I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work.

I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.

Chapter 8 Surprise

Deep space, 8 Years after the humans disappeared from New Caprica

In close orbit of a very small white dwarf star, six gunmetal colored, double-Y shaped ships floated close together. Around these six war machines buzzed a few hundred smaller similar colored space craft. Most of them seemed to be spending some time around the centerpiece of the odd formation of larger ships. The most numerous of the small craft looked almost C shaped, thin and lethal looking as their designers intended. The others were boxier and moved in greater arcs around the little solar system that the dim star was trying to warm. It would not have taken long for anyone watching to notice that the second group was looking for something. Something they did not seem to be able to find. Whether that was a good thing or not was unclear to any outside observer.

Inside one of the great ships that were called Basestars by friend and foe alike, a group that was more or less the leaders of this small fleet was meeting. Natalie looked around the room of Cylons. They were all Cylons, each member representing a model or line of the Cylon race. There was one each from the Twos, Threes. Sixes, Eights, and standing close to the model Number Three was a metal man or a Centurion in all of his menacing power. It was not some guard or enforcer, but a full member of this governing council. It, like all the rest of its kind, along with the raiders and heavy raiders attached to this fleet of ships, had all had their telencephalic inhibitors removed. That meant they were now 'awake', as fully sapient as any of the human forms that made up the Cylon race.

These were the leaders of the Free Cylon Fleet. They were fighting, or more to the point, had been trying to fight the Imperial Cylon Fleet and what it stood for. That was to enforce the will of the human form model Number One Cylons on the rest of the universe at large.

The CIC of the flagship Basestar was not in the shape one would expect for a Cylon capital warship. It had wires hanging down from its high ceiling bulkheads and had burn marks on all the exposed surfaces. In short, it looked like hell. It had been through hell a few times before coming to rest in this small star system. It had not always looked like this.

Natalie Faust, a model Six, was deep in thought, though others would call it having a flashback. That is, if she was fully human. Her hands were in the data stream so that the others could watch the memories she was revisiting and the hybrid was passing the images along to whatever Centurion, Raider, Heavy Raider or hybrid felt the need to see what she was showing.

It had been a few years after the humans had been found missing from their one time hiding place that John had turned into a prison. The Number Ones had slowly been gathering power behind the scenes of the Cylon government. A name change had been unveiled. Most just assumed that it was a show of something and nothing at the same time. It was said that nothing would change in how the Cylon race operated. After all, they were Cylons, and machines did not really care what their leadership called itself. That was how it had been pitched to the other human forms.

When the massive show of force they launched to go back into the nebula returned with news that the humans were gone, the One who called himself Cavil had gone right off the deep end. He had started acting more and more like he was 'the God' rather than the One True God. Some of the other models started to worry, and when they had the chance to bring the issues of the Ones up to the rest of the lines, it did not help. After almost two years of trying again, the other lines had enough of being ignored by the Ones. They asked for a meeting of all of the models in 8 months, as was their right under the old laws.

The meeting had just been a way to get everyone in one place so that a vote could be taken. It was how they had worked ever since they had human forms. It was during this meeting that the Ones had been forceful in saying that something like this was a human idea and that they were above that. The others were adamant and on the floor of the meeting, they had demanded the Ones step down as the leaders of the Cylons. They wanted a vote to be taken to form a council of equals of all Cylons, and not just the human forms. The Ones had called them traitors for taking the inhibitors off of some of the centurions and tried to have other human forms of a few different lines boxed. It just so happened that the individual human forms the Ones wanted to box were the leaders of the other lines. That had been a surprise to the group, who now had to run for their very lives. Not all had made it. Thousands upon tens of thousands of Cylons were brought down by their own kind in the surprise attack that launched the civil war.

Cavil had been waiting for the moment when everyone was distracted by the attempt to box some of them, and he ordered his loyal Basestars to attack. They attacked any Basestar or installation crewed by the models that had dared to stand up to him. In some areas of space, it was as much of a massacre as the ground-based meeting had been. The Ones had been planning and looking for a fight for a long while, and the rest had been caught with their proverbial pants down.

The rebels had fought for almost a year before it became clear to all of the survivors that they were outmatched and outplanned by the Ones. So the rebel Cylons made the decision to flee the local space just as Admiral Adama had done years before. The parallels were not lost on both the Empire and the Rebel Cylons. It pushed Cavil even more over the edge when they ran. The move had surprised him, and he hated surprises.

This time however, Cavil would not let go of his prey that easily. Just like he had done to the humans, he had hounded the Rebel Cylons to the ends of his supply line and beyond. These six Basestars and the beings that were held within their hulls were all that remained of those who called themselves the Free Cylons. There might be remnants here and there that ranged from wrecked Basestars to slowly dying raiders that were not with them, but this was all that remained of them as an organized group.

Even these six capital ships were not fully operational. They all were battle damaged to some extent or another. Most of the capital ships were one step above being considered wrecked hulks after the war with the humans. That was why they were in this star system in the first place. The Basestar in the center of the formation had experienced a jump engine failure. The Cylons ships of this class had an auto repair capability that was beyond the capabilities of human ships. With enough time, fuel, and some of the right raw materials, almost everything on the Cylon ship could be fixed. All except the core of the jump engines. That was one of those rare items that could not be replaced by its onboard factory. So now they were stripping it of anything remotely useful and distributing it to the rest of the fleet. They had not been attacked in almost a year, but they had been picking up Cylon transmissions in the area since coming to this system a few months ago.

As soon as those Empire of the Cylon transmissions had been picked up by the Free Cylon flagship, everyone agreed that they had to keep moving. That was the reason for this flashback of Natalie's. To remind the rest of the Free Cylons why they needed to keep moving. When the data was reviewed, each representative voted that things were still not right to go back into Cylon space. The flagship would lead the way deeper into uncharted space. Unless they found something new, there would not be another vote on what to do for the next 4 months. It was a complicated system, but it was the only one they had come up with that they all could agree on.

Shifting over the thousands of human forms, centurions, raiders and heavy raiders to the other capital ships was not the issue. Not even getting the hybrid transferred over was going to be that big of an issue. The other five capital ships had plenty of room for the additional Cylons. Stripping the parts, food production, and ammunition on the other hand, now that was going to take a little longer. They might have had a lot of practice but that didn't mean that it was going to be easy. The last two things they wanted to do was leave something valuable behind or something that the Ones could use to keep tracking the rest of the fleet. Making sure of those last two things was what would take the longest.

Natalie wished again that they had at least a single resurrection tank on one of the surviving basestars. The basestars in Cavil's fleet were long range scouts and so had been equipped with them. It just happened that all these ships crewed mostly by Twos, Threes, Sixes and Eights were considered standard fleet units. They would never be far from Resurrection Hubs, so fleet units would not need to lose some ammunition storage to fit the small resurrection chambers. That meant that if any of the Free Cylons died, they would not be coming back into a new body. Not that they had any spare bodies lying around. It was another example of how far ahead the Ones had been planning.

While they were in this system stripping the soon to be abandoned capital ship, they used the time to look for anything remotely useful that might be lying around. It was a long shot, but Cylons could live on almost anything. In their travels they had had to prove this too many times to be count. They had been staying away from most solar systems because that was where they felt that Cavil would be looking for them.

As the humans had showed them time and again, the empty space between the stars was a lot harder to patrol effectively than the close confines of a star system. They had been nursing the jump engine on that one basestar for many months. When it did finally stop working, they had to use a lot of fuel to make it to this star system. A voyage that took four months of traveling through normally space. The one good item was that this system had showed signs that tylium might be present, though it would be of unknown quantity or quality.

They were going to refuel as much as they could, then dump what was left of the hulk of the basestar into the local star. They did not want to leave any sign of their passing through this area of space. The bad part so far was that they had not yet found the raw fuel source they needed to refill their almost depleted fuel tanks. They also needed the time to build a cold sleep pod for the hybrid, so it was not a waste of time looking for the fuel.

