After telling the worms about the discovery and disappearance of Magrathea, or New Caprica, as then-president Gaius Baltar had named it, they finally gave Starbuck the coordinates of Earth. Scribbled on a piece of paper, since she didn't know if any of the computers in the Fleet could read the type of data storage device the worms were using. The freighter they were on was currently en route to a trading

station several day's travel away, about half way between Earth and Takwella, the home world of the worms.

Starbuck pulled out a deck of triad cards and taught the worms how to play. She managed to win back her Viper, including the parts the worms had removed. They had earlier claimed the viper under some obscure salvage rights as a fee for saving her life.

"This game is no fun at all. You keep winning all the time!" one of the worms said in frustration.

"Yeah", another one agreed.

"Let's play poker", the worm with the large hat suggested.

"Poker! Poker! Poker!" the worms shouted.

"Sore losers! Never heard of poker." Starbuck said.

"The humans on Earth play it a lot. Agent J has taught me how to play", the worm with the hat said and pulled out a deck of poker cards.

"Okay, fair enough. You teach me", Starbuck gave in.

"And when she loses, she'll have to take her clothes off", one of the worms suggested, vaguely remembering some humans playing strip poker on TV while he was on Earth.

"I am not going to take any of my clothes off!" Starbuck insisted.

"Spoilsport", the worm said.

Starbuck lit one of the Cuban cigars, while the worm with the hat shuffled the cards and started dealing. They were hoping they could win some of their stuff back, since Starbuck was new to this game. But after a few rounds she managed to catch on and began winning again. She got fairly good at playing poker and managed to win some star charts, a box of Cuban cigars, several bottles of Vodka, and a another bottle of Whiskey. She also ended up with a glass jar with a yellow lid labeled "Vegemite" and a few other items she did not recognize. Starbuck later used the contents of this jar to grease the landing gear and other moving parts when she reassembled her Viper with the help of the worms.

Another item she had won during the card game was an electronic book with "Don't Panic" on the cover. She had asked the worms earlier about other aliens and they told her she could find all the information she wanted in this book. The device had options to display the stored information as text, audio, video, or a combination of those.

"Mostly harmless? Seriously? Is that all?" she asked in surprise after playing the audio information about Earth.

"It's an older version, a bit outdated", one of the worms explained.

"Yeah, by a couple hundred years", another one added.

"You need to download an update", a third one said.

After a few more days of Starbuck fixing her Viper and playing cards and drinking with the worms, the freighter finally arrived at their destination, a trading station built into a hollowed out asteroid. Here the worms were planning to sell off many of the goods they had acquired on Earth, with the exception of alcohol, coffee and tobacco products. Those however they were going to take to Takwella to sell on the black market for astronomical prices, especially coffee.

The pilot of the worm alien freighter announced that they were on approach to Trading Outpost Sybelius-19 and were preparing to land in 10 minutes. Starbuck went to the cockpit and looked at the view screen that showed the outpost in front of the freighter. She could see dozens of ships orbiting the asteroid, the ones that were too massive to land on the hundreds of landing platforms and runways scattered around the trading station on the surface of the asteroid.

She was astonished that there were so many completely different designs of ships. Many looked like they had not been designed by humans. Based on what she saw out there and what she could piece together from conversations with the worms, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of different species of lifeforms out there, each with their own culture and history.

When Starbuck looked at the numerous ships circling the asteroid again, she couldn't believe her eyes. There was a Mercury Class Battlestar and several other ships that she immediately recognized as Colonial in design. She also saw several other ships of unfamiliar design flying in formation with the Battlestar and the civilian ships. The largest of the strange ships looked organic and was similar in size to the Battlestar.

Then there were several yellow, chunky, slab like ships following the battlestar together with the civilian ships. Starbuck realized that something must have happened. Where was the Galactica? And there were much fewer civilian ships following what appeared to be the Pegasus. Did the Cylons destroy the Galactica and some of the civilian ships? Or did the admiral decide to split the fleet? Could there have been a mutiny? Where did the other ships come from? She had to find out.

Starbuck ran to the freighter's hangar bay and climbed into her viper. She started the engines and checked her instruments. She activated the viper's comm system and told the worm alien that was piloting the freighter to open the hangar bay doors, so she could leave.

"Sorry, but we are about to land on..." the worm said.

"Open the damn doors, or I'll shoot my way out", she yelled into her comm.

The worm pilot realized he had no other choice than to open the hangar bay doors and let her out.

Starbuck flew her viper out of the freighter's hangar bay toward the Colonial fleet,

while the freighter attempted to land on the asteroid. Then, suddenly two Cylon baseships appeared on DRADIS.

