Chapter 2
Battlestar Valhalla CIC – Unknown Stellar System
"Linley, we don't have a few minutes, gods dammit! I need all the power you can muster for the weapons and I need it right frakking now!"
"Commander," Captain Frank Linley, the ship's chief engineer growled, "we're almost there, sir! The coolant pressure indicator has just reached the bottom of the scale. When it's in the yellow, I'll crash start the generators but you may want to cross your fingers when I throw the switch!"
"Give me your best guess for the generator start, Chief." Saundra Vergis, the Valkyrie-class battlestar's commander demanded.
"Three minutes, maybe four, sir."
"You've got two minutes, Mr. Linley. I want us back in the game, by then. Vergis out."
She hung up the phone then she glanced at her XO, Alisander Hamilton. After they'd arrived wherever the hell they were and the old girl had lost power, the silence from the dead control panels had been so deafening, most of the CIC crew was still rattled. So, she'd started snapping orders far more than was normal for her to the point her voice had started to crack. Yet, she had to keep talking so her people could keep their heads in the game and their spirits up. "Colonel, the moment power is restored, have the gun crews load all cannons and missile tubes."
"Yes, sir!" he barked.
Then she whirled from her XO to glare at her Comms Officer, Lt. Sarah Bauer. "Comms, have those ships identified themselves yet?"
The young Caprican woman shook her head in frustration. "I truly can't say, Commander! I can't make heads nor tails out of any of their transmissions. I understand most Colonial dialects; however, none of these people are using any dialect from any of our Colonies. To my ears, these people are talking gibberish!"
Vergis grimaced. She didn't like the sound of that, not one bit. However, it was just icing on top of the piece of crap cake the Fates had served up to them on a silver platter, after their ship had misjumped and apparently dumped their asses into the middle of a clusterfrak of epic proportions.
According to her navcom officer, Lt. Naomi Asiel, the misjump had apparently been caused by several factors. First, they had a glitch in the system's firmware. Then the glitch had been exacerbated by the subatomic particles inside the nebula where they'd surveyed the last planet during their patrol of Neutral Space. The particles had overloaded their FTL drive, causing a feedback loop that cascaded through the ship's power grid.
A shiver then ran through Vergis' body. If the coolant system hadn't been up to snuff, the Valhalla could have been blown to Hades.
However, instead of finding themselves relatively safe somewhere in deep space, the malfunction dropped them inside an uncharted planetary system. Said system appeared to have a Caprica-like world apparently guarded by at least three frigate-sized vessels, according to the meager data they could squeeze out of the DRADIS running on the ship's emergency battery power. Normally, the flotilla of small ships wouldn't have concerned Vergis in the slightest. Although the Valkyrie-class battlestars weren't juggernauts like the Mercurys, Valhalla's guns, along with the forty Vipers she carried, normally should have been more than enough to sweep the unidentified vessels from her sky.
'Normally,' of course, was the operative word. Without their power grid, though, they'd been kneecapped. Working solely off of emergency power, they'd only been able to launch the six Vipers that had been prepped and in the tubes prior to their ill-fated jump. At the moment, they were practically dead in the water. Their weapons were off-line and most of their systems were down, except for life support and communications.
Now she sighed heavily and turned to regard her Comms Officer. "Sarah, get me Midnight on the horn."
"Yes, sir," Bauer said crisply. "Commander, you're on."
"Vahalla actual to Midnight. What's the word on our 'friends,' CAG."
"Actual, there is no change in status. They are continuing to hold their positions. Actual, do you copy?"
"We copy, Midnight," she said with a tiny smile on her face. Even though they were caught between a rock and a hard place until the power grid was restored, she counted herself fortunate that her CAG, Captain Joseph Stark, had been assigned to the combat air patrol they'd planned before the misjump. Stark was a rarity; he was an aggressive pilot who worked well with senior command and his pilots at all times. It also spoke well for the man that he always kept a cool head in all situations.
Her XO grunted and said lowly, "Well, thank Hera for small favors. At least whoever is on those ships out there haven't decided to toss any missiles our way for the moment."
"From your lips to Hera's ears, Sander," Vergis quipped. "Hopefully the fact we're a battlestar will keep them from firing on us for a few seconds more. I may like bluffing my ass off when I'm playing cards but I sure as hell don't enjoy having to do so when my ship is on the line."
"Actual!" Stark blurted over the wireless. "New contact, she's coming in like a frakking fury out of Hades! By the gods, I've never seen anything move so fast in my life!"
"Midnight, this is Actual. What is the new contact doing?"
"Actual, she's maneuvered between us and the other three ships."
Vergis narrowed her eyes at her pilot's report. Something didn't feel right about this whole setup. If the other three ships had been waiting for the fourth's arrival before they decided to attack her ship, why in the hell would the new player place itself in the firing line?
"Commander!"
"What is it, Sarah?"
"Sir, the new contact…she's hailing us! And Commander, they speak our language!"
"Put them on the horn with me, Sarah."
"Yes, sir!"
Vergis brought the phone up to her face and said, "This is the Battlestar Valhalla of the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Please identify yourselves."
"Are you the commanding officer of your vessel?" a man asked.
"I am Commander Vergis. To whom am I speaking?"
Suddenly, he spoke to her using what sounded like formal Caprican to Vergis' Tauron ears. "Commander Vergis, my name is Dr. Daniel Jackson. I am speaking to you from aboard Her Majesty's Starship Endeavor. Our vessel represents a planet that is allied with the inhabitants of this system. When your vessel arrived in their space with no warning, they were understandably concerned. Can you communicate the purpose of your appearance close to their homeworld?"
