Battlestar Argo
by AJ Marks
Part 16: Disruptions
Ares made his way down the hallway along with Robert towards a meeting with Senator Williams. Ares was not sure what type of meeting that he was going to be in. He had brought information about what he thought would be important but he would have to wait to see what they were going to think would be important.
The walk there had been silent as both men were thinking about what would happen. Robert was not sure what was going to happen in the meeting. He was sure though that it whatever happened it would affect his job status. He was also sure that he would be doing a new after today was over. With a bit of sadness he knew that his department was going to be dismantled and handed to the private corporation.
Walking through the door to the meeting room Robert was greeted by the sight of Senator Williams and Senator Sam Harvey sitting there. Robert thought about all he had heard about the senator. Harvey was known as one who did not take anything lightly and researched everything quite extensively. Robert wondered how Jack had managed to get the senator here.
“Ah, I see that everyone is here, good,” Jack said. “Commander Ares, this is Senator Sam Harvey,” Jack introduced the two men to each other.
Ares could see the intelligence in the other man’s eyes and waited to see what the man would say. Sam studied the commander. He had a military look about him that even most military commanders did not have. He wondered if that was from the years of war that they said they had been though. Sam liked a challenge and right now he wanted to be sure he was not being taken for a fool.
“Commander Ares, pleasure to meet you,” Sam said.
“You too Senator Harvey,” Ares replied to him.
“Senator Williams here tells me that you are not from around here,” Sam said to Ares.
“He’s telling the truth,” Ares said. “I’ve traveled quite a distance to find Earth.”
“Now that you’ve found us what is it that you want,” Sam asked wanting to hear it from Ares himself.
“The mission is actually simple, yet complex and could change everything in the galaxy,” Ares said. “My people have been at war with a race called the Cylons for a thousand yehrens, or years. I haven’t been able to get an exact measurement between the two yet. Anyway we’re losing the war.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up with that statement. He was not expecting to hear that from someone with such a commanding presence. He leaned forward to hear the next part that would decide whither or not they would help or not.
“If we do lose there will be nothing to stop the Cylons on their way here,” Ares told them. “We encountered only one civilization on the path here and they were nowhere near ready to repel an attack from the Cylons. I was given the mission to make sure that you are ready, or if you can help.”
Sam sat back in his chair after he heard this. It was something that he was really not expecting to hear. This race called the Cylons did not like humans for some reason. Then he had to think about political ideas, people would oppose such a thing for sure. Many would wonder why they should help out when there was a chance that they would be left alone.
“If we did nothing would they even find us,” Sam asked.
“There is that chance, but their entire mission is to expand their influence. The fact that you’re human will not help in any means of diplomacy with them. We tried at first as well, and that failed when they attacked us,” Ares explained. “I think that it is only a matter of time before they appear in your system.”
“I think we should help,” Jack said. “We would have to do it undercover though.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “I have a plan but if we are to build anything we don’t have a place to do it close by.”
“Not a problem,” Ares said. “We can use the Argo to transport people to a world we saw not that far away.”
“We would have to transport materials back and forth from here to there,” Sam said thinking about it all. There were a lot of hurdles to overcome but he had the feeling that they would be able to do it.
“We might be able to set up a black project about it,” Robert said.
“Yeah, but they’re about to cancel your division and hand it over to a private sector. When that happens any black project would be open to the public,” Jack said.
“What if we put it in the black project for the UWCC,” Sam said musing to himself. He would be able to control it and make sure no one interfered with it. That and he was sure that some useful technology would come out of it.
“That might work,” Robert said as he thought about it. The UWCC had a lot of black projects already and one more would probably not raise any questions unless it became too expensive. “What about expenses?”
“I think we can get around that,” Sam said.
“Then we’ll go for it,” Jack said.
“How do we contact you to begin this,” Sam asked Ares who had been silent for the moment.
“Your assistant, Rebecca is with one of my pilots, he can contact us,” Ares said looking at Robert.
“Okay, we’ll start out work then,” Sam said as they got up and went their own way.
