Chapter 20
Rescue
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Dead Space**
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
The Motherships had launched their fighters after dropping out of hyperspace, the small craft quickly fanning out and beginning to search the area. Each second passed like its own small eternity. In such a state of mind, Davidson barely registered it when Sam said, "It's only a matter of time before one of the fighters flies into the cloaking field and discovers us," but the only thing Davidson could think was, 'I've failed them. I was put in charge of these people's safety and I've failed them all.'
"Colonel Carter, what's the status of your reproduction of Merlin's phase shifting drive?" Davidson was surprised to hear his own voice ask.
The daze he was in was broken only by her response. "It's still not complete, but we can use it."
Turning to face her he asked, "What are the risks?"
"Without a proper setup, we're looking at a massive power draw. It would require the ZPM's total output capacity… and then some."
"How long would it take?"
"With a couple modifications to the power grid, I could get it working in half an hour."
"Excellent, get it done as soon as possible," Davidson said before turning to leave the Bridge.
"Sir, there is a catch. I need all of the ZPM's power output. We're going to have to drop the cloak, channel the energy into the phase shifter, then go out of phase."
"How long will that take?" Davidson asked almost afraid of the answer.
"Give me thirty minutes to adjust the power the grid then it's just a matter of pushing a few buttons. We should finish phase shifting before they have a chance to send anything our way." After a moment of thought Sam added, "However, from my experience being trapped in that alternate reality, I can say that if they do fire anything at us it is a very disturbing experience to see weapons fire pass through you."
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Caprica (Surface)**
*Delphi (Residential District)*
"You weren't kidding," Helo said, more than a little impressed by the vehicle before them. The garage itself was also impressive. The damned thing was practically a fallout shelter with all the lead in the thick concrete walls.
"He always was paranoid," Starbuck said with a smile as she held up the keys. "And predictable."
"So we have transportation groundside," Jack said as she took in their new ride. "Now what?"
"Now we find a spaceport and get the hell out of here," Tommy replied with concern in his voice. Oliver was getting worse. He stopped being able to walk about a mile ago and Tommy had been carrying him ever since. "He needs antibiotics or he's not going to last much longer."
"You said he'd live!" Kimi exclaimed.
"That was before you told me that all of my medical supplies went up with the Raider," Tommy countered.
"Stop… fighting…" Oliver ordered through his heavy breathing.
"Just hang on," Tommy told him. "I'm not giving up on you yet."
"Oliver?" Jack asked when there was no reply.
"Let him sleep," Kimi said soothingly. "He's tired."
Jack, not being used to needing medical treatment because she always had her symbiote, wasn't aware of the fact that, when one suffered a head injury, they weren't supposed to sleep. The others knew it, but they also knew that keeping Oliver awake would only make his pain worse. The look on Tommy's face was enough to spur the others into motion. They were running out of time. Fast.
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Dead Space**
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
"Alright, we're ready," Sam said as she finished her modifications to the Odyssey's power grid down in Engineering.
"Go ahead, Colonel," Davidson ordered.
With a significant drop in power levels, Sam shut off the cloak and started diverting all the power the ship could produce into the unfinished phase drive. Down on the engineering deck, the oversized hunk of scrap parts Davidson had seen Sam working on started drawing in all of the ZPM's power as well as part of the ship's. Marks, sitting beside the Colonel, let out a low whistle at the power levels being consumed.
"Even Atlantis can raise its shields and cloak without using that much energy," the Major commented.
With an awful whirring noise, the central piece of Sam's contraption began to spin and the edges started to glow brightly. In a blinding flash of light, the device activated, emitting a field of white light that quickly engulfed the Odyssey's small form, but not, however, quickly enough.
Colonel Davidson was standing on the Bridge of his ship watching the developing situation with growing anticipation. One of the Ori fighter groups was headed right for the Odyssey, and, if Sam didn't finish in time, they would have to divert all the power to the shield, taking away any and all hope of activating the phase drive and of surviving this fucked up situation. Add to that the fact that cloaking and moving wasn't an option and things were looking bleak.
