Part 1, Battlestar Galactica: Dawn

Chapter 4

IV

THREE WEEKS LATER

Gaius Baltar had barely slept in the last three weeks. Even though Admiral Adama had told him that he wasn't looking for miracles he knew that deep down the Admiral needed him to come through on figuring out at least one of the languages of the planet they were monitoring. It wasn't that Adama had lied to him. But Adama was good at reading people and he understood that his charges were under enough pressure as it was.

Ever since the battle at The Colony, Gaius had been seeing life and his existence in a new light. He was letting go of that personality and ideology that had put himself front-and-center in everything. From being a religious icon to a political lightning rod, he had so many times been worried about one thing, and that was Gaius Baltar. And all that cult of personality had ever gotten him was resentment and grief. But rescuing Hera, and helping defend Galactica, even in his own small way, in what could have very easily been the climatic battle for humanity, and his Epiphany in CIC while facing down Cavil, had changed him. He knew he would never be pure as the driven snow, but he also knew he could contribute far beyond his own fame.

Maybe it was just that he was maturing; maybe it was the aborted coup, where a promising young officer like Felix Gaeta, who he had admired could throw his life away because of old grudges; maybe it was because Caprica had told him she was finally proud of him, just before the battle at The Colony began. Maybe he just realized that life was too short and too precious to waste on self-aggrandizement. Maybe it was what he was planning for he and Caprica.

But immediately upon learning that there was life on this planet and that they seemed to be human, he had, without anyone's consent, began trying to put together a computer program that could translate one or more of the languages those natives spoke, into the Caprican language, and, eventually, visa-versa. There were a few very well-versed linguists and computer programmers within the fleet, and he quietly made calls on them to get them working on the program. When he went to Admiral Adama and told him of what he was starting, Adama admitted that he hadn't even been thinking that far ahead. He had given Gaius his blessing. Adama had even added to the number of missions to the planet to increase their database. He had even flown on about a dozen missions himself.

Even though the scout missions were ongoing, he now felt he had a large enough database to go to the next step, which was to try and sort out the languages that seemed to be common, and, from there, hopefully, pick out a language that perhaps was even more common than all the others. As wonderful as computers were, trying to learn languages from scratch, with no reference, wasn't easy work.

Once the main language was identified, the computer programs they had devised were beginning to look for patterns, commonalities and inflections, and even different accents in a quest to come up with the beginnings of a very basic understanding of what they were hearing. They were still stuck at that juncture.

They had made a lot of progress up to this point. Gaius believed they had found the language or the dialect, that seemed to show up more often than others, and they had concentrated on sounds that seemed to be consistent with that language. But now, they seemed to be stuck, and they weren't making the progress that he felt they should be making. Something was missing. There was with any puzzle a piece or two missing but he just hadn't found them yet.

He found some time to doze off in his quarters. Even then, his mind was churning. How can we eliminate the differences in the way people spoke? The people on this planet had to have dialects with the structure of a given language, just as they had in The Colonies. He himself had a native Aerilon dialect and had learned to sound like a Caprican as he got older. It didn't mean that someone from Aerilon and Caprica couldn't understand one another, but their accents and some regional dialectic difference would make them sound completely different. That had to be in play as well on a planet with at least six billion inhabitants.