to look for, what to do with what we found."
"He based his proposal on technology found in a cache of ancient alien artifacts, hidden deep inside a mountain." Ellen's voice was distant as she brought up old memories. "I was on vacation from the university when it was found, Saul was just an intern for my father then. The place must have been untouched for thousands of years. Nevertheless we knew what it was for, how to reverse engineer it. It took time, for our own technologies to catch up, but in the end we never had any doubts."
"The machines launched their war on the same day we were to commence human trials." Sam Anders spoke blankly. "One minute I was stopping by a street vendor on my way to work, the next I was waking in a resurrection tank in orbit."
"We watched, helpless, as the bombs went off." It was Tory's turn to take up the tale. "The machines didn't have anything that could reach us, but neither did we have any weapons to hit them with. In the end, we had no choice but to set a course for Cyrannus and hope to find our brothers and sisters."
She laughed bitterly as she realized something.
"We somehow knew where to go. The voices told us."
There was silence as the gathered Colonials and Cylons, no, they were all Colonials now, processed the words of the Final Five. Digesting just how much of their until now divergent history had been the result of the actions of beings they could not comprehend.
Finally Laura Roslin had had enough of ancient history. Or more likely, if she were honest with herself, had had as much upheaval as she could stomach. So many uncomfortable truths. Far better to deal with the here and now.
"What now?"
"You pick out a new home for your people." Sam answered after another round of wordless consultation among her peers.
"Our ships have been surveying a number of potential worlds for the past couple of days." She continued as she started typing into a tablet and a huge screen behind her turned on and divided itself into several section. "And we've finally narrowed them down to a small number of candidates. We already have an engineering team on standby to help with setting up your colony. All you have to do is pick one."
This perked the Colonials up. While the massive carrying and manufacturing capacity the new additions to their fleet represented made their situation less precarious than before, it did not mean they intended to stay aboard their ships indefinitely. Somewhere down the line, they had always intended to put down roots on a planet somewhere.
"Will any of these have Stargates on them?" Admiral Adama asked.
"All of them will have one, yes." Sam replied as she handed out a pair of folders. "The disposition of which will be entirely under your discretion. Hide them, bury them, keep them under heavy guard. We'll show you how to use them, along with a number of addresses that you can use for potential trade or allies. But what you do with them afterward is entirely up to you."
The Admiral nodded, prompting her to continue.
"Did you have a question, Admiral?" Colonel Davis asked, intrigued at the Admiral's facade.
"I was just wondering," the Admiral began. "Why don't you just take us all home to Earth?"
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that ensued. The other Colonials were taken utterly by surprise, casting dumbfounded looks at both their military leader and the Tau'ri.
Colonel Davis for his part fought to maintain his poker face. It was not unexpected. Eventually someone would have figured it out. Though he would have bet even money that it would have been the eccentric but undoubtedly brilliant Doctor Baltar who would figure it out.
"So?" Admiral Adama prodded and Colonel Davis sighed.
"For one thing, Earth is only one of several names our homeworld has been called. And mostly because it's been shown that our homeworld wasn't exactly the Earth you were looking for."
"I don't get it. Earth was your homeworld all along?" The younger Adama spoke out. "I mean, we've discussed the possibility in the Quorum, but why the dog and pony show, why not just take us straight there? Or to any one of these wonderful planets? Why did we have to go through what we went through down there?"
"Because you had to complete this leg of your journey before you could proceed with the next one." Daniel answered sadly. "You had to see for yourselves that the Earth your scriptures pointed to was little more than a pipe dream. We didn't know what we'd find, but we didn't want to bring you to a place of safety while your hearts continued to long for Earth. You had to accept things for what they are, now, as part of the healing process."
"And taking us to your home?" The President reiterated the younger Quorum representative's question.
"There's nothing for you there. Our home is but a small crowded world, still coming to terms with its newfound place in the galaxy. All the good real estate's been taken, the various power blocs would never deal with you fairly. Some would. The ones we have a hand in would, but others won't. And we've made too many enemies, too many looking at our planet with evil intent. To heal, to grow and regain your old strength you needed a planet of your own, one where you would be free of any interference."
President Roslin nodded in understanding, and slowly the other Colonials followed suit.
She gestured at the folders containing the data the Tau'ri ships had gathered. "Can we hold on to these while we make our decision?"
"Sure thing." Colonel Mitchell smiled. "We'll have a few more copies made so you can spread them out."
Lieutenant Jonathan O'neill(two Els) had just settled into his chair when his secretary paged him.
"Hammond on subspace comm."
"Patch it through." Jack instructed as he brought up the videophone application on his desktop. Now was as good a time as any to see how well it integrated with the subspace communication system.
Instead of the blonde starship commander who had served under him for a long time, however, the face that greeted him was bald. And grey. There was a pause before he could find his voice.
"Thor?"
In retrospect, it could have been any Asgard. They all looked alike, after all. Then again, the Asgard always relied on Thor when they needed to get in touch.
"Greetings, O'Neill", the reply confirmed his guess.
"How'ya doin' old buddy? I thought you'd all..." At this point Jack realized what he was about to say and just shut his mouth, hands flying as he tried to convey with gestures what he meant.
"Dead? Deceased? Expired?" Thor filled in the blank with his usual deadpan.
"Yeah.." Jack awkwardly agreed.
"We do apologize for the subterfuge. We did not really expect to make contact again so soon. But as is always with your people, events overtook our projections."
"So soon? You mean you did intend to make contact again?" Jack frowned.
