A Chance Encounter Version 2
Disclaimer: I do not own most of the characters, and definitely not the universes as things would be seriously different if I did, that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement. Sadly, all Robotech and Battlestar Galactica concepts and characters remain the property of Harmony Gold and Ronald D Moore I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Chapter Five
Captain's Ready Room
UES Sirona
A Short Time Later
"These Cylons attacked you without any warning or provocation?"
The question from General Anatole Leonard hung pregnant in the air of the captain's ready room on the Sirona. Sitting behind the desk gazing at a group of holographic screens – each one holding either a member of the expeditionary force leadership the plenipotentiary council, the UEG defence council and the UEG government itself – Captain Henderson had just finished delivering his report on the violent encounter that they had just had with the Cylons. An enemy whose warships had been so effortlessly destroyed by their cannons, the beams simply eviscerating them with the same ease with which a few short years ago Zentraedi beam cannons had annihilated there first generation ships.
"They did sir," John answered not at all put out by having to repeat himself. It was kind of accepted fact that Anatole Leonard, as the supreme commander of their sister service the Army of the Southern Cross, was always playing political games with them trying to trip them up. It was classic inter-service rivalry. "We attempted to contact them, and they responded by trying to upload a virus into our computers no doubt to disable us. When that failed, our countermeasures immediately detected and erased it, they responded by launching a missile salvo at us. Since they were clearly hostile, we returned fire and destroyed them."
"As you should have," Minister Exedore said from the screen where he was with the plenipotentiary council. "Though what is interesting is that the Cylon fighters apparently also have fold drives. I have never heard of any form of fold drive in something that small before."
"That is a concern as it gives them a lot of mobility," Leonard admitted with a frown of concern though there was also a hint, well masked but there, of distaste at agreeing with the Zentraedi representative. "What do we know about this fold system that these – Colonists is it – and Cylons use?"
"Colonials," John corrected him, "and unfortunately, we know very little about it. The sensor readings are similar to those produced by our own space folds in that upon the execution of the fold they emit pulses of phased gravitons but they're nowhere near as intense and there is no gravitational and spatial distortion before they emerge into normal space, nor are there any alpha and delta wave phase shifts. Though one thing we have been able to determine from our scans is that the fold field they generate is not very strong they likely can't jump more than a few hundred light years in one go."
"How can you be sure of that?" Leonard demanded.
"There are no tachyon traces specifically no trace of beta-phase tachyons," John answered.
"That would certainly indicate that their folds are short range," Exedore commented at the confused look some of the members of both the plenipotentiary council and the defence council shot him he quickly explained. "When a ship is in travelling through foldspace it encounters tachyons in numerous different phase states with the most prevalent being beta-phase tachyons which adhere to the fold sphere as you travel with the level of build up being directly proportional to the length of the fold. When you return to normal space they're released and since beta-phase tachyons cannot exist for more than a second in normal space-time they rapidly breakdown producing the characteristic Cherenkov radiation pulse that accompanies a defold."
"And the fact that the Colonial and Cylon drives don't mean they must only be in foldspace for a few seconds," Doctor Lang finished having been nodding along as Exedore explained, "such a short duration in foldspace would limit their range considerably. Even going beyond a few tens of light years to a hundred light years might be beyond them for one fold operation."
"There is another factor that indicates that the Colonial drives especially are short range," John added, "the Galactica has sent us the coordinates of their refugee fleet. They're only six light years away from here, they would like us to go there as Admiral Adama is concerned that more Cylon ships will be coming."
"A valid concern," Lisa admitted, "a dozen ships folding in would be too much to deal with, especially if they can fire much larger missile salvos than the salvo they initially launched at the Sirona."
"They certainly can as our sensors confirmed that there are a total of a hundred and twenty-eight missile turrets on each of the Cylon warships," John confirmed, "though strangely we didn't detect any cannons or even light defensive weapons such as autocannons just missile launchers and fighter launch tubes."
