Part 2: Battlestar Galactica, Dawn: Collision

Prologue

PROLOGUE

LATE WINTER, 2025

Galen Tyrol would always think of himself as "Chief Galen Tyrol". It's just what he'd been called for years and years. Well, he'd been called worse, he supposed. "Toaster" and "Skinjob" came to mind, as well as certain expletives. But for years it had been simply "Chief".

But now he was a Rear Admiral but wasn't commanding a Battlestar. Well, not technically. He was building a Battlestar. And unlike the builders of many Battlestars before this one was being built on Terra Firma.

It was nice to be building, not destroying or being destroyed. Galen took a moment to realize that over the last five years, the survivors of the Holocaust on The Colonies were no longer a "gang", as Lee Adama had stated at Baltar's trial so many years ago. They weren't fighting. They were living again. They saw hope and a future with their brothers and sisters from Earth. They had regained much of the humanity they had lost.

As a Cylon, Galen had to grin at the word, but, to him, the word humanity was more than a bloodline; it was a way of conducting oneself, to carry oneself with dignity and pride, instead of with anger and hatred. That wasn't true during the flight from The Colonies to this world. The sheer desperation of being pursued had turned good people, including himself, into desperate beings, willing to do anything to simply stay alive. But not having to run anymore and being part of something that actually had a future had changed him, and most of those who had come to Earth on Galactica and The Fleet.

The rough edges that had shaped him during the flight had begun to fade. He remembered being sick and tired of people-Cylon or Human and wanting to simply go away by himself. He hadn't cared for much of anything since Cally had died, but he also wasn't the same bitter person who had snapped Tory's neck on Galactica either. Some of that rough-hewn scarring would always be a part of him and would in some ways serve him well in his current position. But like coarse sandpaper, hope had a way of whittling away at the layer of callous that had built up around his heart and his emotions all those years. He and those who had fled with him were becoming civilized people again. Much of the soul that he and others' felt had been lost in that desperate flight across the stars, was being regained. And it felt good.

He was now part of United Earth Defense, an organization born two years ago after the Colonials had arrived on Earth. He was in charge of building the new Ship Of The Line for the defense of Earth. It would be his ship. Even if someone else became the master of her when she flew, it would always be his ship.

It was quite literally being built from scratch. Since their arrival on Earth five years ago in 2022, the Colonists had slowly been integrated into life on their new home planet and with their new relatives. After much give and take in the United Nations, and a plebiscite in one American state, the Colonists had finally been settled in what had been part of the American Midwest. The Northwestern part of the state of Iowa was now the Independent Nation of New Caprica, complete with a seat at the United Nations.

After that what remained of the civilian fleet landed at two different places on Earth, here in Arizona, and halfway around the world in Spain. The ships had been dismantled, all the metal and composite materials melted down, two new Battlestars were being built from their remains and from other raw materials from the planet.

The Colonists had the blueprints and the know-how. Earth the raw materials to put together more ships for the defense of this last, best hope of humanity. They had taught their Earth brethren so much in the last five years, and Earth had taught them much as well. Earth was on the verge of conquering cancer now; on the cusp of curing insidious diseases like ALS, Alzheimer's and Dementia. The arrival of these relatives from one million light-years away was transforming the planet.