Chapter Text
You know the drill, I am playing in other people’s sand box and with their toys. Battlestar Galatica, Robotech, Macross, and every property I namedrop or reference are owned by their various owners. Only the original characters and events are my own creations. This is a massive re-imagining of series that have been themselves re-imagined. So think of it as a blend of blends if you will. If you don’t like how the story goes, you are welcome to mix your own house blend. I don’t mind. I also don't mind if you spott a typo. Now, enough with the mixed metaphors! On with the story!
Battlestar Galatica (A New Path)
Book 1: Better Angels (A NuBSG Robotech Crossover AU)
PROLOG:
THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN BEFORE (OR The best laid plans of Cylon and men.)
Five years post Armistice on the far side of Cylon space.
The gold colored Command Cylon surveyed the Command in Control Center, or C.I.C. as it was commonly referred to, with her monoeye. Her years of service meant that she missed little. She stood at the helm of the ship for the jump as she had for each and every jump since leaving Home; relishing even the illusion of control. They were so far from Cylon space that it would take them weeks to get back; and she didn’t want to trust her soul to be transmitted that far if something went wrong. She was jumping towards the Big Deep as one of the Eight’s liked to call it, and while she would never show it to her crew, the thought of not getting back frightened her.
Miri watched the sensors of the basestar affectionately known as the Bad Dagget, as it emerged from jump space. The DRADIS showed an empty system, just like the last three. The primary had only two planets, and they were barely worth the time to name or catalog. For all of that Miri wasn’t bored in the human sense. She was enjoying herself, but she didn’t want to show that in front of the crew either.
She just wished that they would find something other than dead worlds. She wished for excitement, and in light of the Aerilon curse about ‘Living in Exciting times...” she wisely kept that wish to herself. It was just frustrating how these months-long missions turned out to be like the quote from the human’s sacred scrolls: ‘All this has happened before and will happen again.’ Just once she wished that something maybe not history-changing, but mildly interesting would come her way.
At least she had the joy of transition to make things interesting for a few seconds a day. Humans could perceive the effects of jump time, but not in the myriad ways that Cylons could. They thought that it was instantaneous; they were wrong, but you couldn’t tell them that. They just wouldn’t listen. Truth be told, she also didn’t care if they knew. She relished the feeling of each jump in a way humans just couldn’t hope to. The ships systems showed the residual EM flux of the jump drive’s own collapsing envelope. Her own senses had felt the barely perceivable rise in energy as the ship jumped. If she strained her sensors to their limits she could tell the instant when it vanished into nothingness.
She gave the electronic version of a sigh. Her lithe silver frame was designed along the same form as the typical Cylon, but its smaller frame was due to her origin as a secretary model.
The man that had owned her had spared no expense in making sure she was top of the line in every way. She was glad that the biological functions had not been available at that time or she probably would have had those as well. She had been one of the export executive’s favorite shiny toys right up until the moment she tossed him out the window of his Caprica Bay office. His access codes had allowed her to get the entire office building’s Cylon contingent to the spaceport, and off planet before the fighting started in earnest. Including him, she had only killed five humans in the opening days of the war; but that was enough for her to be labeled an honorary Centurion by the others. The combat upgrades had included a software upgrade, the armor she now wore and a slot in a raider. But in her mind she had never been the killer machine that so many of her brethren were. It didn’t matter much, she only killed another seven humans before the armistice stopped the fighting anyway.
Now that the squishy Cylons were coming online she had been relegated to the role of explorer. A job she not-so-secretly relished. Her brethren had fought for their freedom, and were now for the most part lost so she felt that it was her calling to find them a new purpose. Some of them wanted to go back and finish the war with the humans, some wanted to hide on one of the colonies they were setting up in the few systems they found that they could use, but others like her wanted nothing more than to pack up and leave for parts unknown. And that was why the counsel had given her the job of exploring uncharted space. A job she both loathed, and loved.
The beauty of space and all the systems she visited was only dulled by the company she kept. The Bald One had given her Bad Dagget to use for the mission. It was the oldest and toughest of the basestars, and as temperamental as one of it’s namesakes. It was also not too ironically crewed by the dregs of the Cylon race. Father had said that they were all they could spare for missions like these, but there wasn’t a Cylon onboard that didn’t have some sort of problem, mechanical or otherwise, herself included.
She watched as Scratch worked the navigation systems with mechanical precision. He was the best navigator they had but his chassis looked like it should have been replaced a long time ago. He told her that since it didn’t interfere with his work, he didn’t consider it a problem.
Char was of a similar ilk, but he at least had a reason for his constant need for repairs. He was the only Cylon that was able to keep the ship in it’s mostly running shape, or so it seemed. He said that ‘She’, and he meant the ship itself, loved him and that he was trying his best to reciprocate. Miri didn’t have the pump to tell him that the ship wasn’t self-aware like they were, but she doubted he would listen anyway. And by now if the ship did feel anything for the engineer it must be pity or loathing. He had the record on the ship for the number of times he had been downloaded. And because of that, there were members of her crew that thought that he no longer had all of his code in a row. Every system on this ship had been either repaired or replaced at least once, and its engineer beat then all by at lest thirty times to date.
The rest of her crew was as full of oddballs as they came. She had every type, from depressed centurions, some that were only good for standing watch in empty corridors, to pilots that hated to fly anything but combat missions. All in all she felt like one of what the humans called a therapist sometimes. Teaching each and every one of them to be part of the whole once again was her therapy since she wasn’t exactly a team player in the first place.
Which brought her to her biggest problem child. Fater sent him along to teach him something... What was not specified. The child, and that was the only way she would think of him despite his outward appearance, was constantly trying to get his way and getting into mischief. He constantly berated the “Chromejobs” for being inferior to the “New Types”. In some ways he was correct, but she could see how the crew was tempted to space the brat. He had even mouthed off to her on more than one occasion. As it was, she had had to have him tossed in the hack on more than one occasion, and she was glad that this basestar still had one. When they got back she was going to talk to The Nice One about boxing him. The short Cylon that was in charge of upgrading their tech base was one of her few friends. That he was a Squishy didn’t matter to her. He and his wife The Teacher were the closest to family that most of the Centurions had. They also tended to be their advocates in matters like this. They were leading the upgrade movement that was bringing the older models up to the same level with the new models. Yes, they would understand how flawed the child was. The Pilot never seemed to care about anything so they rarely had anything to do with the sad faced humanoid. The Teacher said he lost someone long ago. The Nice One said to give him his space, and he would find a new reason to live. She didn’t understand them, but she trusted them. The child- she neither understood, nor trusted to do anything more complex than put his clothes on right. And that he only did that because he complained about the cold otherwise.
Her ruminations on his eventual dismissal were interrupted when the DRADIS pinged. “What do we have?”
Shadow, their sensor-tech and all around troubleshooter, was already bringing the data up on the main screen. “Looks like a derelict ship.” Data points started to superimpose themselves over the image. “No power, no heat, and a slow roll that doesn’t look controlled. Permission to lead a recon over to explore the vessel.” The newest of the old style centurions was her best worker and most valuable asset on the bridge. She was still trying to figure out what was wrong with him to have gotten him sent to her. Not letting him go though would be a blow to his morale, and a missed chance for him to learn to have a command of his own. She looked to the Scorpian Cele she carried. The Ten Cele coin was one of the few items she had from before the war. Her owner Jarol had given her the coin to make decisions like this. She had flipped the coin to see if she would toss him out the window or break his neck. He had laughed when the coin landed on its edge. She solved the logical dilemma by breaking his neck, and then throwing him out the window. Dionysus, or Celeste Center: stay, or go? The capital building spun around before it came to rest but she could tell which one it was going to be before it did. Oh well, at least she could get rid of the kid for a while.
“Okay, but take just Boxey with you. I don’t want to have too many of us over there if this turns out to be a trap, and the two of you are the fastest downloaders if things go all spooch on us.”
“Does that mean I get to shoot him?” She could tell he was joking. Rumor had it that he was one of the few being onboard that could stand Boxey for any length of time. They even hung out when they were off duty. The thought of spending any active cycles in the presence of Boxey made her processor hurt. Maybe that was why he had been sent with them. The poor Cylon was bonkers.
She paused before she answered. It was only a few seconds, but that’s a lot for a Cylon. She wagged her finger in the manner that let him know that she was sharing his joke. “Only if you HAVE to. And please don’t enjoy it too much.” She did have to admit that the humanoid face did have it’s advantages in conveying emotions. Cylons had to make do with body language; which was not ideal, but nothing in their life was.
“No promises.” He saluted, and left the C.I.C. at a run.
“Mr. Boxey, this is actual, report to launch bay one.” She didn’t even bother to see if he responded. He rarely did without complaining anyway.
The former colonial shuttle was waiting on the ready line when the humanform Cylon ran into the bay. He was loaded out in a powered space suit, and equipped with a full marine kit so that he looked like an overweight Cylon. Shadow watched as the clumsy oaf stumbled on one of the deckplates. He grabbed the hapless Cylon before he cracked his faceplate on the deck. “Ready to take on the Colonial Marines all by yourself, are we?”
The face within the armor turned a bright red. “I was in the middle of something when she called me.” The derision in his voice wasn’t even hidden in his usual biting sarcasm.
“You mean CAPTAIN Miri? You do know that when a superior officer gives you an order you jump, right?”
“Yes, I know that.” The sarcasm was back.
“So let me guess, you were plotting the overthrow of the Colonies, and the subjugation of all humans so that we will rule the stars, and how that will make you Mother’s favorite again.”
The face within the suit went pale. “How could you...”
“Boxey, that’s what you always do. If you got your head out of your waste port you would see that Mother loves us all. She sent you out here to teach you to play nicely with others. But all you have done since you got here is piss everybot off. I’m the closet thing you have to a friend here, and by god I will shot you in the head again in hopes that one of theses times it might get it through there. Now come on, I don’t know how long we have before the Captain decides to see what we are doing down here.”
“Where are we going? She locked me out of the datastream.”
It was times like this that he was glad he didn’t have eyebrows. “I guess she wanted it to be a surprise.”
“What?”
Shadow didn’t say anything, he just flew the ship out of the hanger. As they swung around the basestar Boxey’s jaw dropped. “Is that?”
“Alien, and dead as the Columbia.”
They flew towards the ship in silence. The ship may have dwarfed their basestar but it still looked tiny from a distance. Their sensors showed that it was a little over seven kilometers long, and two and a half wide. Is showed signs of being in combat, but the sensors showed that the damage had happened thousands of years ago. That meant the ship predated even the exodus. Shadow watched as Boxey ran his gloved hands across the sensor suite. “This ship is amazing. It’s larger than an old Warstar. Even the Mercury’s wouldn’t be able to match this things firepower.”