She blinked twice as she digested all that this Jackson fellow had told her. Apparently on his world, their people were ruled by a monarch just as Virgon had up until a century ago. Also, Jackson's planet had an alliance with the government of the people who lived in this system. Yet, how could a planet that had to be in some Neutral Space backwater and, at best, settled by a thousand or so Colonial separatists be allied with anyone? For that matter, what planet did Jackson call home if it wasn't located in the Twelve Colonies?
"Dr. Jackson, there are many things I'd like to have cleared up to my satisfaction; however, at the moment, my biggest concern is with the three vessels that had faced off against us right before your ship's arrival."
"Well, Commander, your ship did intrude into their territory and due to the evident language barrier between them and you, I believe it is understandable the Galarans were alarmed by your ship's appearance in their system. Fortunately, they contacted my people in the hopes that we could resolve this matter before any shots were fired."
"Dr. Jackson, can you please explain to me how these settlers can assert a claim that this space is their territory if we're in Neutral Space?"
The man paused for several moments before he spoke again. "Commander Vergis…the Galarans have lived on their world for thousands of years. Their population is in the range of hundreds of million people. To my knowledge, no one has ever referred to their system as being a part of 'neutral space.' In fact, for many of those years, the planet Galar had been protected by an ancient spacefaring race under the terms of a document called the Protected Planets Treaty."
While she considered the astounding information that Jackson had just presented to her, the overhead lights in the CIC grew bright and the hum of power surging through the consoles sounded throughout the large room.
"We're back in business!" Hamilton whispered enthusiastically.
Vergis then keyed her phone off for a moment while her XO used his phone to tell the gun captains to arm the guns and missile tubes. Then she turned to Asiel and snapped, "Lieutenant, scan the unknown ships. Start with the Endeavor, the ship closest to us."
"Yes, sir," the lithe Aerilon woman responded. Moments later, with a stunned look on her face, Asiel stammered, "S-sir…by the gods…the scanner…i-it can't be right!"
Vergis stared down the younger woman. "What is it, Lieutenant. Spit it out!"
After she'd regained her composure, Asiel reported, "Sir, the Endeavor…well, her power signature is off the charts! According to my readings, that single ship has more than enough juice to light up all of Caprica City! Also, sir, the computer has been unable to get a fix on our current position relative to either the Colonies or the border of Neutral Space. We're hell and gone from where we're supposed to be, Commander."
In response, Vergis said nothing. She simply nodded. Apparently, her battlestar was lost far, far from home. Somehow, her ship had inadvertently stumbled upon an uncharted star system that contained an inhabitable planet where untold millions of people were living…
Or were the people who lived on this world actually human beings?
She keyed her phone and asked, "Dr. Jackson, are you still there?"
"I'm here, Commander Vergis."
She sighed then asked, "Doctor, the Galarans…are they human beings?"
"Of course, they're human beings," he answered. "Most of the sentient life-forms in our galaxy are either human, like your people, or an off-shoot of humanity."
"How do you know we're human, Doctor?"
"Why our sensing instruments showed us you're human, Commander. Our instruments have also indicated that your power generators are back on-line and you've armed all of your weapons."
She closed her eyes and cursed to herself. Frak! Their technology must be a lot better than ours for them to generate all that power and enable them to know so much about my ship's status!
Quickly regaining her composure, Vergis said, "Dr. Jackson, we'd inadvertently jumped into the Galaran system due to a problem with our navigational computers. We apologize to the Galarans for any disruption we may have caused their society. We aren't looking for any trouble, we simply want to repair our ship and return home. Although it's true that we've armed our weapons, we will not fire on any vessel unless someone fires upon my ship."
"That is good to know, Commander Vergis. I should inform you, for the sake of total transparency, that the Galaran vessels and the Endeavor have activated their weapon systems but shall not fire upon your escorts or your ship so long as they do not advance toward their world or fire upon our vessels."
"We appreciate the kind consideration given to us both by the Galarans and the commander of your ship, Dr. Jackson. We will follow your instructions to the letter. Moreover, after the repairs on my vessel have been completed I hope that we will have the opportunity to open a three-way dialog between my people, the Galarans, and your people, Doctor. Perhaps we could discuss the possibility of trade talks between our governments."
She smiled slyly, hoping the good doctor would take the bait she'd just offered. Up until now, the Valhalla's mission into Neutral Space had been a bust.
A year ago, Commander Adama and his crew on the Galactica, had uncovered a plot by a Fleet Admiral to destroy a separatist settlement in Neutral Space to cover up a terrible crime. All the women in the settlement had been wiped out by an experimental bioweapon project funded by Colintel and the admiral had wanted a black ops ship to cover Colintel's dirty tracks. Several months ago, Exploratory Command had sent the Valhalla into Neutral Space to scout for other separatist settlements and to see if there was any Cylon activity in the region. Although there probably wasn't much they could do to the Cylons for fear of jeopardizing the armistice, Command had wanted her ship to remove, if possible, any settlements. It seemed that Command didn't want any rogue colonies in the region that could expose Colonial citizens to predation by either Cylons or pirates.
However, Vergis mused, discovering two, technologically advanced human civilizations that could be potentially absorbed into the Twelve Colonies of Kobol would not only blow the Admiralty's collective minds but could lead to her promotion to rear admiral!
At that moment, Jackson derailed her thoughts when he said, "We are happy to be of service to both the Galarans and you, Commander. I shall express your desire to open a dialog to the Galaran government and to my government as soon as possible."
"Thank you, Dr. Jackson. Oh, and Doctor, I hope it wouldn't offend your government if I were to ask you the name of the planet you represent."
"I don't see any harm in providing you with that information, Commander. I am from the planet Earth."
Except for the electrical hum of the machines in the CIC, silence reigned for several moments before Colonel Hamilton muttered lowly the two words that were on the minds of every person in the room.
"Frak me."
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