Starborn Smith [Massive Scifi MultiFusion / Celestial Forge]

[BlazingHyperion]

It had been four days since I had finally acquired all of the Star League era tech onboard the Manassas. In that time, we had been joined by an additional four of the original crew. All of them were rather eccentric. Apparently all the members of the crew had been like that originally, even Elder James, to an extent.

I guess 20 years of living in a rural village and raising kids would mellow out even the wildest of people.

To say that the returning engineers had been a significant help would be an understatement. Each one that had returned to the living had worked for three days straight before stopping. I couldn't tell if it was just their personality, or if it was a side effect of the sarcophagus. If it continued with the rest I might have to ask the Elder to start giving people time off before forcing them back into duty.

We weren't exactly in a hurry, but we weren't not in a rush either. Any day, another System Lord could decide to attack, or maybe a group of Ashrak spies might decide to check on what happened to the group that went missing. Of course, none of that was immediately likely, and we had all three Stargates under very strict watch, but it still meant we didn't have time for dithering.

So, Elder James had invited me to another one of the negotiations. Apparently, this was the first meeting that didn't primarily concern the mutual exchange of food and supplies.

We had once more arrived on Dendred and taken up seats within the ship that formerly belonged to Eris. Elder James and I had been the first to arrive, followed shortly after by Arktos, one of his subordinates, Ma'chello, and Eudora. Once we were all settled, Ma'chello began the meeting with the first of several major topics.

"During the beginning of Ares' occupation of our world, a collection of people arrived. Citizens of a nation that called themselves the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. They arrived seven years before I officially began my rebellion, and were among the group that convinced me to actually begin the fight. I have no doubt that, given enough time, I would have started the rebellion eventually, but I very much doubt it would have been as successful as it is now."

He took a deep breath and continued. "I'll let Eudora take it from here."

Eudora stood up and pulled out several sheets of paper, handing them to all of us. "Our ship was the BSG Daedalus, what we refer to as an Adamant Class Frigate. We were at war with the Cylons – a… collection of machines that we had created to defend us from external threats. This was during the early stages of the war…" she seemed to be deep in thought for a moment.

"Well, I say it was the early stages of the war, the war had really been going on for nearly four years at the time, we just didn't know it yet. Anyway, we were attempting to destroy an enemy vessel, something we refer to as a Phobos Class Tech Cruiser. The captain ordered us to ram the ship and activate our jump drive – our FTL drive. The jump activated, but it took us far further than expected. All of our digital information was wiped, and most of the crew onboard died. The only thing we have left are physical star maps, and we quite frankly don't have the equipment to find the location of the colonies."

I spoke up, "If all of your digital systems were wiped, how did you get off the ship?"

Eudora nodded, "We were onboard a flight of Raptors – specialized colonial shuttle craft – that were still within the hangar. When the Daedalus jumped, we got dragged along, but the Raptors are designed to protect the users from ionizing radiation and the effects of nuclear weapons detonated at close range. We were also about the furthest away from the source of the radiation."

Arktos was listening intently this entire time, "you claim to be one of them?"

Eudora nodded in reply, "I was."

That was an odd choice of words, "Past tense?"

She nodded, lightly. "I've lived among the people of this world for thirty years now. More than half of my life. This is my home now, no matter where I've come from."

Arktos nodded once and Eudora continued, "We've been tracking the wreckage of both ships for decades, but we haven't been willing to risk discovery since it appeared that Ares and Eris were unaware of them. Now that neither of them are a concern, we'd like to attempt a recovery mission."

Arktos nodded, "I can understand why James is here, but I fail to understand why I am here."

Eudora's face turned stern as she spoke, "We would like to attempt to revive any crewman we discover onboard the ship."

Seeing that Elder James was preparing to speak, she stopped him for a moment, "we had a lot of good engineers aboard our ship. Let us at least try and we might be able to retrofit a colonial jump drive onto your vessel."

Elder James quickly closed his mouth, his brows furrowed as he began to think. A moment later, he nodded. "Alright. What did you have in mind for my people?"

She nodded. "I have heard that you have people with experience in zero-g combat and zero-g maintenance?"

Elder frowned, "Both have been relatively minimal, just a few weeks spent in space here and there."

"My own people don't have any experience with zero-g. None of the original Daedalus crew have experienced zero-g conditions in decades. We can do some basic conditioning for them to get them reacquainted, but that's two dozen people. I need at bare minimum a hundred to be able to secure both vessels. I have men currently undergoing training, but it's going to be weeks before they're even remotely ready."

Elder James nodded. "I have two hundred people that go through semi-regular zero-g training."

Eudora turned to Arktos next, "We don't have enough vessels to engage in full recovery operations. A Tel'tak is capable of carrying twenty five passengers safely, we need four to carry James people, plus one for any command staff, plus at least four more in order to transport materials to do repairs."

I frowned. "I remember seeing several vessels when I first visited Dendred, what of them?"

Ma'chello let out a sigh. "Everyone who might know how they work is dead, and they became effectively inoperable decades ago."

I nodded, "And what of those colonial Raptors?"

Eudora shook her head. "We originally had twelve of them. We're down to two that are still operational, and they each only have a capacity of five persons each."

Arktos smiled. "I am just as much in need of allies as you are. I will provide as many ships as you need as well as pilots. In exchange, I would like some of my men to join yours in this zero-g training."

Eudora seemed rather surprised by Arktos' agreement. "Thank you."

She once more turned her attention to James, "I believe that you currently have six Tel'taks, is that correct?"

I coughed once and answered in the Elders stead. "Four actually, Enyalius was doing… something… to one of them, and Elder Callum has been obsessed with figuring out what."

Elder James continued from there. "I also have plans for the other four that will leave them out of commission for at least a year. That was something I actually wanted to bring up with Arktos."

Eudora looked down at some papers, "Well, if Arktos is going to be providing ships and capable pilots, and James is providing the necessary men for the work, then I think we're good to move onto what you wanted to cover today, James."

James nodded, and then turned to Arktos. "You two have likely been able to assume this, but our vessel is currently stranded; our FTL drive is currently not operational – though we are making strides to get it into a semi-usable state – and even if it was, it would take us nearly 17 years to take the ship back the way we came. That is assuming we didn't suffer another catastrophic drive failure. Well, with a Goa'uld Hyperdrive, we could have a vessel back home in about a year."

Arktos once again nods his head. "Then I take it you have been unable to fly the Tel'taks?"

Elder James nodded, a stirn look on his face. "I need someone to help train my people in flying Goa'uld vessels."

Arktos nodded. "Then I will provide you with trainers, but I would also like your men to provide mine with zero-g training as well." He looked over at Eudora for a moment who seemed just as surprised. "Both your peoples have some experience with zero-g environments. The Goa'uld never saw a reason to train us to work in such environments. I have had many of my men die after a battle because they suffocated in vacuum."

