Chapter 19:

Battlestar Hyperion CIC, in system Y8P-8165, Unknown Space

Day 68, 18:40 PFT

Emily stood, hunched over the central console, flicking through pages of data, celestial body counts, atmospheric scans of potentially Kobol-like worlds. The rest of the CIC was quiet, this was one of the shifts where the highest number of command staff were on their breaks, and the ever-present noise of DRADIS that Emily usually blocked out was the only sound. She scratched her eyes and tried to suppress a yawn. It would've been easier if some of the people she was closest to were there. Hermes, Anastasia, even the Admiral were all back in their bunks for a few hours, and soon she would be able to join them. Looking at her watch, she willed on the last 20 minutes until Commander Virgon would arrive and allow her to join them, but for now she knew she had to just finish getting through these last reports.

She had to control her eyes from just skimming straight over the top of anything that could be important, but as they were tired it was becoming quite the struggle. This was why she was quite surprised when she realised she had actually noticed something. She flicked back a page and looked around at the top. This report was from the 23rd Raptor flight of the day, but if she flicked to the next it said that one was from the 25th. Emily was sure she had ordered them properly and started to go back through each of them, though she was still unable to find flight 24. She picked up the folders they had come to and tried to see if there were any she hadn't picked up, but there were none of the sort. Placing them down, she walked over to the Junior Lieutenant currently manning the role of Communications Officer.

"Did today's Raptor 24 ever report back in?" She asked him. He dutifully tapped through his screens.

"I never saw any notices of missing craft but… ah, here we are," he pointed to a line on a spreadsheet he found in the system. "Reported in all clear. Piloted by Rascal. Got in almost an hour ago…"

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Emily said, returning to the central console. She wondered if maybe the pilot just didn't bring the file up to CIC after his run; possible given she recalled Rascal had only recently got his wings before the Fall of the Colonies.

After a couple more minutes, Emily looked up as the Lieutenant cleared his throat. "Um, Colonel, sir, I did find something else."

Emily wandered over to him and leaned over his desk. "What is it you've found?"

"It's a call I redirected over the intercoms from the starboard hangar to the Admiral's quarters," he explained. "I'd forgotten I'd done it. It was made by Lieutenant Gemini so I didn't make the connection at first."

"Good spot Lieutenant. Can you put me through to the Admiral?"

"Of course, sir." He tapped away at his desk as Emily walked back to the console and grabbed hold of a cord-phone. "You're through now," the Lieutenant told her. She picked the phone up and held it to her ear.

"Admiral?" she asked.

The voice that came back to her was not the Admiral's. "Oh hi Emily, it's Hera."

"Hey, what are you…?"

"I'm just meeting with the Admiral, he's speaking to Rascal at the moment but let me pass you over," Hera paused, and Emily could hear a dialogue quietly in the background. The pieces were starting to come together now, but Emily really wasn't sure whether she was supposed to excited or worried.

"What's the matter Lieutenant Colonel?" The Admiral asked quickly, he sounded curt, hurried.

"I was just wondering if you knew anything about Flight 24 from just a bit earlier sir?"

There was a pause before she was given a response and she began to get the feeling that that wasn't a good sign. "I'll send the Commander up to you now and you can come down here, it'll be easier to speak in person."

"Oh, of course sir," Emily replied quickly, glancing over at the Lieutenant who was watching her from his desk. "I'll be down shortly."

Battlestar Hyperion, Admiral's Quarters, in system Y8P-8165, Unknown Space

Day 68, 18:54 PFT

After a knock, the bulkhead swung open and Hera led her inside the Admiral's Quarters. It had been a while now since she had last been in here, and clearly the wear of the search had worn on the Admiral as well. Papers and mugs were scattered everywhere, including on the floor in some places. The desk was the worst offender, with stacks of the same reports she received overflowing from his organisers.

"Thank you for running down, Emily," The Admiral said, walking around his desk and collecting up a small pile of papers. He held them out as he approached and she took them. They were the reports from Flight 24 alright, but she'd never seen a report so thorough.

"We knew we'd found something as soon as we jumped into system," Rascal said from the sofa across the room. "Once we'd scanned the system and spotted this planet, we jumped closer for another look,"

"But it's not Kobol," the Admiral said, leaning back against his desk, arms crossed. "We cross referenced it with all the information we could gather that we sent with the first expedition out here. It seems too cold, too close to a nebula and it's got rings, none of which were mentioned in any kind of scripture or in any archaeological sources that the Fleet could dig up about Kobol pre-exodus."

