Captain Gloval yelled out, "All hands brace for impact!"
The SDF-1 came to a halt after slamming into the remains of Macross Island.
"Find out where we are," Gloval said with a heavy heart.
"That is Macross Island out there, but I am not detecting Earth at all." Lisa Hayes shared a scared look with Claudia Grant.
The next few days passed by quickly. The last of the alien battlepods were destroyed and the civilians from the shelters were taken aboard the SDF-1. The RDF technicians had started the grisly process of recovering the Deadelus and the Prometheus carriers. No one even noticed the two missing teenagers that were lost in the depths of the mammoth battleship.
"So, Lisa, you said you have some information about where we are?" Captain Gloval asked. He looked around the small conference room.
Lisa nodded. "It has taken Dr. Lang and I all this time figure out where we are. Dr. Lang?"
The strange man that was their chief engineer nodded. "Somehow we were ejected clear out of our solar system. According to what we know about the fold engines, that shouldn't be possible for such a short trip." Lang flicked a switch to turn on the computer screen. "We have managed to deduce our general location in space, but the stars do not match our universe exactly."
"I was informed that no matter where we were in our galaxy, that we would be able to find out our location," Captain Gloval said in a low voice. This was beyond his worst nightmare.
"If it were our own galaxy, that would be true. This appears similar, but scrambled a bit. With that bit of information, I took some exact measurements of the stars and our atomic clocks. This appears to be some sort of alternate reality with minor, but measurable differences."
"What? That isn't possible!" the captain shouted.
"It wasn't possible until we did it. And it is mostly my fault." Dr. Lang stood up to go over to the window that showed outer space. "I made a fatal miscalculation in estimating the safe distance to initiate a fold jump. Not only does the SDF-1s fold bubble extend far beyond the ships hull, it is many time more powerful than I believed."
"What are our options? My God! We have thousands of civilians that we have dragged along with us!" the captain asked.
"Not good. We are at the edge of a solar system and the fold drive appears to be just missing. It isn't our Solar System either." Lisa took a deep breath. "We have detected unusual high power radio frequency transmissions from in system. We had to recalibrate our receivers to even detect them."
"The aliens that attacked us?" Gloval asked as he bristled his mustache.
"I don't think so. We don't have a size reference, but they look human. We've been operating in near radio silence since we detected them. There are thousands of locations, all across the system. So they are space-faring."
"We shall have to initiate contact with them if we wish to have any chance to return to our home. Dr. Lang assures me that we do not have the ability to replace our lost fold drives. Dr. Lang?"
Lang had sat back down at the table. He played with his collar while answering. "Not in the time we have. We scavenged everything we could from Macross Island itself, but we were never supposed to be in a position where we did not have the resources of Earth for repairs. And without our fold engines, we have no possibility to return home."
And there is no way we can retreat out of their system either. "Very well. Lisa, I wish you to set up an S.O.S. using their frequencies at the highest output level we can manage."
--------
Commander Cain walked into the bridge of his Battlestar, the Pegasus. BSG 109 was its specific designation. "Commander! We've got order from command to investigate an unusual signal out near the Oort Cloud. They can't make heads or tails of it. It appears to some sort of simple repeating code."
"Thank you, Major Druum. Do we have coordinates for a jump?"
"Yes, sir. I've got it plugged in and the computers should be ready to process it shortly."
Cain grimaced at that. Adama might have a point about these new Battlestars. The computer systems were too intergrated. Something that would never have been allowed back during the War. Thinking about Adama reminded him about his old ship that was going to be decommissioned in just a few weeks. "Prepare to launch fighters when we arrive. Engage with a one minute count."
The commander walked over to the main tracking station, letting the droning voices of his bridge slide past him.
"-Four, Three, Two, One! Engage!" With the navigators control, the Pegasus warped into space near an uncharted asteroid.
"I have a Carrier Class Cruiser at mark two two four, distance is fifty kilometers!" the soldier at the radar station yelled.
Cain's blood ran cold. The Cylons? "What is it?"
"It doesn't match anything we have. It does not appear to be a Basestar. It's pretty odd looking. They look like they might even be making repairs."
"I want our Vipers to enclose the area but they are not to advance towards the unknown ship. Open a channel," Commander Cain ordered.
The voice that replied made no sense at all. What was this idiocy?!
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(Posted Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:21)
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