Both of Elder James' eyebrows rose at Arktos' words. That certainly seemed odd, but it matched with what I knew of the Goa'uld from the TV-Show.

I turned to Eudora, "Why don't we just have everyone undergo zero-g training together?"

Eudora stopped for a moment. She turned to Elder James. "I'll be honest, we've just been taking people up in shuttles and letting them float about for a bit. If you're offering to provide a proper training environment, then I cannot, in good conscience, refuse."

Elder James appeared deep in thought. "Alright. Both your groups are welcome to use my vessel as a training center." He just barely turned towards me for a brief fraction of a second, before turning his attention back to Eudora. "In exchange, I want a pair of your raptors. Any pair of raptors; you can even give us your two most damaged raptors. I'd like to have my own engineers take a look at your Jump Drive."

Eudora looked taken aback for a moment. She looked back at Ma'chello. After a moment, he nodded and she continued. "We can agree to that."

Elder James nodded. "Good."

He turned back to Arktos, "there is another thing. A tel'tak does not have the storage capacity for a year's supply of food."

Arktos nodded and Elder James continued, "Our current plan is to have each of the Tel'Taks carry a Stargate externally and make stops, but we don't have a complete map of habitable planets. One alternative that has been brought up is that our ships could stop on worlds that already have Stargates and dial in from there."

Arktos nodded once more. "So what is the issue?"

"Quite frankly, we don't know where each of those Stargates are. We were hoping that Ares had some sort of database of Stargates and Stargate Addresses."

Understanding sparked in Arktos' eyes and he nodded. "Of course, I would be happy to provide you access to our map."

Elder James seemed satisfied and continued. "Now we have some more long term matters. At the moment, we have time. That won't last. Eventually, some System Lord will realize that something has happened to Ares and send forces to investigate. I would like to propose the creation of a base of operations where we can evacuate when the time comes."

While the people of Dendred and Arktos were both clearly interested in preparing such a location, that didn't mean there was not a LOT of work that would be required. Not even mentioning the location – that would be chosen MUCH later – gathering the necessary supplies, and workforce, and even designing the facility were all in question. Elder James agreed to provide several of the Dig King Industrial Mechs that were aboard the Manassas, as well as villagers to help work on the site – though mostly as a token effort; the Jaffa had a total population of nearly 10,000 while Dendred had a total population of nearly 100,000 after the most recent survey. Arktos would provide men and ships to assist in the work, finally, Ma'chello would also be providing labourers, but he would also be the lead in the design team.

With the subject of the next meeting prepared, there was one last subject. I had been busy over the past few days, and it was finally time to start. I handed out compads that would display images and began. "So I've been reviewing Zeus' data on the precursor aliens. They were a race of machines that gained sentience that called themselves the Cybrex. According to Zeus' research, approximately 600,000 years ago, they nearly purged all life in the galaxy. Then, they all suddenly disappeared."

Eudora shuddered. "Who created them?"

I already knew the parallels that this would bring to mind for the colonial, "No idea, but they were apparently the first to fall to the Cybrex."

I continued from where I left off. "Some time after they disappeared, this ringworld was discovered. Apparently, the Cybrex had somehow cut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy. Most of the galaxy's ships were sent to wipe them out. The ship that Zeus discovered with the recording was one of the vessels in this fleet."

Arktos was busy looking through the images, "Approximately how many ships were there in this fleet?"

"If I was to estimate… 50,00. Though most of them were smaller craft, maybe ten times the size of an Al'kesh."

Ma'chello shuddered, "So how did these… Cybrex, fare?"

My face remained neutral, the Elder didn't want me revealing my meta knowledge, though I couldn't really tell why. "We don't know. They had no ships and they didn't fight back."

Arktos frowned in response, "then how did Zeus' lost ship fall out of Hyperspace?"

"In-fighting; every empire was expecting to gain something from the Cybrex, ships, technology, you name it. They gained nothing. The only thing that was left in the system was the ringworld itself. I haven't been able to fully translate the internal communications, but what I have been able to determine is that a total full scale battle between all sides was only dissuaded due to extensive negotiations among the higher ups. Even then, some of the more… militant nations couldn't help but take pot shots at other vessels."

I pulled up a general map of what had once been Zeus' domain. It covered an area almost 5% of the entire galaxy. While it was nothing compared to the domain of even Yu, let alone Ra, it still put him among the top 10 most powerful System Lords of all time.

I highlighted several star systems. "These Systems all contained relics of either the Cybrex or one of the nations that was part of the attack."

Pointing out one of those star systems, I continued. "This was where the vessel was discovered."

Arktos raised an eyebrow, "Alright, what does this mean?"

I circled one more spot, just at the edge of the image. "This is us. We're less than a thousand light years away from these locations."

I focused on Arktos and he chuckled. "Well, what do you wish of me?"

"I think we can find the Ring World."

His eyes widened for a moment. He seemed to consider it. "You wish for me to send an expedition to these worlds?"

I nodded, continuing. "That star system has been hidden from the System Lords since the beginning of the Goa'uld Empire. If we find it, then – if we so decided – all of our people could easily not leave that system for the next 10,000 years and not even run into each other."

Arktos nodded, but quickly stopped himself. "Zeus had access to an army to search for these sites. What chance do we have?"

That had been the question I had been waiting for. Taking a deep breath, "I haven't had a chance to look through the computational devices of any of the other species, but I have a code that – if sent in orbit of a planet – will send you a signal from any surviving Cybrex systems."

Arktos seemed to be deep in thought. Finally, he asked me a question. "Tell me, Arthur, what do you think of my people?"

I was rather taken by his choice of question. "Do you mean those that follow you or the Jaffa as a whole, and in relation to what?"

He seemed to consider my question for a moment, before letting out a light chuckle. "What must my people do to be free of the Goa'uld?"

That was a much heavier topic. Arktos stared at me with intensity; he wanted a proper answer from me. "The Goa'uld created everything about you to serve them. Your technology, culture, way of life, even your language; all of it was created for the sake of providing them the best servants — no, the best slaves possible. Your people must either exterminate the Goa'uld or give up those things to truly become free."

I had expected him to be angry, but instead he just got lost in thought for a moment. "I have never heard my own inner thoughts so clearly articulated by another person."

His response threw me for a loop.

He nodded, "Very well, I will provide ships for this endeavor." He turned away from me and turned back to the others. "I expect that you all will provide support as well."

Elder James seemed to think about it. "We're going to have to start scouting other words for a place to relocate. It might not be a bad choice to start building specialized scouting teams."

The concept seemed to appeal to everyone in the room. A test run of ten such teams was quickly decided upon.

The rest of the meeting was spent working out some of the specifics for teams, but there wasn't a lot that could be done now without significant preparation. The meeting ended ahead of schedule as everyone returned in order to prepare and figure out who they'd be sending for the zero-g training onboard the Manassas, as well as prepare any other necessary material.

