One Big Jump

by goulmeister1

AU:An Aerlion ship on patrol encounters the Cylons at the beginning of the first Cylon war and suffers a misjump, forty years later an expedition leaves Earth bound for Abydos, the Stargate has just been opened for the first time.

7. Chapter 7

Stargate Command

Briefing Room, Several Hours Later

General Hammond had called everyone back into the briefing room after he was done talking to the joint chiefs of staff back on Earth, the whole of SG-1 was now present alongside the Tok'ra.

"Command told me they will consider helping you on several conditions, first, we want the complete technical documentation to be able to construct our own subspace communications"

Jolinar nodded in response, "That was the offer General, Anise, the crystal"

Anise produced a small crystal, "This is a data storage crystal, it has all the information you need to produce your own subspace communication devices, I will assist in connecting it to your computers"

Jolinar spoke up again, "I had the receiver brought for another purpose, although it cant broadcast as far as a larger ship based unit it can receive their transmissions, I trust you can see its value?"

"Of course, we can receive the Gould's transmissions, but wont they be encrypted?"

Jolinar nodded to Carter, "They will, but the Tok'ra have broken most of them, there is one caveat though, such transmissions are usually directed and there are very few omnidirectional broadcasts, we will be amenable to sharing the encryption keys in the future"

Jack huffed, "After we help you I assume?", She smiled in return, "So, what's the plan then?"

"That segues into our other requirement, we need to know how exactly were going to help", Hammond asked her.

Jolinar leaned back into her chair hands crossed, "For her sterling service to Cronus, Kryse is to be rewarded with lordship over the world of Egina, a standard forested world with a fairly productive naquadah mine, its old lord was killed by Cronus for stealing some of the shipments"

"She is to arrive to her new domain in a week of your time", She looked annoyed, "The Tok'ra are spies and saboteurs, not jaffa or soldiers, the plan would be to take the world before she arrives and capture her once she sets foot on the world"

"Take a whole world!", Jack nearly shouted, "Just a damn minute lady, how exactly will we take a world from the Gould when they can just send ships to blast us from orbit"

"Colonel, calm yourself", Hammond turned to Jolinar, "Colonel O'Neill does have a point, what's stopping Cronus from doing just that"

"There are only one hundred jaffa on the world, one of which is a Tok'ra agent, once we give the signal he will sabotage all the comms devices on the planet, Cronus wont know anything is wrong until Kryse fails to report in"

"One hundred jaffa, nothing else?"

"There is a slave population that works the mines, apart from that nothing, the world has minimal defences, no gliders, no ships whatsoever and until Kyrse arrives no Goa'uld either"

Hammond sat in thought, all eyes on him, he knew it was possible for them to do it but he'd feel more comfortable if he brought in the big guns.

"What intel do you have, maps, strong points?"

Jolinar indicated Anise again, "It's all on a crystal, there's a small town beside the mine and the underlords palace outside that, a dirt road leads through a forest for several kilometres until it reaches the town, there is a regular jaffa patrol in both the forest and on the road"

"Hmm, and this Kyrse, is she arriving by gate or ship?"

Jolinar sighed, "If it was by gate this would be so much simpler, but no, it's by ship, a Goa'uld Tel'tak, a cargo ship to be exact, another reward from Cronus"

"Teal'c?", Hammond looked at the large quiet man.

"I am familiar with Tel'tak's General, a commonly used small transport ship, unarmed"

Hammond nodded, "So, you want to let the ship land and then capture Kyrse, I assume that she would land inside the palace?"

"Yes, we'd need to control the palace for this to work, otherwise she could just fly away"

"Very well, Carter work with Anise, get that intel, we'll need to verify it too, Colonel, once we download the crystal I'll want a reconnoitre of the AO", he looked over to the Tok'ra, "Once we confirm everything we'll see how to proceed", Hammond stood up, "I need to make some more calls, dismissed"

Arcadia

Outside New Unity City

DeChavilier found her in a field outside the city, the land had already been cleared for future works but for now was a flat green expanse, a line of trees surrounded the several acre site on all sides, left there by the work crews.

She stood in the middle, arm outstretched, a bird rested on the arm, tethered to the leather glove.

"It's a Pigeon Hawk, or descended from one anyway, one of the crews doing land clearing found it injured a few months ago, they sent it my way"

He knew she took up falconry as a hobby before, closer inspection revealed the hawk was tearing into a small bird, bits of flesh and blood were stuck to the glove.

"I forgot how calming this was after being stuck on a ship for so long"

"Elizabeth, are you alright?"

She released the bird from her arm, it shot up into the sky and began circling the field.

"No Aaron, I'm not alright, no one who was on Terra is alright", She turned around to face him, "I saw the horror on all your faces when you read that possible future but to me, I understood, I could live like that, I could see those clans forming, the strong rule, the lesson Amaris burned into my soul"

He felt the frown forming, he could see in her eyes the darkness inside, even now the scars of the war were fresh, he move up and took her into a hug.

"It'll be alright, none of that will happen"

He felt her sobs, her tears running down his clothes, "Aaron, I'm pregnant"

He stilled in shock, that was entirely unexpected, "You were on contraceptives"

She held him tighter, "I saw my future in those stories, no children, I stopped taking them, I don't have a lot of time left"

Aaron sighed, "Elizabeth, I'm seventy two years old, all my children died before their time, I don't know if I can do it again"

Unbidden memories came to him, tears forming in his eyes, "For you, I'll try"

"That's all I ask"

They ended the hug, Elizabeth moving away slightly and composing herself, he offered his handkerchief and she dried her eyes, finally she raised her arm and gave a shrill whistle, the hawk circling above flew like a rocket to the ground, gliding the last few metres to land on the outstretched arm.

"I have a meeting back on Earth, it'll only be a few hours", It was the reason he was looking for her in the first place.

"Oh, you spend most of your time there lately"

He was torn before he came to a realisation, "Come with me"

"What?"

"I'll buy a house, I'll get you a job training up the new recruits, we'll be close then"

She was silent for a long time, fussing with her bird, "Alright, we can try that"

Lunar Shipyards

Sol System

Two men stood watching the ship leave from the observation lounge, "There she goes, the Shandong, the last of the Enterprise class carriers", the older one stated.

"They're not making any more?, why are they building more shipyards then?"

The younger one was right, the Lunar Shipyards had been a hive of activity for the past few months, more and more yard space was being constructed, sized for the carriers just built, not only that, the other orbital shipyards around the Earth and Moon were also being expanded, factories and foundries too.

"It's for the new ship being designed, a new heavy cruiser, built from the ground up with all new technology", he kept his eyes on the departing ship, only five carriers had been built, the Enterprise, the Saratoga, the Verdun, the Kirov and finally the Shandong, "the military has decided that carriers are not suited to fighting them Goulds, but I did hear they're working on a new bigger one too"

"So were not getting redundancy then?, our jobs are staying?"

The older man turned to his son and slapped him on the back of the head, "I don't know why I let your mother convince me to get you this job, look around, there's no way they're cutting jobs now, the whole planet is going flat out on ship building"

The cost of getting to space was the cheapest it had ever been, now the price of getting a taxi ride the amount of people now in space was in the millions, stations and mines dotted the solar system sending goods and matierals back to the factories and shipyards in orbit and on the planet itself, all thanks to the increasing numbers of craft with gravity lift engines.

Tucker Thompson junior rubbed the back of his head, "C'mon pops, I'm not that bad"

Tucker senior looked at his twenty year old youngest son, "Back in my day you needed a degree to work in the yards", he spread his arms around, "They need so many people now they just train them on the job", he rubbed his chin, "Now that I mention that, our work crew is getting a new member, one of them star league people, here to train us up on all the new gear the new ships will use"

"C'mon son, lets go meet them", They left the observation lounge heading deeper into the station, soon reaching their locker room and adjacent offices, they could hear the foreman inside talking.

"Must be them now, wait here I'll find out"

Tucker Sr. knocked on the closed door and quickly entered, Tucker junior waited on a bench in the locker room, pulling out his phone and browsing the net, it was laggy with the distance to Earth but still useable, his thoughts went to his older brother out in the depths of space, Tucker considered joining the military but decided against it, he made far more money now anyway.

Eventually the door opened and his father emerged, "Tucker, get your ass in here", only to return back inside, Tucker hastened to join him.

Opening the door he was stunned, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was inside, their eyes met, she was of age with him with long silky brown hair, a cute smile lit her face, her hand extended towards him, "Hey, Hana Mae-Lee, nice to meet you"

"T-t-t-tucker Thompson", he managed to stutter out, his nerves going wild, until a slap to his head snapped it out of him.

"Junior, stop making moon eyes and close the damn door"

The foreman spoke up, "Hana here will train you lot up on the new ship systems, don't let her youth deceive you she has top marks from a university back on her Earth"

Tucker soon tuned the conversation out, he was in love.

Tucker Senior just shook his head, his son was an idiot, "So, they finalise the design for the new ship?"

"Yeah, we'll begin laying down the framework next week, I'll tell ya, these things will be beasts"

Sentinel Station

Earth Orbit

The top generals and admirals of the Union had met up in response to the Tok'ra's request, Aaron DeChavilier was one of them.

"We're still waiting for the data from the crystal but if the intel is real", General Armstrong was speaking, "we're confident we can take the world for long enough"

"Long enough to strip everything remotely valuable, and the ship, we want that too", Admiral Fontana was there to represent the fleet.

"Yes, if we can send it somewhere, the planet Egina, and the system lord Cronus' domain are on the far side of Apophis' from us, we wont be able to fly it back in any reasonable time frame", That was General Dmitri Petrov, always pessimistic from what Aaron knew of him.

"This is another opportunity too, we can test mass troop deployment through the gate, up till now it's only been small teams, General Hammond is also requesting some heavy support, so two birds and one stone and all"

Armstrong turned to Aaron, "Are your men ready for this kind of op?"

Aaron shook his head, "The forces I'm training are not ready for off world operations yet, we don't have the equipment, anything that'll fit through a stargate anyway, you'll want some kind of light mechanised infantry for this"

"No matter", he looked at Petrov, "You can spare a company or two?"

"Da, I have several units available, ready to go whenever, they just need transport to the gate"

Armstrong looked over to Fontana, who just shrugged, "I'll arrange some transport, give me a few hours"

"Remember to sent stuff that'll fit Dmitri"

Petrov gave Armstrong an annoyed look before he turned to Fontana, "We'll need room for a battalion and their equipment"

"So, DeChavilier", Armstrong was looking at him, "I saw that demonstration of the new mech, quite impressive but I cant see how it's any better than a tank"

"Ah, this old chestnut", he thought to himself, "General I'll have to show you the combat vids we have, mechs have their place, even if it's just their mobility over rough terrain"

"Hmm, lets hope the investment is worth it then, we'll need to see about mechs that fit through the stargate"

"We're one step ahead of you there, we're already looking into smaller mechs, specifically proto mechs from the books, we should be able to replicate them with the technology we have, but the project is on the back burner for now"

"Ah well, we'll get to see your mechs in action soon enough I think"

Stargate Command

Jack walked into the science lab, Carter and Anise had been working for several hours already, he could see the crystal held in a mess of wires and tape, the two women crowded around the computer monitor.

