Sorry about the long update time, been busy the past week so havent had much time, Im working on a new chapter for origins next so please keep reviews coming :)
Reviews:
Reikson: Yup the zero point energy tap that steals power from our current space time is what will power Olympus. The ancients are more advanced than the Alterians and so have perfected this technology.
Angelus: The Pegasus will come into play in a few chapters, the Colonials are going to have to fight for Olympus first, the Pegasus will help with the fight to regain Caprica.
SADDAMINSANE: We only assume the universe is 14 billion light years wide because we cant see beyond that distance, but there are theories that 14billion light years is a sort of horrizon, so no matter where in the universe you are you can only detect 14 billion light years optically. The way im getting around this, and have carter able to detect the distance to the Kobolian galaxy, is by Subspace tracking. When they track wormholes, the wormholes travel through subspace which isnt limited to the "Horrizon" effect generated by light in the universe.
EvilClone: I dont knw, Gaeta just seems Cylonish to me.
Starbuck opened her eyes, for some reason her reaction to the spontaneous transport was to shut her eyes, which at the moment seemed illogical. What she saw before her was beautiful, it was a stargate but unlike the one she came through this one seemed less archaic, and more technological. It possessed a digital ring of constellations as opposed to a solid engraved ring like the one on Kobol. It made sense to Starbuck, if this city was in fact an intergalactic vessel, then having a digital stargate capable of changing constellations without removing the ring would be a very good idea. "Its about bloody time" a voice assailed her from behind drawing her attention away from the stargate and towards a female figure perched atop what appeared to be an elevated observation deck. The woman was dark haired, athletic and carried a heavily accented voice. Down the center of the observation deck ran a flight of stairs that seemed to glow with their own radiance. In fact Kara noticed that the entire cavernous room was lit by a series of crystal platelets that protruded from the walls at right angles. She guessed that these platelets served more than an atheistic purpose.
Daniel Jackson who was closest to the woman seemed to be overcome with an annoyed expression as the woman jumped several flights of stairs and ran towards him. "It's a good thing you're here, I was starting too feel a little faint" the woman placed her head on his shoulder and feigned fatigue. "The bands wore off" Daniel replied sternly, the band he was referring to had quite literally made the pair inseparable, and had been the source of much announce to him. Even though he did grieve at her loss, truth be told he was relieved that they were no longer joined. The woman's eyes went wide "Oh" she muttered, pulling herself away from Daniel "I guess I feel better now". She grabbed a hold of Daniels hand and nudged him towards the stairs "Theres something you have to see"
The group followed the pair up the stairs, where Starbuck was greeted by the strangest command deck she had ever seen. There were no distinct operations stations, no central Dradius console and strategic planning table, in fact the deck looked like a collection of crystal platelet covered desks, positioned randomly around the room without a single monitor in view. "Are you sure this is a ship?" she questioned towards Daniel who was now standing before an oddly placed sheet of something that looked like glass. "Oh yeah, I am quite sure" Daniel had replied without even glancing back at her, his attention thoroughly focused on what looked like crystal platelets arranged on a multi tier recessed console.
Daniel took once of the crystal platelets and swapped it with another on a lower tier, the effect was immediate. The display screen buzzed to life startling Starbuck who now realized why the glass was placed in its current position. Strange symbols streamed across the glass surface intertwined with beats and pulses of light flashing blue and red in the background. "Okay we have a problem" Daniel announced. Jack, who had moved into a position beside him asked "What would that be?". Daniel looked at Jack with genuine concern in his eyes "I can't translate this writing!"
"I guess now you know why it took so long for me to send a distress signal" Vala stated bluntly "I tried about a million combinations before I unlocked the communications control system, and I didn't even know if my transmission got out". Starbuck had ignored Vala's comment, instead her eyes were steadily transfixed on the monitor. "Energy levels" Starbuck read aloud, eliciting curious glances from the others. "Excuse me?" Jack asked. "The readout, its stating the energy utilization levels of the entire city" Kara replied "It's in ancient Kobolian".
Carter had made her way to one of the reactor rooms, she was now charged with the duty of converting the gigantic tillium reactors into much more effective naquidah reactors. She had read the specks on the tillium reactors before reaching the room, but even those did not prepare her for the sight that greeted her. The tillium reactors easily reached 3 stories high and ran at least a hundred meters along the very large room that housed it. She was in awe of such a feet of technical engineering, her people were basically given naquidah reactor technology and had no doubt that Earth based reactors for a ship of this size would easily have been this large if not larger, otherwise. While still starring at the mammoth generators she failed to notice Chief Tyrol stroll over to her position and was snapped out of her stupor when he asked her if she needed assistance. "Actually I do" she replied "I need to take this generator offline to start converting it into a naquidah generator".