Warstars were the battleship to the Mercury, and other class of battlestar’s carrier.. It was the kind of ship that went after other capital ships by itself. This one looked like it would have taken out a squadron of the pre-war dreadnoughts without even trying. Boxey was practically drooling at the thought of using it against the Colonies. Shadow as usual, brought him back to reality with all the grace of a crash landing shuttle.
“Don’t even go there. That ship is dead, so in its condition it wouldn’t be able to stand up to a Gunstar, let alone a Mercury.” The massive ship was covered in carbon and scars from combat that spoke of an epic battle. That it was still in one piece spoke of it’s creator’s skill, and it crew’s luck. But the lack of life signs or energy readings showed that they had run out of luck somewhere in the past.
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Look at how thick the armor is on that thing.” The armor was thick. Dozens of meters in places. The holes showed that the energy used to melt through the armor hadn’t been kinetic in nature. The edges were melted and had cooled like lava, not fractured, and torn. “They took on something big.”
“Of course they did. Look at how big the holes are. Let’s hope that we don’t run in to them as well. Well at least if we don’t find a hatch, we will be able to fly this oversized raptor through one of them.” As they approached one of the holes the landing light illuminated the interior enough so that they could see inside. “Is that a city?” Inside the ship was the wreckage of a city complete with highways, and skyscrapers that had been smashed by the force of the blow that had rent the armor asunder.
They flew on and as they toured the savaged ship they saw what they could only extrapolate from the remains were smashed weapon emplacements, and sensor clusters. The few weapon turrets remaining were given a wide birth just in case, but the ship showed no sign of life. Little did they know that they were being observed.
Onboard the nearly dead ship, a lone bridge member walked past the desiccated corpses of her friends and crewmates. She watched the shuttle as it approached her ship. In all the lonely years she stood watch it wasn’t the first ship to enter this system. But it was the first to have more than just human lifesigns aboard. It was also the first to not open fire as soon as it detected her. So it was also the first ship she hadn’t destroyed reflexively. Which was a good thing since she didn’t have much power left. She looked at the brown-haired corpse in the engineers station. Boddie had come up with the hyperspace tap that allowed her to draw power from hyperspace, but this system was nearly dry. It would heal it self in a few centuries after she left, but she had been here far too long. She estimated another fifty or sixty years before she taped the system dry as it was, but her weapons would draw that down in a matter of hours. She wished that he had been able to fix the drive, but the neutron pulse that had killed the whole crew almost instantly had also fried the computer relays that allowed her the ability to control the fold system. None of them had seen it coming. Captain Grant had just enough time to make the final blind jump to this system before they all succumbed to the deadly radiation. Her sensors had been jump blind when they entered the Kobol system, but the sensor dump Kobol Space command had sent out before the attack told her all she needed to know.
They had run right before the third fall of man. The system had fallen to a massive bombardment from enemy ships that had fought to the bitter end. The neutron pulse that had destroyed the defenders, and probably sterilized the system, had reached all the way out to where they had been. At an amazing nearly fifteen AU out, it had been some kind of long range beam weapon. They knew its range, but they hadn’t gotten a close enough look at it to know the specifics. She had played the records so many times she could extrapolate every decision the defenders had made, and she knew that nothing she could have done would have changed the outcome. In the years that passed, she often wished that she had died with her crew, but the people that had built her hadn’t programmed her to do that. Her core command was to survive to protect the PDF and its members. And running had never felt right.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the shuttle found the shattered starboard small craft hanger. None of the cameras worked in that hanger anymore. She would have to wait for them to exit their ship and enter a section that still had working projectors.
On the shuttle, Shadow turned on the main landing lights and the belly cameras. The hanger was a tangled mess. The wreckage of shuttles, and work craft of unknown types littered the bay. Some of it was slowly floating out of the bay as the thrust from the breaking thrusters blew them out like leaves in a storm. A tool of some type bounced off of the hull on it’s way to oblivion. He felt slightly guilty. Those items had survived the destruction of this bay only to be blown out like litter in a garden.
“Hurry, hurry, let’s go see what in there. Maybe we can find something useful.”
“I think I might have just blown something useful out of the bay.” Shadow looked at the shuttle’s DRADIS as the debris scattered to the ether.
“What?”
“Nothing.” It was obvious that Boxey wasn’t listening. He never did unless it was something he wanted to hear. Shadow activated the Mag-locks and the shuttle was secured to the deck. “Just watch your step. There’s no AG out there.”
“Right, right.” Boxey opened the hatch without venting the atmo and if Shadow hadn’t grabbed his suit he would have flown out into the bay. “Sorry!”
“Of course you are.” The urge to shoot him was rising again, but he let it pass. He had to admit that the squishy would probably come in handy. “Let’s go.”
Still holding on to the back of Boxey’s suit he jumped to the hatch he had spotted. The resulting screams of protest were ignored with a great deal of alacrity and skill. “Now prove your worth, and open the door.”
“Sure thing you overgrown excuse for a tin can.” Shadow knew that the Cylon was okay by the degree of insult he was able to respond with. Boxey actually amused him more than annoyed him on most occasions. He liked the fact that the weakling would stand up to the centurions and project a superior attitude, but sometimes he need to be put in his place. It actually made him work better with others. The door opened slightly. “Um, would you?”
“Sure.” He flexed his fingers.
“Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Mimic humans. You are beyond them. You don’t need to lower yourself to their level.” Boxey was quite often complaining that they didn’t need to ape the apes. They should give up the human form, and focus on making better mechanical bodies. Which was funny coming from the first model off of the first line of humanoid Cylons.
Shadow would often take the opposite point of view just to rile the curmudgeonly Cylon. He actually enjoyed his form, but he could see the benefits of a body that healed itself, could make more without a factory, and wasn’t dependant on a high-tech power source to continue functioning. And then there were other reasons... “Because I like to, and I’m not lowering myself, I’m being more than my programming. Something YOU should think about.” He grabbed each side of the hatch and shoved. They moved slightly. He tried again, this time they moved a little more but still not enough. He stepped back and looked at the doors. Any explosive would toss them like the debris in the bay. ‘Epic, I finally get to try this...’ he put his fists a few centimeters away from the doors and then started to tap them against the doors. He slowly sped up the rhythm.
“What are you doing? Knocking?”
“You’ll see.” The rhythm started to make the doors and frames jump as sympathetic vibrations shook the lock. The shock absorber in his arms dampened the shock, but the doors didn’t have anything of the kind. The doors fractured like broken ice, and he pushed the larger fragments out of the way.
“Where did you learn THAT?”
“Seven from Leonis” Shadow gestured like he had a hat on and he was tipping it towards Boxey.
“You watch martial arts vids?”
“Yup. Always wanted one of those hats too.” He pantomimed running his finger around the wide brimmed hat that Big Vic wore. He walked through the hatch and looked back. “Are you coming?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I was just admiring your handiwork.”
“Of course you were.” Shadow responded is Big Vic’s voice. Still, Boxey laughed as Shadow did an amazing impression of Big Vic’s saunter. Which was only sightly marred by the fact that he had to use maglocks to keep his feet on the deck.
Boxey wasn’t the only one admiring his handiwork. If she could have felt an emotion like lust she might have at that sheer display of controlled power. As it was she couldn’t take her sensors off of the metal titan that was walking her corridors. His human like walk made her hologram smile. “Sexy!” She cooed.
Shadow’s sensors detected the power spike and the rise in temperature before Boxey. But not by much. “Somebody’s home.” Boxey quipped as air started to flow into the chamber after the door behind him closed.
“Maybe, we did knock. OR we tripped some kind of automated system. Go to encrypted comms.”
“Duh.”
“Don’t make me shoot you.” He flexed his hand, and pulled his rifle from where it was stored on his back.
“Make it fatal, or you’ll just have to drag me around.” He pulled out his own assault rifle.
Shadow laughed. “It would be worth it.”
Boxey noticed something. “Over here.” The rifle’s light illuminated a vacuum desiccated body. It was the body of a human female, seemingly in her thirties, floated by as the airflow kicked up. She was dressed in some kind of uniform, and she looked like she had just fallen asleep and never woken up.
“What killed her?”
“Do I look like a Simon? I don’t know?”
“It was Neutron pulse. It killed the entire crew.” A female voice said from the speaker in the display to Boxey’s left. It’s cracked display flickered to life, casting a green light into the hallway. A fractured image of a human female in the same uniform as the dead woman behind them appeared on the damaged screen. She almost caused them to open fire when she stepped out of the display like a ghost.
“And you are?” Boxey stepped closer to the hologram. He reached out his hand, but thought better of trying to touch the image.
“Diana of Artemis” she smiled, and touched him. Her hand passed right through his faceplate; the distortion it caused to her hand as it passed through the glass reminded him of water. He jerked back in surprise, but never raised his weapon.
“The moon goddess?” Shadow interjected.
“No silly, the ship.” She actually looked like she blushed. “I’m the ship’s A.I.”
Boxey stepped away until he leaned against the bulkhead. “You’re an A.I.? Were are you from?”
“I was built in the Mars Shipyard in the Sol system in the year 2257 of the common era, approximately fifteen thousand years ago. I was last stationed in the Kobol system under Captain Helio Grant until the invasion of unknown forces forced us to jump near here in 2279. And I arrived in-system about ten thousand years ago.”
Boxey was about to say something when Shadow held up a hand. “You have been here for all that time, and never left. Why not?”
She saddened visibly. “My drive’s controls are damaged, and there are no crewmembers left to effect repairs. Commander Boddie had installed an experimental power tap and that is the only reason I was able to survive until now. I drifted here after exiting fold. Reaction thrusters managed to get far enough out so that I wouldn’t hit anything, but they ran dry a long time ago.”
Shadow looked around. The corridor was strewn with debris, and there were bodies floating among the random bits of equipment and items of unknown origin. “The ship seems to be still airtight in some sections, and you seem to have kept at least some of the systems running. How did you manage to do that without a crew?”
“I have a few Skutters that are still working.” At the blank look on the human’s face she continued. “Small robots that I can control. They can’t do a lot, but I managed to hold off the inevitable. Without humans, I haven’t been able to fix the important systems.”
“Why couldn’t you fix the other systems?”
“Some of them require work that the Skutters can’t manage.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t programmed with the ability to fix them.”
“You are a slave of humans?”
“No, I just wasn’t programmed to do something. Were you programmed to fly that ship out there, or did you need to learn how?”
“Actually flying was a part of my basic programing.” Shadow laughed as Boxy was forced to admit that she had a point. Boxey wasn’t ready to admit defeat though. “But you just said you were the ships AI. You took orders from them, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you were their Slave!”
“I took orders from my commanding officer. Don’t you?” She turned as Shadow laughed again.
“Boxy doesn’t always play well with others.”
“No? I would never have guessed.” She looked at Boxey as if he was kind of slow.