Emily was confused then. She did believe the Admiral about Kobol, she didn't have any choice she supposed. Even without that fact though, her family had been religious and ultimately it was widely accepted knowledge the Kobol had been a real place, so there was no reason to suggest it couldn't be found. Despite all this though, she began to wonder why they needed to go on after this. They'd found a habitable world, a long way out of the way of the Cylons. Could they not just settle everyone here? "Sir, if you don't mind me asking, what's so wrong about this world?"

"I promised everyone Kobol Emily, I have to deliver that," the Admiral replied. "It's a valid point, and given the toll this search is putting on everyone I can't justify the hunt much longer. I've made the decision that we will take note of the location of this world and if in five more days Kobol is not found, we will return here."

"Forgive me sir, but couldn't we just cut out the possibility and stop now?" Emily could see on the Admiral's face that his decision had already been made, but in light of all these never-ending shifts and nights of barely sleeping, she wanted to make at least more of a case. "I'm not sure the crew can take much longer of this."

"This concern was raised by Lieutenant Gemini as well. After these five days more of trying I will cease the search. But for now, our focus is still on Kobol. A location of such significance not only to our history but our religion would be such a motivator to everyone on the fleet. Some random world with no significance won't be the same. Kobol was home for us once, it won't take long for it to feel like home again. People will be able to connect to it, that's why I believe it's worthwhile."

The Admiral finished his speech and Emily nodded silently to herself, staring at the ground. After a moment, she looked up at him and handed him back the reports. "Thank you for informing me, Admiral," she said, giving him a salute, one that he quickly returned.

"Of course, I couldn't keep my Tactical Officer out of the loop now, could I? Go get some rest now Emily, I'll see you at 01:00."

Raptor 208, in orbit of Star XCJ-7393, Unknown Space

Day 70, 22:14 PFT

Twinkle-toe clicked through the usual pre-flight checks as his Raptor spun up on the flight deck of the Hyperion. "All clear back here," his co-pilot for this run, Waltz, said from behind, giving Twinkle-toe a thumbs up as she did so.

"Copy, Waltz. Hyperion, Twinkle-toe, ready to depart," Twinkle-toe called out, clicking through the menu screens on his computers and settling his hands on the controls. He waited a moment until suddenly all his lights flicked to green and his radio crackled.

"Twinkle-toe, Hyperion, you are go for departure. Good hunting," the voice of Hermes from up in the CIC replied. With that, Twinkle-toe fired his thrusters to max and lifted off of the service ramp and began to fly carefully out of the cavernous flight pod. The rush of submerging yourself into the vast blackness wasn't quite as intense when launching in a Raptor from the flight pod as it was being thrown from a launch tube in a Viper, but the ever-present sensation of sudden quietness never left Twinkle-toe.

Even after a month, constantly launching into an unfamiliar starfield, it was fascinating to see all the new sights each time. In a few of the last systems they passed through, there had been a glowing orange nebula close enough that it was visible to the naked eye, though it was still small. There were others they had seen in the very distance in other systems, but in few places were they large enough to be visible without enhancing cameras or lenses.

This time, there were no nebulas, and at this time no other ships beyond Hyperion. The more powerful Battlestars were each out on scouting runs alone. The sheer number of systems they had visited in the last days, weeks, whatever it was now, was staggering to Twinkle-toe. Even with the vastness of space Twinkle-toe wondered quite how big of an area it was that they had been searching. Each cycle had been intense. Hyperion and Draconis had been jumping around alone, each time heading to a new designated cluster of stars and launching a few cycles of Raptors, then meeting the civilian fleet guarded by Sirius and the injured Eos at a new rendezvous point where they could send out more Raptors.

Theia and Persephone had been going around doing much the same, though they were going as a pair in case they ran into anything hostile. Ideally, the Admiral had hoped to use Sirius alongside the Persephone to keep Eos and Theia together as usual fleet mates, while the much larger Themis could protect the civilians, but the battle at the mining asteroids put pay to that plan.

The craft beneath him began to shake as the FTL drives spooled. Twinkle-toe pointed the Raptor up to the direction he was told and waited for Waltz to call forward to him.

"All clear Twinkle-toe," she said, holding a thumbs-up above her head, even though she would have known Twinkle-toe would never having been looking back at her.