 

[BlazingHyperion]

I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea. In Stargate SG-1, one particular episode shows an Al'kesh – a Goa'uld bomber and cargo vessel – pulling several large containers. Well, what if we could have an Al'kesh drag a dropship through Hyperspace?

After further consideration, the idea certainly had merit, it just had one major drawback. The Stargate effectively made the dropship obsolete. Especially with Elder Callums most recent idea for battlemech deployment, he could effectively get all but the most oddly shaped mechs through a Stargate. Even then, you could usually disassemble and reassemble them (though that took a much larger period of time).

Nonetheless, I brought the idea to Elder James. Just like myself, he seemed contemplative at first, but quickly realized that it wouldn't be all that useful. I took the rest of the day off. Between reviewing the footage recovered from Zeus and trying to work through the issues with the Manassas' KF-Drive, I had not slept well.

The next day, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that everyone had already chosen who would be participating in the zero-g training exercises. I tried to join them, but the Elder insisted that I continue with my current engineering work, and well… I couldn't exactly disagree with his reasoning.

200 Jaffa and 200 soldiers from Dendred. They would be trained by about 30 of the villagers who were more experienced in zero-g.

With the people from Dendred, came along the two broken raptors that Elder James had negotiated as a trade. This variant of the Raptor had two massive vertical stabilizers that were just barely too large to fit through the gate, so they had to be removed, but with a little finagling, the rest of it could fit through with little issue.

I watched as the first hull slowly moved through the Stargate. Other than the pair of removed stabilizers, it appeared to be in perfect shape. There was no external damage that would immediately indicate why it had stopped being used. Elder Callum ordered for the first raptor to be moved out of the way while the second one was slowly lowered through.

I approached the Raptor and placed my hand on it.

First Perk Activated. Partial Blueprint Acquired: Colonial Raptor (Mk. II Raptor) Miniaturized Field Initiator

I was always fascinated by advanced technology and this was no exception. When comparing fire-arms and battlemechs onboard the Manassas, it was clear that – even between companies and Inner Sphere powers – a lot of technology was simply re-used between rivals. This was different. The Colonial Field Initiator was designed – from the ground up – using an architecture that was completely alien to that of the one aboard the Manassas. This departure in design architecture resulted in radical changes in performance.

I hadn't gotten the blueprint for the Manassas' Drive Core, but I had read through the things manual and I had some basic understanding of the concepts behind it. Plus, the Manassas' Experimental Field Initiator was so closely related to the Drive Core that I had to get a basic understanding of how the two were interconnected in order to understand how just the Initiator worked.

The KF-Drive Field Initiator – KFFI – was big, but its size pales in comparison to the size of a drive core. Together this means that miniaturizing a KFFI has significantly diminishing returns. Rather than focusing on size, the designers of the KFFI focused on using the device to provide more and more minute control of the final destination.

The Designers of the Colonial Field Initiation – CFI – clearly had a different idea in mind. The only thing that the CFI does is take a massive quantity of current – presumably from the Tylium that Colonial vessels use as fuel – and produce a completely un-modified Hyperspace Field. That was to say, while the KFFI was responsible for directing a Hyperspace Field so that a ship would arrive at its final destination, the CFI was not; the Colonials used another method for determining the final destination of their jumps.

I turned away from the first raptor and approached the gate, watching as the second raptor slowly crept its way out before being moved out of the way. Next came the two pairs of vertical stabilizers. They were also moved out of the way. Finally, people started arriving through the gate.

Standing by the raptor was an older gentleman who seemed to be introducing himself to Elder Callum. "You must be Callum. I've heard a lot about you."

Elder Callum chuckled lightly, "I'm afraid that I can't say the same."

The man nodded, "Of course, Dwight Perry. I am the current chief Flight Engineer for all Colonial Vessels on Dendred."

Elder Callum reached out his hand and the man took it, "well it's a pleasure to meet you. Hopefully we'll be able to get something useful out of dissecting these ships."

The Man nodded, "I'm here to help any way I can." He turned to me next, "You must be Arthur. A pleasure to meet you."

I put on a slightly embarrassed smile and shook his hand. "A pleasure, Mr. Perry. Would you be willing to show us around these ships?"

He nodded as the last of the people made it through the gate. For the next 20 minutes, he showed us around the interior of the raptor, giving a basic explanation of the Raptor's internal systems.

I nodded, "I think we can work with this. We're in for a few sleepless nights though."

Mr. Perry chuckled and I pulled out my radio to call over the pair of Phoenix Hawks that were on standby. As they approached, the man stared up at them in awe for several long moments before getting a hold of himself. "You have some mighty fine machines here. Would make a Cylon blush in inadequacy."

I chuckled and the two raptors were carefully moved a few hundred meters into the Leopard's port mech bay; Elder James had emptied the thing out so that nothing would be in the way. Next began the hard part. We would be disassembling the thing, bolt by bolt, plate by plate, wire by wire, and documenting the entire process.

Waiting for us were a pair of the Manassas' Engineers who had been reassigned to work with us. Slowly the second raptor was lowered into the bay, the doors were closed, and the air began circulating.

While not crucial, a semi-clean room would make our life much easier when the time came to take apart the colonial jump drive. I approached the second raptor and touched it once.

First Perk Activated. Partial Blueprint Acquired: Colonial Raptor (Mk. II Raptor) Jump Spinner

The Colonial Drive replaced the solid germanium core of the KF-Drive with several dozen individual contra-rotating disks. These disks produced a powerful magnetic field which directed the Hyperspace Field around a colonial vessel.

This gave the Colonial Drive insane control over the size and scale of the field, but that wasn't its main advantage. The primary advantage of the Colonial Jump Spinner (as it was called) was that it needed to be long. For comparison, a KF-Drive Core needed to be anywhere between 80% and 90% of the mass of a ship, a Colonial Jump Spinner needed to be 90% of the length of the ship in order for the induced fields to cover the entire ship. While this meant that a Jump Spinner was still quite large, it was – at most – only ten percent the size of a KF-Drive Core.

Just like that, we began to work. For three days, 16 hours a day, we removed, catalogued and stored every single piece from one of the two raptors. It was the end of the third day and we were barely halfway done. At this moment, a piece of news arrived, the mission to the BSG Daedalus was under way.

- - -
POV: Eamon Thorne

Even when Arktos' people betrayed Ares, I never imagined I'd end up working beside them. I didn't have anything against the Jaffa – though I knew some of the others did – but it still felt weird to be working with them.

In the end, Arktos had agreed to provide two Al'kesh and four Tel'tak. I stood behind the pilot's chair in one of those Tel'tak; we had just exited Hyperspace in an area outside of the system's Heliopause. In the distance just outside the ship's front window, I could barely make out the twinkling of some sort of metallic object.

