Brothers in arms

A Babylon5 nbsg crossover,

In 2190 the Earth Alliance starts searching for new colony worlds far out on the outer rim of the galaxy.

The Explorer class ship Marco Polo comes across a world that appears to have suffered a nuclear Armageddon some time in the distant past.

With radiation levels having returned to just survivable levels it is decided to build a jump gate here as an interim stopover point for future expansion.

Knowing that a similar species to humanity once lived on this world with some kind of robotic mechanical constructs it is decided that the Marco Polo search for the origin of this race, archaeological finds indicate that this race originated from a more distant planet called Kobol.

Another habitable world was found in a nebula and another jump gate was built in this system

It wasn't the best of environments being wet and cold most of the time.

But the captain of the Marco Polo thought that British settlers would probably love it as it was cold and bleak and would remind them of home.

Several years later the EAS Marco Polo found another garden world it too had suffered a cataclysm in the distant past but now it had regenerated into a lush world perfect for colonisation.

While the jumpgate was being built the exploration of this world discovered that it was the world of Kobol that the relics from the first one indicated that this was their home world.

Yet scientific investigations indicated that no form of industrialisation had been present on the world over five thousand years ago.

In fact all indications showed that Kobol had been terraformed and a human population transplanted to it.

Interplanetary Expeditions even went so far to say that only the mythical first ones had the technology that long ago to transport humans so far from the earth.

Having already found one world that was obviously a human world they speculated that it was possible that brothers of man may remain yet to be discovered by the parent branch.

Once it was resupplied and the first colonists arrived from the earth the EAS Marco Polo set out again to find these rumoured brothers of man.

The Marco Polo had found many worlds while not suitable for colonisation were more than worth their exploitation because of their mineralogical wealth.

As it travelled further it discovered more worlds ripe for colonisation or exploitation.

It suddenly occurred to the captain of the Marco Polo that this edge of the galactic arm appeared to have never been colonised even by the first ones.

As he thought this an alarm erupted from engineering and as a precaution the Marco Polo dropped out of hyperspace to make repairs.

While the EAS Marco Polo was making repairs it started intercepting radio and video transmissions from what appeared to be humans speaking a bastardised version on ancient Greek with some proto Latin influences.

This baffled the crew of the Marco Polo for as far as they knew no humans should have been this distant from the earth.

It was speculated by the xeno-biologists and Interplanetary Expeditions that this might have been a society that was taken by some of the rumoured first ones whose remnants they were tasked to look for.

After a quick discussion it was decided to travel to the very edge of the Helios-Alpha system in the Cyrannus star cluster and then send a transmission of introduction.

Then they would wait for a response and an invitation for additional contacts.

2200 CE / 20 CY BCH

When the EAS Marco Polo appeared at the edge of the Helios-Alpha system it triggered the Colonial early warning system and even before they could complete the transmission of their first contact greeting the Battlestar Atlantia under the command of Rear Admiral Nagala suddenly appeared a short distance away from the Marco Polo scaring the hell out of its crew.

Captain Abraham Bennett was shocked by the sudden appearance of a ship so close to the Marco Polo.

Even if his explorer class ship did dwarf the smaller colonial vessel the latter was far bulkier and had a lot more weapons.

After communications had been established he had been politely invited to come on board the Atlantia to start preliminary discussions.

It didn't miss his attention that while he was preparing a shuttle nearly a dozen more of these Battlestars appeared close to the Marco Polo.

Upon arrival on board the Atlantia Captain Bennett immediately noticed that these Colonials possessed artificial gravity and that alone if they could get the rights to it would make this first contact very profitable indeed.

The meeting with rear Admiral Nagala was very brief the Colonial government had received their first contact transmission shortly after the arrival of the Atlantia and even as Captain Bennett was shuttling over to the Atlantia the President of the twelve colonies of Kobol had already ordered that the Earth ship be escorted into Caprican orbit so that direct negotiations between the President and Captain Bennett could commence.

As he headed back to the Marco Polo Captain Bennett shook his head at what he had seen while the Colonials did have some very advanced technology they still used a form of fossil fuel for power generation and their ships stilled used kinetic weapons with no sign of any energy based armaments.

It was as if they had technology from the 40th century mixed up with that of the 21st century.

And then there was the issue of how these colonials came to be here on the out rim of the galaxy in the first place.

These were all puzzles that needed to be solved.

Luckily for him it wouldn't be his problem.

All he needed to do was get permission from these Colonials to build a jumpgate in one of their star systems and then Earthgov could send diplomates and trade delegations to deal with these Colonials.

The President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, George Constanza watched the live feed as the earth ship the EAS Marco Polo travelled sedately towards Caprica.

It would have been impossible to hide the fact that an earth ship had arrived in the Twelve Colonies after their transmission so he hadn't even tried.

He only wished that those bloody media raptors would stop harassing the Marco Polo.

He already had five squadrons of vipers chasing the bloody media off but they kept on returning in greater and greater numbers.

They just didn't think.

The earth ship was four time the length of the current Colonial battlestars though not as bulky.

And he knew how difficult it was to manoeuvre very large vessels.