Looking out the window, he was momentarily blinded by a flash of light so bright he could see it even with his eyes squeezed shut. Once the flash in his vision disappeared, Davidson noticed that the world seemed hazy. Everything outside of the Odyssey seemed to be blurred with motion as if they were moving extremely fast… except for five Ori fighters. Finally it all clicked in his head and, hitting the comms channel again, he shouted, "All hands brace for impact!"
As his cry echoed through the halls of his ship, Davidson realized that it was useless. The power to the shields was fueling the phase drive and they couldn't be raised, not with what was left in the capacitors. The five Ori fighters had breached the transition zone and had been pulled through with them. The two leading fighters had a delayed reaction caused by the flash and crashed into the hull of the Odyssey. One of them breached a weekend spot in the armor. The other crashed into the gate symbol for Earth that was proudly emblazoned on the side of all of the 304s.
The impact to the Odyssey coupled with the lack of inertial dampeners caused it to rock violently giving voice to the pure destructive power of the explosions that had just ravaged the small ship, a voice that would've been silenced had the shields been active. As the Odyssey stabilized beneath his feet, Mitchell, who had deiced to volunteer for sensor duty, took one look at his screen and knew he was in trouble.
The Bridge of the Odyssey was nestled in a small, bunker-like structure at the joint in the neck of the ship where it meets the main hull. The common misconception amongst the enemies of the Tau'ri was that the Bridge was located in the tower located towards the rear of the ship, but really it wasn't. The tower at the back was where the sensors room had been moved to after the consuls in the Bridge had been busted. The tower at the back was where Mitchell was… and that's where the three remaining Ori fighters were headed.
As the fighters impacted the Odyssey and the hull was breached, Jacob, put in charge of the life support consuls, quickly sealed off the breached area from his place in the Infirmary. Then Davidson waited until, finally, the team manning the internal sensors made the announcement. "Damage is minimum and no one was in the area. I repeat, no casualties."
Sam ran onto the Bridge just in time to see the remaining fighters fly right over the Bridge's forward viewport. Although she was one, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the fighters were after the Bridge. Crippling an enemy's ship is combat one-oh-one. Too bad for them, the Ori didn't know that they had just flown past it.
Running up to the comms consul, Sam hit the button and shouted, "EVACUATE THE TOWER!"
The room spun around him as Mitchell tried to get up only to find himself once again shoved down by the force of yet another impact. The Ori had opened fire on the tower and the armor would only hold for so long. Then he noticed the end-tail of an Ori Mothership's main weapon's fire as it passed right through ship. Mitchell closed his eyes, expecting death, only to remember that they were out of phase, but the fighters must've been as well. As the armor started to give, Mitchell closed his eyes one last time and let the light consume him.
*Quaero (Bridge) [a few seconds earlier]*
Jack looked out of the viewport onto the scene before him, a look of pure horror on his face as he saw three Ori Motherships fire their main weapons at the Odyssey. Already he could tell that something was wrong. The Odyssey had a distinctive blur to it almost as if it was accelerating at a high speed, but he knew that was impossible with the damage to the dampeners, engines, and everything else that had been fried.
His look of horror quickly turned to one of confusion when he witnessed all three beams passing right through the Odyssey's small form… without any effect? "What the hell?" Jack asked in total bewilderment.
Hermiod did a quick scan of the battlefield then reported in his dull voice, "It would appear that you were correct to believe that Colonel Carter would contain the situation. According to our readings, the Odyssey is out of phase enough to be immune to weapons fire."
"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Jack whooped in relief. With a look of realization he added, "Uh… does that mean we can't tell them we're here?"
"One moment," Hermiod replied. "It is possible that, with a slight modification to our communications array, we will indeed be able to communicate with them. However, it will be impossible to beam over the supplies they need while they are out of phase. They will need to drop the field before we can transfer the supplies."
"Whoa!" Jack exclaimed in surprise as the rear tower of the Odyssey erupted right in front of them. "I thought you said they were out of phase!" he added with an accusing look at Hermiod.
