BSG/Voyager Crossover - Part 8b
For 
bantha_fodder's BSG/Crossover ficathon. Dedicated to
regencyg!
Pairing:Janeway/Adama, Sr. or Janeway/Roslin
Prompt: Galactica stumbles into the Delta Quadrant and meet Voyager, Bill and Kathryn bond over the demands of keeping everyone safe. Or Kathryn and Laura bond over being women in charge. Or both.
Title: Flying Colours Part 8: Stirring up the Hornets' Nest (continued)
Word Count: 3,983
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Refer to Part 1
Flying Colours - Part 8b: Stirring up the Hornets' Nest
"She has given us a choice of three candidates," Laura quipped as she brought out the device Janeway had given her. "Depending on which one matches our map."
She activated the device, put it on the briefing table and stepped back. The stars were projected into thin air; a pulsar, with spectacular jets streaking from its poles, zoomed into focus and Janeway's voice filled the air as the Quorum members jumped back from the hologram.
"This is an old pulsar approximately eighty-eight light years from here," the Captain of Voyager said as a series of numbers glowed a short distance away from the pulsar. "Coordinates close this pulsar should be apparent now--they are coordinates relative to our current position. Near this pulsar, there appears to be a cyclical wormhole aperture."
They all gasped as a glowing blossom of light and gas opened in space.
"However, this wormhole is unlikely to be the proper phenomenon as it appears to be unstable and we probably would have difficulty predicting its exit aperture with any reliability. Furthermore, although most ships can use wormholes, it would be far more dangerous for hyper ships as their engines tend to attract free verteron particles and could theoretically destabilise the wormhole. Finally, I’m pretty sure there are no wormhole apertures in the vicinity of Earth--believe me, if there had been, Starfleet would have found them by now. Earth is the seat of the Federation President and Council, and we take our security very seriously. Cyclical wormholes jump around, but they have predictable positions they might exit to each time they cycle. However, they've been known to reverse cycle polarity. That means that this end may appear fixed for now, while the exit end jumps around, but on the next cycle, or perhaps in a hundred cycles, the exit end may anchor and this end would begin to cycle locations.
"This is our second choice," Janeway continued and the image changed to show the roiling, twisting colours of what appeared to be a nebula or some sort of gaseous cloud with more coordinates glowing on it. "It is a core inversion spatial rift approximately one hundred and two light years away. This rift is old and more importantly, stable to hyperspace vessels. However, all known inversion rifts pass through the core of the galaxy and I doubt that this one is an exception. Unless you can precisely navigate this type of rift to target its companion on the other side of the galactic core, you could end up anywhere in the galaxy, or even conceivably in another galaxy altogether, if you end up anywhere at all. I doubt your ancestors could navigate this one and in any case, the closest inversion rift to Earth is in the Klingon Empire--hundreds of light years from Earth. No one goes into Klingon territory except by express invitation, and even then, smart people think about it long and hard."
There was a moment of silence, before Janeway's voice resumed and the image changed once again to a binary system on the edge of another spectacular nebula. Bright spots of light burst like fireworks in the space between the suns and died quickly, before another one blossomed.
"This last set of coordinates--about one hundred and twenty-nine light years away near this Type 11 Nebula--is the one I believe you're headed for. In this binary system is a nexus of no less than twelve interplexing flectures. The good news is that there is a single flecture point right in Earth's backyard--between the wide binary companion stars of the Alpha Centauri system a mere four light years from Earth. The bad news is that interplexing flectures--like wormholes--are by nature unstable, though they generally only fluctuate in their spatial position. However, there are ways to stabilize them long enough to use them.
"Here is the kicker, ladies and gentlemen--this nexus seems to be spatially anchored to this system’s two suns, as the flecture point back home is anchored between the Alpha Centauri suns. However, although they are not fluctuating in space, they are fluctuating in time. So not only do you have to choose the correct flecture point--and I'll give you that one in twelve chance--you also have to stabilize its chronometrics, or you risk ending up on Earth in a time when it was in no shape to be of any use to you.