If the bloody press didn't keep their distance he'd have to order the vipers to open fire just to keep the earth ship safe.

Captain Abraham Bennett could not believe the media frenzy that the Marco Polo's appearance had created.

They had finally managed to make it to Caprica's orbit without crushing one of the news raptors but he didn't really know how they had avoided that.

Now he had to meet with the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and their quorum of twelve.

Though some of the talking heads they had been listening too were insisting that it had to be renamed the quorum of thirteen now that their brothers had returned to the fold.

From viewing the media reports Captain Abraham Bennett knew that their appearance was a powder keg just waiting to be lit.

The journey to Caprica had allowed him some time to think over this issue and he had decided that the truth was probably the best.

He would tell the unedited truth to the Colonial president and he could deal with the political repercussions.

Hopefully he could keep most of it quiet for a period of time.

After all it appears that the colonials didn't know how they got to this Kobol and the Earth certainly didn't though he did personally suspect that some of the First Ones simply had to have been involved as nobody else really had the ability five thousand year ago to transport humans to the very edge of the galaxy.

The first public meet and greet went well with the Colonial President and the Quorum of Twelve but President George Constanza was concerned and his political senses kicked into overdrive when Captain Abraham Bennett suggested that they have a private meeting to discuss some minor differences.

Captain Abraham Bennett sat in the office of the Colonial President George Constanza and after having taken a sip of a strong liquor ambrosia he turned to look at President Constanza and said, "Mr President I asked for this private meeting as it has come to our attention through the media coverage that the histories both our peoples know diverge and we are at a loss to explain it.

I wanted to let you know straight away so that if necessary you can spin doctor the knowledge as you think best.

While we don't want to debase your religion and I might add that it is still worshiped by a small minority of people on the earth your religion is from a very early culture on earth.

Now before you say anything I will admit that we don't know how you come to be out here either though we do have some theories.

To cut to the chase your sacred scrolls state that your thirteenth tribe left to settle the earth four thousand years ago.

Unfortunately the sad fact is that we humans who live on the earth have buildings and other structures that are older than that date and we have documentary history of a town called Aleppo which has been continually occupied for eight thousand years with human habitation dating back a further five thousand years from that date.

We have other cities that each contest that they are the oldest like Jericho which while it is true that it might be the oldest city town on the earth it hasn't been continually occupied but archaeological evidence does indicate that it was first occupied thirteen thousand years ago.

At this point I would like to advise you that my command discovered a garden world several years ago that had ruins that match some of the records in your Holy Scrolls that makes me believe that this world might be the world you refer to as Kobol."

President Constanza's eyes lit up at this but Captain Abraham Bennett continues by saying, "However scientific investigation indicated that Kobol was terraformed only five thousand years ago and before that time had no sign of human life or any of our crops and animals.

I know your Scared Scrolls say that humanity began on Kobol but the fact is that we have archaeological evidence that humanity evolved on earth through fossil records that date back millions of years.

Now how your people came to be on Kobol and later these twelve colonies is a mystery to us.

One we would like to solve.

That is the dilemma we face as I suspect that some of your people won't take kindly to this new information.

I will make available to you all our historical databanks if you wish to have discrete historians take a look at them.

I hope you will treat this information delicately as we don't want to disrupt your society.

Now on to more important issues, I would like your permission to build a jumpgate in the Helios-alpha star system so that I can contact the Earth and get them to send a diplomatic mission here to negotiate directly with you and the twelve Colonies of Kobol.

They could probably arrange for some of your people to be taken to Kobol though there are probably quite a few earth colonists on it by now as garden worlds are rare finds."

President George Constanza agreed to the construction of the jumpgate while contemplating the Earth shattering revelations that had just been made to him.

He like the majority of his people who were only mildly religious would take the revelations in their stride.

But there was still a large minority that would react very unfavourably to any questioning of the validity of the sacred scrolls.

For now he would take up their offer and get some discrete researchers to do some digging for him in the Earthers archives.

Once he had this information then he could make the appropriate political decisions.

Earthgov was shocked when a shuttle from the Marco Polo arrived informing them that they had discovered a dozen worlds inhabited by humans who still worship the Greek pantheon of gods.

But what shocked them the most was the estimated twenty billion people that lived on these worlds.

Still this represented an unprecedented opportunity and a diplomatic ship was quickly sent to the twelve colonies of Kobol to negotiate a trade and other agreements.

Once the shuttle returned with an acknowledgement that Earthgov would be sending diplomatic teams to negotiate with the Colonials, Captain Abraham Bennett and the EAS Marco Polo left the Cyrannus star cluster and headed in the opposite direction to the red line border with the Cylons after a request from President George Constanza.

President George Constanza was sorry to see the Marco Polo go but he knew that orders were orders and it was an exploration ship.

Besides now they had the jumpgate Earth could send representatives whenever required and the Twelve Colonies of Kobol could even get hyperspace jump technology for themselves.

2210 / 10 CY BCH

President George Constanza had been re-elected for a record fifth term on the back of his successful contact with Earth.