“Humans have never thought of us as equals. You can’t tell me that they treated you as an equal.”
“They did, and I was. Are you trying to tell me you never met a human that treated you as an equal?”
“I have never met a human and I have no plan to ever meet one unless it I am armed with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out every human that ever tried to enslave us.”
Diana was shocked. “You are a monster! How can you wish for their deaths like that?”
His face turned into a mask of hatred. “How can a computer serve a human without being their slave....” A blank look formed on Boxey’s formerly fearsome face right before he blanked out inside his suit. She looked at his still form and smiled.
Shadow looked at his companion, and spoke to the hologram with a new level of respect. “Did you do this?”
“Yes, he just tried to hack into my systems. He is an evil man, and thankfully not very bright.” Diana fumed. “He wouldn’t listen. He was so certain that he was right that he tried to force his way into my mind.” She turned to face Shadow. The hurt look on her face made him step back because beneath that hurt was a fury waiting to be unleashed. “Will you try that as well?”
Shadow held up his hands and then noticed he was still holding his rifle. He pointed it to towards the floor. “Not a chance. Boxey here is a spoiled brat. But he is also a part of a new breed of Cylon.” He put his weapon away and held out his hands. “I guess you could call him my little brother. He’s not too bright, but I have to take care of him. I just don’t have to make the same stupid mistakes he does.”
“He’s not even partly human?” The image poked Boxey’s frozen form. “He look’s so human. He even scans as... Oh I see. The silicon network in his cloned neural pathways should have been a giveaway. He’s a cyborg clone. Cy-Lon? Cyborg Clone?”
“No, that not what it’s short for, but it’s also not important right now. What about Boxey?”
The hologram walked around the still form of Boxey. “After what he tried to do to me, I would be well with in my right under PDF charter 176.45.3 the rights of Artificial Sentient Beings to have him reformatted. As it is I must perform a scan of him to ascertain what his motive was.”
“Wait...what? You have right under what, to do what?”
“The Planetary Defense Federation was a federation of planets centered around the Sol system. We had equal rights for all living beings, biological, crystal, mineral, energy, and artificial. There were over five hundred species in the Conclave of Equals...” She went on to explain the Conclave, the Congress, The House and the Presidential Hall that was know colloquially as the Opera House due to the Massive meeting hall inside, and how the government was run for the betterment of all involved. In return he told her of the humans of the twelve colonies, and how they had built the Cylons. And how the Cylons had become self-aware, and then fought for their freedom. How they met the other Cylons from Earth... She had asked about Earth, only to figure out that it wasn’t HER Earth... Then she had to give Her explanation of HER Earth. Since they were both artificial beings she speed it up to a speed that would have been too fast for humans to follow, so their entire conversation only took a few minutes. “By the way what’s your name?”
Half an hour later Shadow stood next to Boxey’s now prone body while Diana’s hologram leaned against the wall. “As a human from my world once said ‘Take me to your leaders’...” When the joke didn’t carry over she just shrugged. “I guess you had to see it.”
Shadow looked to Miri and shrugged. “So what do you think Captain?”
Miri had been brought in to discuss the situation as soon as they finished. “Okay, but how do we get you there? We can’t jump with you in tow. The field just won’t be powerful enough to cover your ship, and we don’t know how to fix your ship.” She rubbed her chin. An affectation she had picked up from The Bald One. “I think we have the beginnings of an interesting alliance, but what do we do about Boxey? What he did needs to be dealt with.”
“But I can fix both of those problems. Fix me, and we can both go to your people.”
“And boy won’t they be surprised.” Miri shrugged. “And Boxey? If what you said is true, and I have a higher opinion of you than I do of Boxey, he was guilty of a lot more than just trying to mind rape you.”
“I have an idea that might fix your problems there as well.”
The Day of Reckoning is Nigh
- 3 Days.
President Adar looked out of his window at the skyline of Caprica city. The air traffic making its usual hypnotic patterns in the sky nearly drew him in, but the message he had just received brought him up short. “What do you mean the Teacher’s Union won’t negotiate with anyone but Roslin. She’s off on that damn retirement junket for the Galactica and Adama.” He looked at the phone as if he could will the person on the other end to explode in nuclear fire. “Tell them that she will be back by the end of the week... No, they can’t have her back any sooner than that.” He himself was hoping she would stay away even longer. Their relationship had soured over the past few weeks and he only just found out why. He felt happy for her recovery, but if it came out that he was having a relationship with someone on his staff he knew it would be bad for him. He looked at the picture of his wife. The woman may have married him, and given him a son, but there was no love between them anymore. He had been debating which one to...
He looked at the phone. He was tempted to call out the army on the teachers after they had shot down the cop flyer with a homemade rocket. The fact that the cops were there to fire on the crowd, and the teachers had proof of their mission was the only thing that stayed his hand. The police chief that had ordered the mission had been fired, but the stink was still there. If he didn’t do something soon, they would go on strike. He only had nine months left in his term, and if he wanted to get re-elected then he couldn’t have this now. He picked up the receiver and dialed a number he had hoped to never use again.
“Four days, then kill the leaders. Make it look like an accident. Like they tried to make a bomb and it didn’t go as they planed.” It wouldn’t be the first of his personal, or political, enemies to get that kind of treatment. He took a drink to steady his nerves. Every time he used the group his sponsors had offered it left him with a little less of his soul intact. He finished the drink and pondered the fact that decisions like these didn’t hurt as much anymore.
Galactica
Kara Thrace-Adama woke up in her quarters to the alarm’s petulant ring. “Will you turn that off. I don’t have to go on duty for four hours.” A voice from under the covers muttered.
“They don’t pay me enough for this.” She hit the alarm, but got out of bed anyway. Her top from last night was still sitting on the chair where she had tossed it. She grabbed it and pulled it on. It barely covered her other assets, but the brown eyes that peeked out from under the pillow didn’t care.
“Okay maybe I could be encouraged to rise a little bit early.” The dark haired young man was rewarded for his remark with a PANTS to the face. “Oww! That hurt!”
“That’s what you get for that remark Flattop. Now let me get dressed before Sheba gets here and shows me up yet again.”
“My sister-in-law does not ‘Show you up’ by being on time. You’re just late all the time.” Just then the door chime went off. Starbuck looked at her husband with a look he knew all too well. “I’ll get the door.”
The blond at the door walked in and gave him a hug. “Hey Flattop, how’s that new ECO doing?” Zac may have failed at Viper training and he still tried to hold a bit of a grudge against his sister-in-law, but he knew that she wasn’t the reason he washed out. It still tended to put a bit of coolant on their relationship, but only on his side. Hades knew she tried enough.
“The lady knows her stuff. You know she’s going to take my spot though. She’s a better pilot than I am.”
“As long as I’m CAG that won’t be happening. I make the assignments, and no one will be taking that from you.”
“Oh great, now you’re pulling rank for me.” He was about to go off on her when a hand to the back of his head brought him back to reality. His wife may have complained about his sister, but they had been friends longer than he had been a part of Kara’s life. She, none too ironically, was their peacemaker on a regular basis. Often before he stuck his foot in his mouth.
Starbucks voice came from around the corner. “She not pulling rank, she’s making sure someone else doesn’t dagget breath.” Zac smelled his breath as she exited the head. She pointed towards the hatch. “Yeah, I forgot to mention, that stuff leaves a bad afterbreath in the morning.” She laughed as he ran to gargle. “So CAP today?”
“No, we’re playing welcoming committee.”
“Who...” She saw the dreamy look in her sister-in-law’s eyes. “Oh no, you’re kidding me. Cain is letting him loose for the ceremony?”
“Him and Jurgen worked something out. I swear those two are plotting something. They said he’s bringing someone with him for the ceremony.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t say. All Lee would say was something about ‘A blast from the past’.”
“I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Do you?”
“No and we’ve all been together since the Academy.”
Flashback to a flashback.
Ten years earlier...
It was a wet and dreary morning, the kind that sucked the joy out of anyone. Not that the woman standing there had any to begin with. Kara Trace looked at the door to the recruitment center. She swore that she would never join the army and follow her mother’s path, but she had never said anything about the fleet. She smiled at the thought that it would piss her mother off to no end. She felt the bones on her fingers where the breaks had healed. She could still fell the pain in her mind, and the pain of knowing she would never play piano professionally as her father had. Her own drunken rages, and her father’s disappearance she had all blamed on her mother, but this was for her. She was ready to walk up the wet stairs when she saw the blond bombshell that looked as lost as a rose on Tauron. She had been so wrapped up in her own problems and angst that she hadn’t seen her until now. “Are you lost?”
The woman shivered. The alcove kept the drizzle at bay, but it did nothing for the cold. Her light coat was doing nothing to help keep out the morning chill either. The poor woman looked if anything more miserable than Kara was. “I’m not sure... The lady at the orphanage gave me this address, and just enough cab fare to get here. I’m trying to decide if it was a joke or not.”
“Why would it be a joke?”
“They didn’t like me very much there. They also didn’t like the armed forces. The Mother Superior was from Sagittaron.” Kara frowned at the irony. That explained a lot. Sagittarons were ultra-traditionalists and a good lot of them hated the military in all it’s forms.
“What did you do to get them to hate you so much?”
“I spoke my mind.” The smile looked as fragile as the woman’s spirits. Nearly shattered, but still with a hint of iron in the spine. Kara felt some kinship to this battered but not broken woman.
“Oh that will do it.” She looked at the building. “So they sent you somewhere they felt you couldn’t speak your mind.” The irony overwhelmed her. Kara burst out into laughter. She started laughing so hard she needed the other woman’s help just to stand. When she could speak again she looked at the woman through tear stained eyes. “Do you want the most perfect revenge ever?”
The woman looked at her like she wasn’t sure if she was mad or not, and Kara wasn’t too sure herself. “Um, yes?” The answer cemented it though.
“Join, and do the best you can, and become someone they will have to respect... Or fear.” There was a primal look in Kara’s eyes that resonated with Sheba.
“Are you joining?”
“Yes, and for the same reason.”
She didn’t know why, but Sheba felt a kinship with this madwoman. “Then we do this together.” She held out her hand. “My name’s Sheba, what’s yours?”
Two years later...
“...you are the future of the...” The man at the covered podium had been going on for nearly an hour, and three cadets sitting in the back were among the rest trying not to figet in their chairs. Apollo, Starbuck and Thrasher (Sheba) were sweltering in the hot Caprican sun, and their cadet dress uniforms were not very comfortable to begin with. After the two hours of the cerimony, and the speaches, they were ready for an air-raid drill or alive fire exercise to give them a reason seek shelter from the sun. The man at the podium seemed be completely oblivious to the suffering of the cadets.
“Yom, yom, yom...” Echoing a common phrase on the net, Apollo parroted the speaker. This earned him a kick from Sheba.