Slowly but surely that twinkling grew brighter before it eventually became clear what I was looking at. A pair of ships, barely mushed together. Both of them were relatively intact. Both ships were massive. Even the smaller of the two – though it was only barely smaller – was only slightly shorter than the Manassas.

That was not a pleasant thought. During the debriefing, Eudora had explained that the Adamant was the third smallest ship in the Colonial Fleet. I didn't even want to think about what their large ships looked like.

[Author's Note: Standard Aegis is 725 meters. The Manassas had about 120 meters grafted on for the extra Docking Hardpoints and crew deck making a total of 850 Meters. An Adamant is 830 meters

The other ship – the Phobos Class Tech Cruiser – was even longer, though a good 20% of its length was just what appeared to be antennas.

We stopped a few hundred meters away from both ships and waited for the order to move in. Sure enough, a few minutes later, it came. Just as planned, two Tel'taks – mine and one other – moved towards the Daedalus' Hangar Bay.

Both our ships touched down and the Jaffa pilot nodded once. "We're down. You're clear to move."

I quickly attached my suit helmet and nodded back towards the Jaffa. "Understood. Thank you."

I opened the door to the rear cargo bay, where approximately 20 people were waiting. "4th Squad, let's go. 5th, and 6th, prep to follow us."

My squad – a group of seven – entered the airlock door. It quickly cycled, and just like that, we were in the Daedalus' Hangar. I carefully lowered myself to the floor and activated the magboots that came equipped with the vacuum suit. Once the power was brought back online it wouldn't be necessary – the colonials had artificial gravity tech – but until then the boots were required. This room was almost 70 meters wide and 20 meters tall. If you lost your footing there was a non-zero chance that you'd just float out of the hangar, though the moment I was traversing the ship, I'd be deactivating them; grav boots were cool until you actually had to fight in them, then they just got in the way.

Over the radio, I heard Elder Annelise speaking. "Clear to move out. Clear primary objectives, then radio in."

My squad's primary objective was to secure the secondary port generator room. For security reasons, the raptors didn't have any blueprints for the ship. That meant that we had to follow the signs and hope for the best.

Once we were out of the hangar, we deactivated our boots and navigated the hallways of the ship, following the signs for the port artillery room, which was very close to our target.

The radio crackled to life. "Hangar Deck swept and confirmed clear. Moving onto secondary target."

I listened to the radio and kept moving. Soon enough, we came to our first major obstacle. The part of the ship's bulkhead we were trying to travel through had been caved in. I marked it down and continued to find a way around. Luckily that wasn't all that difficult.

Several more messages played over the radio as we continued to travel through the ship. Slowly but surely, other teams swept through the vessel and confirmed their objectives.

My team found our first group of corpses when we arrived on the deck containing the port artillery mechanisms. The atmosphere in the room had been evacuated as the Adamant had scraped against the side of the Phobos class ship.

Every chair had a person strapped in to prevent them from being thrown about, and every one of their bodies was almost perfectly preserved. It was incredibly creepy. Hopefully the Sarcophagus would be capable of reviving them.

"Crew confirmed in port artillery. Good condition. Recommend immediate recovery."

A moment of silence followed. "Recommendation confirmed. It'll have to wait until the ship is dislodged."

"Understood." I continued onwards.

Finally, I saw the tight, heavy duty door we were looking for. I approached it and began turning the wheel that unsealed the door. Finally, the door came open; on the other side, a long, thin structure had actually poked its way into the room. It looked like part of the Phobos class vessel.

I ignored the part and found the terminal for the secondary reactors. I only had the vaguest understanding of what the various Colonial words meant. Luckily, I didn't have to know. I took out a piece of paper and began looking for the series of characters that had been written on it.

I found them just below a dial with an indicator that was in the red. I tapped it once and nodded. "Alrighty, primary tank is empty."

Beside the first indicator were several other indicators. About half of them indicated half full while the rest indicated close to or completely empty. Luckily I just needed one of them to be full to get everything started. I spoke into my radio. "Port Secondary Generator secured. Primary tank empty, fuel confirmed in secondary tanks."

There is a moment of silence. "Confirmed. You are clear to begin startup procedures."

I quickly replied. "Confirmed."

Luckily for me, the startup procedure was relatively straightforward. My squad and I got to work. A lot of button pressing later, I had a small green button light up. Once more, I spoke into my comms. "Prepare for generator activation."

A quick round of confirmations ran through the radio. The final message from the Elder came quickly. "All prepared. You are clear for startup."

"Confirmed." I replied and pressed the button.

A deep hum shook the hull and I felt gravity re-assert itself as the colonial grav-plating reactivated. A moment later, Elder Annelise spoke. "Power confirmed."

I had half expected to explode there when none of the warning lights went off, but it seemed that everything went well. I certainly hope that everything was going as well for the other teams.

- - -
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading!

Seriously, if you want more chapters, I just posted Chapter #52 on Discord.
Discord: [ LINK: https://discord.com/invite/dbVKfqYw5T ]

 

[MajorMagers]

Probably should have cleared the ship of cylons before turning the lights on

 

[BlazingHyperion]

POV: Annelise Koenig

The Command and Control room of the BSG Daedalus was surprisingly similar to standard SLDF Command and Control centers. The room had a centralized table around which numerous secondary terminals were housed.

Unfortunately, I couldn't really spend any time reminiscing about my time aboard SLDF starships as I was currently surrounded by corpses. It seemed the Daedalus' commanding officers had all died due to the radiation released immediately after the jump. Even more unfortunate, the ship's CNC had remained air tight for the following twenty years, meaning that the corpses of the crew had all rotted away.

Luckily the people in the rear engineering bay were unluckier – or luckier as the case may be. The Daedalus had slammed into the Phobos at an angle, tearing through numerous bulkheads all along the port side of the ship. The primary engineering bay, hangar deck, and basically every room on the port side of the ship had been significantly weakened.

So far, nearly 60 members of the original crew looked like they might be in a state that would make them viable for resurrection. While the ship's chief engineer was sadly not among them, a large portion of the ship's engineers did appear to have been preserved.

Now, the most annoying thing to come was going to be trying to detach the Daedalus and the Phobos. The two ships had quite literally contact welded together and detaching the two would be an issue.

That wasn't an immediate concern; over the next few days, we'd have engineering crews out there to start detaching the ship and repairing the external hull and bulkhead. Much more concerning in the meantime was the upcoming plan to sweep through the Phobos.

I knew a little bit about computer technology; the things I had heard about these Cylons scared me. As a mechwarrior, the idea that they might be able to access the controls of a mech or an aerospace fighter, or even a warship was not a pleasant one.

Lieutenant Sarti may have been a bit of a prick, but she was one of the best engineers I had ever met. She seemed unconcerned by the whole idea. Something about incompatible systems.