"It would appear that a small number of fighters were drawn into the field with the ship. We cannot help them until the field is deactivated."
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
Davidson watched on as the Ori continued to fire shot after shot at the Odyssey, each beam passing harmlessly through the hull. 'Sam wasn't kidding,' he thought to himself with a shudder born of fear, not cold. Then he felt the impact and the following explosion. To his surprise his lonely post on the Bridge suddenly became full of crew members, Colonel Mitchell being one of the new arrivals.
Looking towards the back of the Bridge, Davidson saw Sam sag against the back wall in exhaustion. With one look at the situation, Davidson nodded and held out a hand to pull one of the crewmen to their feet.
Mitchell was the first speak. "God, Sam, are you going for a record or something?!" he asked between closed eyes and very heavy breathing.
Finally finding her voice, Sam replied, "To be honest, I didn't think that would work. There was a rather real possibility you'd appear between the deck plates, but I had to do something." A beeping noise caught the attention of those on the Bridge. Checking the terminal next to her, Sam turned to Davidson and said in a near whisper, "Life signs detector just did a head count," the hesitation in her voice unintentionally creating an air of suspense, "we lost seventeen people in the tower."
Her words struck like a freight train. Now they were up to thirty-five fatalities, and twenty members of his crew were still MIA. Fifty-five out of two-hundred. The Odyssey's personnel list was growing dangerously short in Davidson's opinion.
*USS Odyssey (Engineering Deck)*
Daniel was in the engineering room with Vala when the fail-safes kicked in and the sensors were put in the terminals before them, expelling the engine controls that had been there before. The ship-wide comm had been left active in all of the major sections such as the Bridge, tower, med bay, and engineering. Vala and Daniel heard Sam's announcement and immediately the mood in the room had grown significantly darker.
When one of the consuls beeped, Vala managed to read the screen through her forming tears. Suddenly she jumped up and shouted, whooping with delight which only confused Daniel and the others in the room. Looking at her like she had gone crazy, Daniel asked, "What is it?" his voice also chocked up with emotions over the loss of their fellow men and women and the increasing feeling of dread that was consuming the entire crew. At this point, very few of them were still optimistic about being rescued… and Daniel couldn't blame them.
"Four more ships just dropped out of hyperspace. All of them Asgard. All of them attacking the Ori. We're saved!" Vala said all of it over the radio so that the people in the Bridge, who were facing away from the Asgard ships and towards the Ori, could hear. Her words, like Sam's, hit like a freight train, but this time it was more along the lines of a train pulling up to the station to carry them away. All throughout the halls of the Odyssey the crew was cheering, exchanging hugs, and congratulating each other on a job well done.
Little did they know, their troubles had only just begun.
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
After hearing Vala over the radio, Sam swallowed the lump forming in her throat and squared her shoulders. Standing up straighter, she walked over to the doorway and said, "They won't be able to beam over any supplies while we're out of phase. I'm heading down to engineering to shut off the drive." Before she could leave, Sam noticed a flashing light on another terminal. "We're being hailed…" she said, slightly confused.
"Put it on screen," Davidson ordered in a quiet voice, the shock of everything still prevalent in his mind. As the connection came through, Sam and everyone else on the Bridge was surprised to see Jack O'Neill smiling back at them.
"Hey guys! How's it going?" he said in his trade-mark 'stick it to the man' tone.
Before anyone could respond, two more explosions sounded against the hull and three more beams flew harmlessly through the Odyssey along with a barrage of lesser weapons fire from the Ori Motherships before the three massive vessels turned to face off against the newly arrived Asgard ships as the fleet opened fire with their massive globs of ionic energy. When the O'Neill-class warship moved into view of their viewport, its massive guns firing, Davidson finally let the breath he was holding leave his lungs.
Noticing another flashing light, Sam pressed the appropriate buttons to make a 'two way call,' for a lack of a better way of putting it. They were all relieved to hear Erie, the girl in charge of the weapons, whoop, "Ori fighters inside the field have been downed!"