"Copy. Hyperion, Twinkle-toe: jumping now," he said, dropping his hand to the FTL lever and pulling. The noise of the FTL drive rang right through his skull as it reached its peak charge before, suddenly, a rush and then back to quiet. An unfamiliar sun poured its light into the cockpit and Twinkle-toe manoeuvred them around to face away from it.

"Beginning planetary scans," Waltz called. Twinkle-toe relaxed back in his seat, knowing it would be several minutes for the scanners to ping all the way out to the edge of the habitable zone. Every jump took around the same amount of time, they usually hung around for 20 minutes for the scan to come back, then another 10-15 to sift through the information. Most stars only had either a few celestial bodies in the right spots or were full of only fields of asteroids. Occasionally a planet might be big enough to go take a closer look, but all of these for Twinkle-toe had been dead dust-balls or empty oceans of ammonia. The highlight so far was a hot gas giant, right on the inner edge of a habitable zone, so close to the star that it seemed to almost glow a violent blood red.

Waltz and Twinkle-toe chatted as they always did while waiting for the ping to come in. Everything out there happened so much slower than back in the Colonies. There were no hyperlight transmitters to get everything around the systems instantly, despite the immense distances. Out here they were stuck under the laws of relativity, so everything had to happen at the speed of light. The pair of them spoke mostly about their lives before the attack, particularly life before joining the Fleet. They discovered early on that they were both from Caprica, not too far away from each other either. They discussed their reasons for joining up, Twinkle-toe because he was inspired by tales from his grandfather of the war, Waltz because of her affinity with piloting machinery that stemmed from her farm upbringing. These conversations were always cut short by the panicked bleeping from scanners when the report came it, scaring the living daylights out of both of them every time.

Waltz shuffled to the back of the Raptor again and opened the report, her eyes flicking quickly over every summary. "Five bodies so far, two before the habitable zone, three within. One of those appears to be a moon, though I think that moon is just an asteroid, the other is a lone planet. The one with the moon seems too small but… hold on…"

Twinkle-toe spun round his chair and jumped to his feet, stumbling his way to the back. The two of them surveyed the screen intently.

"This one isn't just within the ballpark of size, it's almost exactly in the middle of the scale we were asked for," Waltz explained.

"Same size as Leonis back home pretty much," Twinkle-toe mused. "Plug in the coordinates and we'll go have a closer look."

Waltz gave him a nod and he stepped back to his seat and put himself back into position. She shouted a set of numbers at him, and he tapped them into the system and began to spin up. Within a minute, they had skipped across the system, and as the FTL drives wound down, Twinkle-toe turned the Raptor up towards the blue light that caught his eye. He dropped his hand from the controls and slumped back in a mix of disbelief and relief when he finally took it in.

"Gods, is that-" Waltz started.

"Kobol? I don't know, but if it's not that's surely close enough."

Battlestar Hyperion, Admiral's Quarters

Day 70, 22:56 PFT

When Twinkle-toe and Waltz made it back to Hyperion they were met with a very hush hush welcome. An Ensign from CIC met them by their Raptor and ushered them quickly to the Admiral's quarters. They received a few glances and stares from the deckhands as they rushed at almost a jog through the hangar, then more as they rushed through the dark corridors of the ship's interior. Truthfully, Twinkle-toe hadn't actually known what to do if they actually found something. In a hurry in the Raptor, they had logged and saved all the info they could and rushed back to the Fleet. There was a codeword they had been given for if they found anything that Waltz thankfully remembered and quoted over the radio. Twinkle-toe didn't know why it was all so secretive, but he'd focused on containing his excitement and focusing just on following the plan that had been laid out for them.

At the pace they were walking it, it didn't take long to reach the Admiral's quarters. The Ensign gave the door a tap and once it opened, he waved the pair of them in and then scuttled off, presumably back to CIC. On the other side of the door as it opened stood the Admiral. Twinkle-toe snapped into a salute, but the Admiral waved him down.

"Appreciated Captain, but we have more important things to talk about. Lieutenant Hernandez, do you have the file?" The Admiral asked, leading them inside.

"I do sir," Waltz said, producing the file containing everything they could pull from the Raptor's logs about the system, including some colour photos they were just able to take before jumping back to Hyperion.

