A/N: Alright. Here we go. This is a brain bug I've had in my head for a long time, and I wanted to finally get it on paper. The crossover is set a few months into the Earth-Minbari war on the B5 side of thing. After the Black Star's destruction, but well before the EA realizes all hope is lost. On the nBSG side it's set a few months before the fall of the Colonies.

Outskirts of the Cyrannus system.

"I'm telling you, I've worked everything from refinery ships to waste barges for fifteen years. I've never seen a read out like that."

The six crewmen gathered around the beat up Dradis display. The ships command center, though it barely deserved the name, was a rusted shadow of what it had been long ago. Like the rest of the ship, it had been stripped of everything that wasn't absolutely vital. Some of the panels along the wall had been removed, exposing bare circuitry. Wires and cables were strewn across the four, the largest leading to console centered in the dimly lit room. Hunched over the front of the cracked display was a grimy, unkempt middle aged man. The so-called commander of the group clasped his forehead with one hand while messing with the ships instruments with the other.

"It's definitely a ship." The man spoke up while trying in vane to sort through the interference. "It changed course to follow us after we turned back for Canceron." The freighters Dradis was rudimentary, like most of the ship. Despite going six ways, and the bucket of scrap metal having been commissioned before the first Cylon war, it still cost the gang most of their life savings. Christened the Schédio by her crew, the mining barge was supposed to have made them rich. Unfortunately, that dream seemed to be getting further away by the minute.

Obtaining a mining permit for the more lucrative inner belts was a bureaucratic nightmare without the right contacts. They couldn't have afforded it before they bought the ship, let alone after all was settled. The plan was to head way off the charted path, towards the outer belts, where few other ships bothered to go. Sure, they wouldn't have nearly the same concentration of precious metals, but surely there would be something out there, and they'd be the only ones around to collect it. Unfortunately, it had only been after they had bought the ship and made the 20 solar unit journey to the outskirts of the Helios-Delta system, that it had occurred to them to wonder why nobody else had done the same thing.

"And you're sure it's not a phantom?" A younger man barely out of his teenage years, filled with optimism only a week ago, piped up.

The older man's head shifted towards the youngest among them with a look of disgust, then back at the display. "I served five years as the sensor technician on a Berserk class cruiser in the military. Half my job was keeping the Dradis in check. Filtering out all the electromagnetic garbage." The mans hands rested on the table below the display, having finally giving up on trying to fight through the interference. The screen was garbled with static, and the target refused to give any sort of decent return. They knew it was there. They even had a rough idea of its heading. But it's size? Location? They could only guess its speed was somewhere close to their own because what little passed as a return stayed roughly the same.

"The Dradis was working fine right up until that thing jumped in." A woman dressed in bright orange overalls crawled out from a hatch below them. "I've been over the systems twice. It isn't a problem on our end. At least, anymore of a problem then we're used to."

The captain glanced at the system map to the right of the Dradis display. They'd be analyzing a comet for potential resources when this thing had appeared on their scope. Their first instinct had been raiders out to make a quick buck on a lone ship. They immediately broke off and jammed the throttle towards Canceron, the closest colony. Unfortunately, it was a full 30 hours away at this speed. They'd broadcasted a distress call, but there was a lot of jamming going on out there. That had been half an hour ago. At light speed the message should have reached every Colonial military unit in the system. So why weren't raptors jumping in, guns blazing?

And if they were raiders, why hadn't they been given an ultimatum or blown up for scrap?

The captain helped the woman back up onto the command deck, and started down the shaft himself. "Nothing against you Joy, I'd like to check the system myself, just so I can see it with my own eyes. Yell at me if anything changes, will you?"

"Aye, captain." The woman said. Technically they had no ranks, but they had been friends going a long while back. It always brought a smile to him.

The man had been toying with the ship's innards for a good few minutes when the Dradis display made a loud, concerning chirp. The woman rushed over to examine the display. She hadn't the same experience with Dradis operations as the captain, but she knew enough. "Good news, the return is coming through much clearer now. I can make out it's size, roughly. Looks about as big as a raptor. Maybe a bit bigger, it's still hard to tell."

"Is it giving off any kind of IFF?" The captain yelled back up.

"No... nothing. Not military or civilian. Nothing Colonial." Her eyes widened in alarm as she realized why the reading had grown clearer. There was still enough guck that they had a hard time judging distance. "It's closing in on us! Fast!"