"Why the hell are the weapons not in the Bridge?" Jack asked over the open channel.
"Long story and I'll explain later, but right now I want to know how the hell you were able to contact us," Davidson asked.
"Hermiod says that you only took the Odyssey part-way out of phase. We can still see you, but no one can harm you," Jack explained.
"Like any of that matters!" Sam shouted in frustration. "We've got injured people and damaged systems to fix. I'll be in engineering shutting down the phase drive. Provide us with some damn cover would you? It'll take a minute to get our shields back online!"
As Sam stormed out of the Bridge, Mitchell turned to Jack and said, "Don't blame her, sir. She's got a too much guilt on her mind and not enough sleep to realize it's not her fault."
"I can understand that," Jack replied in a subdued tone.
"Sir, I feel it imperative to inform you that Colonel Carter was unable to complete the phase drive in its entirety before we were forced to use it. Due to this fact, the drive is currently pulling all of the ZPM's power output as well as all of our hyperdrive, sub-light, and shield power. You're going to have to intercept all of the incoming fire headed towards the Odyssey until Sam can get the shields back online," Marks promptly got the conversation back on track.
*Quaero (Bridge)*
"Hermiod would you be so kind as to ordered one of the Junkers to intercept the fire headed towards the Odyssey?" Jack asked the small Asgard.
After pressing a few buttons on his terminal, Hermiod ordered the Chemo to block the Ori's weapon's fire. Once the ship was in position, there was a blinding flash of light and the Odyssey could now be seen without the previously described blur. Hermiod wasted no time in beaming the supplies over to the Odyssey so the repairs could begin. While the Asgard's O'Neill-class ships may be an even match against the Ori, the un-upgraded and older Beliskner-class would be torn apart rather easily which helped towards tipping the scales against their favor. Also working against the Asgard was the fact that, while they had four ships, two of their ships were already heavily damaged and only one of the remaining two was even a warship. The Quaero just wasn't designed for front-line combat, and, as a result, the Asgard were losing ground, and they were losing it fast.
The Ori Motherships, as they began to focus their attention on the newly arrived Asgard Warships, sent their fighters in bulk to harass the seemingly insignificant Earth vessel. In response, the Odyssey launched all of her own fighters… and a few that Jack had never seen before. The result was a rather spectacular dogfight between the drastically outnumbered 302s and the strange fighters reinforced by the Odyssey's railguns versus the Ori fighters numbering upwards of seventy-five to only sixteen 302s and six of the unknowns.
'Hell, if they're helping us I'll take it,' Jack thought to himself.
The Bissell, the other Junker in their fleet, was the first to lose its shields. It took two more hits from the Ori's main weapons systems and exploded into a short-lived fireball. As the systems monitoring the other remote-controlled ship started to indicate its shields would soon fail as well, Hermiod asked, "Colonel Carter, what is the status of the repairs?"
*USS Odyssey (Engineering Room)*
"We need five more minutes," Sam replied frantically as the engineering teams replaced as many crystals as they could as fast as they could. The strain in her voice was as emotional as it was actual weariness.
"Then I regret to inform you that you will not have five minutes," Hermiod said in his annoyingly neutral voice, obviously unaware of the strain the Odyssey's crew was under.
His response was one of the engineers working with Sam yelling, "WE CAN'T WORK ANY FASTER THAN THIS!"
"Then we shall hold on for as long as we can," Hermiod said before ending the communication without as much as a goodbye.
"Calm down, Captain. We'll get through this," Sam assured the panicking man. With a deep sigh, Sam thought, 'Whatever was on that damn planet better be worth the losses we've taken.' Then it hit her. They didn't need to fix everything right now. "Get the hyperdrive, dampeners, and engines working!" Sam ordered as she abandoned the work she was doing on the sensors and started handing crystals to the woman who was pulling out the burnt and blackened ones out of the hyperdrive's tray that wouldn't work anymore.