“Furthermore, your ships would have to transit the flecture one at a time, so you risk sending each ship to a different timeframe--perhaps some of your people would love being back when the dinosaurs ruled the planet, or others would like it in the twentieth century when humans had so many nuclear weapons trained on each other, we could have blown the planet up a thousand times over. Or perhaps there are those of you would prefer the late twenty-first century, when we finally did blow ourselves up, killing ten billion people in a single day."
Adama felt the pain in the woman's voice and knew this was no bluff or tugging at the heartstrings, but cold reality.
"History calls it World War Three; my father called it the Twenty-five Year War as it flared on and off for years. But technologically, we grew up quickly then; Zephram Cochrane flew us to the stars--in the first warp ship scavenged from a leftover warhead--and we encountered our first alien species, the Vulcans. Then again, some of you may enjoy the future--except for one little thing you need to be acquainted with about the Federation. My officers have already acquainted you with our Prime Directive, which governs our travel and actions in space, now I'm going to acquaint you with our Temporal Prime Directive, which governs our actions when travelling in time. It's simple really; make one step outside the established timeline--past or future--and let's just say that you'll make the acquaintance of the Timeship Relativity, or one of her cohorts, and the temporal agents who guard the timeline. And when you do, tell them Kathryn Janeway sent you--they know me well enough that just thinking about me gives them headaches--and believe me, they so hate having to repair temporal incursions into the timeline. Think about it."
The stunned silence gave way to utter pandemonium.
“That’s preposterous!” Zarek shouted. “Time travel is impossible!”
“Actually it’s not,” William said; they regarded his smiling face in shock. “Time travel is precisely why our ships’ engines work the way they do, forcing us to make quick jumps short-cutting through hyperspace to our destination. If we tried to ride the waves of hyperspace for any length of time, we would start going back in time with no way to orient ourselves until we exit back into normal space--if ever we can. Ask Dr. Baltar.”
Every eye was trained on the scientist. “He’s right,” Baltar conceded. “Time travel is a theoretical possibility. But no one has been able to prove it can be done. And her claim to be able to stabilize such a phenomenon’s chronometrics is patently absurd--if that is what is really there in the first place.”
“Lieutenant Gaeta,” Laura called over the din of voices that Baltar’s pronouncement stirred up. “How long would it take you to tell if those last coordinates Captain Janeway gave us are the match the nebula we obtained from the tomb of Athena, using this system as a reference point?”
Adama smiled; Laura had certainly come into the meeting with all her birds neatly lined up. Gaeta was not a usual attendee of Quorum meetings.
“Not long, Ma’am,” he replied with a sudden grin that lit up his face. “The Admiral made it SOP--standard operating procedure--that we update our read on the Lagoon Nebula after every jump. But right now, President Roslin, I can tell you that the ones Captain Janeway chose are most likely correct--”
“How so?” Zarek demanded. "Why not the rift nebula?"
Adama nodded and the young man continued. “We found it just before we made the last jump that brought us into contact with Voyager,” he said. “There are a number of systems on the edge of the nebula and one appears to be a wide binary system if we approach it from the vector indicated by nebula's relative position in the star map, but we won’t have confirmation for another two jumps when we’re close enough to have a better resolution.”
“Right where she said that nexus of inter-whatever phenomenon will be anchored,” Laura said.
“Interplexing flectures--yes, Ma’am.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Laura said before turning back to the Quorum. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “Whether you like it or not, we’re going to have to take Captain Janeway and her people seriously. And I mean very seriously, because there is no way she’s going to lead us to Earth if there is a chance that we might lead the Cylons there as well. That means that we’re going to have to grow up as a people very quickly, because as you can see from that one small ship, Earth is not alone in its United Federation of Planets. We’re going to have to learn tolerance not only for aliens, but for artificial life-forms, other technologies, and especially other cultural customs that these human beings may have. And we’re also going to have to tell them why the Cylons hate us so much.”
“You must be joking!” Sara Porter shouted.
“Do I look like I’m joking, Ms Porter,” Laura snarled. Adama smiled thinly; yet again the Quorum was surprised by the lioness showing her claws. “If we want their help in neutralizing the Cylon threat and making sure they can no longer follow us, we have to tell them the truth--that we created the Cylons.”