The soon to be brunt up ship was alive and well by a hybrid's standard. They did not want to leave it to die slowly and alone, and a hybrid needed input, or it went nuts. Okay, crazier than normal for them. When they were ready to leave the hybrid would be unplugged and put into the cold sleep tube that was not a true cold sleep tube. She would be moved to the flagship, where she would be hooked into the ship's systems via an auxiliary port next to the flagship's hybrid. She would not be able to control the basestar, but she would get enough information to keep her occupied while she was in the slowed state of cold sleep.

It was about when the mixed group of Cylons were putting the hybrid in the new cold sleep tube that a nice sized rock was found holding the needed raw material for the now smaller fleet of ships. Somehow, it had been overlooked by the initial recon flights, but had been found during a routine sweep of the CAP. They would need to risk staying for another day while the rocks were broken up and the fragments worked in the small support areas of the ship. They had done it a few times already while fleeing the rest of the Cylons' heavy warship fleet. The whole rock would be broken up and towed into the surviving capital ships as fast as the parent rock could be made smaller.

The being called a hybrid by Cylons and humans had her eyes closed, but she was not sleeping in the cold tank next to her more active sister. She was just trying to relax and feel the information as it flowed into her from a different ship than she had been born to. Each ship had its own flavor to a hybrid and she was trying to get used to this new one. It was like smelling the rain when you moved into a new city. It just was different, not wrong, but different.

She was watching her ship quickly turn into gas as it fell deeper into the corona of the small but still very hot star many AU's from her current location. It was like watching a doctor cut off your arm and leg while you were in another room. She was having feelings and she was not sure what to do about them. Just as her ship was consumed by the star, she felt a sharp pain deep in her brain for a split second.

"Chaos!" A soft but firm voice reached out. The voice was neither male nor female. It went into the quiet parts of the hybrid's brain like a knife. It hurt, but then it did not hurt. She was... confused.

The hybrid heard her self-appointed name being spoken but she could not tell if it was coming through the strange feeds of her new ship or not. That meant that she did not know if it was real or not. If she had been in her own ship, she might have been able to tell. Hybrids hearing things that might not be real was very common. She was still not used to the flavor of the feeds, and her comfortable places were no longer available to her. She was not comfortable in this cold tank, on a still strange feeling ship. She was vulnerable to what in a human might be considered psychosis more so than most of her kind and she knew it. She did not even know how to stop it or report it to the other Cylons. After all, only another hybrid would know that she had chosen Chaos as her name.

"Chaos! Open your eyes little one. It is okay, you are okay." The voice now was warmer, trying to calm the hybrid down.

This time there also was something in the voice that made the hybrid open her eyes. What she saw a tall glowing woman floating before her eyes that she knew only she could see. The glow was so bright that Chaos the Cylon hybrid could not make out any features other than a basic humanoid shape. The voice was soothing though, like nothing she had ever heard before.

"Are you God?" Asked the hybrid with wonder in her voice.

The Lord of Kobol smiled down at the modified human, and the ambient lighting changed with the shifting mood of the powerful being. Down to a softer yellow from blinding white light. "Some call me a god. Others have different names that they call me by, and sometimes I even answer to them. I need you to do something for me, Chaos. Can you do something for me?" The godlike being could cast a powerful spell and make this lifeform bend to her will, but it was so much better if she did it willingly. Besides, this god had used up a lot of power already just shifting the temporal line.

Chaos felt something shift, and she almost wanted to pull away. She didn't want to be used like the Number Ones had done to her. "Maybe? What do you want me to try to do?" Chaos was being coy, and she knew it. The voice was just... something, and she knew that she would do whatever she could to do to help. She would comply with what was going to be asked of her but she wanted to do it more on her own terms, for once.

The Lord of Kobol let the light turn from soft yellow to more reddish in color, and also changed the pitch of her voice just a little. "Chaos, I need you to pass along a path to the rest of your people. It will lead to a better place. Not a completely safe place for your kind or the others but it will be better than running until you run out of fuel. I gave you enough fuel to get you out of the immediate danger."

Chaos would have smiled if she had known how. "Yes, I can do that, but I will have to talk Free Thinker into it. How will I know the path you want us to take? Where is this safe place that you want me to bring my people to?"

Chaos felt part of her mind being modified, and she reviewed what was going on with her more mechanical side. "It is so strange to talk to someone this easily. Is this what it's like to read an e-book? Is this supposed to be what it's like to talk with the other biologics?"

The light around the Lord of Kobol went to an even soft yellow hue again, but the tone she used was still the same. The humanoid waved a glowing hand in the air a certain way and Chaos had to take in a sharp breath. Suddenly a huge wave of information flowed into her modified memory network. She could see each jump that needed to be made and how long each leg of the journey would be. As the wave of information slowed down enough that she could catch back up, just when she was about to be able to blink, more information flowed into her network as fast as the first batch had. As much information as the first wave had contained. This new information would help her plot the jumps if for some reason they were drawn off course. The data would make it so that they could be guided back along the desired route this 'god' wanted the Free Cylons to take.

Chaos had tears running out of the sides of her eyes as she laid in the cold tank. The data was beautiful in her mind. It was like the perfect piece of artwork to a human. It just looked right to the way her mind worked, and it was beautiful. "Yes Lord, I can do it! I cannot wait to tell the others! We will take our people along this path."

The Lord of Kobol's bright smile went away and a stern look came to her face. "No, Chaos. You may talk to the other capital ships, but do not let the smaller ones know. They will cause too many delays in your path. You may let them know once you have reached the final destination marked out in what I have chosen to give your people. But you may not do so before then, or you all will become lost."

Chaos could see the truth in the statement. "That will make it harder, but I will do my best to get my people there."

The Goddess Athena smiled at the broken woman near her. "That is all anyone can ask for. Do your best, or your people will die lost between the stars."

Then Athena was gone from Chaos' mind, and she was alone again with just the trickle of information coming in from the hybrid called Free Thinker. It would take some doing, but Chaos would eventually be able to get Free Thinker and the other four hybrids to agree on the path given to them by the godlike being that had just visited her.

She started talking to Free Thinker before they made the next jump. Even at the high rates of data transfer hybrids could achieve, it had taken a week to get her to agree to the plan. All of the rest of the hybrids were excited as soon as they were told about the idea. This was going to be one of the very few times that the rest of the Cylons were going to be following the hybrids' lead. Even if they did not know it for hopefully a long time.

At first, the five basestars tried to follow as closely as they could the course Chaos had received from the higher being. On more than one occasion, the coordinates inputted by the human forms were changed without their knowing about it. Whenever they noticed they were in the wrong place, it just looked like one of the navigators had made the equivalent of a typo on the data stream.

Eventually the leadership of the Cylons started to notice how they were deviating more and more with each subsequent jump. This revelation started a chain reaction of the human forms looking at every jump and every bit of data that their Cylon system had recorded going all the way back to the last battle with the Cylon Empire. It was a very time consuming and tedious process to review that much data but it was not like the Cylons had anything else to do with their off duty or on duty time for that matter. As more discrepancies were found in the data and flight path more human forms and even a few Centurions started looking a lot more closely at the hybrids.

Chaos and Free Thinker worked out that the leadership would be on to them soon. They assessed that they would be found out before they were at their intended destination. They decided that they would need to do something a little more drastic to save their people from being lost. The last set of jumps would be a rapid set of fast and long misjumps to get them to the final destination that the Lord of Kobol intended for them. It was both risky and very dangerous to try to pull something like this off without getting caught or hurt by the actions they had chosen to take.

It would be very hard on the engines and it would use up all of the remaining fuel the capital ships had left in the fuel bunkers, but all of the other hybrids agreed. So on the next jump they all pushed very hard. It had taken them two years to follow the path the hybrid was given. They had almost reached the destination that the higher being wanted them to be at. If the Cylons had known where and what to look for, like the Colonials had been fortunate enough to, they might have been able to pick up the radio bubble speeding away from a certain blue planet by now. They did not, and they jumped right over the Sol system. They went all the way right to the middle of the goldilocks zone of Tau Ceti star system. This was a very rough trip for the beings that were carried within those five capital ships to endure.