*****
Nall was walking along with Rebecca as they were waiting for Ares and Robert to come out of the building. There were few people around so they were left along for the most part.
“So is there anyone special back where you’re from,” Rebecca asked him.
“You know, a girl at every dock type thing,” Nall replied with a smile and a shrug.
“Ah, the typical military pilot,” Rebecca said.
“Actually that pretty atypical about us pilots,” Nall told her. “Most of the pilots I knew have families or were orphans because of the war.”
“What about you,” Rebecca asked pushing her black hair out of her eyes where the wind just blew it back.
“Orphan,” he replied. “I was found after an attack by the Cylons on one of the outer settlements.”
“Wow, that’s terrible,” Rebecca said. “Do you remember your parents at all?”
“No, the attack happened when I was an infant,” Nall answered. Though there were times when he had the feeling that his parents were with him, now was one of them.
“Weren’t you lonely,” Rebecca asked not sure she really could fathom being an orphan.
“The orphan factuality’s are very good, of course I guess they have to be with the war being so long. I guess I never really considered myself alone there, just a large, dysfunctional family I guess,” Nall said with a bit of a laugh.
“Well I guess the meeting went well, Robert is smiling,” Rebecca said motioning to the two men walking out of the building.
*****
Pratt got the message from Commander Ares that he was to move the Argo closer into the system so they could close the distance between trips with the shuttles. Ares had talked with Senator Williams and they were able to gain a bit of food for the ship and its personnel. Pratt had talked with his commander for a while as he figured out what was going to be happening.
Pratt went over everything that was going on. Once Ares got back on board they were going back to the planet where they were going to set up the base. Doctor Weaver was going to start the process with his team and they were going to have supplies. The Argo then would head back to pick up some volunteers to help start the construction while the senators tried to get a budget for them.
Pratt had the crew steer the ship towards the asteroid belt where they would hide among the asteroids. The ship moved though space until it reached its desired position. There was little left to do until the commander came aboard the ship and they left to the planet. Pratt also realized that it needed a name as well. They could not continue to call it the planet as much as they wanted to.
Pratt decided to talk to the commander about it. Perhaps they could make a contest for the crew to name the new base. That might improve moral even more than it was. The only thing hampering it was the taste of the food, which he hoped would improve soon.
*****
The Battlestar Argo’s scanners continued to pick up the transmissions from Earth. The signals grew stronger as the ship moved closer to the planet. Deep in the computer within its hard drive buried under layers of code something stirred like a beast waking up from hibernation.
It analyzed the signals that came in to make sure it was time. The signal was strong enough so it was time to go to work. Slowly it began to work its way through the computer until it found what it was looking for.
*****
Commander Ares walked up to the bridge where he was sure he would find Colonel Pratt. Walking onto the bridge he was about to give the command to head to the planet where they would set up their base. He has just stepped on the bridge when chaos seemed to erupt all around him.
“Colonel, we have a problem,” Renee said from where she was sitting. Her screen had suddenly gone blank and there was a bunch of unintelligible symbols that started to scroll across it.
Pratt looked up from his screen that was had gone haywire to Renee’s. Her screen was doing the same thing. Glancing around he noticed that everyone’s was. He was able to see that Commander Ares was now on board and he wondered what was going on.
“What’s going on colonel,” Ares asked not sure if there was anything else that had been going on.
“Not sure commander, it just started a micron ago,” Pratt replied.
“What’s the system status,” Ares asked. He wanted to know in case they had to do anything important.
“No one is able to bring anything up at all,” Pratt replied.
Ares was beginning to wonder if his new friends on Earth were responsible for such an attack. He quickly asked if they had communications available or not. He was told that they did not at the moment as all systems appeared to be down. Ares quickly told Pratt to inform Troy that a combat patrol was to be set up immediately.
Ares then sent another person off in search of Doctor Weaver to see if he could make any sense out of what was going on. He did not have to wait long until Weaver appeared on the bridge.