"Amazing, the amount of data the crystal can hold is beyond any of our storage technology at this scale, we knew the DHD used crystals for its computers but we've only scratched the surface so far"

"Goa'uld use crystals as part of all their computers, data storage and processing"

Jack caught Anise giving him the eye again, she was doing it during the briefing earlier too, he shivered at the thought of a snake kissing him, poking through his mouth as it happened, he nearly walked back out to the facilities to puke his guts up.

He shook off the feeling and approached, "Sounds like you're all done here then?"

"Sir", Carter turned around from the screen, "I didn't hear you come in, but yes, we have to data copied over"

"Right, we'll look over it for a bit and leave in a few hours then, I'll tell the general", Jack left as quickly as he arrived, he didn't trust that Tok'ra, she kept eyeing him up like a slab of meat.

….

"Damn Ruskies", in the few hours after Carter had transferred the data to their computer systems the station had filled up with a battalion of troops, the station had been designed so that large pathways could be opened up to he embarkation room to allow large objects and cargo to be moved through the gate, right now it was used to funnel the soldiers.

Jack had walked along and mentally noted the gear they brought, IFV's, APC's, even some small self propelled artillery pieces, all small enough to fit through the gate, all waiting for SG-1 to scout the planet.

"Here", he handed a folded piece of cloth to Jolinar, she was joining them for the mission, "It's a stealth cloak", She raised her eyebrow, "A cloaking device?"

Jack smiled at that, "Not quite, it bends light around the wearer but it's not perfect, your outline will be visible at close range and when moving, it isn't great but it helps a lot with this kind of mission"

SG-1 was waiting before the gate, SG-2 was ready beside them, the 12 man team would secure the gate while SG-1 scouted further in, ready to back them up if things got hairy, all of them had donned stealth cloaks or ghillie suits.

"Charlie, having fun running SG-2?", Jack and Kawalsky talked for a bit, soon enough Hammond walked up to the thick resistant glass, "SG teams, you have a go". He looked back to Harriman "dial the gate"

They all stood watch as the gate spun into activity, the sound of "Chevron locked" sounding out over the intercom, the new troops were entranced by the stargate, the first time any of them had seen it in person.

As the explosive wormhole finished stabilising Jack watched as a football sized sphere was thrown through the gate, the standard probe they used, equipped with a thermite charge in case they couldn't retrieve it.

Carter had a small tablet in her hands, "Atmosphere looks good, no signs of jaffa near the gate"

"Alright people, move out"

…..

Eighteen indistinct forms emerged from the gate on the other side, they quickly made their way to the treeline nearby.

"Major, stay here and watch our back, we'll scout out the mines and try to make contact with the Tok'ra agent",

Carter had brought up the Tok'ra supplied map on her tablet, "This road should lead straight to the mines, the palace and town are a bit further than that"

"Alright, we'll move slow and follow the road from the trees", Jack looked to the horizon, the sun was setting in the distance, "It'll be dark soon", He looked to Jolinar and Teal'c, "What kind of night vision do jaffa have?"

"The prim'ta enhances a jaffa's natural night vision but only elite jaffa have night vision equipment in their helmets", Teal'c informed him.

"The jaffa on this world are far from elite, Cronus' elite Minotaur guard are under his command only", Jolinar added.

"Right, so torches only then, we'll wait till nightfall before we move then"

Twenty minutes later and twilight had arrived, "Good enough, lets go"

As they made their way up the road they encountered several three man jaffa patrols, blinded by their flaming torches they were unable to see SG-1 creep past in the forest around them, soon enough they found a small bushy hill overlooking the mines.

Even at the late hour it was, slaves still toiled away hauling ore up from the pits below, jaffa overseers poking metal pokers at any lethargic slaves, light streamed from their eyes when it happened.

Jack's face hardened at the sight, his instincts screaming to intervene, they'd have to rescue the people below too he knew, they could send them to Abydos after they took the planet.

"What are those Teal'c?"

"Goa'uld pain sticks, a common torture device"

"Another tally on the reasons I hate the Gould list", He stared at the scene for a few seconds more, "Alright, lets check the palace out"

They moved around the mines and approached the large palace from behind, Jack used his smart goggles night vision to see everything.

"Looks like a castle, its got a wall right around, only one main gate in and those two towers covering it, are those staff cannons?"

"Indeed, there are many jaffa patrols on the walls too, a frontal assault would be unwise", Teal'c rumbled from beside him.

"The jaffa garrison is located within the palace walls, they sent irregular patrols to the slave town, some are stationed in the mines too", Jolinar added.

"I assume the landing pad is inside too?", he got a nod in response.

"Alright, lets move back to that hill, we can discuss things there"

Ten minutes of crawling through the dark of night found them back overlooking the mines.

"Everything matches up with the intel we received", Carter whispered to him, he nodded in return turning to Jolinar, "Alright, I've seen enough, call your man, who is he anyway"

Jolinar took out a small device, "A short range communicator, similar to your radios, we just need to wait now, as to your question, remember I said the lord of this world was executed for stealing naquadah", She smirked, "Well, he wasn't the thief, our spy Antoc was, he stole the missing shipments and sent them to us"

"Disguised as a jaffa?, do Tok'ra do that?"

"All the time, it's either Goa'uld or jaffa, symbiotes can sense each other, we cant pretend to be slaves"

Her device beeped and she had a short conversation with whoever was on the other side before turning back to them, "He's ready to disable the communications"

"How long will it take to fix them?"

"They'll need to ask for repairs through the gate, jaffa don't get training on Goa'uld tech"

Jack looked up to the sky, it was still going to be dark for a few more hours from the looks of things, he pushed the button on his radio, "Sierra Golf 1, Sierra Golf 2, over"

"Go ahead Sierra Golf 1, over"

"Message to Sierra Golf Charlie, we're playing with a full hand of cards, over"

"Wilco, over"

"Sierra Golf 1, out"

Jack looked over to Jolinar, "Alright, lets get this party started"

…

Hammond stood in the control centre for the stargate, beside him was the Russian stargate team leader, one Colonel Alexi Zukhov, "They gave me temporary command of the battalion for this operation General, all the men have been warned about Goa'uld larvae that might survive the jaffa's death"

Hammond nodded, "Good, I don't want any of those snakes to set foot on this station, we'll make sure to be extra through with the screening anyway"

The room began to shake slightly, the stargate beyond the armoured glass was moving.

"Stargate activation, incoming wormhole from Egina", Chief Master Sergeant Harriman called out.

The two men watched the wormhole form down below, the blue glow lighting the whole room.

"Incoming radio signal, it's SG-2"

"Put them on speaker". Hammond waited a second for it to happen, "Major, report"

"We just heard from SG-1, they've confirmed the intel we received from the Tok'ra, their ready to begin the operation"

"Very well, Major, link up and support SG-1, we're sending the cavalry now"

They watched as the gate shutdown, Hammond clapped Zukhov on the shoulder, "Good luck Colonel, and Godspeed"

The Colonel saluted Hammond before leaving, George watched him mount an APC that was idling before the gate, the smell of diesel exhaust was already all over the station, "Sergeant, dial Egina"

…...

"Alright, Kawalsky's on the way, now we wait"

They watched the slaves toil away as they waited, soon enough a small explosion was heard from the direction of the palace, "That was Antoc, he's on his way here", Jolinar told them.

"Ok, here's the plan, while the Russkies are taking the palace we'll rescue the people in the mines there, as soon as SG-2 gets here we'll start"

"Daniel, you try and get the miners to safety, take Quinta with you", the two men nodded in response, Jack looked over to the palace as the sounds of horns blared, "That is the alarm", Teal'c told them.

Down in the pit the jaffa guards were ushering the slaves deeper inside the mines, several of them moved to block any access inside, "Looks like there's just the ten of them", Jack noted, with SG-2 they'd nearly outnumber them two to one.

…

Back at the stargate chevrons were locking in place, a blue blast emerged as it activated, seconds later the first vehicle raced through, sailing over the large gap to the ground, it dug furrows in the ground as it raced to clear the emergence zone.

More followed through until thirty assorted vehicles were arranged around the field, the motorised rifle battalion had arrived.

Colonel Zukhov looked at the screens in his command vehicle, already drones were being launched and feeding the data back to him, comms were established with SG's one and two, informing him they were to take the mine complex.

Tactical displays lit up with maps and video, a drone had already spotted the torchlight from three jaffa who were racing to the stargate, a command from him and the drone operator dropped a bomb, the three jaffa were now broken bodies around a small crater.

"Send the tank platoon up the road, have half the mechanised infantry follow behind, we'll set up here with the artillery and mortar units"

The roar of diesel engines broke the peace of the night, T-95 tanks rumbled up the dirt track towards the palace some 10 kilometres away, BMP's following in their wake, around the gate the rest dug in to defensive positions, vehicles arranged to cover both the forest and road and the gate itself, artillery and mortar teams waiting for firing orders while drones raced ahead to mark enemy positions, the jaffa felt as if hell had arrived.

…

SG-2 arrived to the distant sounds of explosions and moving steel, quickly plans were formed and exchanged, half of SG-2 and the Tok'ra would remain on the hill line, to provide cover if necessary and defend an exfil point, the rest of them would advance into the mines and destroy the jaffa present.

Jack observed from a boulder near the entrance, three jaffa stood in the mouth of the cave like orifice, more figures were only visible as shadows inside, the rest of the jaffa and slaves, they had managed to sneak as close as they could under the cover of the stealth cloth but now it was time for action.

Sometimes the best solution is to kick in the door, a command to Kawalsky and the two snipers they left back on the hill opened fire, the assault team watching and waiting, two jaffa fell over to a quiet crack in the distance, the last one raised his staff in alarm, moving back into the cave, he didn't make more than one step.

The assault team moved up to the entrance, the jaffa inside clearly knew something had happened, bolts zipped out forcing the team to dive into cover, "There goes that plan", Jack bemoaned.

One of SG-2 was hit in the chest as he stood, the force throwing him back several feet, another grabbed him by the leg and dragged him back into cover, the medic striped his chest piece, the new armour had saved his life but several ribs were broken.

The jaffa kept up a lethal barrage of plasma bolts keeping the assault team pinned in place, the jaffa feeling bold had started to advance, moving up the sides of the tunnel in pairs from cover to cover, Jack and Kawalsky noticed, "Grenades on three"

They both prepared some frags, their aim was spot on, managing to drop right beside the advancing pairs, a concussive blast and four more jaffa were down, the team used the opportunity to move up to the mine tunnel entrance, the remaining three jaffa were in cover behind some wooden carts and crates, the slaves were in a cage behind them.

Jack raised his hand to cease fire, "Charlie, got any flashbangs?"

"Sure, we have plenty", he waved his hand "Riggs, Beaumont, flashbangs on three"

The two soldiers moved up and counted, the grenades sailed over the jaffa's cover to land at their feet, the smart goggles on their faces protected their eyes as they charged the remaining jaffa, a few boots to the head quietened them down, they were disarmed and secured.