"That's odd," Leonard commented with a frown even as all the navy personnel exchanged confused looks. Who built warships that didn't have any capacity to defend themselves against incoming fire? "Why build such large warships and not give them any defensive weapons? Did they never expect to come under fire from their enemies in this case the Colonials? For a machine race it doesn't seem to be very logical."
"There are a lot of questions and unknowns here," Lisa commented, "what about the survivors of the crashed Colonial ship? How are they doing?"
"Doctor Connors is with them right now, admiral. They all have various crash related injuries, broken bones, whiplash and so on. He's keeping them sedated while their injuries are dealt with. Admiral Adama wants them back, but I had to inform him that Connors won't release them until he's dealt with their injuries. He seemed to understand."
"Which is good," Lisa commented, "where is the Galactica now?"
"They're still here though they did launch a small craft a few minutes ago that folded out. My guess is they're going to report these developments to their fleet which has among its members the president of what is left of their civilization. I believe they are waiting for us to decide what we're going to do before returning to their fleet themselves."
"Then they won't have to wait long. We need more information on this situation and the Colonial fleet is probably the only place we are going to get it," Lisa commented before her tone changed to indicate that she was now issuing a direct order. "Fold to the fleet but be on your guard when you're there. I don't think that the Colonials will try anything foolish – especially given that they have seen what our ships can do – but there is no point in risking it."
"I suggest we dispatch some of the guard ships as well from the nearest MARS station," Leonard commented, "at least one of the heavy capitals with a small escort. That should tell anyone watching we are quite capable of dealing with any threat they could pose. Plus, they will have greater amounts of emergency supplies to issue to the Colonials if they really are refugees."
John wasn't the only one who blinked in surprise at that suggestion. "That idea has merit," Lisa admitted. "We should also consider either bringing the Colonials to the station or bringing it to them. Where is the nearest MARS to the current position of the Sirona?"
Exedore checked with his console. "It's in the Jackson system having just finished assisting with the setup of the mining colony there," he said at last. "MARS 5, several hundred light years from the current position of the Sirona. If we are correct about the limitations of the Colonial fold drives then it will be far out of their range, however, should the need arise, it could fold closer."
"We'll keep that as an option," Lisa decided knowing it was time to bring this meeting to a close. "Captain Harrison?"
"Ma'am?"
"Proceed to the location of the Colonial fleet with the Galactica. A capital ship plus escort from the MARS 5 defence fleet will be sent to join you. Until then find out all you can from the Colonials about the Cylons and how they came to be in their apparent condition, render what aide you can with the resources you have available on your ships."
"Aye ma'am."
"Is there anything more anyone wishes to discuss regarding this issue?" Lisa asked looking around. Somewhat to her surprise nobody answered. "Very well then this meeting is adjourned."
The holographic screens pixeled out of existence as the communications links were closed down from the other end. John leaned back in his chair for a moment and sighed in relief, he hated having to deal with the full brass like that. Oh, Lisa and Rick we're fine, so was Exedore in point of fact, it was just political officers like Leonard really tended to get under his skin and had been known to stoke his fiery Celtic temper. Thankfully this time Leonard had made some very good points and had some good ideas that will help them going forward.
Sitting upright he reached out and pressed the comm panel. "Communications contact the Galactica. Inform Admiral Adama that we will follow them back to their fleet," he ordered, "also advise him that high command has ordered ships carrying medical and relief supplies for their fleet are being dispatched from our closest outpost."
"Aye sir."
"Navigation, begin plotting a space fold to the Colonial refugee fleet relay to all ships when complete. Ty coordinate with the medical staff on all ships to prepare as many medical and humanitarian relief supplies as we can spare for distribution to the Colonial fleet."
"Aye sir," both the astronavigation officer and his first officer acknowledged almost immediately. John signed off and took a few moments to consider the situation that had just been dropped in their collective laps. If he was honest with himself these Cylons worried him, yes, their ships were weak against their guns but what Adama had said about the machines believing that they were on a mission from god to wipe out humanity had him worried. He had encountered religious fanatics enough – both before and after the Rain of Death – times in the past to recognise how much of a problem they could be.