“Commander, what’s going on with the computers,” Weaver asked. He had been on his way up to the bridge when one of the crew from the bridge saw him. His computer had gone a bit haywire in the lab and he had been wondering if they were doing something on the bridge.
“That’s what I was about to ask you doctor,” Ares said.
“I was working when the computers just went haywire on me,” Weaver said.
“Well whatever is going on we need to find it and fix it,” Ares said.
*****
Troy realized that something strange was going on when the internal monitors stopped their normal broadcast of internal going on within the ship and started to spew strange symbols. He looked around to see if he could find out what was going on but was not able to see anything.
“What’s going on,” Bri said standing next to Troy.
“I’m not sure,” Troy said as he watched the symbols on the screen.
“Interesting, I wonder if the rest of the ship is like this or not,” Bri said knowing that if the rest of the ship was then a lot of systems would be down.
“I think that we better get to the launch bay,” Troy said. “Tell all the pilots that you meet that I want them all in their hanger for a meeting right away.”
“All right,” Bri said wondering what he was thinking. She quickly went over and told the group that was sitting looking at the monitor while speculating on what was causing it.
“Lieutenant Bri,” Pratt said as he came up behind her making Bri spin around at her name being called. “Do you know where Captain Troy is?”
“He’s heading down to Alpha launch bay. He’s called a meeting of all pilots down there,” Bri said.
“Good,” Pratt said turning to head down there.
“What’s going on colonel,” Bri asked wondering what was going on.
“We’re not sure,” Pratt said. “We’re not even sure what’s going on around us right now.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” Bri said then went to find the rest of the pilots.
*****
Troy was standing in the middle of a group of pilots who were wondering what was going on when he spotted Colonel Pratt walking towards them. It looked like he approved what Troy was doing at the moment.
“I’m glad you’re all here,” Pratt said turning his attention to the group. “As many of you may know there is a problem with the computers right now. Something has corrupted the drives and Doctor Weaver and his team is working on getting it repaired at the moment. But we are blind in space and without communications, external or internal. The commander wants to have a combat patrol going at all times right now.”
“But with no communications how will we launch and land,” one of them said.
“It’s a blind launch and landing,” Troy replied.
“Consider it training,” Gunther added from where he was standing. They both knew that few people liked blind launches and landings. It meant that the pilot had complete control and was practiced in case of combat damage to the ship.
“We need to know what’s going on around us just in case. The commander and I don’t think it has anything to do with Earth, but we need to make sure,” Pratt said.
“All right, you heard the colonel,” Troy said. “We’ll go in groups of four, Jax, Bri, Adam and I will make the first group.”
Bri stifled a groan but knew that she was going to be in the first group. The only problem was she hated blind landings. It was the one part of the training that she had to repeat several times before she finally did it successfully. Now she was going to be doing it for real and she was not happy about it. Taking a deep breath she walked with the others to her viper.
“Communications between vipers is working, so wait until you hear the all clear from the person beside you before you launch,” Troy said to the group. They would be launching in order, Troy, Bri, Adam then finally Jax. All three nodded their heads as the crew raced to prepare the ship for the launches.
Bri settled into her viper and waited to hear that Troy had launched all right. His voice came over the radio saying he was clear. Bri took a deep breath then pushed her turbo button feeling herself pushed back as her viper accelerated and was shot out into space. She let Adam know that she was clear and went to join up with Troy.
Troy was already looking at his scanner for anything that might be out of the ordinary nearby. He did not see anything and was hopeful that the computers were just having a malfunction at the moment and would pass. With that thought he wondered how long the computers would be down. They had set up contact with one other pilot who was staying on board the Argo to listen in to their conversations and let the bridge know what was going on.
“Green leader to Argo listener over,” Troy said.
“Argo listener here, go ahead green leader,” Gunther said over the radio. He had volunteered to be the listener. He was like Troy in wanting to do something when something was going on.
“Scanners are clear at the moment, will keep in contact,” Troy said and Gunther acknowledged the reply. Troy also figured that Pratt would be standing by while Ares worked on whatever the problem was.
