I promised myself that I work on the two previous projects before starting this story, one of which will be the source material. The nBSG will crossover with an original setting that I built. Worldbuilding is a lot easier when you're writing in narrative form it seems, and much of it will be written on the fly. You have been warned.



As always,



BETA READER/Grammar Nazi wanted. PM me for details.



Maybe I should ask for a betareader before posting a new chapter every time like Hiver did?



Here we go.

---



Commander William 'Husker' Adama surveyed the CIC before him. Despite a crew of misfits, the CIC was a beehive of activity, efficient and fast.

Even Colonel Tigh, a functional alcoholic and friend, was hard at work.



Like most other commanders, Adama ran a tight ship. Despite the fact it was almost forty years since the Cylon war, he never really believed all that time that the Cylons weren't a threat. Even so, the pain and the memories do soften over time, and eventually there won't be anything left of Adama's generation. Paranoia ran in the admiralty, but eventually there won't be any more paranoia left to run the fleet. That was why he ran a tight ship. A battlestar can run on discipline, training, and routine in a way that can outlast one's paranoia.



Besides, it helped starve off the inevitable boredom, the dullness that pervaded routine activities.



This battlestar will be retired as a museum ship soon. So the higher ups chose to sideline the Galactica into boring patrols where absolutely nothing will happen. Of course, with space lanes, there can be trouble with ships, but usually nothing that needed to be handled by one of the military ships floating around, let alone a mainline battlestar.



It will be a shame to see her go. A battlestar wasn't meant to go like this. They should either die defending the colonies or be so damaged as to be little more than scrap. But he couldn't say the same for its crew. Nobody wanted to write letters to the next of kin about their loved ones falling in battle, no matter how valiant and heroic a serviceman was.



"Inbound FTL signal emerging!" Dee reported, before calling out the positions that was displayed on DRASIS.



Adama, as well everyone else, knew it was completely out of ordinary. FTL jumps happened all the time to get ships where needed, but was usually done in the space lanes, to minimize both fuel usage and time to a particular body in space.



Anything that happened outside of those locations, was unusual.



It was a raptor that had launched communication drones.



"Looked like the FTL sensor station at Virgon was damaged," Tigh commented on the message that was communicated to the CIC via a tightbeam laser.



"That wasn't routine," Adama replied. "Get ready to launch a courier and a raptor to do recon. Battlestar Galactica will be assisting with the situation ASAP."



Adama quickly typed a message at one of the stations, while forwarding the copy of the message. Chances were, Virgon had already updated the HQ on Picon regarding the issue, but assuming that a message had already been sent would be a fatal error.



One of those things considered standard operating procedure was to relay messages, particularly when it was safe to do so. FTL communications in which one could transmit a message wasn't available to the Colonial military. All FTL communications must be done through FTL jumps, which often involved dedicated couriers.



So two ships launched. A courier and a reconnaissance raptor, each jumping to different places. One jumped toward Picon, while the recon jumped to Virgon.



There was no report of a Cylon attack in the Virgon message, but even so, Adama didn't take chances.



It was minutes later that the raptor reported back.



"Galatica, this is Raptor Racetrack," a female voice radioed over wireless. "We found an unidentified spacecraft, floating near the FTL sensor station, which wasn't there when they communicated their distress."



"This is Galactica Actual, return to ship," Adama ordered. "Set condition one, Gaeta. We may be going into battle. Spin up the FTL drive for Virgon."



The battlestar shifted into high gear as the crew members rushed toward their action stations on the voice of Lieutenant Gaeta. The interior flared red as bulkheads closed itself off. Pilots jumped into their vipers ready to be launched into space.



This was from a cold start going all the way to condition one. But for Adama, it seemed like an eternity. Minutes lost were minutes not being able to respond to whatever was there at Virgon, be it an act of aggression or something else.



He didn't know what to expect from Racetrack's report, but it was crucial to be prepared. More than likely it was just an accident, or at worst, a terrorist attack.



"We're ready," Tigh finally reported.



"Jump."



In an instant, the battlestar jumped. It vanished from that space, only to show up in Virgon orbit.



Of course, there was a brief disorientation for every member of the crew, lasting for what what seemed to be seconds. In reality, no time had passed.



Once the jump was completed, the CIC became even more alive, as each station tried to account for everything in Virgon.



It was immediately clear that everything seemed normal except the spaceship and the FTL sensor station.



There was no attack.



Just a really expensive and crucial station out of service. Without it, Virgon would be indefensible, and other planets more vulnerable to a Cylon attack.



"We need to find out what the hell was going on with the FTL station, then we'll deal with this ship," Adama said.



It wasn't long before the commander of the Virgon defense grid informed Adama that there wasn't anything that he couldn't do to get it fixed soon, other than getting an engineering support group there to assist with the diagnosis and repair.



The commander didn't dwell on it. Instead he focused on the unidentified spacecraft.



A picture of the ship was shown on the CIC screen.



"It doesn't look like anything in our Cylon identification chart," Tigh commented.



"You're right," Adama replied. "But it must be said that nobody has heard or seen a Cylon warship for the last forty years. We don't know what they're fielding these days. If it isn't Cylon, it might be civilian. Anybody recognize it?"



There was silence.



"No, I don't," Lieutenant Felix Gaeta answered. "But it looks like they have weapons mounted on it."



"Weapon? They don't looked like our guns. And there's no lettering that we recognize. The flag? I've never seen a Cylon that does that. It's completely out of their character," Tigh commented. "They didn't care if it was the Caprican or Tauron flag that they're wearing."



"There's a mystery on our hand. Get vipers there on the scene, and some marines to board the ship iif it looks like it's not going to shoot at them."



The starship wasn't certainly of any classical Cylon designs. It was completely different, and sleek looking, with unfamiliar weapon mounts sticking out of it and holes where missiles could come out of. There were two nacelles sticking out towards the rear that he couldn't figure out the purpose of. Whatever it was, it wasn't certainly a landing or launch bay. The design was all wrong.



Indeed, everything about the ship screamed aliens but still humans.



What he was about to find out, however, will shake the core of Colonial society forever.