Empty Space: A Battlestar Galactica Crossover

Air Lint awoke suddenly and knew what he had to do. He dressed in the daily use version of his military police uniform, loaded a full clip into his weapon and set off to find Dr. Whooves.

ICANN director Herpony Brown eyed the odd craft suspiciously. Navy brass did like to show off their latest toys. He swallowed his discomfort and stepped forward with a smile. "Admiral Armor? I'm Director Brown. If you would step this way, we can speak privately in my office." It never occurred to him to ask for identification. The new design shuttle aircraft screamed Navy in a way no paper possibly could. Armor's entourage followed obediently along, staring goggle-eyed at the character of their new home. A city, a real pony city, after all these months in space. And with real air!

"May I offer you refreshment? Water, juice, coffee?"

"No thank you," neighed his guest.

"I'll try some!" offered Dash. A cup of hot, dark liquid was soon produced. She cautiously sipped at it, and made a sour face, putting it down abruptly.

Armor cleared his throat, and began ceremoniously, "We had some political people who were supposed to handle the negotiations, but they couldn't make it."

That got the Director's attention. To date, Project Cyclops had only involved uniformed personnel. If the politicos were getting into it, perhaps it had finally penetrated to the upper reaches of the bureaucracy. That meant more money and faster approvals. "Are these people your technical specialists?"

Armor, in his turn, was thrown off stride. "Yes, some are. This is Chief Applejack and Specialist Apple Bloom. They are the technicians. This is Captain Rainbow Dash." Rainbow had evidently changed her mind about the beverage, as she was eagerly gulping it now, burning her mouth.

"Sir! You've got to try this! It's..."

"Not now Dash," admonished the Admiral, earning a strange look from the earthling. Addressing himself to the Director once more, he continued, "I represent the government of the twelve colonies. We are pleased on this historic occasion to re-establish contact with the thirteenth colony. And, uh, we look forward to establishing productive relations with your government. However we have had some difficulty understanding your official structure. So we would like your help in making contact with the proper authorities."

Director Brown's first instinct was to eject the whole lot, especially the wild-eyed blue rainbow, who was now helping herself to a coffee refill. But the memory of the aircraft settling onto his roof gave him pause. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. If this was a hoax, somepony had gone to multimillions of bits worth of trouble. So he spoke carefully. "Twelve colonies, you say?" he prompted.

"Yes," replied Armor, grateful that some common ground had been established. "We would like to contact your political leadership. As soon as possible. There is some urgency."

"I see," remarked the Director, although he did nothing of the sort. "You'd like to see the mayor? The governor? The president?"

"Earth has a president? Excellent. Yes, we would like to speak to him right away."

"Or her," Dash interrupted exuberantly.

"Yes. Of course," agreed the Admiral instantly, eager to avoid giving offense.

"Redbase, this is MandoPony. I have eyeballs on the target. It appears to be some sort of aircraft. Of no design I have seen before. Poorly streamlined. It's got a tremendous thermal signature. There are two ponies in what look like uniforms loitering near it. I do not, repeat, do not recognize uniform type. I'm coming around for another pass. I have target lock with my Sidewinder. Clear, strong tone. Instructions?"

"Damn! You don't usually see fighters in the city. The last time was right after 9-11. Somepony needs to tell the boss, and quick!"

The phone rang on the Director's desk, sparing him the need to answer immediately. He lifted it up, listened briefly, then, expressionlessly, handed it to Armor. "It's for you." he said.

"This is Admiral Armor of the Colonial Fleet... Yes, well, what you have detected would be the Colonial Fleet. I'm glad to see you've finally noticed our presence in your system... We have come to re-establish contact after all these centuries, to re-unite ponykind... Thirteen groups set out to colonize the stars. Twelve stayed together, while the thirteenth went its own way. You are the lost thirteenth colony... Look, you are in some danger here. We can provide you with some system defense, but you are very vulnerable. If the Changelings find you...

While Armor and his interlocutor struggled painfully to establish common ground for dialog, the others started engaging the Earthers in dialog. Rainbow, of course, went first. "What is this stuff called?" she asked, even more effervescently than usual. "Where does it come from? Where can I get some? Where can I buy some seeds? Can you show me?" And with that she steered a hapless young pony out of the office and forced him to guide her to the nearest retail establishments. On the way back, she shouted, "Clothes!" and dragged him into a store. "This is what your navy wears?" she demanded. "It doesn't look used, it looks new." She held outfit after outfit up to check the look. "I'll take this one and this one. But not this one. Oooh, I like that one a lot."

"Um, you can take them in there to try them on, if you want."

"Really? I'll be right back."

While she was gone, his mind finally kicked into gear, as did hers. "Wow!" he said, when she returned.