The captain had rushed back up. He'd shoved her out of the way to look at the monitor. It had to be pirates. If it wasn't Colonial, and it wasn't pirates, it had to be... But it couldn't be. Not after forty years. They wouldn't come back just to scare the hell out of one lone mining shi-

His thoughts were interrupted as the ship rocked violently. Most of the gang had been knocked off their feet, Joy clung to the command console in a desperate attempt to keep her footing. We're being attacked. They're ship had been stripped of everything vital to daily operations. It was the only way they could afford it. No waste recycling. No FTL. No life pods. The ship rocked again, more violently then before. Please, just be pirates. They're just trying to scare us. They'll board us, take us hostage. Hold us for ransom. The government will do something for us. They wouldn't just-

A third rock severed the ship in half, the two sections blasting apart at the force of the separation. The crew was sucked into vacuum, Joy losing her grip on the console almost instantly. In his last moments of consciousness, the captain glanced at the craft that had ended the life of him and his friends. It silently drifted through the hulking wreck of the ship. It's hull was smooth, with a tail at the end. It took on a strange blue hue. It looked nothing like the Cylon ships they had grown up seeing in museums and movies. It looked different. Alien. Confusion was the last emotion to fill his mind as the cold took over and his body failed him.

Battlestar Galactica, Aquarian orbit.

Galactica's CIC was buzzing with activity. The crowded, dimly lit room was filled with twenty-odd officers busily attending to the ships operation. Most were seated at at large metal consoles, while others were shifting in and out of the room, delivering some tedious paper or giving yet another report that everything was operating normally. At the center of it all stood an older, grizzled looking man with light brown skin and glasses. An array of large, rectangular monitors loomed above them, humming softly as the ships Dradis scanned the space around them. They were empty of dots. Aside from the occasional civilian ship, they'd been empty for weeks.

Commander William Adama observed his officers tending to their routine duties. He took a long intake of breath. "Weekly maintenance report came in this morning. We've had some kind of residue building up under a storage room on C deck. Right under the bulkheads. They'll scrap it off, clean it up, it'll come back a few hours later." His gaze met a gruff, balding man in front of him. Colonel Tigh had been his friend much longer then he'd been his XO. That might have been the only reason this tour of duty had been tolerable.

It was a quiet few seconds before Tigh gave a reply. "It's probably some enterprising young enlistee trying to get in good with his bunk mates." He paused, moving a step closer to the commander, lowering his voice. "Sagittarius Elixir, they call it. It feels like a thousand tiny marbles going down your throat. Not the strongest kick, but that isn't the point this time. If you leave it out without much room, the crap that evaporates leaves behind this freaky guck." There was a tinge of pride in Tigh's voice as he described the odd beverage. "The Sagittaran's have a name for that stuff. Don't much care what it is though, the Sagittaran's have a name for everything."

Adama spoke flatly, now watching his officers as he spoke. "That's not a bad theory."

"Ten cubits he's one of the maintenance crew on C. Hides it under the bulkheads, then grabs it before they make their sweep. Shares it with his mates for gum and good shifts. I did the same thing when I was their age, but it wasn't with elixir, if you catch me." The silence resumed.

This time, Tigh broke it. "So..." he began. "Are we going to spend the next four months of our tour going on about... maintenance reports, stellar logs..."

Adama's gaze turned to meet him. "Not quite the send off she deserves, is it?" Galactica's military career was about to end. She was to be decommissioned and turned into a museum after this last tour of duty. The admiralty had seen to it that the ship was given the least troublesome, most out of the way patrol a battlestar could ever receive.

Behind one of the bulky metal consoles, a young, nervous looking man was examining the monitor in front of him. Felix Gaeta was transcribing something on a cornerless piece of paper. He checked his notes, double checked the monitor, and turned to look at Adama, who was conversing with Tigh. Which means I have to interrupt them. The man grabbed his clipboard, took a breath, and began walking towards his CO.

The short walk felt like a mile. Gaeta was barely a month into his first deployment, and he theorized that feeling would fade with time. Tigh noticed him first, then Adama turned to meet him. Felix turned the clipboard and handed it to the commander. "A report from Delta's central traffic control reported three ships failing to arrive at their destinations in the past few hours. No contact from any of them, which you'd expect if they had some sort of engine trouble." He got the words out concisely. The admiral looked over his transcription for a moment.

"Could be solar storms. Might have knocked out the engines and stopped them from calling for help. All three were bound for Canceron?" His eyes went from the paper to Felix.

The officer nodded. "Yes, sir. They were all in roughly the same area on the outskirts of the system. It's a bit off our trail, but I thought it was worth mentioning." He finished off the last sentence wondering if this had been worth bringing to the Commander's attention. Helios-Delta was one of four stars that made up the Cyrannus star system. Two pairs of stars orbiting each other, each star home to a number of planets. The four stars were the home of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, and its twenty billion inhabitants.

Tigh, who'd been reading the report over Adama's shoulder, spoke. "Aquarian orbit is a long way off from Canceron. No transport is going to drift over into our area this soon." Galactica's out of the way deployment involved patrolling the space around Aquaria, the quietest and least populated of the Twelve Colonies. Most of the rock was nothing but ocean with a few scattered islands, home to nothing but research outposts and luxury resorts. A few stubborn survivalists called it home, but even with all the tourism the number of people surface side barely reached six digits. Canceron, in contrast, was the most populated of all the colonies.