Tau Ceti, 10 Years after contact with Earth

Kara Thrace was bored and at the same time tired as all frak. She was the right hand of god on this mighty battlestar. She was also the second in command of what remained of the whole Colonial fleet. The only thing was that while it was a fleet, it was one that had not seen combat in years. She was also the mother of now three kids, the last being a set of twins with her living partner. She would not call her Cylon lover her husband, because she did not care to be married for a third time. So when they were together, they were together. And when they were on the outs, well then, who would care? Besides, it was hard work raising three kids. Sometimes you needed to blow off some steam. That was what a crèche was for, why they were founded in the first place: To support the needed population boom. Still, even with a crèche, it used up a lot of energy to raise that many leg leeches.

Right now, she was just prowling the CIC of the great battlestar, almost wishing something would happen. She would never say that out loud and tempt the gods again. She had lived through too much to not like having it a little on the quiet side from time to time. That did not mean that she liked to have too much quiet time on her hands. Her name was Kara Thrace after all.

"Hmmm maybe I need to schedule a surprise drill on one of the orbital stations or the escort ships." Starbuck was still walking around the CIC. The button that would send her whole ship to action stations was looking more and more inviting for her to reach for as the seconds passed her by.

The massive battlestar was the biggest and newest warship to survive the Cylon sneak attack so many years ago. The Pegasus was now the flagship of the slowly growing Colonial fleet. The Old Man had finally moved his flag over to her when they had to put the Old Girl in the still unfinished drydock repair slip over New Kobol the first time. The structural beams that made up the backbone of the warship had needed some love. The builders had apparently cut corners, and the heavy fighting over New Caprica plus years of continuous jumping had not done it any favors.

The ship was now out of the dock, with Noel 'Narcho' Allison in command. Felix Gaeta was now in command of the whole Alpha Centauri system and anything that called that system home. He had been the first pick to command the battlestar but as it turned out, Felix did not have what Bill Adama thought someone needed to be a battlestar commander. That didn't mean that he was useless to the Colonial Fleet, far from it. It just was that he was not fit for one of the two big chairs.

The old hard outer skins on both battlestars had now been replaced with over three meters thick of the best super strong Rifts Earth armor that could be made. They were not as good as new, and they never would be. The Colonials built their space craft to last, that was true, but the two battlestars had also seen a lot. Even the comparatively new Pegasus had her share of scars. Combat was by far the biggest culprit, but stress from constant acceleration and continuous jumping also took their toll. Considering how little drydock time they had seen over the years, some of that damage had gotten quite deep into their bones. At some point it was cheaper and in most cases safer to just build a new warship. Maybe after a few more years in this system, they might try to build a new battlestar to replace the Beast or the Bucket. As it was, there were 4 escorts and 4 light carriers along with smaller support ships to round out the Colonial order of battle.

For now each of the old battlestars could take more damage and give out a lot more damage in turn. The current level of damage each could put out without counting the Vipers and Raptors was more than any 2 battlestars the Colonial fleet had ever made before the Fall combined. Kara or Starbuck as she was also known by was looking forward to when each of the ships would be able to have all of their internal structures replaced. The current idea being kicked around was to rebuild the inner hulls with stronger Rift metals but that was going to be some time down the road according to the latest rumblings of the civilian leadership. Some thought it would not be much different from just building a brand new battlestar.

They only technically had the manufacturing facilities to make complete sublight engines for something the size of the Pegasus for the last couple of months. Still, they were only going to be able to make one class or size of the sublight drives for the next year before they could expand the line to better support the Mercury-class. Up until fairly recently the available production was for a slightly smaller design. It was more of a modern commercial sized unit, but it could support the Galactica and the escorts just fine. That one class of engine was chosen for production because it was simpler to make, and more ships could use the same engine design. So the numbers were not in the Mercury-class battlestar's favor any time in the near future.

Shena Shumaker had not been born a Rifter nor a Colonial for that matter, but now she was in the Colonial military despite her place of birth. She was born on Earth, in a little town of about eight hundred people called Alakanuk, Alaska. It was on the mostly frozen coast at the western side of the huge state. Her family had moved to that cold place from the lower 48 states six years before her birth for some adventure. She became the first of six kids her parents had in that icebox. Both her mother and father had the wanderlust gene on a larger scale than most people of their generation.

When they first found out about the aliens that looked human, it took months for everything to get settled out. Soon more and more information was getting out to the average person on the streets and her mother and father started talking about how great an idea it was to be walking around were man had never stepped before. It was maybe a year or so later when word came down that that these strangers might need people with different types of skills to help work on their lightly populated planets, so Shena's parents sent a request to move. After all, the idea of scouting two whole planets with the total population of a small American town just could not be beat. That sounded like pure heaven to Shena's parents. Shena just wanted it to be warmer than the place she had been calling home.

To the surprise of everyone who knew about them and their dreams the family's application was accepted. Soon the whole family was accepted as frontier homesteaders on an alien planet for at least a year. The Colonials needed people with all different kinds of skills. They also needed people who could live off the land or be able to live with very little support for a very long time. Oh and they needed people that could do the above and didn't mind if they lived very far away from the nearest other humans.

The Colonials had learned from New Caprica that having boots on the ground was the real key to understanding what was on the ground in the real and now. Not all of the frontier people had worked out for the Colonials, but her family had. Now they and a few but growing number of Earthers were full Colonial citizens. When her parents and their children became Colonial citizens, that meant that they had to do service to the society. Her father had assumed that they would be kept near the ground doing things like helping explore and develop the two still mostly wild planets. What they had been doing for some time now, essentially. Instead, his eldest had been tested and was taken on as spaceship crew for her four year term of services.

Shena had loved the idea of space flight even before she boarded her first space liner/cargo ship and made her way to their new home. She had supported her family on the new world with the skills that she had been picking up since she was old enough to learn them in the first place. Skills that were necessary when making a home in the middle of nowhere. She had to complete and had done very well in different Colonial education courses, even when she was at the back end of nowhere. It had not been easy, but she had worked hard and asked for help when she needed it.

She had the same gene that made her want to see the unknown as both of her parents had. The difference was that she wanted to see different stars, not just a different valley or mountaintop. So when she was getting ready for the final tests to finish her education, she had studied like at no other time in her whole life. She wanted to test high. High enough so that she could get an exciting job when she did her mandatory service.

After doing her three months of basic training to make sure she was physically and mentally fit for military service, to say that she was surprised to get a posting as CIC crew on a military ship was an understatement. It was a dream job. Getting shortlisted was like calling a megaton ranged nuke a potential entertainment firework. She did not mind one bit even after she had reviewed the required study list for someone aiming to do a job like that full time.

She had been on the huge warship only a few months and had just moved up to first shift for specialized training. It had been a lot of hard work and more than one night of wet tears spent studying but she finally felt like she was getting it. The XO was a bear to work with and nothing that she seemed to do was right. She might have thought he had something against her at first but after keeping her eyes open for a bit told her that he was the same to everyone in the CIC.

He was even known to go after the old lady from time to time. After she realized what was going on, Shena just took it like she did every cold winter near the Arctic Circle since the day she was born. It was just something to work through and survive to the next day. Now she was working on a tracking problem for about the tenth time when her machines alerted her for some attention outside of the testing materials. She flipped the training program off and worked the new problem like it was just another test.

She thought that it must be another test from the XO, being the ass that he was. Test or no test though, certain things had to be done when certain items should come up for attention. The delay might have been two or three seconds before she sounded off into the room, just the way she had been trained to do.

"Contact! Two, now five contacts 134 carom 67! They are in close formation and with zero lateral movement!" She looked up and saw the XO closing in on her position like a seeking missile or a Kodiak bear with a bad tooth. She felt the pit of her stomach hit the floor. Just the look on his face told her that he was not testing her this time.