"It was always our hope to undo the degradation plaguing our genome. Perhaps even restore our ability for cellular meiosis. As time passed however, all avenues we explored proved fruitless. Nevertheless we remained hopeful that somebody else would make the intuitive leap that had eluded us. The Ancients after all, were noted masters of genetic engineering. As were the Nox. It was not inconceivable that somewhere somebody had the tools we needed. We just needed more time. Time to continue looking for a possible answer among the various technologies left by the Ancients. Time to wait for somebody to come along who could make or had made that intuitive leap."
"The Cylons." Jack realized.
"Indeed."
"Back up a minute, if you don't mind my asking. Why did you switch to the smaller bodies? I'm pretty sure you had larger bodies before?"
"That is correct." Thor replied. "We do not mind you asking. It was caused by a plague. It happened during the height of the Great Alliance's power and influence. At first it affected only the Ancients, killing many and forcing what remained to flee to another galaxy. Then, to our horror, it began to affect the other races as well."
"The Ori plague?" Jack sputtered. "We think it was the Ori who created the plague to attack their enemies."
"I see. That would make sense." Thor conceded. "While they despised the Ancients in particular, they would not regard those that could be considered allies or peers to the Ancients any better."
"The Ori wanted a monopoly on Ascension." Jack thought out loud. "Therefore anybody who could be close was also a viable target for them."
"In any case, the plague broke the back of the Great Alliance." Thor continued. "It drove the Nox into hiding. It forced us to engineer the bodies you are familiar with. And the Furlings... simply disappeared. We believe some survived, but we have had no contact for millenia."
"So what now? You think the Cylon technology can help?"
"Loki admitted to leaving a laboratory with cloning and stasis equipment in an underground lab, and this is what the Cylons found and reverse-engineered. In the process of adapting it for their use, they stumbled upon part of the solution we have been seeking."
O'neill waited expectantly, bracing himself for technobabble.
"The original sample we had still had traces of infection from the plague, which is why we could not use it as it was. Using Ancient technology, Heimdall has been able to splice fragments of human genetic material into the ancient Asgard genome. The result was responsive to the treatment your scientists developed for the plague. After some genetic resequencing to increase mental capacity, she was then able to use Cylon technology to grow it to an adult form that an Asgard consciousness could transfer to."
"That's the part the Cylons added? Consciousness transfer? And you mentioned genetic resequencing." Jack asked.
"Consciousness transfer to a body that was not the standard Asgard template." Thor clarified then continued. "The Cylons themselves are not any more evolved than you. Neither was the Asgard sample we had. The result needed to be evolved by a few thousand years to be even usable. Even then there is still some loss of capacity, but not enough that the Council deemed unmitigatable through technology or up-to-date databases."
"Good for you." Jack congratulated him, genuinely happy for his friend. "But you didn't come here all the way just to tell me this. Not that I'm unhappy to hear it."
"Heimdall and his team believe the new bodies to be capable of cellular meiosis. However in order to create a viable breeding population we need more genetic templates. We only had the one Asgard template. The addition of human genetic material was able to increase diversity, but the Cylons only had five first generation templates in their databanks, and seven second generation ones. We need more. The crews of the Hammond and the Odyssey have already graciously donated their own samples. But to get more Colonel Carter suggested I reach out to you."
"Wait a minute!" Jack almost shouted as he processed what Thor was asking. "You need human genetic samples? Our genes?"
"Yes. We humbly ask for more genetic samples. If you could donate your own and inquire who else might be willing among your people. We understand how big this is, we only need a few thousand to meet what you would call a minimum viable population."
"Of.. of course. I'll... You can take mine.. a-and I'll pass the word. In fact, hang in there a minute." Hastily turning to his intercom, Jack stabbed at it and spoke without preamble. "Get me General Landry! And Doctor Lam!"
"Hyperspace transition complete. Standing down Hyperdrive. Securing all systems from hyperspace travel."
"Very good." Captain Gerard Grant acknowledged. "Navigation?"
"Cross-referencing stellar positions and known celestial bodies. Location confirmed, we are at the edge of the Helios Alpha system.
"Excellent. Sensors, what do we have?"
"Multiple debris fields consistent with major space battles."
Captain Grant winced. The Colonials were less advanced than Earth, but that was a relative term. They were far more advanced than Earth had been before Antarctica and the limited disclosure it had forced. Even with the advances gifted by the Asgard, it would still take a long while before Earth could come even close to matching the amount of infrastructure the Twelve Colonies had before the Fall. To see it all in ruins was somewhat disconcerting.
"Captain, we're detecting large amounts of radio traffic. It's not background noise either. Far more than would be expected of a dead system."
"Can you get a fix on the source?"
"Sources of the heaviest traffic appear to be centered in the barycenter between Caprica and Gemenon."
"Well then let's take a look." Captain Grant made up his mind. "Helm, set a course, military thrust. Shields up, but leave the cloak down. Let the natives know we're coming."
The trip did not take long. And when they arrived, what they found took Gerard Grant's breath away. It was a veritable sea of habitats, space stations and ships, with transports and patrol vessels flitting to and fro. All under the watchful eyes of what seemed to be the massive front half of a battlestar not unlike the Galactica.
"Multiple incoming jumps detected."
"Very good response time." Captain Grant observed.
"Now there's a surprise." He noted, looking at what the Colonial warbook was identifying as a Cylon freighter, launching vipers alongside older Colonial designs, notably an Orion and a Catamaran.
"Comms, hail them. Attention Colonial vessels, this is Captain Gerard Grant of HMS Hood from Earth. We come in peace."