"Oh, you like this? Good. But I've decided it doesn't matter. Even if it's not my size, I can swap it for Ambrosia, or whatever. Say, what kind of alcohol does your planet have?"

"I can show you that... How will you pay for this?"

"Like for the coffee, I suppose."

"I paid for that. How does a faster-than-light drive work? I'd buy you this stuff too if you could explain that in exact technical detail."

"I can tell you some of it. You spin out some technetium into a wire and wind it around a horseshoe spindle. Then you spin the spindle in one direction and spin a magnet shaped generally like the ship in the opposite direction. When the end of the magnet threatens to touch the spindle, then the jump field is created. By controlling the point of near-impact, the vector is established. The size of the field is set by the net rotational difference as a fraction of the speed of light. The energy released in the jump slows the spinning and separates the active elements of the system. To re-use the drive system, the components have to be spun up again."

He decided that this might be enough to support a patent application, or at least to induce an aerospace firm to buy him off rather than suffering the delay of a patent case, so he said, "Let's get this stuff paid for so you can get back to your ship."

Applejack wandered out into the hall. Gawkers gave way before her. Spying through a hallway window what could only be a computer terminal with an attendant hunched over it, she made her way there. "Nice machine," she said, by way of breaking the ice.

"It's okay. There'll be a newer, faster model out in three months. We'll probably upgrade then," the pony said tersely, and resumed his maniacal manipulations.

"AJ here is from outer space, Wes," put in one of his colleagues, snickering into his hooves.

Wes barely looked up, gaze flickering perfunctorily over his guest. "It was almost funny when you got the one pony to put on the Spock ears," he remarked sourly.

"No, no. She really is from outer space," insisted his co-workers loudly, laughing harder than ever.

AJ shifted uncomfortably in the chair she had appropriated. "Actually," she said, "I'm from Arlon..."

"You only work in outer space. Ooooh. Where have I heard that one before? And say hello to your friends from Rayon and Nylon for me," Wes added waspishly, leading one of his colleagues to become so weak-kneed that he had to sit down.

Chief Jack was not sure how to respond to this, so she said carefully, "New, faster computers, eh? What'll they be, 50 kilohertz or so?"

Wes snorted derisively. "This computer is a 6 megahertz model. The new one will be faster." He addressed his chortling co-workers, "You really should brief your stooges before you bring them in."

"Wait a minute. Six megahertz? Six million? The theoretical maximum for a fully electronic system is 72 thousand or so. For anything beyond that, you need to use biologicals. Even then, six million is totally out of the question."

"Look, moron, this TI 89 platinum can do way more than 72k." Applejack handled the device wonderingly, punching in a few test calculations. The peevish man appeared to be correct, and did not appear to notice when he pocketed this treasure. In a moment, Wes looked up again. "Are you still here? Next time, research your role before you take it on. Now, if you don't mind, I've got work to do," he snapped, and shut himself off from his lifelong dream of meeting somepony from another planet.

By now, more people were crowding in, and one trod on Bloom's hoof. "By all the gods!" she exclaimed, pulling her hoof away.

"There is no god but God," asserted the pony indignantly. "But I apologize for stepping on your hoof."

"What did you say?" she asked, strange emotions churning inside her.

"I said I was sorry for..."

"No. The other thing," she insisted.

He nodded. "It is not correct to speak of 'gods,'" he said. "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."

"But there are many gods," she countered, her stomach sinking. "Discord, Tirek,..."

"No," he replied, so forcefully that she felt it as a blow to her soul. "They are false idols, set up by primitives to represent themselves, but larger. You colonials believe in such things?" He nodded with her, revelation coming to him abruptly. "I see now why God led me to this place today. God is great, let His will be done. Come, I will explain the truth to you." And he guided her to a quiet place and spoke urgently to her, telling her many things she had never heard before, but which she felt she had known all along.

While they waited for the official representative of the earth government to arrive, Armor had other concerns. "I realize that you are an information systems man, but we have urgent need of some manufacturing expertise." He unrolled some technical plans. "We need these parts as soon as possible." Director Brown had no real training in reading such specifications, but it sure looked to him like the drawings contained the same information as terrestrial blueprints, and in a similar format. He hunched over, inspecting the plans.

"Our government would have to approve any final contracts, of course, but I know a pony who's at Ford now. We went to college together. We might be able to put something together. How many would you need?"

"Five?" Armor said tentatively, hoping it wouldn't be too many.

"Five? That's an awfully small production run. You'd get better value if you make 500 or 5,000." As Armor tried valiantly to process this possibility, Director Brown did not notice the stunned look, concentrating on the next plan, which showed a Viper. "If you want to build these, you'd better talk to Lockheed. I don't know anypony there, but my buddy might. Doesn't look as complicated as I would have expected. A car has more parts. How many of these would you want?"