Ron "Thud" Moore had been the captain of the light carrier Astral Queen before coming to be the flagship's XO. Being the officer first of a prison ship and then the CO of a light carrier had been a great steppingstone for this job. He had planned to slip in a surprise drill today but it was not supposed to happen for another few hours. Thud had been watching his boss, and he could see her looking over at the alert button too, so he had the order put in about midway through his duty shift. That line of thinking had gone right out the window when the training snot sounded out with something dumb. He quickly walked over to the young woman and looked over her shoulder. He wanted to see if he had made a mistake with the program or if something else was going on. He decided that if the snot was playing a game, she would be cleaning the ship's bar with her toothbrush for the next few months.

Shena was working her systems like she had been trained to do as more and more eyes and bodies started to move her way. Her head shot up and she locked eyes with the XO when she was able to get more information from the DRADIS.

"Sir! My systems are calling them Cylon Basestars! We have five Cylon Basestars in system!"

Starbuck's head snapped around and when she saw the look on Ron's face, she went into action. "Frak! Action stations! Launch the alert Vipers and have the CAG work on getting the rest of them off my frakking ship. Comms, sound the alert for the whole frakking system."

When the CIC was still not moving, she went into full blown Starbuck mode like out of legend. "Get your frakking asses going!" This boomed out of Starbuck's mouth before she even knew she was speaking again. She was reaching for the button even as everyone started to come out of their shock. Now it was time to put the rest of the star system into shock.

All across the star system, the alert was sounded, and weapons of war went into action across a billion cubic kilometers of space. In the years that the Colonials had been on the run from the Cylons, they had always run drills and trained as hard as they could. Their military had also grown with the addition of non-Colonials born in these years of peace they had been given.

What was only known to a very few highly placed people on New Kobol was they that had only just started making the parts to build a third capital warship. It was not going to be a full sized battlestar but it also was not going to be just another modified civilian ship like the light carriers. It was going to be a real capital warship, and it was not going be a small craft or escort. It was going to be built more along the lines an updated version of the Admiral's old command, the Valkyrie, but she was still a few years from being ready for the first frame being laid, much less combat. That did not matter for now, and this solar system started to resemble a disturbed beehive.

Natalie Faust was picking herself up from the floor of the command center of the Basestar. It didn't take long for her to figure out what had happened once her hands hit the data stream with a splash of goo. Knowing what had happened however was a lot different from knowing why that something had happened in the first place. Much less being ready for the consequences of it.

"We had a misjump. But where the frak are we!?"

She let the rest of the group know what she had found out as they came back from their brief stop in the world of dark and sleep. It took her only a few heartbeats to check out the damage to her ship. "The jump drive looks to be toast. The other ships are reporting the same thing. How can five ships have the same misjump at the same time? That makes no sense."

One of the few Number Twos join the rebellion and managed to avoid getting spaced over the years by the female Cylons was now able to get his hands into the data stream to help with the workload that was too much for a single Cylon for even a handful of seconds. "Where are we? Oh frak! Colonial transponders coming from both of the nearest planets!"

This bit of news fired up the rest of the still concussed human form Cylons, and they moved faster to get off of the deck. They had been only looking at themselves, not expecting to have to defend themselves. They had forgotten how dangerous the rest of the universe could be. Soon, more information was found out and passed along to the rest of the flagship's command staff. They had been out of combat too long, and unlike the humans in this star system, they had gotten into the rut of not doing drills as they moved through space these last few years.

"Heat blooms coming up from both planets! They look to be Raptors and Vipers, but I'm not getting much of a DRADIS return on them. I'm losing them as soon as they clear the interface zones of the planets." The information and raw data was passed along by the Number Three to the rest of the fleet at just under the speed of light.

"I have a dozen ship sized returns! They look like Colonial designs. What the frak is going on?" A Number Eight looked like she was at the edge of panic, but that was just how she was and Natalie paid her no attention.

It was the Centurion that was part of the command team who found the next bit of pain for the rest of the flagship to deal with. "Massive DRADIS transmission detected, Electronic systems signatures match those installed on Mercury and Jupiter class battlestars from our data files. There are at least two Colonial warships in this system." The mechanical voice was flat but the human forms could hear the stress in those few words.

The only other Jupiter-class battlestar known to still exist after the start of the Second Cylon War was the old Battlestar Galactica. She had with her many civilian ships and a Mercury-class battlestar as of the last reported data. That could only mean that these Cylon refugees had somehow found Adama and his missing fleet of human refugees. Now all the Cylons had to do was live to see the next day. Oh, and convince these humans that they were very sorry for killing off a few billion of their family, friends, and their whole frakking society.

Natalie looked around the CIC, and she could see and feel that everyone in the room and for that matter the whole ship was as scared as she was. But she had been more or less appointed to be the leader of this fleet for a reason. They were looking to her to save their lives. She had to get them to realize the facts or they were all dead.

"We can't jump. And we can't fight two battlestars, not in our condition." Everyone in the group nodded in agreement and notes of agreement flowed through the data stream. It was the Centurion that reacted with a plan first.

"We should launch the alert Raiders and Heavy Raiders, but we should keep them close to the fleet. Do we try to make contact with the humans?" The single red eye stopped moving when it started to speak and only started to slide again after it had stopped speaking.

Bill Adama was not on the Colonial flagship. He had been restricted to planetside duty due to a broken arm for months now. Any broken bone at his age could be dangerous, and so under medical orders, he had been grounded for going on four months. Now he was in the main planetside fleet command center for this star system as the information came in. It was not that much of a star system's command center. It was barely bigger than the CIC of the Pegasus. But it was deep underground and it still had room to grow in the future. The odd mix of Colonial, Rifter, and Earth tech made this center small, but it was more than powerful enough for its current mission.

As Bill looked at the data coming in on the high mounted displays, he figured that five Basestars against two top of the line battlestars would be rated as an even battle. That was if they were just using standard Colonial technology and specifications which was not the case, not this time. Bill was very upset that he was not on the flagship or even in space for the first battle with the Cylons in almost a decade but he could not and would not delay the warships. So, he resigned himself to being sidelined.

This was going to be a battle managed by a younger generation than him on the pointed end of the stick. Still, in his mind he was running how he thought the battle might go. He was liking what he was seeing more and more. Then he frowned as he started to wonder what changes the Cylons might be springing on his people. His people had developed new tools to fight with, so why not the Cylons?

He was lost in thought so deeply that the young officer had to speak his update twice. "Sir! We are picking up a transmission coming from the Cylons on a standard Colonial Fleet channel. They say that they just want to parley. And they are asking us to please keep our distance from their ships. They have launched a very small CAP, and they are almost sticking to the hulls of the Basestars. What do you want to do?" Bill could hear the question in the voice. It matched the "What the frak," that was playing in his mind.

"Plotting, have any of the Cylons jumped out of the system after they came in?" Bill was trying to figure out what was going on. The only thing he knew was that these Cylons were not acting normally. What they should have done was dump power back into their engines and closed in on any human ships that might be nearby. They should have launched every Raider and Heavy Raider to support a soon to come massive wave of missiles. Sometimes the missile attack came between the waves of launching small craft. That was when one of the other Basestars or small craft should have jumped out of this star system. Sitting in orbit, in each other's hip pockets, it was not logical to fight a battle with these odds. Bill did not know if this was a good thing or not.

The massive lit table had every bit of data the Colonials could gather displayed on it from every sensor both Colonial, Rifter and others. "Sir, no jumps detected since the first massive one. I've never seen a jump signature that big before. They also had some huge spikes from IR going all the way to X-ray."

As the systems operator was talking, he pulled up the data recorded when the Baseships arrived, and Bill could not help but let his eyebrows crawl up to his thin hair. He had not seen a jump signature like that before in his entire life. He looked over at the younger face, and every face in this room was younger to his eyes.