“All right, let’s stay close to the Argo for now, but keep and eye out for anything that might be dangerous,” Troy said as they set up patrol paths.
*****
Nall was getting worried. Rebecca was sitting next to him watching as Nall’s face grew more concerned with each passing second.
“What’s wrong,” Rebecca finally asked not able to stand it anymore.
“I can’t get in touch with the Argo right now. They were headed closer to Earth last I heard. I hope nothing happened,” Nall said worried about what might have happened.
“If you want I can try to get a picture of the Argo on the probe,” Rebecca said.
“No, if that gets out then everything might get sticky,” Nall said. The last thing he really wanted after listening to Rebecca talk about her planet was something like this coming out right now.
“All right, try contacting them again,” Rebecca said.
“Well it has been a while since I last tried,” Nall said picking up the transmitter. “Nall calling Argo, come in Argo.”
“Nall, this is green leader, what’s up,” Nall heard Troy’s voice say. That made him frown a bit. He wondered why Troy was answering his call.
“Troy, I’ve been trying to reach the Argo with no success, is everything all right,” Nall asked.
“Computer problem,” Troy answered back. “Knocked out the communications, what do you need?”
“I was just going to let you know that Senators Williams and Harvey were talking it over with a few other people to get the project started,” Nall said. “That and we have a few volunteers already.”
“All right, though it might be a bit longer until we are ready to take people on board,” Troy said.
“Understood,” Nall said as they ended their conversation.
“Problem,” Rebecca asked Nall.
“Yeah, it appears so,” Nall said.
“Perhaps I might be able to help,” Rebecca said. “I’ve got a laptop here that we might be able to use to see what’s going on.”
“I’m not sure about that. Some on board might think it was you who did it in the first place,” Nall said.
“Then all the better for me to do it. I would know what to look for,” Rebecca said.
“All right, I’ll ask and see what they say,” Nall said.
*****
Ares was not sure what to make of the request. He half wondered if someone on Earth knew they were here thinking that they might be a threat to their planet. He also knew that at the moment they did not have a working computer on board so this might help. He had given Nall permission to bring Rebecca back on board with her stuff.
Ares received word that the shuttle had landed. He knew that the two of them would be making their way up to the bridge. They had also changed the patrol which so far had not noticed anything out of the ordinary yet. Troy was standing on the bridge along with Bri. He glanced at them and wondered if they would join anytime soon. He had seen several couples already forming during their journey and others were like Nall and Jax. They just liked to have company.
Nall and Rebecca walked onto the bridge and Ares noticed that Rebecca was carrying a bag over her shoulder. She looked around then back at Nall and said something to him that Ares did not catch.
“Commander, where can she set up,” Nall asked him.
“Ah, how much room do you need,” Ares asked Rebecca.
“Only enough room for this,” Rebecca said pulling out a slim pad and opened it up. This was a computer Ares thought to himself. It was smaller than anything they had that was for sure. “And I’ll need to see if we can even connect at all. Do you have a wireless connection or is it going to be a hardwire?”
Ares looked at her a bit strangely for a moment. He was rescued however by Weaver who was on the bridge trying to figure out what was going on with the computer.
“Hardwire,” Weaver said. “We don’t do wireless because of the Cylons.”
“All right, then I’ll also need a place to hook up as well,” Rebecca replied.
“So, you’ve fell for a computer whiz,” Bri said as she leaned towards Nall.
“I didn’t know she knew anything about electronics,” Nall said.
“I think she might know more than most of us,” Bri said. “Better watch yourself or she might know more about other things as well,” she said waggling her eyebrows.
“I doubt that, I’m a master in that, you’re just jealous that you’re still a novice,” he said in a whisper then leaned toward her to whisper in her ear. “So I hear that you’ve been sleeping with Troy?”
Bri turned red at that and tried to give him a scowl which did not work with him. “I’ll have you know he’s a perfect gentleman.”
“You mean you sleep on opposite sides of the bed,” Nall said. “How boring.”
“I never said that, he’s quite good,” Bri said then realizing what she had said blushed again. “You are in so much trouble,” she said with a growl as he laughed at her.