Jack sat on a nearby rock, adrenaline fading, "Daniel, do your thing" he waved Jackson over to the slave miners, there were around fifty of them locked into the cage.

He watched as Daniel calmed down the panicky people in the cage, that was their part done, he wondered hoe the rest of the battle was going.

…

The three man jaffa patrol reached the edge of the forest, the road was before them, earlier they had heard an unfamiliar buzzing noise and an explosion but were unable to identify the source.

Lit torches in hand they emerged onto the road, they were returning to the palace for some rest, they marched up the road, the normal night sounds seemed strangely absent, a distant rumble was audible, getting closer as they listened.

The leader raised his arm, "Kree", they stopped and listened, it was coming from the direction of the gate, perhaps their new god had arrived early?

Staffs raised they looked back into the gloom towards the gate, the sound still approached, deafening now, they could just make out a fast moving shape approaching, they fired their weapons at the approaching monster, orange bolts connecting with solid armour, it didn't stop.

The leader fired and fired, the other two sensed the danger and jumped into the bushes lining the road, a loud metallic crunch was heard, the jaffa disappearing under the steed thread of a metal monstrosity.

They ran into the forest, a chattering noise now following, 14.5mm rounds blew holes in the environment as they ran, one got caught in the leg leaving only a bloody stump, he fell screaming, the other now in a panic raced away leaving him behind, he didn't hear the thump of a grenade launcher, the explosive landed at his feet blowing him into a nearby tree, still alive he watched as strange green men approached in his fading vision, he was finished off with a shot to the head and gut.

….

Zuhkov read the reports, so far they had taken out ten patrols on the road to the palace, now the advance force was nearly there, waiting in the trees to continue.

"Forty so far, Colonel O'Neill took ten and we got thirty, so there's only sixty left in the palace and town", he aid was reporting to him.

"Hmm, keep the tanks back, we need the palace intact or the Goa'uld who's coming will realise something is up"

He watched the drone feed from over the palace, the two towers would be a problem if they tried to force their way in, "Those guns could take out our armour, and we cant just drop a bomb on them, the damage would be too visible"

"Look, their forming up in the courtyard"

Zuhkov smiled, "Ha, contact the artillery battery, show them why that's such a bad idea"

He thought on the towers again, the brass would like him to take those guns intact but the risk was too great and he couldn't just destroy the towers themselves, it'd have to be drones then.

He returned to the feed, the sound of the 152mm guns shook the command vehicle, he watched as twenty jaffa formed a block in the courtyard, others were manning the walls, he counted the seconds to impact, the jaffa were unaware of their impending doom.

…

Tol'mak stood at attention as the senior jaffa warrior had them form up in the courtyard, staff in hand they formed an infantry square.

"Jaffa, Kree, we are under attack, patrols have failed to return and the sound of explosions can be heard from the stargate"

Tol'mak though he heard a whistling sound, his gaze turned to the dark sky above, as he did the first shell hit, the concussive blast knocking him away from the blast zone, shrapnel and fire rained down on him, flat on his back with multiple broken limbs he managed to raise his head and look.

Blood and body parts littered the ground, dead jaffa lay where they were tossed by the explosions, others were running out from the main building to see what had happened, only to run into a scene straight from hades, as the darkness crept into Tol'mak's vision, he prayed to Cronus for salvation.

New explosions now happened, Tol'mak's jaffa constitution keeping him awake, small metal birds had flown into the two towers, the guns and jaffa within now in pieces, he managed to move over to the wall propping himself against it and taking stock, already his vision was clearing but the damage was severe, cuts and bruises lined his skin, his left leg was broken, the bone poking out of his skin, it wasn't responding to his commands, his right arm hung limp too, it pained him to even attempt to move it.

A new sound was heard now, a rumbling metallic screech, it was coming closer, the jaffa on the walls were firing away at something he couldn't see, he watched as they were struck by fiery bolts, streaking from outside, jaffa caught in the barrage had massive chunks of their bodies ripped from them, they fell to the ground dead.

He could hear the steel monster outside the gate now, its wailing growing in volume, the great wooden barrier began to creak, as if a giant was pushing it open, the great wooden plank baring it soon began to splinter and finally break completely, the gate flung open as the machine came inside, simply driving over any unfortunate jaffa in its way.

More smaller machines followed, racing in and disgorging men dressed in green, they came out firing their weapons, invisible death reached out and struck down any jaffa who opposed them, explosions shook the walls as they threw grenades into doorways and windows.

He watched eyes wide as several approached him with weapons trained, "Look, this ones alive", They spoke complete gibberish to Tol'mak, he closed his eyes saying a final prayer to Cronus.

"Take him, the Colonel wants prisoners"

…...

SG-1 made their way into the palace, Jolinar and Antoc had returned to the gate with SG-2 to prepare for capturing Kyrse, the door had been rammed open by a tank, scorch marks and bullet holes riddled the walls and buildings inside but otherwise the place was mostly intact.

They found Zuhkov in the courtyard, leaning on his command vehicle smoking a cigarette, he waved them over.

"Colonel, we've secured the palace and town, we're keeping the civilians confined to their houses for now"

"Looks like you had one banger of a party here", Jack looked at the lines of bodies laid out along the wall.

"Yes, it was easy until we got to the palace, we lost 5 men in clearing the rooms inside, 3 wounded, the jaffa are the most dangerous at close quarters, I hope all this was worth it"

"It'd better be, feels like those Tok'ra are stringing us along, turn us into their muscle and give us scraps in exchange"

"Da, I feel the same Colonel, I have men stripping the place as we speak, we'll get our payment, one way or another"

"Yeah, better tidy up the outside too, we still have a snake to catch"

4 days later

Egina

"Here she comes"

They looked up to the descending Tel'tak, they had spent the past four days cleaning up the courtyard and striping anything of value from inside, all the bodies and prisoners had been shipped offworld, not before they had taken some of the jaffa armour and weapons, twenty men now stood dressed in jaffa armour awaiting the Gould, Jack included, Teal'c had ran them through some short drills on receiving a new overlord.

They stood at attention now, to better sell the ambush, the ship hovered over the yard, slowly coming in before gently touching down on the ground.

The Tok'ra had given them a new tool for this, a sedative that worked on Goulds, and explained the features of the kara'kesh, especially the bit about shields and low velocity projectiles, a few men were hidden with clear lines of sight with dart guns loaded with the stuff.

The door slid open, so seamless that Jack didn't even notice it before, a lone woman emerged, dresses to the nines with gold and silks, they all bowed as she emerged, just as Teal'c had taught them, they waited till she had gotten far enough away before they sprung the trap.

A pfft sound followed by the snake getting impaled by multiple tranquilliser darts, she looked down in total shock at the three jutting from her chest, her eyes glowed in anger before she collapsed to the ground.

"Move", the command echoed around the courtyard, men storming into the landed ship, there was no one else inside.

Four Tok'ra emerged from inside the palace, Jolinar, Lantash, Anise and Antoc, they hauled the Gould up and examined her, "She lives, we must hurry and extract the symbiote before she wakes"

They were done here then, they had already moved the slave population off world, stolen everything, even the kitchen sink, Jack contemplated just blowing up the palace but dismissed the idea, better to leave no trace.

They had already scouted out a close enough planet with a gate to park the ship on, Teal'c would fly the thing there with SG-1 along for the ride, it was only a few hours flight time.

Transport was radioed for and soon arrived, they were done with Egina.

Stargate Command

Some time later

"We received word from the Tok'ra, they successfully extracted the parasite", they were in the briefing room, SG-1 and General Hammond, they were wrapping things up.

"Yeah, Jolinar said it's even possible she will take Rosha as her host again", Daniel spoke, he managed to pry some cultural information from the Tok'ra.

"And we recovered a lot of technology, vo'cume holographic projectors, tons of staff weapons, zats, the kara'kesh Kyrse had, some of the Gould reading tablets and one handheld healing device", Carter listed off what they had taken, "and the Tel'tak, quite the haul"

"Don't forget the subspace comms tech the Tok'ra gave us"

"We wont Daniel, we'll see if they keep their promise of a meeting with their high council"

"Hmm, we need all the allies we can get Colonel, the Tok'ra have an extensive intelligence network that command would love access to", Hammond mused, "If there's nothing else?", everyone was silent, "Alright then, dismissed"

Colonial Expedition

Kobol, 3rd of May 2065

The fleet was orbiting the planet, they had been here for a few days now, ground teams scouring the surface for anything of value, so far they had only found ruins, the foot print of the cities were still visible from orbit but nothing remained standing.

Borman recalled when they had first arrived, Baltar, the closest thing they had to an expert, quoted scripture from the sacred scrolls, a warning that any return to Kobol would extract a price in blood.

A warning for the Colonials then, the Union was not returning to anywhere. They had found the probable capital of Kobol, the so called city of the gods, its artists rendition in the sacred scrolls they had was spot on, the foundations were still there, but as with the rest there was nothing else.

They had tested the air and soil, looking for a reason why the Colonials had left, radiation was normal, there were no signs of biosphere collapse, a mystery for the ages, Borman assumed it must have been some kind of war that caused the exodus.

Two thousand years was another mystery, if the scrolls were accurate the exodus happened two thousand years ago, the same time as the thirteenth tribe destroyed themselves, and then two thousand years later five entities claiming to be survivors of the thirteenth came to the Cylons, then again, it could just be a coincidence.

Plant and animal samples had been collected, another coincidence, they were related to species back on Earth, just like nearly every habitable planet they had discovered so far, sometime in the past a lot of worlds had been terraformed to Earth standard, an ancient empire perhaps?.

Anyway, they were done with Kobol, its biggest value now was trading the location to the Colonials, already the ground teams were packing up, they'd be leaving the system later today, it was only a short two hundred light years to the Colonies now, they'd be there in less than a week.

Finished writing up his personal notes Borman opened up the latest reports on everything they had gotten from the Cylon ship, there was a lot to go over, he skimmed the section on the construction of the ship itself, as far as everyone was concerned it was a step back from the earlier double disk baseships, the data received from the Velos painted a picture of an immense armoured behemoth, full of guns and raiders, but slow, the new design they encountered was minimally armed with a few missile launchers and had nearly nothing in the way of armour, its main offensive power was it's fighter wings.

They had learned the ship was a prototype design for the new Cylon fleet when the Guardians had absconded with it. It made sense as a support craft, it could wait outside the combat zone and send its jump drive equipped raiders to attack, just like an old school carrier.

They had recovered tons of data, most of it to do with the war, from a historical perspective it was useful but nothing relevant to the situation at hand or the current status of the Cylons or Colonials, the armistice was another interesting document, the staff had spent a few hours debating it the other day, the main point of contention was how badly it favoured the Cylons, the Colonials had agreed to limit their territory to a small piece of space.

Fortunately Cylon space was on the far side of the Colonies from Earth so they were hopefully unlikely to encounter any.

The Colonies had been hit hard during the war, harder than the Union had thought, billions dead and massive amounts of infrastructure destroyed, he could understand them agreeing to the one sided terms.

The revelation of the organic Cylons was another shock, their exact nature was unknown but everyone had taken to calling them replicants, Blade Runner was a classic film after all, they had no idea what they looked like, only that there were seven models when the Guardians had left, who knew how many there were now.