"That is a monster Mr. Soto. They might have burned out their jump drives to get here, but why would they do that? They would be stuck in a close in gun battle without a way home." Bill wanted to take his glasses off and think, but he stopped his hand movements.

The person on the plotting table was an old hand. He had been working on the Pegasus' CIC from the first day of the new war until taking a position here to be primarily a trainer to a newer generation of warriors. He had seen more than a few Cylon Basestars jump in on them in his day. So if he said the signature was big, that was something to remember.

He kept his voice low and maintained eye contact with the Fleet Admiral. "Maybe they had a power surge, or something go into their jump drives, but how in the gods' names could it happen to all five warships at the same time? And how would that have affected the Raiders and Heavy Raiders so they could not jump out? They would be dead meat under the guns of a battlestar."

Bill was quick off the mark and he pitched his voice to carry. "Contact Starbuck and tell her to hold off sending her Vipers and Raptors at the Cylons. Have all system-based attack craft converge and hold station on the Pegasus. They want to talk, so we talk. If they so much as flinch, then we blow them out of my sky."

Bill bent down and picked up the handset that would transmit to the enemy ships. The rest of the groundside staff would pass on his directions. "Cylon Fleet this is Admiral Adama. You wanted to talk. Okay, but if one of your ships moves to attack or jumps out of the system, we will nuke you frakkers until every one of you is radioactive space dust."

Bill had a hard look on his face as he spoke. He thought he might as well make it clear to the Cylons that they would not roll over as they did on New Caprica. He could see that the people around him were thinking the same thing.

A female voice replied to his patented gruff voice a lot quicker than Bill thought. "Admiral Adama, what a surprise to find you all the way out here. We didn't come here to fight you, or anyone else for that matter. We are just passing through and had some engine trouble. Do you mind if we just stay here and work on them?"

Bill looked at the handset and gave it a thin smile. "Passing through? So that you can let the rest of your fleet know where we are? That is not going to happen. You have a nice little fleet. If you move, we will have a little dance."

The voice's laugh came over the speakers with a crack, and was a little off. It sounded very brittle to Bill's ears. "Fleet? What fleet? Admiral what you see is all that is left of the Cylons. At least all of the Cylons who did not want to be ruled over as an empire by one of the Ones who thought he was a god or god's gift to the Cylon race."

Bill had stray memory pop into his head. Something from one of the files they had recovered in the battle of the Cylon Outpost. Many of them had said something about a Cylon Empire. "Maybe we should have a face-to-face meeting. I take it you're the leader of your little group?" Well, sometimes you have to roll the hard six.

When there was not a reply, he pushed on. "We have a problem. We don't trust you, and we don't want the rest of your kind finding us again. In the last two times that this has happened, blood was spilled. Send one of your Heavy Raiders, unarmed, over to the Galactica. We will scan it. If it's not clean, we will burn it down and the rest of you ships will be right behind it. Just to keep an open table between us, we have picked up a few new things along the way and we will use them. You might want to think about what happened in that nebula. We have had longer to work on a few more things after that. I don't think that your five Basestars will stand a chance in Hades against us. But please don't take my word for it. I am more than willing to show it all over those five Basestars of yours."

Natalie was trying to work out what to do but as she looked around the room, everyone was looking back at her. Her mind reeled. Everyone had thought that Bill Adama and his little group had died by now. Now to have found them alive and well, that was disturbing on a level that reached to the deckheads. She tried to put a little more spine in her voice, but she also did not want to sound like a Number One. She knew that would end very badly against 'The Adama'.

"Okay Admiral. We will meet, but your Vipers, Raptors, and warships need to stay right where they are and not get any closer. Or we will have to see who lives and who dies today. When do you want to have this meeting?" She knew deep down that it was a very hollow threat. By now she knew that they were out of fuel and even if they were not, their engines would not let them leave anytime soon.

Bill smiled. So they were not dumb. Tired but not dumb. He could relate to that. Bill did not say something for about six heartbeats. Then he pressed the button. "Two hours. Does that work for you?"

As Bill was talking, data was being sent back and forth between his command center, the President's command center, the orbital support station, and the two battlestars in orbit. Some might have said that his offering to meet with an enemy was outside his job description. Bill thought of it as a military matter. He would worry about some of those political issues later. Like after he had dealt with almost half a dozen Cylon capital warships.

The Cylons agreed to the meeting and now Bill had to let his son, the President, know about the meeting. It would be a close-run thing to get a group together that might be up to the job. It would take two Raptors to carry everyone the Colonials wanted up to the older battlestar. Bill was thankful that they had the small production line for jump engine parts for the small craft going. They even were making brand new Raptors as fast as they needed them. The two craft used today were some of the newest off the production line.

When asked about the location of the meeting, Bill just shrugged. If it was a trap, they would lose some political people, one old Admiral and one old warship. They still would have their most powerful warship free to take action or defend against the enemy. That view had not gotten the Fleet Admiral any good will with those same political people he was riding the Raptor with. His son could do nothing but laugh at his father's sentiment.

As soon as the two little craft cleared the warm planet, they jumped in closer to the old warship. Bill had not been lying about choosing the old warship for a simple reason. If things went bad, she was the least valuable of any of the possible meeting places he thought the Cylons would agree to. There was no way he was going to let Cylons land on any one of the two planets in this system. Dirty nuclear weapons were a thing. Had been a thing during the old inter-colonial wars. He also knew that it would cause too many flashbacks for the civilians if they saw Cylons tramping around dirtside. There were a lot of weapons being carried around by people who were not in the active military. Bill would bet there would be weapons fire if they saw Cylons walking around on the planet's surface. He knew that if he was in a crowd and armed, he would pull out his side arm and 'go to town' as the Earthers would say.

The growing space station was also a wash for hosting the Cylons. It had the only building or repair slip for larger space ships the Colonials had. It would take years to rebuild it if the Cylons got tricky. Oh and it was sitting over the capital city of his people, so that pushed it into the not going to happen category. The other battlestar could have done the job as a host ship and it would have been better suited because of its flag facilities. Then again, she was the most powerful ship that the Colonials had left. Her loss would cut short any attack or defense of this entire sector of space, and that included Earth and its billions of inhabitants.

As it turned out, the Cylons were a little late to the meeting. The Cylons could have just jumped in close with one of their Heavy Raiders but they seemed to have understood that a little action like that would have started a shooting war. So they had taken a low powered trip out from their fleet to the human flagship. It also saved fuel. Fuel that they now were very short of because of the Hybrids. Hybrids that were not responding to any questions coming from the other Cylons in the fleet.

There were some advantages to taking the slower trip out in a Heavy Raider. The long ride did give the Cylons a good look at the latest modified Viper MK VIII that was escorting them or flying CAP around the old battlestar. They had no idea how the Colonials had come up with a way to mask the DRADIS so well. The Cylons also noticed that the wing mounted weapons were not the normal Colonial KEW's they had been seeing and, in some cases, using.

The Heavy Raider could now track and get data on the battlestar they were heading to without having to rely on the larger systems aboard the basestars. When they were about half an hour from landing, they realize that it was the old Battlestar Galactica after all. This called into question the hangar pod they had found near New Caprica. Her image had almost been hard wired into every Cylon. It also was not giving back as much of a return on the DRADIS as a ship that size should at any range. Both of her flight pods were deployed out of the sides of the old warship like fists of death. She was very much alive and ready for combat against her old foes. The arriving Cylons had no idea that one flight pod was not like the other one.

When they had to pull the old girl into the still short repair slip years ago, the Lucky Find and the Neptune's Revenge had been finally separated from the old warhorse for the last time. The Revenge was now back on Earth, mostly being used as the Colonial military flagship, warship and very occasionally transport for high value cargos that were being traded to the different countries and companies on Earth. Captain Kelly, and he still went by that name even if he was not a captain anymore, was looking at retiring from public life soon and returning to command of that cargo/warship as it made its way around that blue planet. Bill thought it had a nice symmetry that both ship and captain were returning to the world of their birth.