"Oh frak!" Starbuck cursed.

Two more baseships jumped in on the opposite side of the fleet. The baseships started launching raiders and the battlestar launched vipers. Starbuck was surprised when the organic looking ship that seemed to belong to the fleet launched a small number of vipers as well. The civilian ships started jumping away, one by one, including the clunky yellowish ones.

Amidst the comm chatter between the vipers she could hear voices and call signs she didn't recognize. A woman with the call sign "Hellcat" seemed to be in charge and a man with the call sign "Bojay" appeared to be her wingman.

"Ratface, this is Hellcat. Five raiders are making a run for the Scylla. You and Noodle guard her rear flank; Bojay and I are on our way".

"That can't be right, Starbuck thought. She didn't recognize any of the callsigns of the other pilots and the Scylla had been one of the ships that had been stripped and abandoned by the Pegasus. The ship was now apparently having trouble with her FTL drive and the Cylons have recognized her as an easy target.

Starbuck decided to help protect the Scylla, since it was the most vulnerable ship to enemy fire. Two vipers went to intercept the raiders heading toward the Scylla, with two more on their way. Starbuck saw eight more raiders leaving the main formation and flying toward the Scylla. Another odd thing Starbuck noticed was that there were two cloud type luxury liners, while she remembered there had been only one, the Cloud Nine, when she had last seen the fleet. She was now between the two luxury liners, getting closer, but still too far to join the fight.

Two vipers began exchanging fire with five raiders. Two of the raiders exploded in fireballs and one of the vipers lost its starboard wing.

"Ratface, I'm hit, I'm hit", Starbuck could hear a male voice frantically shouting.

"Stay calm, Noodle", she heard his wingman reply.

Ratface brought his viper around and fired. He managed to destroy two of the raiders, but was unable to save Noodle.

Four raiders and one viper had been destroyed in this engagement, while at the same time similar dogfights were going on all around the slowly retreating civilian fleet.

The fifth raider began a strafing run on the Scylla before being destroyed by the two other vipers which seemed to have arrived just in time. They appeared to belong to Hellcat and her wingman Bojay. They barely had enough time forming up with the surviving viper when the eight raiders came into weapons range. Starbuck came out from behind one of the cloud type ships, which was jumping out at the exact same moment. She fired on the raiders, destroying two and damaging a third. The remaining raiders damaged one of Hellcat's engines and destroyed another viper, which seemed to be the one belonging to Ratface. Hellcat was able to destroy one of the raiders and Bojay got another two. The damaged engine prevented Hellcat from performing more tricky maneuvers; otherwise she might have scored at least another kill. Starbuck could tell by the actions of the other pilots that Noodle and Ratface must have been complete nuggets who could possibly have survived if they had been more experienced or better trained. Hellcat and Bojay however seemed to be seasoned veterans.

The remaining raiders attempted an attack run on the Scylla, but were quickly destroyed by Starbuck and the other two vipers before they could do any major damage other than scorching a few hull plates.

And then her comm unit began to crackle again.

"Unknown Viper, this is Hellcat. Please identify yourself", the pilot of one of the

vipers said through her comm.

"Hellcat, this is Starbuck"

"Starbuck? We don't have anyone with that call sign. But thanks for pulling our asses

out of the fire. Please stand by to be escorted to the Pacifica"

"The Pacifica? You guys are from the Pacifica?" Starbuck couldn't believe that another battlestar had survived.

One of the baseships that were trading shots with the battlestar was hit by three nukes and exploded. The other one was missing two of its arms. The battlestar had taken some minor damage. A squadron of heavy raiders fired missiles at the asteroid base. Some of the missiles were destroyed by the base's defense grid, but there were too many. A damaged basestar kept attacking the battlestar and the civilian fleet, while one basestar joined the heavy raiders in the attack on the outpost and the other two gunned down several of the other ships of unknown design. Starbuck cringed as she saw the worms' freighter explode.

Some of the alien ships fought back, but were no match for the firepower of the basestars and their raiders until finally a group of 3 alien ships formed up and concentrated their fire on one of the baseships. These three ships were very similar in design, with one of them larger than the other two. They had been caught by surprise and it had taken their crews a while to get their bearings, but now they had targeted the attackers and were heading toward them with all guns blazing. By now the last

civilian ships, including the cloud type passenger liners and the lightly damaged Scylla had jumped out of the system.

"Pacifica actual to all squadrons: Return to the barn immediately. We're bugging out", Starbuck could hear through her comm.