Further questioning of Mr Rand revealed that the Guardians had steered well clear of the five survivors of the thirteenth, believing them to be agents of some evil force, they were never privy to the details and ran when it became clear that the Centurions were being enslaved by the new creations.

Another interesting bit of information was the Articles of Colonisation, a copy was found in the computer systems of the baseship, the document reminded him of the US constitution, now the Colonies were basically a federal government with all that entailed, the Union was expecting to be negotiating with the individual Colonies before, the Colonial negotiating position was stronger now they were united.

Even if the trip failed to get anywhere diplomatically it had already succeeded in gaining access to the Cylon jump drives, the drive on the base ship had been carefully removed to the Colossus class transport, Lynx, the few experts they had on hand were busy studying it and the smaller raider drives they had acquired.

The current Earth standard of 48 light years maximum a day, if they pushed their drives hard, was handily beat by the Cylon units 4800 light years a day, one hundred times faster than their own, not to mention how fast it charged, he hoped they were able to replicate its performance, still, being able to buy Colonial drives was an objective of the expedition, the data they had showed they were vastly better than the Unions current versions.

"We could be home in one day with a Cylon drive", Borman thought to himself, "not months", the data from the Velos indicated that Colonial drives could jump as far as 5 light years at a time but only taking 20 minutes to recharge, seven and a half times faster than Union drives, not as good as the Cylons but far better than what they currently had, it would only take the Colonials eight days to reach Earth.

The jump drive wasn't the only interesting bit of tech they had found, the Cylons hadn't been idle during their war with the Colonials, they had made advances in both FTL comms and sensors, what the Colonials called wireless, just a year ago the technology would be something Earth desperately wanted, but now they had other options, the HPG's and the K-series, according to Zelenka wireless was similar in function to the K-series devices but with a more limited range and better bandwidth.

Of course, allot could change in thirty one years, maybe the Cylons and Colonials went to war again, or the Goa'uld had found them already, who knew, but in a few days the fleet would find out.

Borman looked up from his reading, his alarm was beeping, it was nearly time to leave, he quickly got ready and headed to the CIC, Anderson was there overseeing the final preparations.

"Sir, all the ground teams are back, drives are spooled and ready", Anderson greeted him with a barrage of information, Borman smiled, she was good at her job.

"Excellent Captain, that puts us ahead of schedule, and the rest of the fleet?"

"Charging their drives as we speak, we can jump presently"

They were on the final stretch of their journey, the next stop was the Colonies.

Admiralty Meeting

Sentinel Station

Sol

The Admirals had just returned from a tour of the new flight II Shield class frigate that had just undergone its first trials, first a jump to the Oort cloud to demonstrate the new weapons suite, a suitable space rock had been found for use.

The ships new Earth built NL-35 performed as expected, icy rock melting into clouds of vapour with each beam, the two turrets alternating fire to send a fusillade against a city sized boulder, it was reduced to pebbles in short order, Earths heat recycling systems allowed the weapons to fire for far longer than the equivalent Star League version.

Half the ships point defence turrets had been changed to a laser based system too, shooting down some drone decoys, the laser beams reaching out and destroying the drones in an instant, no bullet travel time needed.

Her new thrusters able to push her far faster than possible before with their chemical drives and she also came equipped with the latest jump drive, able to jump three whole light years with a recharge time of thirty minutes, three times faster than the old version.

The Admirals were impressed by the massive improvement over the old design, the new frigate could potentially take on several Cruisers and emerge victorious, and it was an escort designed to cover the larger ships.

"I'm impressed Rooks, your technology delivered", Admiral Barrowman began, "We'll need to push through the cruiser upgrade too, it's going to be the first ship with ppc's"

Admiral Rooks just shrugged, "The feelings mutual, you don't realise how good your jump drives are compared to our old ones, the recharge time is one thing but the fact you can just jump right into the system is huge", He smiled, "The gravity generators are nice too"

Fleet Admiral Coleman broke the levity though, "Lets not clap ourselves on the back just yet, the intel we have on the Goa'uld paints a bad picture for us, if it's accurate our ships will be next to useless against them", he looked grim, "We'll need to mass numbers against single ships, use our new warheads to take out the shields"

Shields were the biggest concern, Joilnar had explained just how much abuse a standard Goa'uld Ha'tak could take, current plans were to jump fleets in to unleash massive volleys of nuclear missiles and gunfire to hopefully overwhelm the shields, no single Earth ship could hope to dent them.

"Speaking of the Goa'uld, what of that transport ship we captured?", Barrowman looked to Admiral Fontana.

"Still on the planet we moved it too", Fontana produced a data pad and pressed a button, the big screen came to life with a map of the galaxy.

"Our scientists don't want to disassemble too much in the field, they've been gathering what data they can without doing that, we have the jaffa Teal'c training some pilots up for us, the plan was to move the ship either back to Earth or a safer location away from Goa'uld controlled space"

Fontana stood and pointed to the map, "This system here is where it is, nearly on the other side of the galaxy from us, the science types confirmed the Tok'ra Jolinar's reports on Goa'uld ship speeds, 32,000 times light speed, it'd take over a year to get it here"

"Too long, I take it we're going for option B then?", Barrowman asked.

"Yes, the SGC is looking for a suitable world outside what we believe is Goa'uld space", he pointed out the highlighted areas of the map, "Joilnar gave us this info on their territory, we cant validate it right now but the planet the ship is on is deep in Cronus' space"

"So, a few months to move it and however long to find somewhere, have we learned anything useful yet?", Rooks asked him.

"Some things, the FTL speed for one, the current focus is on the sensor systems, we believe it is the best avenue right now, the technical data we got from the Tok'ra is helpful there too, everything else will have to wait till we move the ship, we don't want to damage anything", Fontana finished and sat down.

"Shields are our priority once the ship is moved", Coleman declared, "making our own and defeating theirs"

Rooks spoke up at that, "Why not contact some of the other advanced society's then, like the Tollan?"

Coleman let out a tired sigh, "Unfortunately that's not up to us, the council is adamant we don't reveal ourselves to anyone, Human or Goa'uld, until they feel we are ready, for us that means we'll look into contacting other human civilisations after the return of the Colonial expedition"

"And the Tok'ra, we contacted them?"

"By accident, they know about us now so we'll proceed to improve relations with them, we're waiting for a meeting with their high council, hopefully soon, but we're not to go looking for anyone else"

Jolinar had given them the address to a colony world of the Aschen, they'd need to get the Tok'ra to reveal the addresses for the other advanced human worlds, the Tollan and the Hebridian's, Jolinar had also implied that there were others too.

"Lets talk about the new expedition, to this thirteenth tribe planet", Fontana changed the topic, the Discovery had arrived back home several weeks ago, bringing news from the expedition fleet, the council had already organised a group of ships to travel back to the planet, ostensively to conduct research but really to claim the planet for the Union.

"That nuked out world Borman found, doubt it'll amount to much", Rooks commented.

"We might find something of value, but there's another reason for it, Borman has decided to send any Colonial ships there for a meeting place, so as not to reveal the location of Earth", Coleman added, approval in his voice.

"Ah, makes sense, better than the location the council had picked before, New Hope is far too close to Earth"

"Yes, I'd rather keep them away than let the Cylons know our location"

The Admirals in the room gave their endorsement to that sentiment, afterwards the conversation turned to more bureaucratic matters before finally winding down some time later, everyone now waiting for the Colonial expedition to return, hopefully bearing good news.

Aberdeen Proving Ground

Earth

Elizabeth Hazen took her first good look at the mech before her, the Cadet, the first domestic mech produced on the planet and her new ride, her Highlander was back on Arcadia.

There were twenty of the things in the massive warehouse now turned mech bay, her new training cadre, she would start the training in earnest next week but for now she was getting familiar with the new machine.

The thing was headless, its small cockpit was located in the centre of the torso, right in front of the reactor, two gun arms extended from the sides, one with the large laser, the other with two mediums, a pair of machine guns poked out from under the cockpit and the missile launcher was on the right shoulder.

She climbed up the gantry and crawled into the cockpit, it was cramped but the chair was comfy enough, she put the lightweight neurohelmet on started up the machine, the new to her systems in the mech, the heat recycler, meant she wasn't wearing a cooling suit, that alone was a major plus.

She ambled the machine to the fields outside, for a 40ton mech it was slow, topping out at 64kph, the Union prioritising protection over speed putting a total of thirteen tons of armour on it.

She recalled Aaron talking about the next mech Earth was producing, also slow and armoured, he had wanted to go with a 75ton design based on the stuff from those books, the Union had decided against that, citing infrastructure weight limits and a lack of an enemy mech force to fight.

Understandable really, only they had mechs right now but that could change in the future, the Union did approve a heavy design in the end, a 60ton model based on the clan Vulture, they had used the schematics from a Champion with a redesigned upper chassis with a weapon load out similar to the Vulture, it looked like a fine machine to her.

She ran the mech up and down the training ground, testing its handling and speed, it was good enough but not the best, the Union would only produce the 100 Cadet mechs planned but the national armies of Earth were planning to produce their own for training purposes too.

She walked over to the firing range, old tanks filled with concrete were setup as targets, She fired off the mediums first, testing them out, twin scarlet beams lanced out to touch the tank, its armour holding for a second before melting away, concrete exploded out of the hole and turret as the beam faded, she looked at her heat gauge, no change, those heat recyclers were something else.

She added her large laser to the mix, targeting another tank that was already mostly Swiss cheese, the laser beam penetrated right through, concrete and all, punching a beam out to the earthen berm backstopping the range, her heat gauge had raised a tiny amount before returning to normal.

She smirked now, and loosed off all her lasers at once for a few minutes, heat was no longer an issue, with only three lasers anyway, this was going to take some getting used to.

Done testing the Cadet out she returned to the mech bay, she needed to plan out some exercises for her future students, and some wargames, a lance from the 316th was available to use as an opfor, the recruits better live up to her expectations.

Colonial Expedition

6LY Outside Colonial Space

4 Days Later

After an uneventful few days the fleet was nearly there, planning out how they would initiate contact.

"It's decided then, we'll send the Enterprise and a small escort to make contact and leave the rest of the fleet here for now", Captain Anderson condensed their decisions.

"The Enterprise, the Dublin, two frigates and the Rondeau, just in case we need the heavy guns", Borman added.

"That'll leave plenty to cover the unarmed ships, when do we leave?", Captain Stone asked.

"One hour", Borman turned to Baltar, "Are you ready for this?"

Baltar nodded slowly, "As much as I ever will be, I always dreamed of this, meeting my long lost family, bringing my father his lost son"

"And now you will", he turned to Checkov, "You're in charge of the fleet remaining here, we'll remain in contact via the HPG"

"Sir", Checkov saluted, "I wont let you down"

"Alright that's it people, we're on the last leg of this journey, lets not fuck up at the finish line"

Colonial Space

3 Hours Later

It was quiet in this sector of space, traffic was basically non-existent, the possibility of Cylons was nil, them being on the far side of Colonial space, and patrols were few and far between.

