[Tabitha]

Chapter 8
Arrivals and Departures

BSG-01 Battlestar Avalon
1/11/48 1000

Brandt marked off the progress as it happened. Avalon’s shields were refit with the new “Focus” shield array. The equipment was basically carried in and bolted in place on the Avalon’s barn like bridge. The cable and emitters were harder to install and they ended up cannibalizing the old electron screen electronics. That meant no secondary shields, but with the rhino hide of the Avalon, it wasn’t necessary. The prototype “Prowler” fighters were loaded, though the weapons pods they used were having to be painted black to prevent them from getting mixed up with the weapons pods the older Vipers used. The engines were being refit with a new core and larger fuel pumps, that was good. It meant the giant alligator could outrun a Basestar. The might come as a surprise for the Cylons, if they remembered Avalon as being slow and clumsy. The missile tubes were still empty and she had no up to date weapons control software, but the technicians at Arcadia were installing some kind of strange round mushroom in the middle of his bridge. They claimed it would project a three dimensional image of the combat zone, complete with little likenesses of the ships involved, as well as display data about them, such as speed, damage taken, course, heading, probable heading, and suggested maneuvers. He could do without the suggestions, but the rest sounded great. IF it worked. He was delighted, not bad for a days work, but then, they had two hundred of the best brains in the Colonies working around the clock, and his DC and engineers were working with them every step of the way. In another two days, they would be off to Ragnar Anchorage to re-supply their missiles and guns.
He tried to lean back a little but the command chair was still broken. He spilled his coffee and cursed. This was some damn good coffee, even cold. The new cook from Arcadia knew how to make soldiers coffee. That, he smiled, was the best upgrade they had made since arriving.

Planet Virgon, Athena City
1/11/48 0900

The bottom floor of the Dymands Department Store was buried four stories below ground, in the heavily reinforced foundation of the high rise. Dymands had always prided itself on having the latest styles as well as being the most lavish shopping center in Athena City. Among its expensive fashions, it also sold the latest electronics and entertainment devices. The communications suite of the Dymands Store was also state of the art. The satellite dish array was now in ruins, but the powerful transmitter and receivers were hidden in the basement, along with two young Virgonians. The young boy now typing away on a state of the art lap top was responsible for the replacement dish that was now sitting under a camouflage net in the rubble of the building. His friend, and hopefully girl friend, Sarah, was making some hot dogs and beans on a cooker plate they had also stolen from the store ruins.
“Ok, Sarah, I think I have their codes down. Want to watch as I test it?” he asked. Sarah nodded setting the pan down and walking over. She leaned over the make shift desk, pushing her glasses up onto the top of her head. Danny tried not to stare at her lips as she leaned closer. He had the biggest crush on her. Sarah had straight blond hair and green eyes with smooth clear skin. She looked so girl-next-door with her cute good looks and her pink pouty lips, Danny found himself often zoning out when she was talking, looking at her lips and day dreaming about kissing them. He was still thinking of that when she pulled off her tee shirt and bent over to pick up the VR helmet. He helped her to plug in the VR suit she wore, which looked so sexy on her that he had to bite his lip to keep from making a silly noise he made when he was excited.
They both stood looking at each other through the visor of their helmets before they both waved their hands in front of their faces activating the VR suits. They “saw” the internet connection appear in front of them. It was neon pink in Sarah’s visor, a greenish blue in Danny’s. They saw the command line interface hovering just above their heads to the right. To the left, they saw the current URL address they were occupying. He put both hands in front of him and mimed opening a book, the action opened a program he had loaded in his RAM drive he wore on his hip. Sarah also wore a RAM drive on her hip, but Danny thought it looked sexy on her, though just why he couldn’t explain.
She turned to face him and looked at the holographic display that hovered in front of him. It was translating data faster than a normal program could. Because it was already loaded into RAM, it could be accessed far faster than a program loaded from Crystal-Drive. As a result, it was able to flex and bend and wrap around the code bases that the Cylon command codes assumed in virtual space. The actual process of how programs work in VR was hard to understand for basically 99% of the population, but the result was a totally object oriented environment, where commands were selected, initiated, and stopped by the shape and position of an object. To understand how a program worked, was to understand how to shape the object that represented the program. Danny had crafted his first program at the age of seven, but it was just a simple file copy program. He crafted it to look like a light switch and snuck into the VR class room office and replaced the simple “light switch” object on the teachers office with it. Needless to say, it made studying for tests far easier. He was able to download everything that the instructors were working on. Since the majority of Colonial citizens were still afraid of the net VR internet, only a small fraction actually utilized the VR portion, hence the command line interface. It was planned that in time, the CLI would be eliminated.
Shannon watched as the hack program began to glow the same color as the Cylon comm. program. It was bright red, and she looked up at Danny excited. They had been working together all day and night to make the hack program work right. They were not sure what the result would be, but it seemed like they cold at least do SOMETHING to fight the Cylons.
“Ok, it works, its interfaced fully with their comm. program, now what?” she asked. Danny shrugged. He hadn’t gotten that far in his plans.
“How about we screw with them.” Danny offered. He reached back and “selected” a music program he knew Sarah loved. He activated the program and entered the command ‘Dance’ into the Cylon comm. line. Sarah giggled and he saw her disappear as she pulled off her helmet and shut off her VR suit. Danny did the same and together they climbed the stairs to the bottom floor. They climbed the top of the second floor debris and looked out over the surrounding area with the field glasses they stole. For about a hundred yards around, the half dozen Cylons the saw were doing some odd movements that at first looked like they were short circuiting. Sarah laughed as she realized, that was the machines interpretation of dancing. They laughed and pointed at the Centurions before going back into the basement. Danny jacked back in and together they removed the dance command and entered two simple commands, ‘Leave’ and ‘Ignore Humans’. They went back to the look out point and were delighted to see the Cylon guards turn and walk away, ignoring them entirely. “By the Lords… do you realize what we could do if we could tap their entire network?” Sarah asked hugging Danny. She kissed him hard, fully and lovingly, and Danny blushed feeling his toes curl. He looked at her wondering if she really felt that way, or if it was just the moment.