I certainly hope she was right. Once we had the Daedalus mostly online, we'd have to start sweeping the Phobos. None of the colonials had ever been onboard a Phobos before. They were always scuttled to prevent them falling into colonial hands since they had a lot of advanced technology built into them.

A call came over the radio. "Cylon confirmed in starboard generator control."

I felt everyone around me tense; I immediately replied. "Confirm status and reseal the room."

Several moments passed. "Confirmed inactive. We're doing alright. Resealing starboard generator control."

I nodded. "Confirmation of possible Cylons active post-jump. Everyone beware."

Luckily for me, that turned out to be the only Cylon aboard the Daedalus. Still left me worried though. It was six hours later that the ships' final room was swept and confirmed. By the end, we had confirmed 326 of the original 1100 crew that would be viable for revival.

When I spoke with her, Eudora seemed surprised that it was even that many. She had expected maybe a hundred. The damage to the hull was just much greater than she had previously noticed, though also much less significant since outer hull damage was relatively easy to repair.

- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair (Gonna start adding that last name now)

It had taken everyone only four days to have the first of the search teams assembled. There were ten in total to begin with, five of them would be travelling via ship to locations that already had confirmed Cybrex facilities, while the other five would be scouting worlds on the exact opposite side of the galaxy for locations that we could use as a fall back point.

A collection of thirty initial worlds had already been chosen for an expedition. We had relatively minimal requirements for such a world. They had to be uninhabited, mountainous, on the very outskirts of the galaxy, and away from the main worlds of any System Lord. Luckily, such worlds were numerous.

Now, I was following Arktos back to Ares' fortress. I'd already spent some time working out how to convert Goa'uld file formats into Inner Sphere file formats, which had been my main project in what little time I had not spent disassembling the raptor.

So, I followed Arktos through the gate and once more found myself on Mycena, surrounded by the towering forms of numerous Goa'uld Ha'tak.

I had come by just a few days earlier when I was reactivating the Tel'tak and Al'kesh for use, though the Cheops and Ha'tak would remain inoperational until such a time as we knew for certain what was going on with those.

Soon enough, I found myself within a room hidden deep within Ares' Flagship. We entered the room and I saw a Goa'uld terminal standing against the wall. Arktos nodded. "Here we are."

I immediately got to work. This terminal was different from previous terminals I'd seen, but it was similar enough that I could still use it with relative ease. On top of that, Elder James and I had decided that it wasn't worth hiding my abilities from our allies, though we wouldn't go out of our way to explain it either.

Within twenty minutes, the transfer was completed. The Goa'uld Database was incredibly extensive. It contained complete surface scans for a lot of the worlds as well as mineral scans and a list of the world's native wildlife. Unfortunately, the Star League data storage couldn't store even a fraction of that information, as such I had the Database export a brief summary of a world's climate, its location in the Milky Way, and its Address.

There weren't nearly as many addresses as I was expecting. Barely less than two million addresses. While that was undoubtedly a significant number of earth-like worlds, that number pales in comparison to the over 100 billion stars in the Milky Way that had been assumed in my past life.

Now that I was looking through the Goa'uld Database, I knew the actual number was approximately 220 billion. Something else caught my eye, however. There were gate addresses that seemed to go to several of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Even stranger was that which galaxies actually had known stargates was totally random.

In total, I used nine different compads to store all the downloaded information. I was honestly impressed it only took nine. When I was finished, I disconnected the final compad and deactivated the terminal. The whole process took me barely twenty minutes.

We returned through the gate to the village where I took the Ring Transporter up to the Manassas and from there I took the elevator to the Cobalt Eye. Entering the Bridge, the lights came on and the same neutral face that I had come to expect appeared on the Holotable.

I immediately began uploading the data to the Cobalt Eye's computer core. As the final upload, I spoke. "Alright, can you collate the map?"

"Of course. One moment please." Several moments pass and the AIs face disappears, replaced with a map of every known Stargate address in the Milky Way.

"Show me Terra." I ordered the AI.

The AI immediately replied. "There is no record of a gate address at the location of Terra. Would you like me to show Terra's location?"

That was odd… had Terra's location been literally lost? Then how had Apophis known Earth's address in SG-1? I nodded.

Immediately, a red dot appeared in the projection. Looking at the map. "Show me a sphere with Earth at the center, which ends about… here."

Immediately, a red sphere also appears on the projection. "What is the relative density of Stargates within this area?"

A moment passes. "The density of Stargates in this area is 70% lower than the average." Another moment passes. "It appears that there are no known Stargate addresses within the Inner Sphere. The closest known address is 1,103 light years from Terra."

An idea came to me. That was still close enough for a Star League Expeditionary Team to uncover it. "Are there any Star League records of this world?"

A moment of silence. "Not in my currently available records."

After thinking for a moment I noted down the address and got to work. I needed to work on an algorithm for identifying any world's address. Now I just had to reverse engineer the whole system. How long could it possibly take?

- - -
POV: Eudora Cassia

I had decided to wait with the sarcophagus while I waited for the first of the Engineers to be revived. Reviving the Manassas' crew took anywhere between nine and thirteen hours and I was hoping that the revival process wouldn't take too much longer than that.

Sadly, we were now at the 15th hour of the process. Obviously, floating in space for 20 years didn't do any favors for the ship's crew.
Now, I sat and waited. It was as the fifteenth hour was reaching its end that the sound of stone grinding against stone – the sound of the sarcophagus opening – finally became audible. I looked up to find a very confused crew man sitting up in the sarcophagus. Slowly and with bleary eyes they turned to me.

Almost on instinct, the engineer stood up and threw a salute. I had been worried that things wouldn't go well. It appears that I had been wrong. "Ma'am" they called out. I let out a sigh.

"At ease, soldier. We have some catching up to do."

The engineer looked around wearily, "Yes ma'am."

I would be doing a lot of explaining in the near future. I was almost glad that we would be splitting the time for revivals between the Daedalus crew and Manassas crew. This was going to be a long talk… and I'd have to give it a lot of times.

- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair

It took two whole days to write a program capable of generating an address for a world, and It had nearly driven me insane. I had become so focused on my task that I didn't even realize that I hadn't slept that whole time.

I always enjoyed learning and figuring out puzzles, but it wasn't always this extreme. I frowned; maybe it was a side effect of my perks? Or maybe it was because I actually had challenging puzzles to solve now. I let out a sigh.

I had compiled a list of possible addresses for every inhabited world in the inner sphere. I doubted any of them would work, but according to my meta-knowledge there should be two Stargates just on Terra alone.

I immediately went to find Elder James. I found him aboard the Manassas viewing the zero-g training. "Elder!" I slowly floated over towards him. "It took me a moment, but I have it figured out."

He raised an eyebrow, "I was expecting you to take longer."

I snorted. "It was mostly a pain in the ass to get the exact mathematics down. The AI was able to brute force a significant portion of the process too."