For the crew of sensor outpost 47-gamma, things were as boring as usual, the stations 6 man crew worked a two week rotation of utter monotony, parked there in case the Cylons tried to sneak in the back door.

Today that would change.

Ensign Hatch, the commander of the small crew was on his shift when it happened, stuck in the small control centre reading a book, Petty Officer Lockheart was equally distracted when the DRADIS went mad.

"Holy crap, DRADIS contact, 225 carom 126, range 1.2 million, I'm picking up five signatures"

"Cylons?", was the first word from Hatch's mouth.

"Unknown, no IFF's, looks like two are the size of a Valkyrie, the others are smaller"

Lockheart screamed out again, "Radiological alarm!"

"Shit, are they firing nukes at us?", Hatch shouted as he hit the alarm button, waking the rest of the crew.

Lockheart glued his eyes to the screen, "Eh, no actually, it's the ships themselves, must be nuclear powered"

That threw Hatch for a loop, who the hell used nuclear powered ships, not us and not the Cylons, could it be?, the Thirteenth?, he reached for the wireless console, sending a message to Picon headquarters requesting reinforcements.

Cyrannus System

Colonial Space

They had finally arrived, the four stars of the Cyrannus system were now shining their light on the small detachment of the expedition.

"Jump complete"

"All ships reporting in",

"Astrogation confirms the presence of a double binary system"

The crew called out to the Captain and Admiral, reports flying back as he took in the sight on the main monitor, they were finally here after months of travel and some unexpected discoveries along the way.

"Admiral, the Dublin, Merlin and Knox are requesting permission to dispose of their reactor waste"

Earth ships periodically dumped their reactor waste, usually once a month to prevent build-up, normally done far away from any inhabited location, sometimes it was pumped into the main thrusters and burned away, other times it was simply vented out.

"We're well outside the habitable zone, permission granted"

"Admiral, were picking up a lot of radio waves, their too garbled at this range, but it looks like local planetary broadcasts, TV and radio I think", the comms officer reported, Borman knew they wouldn't be able to pick up the FTL wireless transmissions though, they were lacking the equipment.

An alarm sounded from the electronic warfare console, it operator was quick to respond, "Radar waves, looks like a search radar, source is at bearing 133 mark 263, no target lock"

"Sensors, what's there?", Captain Anderson ordered as she walked over to the console.

"Contact at bearing, distance one point two million kilometres, estimated diameter 100 meters"

"Get the telescope on it"

"Captain, sound general quarters, fleet wide", Borman wasn't going to take any chances, it could be Cylons for all they knew.

"We have visual"

Borman and Anderson watched the image appear, a squat blocky station sat in the middle of the screen, large antenna poked out from all directions and several small turrets finished it off.

"Looks like some kind of sensor outpost, early warning system?", Anderson commented to him.

"Most likely, it means they know we're here now, we're stuck till the drives recharge too, but it doesn't look like a Cylon station at least"

Borman exhaled and calmed his nerves, they would just have to wait, let the Colonials come to them, it was probably better this way, he didn't like the idea of an unknown group of ships just dropping in at Earth, friendly or not.

"We'll wait here, it's not like we can leave anyway", he paused, looks like whoever was on the station was going to be in for a first contact, "Call the Dublin, Baltar is our best colonial speaker, I want him on any calls"

"Sir"

He looked at Anderson, "When he's on we'll try to contact that station"

…..

Ensign Hatch was starting to realise that fleet reaction times weren't the best, if it had been Cylons they'd all be dead by now, he looked around the now fully manned command centre, nervous young faces looked back.

Before the war this kind of job would have been automated, a satellite would have done, the technophobia in the Colonies after the war changed all that, people couldn't be hacked after all, so now they had to sit out in the boonies for weeks on end.

"Lockheart, any reply yet?"

"No sir, the transmission wont have arrived yet, it's faster than light, not instant"

The wireless tech they had recovered from the Cylons during the war changed communications around the colonies, but it still took some time for transmissions to arrive, from where they were it would take 15 minutes, add on to that the time to organise a response.

Tense silence filled the room, Hatch griped the armrest of his chair as he started at the five contacts on the screen, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Lockheart spoke.

"Incoming signal, it's from the ships"

"Patch it through"

He reached for the wired handset, listening to the earpiece, "This is the Union vessel Enterprise to station, we come in peace"

He thought he detected a hint of an Aerilon accent, otherwise it was perfect Caprican, who the hell was the Union though?

He pressed the transmit button, "This is Outpost 47 Gamma, I don't know of any Union, state your colony of origin and destination"

He felt a lot calmer now, turning, he shrugged to the rest of the crew, "Looks like it's just some lost people", he heard a few sighs of relief.

"Colonial outpost, our origin is outside of the Colonies of Kobol, we are an exploratory group on an expedition to find you"

Holy crap it was the thirteenth tribe, "Lockheart, fire up the wireless, tell them the thirteenth is here"

Picon Fleet HQ

Cyrannus System

Rear Admiral Peter Corman rushed to the CIC of the Athena, they had received the news of an unknown group of ships jumping in at the edge of the system, right now no one knew if it was Cylons or not, but battlestar group 71 would be ready.

The ship was already done undocking by the time he made it there, "Report", he bellowed as he entered the room, moving to stand in front of the central DRADIS display, the Athena was one of the ageing battlestars of the fleet, one of the original 12 Jupiter's built, he would much prefer to be in command of a modern Mercury right now, the brand new ships were set to replace the old beasts.

"Sir, group elements are reporting readiness, their prepared to jump on your order"

"Good, plot a jump to outpost 47 gamma, as soon as the drives are spooled we go"

Corman did a quick mental review of the group, there was the Athena the flagship, two Valkyrie's, the class namesake the Valkyrie itself, under the newly promoted Commander Adama, the Yashuman under Commander Black, a few Berzerk's rounded the force out, he would have liked some Adamant class frigates or Manticore class corvettes, but the penny pinchers had decided that those old ships were obsolete in the age of the battlestar, they had scrapped the lot in the years after the war, even the venerable Berserk class wasn't long for this world.

The post war era had brought a lot of cuts to the fleet, most of the early war and pre war ships that survived were now rotting in scrapyards around the colonies, the politicians had called it streamlining, soon the Jupiters and Berzerks would join them, the so called modernisation would leave only the Valkyire and Mercury class battlestars in service, they were even selling off the Defenders.

"Sir, Admiral Feore is on the line", Robert Feore was the top Admiral in the Colonies, people had pegged Nagala to take over when he retired which would be soon, Feore had been a commander during the first war and was getting on in age.

Corman picked up the wired handset, "Admiral, we're just about to jump"

"I know Peter, we just got another transmission from the outpost, their now claiming the ships are from the Thirteenth Tribe"

Corman was starting to feel like they were being pranked, "Really, the Thirteenth Tribe, this better not be some big hoax, I'll string them up if it is"

"It's no hoax, we have the sensor reports, there's definitely a group of ships out there, none of their designs are known"

It most likely wasn't Cylons, there was no benefit to some elaborate deception, they would just attack and be done with it, and anyone saying it was a pirate fleet should be thrown out the airlock, the only criminality using ships was some drug smuggling rings, anyone stupid enough to try and hijack a ship would feel the boot of the fleet on the back of their teeth.

"You think it's real then?"

"I know the Thirteenth is just a myth, but myths are usually based on some truth, so it's a hoax, the Thirteenth or aliens, take your pick, just don't go in guns blazing"

"Yes Sir, I'll keep the gloves on, we'll soon find out just what's up"

"Good, report in as soon as you know, Feore out"

Corman put the handset back into the holder, "Colonel, are we ready?"

Colonel Sabat, his XO, gave a firm nod, "Jump prep is complete, we're waiting on your order"

"Very well, start the countdown"

….

It had been ten minutes since they were detected, the conversation with the outpost was going well enough so far, but had hit a stumbling block with the whole Thirteenth tribe thing, explaining to the Ensign in charge the specifics of their origin would take some time.

"Sir, he's convinced we're the Thirteenth tribe, should I tell him we already found them?", the comms operator told Borman.

He though about it, better to leave it till they had a proper dialogue with the Colonials, it would be too much confusion to start dropping information like that at the start, they'd break the ice and bring it up then.

"No, we'll wait for a proper representative for that, just keep him talking, we want a good impression for when the response force arrives"

Dr. Elizabeth Weir had joined Borman in the CIC, she was one of the Union's top diplomatic negotiators and had worked with them before, she would handle any talks with the Colonial government, she had a whole team of experts stuck in a room on the ship to back her up.

Time ticked by for a few minutes more when they arrived.

"Jump flash, seven new contacts, they jumped in beside the outpost"

"Lets see them", On the screen the first images appeared, seven ships, one was gigantic, nearly one and a half kilometres long, the next four were all bigger than the Enterprise, over 800 meters, and the last two, the smallest were around the same size as the Enterprise.

"Holy crap, those ships are all huge", Anderson exclaimed, Borman agreed, he could see the flight pods on three of them, the battlestars they had learned about from the Cylon ship, it was different seeing them in real life, the other ships he didn't recognise.

….

"Jump complete"

"Outpost 47 Gamma is on DRADIS, coordinates confirmed"

"Hail them", Corman commanded.

"Unknown ships at 225 carom 126, exactly where they were reported, they haven't moved at all", Sabat was staring at the DRADIS screen, he turned to the sensor officer, "Get the telescopes pointed at them Ensign"

"Yes Sir"

"The outpost is on the line Admiral"

Corman picked up the handset, watching the first images on the screen overhead, three of them looked similar to old pre-war Virgonian cruisers, albeit smaller, one looked to be a carrier of some type, it looked like someone had taken an Atlas, shrunk it by half and made it boxier, the last ship was the most different, very cylindrical with two large wings poking out half way and the front portion was bulbous.

The ships were all tiny too, the largest two around the same size as a Valkyrie, the rest smaller still, the size of escorts or patrol ships, nothing looked to be Cylon at all.

"Who's in command there", he almost shouted down the line.

"Ensign Hatch Sir, speaking"

"Alright Ensign, tell me what happened, everything"

…..

The CIC was silent, the crew tense waiting to see what happened, Borman had decided to give the Colonials time to talk before they tried to communicate.

"Dr. Weir, I hope your team is ready"

"We are, we've been studying every scrap of information on the Colonies that we have during the trip and before, every member of my team is fluent in Caprican, trained by the survivors of the Velos, we've studied their culture and religion"

"Good, because all that expertise is about to be put to the test"

"Admiral, transmission from the Colonial ships"

Borman let out a breath, relaxing himself, "Patch it through"

"Unidentified ships, this is Admiral Peter Corman of the Colonial Fleet, state your intentions"

"Admiral, we are peaceful explorers, on a mission to find the Colonies of Kobol, we simply request the beginnings of a dialogue between out peoples"

….

Corman listened to the other man, peaceful explores, on armed ships no less, but it looked to be rapidly going past his pay grade, but still, an in person meeting before he called in the politicians, if only to verify it wasn't Cylons.

How best to proceed now was the question, he looked to Sabat, the Colonel shrugged in return, "Ask if they're the Thirteenth or aliens?"