#
To Part 9
bantha_fodder's BSG/Crossover ficathon. Dedicated to
regencyg!
Pairing:Janeway/Adama, Sr. or Janeway/Roslin
Prompt: Galactica stumbles into the Delta Quadrant and meet Voyager, Bill and Kathryn bond over the demands of keeping everyone safe. Or Kathryn and Laura bond over being women in charge. Or both.
Title: Flying Colours Part 8: Stirring up the Hornets' Nest (continued)
Word Count: 3,983
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Refer to Part 1
Flying Colours - Part 8b: Stirring up the Hornets' Nest
"She has given us a choice of three candidates," Laura quipped as she brought out the device Janeway had given her. "Depending on which one matches our map."
She activated the device, put it on the briefing table and stepped back. The stars were projected into thin air; a pulsar, with spectacular jets streaking from its poles, zoomed into focus and Janeway's voice filled the air as the Quorum members jumped back from the hologram.
"This is an old pulsar approximately eighty-eight light years from here," the Captain of Voyager said as a series of numbers glowed a short distance away from the pulsar. "Coordinates close this pulsar should be apparent now--they are coordinates relative to our current position. Near this pulsar, there appears to be a cyclical wormhole aperture."
They all gasped as a glowing blossom of light and gas opened in space.
"However, this wormhole is unlikely to be the proper phenomenon as it appears to be unstable and we probably would have difficulty predicting its exit aperture with any reliability. Furthermore, although most ships can use wormholes, it would be far more dangerous for hyper ships as their engines tend to attract free verteron particles and could theoretically destabilise the wormhole. Finally, I’m pretty sure there are no wormhole apertures in the vicinity of Earth--believe me, if there had been, Starfleet would have found them by now. Earth is the seat of the Federation President and Council, and we take our security very seriously. Cyclical wormholes jump around, but they have predictable positions they might exit to each time they cycle. However, they've been known to reverse cycle polarity. That means that this end may appear fixed for now, while the exit end jumps around, but on the next cycle, or perhaps in a hundred cycles, the exit end may anchor and this end would begin to cycle locations.
"This is our second choice," Janeway continued and the image changed to show the roiling, twisting colours of what appeared to be a nebula or some sort of gaseous cloud with more coordinates glowing on it. "It is a core inversion spatial rift approximately one hundred and two light years away. This rift is old and more importantly, stable to hyperspace vessels. However, all known inversion rifts pass through the core of the galaxy and I doubt that this one is an exception. Unless you can precisely navigate this type of rift to target its companion on the other side of the galactic core, you could end up anywhere in the galaxy, or even conceivably in another galaxy altogether, if you end up anywhere at all. I doubt your ancestors could navigate this one and in any case, the closest inversion rift to Earth is in the Klingon Empire--hundreds of light years from Earth. No one goes into Klingon territory except by express invitation, and even then, smart people think about it long and hard."
There was a moment of silence, before Janeway's voice resumed and the image changed once again to a binary system on the edge of another spectacular nebula. Bright spots of light burst like fireworks in the space between the suns and died quickly, before another one blossomed.
"This last set of coordinates--about one hundred and twenty-nine light years away near this Type 11 Nebula--is the one I believe you're headed for. In this binary system is a nexus of no less than twelve interplexing flectures. The good news is that there is a single flecture point right in Earth's backyard--between the wide binary companion stars of the Alpha Centauri system a mere four light years from Earth. The bad news is that interplexing flectures--like wormholes--are by nature unstable, though they generally only fluctuate in their spatial position. However, there are ways to stabilize them long enough to use them.
"Here is the kicker, ladies and gentlemen--this nexus seems to be spatially anchored to this system’s two suns, as the flecture point back home is anchored between the Alpha Centauri suns. However, although they are not fluctuating in space, they are fluctuating in time. So not only do you have to choose the correct flecture point--and I'll give you that one in twelve chance--you also have to stabilize its chronometrics, or you risk ending up on Earth in a time when it was in no shape to be of any use to you.