The Elder nodded. "Good. Then we'll be able to begin the next stage of the expedition."

 

[Skrattybones]

POV: Arthur Sinclair (Gonna start adding that last name now)

Click to shrink...

POV: Arthur Cameron

Click to shrink...

Is it Sinclair or Cameron?

 

[BlazingHyperion]

Is it Sinclair or Cameron?

Click to shrink...

Thanks. I failed to fix this in the base doc. Sinclair, since its the name his father preferred.

 

[BlazingHyperion]

- - -
POV: Eudora Cassia

It had been a little more than three weeks since we first began recovery operations for the Daedalus. It had taken a while, but we had finally gotten the ship's outer hull fully sealed. The villagers, despite how they appeared sometimes, really knew what they were doing.

That shouldn't have been all that surprising, considering the fact that they're ships didn't have grav-plating. They were obviously inexperienced when we started the repairs, but that didn't last long. Now, the exterior hull was a mess, but it was airtight and we could finally start repressurising the rest of the ship.

Since operations had started, we had revived 16 of the ship's crew and there had yet to be any issues with any of them. They all seemed relaxed and happy to be alive – something that James had reported in those revived by the device. The Sarcophagus was scary. It seemed to either temporarily suppress the trauma that came before its use or remove it entirely. We would only know in the coming weeks and months, but considering the fact that there had yet to be any significant issues, I would say that it was unlikely that we'd notice anything for a while, and by the time we did we would hopefully be able to give these people a break.

Now, repairs were ongoing with the Daedalus and according to the engineers, we would be ready for a relight of the main engines. Once it was away from the Phobos, the next step of this process would begin; clearing the ship of inactive Centurions.

The Phobos was a modified version of the Nebula class corvette, one of the first purely Cylon designed ships. With that in mind, we weren't entirely sure how usable it would be for a human crew, but we were going to try anyway, the Centurions had to be capable of getting around somehow.

I let out a deep breath as my radio activated. "This is engineering. We are ready for relight."

I replied immediately. "You are go for relight."

Several long seconds passed before a hum seemed to pass through the hull of the ship before it just as quickly passed.

"Relight successful. Good thing we spent the extra time checking the fuel tanks."

I chuckled bitterly. "Indeed. Prepare the ship for a light burn. The sooner we're out of the way the better."

A moment passes. "Yes ma'am. Thrusters are ready for a 10% burn."

I turned to the Helm and nodded. The person stationed there immediately began working. Several seconds pass and I felt a slight tremor through the ship's hull; my radio activated once more, "Burn confirmed at 10%"

A voice came over the radio, from Elder Annelise. "You are cleared of the immediate area."

I nodded. "Understood. Give us a few hours and you're clear to begin with the Phobos. Hopefully we can get the Jump Drive working, otherwise I don't think we're going to be getting back to Dendred anytime within the year."

A clear reply came back. "Understood. Send for us if you need anything."

"Understood. Out."

Once more, I took a deep breath. It felt good to have the Daedalus back and running again. Hopefully we'd get her back to fully working order."

- - -
POV: Eamon Thorne.

I took a deep breath as I floated into the visible hole in the hull of the Phobos, my team slightly behind me. The Daedalus had disappeared from sight several hours ago. Now it was time to begin sweeping the other ship's interior.

We didn't see anything we would consider an airlock on the main body, but there were several holes where the hull had been scratched open as well as a main hangar which was too small for even a Tel'tak to enter. A total of eight teams had begun sweeping the ship.

The first thing I noticed when I was inside was how similar it was in style to the Daedalus. Even if the Cylons had started to depart from standard Colonial design, it was clear that they still very much copied colonial design standards.

With great care, we swept through the ship. Our compads were used to track our location and create a primitive map. We found our first Centurion after about ten minutes. It floated in the middle of the hallway. We marked its location on our compad and carefully proceeded around it.

We were pretty sure that at least one such Centurion had been active after the jump, and if one of them was active then chances were that there would be more of them. We were going to be at this for at least several hours. After that, we'd need to remove all the inactive centurions, then see what we could do about disconnecting the internal computer systems… there was a lot to do.

- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair

"Look, see these." I pointed to a set of values that had been inputted into the terminal years prior during Operation EXODUS. "Those are wrong."

Lieutenant Sarti looked at the numbers, then looked over her shoulder to one of the engineers. "Give me the manual."

She was handed a compad; a document with over 3,000 pages was opened and she began scrolling through them. Finally, on page 1,700 she found what she was looking for. She shook her head, "No. The manual clearly states that these are correct."

I scoffed at her. "I guarantee that there is no single person in existence who knows the Field Initiator better than me. I promise you, those values are wrong."

She frowned; she moved forward several pages and cursed. She turned to everyone else in the room. "Everyone shut up! Put down everything you're doing."

Once everyone had stopped what they were doing, she continued. "We're going to have to resolve the KF-Drive Equations, from scratch this time, we have major errors in the manual."

Groans filled the room; this would be a two-week long process at the bare minimum. We returned to the village to inform Elder James before commandeering one of the Rec Rooms aboard the Confederate SLS Maresias. The moment I stepped onboard, my perk activated.

First Perk Activated. Partial Blueprint Acquired: SLDF Confederate Dropship Confederate Engine Nozzles

I had completely forgotten to grab the partial blueprint from this dropship. Well, I've gotten it now.

We entered the conference room and immediately began working away on the drive equations. There was an immediate and glaring flaw. Whoever wrote the manual had been working with incorrect assumptions for the mass and power requirements of the Manassas' Experimental Field Initiator and Drive Core. Luckily, the correct values were available in the ships manual at another section and I was able to confirm them thanks to my first perk.

I groaned – in all honesty, everyone was groaning a lot. I would be doing a lot more math in the coming weeks.
- - -
POV: James Cromwell.

"Arktos," I nodded to the giant of a man as I approached the landing bay of Enyalius' former fortress.

He turned to me and nodded. "James."

We stood and watched as several of the Tel'tak took off; the pilots were practicing take off and landing, so they'd be back in just a few seconds – if even that.

"How are they progressing," I asked. They seemed to be doing alright considering how well the ships were flying.

Arktos nodded. "Well, but it will still be several weeks until I feel satisfied with letting them fly a ship by themselves."

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing. "I have a proposition. I am aware that you wish to get your expedition off the ground as soon as possible."

I nodded. The Inner Sphere had resources that we just didn't have access to. Industrial ability and the like. I hated the idea that I might have to interact with the great houses, but their resources could really provide us a kick start of raw and manufactured materials, not to mention personnel. A thousand people was barely enough to operate a single factory, let alone the dozens that we would need.

There was more. I had been hoping that Arthur's words about what the Inner Sphere had devolved into would be wrong, that if I went to find the Exodus Fleet then I would find a paradise. With every day that passed, with everything he said about the state of the Goa'uld Empire that turned out true, that hope dwindled further and further.

