Starborn Smith [Stargate, Battletech Multicross]

POV: Annelise Koenig

The Command and Control room of the BSG Daedalus was surprisingly similar to standard SLDF Command and Control centers. The room had a centralized table around which numerous secondary terminals were housed. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't really spend any time reminiscing about my time aboard SLDF starships as I was currently surrounded by corpses. It seemed the Daedalus' commanding officers had all died due to the radiation released immediately after the jump. Even more unfortunate, the ship's CNC had remained air tight for the following twenty years, meaning that the corpses of the crew had all rotted away. 

Luckily the people in the rear engineering bay were unluckier – or luckier as the case may be. The Daedalus had slammed into the Phobos at an angle, tearing through numerous bulkheads all along the port side of the ship. The primary engineering bay, hangar deck, and basically every room on the port side of the ship had been significantly weakened. 

So far, nearly 60 members of the original crew looked like they might be in a state that would make them viable for resurrection. While the ship's chief engineer was sadly not among them, a large portion of the ship's engineers did appear to have been preserved. 

Now, the most annoying thing to come was going to be trying to detach the Daedalus and the Phobos. The two ships had quite literally contact welded together and detaching the two would be an issue. 

That wasn't an immediate concern; over the next few days, we'd have engineering crews out there to start detaching the ship and repairing the external hull and bulkhead. Much more concerning in the meantime was the upcoming plan to sweep through the Phobos. 

I knew a little bit about computer technology; the things I had heard about these Cylons scared me. As a mechwarrior, the idea that they might be able to access the controls of a mech or an aerospace fighter, or even a warship was not a pleasant one. 

Lieutenant Sarti may have been a bit of a prick, but she was one of the best engineers I had ever met. She seemed unconcerned by the whole idea. Something about incompatible systems. 

I certainly hope she was right. Once we had the Daedalus mostly online, we'd have to start sweeping the Phobos. None of the colonials had ever been onboard a Phobos before. They were always scuttled to prevent them falling into colonial hands since they had a lot of advanced technology built into them. 

A call came over the radio. "Cylon confirmed in starboard generator control."

I felt everyone around me tense; I immediately replied. "Confirm status and reseal the room."

Several moments passed. "Confirmed inactive. We're doing alright. Resealing starboard generator control."

I nodded. "Confirmation of possible Cylons active post-jump. Everyone beware."

Luckily for me, that turned out to be the only Cylon aboard the Daedalus. Still left me worried though. It was six hours later that the ships' final room was swept and confirmed. By the end, we had confirmed 326 of the original 1100 crew that would be viable for revival. 

When I spoke with her, Eudora seemed surprised that it was even that many. She had expected maybe a hundred. The damage to the hull was just much greater than she had previously noticed, though also much less significant since outer hull damage was relatively easy to repair.

- - -

POV: Arthur Sinclair (Gonna start adding that last name now)

It had taken everyone only four days to have the first of the search teams assembled. There were ten in total to begin with, five of them would be travelling via ship to locations that already had confirmed Cybrex facilities, while the other five would be scouting worlds on the exact opposite side of the galaxy for locations that we could use as a fall back point. 

A collection of thirty initial worlds had already been chosen for an expedition. We had relatively minimal requirements for such a world. They had to be uninhabited, mountainous, on the very outskirts of the galaxy, and away from the main worlds of any System Lord. Luckily, such worlds were numerous. 

Now, I was following Arktos back to Ares' fortress. I'd already spent some time working out how to convert Goa'uld file formats into Inner Sphere file formats, which had been my main project in what little time I had not spent disassembling the raptor.

So, I followed Arktos through the gate and once more found myself on Mycena, surrounded by the towering forms of numerous Goa'uld Ha'tak. 

I had come by just a few days earlier when I was reactivating the Tel'tak and Al'kesh for use, though the Cheops and Ha'tak would remain inoperational until such a time as we knew for certain what was going on with those.

Soon enough, I found myself within a room hidden deep within Ares' Flagship. We entered the room and I saw a Goa'uld terminal standing against the wall. Arktos nodded. "Here we are."

I immediately got to work. This terminal was different from previous terminals I'd seen, but it was similar enough that I could still use it with relative ease. On top of that, Elder James and I had decided that it wasn't worth hiding my abilities from our allies, though we wouldn't go out of our way to explain it either. 