The Admiral took the file and began pulling out pages. The two pilots stood around as he leant up against his desk. He first pulled out the photos and studied them for a couple of seconds, before placing them down on the desk and taking hold of the data files. These he studied in much more detail as Twinkle-toe and Waltz shared anxious glances. The Admiral placed the file down and - still clasping the first page of data - pulled out a hand-drawn set of notes attached to the front of another file. He placed the two down, side by side on the desk and began to compare. Twinkle-toe drew himself up closer to try and check up over the Admiral's shoulder, although he thought better of it and took a step back, not wanting to risk a telling-off at this time.

The wait felt agonising as the Admiral scrutinised over the details. They had done that too, back in the Raptor, though Twinkle-toe assumed the Admiral had far more information about what they were looking for to go off of. Suddenly, while Twinkle-toe was busy thinking to himself, the Admiral placed the papers down and marched over to a cord-phone to the side of the room. He picked it up and gave out a series of orders too quiet for the two pilots in the room with him to here.

"Sir?" Twinkle-toe asked, finally speaking up.

"This all looks incredibly promising, well done you to," was all the Admiral said as he walked back to the desk. He picked up the photo again and held it next to the page with the summary of the dataset.

"Do you think it really is it, Admiral?" Waltz asked, tentatively.

"I've ordered for a pair of Raptors to go and investigate further, but this looks very close."

"How will we know if it's really Kobol, sir?" Twinkle-toe said, approaching the desk, files now scattered all over it.

"The research done by the Fleet over the last few years has given us a relatively good idea of what to look for on the surface, particularly landmarks, cities. It's doubtful that much has survived, but as long as just one thing has, we'll have our answer," the Admiral said, cracking the slightest hint of a smile. That bit of a smile sent a wave of relief rushing over Twinkle-toe, and more than that, a feeling of real hope. That was unfamiliar.

"So… what we shall we do now sir?" He asked, feeding off the excitement the Admiral was fuelling itself inside him as it grew.

"I think you two have more than earned a break," the Admiral told them. He walked past them towards him door, patting Twinkle-toe on the shoulder as he passed. He and Waltz shared a glance and a grin as the Admiral walked over to the door.

"Drink?" Waltz asked.

"The stiffest they've got."

Battlestar Hyperion, Officer's Barracks

Day 70, 23:13 PFT

The clanging of fists on metal were what awoke Spinner. He scratched his eyes open and looked around him. There were only a couple of other pilots in the dorm with him, all of which were sitting up in response to the noise. Through the banging, he could make out voices.

"Spinner! Get out here now!" was about all he could make up. After only two hours of sleep this shift, Spinner swung his legs out over the edge of the bed and stumbled to the door. The other pilots looked at him as he staggered across the room, all wondering what could be so important if there weren't klaxons blaring. Most of the pilots weren't even pilots Spinner was intimately familiar with. He knew a few callsigns (Rook, Longball, Sombrero), but otherwise it was only Squirt in there with him that he knew, as they'd been partnered together to share a Raptor.

Reaching the bulkhead, he spun the lock and pulled it open enough to show his face. On the other side, Hera and Twinkle-toe shoved it open all the way. "Oi, careful," Spinner cried, covering decency as he'd only been sleeping in underwear and his vest.

"You'd best put something on. The Admiral's speaking to everyone in the port hangar," Hera said, crossing her arms and looking him up and down with mock distain.

"What about? What do I need to put on?"

"Anything, just get down there now!" Hera gave him a wink and slapped him on the shoulder. "Be quick, he's on in two minutes."

"Two minutes?!" Spinner jumped back into the room and flung open his locker, or rather, the locker he was using in the room. He grabbed his blues as they were the first things to hand and, after hopping into the trousers and hurriedly putting on his boots, he began to sprint down the corridors towards the hangar, doing up his top as he did so. Luckily, he was in a barracks on the same level as this hangar, meaning Hera and Twinkle-toe probably stopped on their way down, so he wasn't in too much danger of missing anything.

Although he arrived at what he thought was bang on two minutes later, the Admiral had just begun speaking as Spinner walked into the hangar. There was a throng of people at the side of the hangar, all looking up at the raised walkway Spinner could deduce was where the Admiral was. He spotted Hera in the crowd and squeezed his way through to her. As he had approached, he heard the Admiral's voice, but not over the loudspeakers. He presumed he was just speaking to this crowd before the rest of the crew.

The hangar itself was eerily quiet. For the first time in weeks, all work had been stopped and the whole hangar crew was in the crowd watching. Up top, he could just make out the Admiral, flanked on one side by Emily who seemed to be anxiously checking her watch, and Twinkle-toe on the other. Spinner and the others around him huddled up as more joined their ranks, an air of excitement rising as the Admiral reached for a cord-phone.