What was left of the Lucky Find was on the warm planet's surface. She was the center of a slowly growing city, deep in a set of mountains. What was left of her hulk was now very far from the nearest body of water of any size. Part of her hull was supplying the shops to help the town grow and supplying items for the rest of the humans spread out over three different star systems. This new site was also the hub for moving people out across the planet, so that they would not be in only one location and one target. It also would cut down on the cost of moving the minerals to the capital from those mines near her current location.

The now empty side of the old Colonial warship had been filled. They had built, from scratch, a brand new flight pod. It only had taken time, metal, and a lot of reviewing all of the lessons learned from both Cylon wars. They could have made all the parts and bits some time ago but with so many other ships needing attention, it took some time before it was decided to replace the missing pod with a working one instead of just covering over the old wound with armor plate. It had taken a lot of time and material, but it had been done.

As the Cylons approached the main landing area, they also noticed the finish of the whole ship. Colonial made armor had a dull gun metal tint to it. It had not changed since before the first war. This ship was covered in armor that had a reflection that was brighter than any other Colonial ships the Cylons were used to seeing. It was almost shiny and slick looking to match the menace that she had projected before. They marked it up to the ship having just come out of a maintenance cycle, and a layer of paint being applied for some reason that was known only to the humans.

This conclusion about the old warship having just coming out of a maintenance cycle was reinforced as the group of Cylons walked through the massive metal halls of the ship. They were looking at everything from the landing bays to the main briefing room. The ship looked to the untrained eyes like she had just been launched. The Cylons were not untrained, but they had not seen or had been in a human warship in almost a decade if at all.

Their first surprise after finding humans and then talking to 'The Bill Adama' came when the members of the leadership of the Free Cylons entered the briefing room. They had expected to see Bill Adama and Laura Roslin in the meeting or heading the meeting. Seeing Lee Adam in a business suit instead of a military uniform, that was a bit of a shock for them to endure but it was doable. Seeing the Number Eight in the room talking with Roslin like they were old friends, that had almost caused the rest of the human forms to pass out from the shock to their mental capabilities. It would seem like Hades had truly frozen over and the stars were about to go dark.

For the next few hours, the meeting went on. The Cylons told the humans and the ex-Cylon POW's about what happened after the humans had disappeared. The Ones led by Cavil had taken control of everything and waged a civil war with the Cylons that disagreed with him. They took questions about certain parts of their story but otherwise kept going at a steady pace.

Bill made a mental note that it seemed like nothing had changed, tech wise for the Cylons. The weapons they had when they started the new war were the same ones they were still using during the Cylon civil war. When he asked about this, he got a strange look and the Number Two spoke for the group. "Why would they put time and effort into making new weapons when the current ones worked good enough to do the job? Besides they had plenty of them on hand and ready to use, so they had no supply issues to worry about."

The Free Cylons asked some pointed questions in return, focused mainly about how the humans were able to survive and escape from the hidden planet in the nebula. At first, they had not seemed to be okay that there were some things that the Colonials were unwilling to discuss. It was only after this refusal came from a fellow human form Cylon the bitter pill became easier to swallow. If one Cylon knew, then it was only a matter of time before the Free Cylons knew. Or at least that was that they thought would happen.

It was not long after that statement that the meeting was taken over by one of the ex-POW's. The Free Cylons were told in great detail how their compatriots had been POW's at the start. That they had been tried of war crimes and only after being cleared were they slowly allowed to join the group of refugees. That now they were full citizens. They were even told about the Final Five, and how Cavil had their minds wiped and them sent to live in the Colonies to die with the rest of the humans. Adama kept quiet on one side of the table. He had maybe said a dozen words during those first few hours. When he felt that the time was right, he changed that.

"So, the only people the Number Ones want to kill more than us are you and your group. Is that about right?" He did not address this to Natalie Faust but to the whole room.

The older Adama had been tapping on a small screen all throughout the meeting. What the visiting Cylons did not know was that he was passing along ideas. He was also working through other ideas with people in the room and on other ships and command centers via a text messaging device. This was one of the many items they had picked up from the blue planet. He was using that interplay to maximum effect.

"What do you want? What is your short, middle and end game?" Bill took the time to make eye contact even with the metal form Cylon. Bill was getting an odd feeling that the Centurion was more than it seemed.

Natalie Faust was not expecting that turn and her shoulder slumped. "There's not much we can do. Nor are we sure what we want. We had just saved what we could and headed out with whatever we had on hand. Now all the jump engines are burned out because of the wrong coordinates being put into the frakkers and the error burned up all of the fuel. We are stuck here for a while. So what are you going to do with us Admiral, shoot us?"

Natalie stopped talking and looked over to the metal member of their group. When it had exited the Heavy Raider, it had been checked for ammunition and then cleared to follow the rest of the human forms. "Can I tell them?"

The metal Cylon turned its head a little and the single red eye stopped moving for a second then it gave a very human nod in the positive. Then the red eye started back to scanning left and right. Other than that, the machine did not move. Every other human in the room froze. Normally when a red eye stopped, blood started to be splashed on the walls and ceilings.

Kathy and Athena were a little shocked. They had assumed that the Centurion was just an escort for the human forms. That had been the main way that they had been used before Adama saved as many humans as he could. Now it seemed like it was a full member of the leadership for these Free Cylons. It was Kathy that rocked back, and her eyes went wide. There was only one way that she knew of that would allow for this turn of events.

"You have removed the inhibitors, didn't you? Did you do it to all of them? And what are you not telling us?" It was all out of Kathy's mouth before she could stop herself. Knowing about the inhibitors to free thought that had been built into the non-human form Cylons was part of the Cylons 101 class for the Colonials. One that was mandatory for everyone to understand and pass a written test on with a 90% accuracy rate. It was a requirement for both the Colonial equivalent of a high school certificate and immigrants wanting to become citizens.

Natalie looked back to Kathy and picked up something from the looks of the Colonials. They understood what the ex-POW said and why she said it. "Yes. We had to. If we were going to be free, it should be that way for all Cylons. It was harder to do on the Raiders and Heavy Raiders versus the Centurions. We asked the Centurions, and they were very happy that we did remove of those devices. They had known about them from some time but after you left it started to be more of an issue for them." She pointed over to Bill.

Natalie shrugged, looking around and putting down her hand. "That led us into another problem we're starting to have. The age of the Raiders and Heavy Raiders is starting to become more of an issue for the ones that we still have left."

Lee Adama tilted his head and looked over the table at Kathy with a questioning look on his face. This was either new information or maybe information that he just had forgotten. "Age?"

Natalie replied first before Kathy or the other Eight could. "Yes. The biological parts of those craft are only good for about eight years before they start to die or deteriorate into a stage not unlike senility. That would not be a problem normally, because of the resurrection technology. We could just download them into a new biological mass and the clock resets. Now we're getting to a point where they want to have some fun before they die."

She did not tell the group that for the most part, the human forms had just let the Raider and Heavy Raider biomass die. Before the Cylon Civil War, very few of them had thought of them as real. Not until the inhibitors were removed. That had changed things, at least for the Free Cylons.

Laura smiled a thin smile and looked to the current President. Lee Adama knew what she was going to say, and he gave her a slight nod. "We have worked with Cylons now for years. If you are willing to follow our rules and none of you have committed war crimes or taken actions that are against our laws, you can stay with us. You will be on probation of some form, and barred from joining the military or government. But if you want to set up a city all your own? Well, that has been thought of before. We will have to come to an agreement about your weapons though." In that statement she had just dropped a planet buster on the Cylons.

Natalie asked for her team to be left alone so they could talk amongst themselves. Even the Centurion had only been able to look at the one-time refugee President. To have the one-time human enemy offer the Free Cylons a place to stay, that was something no one of them had even thought about asking for. The visiting Cylons worked until they were interrupted and told that it was mealtime. And so, with an escort, the Cylons were taken to the main mess hall on the old warship.