Though how could an artificial intelligence discover religion like these Cylons apparently have, he thought confused as surely, surely an artificial intelligence would consider religion to be illogical. There had to be something more to this than that, something deeper. But what that could be he had absolutely no idea. After a moment more thinking about it, he sighed, stood up and began making his way back to the bridge. They would be folding to the location of the Colonial fleet soon, hopefully they would get more information on the Cylons, and why they were really out to exterminate humanity, when they got there. If they didn't well, they would deal.
Combat Information Centre
Colonial Battlestar Galactica
"That's what they said?"
Admiral Adama stared as Lieutenant Dualla in surprise at the report that she had just relayed to him. He wasn't the only one as beside him Colonel Tigh was just as shocked. Not only was the Sirona and the other ships with her coming back to the fleet with them but more ships had been summoned, ships that would be bringing desperately needed supplies of food and medicine for their surviving population. While the supplies would be beyond helpful the question was how had they been summoned? How did they know where the fleet was unless…
…unless the Thirteenth Tribe had FTL communications small enough to fit on a starship.
While FTL communications was nothing new back in the Colonies – civilization would have been far different if the Colonies and the people on them hadn't been able to talk to anyone anywhere in their star cluster in real time whenever they wanted - it had only been accomplished through the use of massive planetary arrays and a massive number of communications relay stations and satellites. The systems were extremely bulky and power intensive and no ship – not even the largest of battlestars – had anywhere near either the space or the power requirements to mount such a system. Scientists and engineers had been trying to overcome those problems for decades at least and had never quite been able to crack the problem, like fusion power it was one of those technological breakthroughs that was always a decade away.
"Yes sir," Dualla confirmed, "more ships from the Thirteenth will travel to where our fleet is currently holding station. Though they haven't said what ships or how many there will be only that they are coming from their nearest outpost, someplace called MARS 5, and will be bringing additional medical and other humanitarian supplies for our population."
"How can they have arranged all that?" Saul wondered confused and a little concerned. The more he saw of the Thirteenth Tribe the more nervous about them he became. They were clearly technologically far superior to them, for ships barely the size of an Argo-class destroyer to rip apart four Cylon baseships without breaking a sweat – and to do so with fracking energy weapons – they had to be. Why would someone like that really help them?
"They have to have FTL comms on their ships," Adama replied grimly, as nervous of their cousin's technology level as Saul was. He hoped to the Lords of Kobol that the Cylons never managed to gain control of even one of those ships as there weapons systems would enable them to wipe out every ship in their fleet regardless of anything he – or the other warship captains – could do about it as from what he had seen of them even the strongest ship they had, the Mercury-class Pegasus, would be relatively easy for their cousins to destroy as their ship armour had been designed to defend against nukes, autocannon and railgun rounds not whatever kind of weapons those light blue energy beams were.
"Like the Cylons," Saul commented grimly as it was known that the Cylons had FTL comms, at least to a degree given their ability to resurrect after death. Provided of course one of their Resurrection Ships was within range to receive and process their download.
"Indeed, if not more advanced. It would fit with what we have seen of their technology so far," Adama commented, "however we shouldn't read too much into this."
"Good point," Saul admitted, "still I'll feel a lot better once we know more about them."
"Something that we will only learn by talking to them which we can do when we all get back to the fleet," Adama answered before turning to look at Dualla, "Dee respond to the Sirona. Tell Captain Harrison that we understand and will let the rest of the fleet know that more Earth ships are coming. Then tell him that we will see him at the fleet."
"Yes sir."
"Mister Gaeta is our jump back to the fleet calculated?"
"Yes, sir it is. We just need to retract the hangar pods and start the countdown," Gaeta answered immediately.
"Very well we will return to the fleet. Commence final jump prep."
"Yes sir."
Bridge
UES Sirona
Once again sitting at the command station on the bridge John watched as the Galactica vanished into its space fold. To both his eyes – or rather the Sirona's external cameras as the battlestar, while a large ship, was too far away to be seen as anything than a faint dot – and the sensors the effect was very different to their own space folding process. The Colonial warship didn't generate a bubble of normal space-time around itself before phasing into foldspace in the way they did, instead the field it created was conformal to the hull and, somehow, wedged open a small spatial rift of a kind that they had never seen before which in the microseconds it existed somehow pulled the entire vessel into itself.
