Empty Space: A Battlestar Galactica Crossover

The sound of Lt Maud's voice reverberated reassuringly across the Combat Information Center, "Jump complete."

Specialist Rarity chimed in a moment later, "All vessels in the fleet present and accounted for."

Finally, and most importantly, Maud again, "DRADIS is clear. No enemy contacts."

"Launch the Combat Air Patrol, stand down to condition three," ordered Col Luna as the tension lifted.

Meanwhile, Spec Rarity discreetly triggered the radio-frequency search program. Processing any found signal would take time, but detecting it should be quick... "Sir, I have... something." She looked significantly at the XO and Admiral.

"Conference room," the XO ordered brusquely.

"Belay that," countermanded the Admiral just as the others were moving to comply. "We won't keep this contact a secret," he announced generally, adding under his breath, "it seems."

"Yes, sir," acknowledged his comm watch chief. "The signal is at a strength of 2.7 times 10 -23 emons per square meter. I am running analysis of signal now. Results should be available in..." she trailed off. "Actually, sir, I'm receiving multiple signals on a band of neighboring frequencies. The new contacts are weaker than the value I just quoted, sir, but they're there. It's a lot of data for the computer to analyze, sir."

"Look for similarities with the prior emissions, Specialist," the Admiral instructed. "And let me know when you find something. If you do." He turned his attention to housekeeping matters. "Signal the Pegasopilis Resupplier that she may commence her refueling route. Calculate and send the emergency jump co-ordinates to the fleet, Ms Maud. Moon, anything of interest in this system?"

But there was not, and the computer stored the incoming emissions and sorted through the flood of data, first ranking them as analogues of the signal from two jumps prior. Then it got to work on the most promising, making comparisons at a speed of 12,000 floating-point operations per second; the fastest possible computer speed according to Cannonn's corrolary to Akarov's Fourth Law of Computation.

And then there was nothing to do but wait. All through the rest of starboard watch, the port watch, and into the next starboard watch the computer hummed quietly to itself, as all the watch officers and crew glanced at it surreptitiously. Coming on duty once more, Rarity checked input status, and noticed that what the computer identified as "continuous sources" tended to quit, and sometimes be replaced with new ones. Curiouser and curiouser.

When the red "busy" light clicked over to the blue "waiting" status, Rarity scanned the summary report. "Sir, the computer has completed its analysis of the top-matching signal. It has a 78% match with the template."

"Let's see it," commanded the XO and for the next 5.23 minutes they saw the same three figures from before, recognizable by their distinctive hairstyles, slap, poke, prod, and hit each other. A few crew members decorously hid their contemptuous laughter behind raised hands, but most just gaped uncomprehendingly. In the following silence, Col Luna finally interjected, "How much chance the computer is misinterpreting the content?"

"Zero, sir," supplied Lt Maud. "Captain Armor and I have arranged the fleet and deployed detectors to simulate a 200km diameter reception dish. This is what the source is sending, sir. There is an unexplained residual of 8%, but that could be interference from..."

Rarity's explosive intake of breath interrupted Maud's lecture. Quickly, she strode over to his station and pulled her headset off, holding it near his nose. Raising one of her hooves, she said, "With your permission, sir."

Uncertainly, he replied, "Go ahead," and she hoofed him. Hard. Looking over to the readout on her console she said, "I've got good capture. We now have the sound of a hoof..."

Maud stopped rubbing her head as her eyes flew open in the Eureka moment. "The residual!" he exclaimed.

"Yes!" she responded excitedly. Across CIC, the XO threw up her hooves. "Would either of you care to share your sudden insight?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Maud. "We believe that residual in the signal may be a synchronized audio. If the signals at the various sonic frequencies from the known sample slap-sound Rarity just collected match up with those in the residual of the incoming signal at the point when one of them slaps the other, which seems to happen fairly frequently, it will function like a key for the source's audio-encoding system, and we'll be able to hear as well as see what they are sending."

The XO digested this monster sentence and said carefully, "Right. Carry on."

They set the system up to scan for scatter distribution matches near the mark of one of the sounder slaps visible in the transmission. And again, there was nothing to do but wait. Just when it seemed that the wait would become interminable...

"DRADIS contact!" called out the officer of the watch, the redoubtable Maud. "Just jumped in. Contact is a single Changeling raider."

"Vector the CAP, launch the alert fighters, set condition one throughout the fleet," reflexively ordered the XO, as everypony suppressed the familiar adrenaline surge that contact with the enemy always produced.

Out in space, Pinkie and Rainbow Dash took the vector provided by Galactica, and executed high-g turns, the legs of their pilot suits automatically squeezing forcefully and rhythmically to move blood back to the upper body and the all-important brain. Pilots must not be allowed to black out. Targeted on the raider, they quickly throttled up turbo speed and swiftly closed the distance, weapons blazing as they closed on target. But the raider blipped out.

"Frack!" Pinkie cried in frustration.

"Don't worry about it, Party. We kept it away from the fleet. Right now we've got to get home. The fleet'll be prepping for jump already. We wouldn't want to miss it."

Aboard the Battlestar, there was a different concern. "Did they get it?" demanded Armor.

"I don't know, sir," admitted Lt Maud. "We don't fully know their capabilities. They may not even have been looking at RF output. It probably scanned us and jumped back to report our position."

Armor pondered this. "And they would have noticed the arrow of Discord, wouldn't they? Our unusual deployment, I mean."

Maud's face fell. "Yes, sir. And they would have been able to calculate the direction, as well."

Armor's reply was ponderous. "So if I understand what you're saying, we just gave them a starting point and a direction?"

"Yes, sir." Maud's voice was shaky as he thought through the implications of his action, and it seemed for a moment as if he might cry. "We just showed them the way to the source of those signals. The way to Earth."