Around the room, the assembled crewmembers dropped repairs to the shields, weapons, comms, and everything that Sam hadn't just mentioned. Fixing the whole ship in five minutes would be impossible, but they only had to get into hyperspace to survive this day. Three minutes later, Sam stood up straight, her back popping after being hunched for so long, and darted over to the terminal that controlled the hyperdrive. She powered the drive up and was happy to see a lack of sparks indicating that they had gotten the system working again.
On the other side of the room, another system came online and a report followed. "The sublight tray's been replaced so we won't have to worry about overloads, but the damage to the engines themselves will prevent us from reaching maximum speed."
"Can we safely decelerate from hyperspace?" Sam asked.
"Only if we have enough room. It'll take us over five-thousand kilometers of open space for the engines to counteract our exit speed in their current state."
"And the dampeners?"
"We're just getting your patch on the system working again. We can't be bothered to repair the whole thing," another crewmember replied.
"Then we're clear?" Sam double checked.
"We are," the woman beside her replied.
"Have the Asgard pick up the fighters, we're moving!" Sam ordered as she brought the three systems needed to move the ship to full power and tore open a rift in the fabric of reality.
When a semblance of consciousness returned to him, the pain was greatly subdued. He reached up, tenderly, and felt the soft fabric that encased his face. His lungs felt better, no longer as if they were full of ashes. The left side of his body felt healthier, as if the muscle and skin had, at the very least, been cooled. 'We must've made it back to the fleet,' he thought as he sat up. He was still a little light headed, but he could tell something was wrong immediately.
He was in a tent.
His hands reached for his weapons to find them missing, then he looked down. His armor had been stripped away as well. He was bandaged where injured and obviously had undergone medical treatment, but he couldn't say whose hands had done the work. Then the flap opened, and the Human-form Cylon who had shot Adama a few weeks ago entered.
The only thing that stopped him trying to kill her was the woman who entered behind her. "Jack," Oliver practically croaked.
"Good to see you showing signs of life again," Jack replied with a smile before leaning out of the tent and shouting for Tommy. The man in question entered in a hurry and knelt over the pallet Oliver was lying on while looking over his wounds with his armor's built-in scanner. "We're not prisoners," Jack assured him.
"You can tell that's what I'm thinking?" Oliver asked as Tommy unwrapped his arm, reapplied some type of cream, then rewrapped it before moving on to his leg.
Jack shrugged then pointed to Boomer. "Her being here is a sign of trust," Jack explained. "She's the one who saved you."
"How?" Oliver asked.
"Your people wanted to raid a hospital being held down by an entire battalion of Centurions. I convinced them to let me go in instead since the Centurions won't shoot me," Boomer replied.
"Why?" asked, still skeptical.
"Because not all Cylons are bad," Boomer said. "Not all of us wanted to go to war, but the Consensus is based off of majority vote, not unanimous decisions. Only two lines opposed the genocide. Two out of seven isn't a majority."
"How long was I out?" Oliver asked Tommy.
"Nine hours," Tommy replied. "The sun's set, and, before you ask, we're camping out with the Resistance."
"The what?"
"Not everyone died in the bombing," Tommy explained. "After the hospital, we were making our way to the edge of the radiation zone where the Cylons set up a spaceport. Like you said, get a ship and get off-world. On the way, we were ambushed by a group of Colonials. It took a while for them to believe us that there are only twelve known Cylons that look like Humans and longer still for them to believe that, according to that one over there, only seven of them are represented by the Cylon Collective."
"Only seven?" Oliver asked.
"It's a long story," Boomer replied. When Tommy was done rewrapping Oliver's leg, she grabbed a box of gauze that sat on a table beside her and tossed it to him so that he could check on Oliver's half-wrapped face.
"I'm not going anywhere, and, unlike the Colonials, I'm more likely to judge you as an individual instead of a group," Oliver prompted.
**Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Dead Space**
*USS Odyssey (Bridge)*
Davidson looked out of the transparent material that made up the Odyssey's windows and admired the beauty of the swirling vortex-of-a-tunnel that is hyperspace travel. 'I never thought I'd actually miss this nauseating swirl,' he thought to himself. His thoughts were interrupted when Sam came back onto the Bridge with a look on her face that said, 'I'm sorry.'