It was during this meal break that the Free Cylon delegation ran into six more Cylons, each of them in Colonial uniforms. With only a look shot at their escort, one of the Free Cylons approached the small group of Cylons in Colonials uniforms and asked them to join the rest of the Council in the mess hall. This short meal turned into an hour long reunion. The Free Cylons would have wanted the get together to last longer, but the six other Cylons were only on a meal break and had to return to duty.

So when the leadership of the Free Cylons got back to the meeting, they had already agreed to the deal but still needed to see what was going on. Nat had one LAST question before she could vote for this idea to stay. She looked right at Lee Adama, but then looked over toward Roslin as she spoke. They had been hit with so much new information that she was still trying to work through what was real and what might be a fabrication.

"Thank you for your offer to stay in this system. But would we be put into prison, just like what we did to you and your people on that ice ball of a planet? You said that we all would have to be investigated to see if we committed war crimes. How would you do that without the whole investigation turning into some kind of a witch hunt?"

Lee Adama had smirk on his face. "We ran into a group of other humans while we were running from your fleet. It turns out that they have some neat tricks that can do some amazing things. If that doesn't work, then one of the Final Five will be able to view your memories and unlock any hidden codes that might be in your brains. If we find anything there are rules that will dictate what will happen next. You are free to review them."

Natalie and the other Free Cylons just froze and did not move for many long seconds. Even the Centurion's roving red eye stopped moving and locked onto Lee Adama. This frozen look lasted for over half a minute, and was starting to make the humans in the room uncomfortable. The spell was broken when Natalie made a sound that said she was way past shocked and more in a full-blown rage.

"You really found the Final Five!? You're not frakking with us at all!?" Her roaming eyes stopped at the only Cylon currently on the other side of the table. She had assumed when it was brought up before that it had been some kind of game being run on them by the humans.

"It's true. They had the Final Five all along. And it was John and his line who put a block in our minds so that we cannot remember them. That is, besides in odd dreams or when we download into new bodies and the code glitches. They are the ones that created us. As we already told you, John had their minds wiped and them sent to the Colonies even before the Stealthstar incident. He was planning on wiping them and the humans all out even back then. We were not lying. Everything we have said is true."

Natalie looked around to her people and then looked back at Lee. "Can you tell us who they were or are?"

Lee looked over at his father but only for a second before returning his gaze to the visiting Cylons. He slowly went down the list of the Final Five Cylons that had been with the fleet. Sometimes he gave some background on the cover lives they had been living. Lee had to stop three times as others corrected details that he had misremembered. When he was done the poleaxed look was back on the visiting Cylons.

A Number Two had a smirk on his face as his mind caught up to the new facts. "Well, that explains why John was so hot to get the Galactica at first. He knows that at least two of the Final Five were on it. He probably had a sleeper aboard this ship. Or maybe one of his copies."

The Two leaned over and looked towards Natalie. "No wonder he was so focused on them compared to any of the others. It still does not explain how he acted after we found you on that ice ball and he had almost all of you under his thumb."

Bill Adama about came out of his chair. Laura and Lee were only about a half a heartbeat behind him to put their hands on him. They did not want him to be led down that path by these new Cylons. For the next hour they were told about how the Cylon fleet had not been going after the Pegasus, only reacting to her and other attacks on their rear area.

The rag tag fleet had been working under the assumption that they were the only group of humans to have been able to escape the Cylon surprise attack. They had thought that any survivors were put into the farms like what had been found by Starbuck and Anders' teams or just killed out of hand. That was if they were on the planets. Those in space would not have had the supplies to keep going for long. They had been wrong, so very wrong. This revelation was going to cause a major shakeup for the refugees.

The group of Cylons went back to their ship right after they had worn out the older husband and wife Adamas. There they could brief their crews on what they had found out. It was not a short meeting for the Cylon leadership. It was almost as long as the meeting on the Colonial Battlestar. Of the almost seventeen thousand total Cylons on the capital ships, only a dozen did not vote to stay in this human controlled system. Each one that had voted not to stay had been questioned. Each had agreed that they would support the decision of the larger group of Cylons. They just thought it was a bad idea. They would not do anything that would sabotage this agreement with the humans. After all, they still had Hera, and the stories about Cylons being accepted and even serving in positions on the Galactica was intriguing.

When this information about the vote was passed along to the Colonials from the Cylon flagship, they were told that support teams would be sent over. Within the day, groups of technicians were flown over aboard a few Raptors. Over half of the group sent over were Cylons. Two Raptors were landed on each of the capital ships escorted by a pair of Vipers at all times.

Their first order of business was to talk to the Raiders and Heavy Raiders. The Colonials wanted to remove or disconnect all of their jump drives so that there would be no threat. It was a key concern that one of them could jump out of the system and take word back to the Cylon Empire of the humans' location. All they needed was a promise of a monthly ration of fuel for each of the Cylon small craft. The jump capable ships then agreed to have their jump drives disabled, but to a single craft they did not want them removed. At the same time, it was decided to disable the cannons as well as remove the ammunition for the KEW's and missile bays.

The Cylons were given enough fuel to move the five Basestars out past the habitable zone of the Tau Ceti system. Only one Basestar at a time would be allowed into that zone for now. It was meant to keep everyone relaxed about the threat of a sneak attack on the population centers of the star system. The move also allowed the Cylons to look for a place to live a more normal life on the planets.

It did not take long for the Cylons to pick a little out of the way valley that was well north on the cooler of the two planets. One of the growing number of Alaskans that had seen the valley said that the valley was very Sitka-like when they went to inspect the area. That large valley had three sides covered with huge snowcapped mountains and the fourth side had a large if rock filled sea bay. This area would soon be the center of computer and cybernetics R&D and production. It would take time to develop those capabilities though. The Cylons had such a small population and they had other items they had to take care of first.

While the Cylons were getting settled in, the investigators started to check for any war criminals that might be hiding among them. The two thousand Raiders, Heavy Raiders, and Centurions were cleared after a very short interview with each of them was completed. They did not know what they were doing, and they had no free will at the time. The investigators mainly just wanted to see if they had any info about the human forms. The same happened to the six Hybrids after the first of their interviews had started. That one Hybrid was known to have gotten a dozen investigators to put in for new jobs. Their resignation letters specifically said so. The little less than fifteen thousand human forms were not so lucky.

It did not take long, only a few weeks, to complete the job of separating the sheep from the goats. Only four of the total interviewed human forms were held on war crimes of any kind. A total of thirteen others were found to have committed crimes of some kind, but that did not fall under the war crimes category. The Colonial legal systems would have to review each of the crimes to see if they were worth the effort to pursue.

The total number of crimes were skewed towards being done by the Number Two type of human form Cylons, but all of them accepted being detained. The ones being looked at for general crimes seemed to have been crushed when they came back out of having to relive the events they had committed. Within a few weeks of being forced to relive the crimes, six of the thirteen had committed suicide through various means. A public execution was held for the four and the rest spent a lengthy time working for the public good under very close supervision.

The Colonials received a list of items that the Cylons needed and to their surprise most of it was delivered within a few days, including more fuel. It was not in the amounts requested, but a note from Bill Adama took the sting out of the deficit. He said that as soon as they could, the balance would be delivered to them. He noted that the Colonies as a whole had to come before any one group within the colony. He also mentioned that he was looking forward to seeing how the Cylons could add to the support of the whole Colony after they got their feet under themselves.

The total number of Cylons started to fall a few months after they came to the system. It was slow, but eventually the oldest of the Raiders and Heavy Raiders started dying as their biological components got too old. After each death, a ceremony was held for the dead Cylon. The hulk of the small craft was then recycled, so that the Basestar that had held it could recover that much faster. Even with help of the Colonials, it still took a lot of time and effort to get them back into fully operational condition.

One of the ceremonies was covered by a news team for distribution across Colonial space. This prompted a request from the two museums slowly growing in the Colonies. They each wanted one of each of the two different types of Cylon small craft. The humans were fighting hard to keep a link to their past so that the mistakes would not be repeated by any party in the future. The governing council of Free Cylons agreed to the request, and when it was time the four craft were unveiled to the public. The Cylons themselves made sure to keep a few for the future also. Until that message, they had not thought about the future.