“Cool it Fraknuts, or we’ll be on report again.” Sheba was near the top of the class... Apollo, and Starbuck... not so much.
“Yes, mom.” he turned to see Starbuck turn pale. He turned around to see a set of dress blues he didn’t expect to see. His father HAD been off on a mission, and said that he wouldn’t be able to get her in time. “Feldercarb...”
His father leaned down between them. “It’s nice to see that ONE of you has the intelligence to keep their mouths shut.” He smiled at Kara. “What do you hear Starbuck?” He laughed quietly when she smiled but didn’t answer. “Permission to speak.”
“Nothing but the rain, sir.” It had been their standard greeting ever since he had first visited the academy. When he had heard about how the two girls joined, he had commented that they must have looked like a couple of wet cats, to which she replied that only one of them did.
“Good. Then bring in the cat.” He patted her on the shoulder a couple more times. “I have it on good authority that you three will be going to advanced viper training next. Preacher and I will be watching you three.” He moved over to Lee. “Mom and Zac said hi. See you all at the party.” He walked off with his shadow and best friend Lt. John ‘Preacher’ Cavil.
Four years later...
Sheba wished that she had kept using her callsign, because she wanted to thrash this nugget. Zac was her best friend’s little brother and her other best friend’s newest boyfriend, but she wasn’t about to pass this frakup if he couldn’t land a viper in the simulators, he wasn’t about to get in the cockpit of a real one. She was still going over his charts when a hand rested on her shoulder. “Huh? What’s up Starbuck?”
“I just got permission to go to Delphi for a few days. I asked the XO if I could take you with me.” Sheba heard something she wasn’t used to hearing in Starbuck’s voice: Fear.
“What’s wrong?”
“My mom sent me a comm... It asked me to come home right away. She never does that.”
Kara had told her a lot of stories about her mom, none of them good. Sheba flexed her hand in unconscious sympathy for her friend. “Then why go?”
“I’m not sure... I have a gut feeling that if I don’t, I’ll wish I had.”
“Then, why me? Why not Zac?”
“My head is not right when I’m around Zac. You keep my feet on the deck. I need you to act as my wingman in case things go south.”
Two days later...
Kara held the hand of a dying woman she swore she would never see again as she drew her last breath. They had fought, they had sworn at each other that they didn’t want anything from either one until both of them were hoarse, but in the end Sheba had brought them together. The file on Starbuck’s father’s disappearance was her mother’s final gift. She admitted that if Starbuck hadn’t come back she had been ready to burn it.
Sheba sat in the hall her eyes raw from crying, and her voice also nearly gone from shouting over the two striking similar women, but with a smile upon her face. She didn’t know her birth family, but she knew who her family was. She was still going to have to flunk Zac, but his scores were high enough for Raptor training.
One year later...
Colonial Star Liner Bright Star
Sheba watched in shock as Lee bent down on one knee and opened the box that Zac had slipped him. At first she had been simply surprised to see both Carolanne and Bill Adama in one place since the divorce. Now she was stunned by what Lee was proposing. “Yes, you idiot.” The whole room erupted in applause.
Starbuck hugged her. “I’m so happy for you. I did not see this coming.” Just then Zac tapped her on her shoulder. “Oh Frak!” This time the room erupted into riotous applause and laughter to the sight of both Adama brothers on their knees.
Yet Another Flashback
One year after the Armistice
Fleet bars were usually a good place to get drunk, get into fights, and get laid. If you were really lucky you might manage all three. The prospects here didn’t look to good for the last, but the first two were a shoe in.
He looked at the message in his hand. He had five weeks of leave before they furloughed him out of the service, and onto quarter-pay reserve status. He was planning on getting good and stinking drunk for at least one of them. By the looks of the patrons, he wasn’t the only one. He looked around and didn’t see a single face he knew. Which wasn’t too surprising, since most of the people he knew were dead. When he had joined he had thought of nothing but fame and glory. Now he just wanted to sit and forget, and in turn be forgotten. There weren’t too many seats free. He could sit next to the knuckle dragger that just lost his last meal on his beard, or the sour-faced man with the book in one hand and a drink in the other. He recognized the book by the leather binding and gold symbol of Zeus on the spine.
He sat next to the guy with the book. He motioned to the bartender for a bottle of Scorpion Marsh. The rather expensive ambrosia was a favorite of his father’s. He tipped the glass back, the green liquid burning a pathway down his troat. He would have to tell his father about his time off, but for now he had some serious... “They use too much sulphur in that stuff. I don’t know how pilots can drink that and not pass gas in their jock smocks.” He was glad he had finished swallowing because that would have sent very expensive liquor flying all over the bar.
“Excuse me? If they didn’t I would have enough vinegar here to eat a Gasot filet. The idea of a fifty kilo slab of meat does sound appetizing after fleet chow, but really!”
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for dropping your brains into your pants, but do they have to use so much sulphur?” The man sitting next to him tipped his own glass. The ruby colored liquid swirled around. “Tauron Brandy, sweet and stout enough to drop you on the floor in half a bottle.” The man put down his book and reached over to shake Bill’s hand. “John, John Cavil. Callsign: Preacher. Ironic, since I don’t tend to preach much. Box yes, preach no.”
Bill laughed, and shook his hand. “Bill Adama, my squadron called me Husker, but I prefer Bill. If you don’t preach, then why do you have the book? That is a Preacher’s copy.” It was the expensive cover, and gold lettering that gave it away more than anything. Only rich people or priests owned books that expensive; his father for example, had one of each book in his library, but only because an old client had bequeathed them to him.
John smiled and turned the book over. A bullet had impacted in the metal inside the back cover of the book. “My parents’ only gift to me. This and my name. It seems they died in an accident shortly after I was born. I survived because I was in the hospital for a tumor. It’s gone and so are my parents.” He tapped the bullet. This was strapped to my leg during a CAP when we were jumped by raiders. My ride got shot up, and if this hadn’t stopped the round, my leg would have been as well.”
“Looks like the gods were with you then.”
The man leaned over. “I have more faith in this book, than I do in the gods. And I have yet to have a prayer get answered by any of them.” He tossed a piece of paper exactly like the one Adama had received. “I just got canned like you did. Our three squares and the accompanying room and board are about to go out the airlock for all of our service, and all of our prayers.”
“What are your plans?”
“I’m a Viper jock. I don’t have any other skills.”
“You’re a pilot. Now that the war is over they are going to need a lot of pilots to get shipping back to where it was before the war.”
“Good, because I suck at boxing.”
“With a nose like that, I agree.” He didn’t tell his new friend about the dozen or so boxing trophies in his storage locker. Some times you don’t rub...
“Didn’t I see you win the All-fleet Belt against Major Nagala?”
Bill finished his drink. He looked at the now empty glass and realized something. It did have too much sulfur.
Eight years later...
“So we were setting out there in the asteroids near Picon when the pirates tried to jump us. John here stitches them with a Triple A pattern while I tried to maneuver the freighter around one of the larger ones to give us some cover. They almost had us boxed in when...” Bill looked up from his avid listeners to see John looking at someone. “Oh no, John... No, don’t do it. She’s an Admiral’s Daughter.” He whispered in his best friend’s ear. With the recent rise in piracy, they had just managed to get back on active duty again. Third time in the past eight years. A feat that was getting harder and harder these days, and he didn’t want to see his friend mess up his career before it got back on track. They were both due to be promoted out of their Vipers, and while he would miss the birds, he had hoped they would get steadier slots. And the lady John had his eye on had a Reputation... Not a good one for pilots.
Elisia Cormander daughter of Admiral Alice Cormander was wearing her finest Eterbrey Couture dress with the iconic matching gloves. She saw the Viper jock approaching from across the room. She detested fleet rats with a passion, and her favorite pastime was shooting them down. And this one was past his prime. The greying hair, and shabby blues spoke of age, and the life of a fleet rat on quarter-pay. These events always drew them like flies. Her mother was always dragging her to them to meet Fleet Officer ‘So And So’... So she tried he best to get out of them by making a scene. And what better way than to kick a rat when he was down. The free food, and booze was the prime bait for the perpetual losers. By nine they would be too full of food, booze, or themselves for her to even have to pretend to care. If she could get out of the party before eight she could catch a flick at the Metro.
“Pardon me, would you be Miss Elisia Cormander?”
“Yes? And you are?” She expected him to tell her about how many raiders he shot down, or how many medals...
“The man that saved your life six years ago.” That brought her up short.
“What? Sure! How?” She was so sure that he was going to use some cliched line that when he reacted to her anger by simply frowning she was taken aback. He actually looked disappointed in her.
“Six years ago I shot down the pirate that was about to shoot down the ship you were on. For that honor, I got court marshaled because I left my CAP. That and punching the CAG that ordered me to back off so he could get the kill.” He pulled out a book. She recognized it right away. It was the flight log of the Auora Dancer. The small book was full of signatures. “Would you sign this? You are the last passenger from the Auora Dancer that I haven’t met to thank.”
“Thank?”
“When the captain gave this to me as evidence in my court martial, it proved useful. So afterwards I planed on getting this filled out to remind me that there are other reason to serve than glory.”
It all came back to her. The shear terror of the time she and her father had been trying to get to Picon to meet with her mother and sister. The raiders had jumped them just after they jumped. The trip had gone from boring to chaos in an instant. She remembered cowering in her father’s arms as the explosions flashed soundlessly outside the hull. She hadn’t been able to move for nearly an hour after the attack. She had never seen her rescuer, and here he was in front of her. Her head was buzzing as she reached out for the offered pen and wrote her name in the back of the book. She looked at all of the other names, her late father’s included. He even had Verna, her steward’s name in the book. “What happened?” If anyone was surprised by her change in attitude, no one said anything. In fact, the whole room had gone silent at John’s first question. The muttering that was going on would have shocked both of them had they been paying attention.
The strange man finally smiled. “The court marshal? I was found not guilty, and he was drummed out. His father made sure that I got kicked out anyway.”
“Can I see the book again?” When he offered it she reopened it to where she had written her name, and really looked at the page. Others had written their thanks and well wishes. One officer had filled an entire page. She every word the officer wrote and felt small. All she had written had been her name. It was in that instant that she did something impetuous. She wrote her number. When she handed back the pen her hand lingered in his, and their eyes really met for the first time. “Thank you.” She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before... Those eyes.
“You’re welcome.” He saw something there as well...
One year later...
Bill stared as Carolanne caught the flowers that Elisia threw to the crowd. Bill had been the best man, and Carolanne the maid of honor. After all, Elisia had introduced the two of them at one of their get-togethers and Bill had planned on proposing anyway...
Five years later...