"Sensors did we get all that?" he asked, more for forms sake than anything else as he knew that both the primary and secondary quantum matrix computer cores automatically stored all data recorded by all their myriad of sensor systems after you never knew when something could prove useful.
"We did sir," the officer manning sensors reported. "The data has already been sent to the labs for analysis. We should have some initial findings and theories on the Colonial and by extension the Cylon fold system in a few days at the most. Though now I can say that from what we saw we might have to completely rewrite the book on methods of folding space."
"That will be interesting," John commented knowing that he could count on one hand the number of people – Terran and Zentraedi alike – who understood just how fold drives did what they did. Like many other aspects of robotechnology it was an incredibly advanced process, underlined by quantum mathematical principals that might as well be magic. And even those who did understand would admit that they did not know everything – in fact John doubted even the Robotech Masters, as incredibly advanced as they undoubtedly were, knew everything about how space folding technology worked – and would certainly welcome any new insights they could gain from the Colonials system.
"Indeed sir."
"Navigation are our own preparations to fold to the Colonial fleet completed?"
"Yes, sir they are. All ships report that fold computations have been completed and verified. We can fold whenever we wish."
John smiled and was about to give the order to initiate the fold operation when the communications station came alive. Now what, he thought as he looked over at communications seeking an explanation for the alert. Thankfully the officer there was quick to give him one.
"Sir we just received a message from MARS 5 operations," the officer reported, "they report that three ships from their defence fleet centred on the UES Procyon have been loaded with as many humanitarian supplies as possible and are preparing to make the fold to the Colonial fleet. They report the ships will be ready to fold within twenty minutes."
The brass really is taking this seriously, John thought knowing that the Procyon was one of only a handful of Polaris-class battleships that had been so far built for the expeditionary forces. Each of the six MARS stations was protected by a fleet that included two Polaris-class ships. Ships that while comparable in size of the SDF-1 were a lot easier to build. The fact that one would be on her way to the Colonial fleet – if he remembered right the Procyon was Admiral Christina Haywood's flagship – with an escort, almost certainly a pair of cruisers showed how seriously the brass were taking this.
"Understood," he said, "did they say if Admiral Haywood is commanding the mercy mission herself?"
"Yes, sir she is."
"Well, that should make things interesting," Tylen commented from his station.
"Indeed," John confirmed. While he had never directly interacted with Christina Haywood, he knew her reputation. She was a tough, no-nonsense officer who didn't suffer fools gladly, which had made her many enemies in the heavily politicised pre-Rain UEEF fleet as more than once she had threatened to deck certain politicians – especially the late, and very unlamented by anyone who had ever had the misfortune to encounter him, Senator Russo. That had kept her a ship captain until after the Rain as so many of the senior officers – especially those who were more politicians than soldiers – in the UEEF had perished, incinerated with billions of others in quantum fire. As a result, Haywood had gotten a long overdue promotion.
"But it means we need to stop dawdling here ourselves and fold to the Colonial fleet," John said at last. "All ships commence space fold procedure."
"Aye sir. Commencing fold procedure."
Cylon Resurrection Ship 103
That Same Time
Cavil awoke with a gasp and sat up out of the goop filled resurrection tank. His whole body was aching as though he was one giant bruise, and his thoughts were moving almost glacially slowly as he had what felt like the whole, now long since incinerated in nuclear hellfire, band of the Colonial Fleet Marine Corps pounding away inside his head. Thus, it took him a few moments to notice a couple of concerned looking fellow Cylons – two Fours, a Six and another One – all working at the control station seemingly frantically working to accomplish something.
Fortunately, the One of them quickly noticed that he was awake and turned to face him. "Oh, good brother your awake," he said in greeting, "how are you feeling? Have you integrated properly?"
"Aside from feeling like I have just been runover by a battlestar group I'm fine," Cavil answered awkwardly standing up, one of the Fours moving away from the interface to help him. He needed it as his legs felt like they were made of jelly and were barely supporting him. "Ugh what happened? I've never felt this bad after a resurrection."