The Chief nodded for Carter to follow him and led her halfway down the length of the room to a small control station comprised of monitors displaying operation status information. The station was manned by three technicians who Carter only now realized were wearing ear protectors. She had not noticed earlier, stunned by the sheer magnitude of the generator, that the generator was extremely loud. As the chief shouted something to one of the technicians the man eyed Carter suspiciously before nodding back to the chief. The pair then stood and walked to a red box on the lower midsection of the generator, each brandishing a key. Once inserted, the box flung open to reveal a red leaver which the chief pulled on. With a very loud clanging yellow warning klaxons sounded, and then died along with the noise produced by the generator. The technicians flung off their ear protections while Carter pulled out a scanning device and began analyzing the generator.
Almost twenty minutes into the scanning Carter was left with the realization that converting the current generator, would be too much of a hassle. The only sections that could be salvaged for the conversion would be the actual super conductive interface that fed the ships power conduits. She was now faced with the task of disassembling the current generator and fabricating a totally new naquidah generator. "How long do you think it will take" Tyrol asked, breaking Carter of her concentration "Colonel Tigh is getting kind of ancy in CIC, he's afraid we might not have the power for an FTL jump if the Cylons show up". Carter stared at the man, her mind was already wondering back to the configuration required to bring the naquidah generator online, the truth was she really did not know how long it would take. "I cant give you an exact timeline, Your generators are a lot more primitive than I would've hoped, I'm going to have to build this thing from scratch… we're looking at 2 days at least" she replied, then thought for a moment before adding "But I think I have solution to bring you up to full power until then… actually we might not need to replace this generator at all"
With that Carter left the generator room and headed for the puddle jumper wondering why she hadn't thought of this sooner. Instead of converting, or replacing their current generators, she was going to fabricate miniature neutrino ion generators of the same caliber used to replenish the puddle jumpers core. The generators themselves produced in excess of 1000 times the amount of energy all six tillium generators could output. With a single generator aboard, the Galactica would never have to worry about fuel ever again, the only problem was the very rare element required for the fabrication of the generators. The element itself could not be synthesized, however the puddle jumper did contain an emergence reserve. She would require roughly half the reserve in order to create a generator for the Galactica.
The Vallinor sped through space at impossible speeds, over 281 billion light years away lay her destination. No vessel in recorded history had ever traveled this fast, and at the moment her lone organic occupant lay in stasis awaiting her arrival in the Kobolian galaxy. But something was wrong, something neither the Vallinor nor her sleeping occupant could anticipate. Several decks bellow, in the bowls of the vessel Lurked another presence, a presence that had forced the Asguard into building such a vessel in the first place. The lower decks echoed with the sound of metallic feet scuttling about, and then through the scuttling of metallic feet another sound was heard. This one dull and regular, it was the sound of footsteps, human footsteps.
The footsteps drew closer to the stasis chamber that held the vessels' single, organic occupant, and then stopped, peeking into the glass chamber. The owner of the foot steps smiled, his replicator brethren had already begun enhancing the Vallinors engines, improving on the technology the Asguard had invented. The replicators had a knack for expanding on technological innovations of other races, seeing aspects of the technology that the organics failed to utilize to its maximum potential. The Vallinor was another such technology, the concept of which the replicators would never have developed on their own, but now that is was proven, they were able to enhance and exploit the engines to their maximum potential. Even now the vessel was traveling at close to fifteen times its original velocity, in less than a month it would arrive in orbit of Kobol, and from there the replicators would feast upon the technology of the ancients, and become more advanced than anything in the known universe.
"For now you will live" The human form replicator whispered to deaf ears. The ships computer was sentient to a point, and if he were to dispatch the Asguard captain the vessel would automatically engage safety protocols, locking down the vessel and returning it to Asguard space. Already he was pushing his luck, simply getting aboard the vessel was a near impossible feat, only accomplished due to the hastily departure of the vessel. He was again lucky, having tapped into the computer network after the Asguard captain had gone into stasis and learning of the vessels mission. And again he pressed his luck by upgrading the engines, but fortunately he managed to trick the computer in believing the upgrades were transmitted from the Asguard high command, and so under their guise he managed to make the vessel modify its own hyperdrive. He did not wish to be returned to asguard space not since the replicator known as Samthan Carter had shared the secrets to blocking the Asguard weapons with only those of her brethren under her control, so naturally if he were discovered the Asguard would easily dispatch him and his brethren under his control.
Colonel Tigh and Chief Tyrol stared at the device Sam had presented to them "You're telling me this thing can replace all of our generators?" Tigh laughed disbelievingly. Carter was not phased "It can actually provide 1000 times more energy" she replied. Adama who had been briefed on the device also looked at it suspiciously "How can something that small provide energy to power the entire ship?" he asked. "And without requiring fuel" Tigh added.