“Furthermore, your ships would have to transit the flecture one at a time, so you risk sending each ship to a different timeframe--perhaps some of your people would love being back when the dinosaurs ruled the planet, or others would like it in the twentieth century when humans had so many nuclear weapons trained on each other, we could have blown the planet up a thousand times over. Or perhaps there are those of you would prefer the late twenty-first century, when we finally did blow ourselves up, killing ten billion people in a single day."
Adama felt the pain in the woman's voice and knew this was no bluff or tugging at the heartstrings, but cold reality.
"History calls it World War Three; my father called it the Twenty-five Year War as it flared on and off for years. But technologically, we grew up quickly then; Zephram Cochrane flew us to the stars--in the first warp ship scavenged from a leftover warhead--and we encountered our first alien species, the Vulcans. Then again, some of you may enjoy the future--except for one little thing you need to be acquainted with about the Federation. My officers have already acquainted you with our Prime Directive, which governs our travel and actions in space, now I'm going to acquaint you with our Temporal Prime Directive, which governs our actions when travelling in time. It's simple really; make one step outside the established timeline--past or future--and let's just say that you'll make the acquaintance of the Timeship Relativity, or one of her cohorts, and the temporal agents who guard the timeline. And when you do, tell them Kathryn Janeway sent you--they know me well enough that just thinking about me gives them headaches--and believe me, they so hate having to repair temporal incursions into the timeline. Think about it."
The stunned silence gave way to utter pandemonium.
“That’s preposterous!” Zarek shouted. “Time travel is impossible!”
“Actually it’s not,” William said; they regarded his smiling face in shock. “Time travel is precisely why our ships’ engines work the way they do, forcing us to make quick jumps short-cutting through hyperspace to our destination. If we tried to ride the waves of hyperspace for any length of time, we would start going back in time with no way to orient ourselves until we exit back into normal space--if ever we can. Ask Dr. Baltar.”
Every eye was trained on the scientist. “He’s right,” Baltar conceded. “Time travel is a theoretical possibility. But no one has been able to prove it can be done. And her claim to be able to stabilize such a phenomenon’s chronometrics is patently absurd--if that is what is really there in the first place.”
“Lieutenant Gaeta,” Laura called over the din of voices that Baltar’s pronouncement stirred up. “How long would it take you to tell if those last coordinates Captain Janeway gave us are the match the nebula we obtained from the tomb of Athena, using this system as a reference point?”
Adama smiled; Laura had certainly come into the meeting with all her birds neatly lined up. Gaeta was not a usual attendee of Quorum meetings.
“Not long, Ma’am,” he replied with a sudden grin that lit up his face. “The Admiral made it SOP--standard operating procedure--that we update our read on the Lagoon Nebula after every jump. But right now, President Roslin, I can tell you that the ones Captain Janeway chose are most likely correct--”
“How so?” Zarek demanded. "Why not the rift nebula?"
Adama nodded and the young man continued. “We found it just before we made the last jump that brought us into contact with Voyager,” he said. “There are a number of systems on the edge of the nebula and one appears to be a wide binary system if we approach it from the vector indicated by nebula's relative position in the star map, but we won’t have confirmation for another two jumps when we’re close enough to have a better resolution.”
“Right where she said that nexus of inter-whatever phenomenon will be anchored,” Laura said.
“Interplexing flectures--yes, Ma’am.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Laura said before turning back to the Quorum. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “Whether you like it or not, we’re going to have to take Captain Janeway and her people seriously. And I mean very seriously, because there is no way she’s going to lead us to Earth if there is a chance that we might lead the Cylons there as well. That means that we’re going to have to grow up as a people very quickly, because as you can see from that one small ship, Earth is not alone in its United Federation of Planets. We’re going to have to learn tolerance not only for aliens, but for artificial life-forms, other technologies, and especially other cultural customs that these human beings may have. And we’re also going to have to tell them why the Cylons hate us so much.”
“You must be joking!” Sara Porter shouted.
“Do I look like I’m joking, Ms Porter,” Laura snarled. Adama smiled thinly; yet again the Quorum was surprised by the lioness showing her claws. “If we want their help in neutralizing the Cylon threat and making sure they can no longer follow us, we have to tell them the truth--that we created the Cylons.”
#
To Part 9