I needed to know what happened and I knew that my crew needed to know as well.

I responded. "The sooner I can have ships back home, the better."

Arktos hesitated as well. "I have had second thoughts about my own plans."

I raised an eyebrow. "Regarding what?"

He smiled bitterly, "I have talked with Lady Isetri about the Sodan. The Tok'ra have made contact with them, but it has been limited."

What was so concerning about that? "That is excellent news."

Arktos shook his head. "What she has told me of them leads me to believe that they are no different from every other Jaffa, they just chose other gods to follow, replaced one master with another."

Assuming that Arthur wasn't wrong with his information, that was about correct. Though their new gods cared even less for the Sodan than the Goa'uld do for the Jaffa.

How much should I tell him? I let out a sigh. "As far as I am aware, several thousand years ago the ancestors of humanity managed to achieve ascension – that is to say they transformed into beings of energy. The Sodan worship these ancestors as Gods in place of the Goa'uld."

Arktos looked away from the ships and towards me as I spoke. "I'm surprised you know so much."

I snorted. "It isn't all that much. Just some vague ideas about what happened."

Arktos sighed. "Gods have never done my people any favors. I have not spent decades working to defeat Ares just to have him replaced with another – even if these others have some actual claim to the title of 'gods'."

I snorted. "If it makes you feel any better, the Ancestors forbid any form of interaction with the material plane. I highly doubt that they were the ones who had the Sodan worship them. It is far more likely that the Sodan discovered a facility belonging to the ancients and learned of their nature."

Arktos was quiet. We watched as one of the Tel'taks came back around for a landing before once more taking off.

Finally, Arktos spoke again. "I wish to join you."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

His face was blank, but his eyes gave off a melancholic aura. "You and the Dendredans; you look towards your future with hope. You may not know what is to come, but you have a chance and you have the freedom to choose what you wish to do. My people… we may have had that once, but it was beaten out of us thousands of years ago. All we know how to do is follow others."

I frowned. "So you wish to learn from us?"

He nodded. "I want you to teach my people how to live. I want them to learn music, poetry, literature, architecture… and perhaps, somewhere along the way, we will learn what it means to be free."

I stood there in silence. "What of the people of Dendred?"

He snorted. "In time, I hope. Your people know that we could have treated them much worse than we did, and you were only slaves for a few short months. The people of Dendred have had our boot on their throats for decades now. They resent us, and rightfully so. I will do what I can to make up for it, and in time they will forgive us."

Another moment of silence passed between us. Finally, I reached out my hand. "Then I hope my people can provide what you are looking for."

He looked down and a genuine smile crossed his face. "So do I, James."

 

[Vanbers]

Just binged this, it's pretty good.

I like the approach of him not hiding things, and instead working with people. I can see the bones of his faction slowly growing, with the SLDF remnant, the now-Free Jaffa, the BSG Descendants, and even the one Tok'ra to make later inroads with, and it's all coming together pretty well imo.

Very neat story, can't wait to see more of it soon.

 

[BlazingHyperion]

- - -
POV: Annelise Koenig

The Phobos had a lot of Centurions. After searching the entire ship, we had confirmed a little over 500 of them. I groaned. "How many people do we have?"

Eamon looked around, "56 total."

I nodded. "So, two people per centurion, 30 minutes to transport a single centurion from the Phobos to one of the Tel'taks. That's 56 moved every hour."

Eamon snorted, "If we round down to 50, it'll take 10 hours to do the whole job. Re-assuming for breaks and the amount of time it takes to find the next Centurion; I'd say three days."

Everyone seemed incredibly annoyed. I groaned again. "Well, let's get to it people. No reason to dilly dally."

- - -
POV: James Cromwell.

For the first time in several months, I stood on a new world. The Stargate stood just behind me. This world was to be the sight of our fall back position. It was at the opposite edge of the Galaxy from what was once Ares territory. The closest active System Lord was nearly 10,000 light years away, and they were a minor System Lord by the name of Lugh.

Almost 80% of the world was covered in some of the deepest oceans of any planet I'd ever heard of. What parts of the world weren't oceans were massive mountainous plateaus that gave Everst on Terra a run for its money. What wasn't an ocean or mountain was a lush equatorial rain forest.

The world had no human habitation and no signs of industry or civilization. It was about as perfect as we were going to get. I turned back to see what everyone thought. "Are we sure this is where we want to do this?"

Ma'chello chuckled. "What more could you want? This world is literally perfect. No; this is it."

Arktos and I shared a look. Arktos nodded as well. "The longer we take, the greater the risk. I need to start moving my Jaffa off of Mycena, and you need to start doing the same. We need to begin construction as soon as possible."

"Alright then."

Ma'chello had spent the past weeks reviewing the construction techniques that we could provide him from the Manassas' Memory Core. It was mostly medical tech and construction techniques which were pretty much exactly what we needed at the moment. Ma'chello had been fascinated by the Castle Brian concept. Absolutely massive constructs of metal that are hidden beneath a planet's surface. He based his own designs on the concept.

We dialed the gate back to Dendred where the last pair of operational colonial raptors were waiting to be sent through. We had an area already decided on; a plateau on the side of the planet's fourth largest mountain. It was nearly perfectly flat – just like a lot of the world's plateaus – and only a few hundred kilometers from the Stargate's current location.

The only issue was that none of the Goa'uld ships could fit through the Stargate. With the exception of Ma'chello's custom built probes, the only flight capable vehicles we had that could get through a Stargate were the Raptors.

I watched on as the tailless raptors were slowly taken through the Stargate before the device itself deactivated.

I nodded to Ma'chello and Arktos. "I need to start preparing my part of the equipment. It's gonna be a pain in the ass to unload those Industrial Mechs."

I dialed the gate back to the Village. I was going to have to fast track reviving the commanding officer of the SLS Claymore. I needed to get access to the Cobras in the Manassas' bay.

- - -
POV: Eamon Thorne

With a final shove, the last of the over 500 centurions entered the Tel'tak for transport. Luckily, the work wasn't nearly as extensive as we were expecting. We could just shove the Centurion into space and have the Tel'tak pick it up with its Ring Transporter.

Next up were the Wardrivers. This particular Phobos carried six of them which is a lot more than normal for such a vessel. Nonetheless, we got to work. Once one of the Wardrivers was disconnected from its docking port, a tow-cable was connected to a Tel'tak just outside the hangar which dragged the thing out. From there, it would be stored away in the nearby Al'kesh and taken back to Dendred for storage.

All in all, disconnecting all of the cylon ships took barely an hour.

Now that it was finally time for a break, we returned to one of the nearby Al'kesh for debriefing. Waiting at the front of the room was Elder Annelise, Elder Dresden, and Eudora of Dendred.