Armor decided against mentioning any specific number. "As many as possible," he choked out.

"These plans look reasonable to me, but I'm no expert." He paused. "Any why are the corners cut off?"

"Admiral!" chirped Rainbow, profferring a cup, "You've got to try this stuff. It's great! I feel like I could do anything, if I only had the time! And look," she said, pointing to the green insignia, "it has my name on it! You also need to try chocolate. And pizza!"

"How many of those have you had, young lady?" inquired Director Brown.

"Uh, five. No, wait, six!" Dash enthused.

"In about an hour? You better stop right now. Are you feeling any effects? Light-headedness, say?"

She frowned her concern. "No. None. Although my scalp is trying to crawl forward on my skull. And where is the head, anyway? I could show Adagio a thing or two right now."

A young woman detached herself from the crowd. "I'll show her." Escorting Capt. Dash away, she whispered, "You mentioned Adagio. You know about the Greek Gods? Tirek? Cadence? Zeus? All of them?"

"Tirek and Cadence, sure. I pray to them every day. And Adagio. But who is this Zeus?"

"What is this chocolate? And pizza?" asked the Armor.

Director Brown shrugged. "Types of food."

"Food? Really? We would like to discuss provisioning for our fleet. We could use some food and some other basic supplies like aluminum, deuterium, technetium and tyllium."

"Um, aluminum would be fairly easy to get. Deuterium maybe. I don't know what the others are. For food, this is a bad time, prices are high right now. We have seven billion of our own to feed, you know."

"Seven billion? Seven thousand million?" Armor's jaw dropped dramatically. "That's more than all the twelve colonies put together. Our whole fleet's monthly ration would get lost in your daily rounding error."

"Director? The parts you wanted are ready," said a young assistant, holding out the five power system inteface couplings Armor had requested.

The Admiral took them wonderingly. "How is this possible?" he breathed.

"HP sent us a sample 3d printer, Mr. Director. Never had anything to use it for before. If it had had circuits or something complex, we couldn't have done it on the printer, but these are simple prototyping plastic. Won't last as well as purpose-made parts, but they'll hold up for a while."

"Chief!" called out Admiral Armor. "We've got birds grounded for want of this part, I believe. Take the shuttle back up and get them spaceworthy right away."

"Redbase, Mad Pony. The vehicle is lifting. I repeat, lifting right off the helo pad. Acceleration is massive. I can fire now or not at all."

"Mad Pony, this is Redbase. We have comm jammers coming in. Trail the bogey and report."

"Roger that." The pilot called Mad Pony pushed his throttle to the limit and his F-15 Alicorn shot forward, pressing him violently back into his cushioned seat as he raced the Phoenix to the stratosphere. The gap continued to widen, so he punched up the afterburners and raw fuel was dumped into the white-hot exhaust from his engines. Again the Alicorn slammed him back with acceleration, but still the gap widened. The blue sky faded to black as the fighter neared its operational ceiling. "I can't keep with them, Redbase. They're above my ceiling. Into orbit, I guess."

Luna absorbed the report over the radio stoically, stroking his chin. "Very well. Chief, send three of the parts to the deck. Your crew can install them. The other two are for Pegasus birds. Take them there in your Phoenix and install them personally. Ms. Pie will be joining you for the jump out. Reports are that the damaged vessels will need very precise navigation to get safely to Earth orbit. So she'll be seconded to Pegasus until further notice to handle it. Stay in the Phoenix, Chief. Just drop the parts and scoot with Lt Pie. Galactica out."

The jump was risky, but Maud Pie could run it in his sleep. Once they were safely vectoring toward the Pegasus landing bay, the Chief had a thought. "Lieutenant, I've got something that I picked up on Earth that might interest you."

Coming aboard, Chief Applejack hastened to the deck, while Lt. Maud made her way to the bridge of the ship, admiring the improvements the smaller warship had by virtue of its much more recent construction.

"Captain Armor sends his compliments, Lieutenant," said Major Omunda. "He'd have greeted you himself, but he's observing the recovery of our blue wing after exercises. We expect him back here in CIC in perhaps half an hour." Omunda winced inexplicably and rubbed his left hoof while Maud explored the various stations of Pegasus's CIC.

"We've lost the Admiral," reported Specialist Nakura reluctantly. "There's some interference on the ground."

"What the hell?" demanded the XO of the ship. "Get him back!"

"I don't know if I can, sir. The interference is very powerful."

"Now those bastards, whoever they are, will have to talk through us!" declared the watch commander at NORAD in satisfaction.

"DRADIS contact!"