"You're right, Colonel. But I don't think Canceron would mind a few extra eyes giving the SR teams a hand." Adama handed the clipboard back to Gaeta. "We'll have a few raptors head out that way and coordinate with their search. Lets remind the pilots that this is a military ship, not a pleasure cruise." With the whole crew knowing very well their deployment was worry free and the ship was headed out the door anyway, things had become lax. Though Adama, headed for retirement himself, didn't run nearly as tight a ship as he used to, he intended to make sure Galactica's pilots hadn't lost any edge by their next deployment.

Tigh grinned. "I'll make the call to the CAG myself. They'll be so disappointed about missing their nightly triad game." The Colonel seemed more attentive, eager to have something to stem the monotony, however minor. "It's a bit odd though, having so many ships affected by solar storms. I thought even civilian ships were hardened against that stuff."

Adama shook his head. "The storm probably frakked with their navigation computers. You know, a lot of these hotshot captains rely so much on their computers doing the hard work for them that they don't know how to react when they fail." The commander was very opinionated on the fleet's recent obsession with integrated networks and reliance on computers. Their species had been almost wiped out the last time they wanted a better computer to make life easier.

Gaeta, who was still standing in front of them, looked uncomfortable at the commander's last comment. Adama let out a small chuckle. "How are you liking your first assignment? Nothing like you expected, I'm sure."

Felix had spent the last two years of his life at the academy learning every nut and bolt of the integrated systems Adama seemed to despise. Ironically, after all that training, he was assigned to the last warship in the Colonial fleet that didn't possess any networked systems. Everything was still done with pen and paper, or by manually moving data chips around the ship. He felt his nervous attitude return. "It's... not quite what I expected. Uh... But I'm enjoying it." He felt Adama's eyes lock on him. "Galactica's a fine ship with a long history. I'm honored to be able to serve on her before she retires." Adama let a small smile show before he dismissed him.

Tigh picked up the phone and began dialing the flight deck as Gaeta walked back to his station. Adama glanced at the empty Dradis screen for the tenth time of the day.

Battlestar Triton, pilots ready room, Canceron orbit

Kara Thrace seated herself in the furthest row back from the CAG. It was the best spot in the briefing room to watch over the other pilots and judge their reactions to whatever it was the CAG was saying. Squadron emblems adorned three walls of the very modern looking room. In clear view at the front was a giant Kara had served in the Colonial military for nearly a decade now, and had the reputation of a natural combat pilot, but her attitude had kept her career advancement in stasis. Her current deployment on the Triton had been mostly patrol and escort duty, but it had its moments.

"...And a tyllium transport was scheduled to arrive three hours ago has dropped off the map as well. that makes five civilian ships." Most of the ships raptor pilots had been fetched out of the blue to take part in search and rescue operations for a few missing civilian ships. Kara fought to keep her eyes open. She felt a strong sense of annoyance. Why would she be called in for this? She wasn't even a raptor pilot. She was qualified for them, sure, but she belonged in a viper.

The CAG continued. "That makes this the largest shipping incident in the last decade. Our first thought was some sort of solar storm, but if that were the case we would have lost contact with every ship in the region at once. This is much more intermittent." Behind him was a map of the Helios Delta zoomed in on Canceron's section of the solar system. Dots indicated the last known position of the vanishing ships, laid seemingly at random. One or two ships wasn't unusual, but five? All in roughly the same area of space? That was enough for the military to bat an eye.

Kara was starting to get a sense of why viper pilots were being called in for this. The CAG went on for another few minutes, briefly going over profiles for the missing ships, where they could have drifted, and acknowledging a far more malicious possibility. Raiders were known to prey on shipping, but that Tyllium transport had been almost right on top of Canceron. They would have to be extremely bold to try their luck this close to military patrols. And if had been raiders, or Gods forbid, terrorists... they should have been getting distress calls.

Now the CAG was going over raptor assignments and search patterns. Space was big, and as the ships had more time to drift, the search space increased exponentially. He was just beginning to assign copilots when an officer walked into the room with a worrisome expression on his face. He locked eyes with the CAG, and whispered something to him out of earshot of the pilots. The two conversed for a few seconds before the CAG thanked him and addressed the room. "Change of plans. Search and rescue just got a lot more complicated."