I grabbed some water and took a seat as they began.

"Next up, we'll begin repairing the hull. Luckily, this is going to be a lot less work than with the Daedalus. Unfortunately, we're going to have to remove a large chunk of the ship to remove the computer core."

Groans filled the room. Literally removing a part of a ship was not a good idea. It was dangerous, exceptionally difficult, and was always time consuming. Elder Annelise continued explaining what other work we had for another hour or so. At the end of the meeting, I approached the front.

Making sure I was outside of the range of Eudora, I approached Elder Annelise and Elder Dresden. "Have you considered asking Arthur for him to take a look at the ship?"

The two Elders looked between each other for a moment. Elder Annelise replied, "Do you think he'd be willing to?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't he? He's basically a tech nut anyway. The only issue is going to be getting his first perk to work. As far as I'm aware, it only works on things that belong to the village."

She frowned. "I'll have to talk it over with James."

I shrugged. "Anything is better than having to remove multiple decks of the ship."

She nodded. "Alright. Start repairing the hull. I'll go meet with James."

I shrugged and got to it.

- - -
POV: Arthur Sinclair.

Elder James and Elder Annelise found me in the rec room with the other engineers. "Arthur, could we talk to you for a moment."

I walked over. "Yup. What can I do for you?"

Elder James began. "We're in the middle of repairing the Phobos. Our current plan is to remove the ship's computer core entirely, the issue is that doing so would require removing multiple decks of the ship."

I grimaced, and Elder James continued. "We were able to negotiate partial ownership of the Phobos – though we're going to have to start providing materials to the repair effort. Are you willing to take a look at the ship?"

I blinked in surprise. "Absolutely, but it'd be of more help if I had some other Cylons to examine first."

Elder James nodded. "We have the six Wardrivers as well as two dozen Centurions for you to examine."

I immediately perked up. "Let's go then. They only needed me here for the beginning of this."

I took my leave of the room that was filled top to bottom with mathematical formulas and followed the Elders to the Stargate. Upon arriving on Dendred, we took a Tel'tak to the other side of the planet. I saw the ruins before I even noticed our destination. What must have once been a city of millions, reduced to nothing but collapsing buildings over the course of 50 years of abandonment.

We set down at a military outpost set into the side of a mountain. A massive door opened up to reveal an absolutely ancient interior hangar. Inside, lined up side to side were more than 500 Centurions as well as the six Cylon Wardrivers.

First up were the Wardrivers.

First Perk Activated. Partial Blueprint Acquired: Wardriver (Cylon Raider Variant) Wardriver Chassis

The chassis was quite sturdy – it could probably take a few hits, but basically any SLDF star fighter was better. I quickly moved on towards the other Wardrivers.

First Perk Activated. Complete Blueprint Acquired: Wardriver (Cylon Raider Variant) Wardriver Tylium Reactor, Wardriver Computer Core, Wardriver Hacking Suite, RCS System

I'd finally gotten a Tylium Reactor, and boy did I see why the colonials used it so heavily. Tylium – like naquadah – was a transuranic element, with a weight much larger than that of even Oganesson – element 118 back in my old life. Tylium, however, had two rather unique features.

A Tylium nucleus included one antiproton which was then totally enveloped with neutrons. This meant that a Tylium nucleus didn't need anywhere close to an equivalent number of electrons to remain stable. The electrons that orbited Tylium were incredibly loosely bound. Normally, when Tylium was connected to other molecules, this wasn't a concern, but when refined into pure Tylium, those extra electrons could be stripped away with incredible ease.

A single Tylium atom could have 24 electrons stripped away before there were issues. More than 24 could be stripped, but the tylium would then start to produce Alpha and Beta radiation. I assumed that this is likely what caused the deaths of the Daedalus' crew. Anyway, it was a fascinating concept, and I would think about it more at a later date.

Finally, I touched the last Wardriver.

First Perk Activated. Complete Blueprint Acquired: Wardriver (Cylon Raider Variant) Zoe Graystone Engram (Modified)

Ahhhh… ohh fuck.

I sat down; Elder James and Elder Annelise both gave me a worried look. I waved them both off, "I just got a reminder of how the Cylons were created."

Elder Annelise raised an eyebrow. "Explain."

I grimaced, but proceeded anyway. "Well, the daughter of the CEO of Graystone Industries – Graystone Industries were the company responsible for creating the Centurions – well, her mind was copied and she ended up dying not long after. Well… stuff… happened from there and the CEO – I can't even remember his name – modified the… engram of his daughter so that the Centurions would be more effective in combat."

Looking up to the Elders, I could see that they both seemed almost ill at the idea. Elder James looked particularly upset. Elder Annelise asked a rather important question, "And these… modifications… what did they entail."

I grimaced even harder. "They were effectively a lobotomy."

The Elders looked particularly affected by this revelation, which was almost a relief. I didn't really know how they would respond. I remember reading in some fanfic that the Hegemony did basically the same thing when creating its own AIs, but I don't believe that was ever confirmed in any of the canon – or even apocryphal – material.

[Author's Note: Lemme know if I'm wrong. The only info sarna.net has on AI is on the SDS and the M-2 through M-11 Systems]

Taking a deep breath, I stood back up. "Centurions next."

First Perk Activated. Complete Blueprint Acquired: Cylon-War Era Centurion Centurion Chassis, Centurion Power Cell, Centurion Computer Core, Centurion Monoeye, Zoe Greystone Engram (Modified)

As I finished with the fifth Centurion, I let out a sigh. I reached down and tried to open the port on the Centurions neck. It didn't open – the power cell was dead after all. Ignoring the pulse caused by the ship's jumps, one charge of the power cell would only last ten years.

I let out another sigh. I knew what I had to do now. I turned to the Elders. "Give me some tools and find some people to help me with this."

Elder James raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing?"

I looked up at him. "Removing the memory engrams. It's dangerous to leave them installed."

Both to others as well as to the Cylons themselves. It wasn't right to leave them here, even if it wasn't out in the open. It might be possible to save their minds. Even if these beings wished to wipe out Humanity, they were still human and they had been wronged by the colonies before the war began.



Elder James and Elder Annelise returned twenty minutes later with a group of 12 to help. Luckily removing the engram wasn't exceptionally difficult. The Centurions were designed such that the Engram could be removed if a Centurion could not be moved.

I showed everyone how to remove the Engram and we began. To get a Centurion's memory engram took about ten minutes. With twelve of us, we removed 50 engrams every hour, since some took a bit longer than ten minutes if a Centurion suffered corrosion.

As I was moving onto the eighth centurion, I heard something behind me. I assumed that it was one of the other personnel, that was until I felt a metal arm wrap around my neck.

- - -
Author's Note:
If you aren't aware, I have written up to Chapter #53. You can read it on Discord:
[ LINK: https://discord.com/invite/dbVKfqYw5T ]