Epilogue
"Finally home," Lya sighed happily.
They were alone. Nafrayu was long asleep, and there was no need to pay tribute to Nox decorum.
"Yes my lady," Anteaus answered with reverence and an exaggerated bow. "My prayers that you will guide our family to prosperity," he stated gravely.
Lya rolled her eyes on him. "Be careful," she warned her partner playfully. "It will go to my head."
"And what a lovely head you have, dear specialist. Want me to trim it for you a little?"
Lya only answered with a mock frown.
"Wine on the balcony?" he asked.
"Maybe an early night to bed?" she counter-offered. Those had been a few long weeks. Hectic and stressful too.
"About that," Anteaus replied warmly. "Councillor Tuphie went to one of his nature concerts this weekend and gave me those, when he got back," he showed her two small decorated snuff-boxes. "Asked me to say 'thanks'."
"It was his turn," Lya complained lightly.
Anteaus disregarded it. "This is the 'blue wine on the balcony' box," he went on, and opened one of the boxes, which was full with small green pills. "And this is the 'early night to bed' one," he said, showing that the other box was full with pink coloured pills. "Natural ingredients only," he added, with an enigmatic smile.
"Naturally…" Lya grumbled light-heartedly. She then reached with her hand to one of the small boxes. "Let's make it a pink-pill-evening?" she asked coyly, and turned to walk towards their bedchamber.
Nox clothes looked like they grew to size on their bodies. They peeled off like a second skin too. Anteaus watched her walking away - mesmerised for a moment, then hurried after her parting back.
It was almost five hours later that Lya rolled out of bed with a well satisfied groan. Nature calls and all…
"Like a hundred year young girl!" Anteaus called after her.
Lya had a well satisfied smile, walking out. She wore a slight frown, walking back. Also, a small azure light was blinking on her console.
"What is it, dear?" Anteaus asked, when she grumbled once more, after reading the short message there.
"Lady Hermione of London and the Alteran anquietas will be visiting in five hours time," Lya all but complained.
"Didn't know this specialist position will be that stressful?" he answered. " Last time we needed one, it was your great grandmother's days."
Prologue
It's been four months since the small Cylon fleet found itself lost. Luckily they found themselves in a resource rich location, so they were able to mine for fuel.
Otherwise the fleet was in a dire situation.
Their weapon stockpile was mostly depleted during the last battle. All they got from that showdown was fear and frustration. Someone was playing games with them. Someone very capable.
They have managed to gather enough materials for their manufacturing facilities to start and renew their magazines, however, with the centurions still offline, they had the theoretical knowledge, but neither the practical know-how, nor the workforce, nor the safe facilities for organic Cylons to handle radioactive components and materials.
The Raider situation was even more frustrating. The resurrection ship was intact. So were the two thousands or so Raider space-frames within. But, the fleet's active Raiders had jumped away unhurt, so the fleet didn't have any Raider consciousnesses available to activate the ones in storage. For this, they will have to reach the Hub, or the Colony ship. It left the fleet very limited in their ability to engage any enemy.
Not that resurrection worked. As far as the Twos and Fives working on the system could tell, there was no interference on those frequencies any more, but no resurrection ship paired with their signal. Either they were all destroyed, or their small fleet was far far out of range. As much as it being the cornerstone of their existence and culture, Cylons didn't truly understand resurrection. This technology was lost together with their five parents. All the local Cylons could tell was that downloads to the local resurrection ship would probably work right, but no actual resurrection will occur till robust communication with the Hub, back at the colony, is established. Downloads would stay stored on the ship and no one knew for how long those will be safe from degradation.
Fear within the fleet persisted…
All these combined weren't the worst part even. Ever since that ill fated battle, all hybrids within the fleet had only one word to say - "Lost." All navigation screens were black and showed the same blinking notice - "Uncharted."
With no charts and very few Raiders, the fleet's progress slowed down to a crawl. The fleet could make safe blind jumps of two light years distance, or about, but this was very wasteful of resources. They could use their few remaining Raiders to daisy-chain small jumps ahead of the main fleet, and scan for safe jumps of about five light-years, but this was still a ridiculous pace. It will take them decades to reach home at that speed, even if they knew just what direction home was.
"Capricia, have a look!" Leoban called from the main navigation post. He was sitting there with his hand inside the interface basin for a few days now, saying nothing, while others bicker around him. Where Capricia went, her Three friend followed. This debate about just who was in command, and who appointed her so, was still ongoing. One of the One models followed too, but was stared away by his three comrades. One models were the least popular in the community at this moment.
"What are we looking at?" asked the Three to earn a frown from Capricia. She wasn't the one invited to ask questions.
"A galaxy," Leoban deadpanned. He earned an eye roll.
"That galaxy," Leoban elaborated, pointing at the centre of the main screen.
The Three motioned him to go on, and Capricia didn't object for once. She had little patience for dramatic build ups at the moment.
"Most of the star clusters are recognizable," Leoban went on, and names started to appear on the screen. "Large Magellanic Cloud; Antennae; Black Eye; Pinwheel; Lupus; Atlas;" names kept appearing on the screen. Familiar names, for familiar galaxis.
"Can you tell where we are?" Capricia asked impatiently, and Leoban disregarded her.
"Then I took a look at this one," he said and pulled both back into the neural interface. It was a relatively close one. A galaxy which was somewhat familiar, but was not. He then pulled one of their star charts and overlaid it with that galaxy.
"Impossible!" the Tree stated.
"Analysis shows eighty-four percent match," Leoban detailed calmly. "Some of it is probably due to our charts not being detailed enough. The main other factor is that this Milky-Way," he pointed at the large screen in front of them, "is about twelve to fifteen millions years too young."
For a long moment, all three said nothing.
"If true - where does it put us?" The One, who was still listening in, asked.
"Somewhere in the Cigar galaxy," Capricia snided back. "Just how did…" she started to ask, after another long silence, but an alarm cut her short.
Viewscreen focused to show a ship, which just appeared in front of their fleet. It was a large one - only slightly larger than a Basestar, yet overshadowing their ships in volume. It was also single. Replay showed the ship appearing, then a chain of identical ships being stretched back into the infinity, before disappearing a fraction of a second later.
"How?!" the Three asked with clear incredulity.
Incredulity aside, this question was well deserved. This way of arrival indicated travelling at super-light speed in real space, which shouldn't be possible.
"The inertia alone!" Capricia mumbled. Cylons, and colonials, had rudimentary artificial gravity, but it couldn't have possibly withstood these kinds of speed and therefore accelerations.
"And who, in his right mind, would build a ship this way?" a Four commented.
"How does it stay space-tight at all?" Capricia offered.
"Nevermind that!" the One snapped. "We might now get some answers."
"We are being hit with some radiation from that ship!" Leoban warned, and they all looked at the large single ship, in front of their fleet with some trepidation.
Then, with some relay noise, from every speaker aboard each one of the Cylons ships, a message came in computerised, reverberating voice:
"We are the Borg," Came the announcement from the strange cube ship.
"Lower your, err…" the voice hesitated for a moment.
"Surrender your ships!" the message went on with regained certainty now.
"We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile!"
One last time (for this story) - Huge shout to flyboy38, my beta, who took the time to make sure this story is a much better read. Couldn't have done this without your help.