After a deep, bracing sigh, Davidson asked, "What happened?"
Taking a calming breathe of her own, Sam began. "We just finished doing a check for power. The phase shifter took more energy than I initially calculated. While the ZPM handled it without any trouble, the ship itself didn't."
"Colonel, I have a massive headache and I don't really feel like thinking right now, so please explain this in as simple a way as you possibly can," Davidson interrupted.
"To put it simply, sir, the ZPM draws power like a battery and has plenty of charge left. The ship, however, runs off of consumable materials and burns through it like gas in a car. The Colonials use Tylium, the Asgard use neutrinos, the Ancients use ZPMs, but, personally, we use a scaled down version of a nuclear reactor. It heats up large quantities of water and turns it to steam that's then used to spin a magnet inside of a coil of naquadah wiring…" Sam trailed off then rephrased the entire explanation.
"Liquid naquadah is our gas," she said simply despite it being a highly inaccurate statement. "We used up enough of the liquid naquadah stores that we're essentially running on fumes."
"So we're going to be stuck running off of the ZPM until we get more liquid naquadah? What's the problem with that? If the ZPM can handle it, we're fine, right?"
Rubbing the back of her neck, Sam took a nervous glance around the room. "Sir, our reactors are designed to…" stopping to word it in a way he would understand, Sam said, "take an electrical charge, run it through the naquadah to boost the power, then distribute the energy throughout the ship." Once again the statement was far from accurate, but it would get the message across. "The larger the charge going into the liquid naquadah tanks, the larger the charge coming out, but the more of the liquid that's vaporized. We can use the ZPM to make a bigger initial charge so that the resulting charge is bigger, but our power conduits aren't large enough to handle the power of a ZPM plugged directly into the power grid. It would overload all of our systems. To put it simply, sir, our ships are designed to run off of gas, not the mother of all batteries."
Explaining the extremely complicated and highly advanced power generators they used on their ships in such an inaccurate and stupid manner actually managed to leave a bad taste in Sam's mouth.
"So once we run out of gas, we're stuck?" Davidson asked.
"I've been trying to see if I can reconfigure the ship's power distribution systems, but I can't. At least, not without landing, stripping away the armor, and doing it by hand."
"How long?" Davidson asked in reference to both how long they had until they were powerless and how long it would take to conduct the reconfiguration of the power grid.
"We'll be able to rendezvous with the Asgard but we won't make it to Ida without their help. As for the reconfigurations… well, they would take at least a month of work if done by hand."
"Well then, I hope the Asgard will be able to help us with this. If they can't… we'll run out of supplies long before the repairs can be completed, unless we find a planet with a Gate."
The Odyssey lurched under them as the ship dropped out of hyperspace then jolted to a halt when the Asgard, already waiting for them thanks to their more advanced hyperdrives, caught the small ship in a tractor beam. The inertial dampeners, having been largely repaired by the replacement of the crystals, softened the blow enough to only have people stumbling.
"Hey guys, didn't think you were gonna make it," Jack said over the now open comms channel.
"Well, you know the Asgard," Davidson replied. "They'll always be faster than us. Anyway, Carter says we have a problem."
"She has already informed us, Colonel. We received a copy of the diagnostic report some time ago. Do not worry, Colonel Davidson, we have a solution," Hermiod reported as the 302s launched from the O'Neill-class Warship and returned to the Odyssey.
"Great, wanna fill me in?" Davidson asked.
"We will use the Cursor's matter converters to repair the Odyssey. Thanks to the foresight of the Area 51 shipyards, we have the necessary components to repair the internal systems, and, after sacrificing the Chemo, we will have more than enough material to fix the structural stability of the impact sights, as well as to rebuild the tower," the little gray man replied.
"I'm sorry, but are you saying that the Asgard now have matter conversion technology that can be used against other ships?" Jack asked from beside the Asgard.
"We have had the technology for quite some time. When the Goa'uld landed on a planet under the Protected Planets Treaty, we would use the technology to destroy their unshielded ships," Hermiod replied.