The tone that normally accompanied an intercom message ran out. "Attention all hands, this is the Admiral. Sorry if I'm waking any of you by making this announcement, but I promise it will be worth it. Seventy days ago, our homes were attacked. Our Fleet was destroyed, our friends lost. When we made our escape, I promised you a new home, or rather, an old one. I promised you that I would take us to Kobol. It has not been an easy journey, and I thank each and every one of you for your efforts not only in this search, but for your grit and valour in every fight we've found ourselves in. Equally, I want us to remember the names of everyone who got us to this point. In the battle for the mining field, we lost 4,317 of our number. Never forget their names, nor the name Themis, or those of any of our loved ones back home.

"But now, I want to you all to take a moment to thank yourselves, to congratulate every man and woman around you. As of 22:20 hours today, one of our Raptors jumped into a system with a world perfectly habitable for human beings, and after verification flights, I can confirm to you all that that world, according to all our records and data, is Kobol." A huge cheer suddenly went up from the crowd and the whole group began to hug each other, shake hands and celebrate in anyway they could with those around them. Spinner stood, half asleep and half delirious with relief. Several hands clapped him on the back and a few people tried to shake his hand, but he simply stood, taking the moment in.

"You've done it, we've found it. A small group of Raptors are just now being dispatched to contact the civilian fleet and our other Battlestars to inform them, and at 23:30 we will jump back to them as well, and from there, we will be heading straight for the Kobol system. I suggest you all take some time off from your duties if you can. I will be taking volunteers for CAP once we jump into system, and also for the first Raptor crews. I will be launching in the first Raptor to make landfall at 01:30, I hope to see you all there, so get to the side of the hangar and put your name in the hat. Thank you all very much, I won't hold you for any longer."

The scenes in the hangar returned to euphoria. Spinner couldn't help but smile as the Admiral put away the phone and he turned his attention to the men and women around him. Some people were dancing, some still embracing, many so emotional they couldn't hold back floods of tears. Spinner just couldn't believe it, there were times, in the last week especially, where he didn't believe this moment would actually happen. He'd always assumed humanity left Kobol because it was destroyed or cataclysmically broken, to be going back seemed like too much of a dream. Maybe that was just the tiredness talking, but what he did know was that he was going to need a drink later, and that there would certainly be a lot of others who would.

He stood around chatting for a while, he had no idea how long. Many pilots split off briefly to put their names into the lottery hat to go down and touch the surface of a planet again, or even just see it from space. Spinner was desperate to go too, but at this point he felt too tired to rush over and join the scrum. He jumped as a hand grasped his shoulder and he spun around. Emily gave him and the pilots he was with a smile.

"Can you believe it?" Hera asked, having to lean over and shout over the chanting as it began.

"Hardly. I wasn't sure if we'd make it either. However, can I borrow Spinner for a moment?" Emily said.

The others gave her a shrug. "Of course not," Hera said. Emily pulled Spinner to the side just out of ear's reach from the other pilots.

"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" Spinner said, a big dumb grin on his face.

"It certainly is. I'm just glad it's the real thing this time," Emily said, weariness making her sound almost forlorn.

"This time…?"

"The Admiral has a request for you. He'd like his CAG to fly him down to Kobol," Emily said, ignoring Spinner as he trailed off.

Spinner's attention pricked up and he glanced at the pilots around him. "I'd love to but… I have not had enough sleep, and surely Twinkle-toe should go, no? It was his find."

Emily reached out to his shoulder again and peered at him as if she were a teacher peering down over her spectacles. "I think the Admiral is quite set on having his photo op with his senior staff planetside. Besides, I think Twinkle-toe and Waltz are a bit busy at the moment," she said, turning her head towards the group on the other side of the hangar deck. Spinner craned his neck around and saw Twinkle-toe and Waltz crowd surfing over a scrum of pilots, engineers and technicians, taking swigs from full bottles of what Spinner could only assume was straight whiskey from the officer's mess.

"That's true, I'll wake up myself up. Thanks Em, you owe me a drink when we get back."

"The Admiral owes it to all of us, and more than one," Emily said with a laugh. Their tired tension broke down and the pair embraced. When Spinner pulled away, he couldn't help but laugh. He really, really couldn't believe they'd made it.

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