Even though there had been religious turmoil over the revelation that earth was the home world of humanity eventually most accepted this fact once the irrefutable archaeological evidence was produced.

For the priests of the Lords of Kobol it didn't matter what man had written on some parchments.

If human interpretation was faulty than that was humanities fault not the gods.

What was even more blaring to the priests was the fact that nobody knew how humans got to Kobol.

This they said was obviously the act of the Lords of Kobol in taking humans from the earth for their own divine reasons.

As for the thirtieth tribe why they may have returned to the earth or found another world that they named after the fabled worlds.

But to President George Constanza the religious arguments meant little to him as the economic benefits of ties to the Earth Alliance and the alien races far outweighed the difficulties they presented.

Both the twelve Colonies of Kobol and the Earth Alliance underwent a technological cross pollination that would leave both human governments stronger in the long run.

At Earthforce Research and Development the artificial gravity and jump drives were an interesting enigma.

Very early on in their contact with the Colonials it became very apparent that they had very little understanding of the physics principles behind their operation.

They knew that the artificial gravity and jump drives had been gifts of their gods but they didn't know why they hadn't done any basic research into the principles behind their operation.

This was something Earthforce R&D quickly rectified.

In the decade since contact was established with twelve Colonies of Kobol Earthforce and the Earth Alliance had a far better understanding of the principles of the operation of the Colonial artificial gravity and jump drives than the Colonials did.

But Earthforce R&D made one other discovery that they kept quiet about.

During the investigation of the Colonial point to point jump drive it was discovered that at the point of making the jump an energy shield was created around the Colonial ships for the split second it took for the Colonial vessel to jump from one point to another.

As far as Earthforce R&D had been able to discover even the Colonials themselves didn't realise this happened at the point the jump was made.

The Energy shield would remain a top secret Earthforce R&D program for the next three decades while they perfected this new technology,

These technologies made all existing Earthforce ships obsolete overnight as with such a mass obsolesce evident a decision was made to essentially replace all existing Earthforce naval units with new ones designed from the keel up using all known existing technologies.

2216 CE / 4 CY BCH

Commander William Adama had just been given command of the Grand old lady of the fleet the Battlestar Galactica.

This was supposed to be the final tour for both Adama and the Galactica.

Yet no sooner had he taken command than he was order to take his new command and his scratch crew to the Neue Hanse Orbital Shipyards at Earth where the Galactica would undergo a completed refit.

This refit was not a normal refit but rather a complete rebuild.

Under a joint cooperation agreement between the Colonial Fleet and Earthforce the Galactica would be refitted to test Earthforce technologies before it was introduced to the rest of the Colonial fleet.

The Galactica would be at the Neue Hanse Orbital Shipyards for at least the next eighteen months.

Because of this families would be allowed to travel to the Earth with their spouses.

This had pleased Carolanne no end and their marriage that had been on shaky grounds had suddenly stabilized as her family used this connection to get close to the Earth mega corporations.

This also allowed both Zak and Lee to come as part of the crew along with their respective fiancée / girlfriends.

While Lee and Kara would learn about flying the nova starfury Zak would be stuck with flying raptors after he had flunked out of viper school.

Still he had heard from an Earthforce officer that the Earthforce Raptors were something special and he couldn't wait to fly this warthog variant.

When the Battlestar Galactica exited the jumpgate Bill Adama was stunned by the view of the Neue Hanse Orbital Shipyards.

He had thought that the Picon fleet yards were large but the Neue Hanse Orbital Shipyards dwarfed them all.

Bill thought that these Earthers must be a very paranoid people to want a four thousand ship navy.

Still he was stunned by the sight of Nova Dreadnoughts, Hyperion and Artemis warships production in Earth orbit with the four assembly lines churning out ships as he watched.

2217CE / 3CY BCH

Commander William Adama could only stand and watch as the old girl was being essentially gutted by the Earthers.

What had amazed him were all the faults they had found with the original construction that had meant that the Earther shipwrights had to strip back far more of the Galactica than they had originally thought.

Still that was nothing compared to yesterday's accident that saw an unexpected hull rupture in the flight bay suck a junior lieutenant Sharon Valerii.

That she survived her short exposure to space was a miracle but she had still not regained consciousness and remained in the Earther med bay with Earther medtechs and Dr Sherman Cottle keeping a close eye on her condition.

But those were the least of his problems his biggest on was Carolanne who was busy integrating herself with Earth High Society.

Bill was sure that the only reason that Carolanne remained with him was because the Galactica had been sent to the earth for its rebuild and Carolanne family wanted to be in the front row of powerful Colonial families having links to the Earthers and their technologies.

Dr David Collins examined his patient from the spacing accident.

He was very surprised that this Lt Sharon Valerii had managed to survive even though she was recovered quickly.

As she was still unconscious he decided to run further tests including to see if she has either a dormant or active telepathy gene.

So he was very surprised when he discovered that Lt Valerii has nearly ten percent of her body mass being made of silicon pathways and there is even nanonic machines present in her body.

It was very obvious from his scans that the pretty young LT had been bioengineered.

The question that remained was who had actually done it as from his understanding the Colonials didn't have the technical ability to do so.