"Oh, so that's what the weird beam of white light was. Yeah I remember now. Thor used it back when we broke his 'Hammer' on Cimmeria," Jack said with an 'ah-ha' face.
With the Bissell destroyed, there were only two other ships left other than the Quaero. The Clausus Cursor was still fully intact while the Chemo was still barley holding together, as was the nature of a Junker. Hermiod had decided to use the Chemo as spare parts for the Odyssey, mainly in the form of conversion to naquadah. The refinement process would take the large ship and render it down into near nothingness. The energy required to make liquid naquadah on the level of refinement needed to run the Asgard systems onboard the Odyssey would all but consume the ship leaving only a few thousand gallons of liquid naquadah in place of the millions of metric tons that went into its construction. Since a full tank wasn't needed, however, restoring the ship's structural integrity would be the first order of business and the schematics provided by Stargate Command would assure it was done properly.
*USS Odyssey (Engineering Deck) [sixteen hours later]*
Sam was tired. Hell, they all were. After more than half a day they were finally done repairing the Odyssey. The small ship had been struck by beams of white light from top to bottom, back to front, left to right, and everywhere in-between. And what was the end product? The Odyssey, fully clad in her trinium-alloy armor, the tower fully rebuilt, structural integrity fully restored, all of their terminals repaired, and their supply of liquid naquadah restored enough to get them to Ida and back to Earth again without running out.
***Milky Way Galaxy (Local Spur Arm)***
**Kobol (Surface)**
*Tomb of Athena (Sub-Level)*
"He wouldn't! Would he?" Gabi asked as she turned away from the door she was trying to hack open and looked to the people behind her.
"One of the Heavy Raiders just entered the atmosphere," Kimi answered as she looked at the computer she was holding. It was linked to their Baseship in orbit and displayed the sensors readings.
Getting back to the fleet had been… relatively simple. All they had to do was get to the spaceport, take it by force, then load up the two Heavy Raider that the two pilots could fly before making contact with the captured Baseship. After that, Gabi just sent their own Heavy Raiders down on an automated course and gathered the nearly three-hundred resistance fighters. Then they started jumping back to Kobol, but, as Gabi would then discover, they had left their IFF on and, as a result, six Baseships had followed them. Now they were in the middle of a standoff with Galactica aiming nukes at the planet, Pegasus covering the retreated fleet, and the captured Baseship holding the Cylon Fleet at gun point. To make matters worse, they weren't ready to leave the planet yet.
"Send a message to the Admiral and let him know that he's not to let anything past him until after he's been removed from orbit by force," Oliver practically growled through his still sore throat before storming back up the hall to where the rings were, Kimi and Tommy right behind him. The rings deposited them inside of the stone structure of the tomb above and the trio marched out of the door as Tommy pulled the massive cannon he carried around with him from its place on his back.
"You can't seriously expect that to work," Starbuck said, her and her team standing guard of the doors on the surface.
"Why not? If Oliver can shoot down a Heavy Raider with a bow, then I can do the same with…" Tommy began before Oliver made a noise in his throat that sounded like he was ready to kill something and it had better be the Cylons before one of them got hurt. "You got it, boss," Tommy amended as he spun the auto-cannon to life. With a roar of sustained, heavy weapons fire, a stream of projectiles moving beyond mach nine slammed into the Heavy Raider. The stream of projectiles quickly cut through the target's armor and brought the Heavy Raider careening down to crash a few kilometers off course.
With a simple grunt of approval, Oliver turned back to the tomb and left, Tommy and Kimi staying on the surface to reinforce the defense teams in case the Cylons survived the crash.
"I see why he's in charge," one of the Marines that guarded the tomb said.
"You have no idea," Tommy replied as he shook his head.
The sound of the rings activating again had Kimi turning around to see the rest of their team come running out of the tomb with a cursing Gabi at their lead. "Move! Move! Move! Come on! Let's go!" she shouted to the assembled men and women. They piled into the Heavy Raider that the Tau'ri had brought and the two Raptors Pegasus had sent as reinforcements. No one was about to argue with her. She'd only been with the fleet for a few months and her reputation for making things explode had spread like a wildfire.
