Part 2: Battlestar Galactica, Dawn: Collision

Chapter 10

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The program that Gaius had come up with was a work of art. At its core, it had been a basic computer program to simply give instructions. But their study of Bulldog's Raider had paid off. He was able to come up with a program that would scramble the Raider's visual acuity so that when it "looked" with it's red electronic eye it would see echoes, not real ships. And since everything was tied into the Hybrid all the weapons system would have the same problem. They were seeing two or three of the same ship and they couldn't figure out what was real. And since the virus spread from the Hybrid on that Baseship to the weapons and Raiders from her ship, then from those Raiders to the other Raiders, and then back to the other Baseships...

In essence, the Cylon Raiders and weapons were shooting at...nothing.

The program also masked where Pegasus and Galactica really were. The Humanoid Cylons couldn't open a window to see where they were so they were blinded as well. Every system on the Cylon Baseships was crippled by the program in a matter of seconds. They were all networked into the same system, so they all shared in the misery.

Now, they had to regroup, again.

"What the frack happened out there!" Cavil was as angry as anyone had ever seen him, which was saying something. "One minute, they're honing in on the Battlestars, the next, they're flying off in different directions, running into each other; shooting at empty space! What the frack!"

The others were just as shaken as Cavil. They thought they had a chance to take out at least one Battlestar in this engagement even as they kept pounding the planet below. Instead, they had a bunch of confused Raiders, confused missiles, confused Hybrids, and a confused Dradis system.

"Damned if I have the first clue", said Sharon heatedly. "I've never seen anything like it!"

"Maybe I missed something, but I didn't notice any problems right up until...they went haywire." None of them had ever seen a Simon so upset before. They were usually the most level-headed ones, almost to a fault, but he was even aghast at what was going on.

"Nothing", Cavil said, exasperated. "No indication of anything."

"Something happened", Sharon argued. "I sensed something for a moment and then everything went haywire. And it wasn't any simple malfunction. It's like the computers grew a mind of their own."

Doral hadn't said a word, he was in a fit of rage. But when Sharon said that last sentence, the light when on over his head.

"Hold on. A mind of their own?" He thought it through. "Oh, no, that's not what happened. I'll wager that somehow, someway the humans implanted some kind of virus in our systems. It's the only thing that makes sense!"

"There hasn't been a human on this ship in years", Cavil snapped. "We had no intruder alerts; we had no malfunctions suddenly appear."

Sharon broke back in. "Wait a minute", she said, an ashen look spreading over her face.

"What is it, Sharon?"

"About seven years or so ago, maybe a little longer, one of the Baseships allowed a Colonial officer to escape after several years in captivity. We let him go, and we made sure he found Galactica. We wanted him to take Adama out. Obviously, it failed and we don't know what become of that officer."

Still somewhat flummoxed, Simon was not getting it. "What do you mean we let him go? How did we let him go?"

"We let him escape in a Raider. There is a way for humanoids to fly it, although none of us have ever tried. He landed the damn ship on Galactica."