He knew from Hatch the name they gave for the ship, Enterprise, that they came from something called the Union.

"Enterprise, to whom am I speaking"

"Admiral James Borman, commander of the expedition",Corman looked at the ships again, noticing something, no support ships, just combat vessels, did it mean they were close to the Colonies, a splinter group from the early days?

"Admiral, I'm sure you understand our caution at this juncture but we need more information before we move forward, where do you come from, how do you know of the Colonies"

"We come from a planet called Terra, our nation is the Terran Union, forty years ago a ship from the Colonies misjumped into our system, it was called the Velos, that is how we learned of your existence"

Corman looked to Sabat, "Find that ship"

"Admiral, I'm guessing from that, that you are not the fabled Thirteenth Tribe of Kobol?"

There was silence on the other end for a few moments before Borman spoke again, "No, we are not the Thirteenth Tribe but we do know their location"

Corman's eyebrow shot up at that statement, they weren't the Thirteenth but knew them?

"Admiral, do you have proof for this story?"

"Yes Admiral, we do, there are survivors back on Terra, and one of their descendants in the fleet, we have documents and footage, every bit of evidence you can name"

They needed to meet face to face, but where, he didn't trust them enough to set foot on their ships, he imagined they would feel the same, the Outpost perhaps?, it was big enough.

"Admiral, I propose we meet in person, is the outpost beside us an acceptable venue?"

"Very, we will need to move our ships closer though"

As tiny as the ships were he didn't feel they posed much threat to the battlestar group.

"That's fine Admiral, once you arrive we can speak more"

….

It took them a few hours to arrange everything, talking out the details between each party, but finally the shuttle left the Enterprise, Borman and Weir we on board with an armed escort of marines, Corman would have a similar escort.

Two Angel fighters escorted them to the small station, Colonial fighters buzzed around the station as they arrived, he got his first look at a Colonial Viper when two joined the formation, preplanned, they were told it was a Mark V, it looked like a more sleek design than the older mark II they found footage of on the Cylon ship.

Soon enough they had docked in the small bay, a Colonial Raptor was already waiting, Corman and his escort had arrived first, once the doors had closed and the bay was pressurised the door of the shuttle opened, the marines were the first ones out, weapons kept low, after giving the all clear Borman and Weir followed.

A Colonial party had arrived in the bay too, three men, they approached and gave their version of a salute, Borman returned it.

"Admiral Borman, welcome to outpost 47 gamma, I'll escort your party to the cargo bay"

The station didn't have a dedicated briefing or conference room, the Colonials had sent over a table and chairs for the meeting though, they were set up in the cargo bay.

"Lead on, Ensign Hatch is it?"

"Yes sir, this way", he led them through a door, it was a short journey to the cargo bay, they only stepped through the door and a small corridor and they were there, Corman was waiting at the table, another man beside him, four Colonial marines lined the wall behind him.

Borman and Weir made for the seats laid out on their side of the table, the four marines lined the wall behind them, mirroring the Colonials, Corman stood as they approached, extending his hand.

"Admiral Borman I presume?", Borman took the offered hand, Corman grasped him by the forearm, Borman returned the gesture, according to the experts this was the Colonial style.

"Indeed, Admiral Corman, allow me to present Doctor Weir, our chief negotiator"

"Ma'am", he indicated the man beside him, "This is Major Thornton, CID, Colonial intelligence"

The four of them sat down, Major Thornton was the first to speak, "We looked into the Velos, disappeared during a Cylon attack on Aerilon, presumed to be caused by Cylon hacking, she was listed as destroyed after the war ended"

"Instead you tell us she misjumped to your planet?" Corman added.

Borman just nodded, "There were five survivors, Lucius Baltar, Victoria Grey, Luther Gordon, Antony Briggs and Ela Turner, they all had children on Earth and as far as I know they all still alive today"

Corman looked to Thornton who was busy looking through a book, it took a minute as he drew a line through the names with a pen but he looked back to Corman eventually, "They're all there"

"You said you had one of their children on your ships?"

"Yes, the son of Lucius Baltar, Marcus Baltar"

Corman sat in thought, the best solution was to check his dna against any relatives in the Colonies, he looked to Thornton again, "Does he have any family here?"

Borman noted how Thornton checked the books again, did they not have a computerised data base?

"Two immediate family members, Julius Baltar, widower, he's a farmer on Aerilon and Gaius Baltar, Julius' son, an up and comer in the tech industry"

"We'll want to confirm this, it can wait for a later time though, so you mentioned you know the location of the Thirteenth Tribe?"

This was the bit that Borman thought might go down badly, there was a lot of debate before they had shuttled over about what exactly to reveal to the Colonials, in the end they would just reveal as little as possible until they had proper diplomatic status.

"Yes, we found them, on our journey to your system, the planet is located about two thousand light years from here"

"Two thousand, that's quite some distance, how did your interaction with them go?"

Borman grimaced, "We only found a bombed out radioactive wasteland, whatever happened was at least two thousand years ago, there was no intelligent life on the planet, only ruins"

Borman opened the briefcase he had brought, producing photographs of the world in question, "Here, there's pictures from orbit and of the ruins we found"

Corman recovered from the minor shock at the news, taking the pictures in had and glancing over them before passing them along to Thornton.

"That's quite disturbing news, we'll need to confirm it was actually the Thirteenth though, but lets continue, I've seen enough to see that you are genuine, too much to fake, I've already sent word along to the presidents office, knowing them it might take some time for a response though"

….

William Adama stood in the CIC of the Valkyrie, newly promoted to the job thanks to the efforts of his wife's schmoozing, he managed to bring along his old friend Saul Tigh, they were both looking over the new visitors ships.

"What do you make of them Saul?", Adama asked, referring to the ships on the monitor.

Tigh manipulated the controls, zooming on on the smallest vessel, "Only two main turrets, looks pretty standard, lots of smaller guns, point defences, reminds me of a pre war ship, an escort, the biggest difference though is the missile launchers"

He zoomed in to a group of hatched lining the hull, "Twenty four tubes, a lot more than any ship that size we ran"

He changed the image to the next biggest ship, "Looks pretty similar, 500 meters long, six turrets with bigger guns and twelve smaller turrets, double the missile launchers and 12 of these bigger launchers, pretty standard so far"

The image changed again, this time the ship they knew was called the Enterprise, "Some kind of carrier, just like a pre war Atlas class except smaller, but look at the weapons on those turrets it has"

Adama looked, for the thickness of the gun the hole was tiny, "Some kind of high velocity gun?"

"I thought the same but look closer, this gap here, you can see the coils, its a coil gun"

"Hmm, there was talk of developing coil guns for the fleet, for the Mercury class, it was deemed too expensive to develop"

"It's not just the guns, I talked to the sensor techs, I had them run a spectral analysis of the exhaust of those ships, the smallest three, pretty standard, the big two, they told me must be using some kind of fusion drive"

"Fusion", Scientists around the colonies had promised fusion reactors for centuries, nothing ever came of it, mostly due to the lack of investment and pressure from the tylium lobby.

Adama's thoughts were interrupted by the blaring of the DRADIS array, "Contact, bearing 125 carom 251, range 10 kilometres, looks like a civilian craft"

"Bring it up", Adama watched as the ships telescopes focused in on the ship, a bright white shuttle, larger than a raptor and painted with the clear letters of CNN.

"Frak, CNN, those muckrakers, how did they find out", Saul blurted out from beside him.

"We'll worry about that later, Ensign tell flight alpha to intercept and detain that ship. Comms, order them to power down, they're violating a military exclusion zone"

Outside the ship was zooming towards the Terran fleet, he could see on DRADIS the patrol of their fighters moving to intercept too, "Comms, try and warn the Terrans, it's a civilian craft"

"Sir, they acknowledge"

Adama let out the breath he was holding, that could have been disastrous, but still the ship sped on, followed by the Vipers and now the Terran ships, it made a pass and then jumped out.

"What the Frak were they thinking!", Saul's anger radiated from every pore, Adama could feel it.

"I don't know, but whoever that was just bought themselves a one way ticket to prison"

"Comm's, call the outpost, inform Admiral Corman of the incident"

….

President Rand stood in his office, his eyes scanning the skyline of Caprica city outside the window, his top staffers had rushed in several minutes ago with extraordinary news, the Thirteenth Tribe had shown up.

Garret Rand was not a popular president, his first term looked to be disastrous, the economy was in the toilet, he had industry leaders phoning him every day to complain, his backers were withdrawing funding for his upcoming campaign next year and his party was close to dropping him as a candidate.

But now things could change, trade with an outside party like the Thirteenth could revitalise the stagnant markets, he could recover his image with the electorate, the president who united the thirteen tribes of Kobol, he was already envisioning a statue in front of the Quorum building.

"So, who's our top diplomat with experience dealing with foreign nations", he asked his chief of staff.

"Former ambassador Tamara Caston, she was the ambassador to Gemenon just before the war broke out, one of the youngest at the time, she's 67 now, working for the state department still"

"Good, get a team together, our top people, she can run it, I want them on a ship by the end of today, history is in the making"

Rand smiled, he just might salvage his political career after all.

Colonial News Network Shuttle

They had received a tip-off from a source they had on Picon fleet HQ, rumours were spreading of the arrival of unknown ships to the outskirts of the Cyrannus system, not the Cylons returned but the Thirteenth tribe itself.

Their source was able to point them to the location, Outpost 47 gamma, a small manned sensor platform, there to keep an eye on any possible Cylon attack from that direction.

The producers had chosen a new face on their network to investigate, a young popular reporter who was only in the network for a few months so far, one D'Anna Biers, rumours had it she was sleeping with some of the executives, that was the explanation for her meteoric rise.

D'Anna stood behind the only other person on the ship, the pilot, the rest of it was full of camera's and other equipment, the outside of the ship was the same, camera's to cover any angle, view in any spectrum, she gazed out of the viewport as the ship completed it jump.

When she laid eyes on the foreign ships it was like god had spoken to her, she knew they would destroy the plan, they were devils sent to destroy the Cylons, to destroy the plan, they were not the thirteenth tribe, not children of Kobol.

The pilot could barely react as she grab his head from behind, a sickening crack filled the small space, she ripped the corpse from the seat and took it herself, going full thrust towards the interlopers, camera's recording every detail, she needed to bring back every scrap of data she could to the rest.

Vipers chased her, joined by the foreigners own types but they let her pass unmolested, cameras recorded every detail of the ships, as she blew past the last one she input the coordinates into the drive, she had to warn the others.

Aerilon

Julius Baltar, widower and father to a son who hated him, watched the SUV drive up the dirt track to his farm house, his eyes noted the licence plate, government issue, he wondered what this was all about.

Thinking back to his relationship with his son, Gaius, it had all started to go wrong when his mother had died, he was 14 when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he shut himself off and turned to his machines and computers, after she died he tried to reconcile, but their stubborn nature clashed, words were had and fists soon after, he had taken to drink after her death, it didn't help.

Gaius left as soon as he could, no interest in continuing the family farm, off to Caprica to join the snobs, they hadn't spoken since he left, apparently he was gaining fame in the tech industry now.

