"Dreams of the Thirteenth" Part 3 Battlestar Galactica #9 (Dynamite) Written by Dan Abnett Illustrated by Cezar Razek Cover by Livio Ramondelli 2014

The secret of the space artifact revealed.

Story Summary

While running a deep scan of the space artifact, Athena detects the return data coming from inside the Galactica. It turns out that the Viper maintenance wizard Xam was a latent psionic whose abilities were triggered by the energon discharge of Starbuck's Viper after a recon patrol of the quantum storm (in "Red Shift"). Xam's own strong desire to reach Earth has unintentionally caused the euphoric dreams of reaching Earth currently being experienced by many in the fleet, as well as the projection of the mysterious space artifact. As Dr. Salik examines Xam, the pursuing Cylon basestar arrives and launches Raiders on the fleet. Xam uses his psionic abilities to project an impression of eight battlestars waiting to fight the Cylons, causing the basestar to suddenly recall its Raiders in full retreat. The fleet is saved...for the moment...but Xam is left a vegetable by the experience.

Didja Notice?  

On page 4, Apollo calls his sister Athena by the affectionate nickname Athy.

On page 7, panel 2, the word "pin-pint" should obviously be "pin-point".

This issue reveals that Xam is a delta-class telepath. Apparently, this is a high degree of telepathic ability as Starbuck remarks, "Highest psionic readings I've ever seen. Ever."

Dr. Salik believes that the energon blast that discharged into the hangar bay from Starbuck's Viper after the first recon into the storm caused a shock that awakened Xam's latent psionic abilities. This occurred in "Red Shift".

The basestar suddenly shows up to menace the fleet on page 12. Yet this is just shortly after the scene in "Dreams of the Thirteenth" Part 2 in which Athena reported the Cylon force to be 7 hours away! No explanation is given for the discrepancy.