Carter glared at them, the technicalities behind neutrino ion generators was a level of physics beyond both of them, heck even she barely grasped the concept. The fact was she had fabricated the device from the Asguard computer core, it being one of the technologies she was allowed to offer the Colonials. The disbelieving eyes continued to stare at her, so she decided to venture an explination "Well it does require fuel, but the thing is the fuel is so abundant in the universe you don't really need to concentrate it into the device. You see neutrinos are super fast particles that zip through all mater in the universe and cannot be slowed down, well at least by any physics we know, giant aliens on the other hand can slow them down whenever they want to make contact but that's another story… The neutrinos are abundant in the universe, something on the order of a billion trillion of them passes through every square inch of your body a second. What the generator does is create an energy field that causes the matter within the generator to interact with the neutrinos on a sub atomic level causing the matter to spontaneously generate ions which are converted into energy."
The three men simply stared at her with vacant expressions on their faces, they clearly didn't grasp the concept, so she decided a physical demonstration was in order. She picked up the device and quickly asked Tyrol where the nearest power distribution junction was. The chief guided her through the hallways and brought her and the others to the Draidus console and pointed to the interface junction directly beneath it. "This junction is used in the case power to the CIC fails, emergence generators can be attached here and the power shunted to critical systems all over the ship" he explained. "Great then this is the perfect place to interface the generator" she replied, and not waiting for a response she detached the superconductive interface from the Draidus console and attached it to the generator. Immediately raw power began to feed into the power grid from the device.
"Sir, im detecting an increase in power to the grid" Duwala reported as her screens lit up, her eyes opened with shock as she saw exactly how much energy was now flowing through the ship "Power level increase by a factor of a thousand" she gasped. Tigh, Adama and Tyrol could do nothing but stare at Sam with shock. Meanwhile Sam looked at the men with a satisfied smirk on her face.
"No that cant be right" Daniel protested as Starbuck translated the writing for him. Daniel was seated at a consol while Starbuck was crouched beside him, supporting herself on his shoulder. Starbuck turned to him with a smile spread across her face "Look, you may be a linguist, but I'm the one who's actually fluent in this language" She slapped him on the back playfully. Daniel looked from the computer screen and then into her eyes, where he seemed to freeze captivated mere centimeters away from her face. Starbuck returned the gaze as their faces moved closer together into what would mostly certainly have been a kiss, a third face jumped up behind the pair startling them. "What cant be right?" Vala questioned, a rigid smile on her face.
Daniel snapped back into reality and returned his attention back to the screen "The energy output that Kara translated, its impossible, not even a dozen ZPM's have that kind of power" he reported. Starbuck, who had also snapped her attention back to the screen, became perplexed "What's a ZPM?". "It's like a giant battery, it's what the ancients used to power cities, and outposts" Vala answered her. "It gets its energy from Vacuum energy stored in a sort of universe in a bottle" Daniel added. Starbuck nodded "well, then yes, this says that the power core is some sort of vacuum energy tap, but it doesn't say anything about a universe in a bottle… there's only one of them, and I am 100 percent sure that I have the output translated correctly".
Daniel reeled at the thought, a single zero point module with the power of two dozen zero point modules. This sort of energy could restore Atlantis to its former glory, an energy shield that would never die allowing it to destroy the wraith without fear of loosing its shields. While in mid thought Jack and Apollo returned, the pair decided to check out the city and scan for life signs "So Daniel, figure out the FTL drives?" he asked. Daniel stared at him sternly "No Jack, we've only managed to get into non regulated systems, there's some kind of firewall protecting the stargate, engines, weapons, shields and even transporters". Jack sighed, he had figured as much.
Thousands of light years from the newly conquered Caprica, a Cylon fleet comprised of seven base stars, fourty new generation carriers containing thousands of heavy raiders, and untold numbers of raiders traveled through space. Guided by a map they had discovered long ago, a map that they believed would lead them to Earth. The map had come into their possession during the first Cylon war, It was sprawled on an ancient scroll preserved during a raid on a Caprican temple. It was a cryptic map, showing the constellations of the twelve tribes, and a familiar nebular. It took many years for the Cylons to decipher that the constellations and the nebular were all objects that could be seen from Earth, and so ten years ago a sizeable portion of the fleet was dispatched. They had calculated the size of the nebular relative to the perspective from earth, and generated a sphere. Systematically the Cylons were investigating the circumfrance of sphere, searching for signs of life, searching for signals and transmission generated by advanced civilizations, but they found nothing. It was not until several hours ago that a message from Caprica had delivered information about a new method of communications the Colonials had gotten ahold of. They adapted their sensors to track this "subspace" either, and had detected a signal coming from a planet that lay on sphere, and were now preparing for the week long jump to the system.
TBC... the next chapter is going to be like the siege, where the cylons will invade the city while Daniel strugles to bring the shields and weapons online. And of course Galactica will make it to the city before the Cylons invade, and so there will be a space battle.