While the surviving vipers, including Starbuck, were returning to the Pacifica, the three alien warships had managed to destroy one of the Cylon basestars, while the Cylons had destroyed the trading outpost and many of the alien ships. After Starbuck had landed her Viper in the port hangar bay of the Pacifica she was escorted to the brig by marines, who told her that they needed to verify that she was in fact a pilot from the Galactica and not a Cylon imposter. She was used to spending time in the brig, albeit for different reasons. She still could not believe that Pacifica and another whole fleet of civilian ships had survived.

As the commander walked in, Starbuck stood up and saluted. He returned the salute.

"Welcome aboard the Battlestar Pacifica, Captain Thrace. Please excuse the rough treatment. Security measures." the commander of the Pacifica apologized. He gestured the marines to leave.

"I am Commander John Crichton", he introduced himself.

Starbuck was sitting across from Crichton's desk in his office aboard the Pacifica.

After she had been let out of her cell and given back her pistol she explained to him how the Galactica and a fleet of civilian ships had escaped the destruction of the Twelve Colonies and later caught up with the Pegasus. She told him about the planet they had called New Caprica, and how she had been separated from the fleet and rescued by the worm aliens.

"The Pegasus. We actually found the fleet Cain had left behind. 15 civilian ships with no means of defending themselves. Glad that cold, heartless bitch bit the dust...Her daughter makes a fine CAG, though", Crichton said when Starbuck mentioned the Pegasus.

"Cain's daughter?" Starbuck asked.

"Sheba Cain, call sign Hellcat. I believe you've met her"

"Yeah, we could call it that. It's a funny irony she saved the Scylla, one of the ships her mother had abandoned. By the way, there are some ships in your fleet that I don't recognize." Starbuck inquired.

"Yeah, the large one is Moya, the yellow ones we call the mystery fleet".

"Mystery fleet?"

"We found them drifting in space shortly after those walking trash cans attacked the Colonies. The ships were packed with food and medical supplies, but had plenty of room left. We loaded them up with people from the sublight ships you guys had to leave behind".

"So you found an entire fleet loaded with food and supplies?"

"Pretty much. Too bad though they didn't have any beer on board... and the pizzas were kinda stale", Crichton complained.

"And what about this Moya?" Starbuck asked.

"Umm, Moya is a classified project. Sorry, but you don't have the security clearance for this kind of information", Crichton hoped she would not ask any more questions about Moya. It was already hard enough to keep the truth about her a secret from the rest of his crew. He had told them that Moya was a top secret research project and his wife Aeryn was a Colonial Intelligence Officer in command of Moya.

The fact that Admiral Adama was trying to lead a fleet of survivors to Earth worried John Crichton. After his experimental spacecraft Farscape One had flung him to what seemed to be the farthest corner of the galaxy, his main goal had been for several years to find a way back to Earth. But after he had reached the Twelve Colonies during their destruction at the hands of the Cylons and found himself in command of the Pacifica, things had changed drastically. He had realized he needed to shift his priorities, making sure that the survivors of the twelve colonies would never, ever reach Earth, while protecting them at the same time from the Cylons. Crichton knew that if the Colonials found Earth, the Cylons would eventually get there as well. And Earth was by far not ready to deal with the Cylons. He had witnessed firsthand what level of destruction these machines were capable of when they nuked the colonies. He needed to prevent the same thing from happening to Earth. At any cost. No matter how much he wanted to go back and see his father and two sisters. And then there was his family aboard Moya to protect: His wife Aeryn, five year old D'Argo, and three year old Xhalax. Suddenly someone banged on the hatch that served as door to Crichton's office. He opened and someone Starbuck immediately recognized as a Model 3 Cylon in colonial uniform walked in.

"Commander, our raptors have returned from the SAR mission and found..." the woman began to report.

"She's a frakking Cylon, they look like us", Starbuck jumped up, pointing her pistol at her.

"Stand down, Lieutenant!", Crichton shouted at Starbuck.

Starbuck looked at him and lowered her weapon.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your horses here, lady", Crichton intervened, jumping up from behind his desk.

He managed to convince Starbuck to holster her gun.

"She might be a Terminator, but she's on our side now. We know about the human models." Crichton explained and managed to talk her out of shooting his XO.

This made her think of Sharon Agathon and made her wonder if other Cylons have defected to the Colonials as well.

"Please continue, Major Robbins"

"Sir, our raptors have found four of our missing pilots alive, which brings our casualties from the last battle down to 13 dead pilots and 8 wounded. We have lost 17 vipers and 21 more will need intensive repairs. Our total casualties are 38 dead and 47 wounded across the fleet." Major Sandra Robbins continued.