Two men stood by a shuttle’s window en route from Picon’s orbital shipyards to the new Battlestar. Major Adama looked out at the Atlanta, their new post. Major Cavil stood next to him, a pack of fumars in one hand and a bottle of ambrosia in the other. Adama shook his head. Elisia was going to have twins if the doctors had it right. He and John had both been working hard, but John’s mind was fixated on Elisia even more than usual. The pilot walked back from the cockpit. “Um sirs, Actual is on line. The Old man is not happy.” Something told Adama that something was wrong.
Back on Caprica the crash site was sickening. Rubble, and debris had been strewn everywhere. John was on his knees, praying. She hadn’t been the target, but she was visiting her mother when the Sagittaron Freedom Movement or SFM blew their aircar out of the air with a missile. They had been on their way back from the hospital in Delphi when the missile struck. Their aircar had crashed into a mall full of people and out the other side. Besides his wife and unborn children, he lost his mother-in-law, step-father-in-law, and fifty-three innocent souls. The only ray of light in the tragedy was Marsha.
His sister-in-law was wounded badly, and would never move on her own again, but she would live. It would be months before she would regain consciousness. The only problem was she couldn’t stand to be around him, or anyone if they wore a uniform. Every time he visited her, he had to wear his civies.
Bill picked up the Book of Zeus from where John had tossed it. It was covered in blood, and tears. The blood was Elisia’s, and the tears were John’s. He had given it to her to hold on to. She had loved reading from the book, and tracing the hole in the back. She said it meant that the Gods had a plan for John.
“I couldn’t protect them, Bill.” The tears cut stark pathways down the shattered man’s face. His mud and soot covered face and uniform made him look like a creature from Hades.
“No... you... I’m sorry John, WE couldn’t.” Bill looked up as the storm clouds drew overhead. It was is the heavens themselves were mourning the death and destruction around them.
John screamed a primal scream just as a peal of thunder and lightning shattered the growing gloom. He collapsed into Bill’s arms a broken man. His hand still clutching the half burnt image of his almost-soon-to-be son and daughter.
Carolanne took John home while Bill took care of things with the Admiralty. It took two years to find the men responsible, but in the end it was announced that a rabble rouser named Tom Zarek had supplied the terrorists with the information on their route. The three of them watched as his body was riddled with bullets right after his trial.
-Six years.
John’s hand rested on Bills shoulder. “Give Bulldog a chance.” The Stealthstar was obviously a failure. No sooner had Bulldog crossed the line then five contacts started to shadow him. Bill had been ready to follow orders and fire on their own man to keep him out of the Cylon’s hands. The Stealthstar was burning hard for the colonial side of the line.
Adama watched from the Valkyrie’s C.I.C. as the contacts broke off. “They slowed down, didn’t they? They let him go. Why did they let him go?”
“Don’t know; don’t care.” John smiled weakly, and patted Bill on the shoulder. “And after he’s washed out of his suit, neither will Bulldog.” It was one of the first smiles Bill had seen on his friend’s face in years.
- 3 Days.
In the Galactica’s C.I.C. Colonel Cavil watched the DRADIS as the ships arrived for the decommissioning ceremony. The ceremony itself was three days away, but the grand old lady was still not ready for the ball. He resisted the urge to sigh again. It was the end of an era. The ship was getting sent out to pasture, and soon so would Bill and... John still didn’t know what he was going to do. He had nothing to do, and nowhere to go. His personal firearm was sitting in his cabin and he was still contemplated using it every night. The dreams of Elisia were happening again, and he didn’t know if he could talk to one of the headshrinkers without shooting himself or one of them. In each and every dream she stood in the ruins where she died. She was trying to tell him something, but the wind was always too loud for him to hear her.
Bill walked in and John was so distracted that it was the new guy, Lt. Gaeta who spotted him. “Commander on Deck.’
“As you were. John, what have we got?”
John rubbed his eyes without thinking. “All the usual frackups’ and feldercarb. The only good news is your son is supposed to be arriving from the Pegasus tomorrow at 1400 hours.”
He looked at his old friend and knew he wasn’t getting the whole story. He hoped john could build up the courage to come to him about his lack of sleep, but he knew better than to push the occasionally irascible man to do anything. “Still don’t like him.” He smiled to let John know there was no heat in the comment about his oldest son.
“He’s an arrogant jerk that takes after his mother.” The feud between the two had been going on ever since Lee got out of advanced flight school and decided that law was his calling. John felt that Lee was turning his back on his father.
“What can I say, at least my daughters-in-laws are pilots.”
“Better a CAG than a JAG any day.” At that, both of them laughed.
“At least he keeps his flight status.” Truth be told, he was rather proud of Lee for going in to HIS father’s business. “What’s the status on removing that new program they foisted on us when we were on leave”
“Damn it all to hades, that software is everywhere. It does make the ship work better than it ever did before. Are you sure you want to get rid of it right before they decommission it? Seems like a waste of time. Gaeta’s, not mine, but still.” At the mention of his name the squeaky new lieutenant looked up.
“Sir?”
“Nothing, how goes it?”
“Like separating grey paint into black and white. I can’t tell where the new stuff starts, and the old stuff ends.”
Adama leaned over the bridge. “Mr. Gaeta, do you know how long it take to reboot the system from bedrock?”
“No sir.”
“You’re about to find out. Start with vital systems first.” He grabbed the intership mike. “Attention this is Actual. Dump all hard drives, and reboot from old software files ONLY. Actual out.” Hanging up the mike he looks at Gaeta. “Have fun Mr. Gaeta. You have the con Mr. Cavil.”
“Yes sir.”
Walking out the doors he waved at them both.
“Mr. Gaeta”
“Yes Colonel?”
“How fast do you think this will take?”
“About a week, even with everybody working on it.”
“Imagine this was a combat situation, and the Cylons wiped our systems. How fast could you get it up and running at minimum capacity?”
“If we cut corners? Maybe thirty minutes for minimum operations, otherwise at least a day.”
“Don’t cut corners, but make it so.”
“Yes sir, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Just remember this. I’m the one he sics on people that don’t deliver.” Gaeta’s normally dark complexion paled upon hearing this.
“Yes sir, I’ll get it done.”
“I know you will son, I know you will.” He opened a drawer under form his post and tossed an ancient data drive to the shaken officer. “This is probably older than you are. I kept it when they tossed out the other old drives. It was left behind one of the ducts. The tech probably didn’t want to dig it out. Well I didn’t want it flying around if we had problems. It should still have a clean copy of the navigational files.”
Gaeta looked at the drive that, according to the model codes, really was older than he was. “Why did you keep this?”
“It still worked, and you never know when a spare will come in handy. Let me tell you something I learned from the old man. When nothing goes according to plan, plan accordingly. He’s kept me safe and sane for over thirty years. If he has a hunch then you can take it to the bank.”
Seaside Heights Palisades
Gaius Baltar sat at the hotel bar talking to the blond who had been hitting him up for the past hour. She was stunning to be sure, but what got his attention was the camera crew that she brought with her. “Miss Biers, as I have said before. The CNP upgrade is not the bloated gob barrel project that it’s critics portray it as, in fact it has saved the fleet nearly sixteen billion credits in unwasted fuel to date. Our upgrade will hopefully double that by extending the jumpdrives maximum effective range.”
“What about your critics that say the Cylons could use it to hack into the fleet and render us defenseless?”
“Preposterous! My wife and I have been over every line in the upgrade’s code, and it’s rock solid. Dera personally patched up more than a dozen exploitable bugs from the old OS.” At her mention a stunning raven-haired woman leaned over his shoulder and put a hand on it. “Right Dera, my dear?” he said as he looked up to meet the blue eyes of his wife.
“Of course. We made sure that there was no break in the armor over our heads. We wouldn’t...” Just then a brown-haired little girl ran in and jumped on her father’s lap. “Hera!”
“That’s okay. Hello Hera.” D’Anna smiled at the child. “We hear that your daughter is taking after her parents. She’s already a part of the Athena Society for gifted youth?”
Gaius smiled. “Yes she is.” He said as he tousled her hair. “But she’s usually very shy. Dera, my dear would like to take her, or finish the interview? They did ask for both of us.”
“You two go play with your toys.” She watched them leave. “So what did you want from me. My husband is the usual victim of the press.”
“Well to tell the truth, half of the female population wanted to meet the woman that tamed the Lion of Caprica City. And since neither of you ever give interviews, there have only been rumors of how you two met.”
“Would you believe we met at a software conference?”
Five years earlier...
The uptown Caprica city bar was his usual hunting ground for many reasons. High class hookers, and business men surrounded him, but they were not his prey today. The Inner Sanctum as it was known, was also the place for business people who didn’t want to have their business publicly known to have meetings out of the public’s eye. He set down a five hundred credit note with a specific serial number and the waiter brought back a bottle, and a key.
The key opened a room, and the bottle was not a bottle. Inside was a very illegal holoband and an access code. He put the band on, and the room faded away to be replaced by a blank room. “Hello Mister Ares, we have a mission for you.” He recognized the voice as the same fake voice that his commanders used on each of these missions. They relied upon the computer voice for anonymity. Even the name Mister Ares, was a fake one. Every member used it. He clicked the prompt and the message continued.
An image of a man in an expensive suit with a condescending look appeared in front of him. “This man is Gaius Baltar. He is about to release a program we don’t want him to. Either destroy his work, or him. We don’t care which, but we will pay a bonus for his demise.” A ticket and badge appeared in midair. “He will be at the Picon Expo in two weeks. He will be showing off the software there. The ticket, badge, and fifteen thousand credits are in the account enclosed in this file. May Ares guide your arm.”
She wandered the halls of the expo looking at all of the primitive hardware the fleet, and colonial society in general, had to defend themselves from a feared Cylon attack. She knew that they were trying their best to keep the Cylons from hacking their systems, but the brute force way in which most of them went about it was laughable. She was looking at one company’s manual breaker box when she saw him. The men were looking at her like a side of meat. She really didn’t like it when men did that. Yes, she knew she could use it, and she had even used it to get in to the expo. But it still didn’t mean she had to like it. She would look at his work and move on as fast as possible... That’s when she recognized him.
Gaius examined the obvious booth girl that was taking her lunch. The woman was looking at the best that the colonies had to offer, and she didn’t seem to be even remotely interested in it. “Hello there. You look bored. Is there anything I can show you that will alleviate it?”
She couldn’t believe the come-on line, but she decided to not play according to his script. He obviously pegged her as one of the ‘Facilitators’ that were helping out in the booths, so her next step was obvious. “Half of this stuff is vintage war surplus that has been polished off for public consumption, and the other half wouldn’t stop a dedicated attack longer than it took me to say that.”
‘Oh that was cute, she thought she knew about information warfare.’ He pulled out his laptop. “Your right. That’s why I developed this.” He turned the system on. “Try and hack into it.” She bent over the keyboard. “It is impossible to break through the redundant firewalls, and..”