They didn't even wait to be picked up. Gabi sent a message to the Colonials in orbit and both Galactica and their Baseship disappeared in a flash of light while the Raptors and Heavy Raider also jumped without bothering to leave the atmosphere. There wasn't any time for that!
To the Cylons left behind, it was as if the Humans had finally given up, but then the reason became clear. The explosion that followed their departure was massive. A section of the ground was blown into orbit by the force of the explosion, the heatwave vaporized anything organic in a several mile radius, and the shockwave leveled anything else beyond that. Then it kept going. The shockwave washed over their ships and the force of it crumpled their armor and destroyed the ship. Still it continued to spread. Soon it overtook the system's star and the pressure of it caused the star to join in the explosion.
**Dead Space (Colonial Fleet)**
*Heavy Raider (Cargo Area)*
"What the hell was that about?" Tommy asked.
"Gabi," Jesse replied with a shrug. "Enough said."
"It wasn't one," Gabi replied as she gently placed the bag she had ran out of the tomb with on the ground and its contents spilled out. "It was twelve. One for each of the statues. That's why we could detect them past the jamming field. Twelve ZPMs isn't something you hide easily."
"Twel… twelve… TWELVE!?" Tommy shouted, more than a little shocked.
"We only got eleven of them," Gabi replied in a frustrated tone. "The other one had been powering the tomb's systems all those years and was both severely depleted and needed as a means of keeping the Cylons from getting the computers that were down there."
"When we get back to Earth, they're going to throw us one hell of a party!" Cassidy said as she picked up one of the crystal-like power cells. "God, they're beautiful!"
"Oliver," Kimi said from the cockpit where she was piloting the Heavy Raider. "One of the Raptors they sent to reinforce us is missing."
"They jumped out before we did!" Gabi countered.
"They were the first to jump, actually," Kimi replied. "Admiral Adama thinks they used the coordinates for the fleet's next jump instead of the rendezvous point. He's dispatching another Raptor to go and check."
"Alright, dock us with the Baseship," Oliver ordered.
**New Caprica (Orbit)**
*Colonial One (President's Office) [two days later]*
"You want us to stay here?" Roslin asked, more than a little shocked. "I thought you said that you could get us to Earth now that you had your computer?"
"We can, but that's not the problem," Maria, the negotiator sent over from the Odyssey all that time ago, replied. It was hard to think that their relationship had begun with the two parties so blatantly distrusting the other. "At this point, we know that the Odyssey is still intact and heavily damaged. We need to get to Earth and get them help. Pegasus has the most advanced FTL drive in your fleet and it would take them months to reach Earth at maximum speed. Galactica would take even longer, and the civilians… their drives can't keep up with the warships and your Battlestars can't keep up with the Baseship. If we leave today, we can get to Earth inside of a week and get the Odyssey the help she needs. After that, we'll know exactly where to find you whereas the Cylons can't. Stay here and wait, and we'll come back for you, I promise, but, right now, we need to help our people."
"The Cylons are an advanced species," Marcus added. "The Goa'uld, while outclassing them technologically, are more subjectable to electronic warfare than the Colonials are. If the Cylons leave this part of the galaxy and reach one of the Goa'uld worlds, they could easily advance to the point that they could be a threat to the every Human inhabited world in the galaxy. We're not about to let that happen. We will come back."
Laura sighed and relented. "Very well. We'll make a home for ourselves here."
"Thank you for your understanding," Marcus said with a polite nod.
President Roslin shook her head at his words. "No, Professor, thank you and your people. Without the Odyssey, we wouldn't have made it this far."
"Judging by what I've seen of your people, Madam President, I'm forced to disagree. I have a feeling you would've made it to Earth on your own eventually. The Cylons don't have the drive that the Colonial people do. That's why they can't beat you."
"Good luck, Professor, Ambassador," Laura said as she shook both of their hands. "Give the Colonels my bests."