Battlestar Triton, CIC

Triton and ships like her were the middle child of the Colonial fleet. While the Valkyrie class lacked the utility or self sufficiency of the much larger Mercury type Battlestars, they could still punch just as hard. They were among latest and most sophisticated warships in the Colonial arsenal. Advances in computer and networking technology forbid even the slightest hitch from going unnoticed by the ship's crew. Aside from keeping ship functions running efficiently, it meant damage control teams could respond to crises areas in record time during battle. The computers managed everything from air distribution to target acquisition and tracking. Triton's weapons could certainly still be aimed and fired manually, the computers operated them with a level of precision no human could ever hope to match.

At least, that's how they preformed in live fire exercises. Honest to Gods combat between capital ships had been nonexistent since the end of the Cylon war. With the unification of the Colonies, there just wasn't any other major human faction left. The looming Cylon presence kept the military well funded, but actually testing new hardware to fight an enemy you hadn't seen or heard of in four decades was problematic.

The dark skinned, clean cut man presiding over the warship's command center was well aware of that fact. Commander Holloway had taken part in more than his fair share of simulated battles. But simulations were one thing. You could go through all the trouble you wanted to make it look and act like the real thing, but it would never truly match up. Or at least, that's what his professors had drilled into him through fifteen years of service. Holloway's only taste of real combat had been playing whack-a-mole with pirates around the Colonies. Nothing that could ever threaten a true warship.

The last day and a half had been eventful as it was stressful. And it just got a lot worse. When the first ship or two went missing, it was business as usual. Ever since the unification of the Colonies, the Colonial Fleet had been in charge of spearheading most search and rescue operations. Then the third, fourth, and fifth disappeared without a trace... and the military stepped up its game. If it had been intentional, the lack of distress signal would imply something had jammed the civilian ships. Pirates or terrorists with that kind of kit was a nightmare scenario. The transmission they'd just received had brought that scenario one step closer to reality.

Raptors had identified the remains of one of the civilian cargo ships that went missing. It'd been blasted to pieces, its wreckage scattered across thousands of kilometers. Nothing pirates had should have been capable of so utterly destroying a ship of that size.

"Sir, another transmission from Picon fleet headquarters." A red headed woman piped up from her console opposite of the massive Dradis display. The comms officer had served on Triton for two years. She never seemed terribly ambitious to Holloway, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He much preferred the attitude over some of the officers fresh out of the academy who saw their post as nothing more than a stepping stone to something better. Lieutenant Kira was level headed and dependable, traits an officer was desperately in need of when they'd be getting an earful from fleet headquarters ten hours a day. "Admiral Rigel will be jumping into orbit aboard the Pacifica within the hour." Holloway nodded as he double checked his electronic pad, with a transcript of the brief communication already transmitted and awaiting reading.

With a mixture of surprise and excitement, the man standing to Holloway's right remarked, "The Pacifica?" Colonel Sager had served aboard Triton as Holloway's XO coming up on five years. He had taken some warming up to those first few months. Sager was plenty loyal, and definitely qualified for the job, but he had a tendency to be opinionated. Sager had spent more than half his life on Leonis, one of the oldest and most historically rich of the Colonies. While Leonis had become a democracy alongside the rest of the Colonies, it never truly let go of its imperial heritage.

"Pacifica's one of our flag ships." Sager continued. "I'd guess the fleet's trying to prove they have a handle on the situation before word gets out to the public."

Sager's gaze turned to the Dradis display, faithfully displaying Triton and the rest of her battlegroup in formation. On an typical day, a Battlestar Group was composed of one or two battlestars and their support ships. A mix of frigates and fuel tankers. The latter would jump away if combat looked probable, but were vital for any kind of long term operations. Now that it was clear something was hunting civilian ships near Canceron, it sounded like a second BSG was being called in.

Holloway checked the time. Three hours between the first raptor reported the wreckage and one of the most modern ships in the fleet and her battle group being deployed in orbit. That was breakneck speed by Colonial standards. It concerned him.

"We'll track the bastards down." Sager said spitefully, noting his commanding officer appeared deep in thought. "It wouldn't be the first overzealous crop of terrorists we've put down. The admiralty is probably just giving us the extra ships so we can step up patrols. Make the civilian ships feel more secure." Traffic around Canceron was too populated to give every ship an escort, even with the extra support. Holloway made a mental note not to mention that during any future pep talk.

Holloway's real concern wasn't pirates or terrorists, but something else. Something far more dangerous that they hadn't seen or heard from in decades. The Cylons were still out there, somewhere. His tablet beeped again, notifying him of a new message. Almost immediately after, Kira called out for his attention. Raptors had found another wreck. This time a civilian transport. One of the Olympic liners. The largest class of passenger tug there was. It would have been carrying somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand people, probably. Holloway asked Kira to check the flight manifest. Eight-hundred Seventy-Three souls. The transport had weapons, too. Basic ones, but enough to fight off pirates. They didn't help. The wreckage had been scattered just as far as the last one.

These weren't pirates. And Holloway had a growing suspicion they weren't terrorists, either.