"You are lucky we were able to resurrect you at all," the Four replied, "you're the first from the battlegroup that we have been able to successfully resurrect so far."
Cavil frowned not liking the sound of that. "What do you mean successfully resurrect?" he asked, "the system has worked flawlessly for years."
"There was an unknown and very disruptive type of energy subharmonic in the data stream downloads the hub received from your battlegroup," the other One replied sounding confused and concerned. "The first several dozen individuals to resurrect either didn't resurrect at all or didn't resurrect properly and were reduced to traumatised, child-like entities that had to be euthanised and boxed. It has taken us some time to develop a filtering routine for the subharmonic and even then, we can only resurrect one individual at a time."
Cavil blinked. "How did that happen?" he asked.
"We don't know as your brother said the energy subharmonic is unlike anything we have ever encountered before," the one Four replied. "Do you know what happened? Where the energy harmonic came from? Is it some new weapon that the Colonials have somehow come up with to use against us?"
"It's not the Colonials, which would be bad enough. No this is something worse we have a new enemy one who seems to be far more powerful than the Colonials were at their height. An enemy who has weapons we thought impossible."
"What kind of weapons?"
"Energy beams of some kind, they tore our ships to pieces with ease. Has the hub not received the black box downloads from the baseships?"
"It has but they are badly scrambled and fragmented. It is taking time to put them back together and read the data. Are you sure this enemy used energy weapons?"
"Considering it was a beam that killed me yes."
"That's… concerning."
"And do you know what's worse, they've met the Galactica."
Horrified silence greeted that announcement the other Cylons freezing momentarily in shock and horror. There had always been a possibility that the Colonials would meet someone new out here among the ocean of stars that was their galaxy – even they had only charted a small fraction of it – especially as they moved into areas where not human or Cylon had ever gone. But they had somehow not anticipated something like this happening. It was ultimately the Six who summed up what they were all feeling.
"Oh frack."
Unseen by the assembled Cylons an intelligence – that a certain Model Six would have seen as a recreation of Gaius Baltar – did its equivalent of scowling as it read through the Cylon data. It recognised the energy subharmonic present in the Cylon data stream downloads, it or rather beings like it, had encountered it before.
Protoculture.
The intelligence was not amused. The Haydonites were supposed to have wiped out all traces of that… that… material millennia ago when they had bombarded the Invid homeworld with antimatter bombs. The fact that it had somehow survived, and that someone else was using it, was very concerning. The great organics and synthetics experiment – with the Colonials and the Cylons being the current generation of subjects – was in peril.
The intelligence knew what it had to do, it would speak with its counterpart among the Colonials. They would find out who was using protoculture and thus who was threatening the Grand Experiment they were charged with overseeing. And then determine how to get it back on track if possible though there was always the option of ending this particular round of the experiment and starting again elsewhere in the universe. It wasn't something that the intelligence would like to do, it would be wasteful, and the intelligence hated waste. Hopefully it would not come to that, and the contamination could be contained…
…still, it would be best to be prepared.
Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust I hope you all enjoyed it. I know that not a huge amount happened in this chapter but it is necessary to set things up going forward, especially with my own interpretation of the Battlestar Galactica mythos and the two beings – Head-Six and Head-Baltar – that have been overseeing the cycle that the Colonials and the Cylons have been trapped in for millennia and who told them to do it. I will say now that it isn't Haydon though the two intelligences are aware of him and his various creations like the Haydonites and the Awareness. Who it actually is I will leave a mystery for now.
On the issue of the MARS stations, they're small – by Robotech standards – space stations that were built to support the United Earth Expeditionary Forces in both their search for the path to Tirolian space and the Robotech Masters and the execution of the Gloval Initiative. The name means Mobile Armoured Repair and Supply, they're essentially scaled down factory satellites though by Colonial standards they are still very large. I originally created them for a Robotech Sentinels story that I was going to write but which never got out of the basic outline stage of development but thought they would fit here so I brought them in. Until next time.