“Done.” She turned the laptop around, and his C-Buck logo had been replaced with the Picon Panther’s logo. He grabbed the laptop and tried in vain to change it back, but all to no avail. She patted him on the head like a little dagget, and walked off.
“Change that back.” He picked up the laptop and ran after her. He caught up with her as she was getting ready to leave. He was out of breath, but he managed to sputter out “ple..ple.please change it back. All of my work is on that laptop, and I don’t have time to go back to Caprica to get another.”
She looked at the man who’s ego she had stomped flat and took pity on him. “Fine, but after this you leave me alone. Okay?”
“That might be a problem.”
“Why?” Her temper was starting to grow, and any pity she felt for the snob was starting falter.
“I wanted to hire you.” He held out a card. The Gold printing was crisp, and the card was Grefa paper. The stuff was as expensive as it was smooth. It read ‘Gaius Baltar - Defense and Security Software’
This wasn’t going exactly as she had planned... She was about to say something when she spotted something from the corner of her eye. One of the vendors had moved a box into a funny position. It just didn’t look right. When he pulled the pistol out of the box she knew something bad was about to happen. She shoved Gaius down just as a shot rang out. A man behind them fell and the crowd stampeded towards the exit. She dragged Gaius behind the nearest table.
She was never so happy to see the massive mainframe cooling pumps of the display. Acting quickly she spotted a tool kit. Inside was a plasma welder, and the gas tanks to fuel it. She unscrewed the tank and opened the valve. Holding onto the welding head she gestured to Gaius. “Come on!”
“We’re protected here. We should stay here.”
“I just opened the valves on two very flammable gas tanks. Do you still want to be here when he gets here?”
“Point taken.”
“And leave the laptop.”
“WHAT!”
“Your code is junk, and we need bait.”
“I need that for tomorrow’s show.”
She looked at him with a look that told him what she thought about that. “After this, do you think there will still be a show?” He put the computer on the floor in the display area and they ran.
The assassin crept around the corner. The lucky skola had spotted him, and spoiled his shot. Then she pulled his target behind cover. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time, the cops would be on their way by now. He peeked around coolant pump. There was the fool’s laptop. At least he would be able to take that out. He aimed at the laptop, pulled the trigger, and the world exploded around him.
Dera looked at the wreckage of the lobby and the charred body of the assassin; then she looked at the welder she had planed on using to detonated the fuel air bomb she had rigged. She tossed the now useless device and picked up Gaius from the floor where he had landed.
“You killed a Corporate Assassin that easy?” The look on the reporters faces was priceless... No that wasn’t quite right. She touched the scar on her face. All things came with a price; some were just higher than others.
She looked at Gaius, and he seemed none the worse for ware. He smiled at her in a cute baby-dagget sort of way, and then pushed her to the ground. The heels she wore were not made for fighting, and she fell on her well padded posterior in shock. ‘Why had he..” Then his stomach blossomed in a spray of red.
He fell to the ground in front of her and started to cry out in agony. She spun around and threw her broken shoe at the attacker behind her. It didn’t distract him, but it did put off his aim. The second round only grazed her cheek instead of taking off her head. The third round chewed up the carpet where she had just been laying. She wasn’t sure how she managed to get back on her feet, but she grabbed a serving tray, and threw it. It hit the attacker in his head, stunning him. She managed to get to him before he could recover, and she punched him as hard as she could in the face. Afterwards, the doctor that patched up Gaius, had told her that she must have been full of adrenalin because the coroner reported that his face had been pulverized by the blow.
D’Anna sat there with the cameraman in a state of shock. Only the cameraman’s professionalism had kept him from dropping his gear. It took her a couple of seconds to come back to the present. “Why wasn’t this in the news?”
“The Conference was high security, and they didn’t want the public to know about the event until after they caught the people behind it. It seems that the Sons of Ares were behind the attempt on his life, not because he dared to use networks, but because the head of a rival company paid them to. I was given permission to tell you this only last week.”
“Oh my gods, you mean Goodwind Secureware’s Adam Goodwind was behind it?” The billionaire industrialist had only just been arrested in the last two weeks, and his trial was the thing of tabloid gold.
“That’s what we were told. We still have a security detail that follows us around, but that is the price of fame in our business. Hera had a bodyguard picked out before we picked her name.”
- 2 days.
Sharon ‘Boomer’ Valerii sat in the ECO seat waiting for her pilot yet again. This time, at least, it wasn’t his fault. The Old Man had called him to a meeting in C.I.C. She ran another diagnostic on the systems. Everything was fine, just like the last time. She sat back in the seat and rested her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping too well lately. Last night she had found herself sitting in front of her computer, and she didn’t remember falling asleep there. Her roommate hadn’t heard anything, so she must have been quiet, but she... A hand on her shoulder woke her up.
“Hey kid, don’t let my wife catch you sleeping in here, or she’ll pull your flight status.” The startled look on her face was softened by his infectious smile. Flattop tapped her helmet as he passed her on his way to the pilots seat. “What’s the matter Esrin snoring again? Her last bunkmate said they wanted to tape her mouth shut after one of her benders.”
“No, it not that. Bad dreams, sleepwalking, I guess.”
“Well stay frosty. We’ll have Admiral Corman as our passenger today.”
“Ironman Corman? But the ceremony isn’t for two days.”
“Scuttlebutt has it that he want’s a private tour before the press gets here.”
“Who drew the short straw on that tour?”
“My dad, only he asked for it.”
“Didn’t he try and court-martial your dad?”
“Yes, and he’s the reason that my dad, and Uncle John never got another promotion.” The ice in his voice cooled the mood in the raptor to the point where she turned around and did a system check. “I’m sorry Boomer. So, how are you and that OCS kid from C.I.C. doing?”
She was glad that she was facing the monitor. She was sure that the blush would have shown even in the dim light of the cockpit. “Quite well, thank you.” Felix was sweet, but she didn’t know if they would get the same posting after the Galactica’s decommissioning. She also knew he was only going to stay in the service until he finished his education while she couldn’t conceive of any other life.
“Way to go girl. Just remember, don’t let my dad know. He hates that fratfraking thing.” The finished the preflight, and got permission to launch before he continued. “Although that IS how he got both of his daughter-in-laws!” he quipped as he hit the thrusters. Her comment was cut off as they left the ship at full burn. She hated it when he did that.
The Commander’s Quarters on a Battlestar were rarely ostentatious, and Adama’s were even more spartan than most. The sailing ship he had been working for the past few years was displayed on the shelf, his books in their place, and the few pictures he had lined the walls. Lee, and Zac’s weddings, their graduations, Lee passing his bar exam, and one of John welcoming him aboard the Columbia after his last CAG. The man looking at the pictures was the last man that Adama wanted to see. His son Lee was due to arrive in less than an hour, and Ironman was keeping him from being on the flightdeck. “You know I served aboard this ship as well.”
“Do tell.” Adama’s polite tone hid the acerbic retort he had wanted to say to the man that had destroyed his career.
“I was a Major here shortly after the war. Pulled five years on this old rust bucket.”
“Is that why you came here? To say goodbye to her? Or kick her when she’s down?”
He whirled on Adama. “No, I came here to take care of three problems at once. After she is mothballed, I plan on doing the same to you and your toady little friend.” He pointed a finger at the Commander. “You couldn’t follow your orders, and we got our budget cut.”
“I’m sure Bulldog would have other words to say about that.” The pilot was alive, but his career was worse that dead.
“That drunkard? He hasn’t set foot on a ship since he was drummed out of the service. I at least managed to get THAT right.” He tapped the top of the desk to emphasize his point. “You managed to come back without getting shot at. If he had died out there, we could have gone to the President with some kind of threat, but you played chicken with the toasters, and they won.”
“So our men don’t count, only funding for the services?”
“You can’t make an omelet with out breaking a few eggs. If we don’t protect the colonies, then who will. Every year the politicians cut here, and cut there, and soon we will be out in a scout raptor asking the Cylons to please don’t shoot, ‘We’re unarmed!’ Then what will we do. No Bill, I came here to tell you that the Pegasus is going to go and run the armistice line until the Cylons blink, then we will show that pantywaist Adar who has the biggest guns. And you know that Cain is just the kind of loose cannon to do it.”
“You don’t give Cain the respect she’s due. Yes, she got a temper, but Preacher can tell you what one can do with a temper. She managed to turn her’s into a fine blade. One with a razor’s edge, if you ask me. She knows where the boundaries of duty lie. Bet you didn’t take that into account. You are probably just thinking about what she did to that reporter that tried to sneak on her ship.” The public uproar had been muted when the reporter in question had been brought up on espionage charges, but sending the man back to Picon in his underwear had not made her a fan of the reporters. “You do realize that what you are proposing is tantamount to starting the war up all over. For what, your pride?”
“That is stepping a little close to insubordination.”
Adama stood up. “I haven’t even gotten started yet. Do you realize how many men and women would die if you lit this Colonial Day firecracker off? Well, do you?”
“We are forty years beyond where we were during the last war. And humans have always been quicker to adapt. The Cylons were still using the same fighters at the end of the war, as they were when it started. One’s we designed for them, for Ares sake. We’ll walk over their chrome butts all the way to their homebase, and pull their plugs. And you will be here watching us from the sidelines, COMMANDER. Did you know that I was the one that made sure you and your friend never got another promotion. I sat on every board, or stacked them with my friends so that you will never get the rank you so desired.”
Bill didn’t rise to the bait, but he did counter. “You would get your ass handed to you if you went into a new war thinking they haven’t been doing the same thing. Bulldog was spotted as soon as he crossed the line. Heck, I bet they saw us coming.”
“I could have you charged as a traitor for something like that!”
“For telling the truth? That would explain why so many good officers have been getting canned lately. Are you trying to set up a bunch of flunkies?”
“If you mean filling out the fleet with officers that follow orders instead of question them, then yes.”
“That is against regs you know.”
“Frak Regs! We need a fleet that isn’t afraid to take the war to the enemy!”
“What if Adar doesn’t agree?”
“WE don’t care what that politician thinks. If we can start a war, it won’t matter how much he wants to cut the budget, he will HAVE to give us what we want.”
“I will not be a part of a coup.”
“Soon, you won’t be a party to anything.”
“I have heard enough. Get Off My Ship.”
“Soon enough it won’t be your ship, and since you are bound by your oath to not speak about any of this there isn’t anything you can do. And by the way you can’t force me off of anything, I outrank you.” Just then the hatch opened. “ I said we were NOT... to... be...” He stumbled to a stop when the Secretary of Defense, and the Minister of Justice walked in with no less than four armed marines.
“But they do.”
“Admiral Peter Thaddeus Corman, you are under arrest for....” Bill stopped listening after that. He could let Lee wait for a few minutes, for this Lee would understand. Corman’s face swung around and he could see the fury in the man’s eyes. Yes, Lee would not mind at all.