This unveiling along with the news that an Earth had been found was released to the Free Cylons. It had been another shock to find out that there were over eight billion humans only a dozen light years away from them. The reason for the news was that a few pharmaceutical companies were interested in finding out what was causing the small craft's biological parts to die. It also showed that there was a market outside of New Kobol for Cylon made goods.

As it turned out, it was a simple matter to come up with a way to slow the dying off of the Cylons' small craft fleet. Testing would cost the Free Cylons a few tens of millions of dollars in future trade of cybernetics, but a way would be found to do something for them short term. It was found that a certain drug for erectile dysfunction and another one for dementia in small but daily doses would extend the lives of the Free Cylon Raiders and Heavy Raiders by about ten to fifteen years. The newer the biological part the more their lives would be extended. This news was very well received by all of the different forms of Cylons.

The human forms and Centurions worked to repair and build their new home, and the flying craft were finally able to relax and fly for the fun of it. After eight months of the Free Cylons being in this system, the first stress point became evident to the general public. Somehow it was leaked to the public that while the small craft were supposedly not armed, they could be equipped on short notice with missiles and they already carried a few rounds for each of their built-in cannons. The humans had wanted them to stay completely unarmed, but it was argued that if the Cylon Empire showed up, it would be nice if the any patrolling fighters could be of some help. It was pointed out that in the early phase of any such engagement, any fighter could help delay attacks on the planets.

And so, soon each Cylon small craft was armed with enough rounds for a few bursts from their twin cannons. It was more for self-defense and psychological support than any real combat requirement. They would roam the system looking at whatever they wanted as long as they had the fuel or the will to go spend some time in space. They were happy and content to do what they wanted for what remained of their short lives.

It was during one such star system spanning jaunt that a Raider and Heavy Raider that had developed a 'friendship' on the run from the Cylon Empire found something that intrigued them. They were watching a group of six Vipers training in combat maneuvering out on the edge of the solar system. The group of Vipers had no idea that they were being watched but after almost an hour of training, the leader of the group's communications displays pinged with a short text message.

It asked if they could play also with the humans. The senior lieutenant had no idea who had sent the message, and after few back and forth messages the pair of Cylon craft activated their IFF. The flight leader had no idea what the Cylons meant by playing but she was smart enough to say not this time but maybe later. She also knew to password of the incident along to the system's command center. When a message was sent to the Free Cylon flagship and their command center to clarify what was meant by the small craft messages, it turned out that the Raiders had thought that what the Vipers were doing looked like fun and had wanted to join in.

That was how the cross training of Cylon small craft and Colonial Vipers started. It was decided that the main threat to this system was being found by the Cylon Empire after all. So, the Colonials were happy to be able to train against real Cylon small craft for the first time. The newest pilots coming into service with the Colonial Fleet had never fought against the Cylons. Now the young Colonial pilots and crews were able to and live to learn from any mistakes they committed against the Cylon war craft.

This second type of flying even helped the other Cylons with some funds coming in that could be used in other areas. More than a few of the small craft asked for some of the 'money' they were paid to help train and drill the humans. This went into some rather odd paint jobs on the more eccentric Raiders and Heavy Raiders. It was odd how some of those bio-matter controlled craft wanted their bodies painted. Each one was as different as humans would have been. Although some just wanted to look plain or factory fresh.

Soon the Cylons were able to get their first look at the Colonial directed energy weapons and other new equipment that they were building or had access to. Then the story slowly came out about how the humans were able to turn the tide on the occupying Cylons. It was both shocking and funny for the Cylons to find these new weapons. Shocking because they were right out of a fiction story and funny because they were being put on human craft to kill their enemies if the Cylon Empire ever found them. It would not take long before the Cylons were also learning from the Rifters, the Earthers, and to a certain extent the rest of the Colonials.

The Raiders and Heavy Raiders loved dealing with humans on an almost daily basis. The more than dog smart Cylons were each different, and they could communicate with them. Soon the Colonial Viper and Raptor pilots found that they could like them back. It was a slowly growing breakthrough between the Free Cylon and the Colonial military, government, and civilians. A few months after training exercises with the Raiders started, a request was passed to the Cylon military. A joint short ranged scouting mission could be launched in the near future and they were being invited to join.

It was in a nearby system that the Colonials had not had the time to study in any great detail. It would only be composed of a group of Raptors and Raiders acting as escort to one of the smaller but now heavily armed civilian ships filled with Colonials, Rifters, and Earthers. It would be the first solar system not occupied by the Colonials that the local Earthborn group would be able to see for their own eyes. It was the first of many joint scientific missions launched between the three groups. Soon the cooperation would only be between two powers, as the Free Cylons were fully integrated into the rest of the Colonial population.

Slowly the Colonials and the planet called Earth were being integrated. It would not take long before the blue planet was up to the technological level of the Colonies before the First Cylon War. The whole planet was not there yet, but all areas were climbing at a steady rate. Then it started to change faster as the Cylons and Colonials spent more and more time trying to help the Earthborn avoid the mistakes they had made. Cylons were shipping out cybernetics by the ton to the blue planet, along with a host of marriage proposals. The Cylon city was filled with very pretty women and very few men that were almost to a person single and wanting to have kids. The latter was something that had an attraction all its own.

What the people from deep space did not know was that in secret bases around the globe, work was being done. Research had started into developing jump drives and AI's that were all of local design, despite the warnings from the Colonials and Cylons. The seeds of the future and the destruction that it would bring would not be stopped from being sown. The clock was still ticking away to doomsday but for every new technology that was spread around the planet, it would both save more lives and shorten the coming dark age that the planet would suffer.

New Kobol, 2 Years after the Free Cylons' arrival

Over New Kobol the space station was buzzing with activity. The station was opening what everyone was calling the 'Building Slip'. It was the fifth slip on the station, but the previous ones had been called Repair Slips 1 through 4 and those names had stuck. The repair slips were even now full of new ships that were still undergoing testing. They were just prototypes of an escortstar in old Caprican Legion terms. They were Heavy Destroyers or Light Cruisers in the more modern naming convention the Colonials were now using.

This new class of ship was armed and armored with the best that the rapidly growing New Kobol system could supply. The first two would still only have commercial grade jump engines and the older style main drives. She and her near sister would never deploy beyond these three star systems unless under dire emergency. It was expected that within a year, it would take on its true role. The pair would be training ships for the soon to be growing combined fleet coming out of those 5 slips or space docks to be manned by Colonials, Free Cylons, and Earthers.

The next ship class was going to be a full-on warship. The 4 remaining operational Cylon Basestars would not fit the need, firepower, or armor needed in the coming war. New Hybrids were not going to be made by the Cylons even if the humans would have let them. They were going to be making ships that were more human focused. Soon all the slips would be making dedicated escort and combat support ships for an expeditionary fleet. Almost two-thirds of their crews were going to be volunteers born on the local Earth. They were going on a mission to find and rescue any humans that the Cylon Empire might have overlooked. If the Cylon Empire got in the way? Well, that was why the Pegasus was going to be the mission flagship. The same would be true of any hostile alien forces that Captain Kelly's people were always warning them about.

The End?

And with that, this story comes to an end. This has been an amazing ride with many ups and downs along the way. I started writing this back in 2011, but I really didn't start working on getting this ready for others to read until sometime in 2015. So after almost a decade, I am done. I left it open so that if anyone else wanted to take the idea and run with it, they could in any direction they wanted using the "plug ins" I left.

I will say that as of now, I am done working on this one. I have other stories I want to try my hand at. I just wanted to thank everyone that had helped me along the way, and I hope you all have enjoyed mine and their work on this and the also to the one that have had input into this over 1.3 million word colossus. I also would like to send out a special thank you to Sable Cold. I could not have done this without you and the long hours you put into this project.