Rear Admiral Fred Porter stared at the large holographic screen displaying the image of Bjorn and the patient of special interest, namely Kara Thrace having a conversation, taking mental notes of her behavior and her perspective, and observing her for any unusual clues. His presence was simply a representation of his government’s extraordinary interest in her sudden arrival in previously unknown spacecraft that warranted a close investigation.
“It looks like that the patient woke up.” A voice called out from behind, drawing Porter out of his thought.
“Computer, pause.” Porter said and on his command, holographic screen paused.
Porter turned around facing Captain Mihailov, a technical intelligence officer, as he entered the room. He was hand-picked by Porter to lead a group of specialists and experts to examine Kara’s spacecraft.
“She did few minutes ago.” Porter said with a nod. “Accord to neural readouts, it is apparent that she was telling the truth which negates our suspicions of her being an agent of the Commonwealth Remnants. She mentioned two new factions called Twelve Colonies and Cylons, a potential concern for some of our superiors because we might risk getting into the conflict between them.”
“Twelve Colonies and Cylons? That’s new to me.” Mihailov said, sounding surprised. “It would be very extremely difficult to beat neural lie detector even if she was a highly trained special agent.”
“Well, she is not out of hot water just yet. Our superiors still want to know what she was doing in one of our restricted zones.” Porter replied, “Any progress with the examination?”
“The preliminary examination revealed that it is actually more primitive than we thought.” Mihailov informed. “The cockpit arrangement is archaic as it is clustered with analog flight instruments, two multi-functional digital screens, and a bunch of the toggles and buttons all labeled in English. It is armed with a pair of twenty millimeters KEW autocannons and six external hardpoints. Our scanners could not detect any power sources such as a fusion reactor or accelerator ring until one of my men found a fuel cap, indicating that it was powered by what appeared to be an unidentified high energy density liquefied fuel. It’s all here in the datapad.”
The rear admiral accepted a proffered datapad, studied it for a moment, and looked up at Mihailov, “Anything else?”
“With your permission, I would like to continue examining the vessel further and if necessary, take it apart and then put it together to see how it ticks.” Asked Mihailov.
“Permission granted, but keep me updated every ten hours.”
“Yes, sir” Mihailov replied.
“Wait.”
“Sir?”
“I want you to look through her vessel’s navigation computer and find out where she came from.”
“I could do that.”
“Good, to be candid with you, my guts are telling me this one is different.” Porter sighed.
“What about her, what we will do with her?” asked Mihailov.
“I have a lot of the questions for her.” Porter said, “I will personally speak with her in a couple of days, when we move her to a secured quarter. I am positive that you’ll want to be there because you might have some technical questions for her.”
“Yes, sir. Her inputs would be very beneficial to our progress. That’s if she is willing to talk to us.”
The rear admiral nodded, “I will see that she gets softened up before we speak with her.”
“But… Twelve Colonies?” The captain exhaled, his eyes widen slightly. “It sounds far fetched to me.”
“That’s what I intend to find out.” Porter spun around, facing a holographic screen. “Computer, resume playing.”
Both men looked up at holographic screen, carefully listening to the conversation for any useful information that may reveal anything about her origin and her intention. Little did they know that her prophetic arrival would have profound and severe repercussion for the Systems Confederation, Cylons, and the remnants of Twelve Colonies.