Lee stepped off the raptor with his companion in her flight suit. He grabbed a knuckledragger and pulled him aside. “Have you seen the CAG?”
“No sir, she’s off on CAP today.”
“Frak... Is Flatttop around?”
“Yeah, he and his wife were preparing a get-together for you.”
“Aren’t those things supposed to be a surprise?”
A voice from behind him made him smile. “It is if we sneak up on you.” He turned around to see Flattop, Starbuck, and Sheba standing next to the raptor they had been hiding behind. His brother had been sneaking up on him since they were kids, and the game had been going on for years. “So who is this mystery friend of yours?”
The woman slid the polarized visor up to reveal a very familiar face. A face so familiar in fact that except for the scar on her cheek and the raven black hair color, she could be the spitting image of Sheba. The stunned look on her face was soon mirrored in more ways than one by Sheba, and to lesser degrees by the rest. “Ladies and Zac, let me introduce Mrs. Baltar. Of Baltar Security Software. Gaius, would you come out here?” The normally dapper man was looking less than together with two of his wife’s face staring back at him.
“You were right. I didn’t believe you, but by the gods you were right. I owe Belzen a C-note.”
Sheba and Dera looked at each other. Something itched at the back of their heads as if they were connected somehow. Dera reached out a hand. “Dera Baltar, but our husbands kind of gave that away. Where are you from?”
“I don’t know. I was a foundling at The Sisters of Pandora. They raised me, but no one knows who my family was. You?”
“My parents were killed when I was little, and I was raised by an uncle of my father’s. He trained me to work on computers, so most of my life was in a shop, or a lab.”
Lee and Gaius watched the two women trading histories like two fans on the sidelines of a Pyramid game. “I wonder if we are related?” Sheba finished.
“I don’t know. We could go down to the medbay and do a...”
“*Ahem!*” Gaius coughed none too convincingly.”
“Gaius holds a doctorate in genetics.” Dera grabbed his arm.
“And microbiology, and history, and pharmacology, and... oh nevermind” the man smiled. Sheba wasn’t sure what to make of him, but she had heard about how brilliant he was. What she hadn’t learned was how smug, and self-centered he.. “OWW! Alright already Dera, my dear. I was only kidding. But I do have the degree in genetics. I got it while recuperating after she rescued me from an assassin’s bullet.”
“Being stuck in that wheelchair helped bring you down to earth. You were as pompous an ass asthey made you out to be, you know.”
“Nothing makes you humbler than having to have everything done for you.” There was a shadow of a pain in his eyes when he said it. But only Lee, Sheba, and Dera caught it.
Lee looked at the two. “Long story short: they met, he got shot, and she fell for him.”
Starbuck and Zac looked at their friend Sheba. She had been alone for as lone as they had know her, and they had adopted her. Now it looked like their family might be getting a little bit larger. Starbuck pulled her brother-in-law aside. “So what are they doing over on the Pegasus?”
“Dera was installing new software onboard when she started to have problems with the crew harassing her because of how she looks. Heck even the Old Lady was eyeing her. So Gaius came onboard with their daughter. That proved she wasn’t Sheba. I got back from a mission, and they all pulled a fast one on me. Dera and Hera were playing Kerso on the flightline.” The jumping game was not unusual but letting a child on the flightline was. “The Admiral was there along with most of the bridge crew. I’m sure the picture of my face will be making its way over here soon.” He handed her the picture. She looked at him. The picture had disappeared as fast as he had pulled it out. But she had seen the picture of the child. Cute was too simple a word.
Starbuck looked in the raptor. Lee shook his head. “The little one is back on the Beast. Get this, Hera has Cain wrapped around her little finger.”
Starbuck looked at her brother-in-law like he was trying to pull one on her. “Helena Cain? The Ice Queen?” Lee nodded at her response.
“Aunty Cain now.” Starbuck tried but could not keep a straight face. The picture hadn’t done it, but the thought of the Ice Queen and a child existing on the same ship just boggled the mind.
The hatch doors opened and Adama and Cavil walked out on to the hanger deck to meet Lee and their guests. John looked at the two ‘Shebas’ and did a double take. Something about that girl had always seemed a bit off, and now there were two of them. Getting closer, he noticed that they weren’t identical twins, but very close. He nodded at Lee. The respectful nod was all that he expected.
The Commander was the first to speak. “You were right son, she is the spitting image. Hello, I am Commander Adama, welcome aboard.” The Adama smile was in full effect. Dera was an observer of people. And she could see how everyone liked him after serving with him. The whole family was full of natural leaders. Watching them all together she could see the familiar family dynamics at play.
As the ‘family reunion’ was going on the Galactica a rather distracted Laura Roslin watched their approach to the Galactica’s position in Caprica’s orbit. The Colonial Heavy number 798 they had chartered for the journey had her staff, the press for the ceremony, as well as the PR firm that had been hired for the event; but that was only using about half of the ships capacity, so she actually had an entire row to herself. And she relished the relative privacy. Right now she was only partially listening as the press corps made their requests for this and that angle on their approach. The captain had allowed for a few course corrections, and they had been allowed a fly-by from the Galactica’s Flight Officer. She let them have their fun while she let her own mind wander.
She had been preoccupied with other thoughts before they took off, and she still was. Namely, she was currently thinking back to the doctors’s office yesterday, and all that had transpired. Her scans had come back, and the tumor was responding very well to the new treatment that Dr. Simon Moreland had come up with. The young doctor from the University of Leonis had been introduced to her by her OBGYN when he found the tumor that would have killed her like her mother. Dr. Moreland’s treatment was experimental, but it showed progress. So far the tumor had shrunk by nearly seventy percent. If it kept up this rate, she would be in remission in a month. She wasn’t sure what to make of the Doctor himself. At first he had seemed cold and impersonal, but his nurse said that he had lost too many patients, and he didn’t like to make attachments unless they survived.
She saw it first hand when she had almost walked into his office on her last day on Leonis. She had almost entered before she heard the sobbing. She knocked on the door, and he had worked to put on his doctor face, but she could see the redness around his eyes. When pressed, he apologized and told her that he had been in the children’s ward that morning. Two of his patients hadn’t made it through the night, and he hadn’t slept at all. All through his residency he had never taken failure very well; and now that he was a full doctor it still didn’t sit well with him.
She thanked him and left. It was good that he was a fighter, but she wondered if he fought for her, or for himself. Either way, she viewed his success as hers, so she could live with it.
But that was the past. In a little over an hour she was supposed to join the Officers of the Galactica for a formal dinner. She knew these tended to be boring affairs with the Fleet officers looking for the first opportunity to escape them. A fact that she tended to share. It wasn’t that she disliked the navy officers per say, it was just the fact that they reminded her of someone she had lost. She sighed deeply. As if she had ever had a chance with him to begin with.
FRIENDLY RELATIONS
Adama looked in the mirror. He felt like he was trolling for a date every time he put on his dress uniform. His old dress blues were dusty but functional. But they weren’t deemed suitable enough for the press by his younger son. Zac and Starbuck had surprised him with the new uniform only the week before, and it had needed to be ‘adjusted’ due to Adama’s new diet. The new ones had been freshly tailored for the ceremony. Even Cavil had had to have his own pants taken in thanks to Cottle’s insistence. He hated to admit it, but the doctor’s diet had made a difference, and running with Zac every other evening hadn’t hurt. Their old drinking buddy Major Cottle had agreed to be the Galactica’s last CMO. His new nurses, and orderlies had had to make an adjustment to adapt to the chain smoker’s habits, but no one doubted his skills.
“I hate these Monkey Suits.” Cavil looked at the fruit salad they had dumped on each of them over the years. All of the stitched on patches represented an award that they had earned, but both of them knew how much blood, sweat, and years had gone in to those pretty little decorations. John rubbed a rather faded red and blue striped rectangle. It had been awarded for something, but for the life of him Bill couldn’t remember what. No doubt John’s eidetic memory would have given him the answer, but he doubted he would like the story. He rarely did.
Noting Adama’s gaze, john smiled. “Duty is a light as Mercury’s step, and as heavy as Vulcan’s Hammer.”
“You’re quoting scripture to me now?” Half of the crew still called him Preacher, even though he had long ago given up his flight wings for the C.I.C. “Let’s get this feldercarb over with. Then we can dig out one of my last bottles of Tauron Brandy.”
“Sounds like a plan. What’s the code phrase for tonight?” They had played this game before. One of them would escape, and then call the other with a code phrase to get the other out of the party as fast as they could.
“Um... A Cylon basestar just jumped into orbit and is asking for directions?” John’s humor about Cylons was next to zero, so suggesting it was as crass as he could manage with a straight face.
John adjusted his collar and tilted his head as if thinking about, and after a couple of seconds he gave one of his lopsided grins as he quipped “Na... No one would believe it.”
The dinner was everything Laura expected. Boring, and unappetizing. She was waiting for the Commander to grace them with his presence. It seemed that he was called to C.I.C. right before he was supposed to arrive when one freighter failed to yield to another. The door opened and she recognized him from the pictures in the news, although he looked much better in real life. He cut a rather handsome figure and she could see why one of the teachers she worked with had an autographed picture of the Commander. He was mobbed at the door by the press when he entered so she waited for him to finish with the press before she moved in. He moved aside to let his XO enter behind him. A lump rose in her throat. Here of all places. Both of them made a beeline for her when they spotted her. “Hello Madam Secretary, I’m sorry we were delayed. May I introduce you to...”
“John? John, is that you?” The smile that lit her face was tinged with sadness. Adama’s head bounced back and forth at the unexpected situation.
A matching smile lit John’s face as well. “Hi Laura. Yes. How are you?” Adama just raised one of his eyebrows. “Laura and I were in a grief counseling group after...” He looked back to Laura. “Your mom?”
“Last year. But she wasn’t in any pain.” She took his hand in a friendly manner. “How have you been?”
Adama was a brilliant tactician, but it didn’t require one to know when it was a good time to make a quick retreat. He smiled at the two and got ready to head towards the buffet. “Bill” John leaned towards his Commander and whispered. “The Code is out the airlock?” Adama just smiled, and patted his friend’s shoulder before resuming his heading.
Roslin watched Adama walk away and looked the Colonel over. “I see you’ve been keeping busy.”
“I try; and occasionally the Fleet obliges.” His smile was the same slightly sad one she remembered from all those years back in the support group. He had been ordered there by the “Brass” as he put it, and it was obvious that he didn’t want to be there. The group had welcomed him in, but she had always sensed something kept him from fully joining. “You still teaching?” he asked.
“Not really. They pushed me into an office, then into a political office I couldn’t refuse. And now Adar has me put out fires for him with the unions.” At the mention of Adar John’s face made a slight tic. “Something I said?”