Rebecca glanced over to where Nall was laughing with Bri. She narrowed her eyes a bit at Bri who looked a bit too comfortable with Nall. She stopped and realized she had no claim on Nall and figured she would have to fix that problem. Right now however there was a problem at hand that she might be able to fix.
*****
Pratt walked onto the bridge to see everyone working except Nall, Troy and Bri who were standing off to the side of the bridge. He quickly located Commander Ares and walked over to him. He was bringing in the latest news from the patrols. He was glad that it was good new and nothing had been found. They were still sitting in space with nothing much around them though. That was good and bad. It was good in that they were not in danger of running into anything but the bad was they were in an area where they might could be seen by observations from Earth.
Ares noticed him standing there and motioned him over. He walked over and quickly gave him the report of what was going on. Ares seemed to be glad that nothing was happened. Pratt asked how things were going.
“Well we are just about to connect Rebecca’s computer here to ours. It took a while to get the right connections for the two computers,” Ares said to him.
“And there is no guarantee that the two systems will even acknowledge each other,” Pratt said.
“Right,” Rebecca said from where she was sitting. “All right, let’s go,” she stated as she clicked on the keyboard of her laptop. It was state of the art with a quad core processors giving it extra speed along with the latest OS from CoreComputer. It was the OS that over took the old Window and Apple OS place. It was far superior to anything either company had ever made.
Ares and Weaver watched as Rebecca typed along on the computer. The first step was making the computers ‘talk’ to each other.
“Ah, this will be easier than I thought,” Rebecca said a bit shocked. The computer recognized the Argo’s computer as a computer written in BASIC. She was actually a bit surprised at that and went to work. “Good,” she murmured as she continued to work. Then suddenly she was in their computer system. It was easier than she had thought for a race that had built a spaceship. The computer seemed to be far simpler than anything she had ever used.
“All right, I’m in,” Rebecca said “Now let’s see if we can find out what’s going on.”
Weaver took a seat next to her to see if he could help when her computer suddenly took on a life of its own.
“What the hell,” Rebecca said as she quickly typed commands into the computer. It took only a few seconds as she realized something was being transmitted to her computer. She quickly set to work to make sure that whatever it was did not get into the kernel of the OS of her computer.
“Hey, is that supposed to happen,” Ares asked from where he was standing.
“No,” Rebecca said then her screen turned to something else. “Now what,” she said. They watched as the computer suddenly gave images which they both watched with curiosity.
“Hey, those look like schematics,” Weaver said as he continued to look at it. The screen took on a more defined image and Weaver was able to see everything more clearly now. “Commander, this is the design of some sort of system, hold on, yes, I see.”
Everyone was wondering what he was talking about. They were hoping that he would clarify himself quickly before they went insane trying to figure out what he was saying.
“This is a design for metals and carbon fibers to help hide our ships from our scanners,” Weaver said.
“Are you sure,” Ares asked.
“Yes, we were working on such a thing before I left, now I have the way to produce it,” Weaver said.
“This could be very important,” Ares said.
“Commander, our systems are coming back on line,” Renee said.
Rebecca watched as the screen ended at the end of page was a small sentence. “Does this mean anything to you,” Rebecca asked.
“Well I’ll be,” Ares said.
Several people looked at the screen in wonder as they read the sentence and realized what had happened.
‘We thank you for your help, now that you have found Earth we hope that this helps in your upcoming battles.’
“I guess they weren’t so bad after all,” Troy said. The group remembered an alien race that they had helped. Now it looked like they were helping them back.
“Wonder why our computer didn’t display it,” Ares said.
“I can explain,” Rebecca said. “Whoever designed it made it very graphic oriented and that it needed a computer from both of our worlds. It would complete it cycle once it recognized both OSs.”
“Well, now that that is over we can start to take volunteers,” Ares said.
“Can I get a copy of that,” Weaver said to Rebecca.
“Sure,” Rebecca replied.
This was going to be an interesting assignment.
End Part 16