Within twenty minutes, the transfer was completed. The Goa'uld Database was incredibly extensive. It contained complete surface scans for a lot of the worlds as well as mineral scans and a list of the world's native wildlife. Unfortunately, the Star League data storage couldn't store even a fraction of that information, as such I had the Database export a brief summary of a world's climate, its location in the Milky Way, and its Address. 

There weren't nearly as many addresses as I was expecting. Barely less than two million addresses. While that was undoubtedly a significant number of earth-like worlds, that number pales in comparison to the over 100 billion stars in the Milky Way that had been assumed in my past life. 

Now that I was looking through the Goa'uld Database, I knew the actual number was approximately 220 billion. Something else caught my eye, however. There were gate addresses that seemed to go to several of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Even stranger was that which galaxies actually had known stargates was totally random. 

In total, I used nine different compads to store all the downloaded information. I was honestly impressed it only took nine. When I was finished, I disconnected the final compad and deactivated the terminal. The whole process took me barely twenty minutes. 

We returned through the gate to the village where I took the Ring Transporter up to the Manassas and from there I took the elevator to the Cobalt Eye. Entering the Bridge, the lights came on and the same neutral face that I had come to expect appeared on the Holotable. 

I immediately began uploading the data to the Cobalt Eye's computer core. As the final upload, I spoke. "Alright, can you collate the map?"

"Of course. One moment please." Several moments pass and the AIs face disappears, replaced with a map of every known Stargate address in the Milky Way.

"Show me Terra." I ordered the AI.

The AI immediately replied. "There is no record of a gate address at the location of Terra. Would you like me to show Terra's location?"

That was odd… had Terra's location been literally lost? Then how had Apophis known Earth's address in SG-1? I nodded. 

Immediately, a red dot appeared in the projection. Looking at the map. "Show me a sphere with Earth at the center, which ends about… here."

Immediately, a red sphere also appears on the projection. "What is the relative density of Stargates within this area?"

A moment passes. "The density of Stargates in this area is 70% lower than the average." Another moment passes. "It appears that there are no known Stargate addresses within the Inner Sphere. The closest known address is 1,103 light years from Terra."

An idea came to me. That was still close enough for a Star League Expeditionary Team to uncover it. "Are there any Star League records of this world?"

A moment of silence. "Not in my currently available records."

After thinking for a moment I noted down the address and got to work. I needed to work on an algorithm for identifying any world's address. Now I just had to reverse engineer the whole system. How long could it possibly take?

- - -

POV: Eudora Cassia

I had decided to wait with the sarcophagus while I waited for the first of the Engineers to be revived. Reviving the Manassas' crew took anywhere between nine and thirteen hours and I was hoping that the revival process wouldn't take too much longer than that. 

Sadly, we were now at the 15th hour of the process. Obviously, floating in space for 20 years didn't do any favors for the ship's crew.

Now, I sat and waited. It was as the fifteenth hour was reaching its end that the sound of stone grinding against stone – the sound of the sarcophagus opening – finally became audible. I looked up to find a very confused crew man sitting up in the sarcophagus. Slowly and with bleary eyes they turned to me.

Almost on instinct, the engineer stood up and threw a salute. I had been worried that things wouldn't go well. It appears that I had been wrong. "Ma'am" they called out. I let out a sigh.

"At ease, soldier. We have some catching up to do."

The engineer looked around wearily, "Yes ma'am." 

I would be doing a lot of explaining in the near future. I was almost glad that we would be splitting the time for revivals between the Daedalus crew and Manassas crew. This was going to be a long talk… and I'd have to give it a lot of times.

- - -

POV: Arthur Cameron

It took two whole days to write a program capable of generating an address for a world, and It had nearly driven me insane. I had become so focused on my task that I didn't even realize that I hadn't slept that whole time. 

I always enjoyed learning and figuring out puzzles, but it wasn't always this extreme. I frowned; maybe it was a side effect of my perks? Or maybe it was because I actually had challenging puzzles to solve now. I let out a sigh. 

I had compiled a list of possible addresses for every inhabited world in the inner sphere. I doubted any of them would work, but according to my meta-knowledge there should be two Stargates just on Terra alone. 

I immediately went to find Elder James. I found him aboard the Manassas viewing the zero-g training. "Elder!" I slowly floated over towards him. "It took me a moment, but I have it figured out."

He raised an eyebrow, "I was expecting you to take longer."

I snorted. "It was mostly a pain in the ass to get the exact mathematics down. The AI was able to brute force a significant portion of the process too."

The Elder nodded. "Good. Then we'll be able to begin the next stage of the expedition."