"What about the survivors from the alien ships? One of the raptor pilots mentioned they found escape pods."

"Our crews have rescued around fifty or sixty survivors from various alien ships that had been destroyed in the battle. They have been brought aboard Moya, as per your orders, sir. One particular group of survivors has repeatedly demanded to be given coffee."

"I will talk to the alien survivors in person. And make them some coffee, for Pete's sake. There should be plenty of it left from the mystery fleet. Anything else?"

"Our people made contact with the three alien ships that were fighting with us against the Cylons. They have identified themselves as a task force from the Hynerian Empire. Their leader, General Rashon, is interested in pursuing diplomatic relations with us."

"That sounds good. I will meet with him tomorrow morning. Did our salvage ships find any goodies?" Crichton asked.

"Atwood's people picked up debris from several Cylon ships, but they're not sure yet if any of it is useful. They also managed to retrieve parts of some of the alien ships."

Crichton wondered what the Hynerians were doing so far from their territory. He recognized the designs of their ships when he had gone over camera footage from the battle. He was glad they had been around, or else the Pacifica would not have lasted much longer. Most of the other alien ships that had visited the asteroid outpost had been freighters or passenger ships with little or no weapons. The only ships beside the Pacifica that managed to put up a fight against the Cylons were the Hynerian

battlecruiser and the two Hynerian light cruisers.

"Major Robbins, inform the flight deck that I will be leaving for Moya in twenty minutes. Then contact the Hynerians and tell General Rashon that I would like to meet with him at his earliest convenience to discuss diplomatic relations. You are dismissed."

"Aye, sir", the XO saluted and walked out the door.

"Captain Thrace, you are now a part of my fighter wing, until we meet up with Adama's fleet. Based on your rank and experience as flight instructor I am assigning you as squadron leader to Tiger squadron. Most of the pilots under your command are still a bit wet behind the ears, so I want you to bring them up to snuff."

"Understood, sir", Starbuck replied.

"I'm heading over to Moya now to have a talk with those hitchhikers we picked up and after that I've got daddy duty. My wife will hit me over the head with the frying pan or her pulse pistol if I'm not home in time for dinner."

"Pulse pistol?" Starbuck asked as they walked out of Crichton's office and into the corridor.

"I'm sure you noticed that a standard issue pistol won't even put a dent in a Cylon Centurion, unless you shoot him in the head. But you can turn those walking garbage cans into Swiss cheese with this baby here. Say hi to Winona." Crichton unholstered his pulse pistol and waved it around.

After Starbuck had taken a shower she went to hang out with the Pacifica's pilots and have a few drinks with them. She was one of them now, for the time being. There were quite a few things that struck Starbuck as odd about this Commander Crichton. In their hour long conversation he had several times used terms and figures of speech she was not familiar with. He also carried a sidearm that was not standard issue and he didn't seem to be big on military discipline. She wanted to know what the rest of his crew thought about him.

Starbuck sat down at a table with Sheba and her wingman Bojay, whose full name was Jason Bormann. She ordered a drink and lit one of the cigars she had won from the worms in a card game a few days earlier.

Sheba looked like a younger version of Admiral Cain, but her hair was lighter. Starbuck wondered how it must have been like growing up with Helena Cain as mother. Her own childhood had been rough, but that must have been even worse.

"Your commander is a bit strange; I mean the way he talks. One time he referred to the Cylons as "Terminators". Hell, I don't even know what a Terminator is."

"That doesn't surprise me. Half the time I don't even know what he is talking about, but he is a brilliant tactician. His strategies and battle plans are solid." Bojay answered.

"Don't let Crichton fool you. He may seem to act like stupid school boy some times, but he is a lot smarter than he lets on." Sheba added.

"After Commander Kronus got killed in the blast that took our CIC out, Crichton just showed up in auxiliary control and started giving orders", Bojay explained. "At least

that's what Lt. Hill told us. He was there when it happened"

"So Crichton was not an original member of your crew?" Starbuck asked.

"No, it seems like he was from another ship. I think the Pacifica picked him up when we rescued the survivors from BSG 21. I don't know. Sheba and I were both out there getting our asses kicked by the Cylons when Crichton took command. We had lost contact with the Pacifica for a while, and then suddenly Crichton ordered us back to the barn and jumped us beyond the red line."

"And you started following his orders?"

"He was the highest ranking officer at the time. Most of our command crew died when the toasters blew up our CIC ", Sheba responded.

"So, do you guys trust him?" Starbuck asked.

"He is certainly not a Cylon, if that's what you mean. Without him, none of us would still be alive", Sheba answered.