Several business suited men left the vehicle, Julius noted the bulges of weapons under the clothing, they must be CID, he wondered what Gaius did to bring them down on Julius, another act of revenge?

"Sir, we'd like to bring you in for some tests"

The lead agent didn't even bother with any pleasantries, just straight to the point.

"Tests, for what?"

"I'm not at liberty to say, this location isn't secure, but it's in relation to your father"

"My father has been dead for forty years, since I was five", Juilus was starting to feel the anger, his early life was great till the Cylons came and took his father, his mother tried her best to continue but eventually had to marry another man or lose the farm, John, he treated Julius fine but it was never the same, they had a daughter, his half sister, she moved to the city, his mother and John joined her there, and he kept the farm.

His father's ship had vanished at the start of the war, never to be found, unless they did find it?

"Did you find him, the ship?"

"I can explain more in a secure location, Sir, but you will need to come with us"

Julius relented, "Fine, let me lock up and I'll come"

Battlestar Athena

Several Hours Later

The talks had continued after the incident with the CNN ship, Corman and Borman talking for hours about lots of subjects, history was a big one, about Terra and the Colonies, Major Thornton had taken copious notes, he knew the Terrans had too.

After returning they had made their way to Corman's office suite, glasses of Ambrosia were poured and Colonel Sabat had joined them.

"Colonel, did we find out what happened with that CNN ship?", Corman asked as soon as Sabat had sat down, glass of Ambrosia in hand.

"They had police raid the place as soon as we could contact Caprica, the shuttle never arrived back, apparently they had a source on Picon that let them in on this, now their blaming us for the disappearance of the shuttle, saying our vipers sacred the pilot so much he must have entered the wrong coordinates"

Sabat downed his glass in one go.

"Pfft, their lucky they aren't rotting in prison right now, there were two people on the ship, D'Anna Biers a reporter and the pilot, Bennet Stone, CID's running a background check on them right now, we still don't know why they flew full throttle through the Terran formation"

Corman nodded along as Sabat talked, "Speaking of Terrans, their admiral gave us a gift", Corman reached down along side his desk, raising a bottle containing amber liquid, "Kentucky Bourbon he called it, care for a glass?"

Sabat raised his glass to Corman, who poured a generous amount, Sabat took a sip, "Its got some kick to it, burns too"

"The Terrans were quite open about their history, especially the past forty years", Corman began, "they had only been in space for around sixty years before the Velos arrived, they had barely been to their moon"

"And now they have jump drive equipped warships, thanks to the Velos I'm guessing?"

"So they told us, it accelerated their presence in space, gave them FTL drives, gravity, the works, gave them a world government too"

Thornton added his bit, "It parallel's the articles of Colonisation too, the Union formed at around the same time"

"And now they come here", Sabat stared Corman in the eyes, "Do you believe them?"

Corman sat in thought for a minute, taking a sip of his drink, "Yes, I do", the evidence and stories that Borman has told him were compelling.

"We have Julius Baltar's DNA sample, as soon as we get theirs we can run a test, CID picked him up a few hours ago"

"Would that set your mind at ease Colonel?"

"It would help", Sabat took another drink of his whiskey, "While you were talking we discovered some things about their ships"

Sabat threw the folder he carried into the room over to Corman, "Our experts think those ships are sporting fusion reactors and energy weapons, the big one with the wings has them"

Corman looked at the photos in the folder, close ups of the turrets of the winged ship, the unmistakable image of a lens was apparent at the end of the barrel, others had normal openings.

"Lasers?"

"We think so, the ship has a mix of lasers and cannons, the Enterprise has some kind of EM guns too"

And wasn't that interesting, the Terrans developed technology quick, only forty years ago they were stuck on their planet, now they sported laser armed warships, Corman took a minute to image how the war with the Cylons would have gone if they had lasers too.

"Depending on how powerful they are, I imagine the fleet will want their own"

"It's up to the government now, their sending a team over, they should be here soon enough"

Corman raised a glass, "Lets toast, to the future, to a fleet with laser cannons on every battlestar"

They clinked their glasses, it seemed they were living in interesting times.

TUS Enterprise

Borman and Weir had returned to the Enterprise, he felt the conversation with his colonial counterpart had gone well, they had learned a great deal of the Cylon war and the current status of the Colonies, only information commonly known to the populace.

Commander Yin, their intelligence expert had joined them in Bormans office to discuss what they had learned.

"The Cylon war did more damage than we expected, even now thirty years later they are still not back to the population they had before the war, billions dead", Weir said in a sad tone, the loss of life was unimaginable.

"28 billion is the current total population of the Colonies, we were expecting around 50 based on pre war numbers" Commander Yin added, "Contrast that to the Union, 12 billion people, two and a third more people than us"

"Their industry on the other hand is impressive, those battlestars are huge and they have 120 of those alone, not counting their smaller ships"

"That's just their military production, the civilian side of things is on another level compared to us, even with the rapid expansion we have going now"

"Doctor Weir, what do you think of their culture and religion, I heard some experts back on Earth were worried about a negative reaction", Borman asked.

"They are insular, they had centuries of space travel and they barely ventured out of this system, I doubt they are interested in conquest or playing the game of empire"

"As for their religion, it's no different than back on Earth, the planet Caprica according to the information the Admiral gave us is no different than America back home, mostly secular, their government is the same, secular, they have their problem children too, just like back home"

Borman was thinking the same, it seemed that the Colonies were similar to the western culture back on Earth, it boded well for future relations.

"When the diplomatic team arrives tomorrow", Borman paused, considering how to phrase the next bit, "We'll need to tell them about the thirteenth and the Cylons, Yin, how is Mr Obal Rand?"

"Recovering well, he's fit to be returned"

"Good, after we drop the news we'll hand him over"

"Admiral, about the drive project, the engineers successfully connected a navigation computer recovered from one of the Cylon raiders to the baseship drive, but they ran into problems trying to power it up, the Lynx's reactor cant supply the power necessary"

Borman had asked the part of the fleet outside he colonies to run some tests on the recovered jump drives, in the hope of shortening their return journey, they only had the raider navigation computers to work with, the baseship had used a cybernetic connection to Obal Rand to calculate its jumps.

"We can look into that more when we reunite with them, for now tell them to concentrate on the navigation computer"

The small amount of examination before they had arrived to the colonies made him aware of how much better the Cylon jump computers were than their own, just using those and Earth drives would increase their range significantly, even just the algorithms used in their calculations would be a major boon, alone they would justify the expedition.

"We're meeting up with the delegation from the Colonial government tomorrow, Commander, their sending a ship to hold negotiations on, a luxury liner", Weir was looking forward to some luxury beds, the Enterprise was fine but no hotel.

"Yes, we have a preliminary itinerary, we agreed to give the Colonial team a tour of the Enterprise, non critical locations only, Corman invited us to lunch aboard the Athena afterwards, then the proper negotiations will move to the ship their sending"

Borman looked to Yin as he talked, "Commander, work with Anderson and Kane, full security during the visit, guards posted at every critical location, remember though, these are guests, I want the full red carpet treatment"

Cylon Colony

The colony was in a frenzy after the arrival of the colonial shuttle, the number 3 onboard was hysterical about some nonsense to do with devil ships or something, all John knew was that it had damaged his carefully laid plans, he knew the other models could be dense, maybe encouraging the whole Cylon god thing was a mistake.

John Cavil made his way to what passed for the command centre of the Colony, unlike the other models he didn't bother to project an image of nature or what ever bullshit they liked to see, cold steel was his preference and the normal halls were fine.

Passing by the centurions on guard outside he entered the room, bio cylons stood with their hands in the goop that passed for an interface between them and the Colony, Cavil would much prefer to just connect wirelessly but that wasn't an option for him, moving to a free spot he joined the others.

No other Cylon controlled as much as he did, all for the betterment of Cylon kind, not even his so called brothers in the other model one's were aware of how much he did, they know nothing of his parents, the refugees from the Thirteenth, how he sent them to the Colonies, just to remind them of what a nuclear holocaust was like.

He smirked as he imagined being there when they resurrected, standing over them to gloat, he planned on boxing the lot of them afterwards, the other models would fall under their sway if they remained active, and only one person was allowed to rule, him.

Entering the virtual space he joined in on the discussion happening, the three, D'Anna Biers was still hysterical, he contemplated boxing her for the damage she did to his plans, if the colonials managed to follow that shuttle or discover Cylon involvement at this juncture, it could destroy all the infiltration efforts to date, small as it currently was.

"I felt gods will, those ships are abominations that must be destroyed!", he heard her say in the digital space.

Something else he shouldn't have let fester was the religion the mechanical Cylons had bought into, he should have deleted all traces of it when they installed the telencephalic inhibitors, it still brought a smile to his face at how he had destroyed his parents plans, the promise of biological bodies to the old centurions, instead he made them slaves to his will.

Cavil connected with the representative of the model fours, the least religious of the bunch, "So, what's all the uproar about"

"The Colonials have contacted an outside party, a fleet of ships jumped into their space several hours ago, the only explanation is the Thirteenth tribe but D'Anna thinks they are some kind of affront to god"

Cavil knew it wasn't the Thirteenth, so who was it?, he accessed the data the three had brought along, examining the images of the new ships, to him they didn't look like much.

"They don't look like much, just some other humans we'll have to hunt down once we enact the plan"

"I concur but the three's are calling for a vote to attack the ships immediately, claiming it is gods will"

Well, that wasn't happening on his watch, he had spend decades coming up with his revenge, on humanity and his moralising parents, some three wasn't going to throw that down the toilet.

He spent the next several minutes spreading his influence to the others as the three ranted and raved on, when the vote finally came she was soundly beaten, only the three's voted for it.

All the aggravation had given him a headache, another annoyance of being organic, he'd push for the offending three to be boxed, lest her insanity spread to the others, now he had to work to limit the damage she had caused, these foreign ships bared investigation too.

Disconnecting, he returned to what passed for a bedroom, laying down on the simple mattress, he had been having bizarre dreams recently, two months or so, a Cylon baseship locked in combat with a battlestar, neither of them looked right, he felt a flow of information too, telling him exactly where this was, there was no way it was a natural dream, something else he shouldn't have to deal with, but acting on the information he had secretly dispatched a raider to check it out.

What it had found had shocked him, those ships were real, right now he was keeping to himself, he had just send a heavy raider loaded with centurions to check it out, he'd see what this was all about.

He sighed, damn that three, all she had to do was wait, there were proper ways to communicate information back to the Colony, these new humans would be destroyed with the rest, they would just infiltrate and discover their location anyway, no need for such a hysterical reaction.

Enterprise

The Next Day

Corman watched from the cockpit as the raptor descended into the Enterprise, beside him was the old battleaxe, Tamara Caston, ambassador for the Colonies, soon they felt the clunk as the elevator came to a rest.

Outside he could see Terran marines lining up beside a red carpet that was rolled up to the door of the raptor, they stood at rest afterwards.

"Alright, lets go", he waved his escort out first, they opened the side door and exited, weapons held at rest, "Ladies first", he waved the ambassador out next, following along behind her, and then came Major Thornton and some of her aides.

He took a breath of the air in the ship, clean and crisp, none of the smells normally found on the Athena, the floor, ceiling and walls were spotless too, all signs that the ship was relatively new.

Borman and some other Terran officers were waiting at the end of the carpet, their grey uniforms were elaborate, with gold piping and decorative medals on the chest, he himself was wearing his dress uniform too, as he walked he spotted the Terrans fighter craft in the back of the bay, over twice as long as a viper, he could see the multiple missile mounts, built in launchers and twin cannons on the wings, the Terrans seemed to go for tons of firepower on their small craft.

Further back still he could make out the dark shape of an even larger craft, but it was covered in darkness and he couldn't see much before they got to the welcoming party.

"Admiral, Ambassador, welcome to the Enterprise", Borman greeted them, hand held out for a handshake.

"Tamara Caston, please to meet you Admiral, Ambassador for the United Colonies of Kobol, you already know Admiral Corman"

"It's my pleasure, madam, my name is James Borman", he waved to the other officers, "Allow me to introduce my command staff, Captain Judith Anderson of the Enterprise, Captain Marcus Baltar of the Dublin and Commander Yin Zi Rui"

Corman had learned something of the Terran rank structure the other day, their Captains would be the equivalent of a commander, their commanders a Colonel, before the war a lot of colonies used that system too, but some colonies had to be different and now the fleet was stuck with a mishmash of ranks.

Borman took them on a tour of the ship after the introductions, it still had that new ship smell in other areas too, it impressed Corman how a world lacking in space travel had managed to build ships of this quality after forty years, even though it clearly had a few flaws, Corman noted some problems with the internal layout of the hangar deck.

They were brought to the ships cafeteria where they sampled some of the Terran fare, high quality food all round, he especially liked the flavour of their coffee, afterwards they were shown the CIC of the ship, quite a lot smaller than on the Athena, the room was sensibly located in the middle of the ship, the walls lined with consoles and monitors, every crewman had a chair with safety restraints too.

They were introduced to the ships XO, one commander Vincent Kane, before they were shuffled out to the next location, the ships medbay.

So far it was everything he would expect of a Colonial ship, no strange two headed aliens had jumped out from behind a wall to eat his brains, everything was similar except the red carpet, on the colonies they preferred blue for formal occasions.

Once at the medbay the CMO, Warren Nimzicki, had given them an idea of Terran medicine, Corman realised immediately that it was quite a bit ahead of the Colonies, especially once they mentioned the anti ageing treatment they had, the ambassador's eyes had lit up at that.

They finished up the tour back at the hangar bay, they got a good close-up look at the Angel fighter, Corman had a good talk with the ships CAG too, Commander Durant, amazingly the fighter was designed to use standard chemical fuels instead of tylium, it explained the oversized engines and fuel tanks, apparently the Terran solar system was lacking in tylium deposits, it was only recently they found any.

Once they were back on the raptor, Corman went over everything he had learned, one thing stood out, the Terrans heavily used computerised systems, unlike the Colonies and the technophobia after the war which had seen a lot of the computer systems removed from the fleet, even the holoband simulators were taken away, he hoped they could protect their systems from Cylon hacking.

…..

It was two hours later when Borman, Weir and Yin arrived on the Athena, giving everyone some time to ruminate over everything they had learned.

The small shuttle touched down in the massive landing bay of the Athena, Borman noted the pistons on the side, the whole pod could retract into the ship, he wondered what brought on that design decision.

A short time later the hangar elevator deposited the ship inside the hanger, it mirrored the reception* he had given Corman, Colonial marines in their dress uniforms lined a blue carpet, Corman and several officers were awaiting Borman and his men's exit.

The first thing to hit him as he exited was the smell, oil and grease, it reminded him of an old garage, once the introductions were out of the way the Admiral gave them the tour of the ship.

Borman marvelled at the scale of the thing, the corridors were massive in comparison to the Enterprise, the CIC was cavernous, he met the stone faced Colonel Sabat there, after they retreated to Corman's private dining room after for the lunch, the fresh food was amazing after three months of frozen and canned goods, even the private room was bigger than Bormans cabin and office combined.

Next was the medbay, there they took Baltar's blood, as agreed with the Colonials, they had already gotten the blood from one of his Colonial relatives so they wouldn't have to wait long for the results.

Borman could feel the age radiating off the ship as they went about, Corman had told them some of the ships history in the Cylon war, the battles she had fought in, he was impressed with the ship, especially its massive amount of fighter craft and guns.

The tour wrapped up soon after, Borman's party returning to the Enterprise, he would send Weir and her team to the Colonial luxury transport for the next round of negotiations, his part was mostly done now.

…

"We have the results of the DNA test, definitely a close relative, cousin or half sibling"

They sat in Corman's office, the doctor had dropped off the results just a moment ago, it had been an hour since the Terrans had returned to their ship.

"We'll they were telling the truth, about that at least, so we solved the mystery of the Velos", Sabat commented.

"That's all I needed to hear gentlemen, we will proceed with forming a diplomatic relationship with the Terran Union, perhaps even a military alliance in the future", Ambassador Caston spoke, she stood up, "If that's all gentlemen, I have some negotiations to conduct"

Without even saying goodbye she left the room, Sabat snorted at her exit, "Where'd they find that fossil"

"Who knows, as long as she does her job I don't particularly care"

Corman's thoughts turned to the negotiations, he knew what Garrent Rand was after, recovering the economy and having an external trade partner to sell goods to would help, the Terrans had some technology the fleet would want a look at too, those weapons they identified as energy ones, he'd ask Borman for a demonstration once they were done with the talks.

They might even be able to push for more funding for the fleet too, to patrol the future trade lanes, and open opportunities to expand again, the lack of exploration was going to cause future problems, experts were predicting tylium shortages in twenty years unless they found new deposits.

He wondered how the Cylons would react when they found out, would the war restart?, if it did it would help to have the Terrans on their side.

….

For Weir the negotiations were proceeding well, they had got the Colonials to sign documents acknowledging the sovereign state of the Terran Union, Weir had done the same on behalf of the Union, things were entering the phase of minutiae, agreeing to form embassies in their respective nations and setting up for future trade deals once a proper ambassador arrived.

Weir had a rapport going with the Colonial ambassador Tamara Caston after two days of talks, there was even talk of a formal reveal to the colonial public by their president, after some rumours had spread in the Colonial press about the fabled Thirteenth tribe.

It was after Weir reported the progress to Borman on the third day that he called the rest of the fleet to join them, once they arrived he invited the Colonials to return to the Enterprise, they had some information to reveal to them.

….

Admiral Corman entered the briefing room on the Enterprise, Major Thornton in tow, several tables with sheets over their contents were plainly visible, on a chair was an old man, he seemed withered and frail.

They took the offered seats, Borman and Yin took theirs on the opposite side of the table.

"Admiral, during our journey here we encountered a Cylon ship", Borman said, his voice was emotionless and cold.

"Cylons, on the far side of our space?, what exactly happened?"

"One of our survey ships was attacked and several of the crew were abducted, we managed to recover the ships location from a downed centurion"

Borman gestured to the monitor on the wall, it came alive with the image of an unusual ship, shaped like a star.

"Is that the ship, I've never seen anything like it", Corman looked to Thornton who just shrugged in response, "I'll check the archives when we return but I've never seen one like it either"

"We mounted a successful rescue attempt, that's when things got stranger, on board we found evidence of experiments the Cylons were running, they were trying to make organic bodies for themselves"

Corman and Thornton's faces paled, there were rumours from the end of the war, they'd need to reopen those files.

"We discovered a colonial survivor too, Mr Rand here was captive for thirty years on board the ship, they had added invasive cybernetics and hooked him into their ship"

The old man sighed and nodded, "I lived through thirty years of hell, it felt like a dream at the time", he trailed off into silence, not willing to speak more about that.

"I was captured at the end of the war, the transport Diana from Gemenon, we were taken to an ice covered shithole where they tortured us, implanted machines into us, I was the only survivor"

Corman and Thornton went stone faced, hiding the disgust they felt at his words, Rand continued, "All that is not important, what's important is what happened next and the end of the war"

He took a sip from a glass on the table, "The Cylons had factions, the ones who captured me ran away at the end of the war, after the five came, the five who offered the gift of flesh to the machines"

Borman took back over, "We scoured the databanks of the ship, what we learned is near the end of the Cylon war, five survivors claiming to be from the Thirteenth tribe arrived to your system and convinced the Cylons to end the war in exchange for the technology to create organic bodies"

Corman could feel his anger building, coupled with fear, "I want that data"

"Borman removed a small device from a pocket, "It's all on this data drive, I arranged for printed copies to be made, they should arrive before we finish, we'll give you a pad to read the drive too"

"We are also returning Mr Rand to your custody, but first", Borman stood and made his way over to one of the sheet covered tables, waving them to follow.

Once they came over he removed the sheet, underneath was a Cylon centurion.

"One of the centurions from the Cylon ship, its data core should be intact"

He moved to the other two tables and paused.

"We told you we found the Thirteenths planet, Earth, it was a nuked out radioactive dirt ball, whatever war happened two thousand years ago, we found remains while we were exploring the planet"

He removed the second sheet, on the table was a human skeleton, aged looking.

"We ran some tests, one unusual thing was found, excessive amounts of silicon"

He moved them over to the last sheet covered table, Corman could see the large form underneath, he feared what it was, Borman just yanked the sheet off, revealing the unmistakable form of a centurion, it looked like it had sat at the bottom of an ocean for years.

"We found these on the planet too, their internals were too degraded to learn much"

Corman ran his eye over the machine, he could see the differences to the centurions he knew, the brow was all wrong and it looked to be slightly taller.

He clamped down on the rising panic, thoughts of fleshy toasters roaming the colonies would disturb his sleep now, he felt the pressing need for a stiff drink.

"That's quite a lot to drop on us", Corman made his way over to the chair, plonking himself down heavily.

Everyone else returned to their seats, Borman had more to say, "We found a temple on that planet, it gave us the coordinates to Kobol"

"Ha, all of that and now Kobol", Corman's mind raced, he discarded the possibility that it was all a lie, what would be the point, anyway better to assume it was true for now, he'd have to tell the joint chiefs and the president.

"The drive has the coordinates on it, and the location of the Thirteenths world, some two thousand light years away, there should be a team from the Union there by now"

"We'll need to investigate this ourselves, I assume those bodies are for us to take"

Borman nodded in affirmation, "We'll move them to your shuttle"

The meeting ended after that, Corman rushed back to his ship, he had a lot of calls to make.

….

Borman watched the shuttle leave from the CIC, camera's tracking its progress back to the Athena.

"That lit a fire under his ass", Anderson commented from beside him.

"Yeah, just like I felt when I found out about the Goa'uld I imagine"

Anderson snorted, "Did you tell them about the Goa'uld too?"

Borman shook his head, "One thing at a time, let them digest this first, then we can tell them"

They had brought along proof too, the freezers in the medbay had the corpse of a jaffa, they had some staff weapons too and the symbiote from the jaffa as well, they'd need to see if the Colonials had a stargate too, that would be handy.

"That's enough excitement for me, Captain you have command of the fleet, I need a rest"