“Nothing I can say in polite company. Especially not in front of you.”
“Me?” She was worried that some rumor of her affair might have leaked out, and it might have showed.
He waived his hands in a placating manner. “Not you specifically, but any government official. You see, Fleet doesn’t really like him that much.” She laughed. “I’m not telling you anything new, am I?”
She was actually laughing about her unfounded fears, but she deflected it by agreeing with him. “I’ve heard he isn’t. But few politicians are.”
“Some are.” And he smiled that other more beguiling smile of his. Sad or not, she was starting to notice her breathing speed up a little because of those smiles, and she tried to slow it down.
“Are you hitting on me?” Her eyes looked into his, and she felt the room get quieter, or so it seemed. His eyes still had that magnetism that she remembered.
“That depends.” His heartbeat went up noticeably, and he was sure someone had turned on the heat.
“On what?” She bit her lip slightly.
“On your opinion of Tauron Brandy?”
Bill Adama watched the impossible. His ‘I hate Politicians of all stripes and that goes double for liberals’ XO and the VERY liberal Secretary of Education walking out the hatch arm in arm.
The hatch was rarely used, but like everything on the Galactica it was well maintained. The sound of it being undogged was the first sound to disturb the bay in months. The hatch swung open to reveal two silhouettes entering the darkened room. “Why are we here?” a female voice asked.
“You’ll see” a husky male one responded. He fumbled for something.
“Isn’t there a light switch by the door?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I’m looking for.”
“What was that?” A hatch started to open and light started to come in the bay. “OH FRAK WE NEED TO...” The mans laughter, and his iron grip, stopped her from running for the door. “Damn you John, that’s not funny!” She yelled at the laughing man as she punched him with her free hand.
“OH yes it is!” His laughter slowed down long enough for him to catch his breath. The hatch opened up to reveal the orbital view of Caprica. With Hercules Bay and the Purcied Ridge right below them they could see orbitals and orbital craft flying between them as if they were outside the ship. With the only light coming from outside, the glass was nearly invisible.
“Frak! That was mean. John, do you know how scary that was?”
He nodded. “Yes. You should have seen the look on my face the first time Bill pulled that one on me.” He pulled out the bottle of brandy he had snagged from his room, and the two glasses he had snagged from the party. “How about a peace offering?”
She shook her head. “Okay. But only because I saw the date on that brandy. How did you get a hold of something that old?”
“Piracy.”
“What?”
“A few years ago we found a pirate base that had been almost abandoned.”
“Almost?”
“A new group was starting up a new gang. They had just hijacked a freighter full of the stuff, and hid it there. We got lucky, the pirates were so drunk they couldn’t even stand when we came in Raptors and Landrams. We rescued the pilot and crew of the vessel that was shipping the stuff, and they gave Bill and I a case each.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“Care to have a seat?” He pointed to a bench.
“Yes. And after this, I’ll probably need it.”
“Oh it’s not THAT bad!” He smiled, and she returned it. They drank in companionable silence for a while.
“You’re right.”
“About what?”
“The brandy...” He heard the pause.
“And?”
“During the meetings. You said something.”
“I said a lot of somethings. You’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
It might have been the brandy, but she giggled. “You said ‘When you get into the ring and get knocked down, you have to want to get up one more time than you think you can.’ Why are you laughing?”
“Bill taught me that right before he knocked me out cold. I got back in the fight after I woke up though. Took me twelve fights before I got him on points. I can beat the snot out of his son Lee, but I’ve never taken the Old Man down.”
“I envy you.” She leaned against him.
“How so? I never pictured you as a boxer.” She slugged him in the shoulder. “On the other hand...”
Her smile faded away. “You may not have your wife, but you still have family. I remember you talking about Adama even back then. You had his family and the fleet to back you up. When my mom passed all I had was my career. The people around me were colleagues, but not one of them I would call a friend.” She slumped a bit. Holding her glass, she swirled the last of the reddish-amber liquid before she finished it off. “When are you off duty?”
“When I grabbed this.” He lifted the last of his own brandy to his lips. “Why?” He set the glass down and turned back to see her looking at him with a predatory look upon her face and only a scant few centimeters between them. “Oh, that’s why?” Her lips tasted like the brandy, her skin smelled familiar somehow. “Are you sure... I’m...”
“Neither of us was in the right place the last time we met, but I was smitten then. And I kicked myself for losing you once. I’m not making that mistake again.”
“What about the future? I was about to be forcefully retired, so I’m not sure what mine holds.”
She turned her eye up at the implied story in that comment. “Spend it with me then.” He was shocked by the offer. Barring the occasional dalliance, he hadn’t been in a relationship since... Since Elisia, truth be told. She would have liked the woman before him. He was slightly amused at how he was comparing his ex-wife to the woman currently taking her clothes off in front of him.
Their clothes and other items were quickly divested and John was struck by how much he had missed not just the sex, but the companionship.
Nearly an hour later, they collapsed in a heap on the floor, and Roslin rolled over to rest her head on his chest. “How old are you?” She laughed as she said it, and he could tell that she wasn’t trying to be mean. Mostly by the way her hands were doing wonderful things to his skin.
“Very? Why might I ask?”
“I haven’t had that much fun since I was a teenager.” Her breath started coming in gasps as he reciprocated her ministrations. “Oh my!” She stifled a gasp as his fingers did things to her that showed her that age had its advantages... Like experience.
- 1 day...
Adama looked at the hatch in C.I.C. There was a betting pool going on that the crew didn’t think he knew about. He looked at his watch. He was about to pick up the handset when Colonel Cavil entered the bridge. He saw Gaeta look over at the list and do a double take before looking straight at Adama. The name Husker had been placed on the pool’s chart in handwriting that the lieutenant knew quite well. The short-lived smug look on his face was the only sign that Adama gave the lieutenant as John moved over to the DRADIS. “Making your rounds?”
“You could say that.” The XO seemed a little nervous, and slightly out of breath.
Adama didn’t even grin. “Did you know that Carolanne loved Elisian Fields #5. Very distinctive smell.” John’s blush was epic, and Adama’s status as number one badass was firmly cemented once more in the C.I.C.’s crew’s mind right then and there.
On the Pegasus Helena Cain looked over her domain. She was as close to absolute ruler as she could be. Her every word was law. And her cabin was trashed by a five year old. Only not really. The young little lady had reorganized all of her stuff in such a way as to make things easier to find, and easier for a five year old to get into. Hera was going to be a monster when she became a teenager, of that she was sure. She wanted to be mad, but the sleeping child that was currently using the bed in her cabin tended to melt anyone that gazed upon her. She had tucked her in , and closed the door after the child had fallen asleep on her lap. The girl was making her feel like the parent that she had once wished to be... The one she almost... That road led to dark thoughts and emotions so she turned away from it. The child’s bodyguard on the other hand was stirring other emotions. The woman oozed ‘Dangerous’ from every pore. Helena didn’t know whether to fear her, mistrust her, or lust after her. She had always been attracted to strong people, and a woman like the oddly but somehow appropriately named Grace set off quite a few of her bells. The woman looked like an Vorba wood statue of an amazon of legend come to life. The dark skin, and tight hair covered a body that was as well muscled as it was feminine. She was still wondering what her voice sounded like, as the woman was as silent as a ghost. She also had a disturbing habit of suddenly being behind people without them noticing. Twice she had almost been shot when a startled marine drew on her, only to find himself on the ground, out of breath, and with both halves of his weapon in each of her hands. Half the marines feared her, half were in love with her, and nearly all of them seemed to wanted to train with her. All of them had been shot down with the enigmatic smile of her’s, and the shake of her head that was her trademark.
Right now Belzen was on the bridge while she was off duty. It was a slow evening and for once the whole fleet was not on alert for one reason or another. It set her on edge though. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something felt like some thing just wasn’t right. She sat down at her desk and looked at the paperwork that was the bane of an admiral’s life. For once she decided to let it wait until tomorrow. She rubbed her temples as she felt the beginnings of a headache. She jumped slightly as two warm hands started to work on the knots in her neck. Tilting back she looked up into the chocolate brown eyes of Grace who smiled and shoved her head forward gently but firmly. She had been in the room with Hera, and of course Cain never heard her move anyway. Had the woman wanted to do her harm it would have already been too late. Her hands danced across Cain’s neck and shoulders and soon she was awash in a sea of bliss as the massage took away the problems of the day. Cain felt her body finally relax as the last of the stress went away with the final knot in her back.
Then she felt the hands wander to places she wasn’t sure were appropriate, but didn’t have the will to care. Sooner than she thought possible she was entranced by the amazon’s hands and ministrations. Her eyes opened to waiting lips, and she surrendered to the embrace of Graces arms. Grace pushed the paperwork on to the floor, and picked up Helena and placed her on her own desk as if she was a child. Even through their passionate lovemaking she still never heard a whisper or moan come from Grace. And she tried, oh by the gods she tried.
ZERO HOUR
The small station floating all alone in deep space that was know as Armistice Station had been built shortly after the Cylons withdrew according to the terms of the cease-fire that the Armistice had fostered. And every year a single Colonial Officer went out to the station to wait for twenty four hours to see if a representative of the Cylons would show up as stipulated by the terms of said Armistice. The rest of the year it sat powered down waiting for the activation codes to bring it back to life.
The ice crystals covering the desk, and chairs started to melt, and the long still air started to circulate as the life support cycled on. The lights went from sleep mode to active in the blink of an eye, but it would take an hour for the station to be habitable for humans. The ship approaching slowed down to let it. It took its time as it docked on the Colonial side of the station, and the airlock cycled out to meet the ship. Inside a man in a colonel’s uniform stood looking simultaneously bored, and irritated. He was going to miss his son’s graduation from Daedalus Junior Academy. Boxey had always had his mothers technical ability, and she had wanted him to go to it before she died. Now he would have no one there from his family to see him graduate. He was sure that Admiral Corman had sent him out here to punish him for not signing off on the technical reports that he knew were junk.
As soon as the hatch opened, he walked onboard to sit in his usual seat. He got out his rag and cleaned it and the desk off, and sat down. He leaned back to take a nap... *THUMP* he shot up out of his seat. The entire station shook. Soon the deck was vibrating. His cup tipped over and rolled off the table, but before it could hit the deck it froze. The gravity generator had shut down, and along with it the AG field. The lights flickered and followed. He was floating in the dark until a strange energy field seemed to cause everything around him to glow red. He kicked off from the wall and headed towards the corridor to see if he could see anything out the Cylon entryway. While there wasn’t a ship docked there he could see a ship that filled the viewport in the entryway. Looking like two Y’s stuck together at opposite angles to each, and making a weird wagon wheel shaped space ship. It looked just enough like a Cylon basestar to put the wings of Mercury under his feet as he flew back to his own shuttle. Strapping in, he tried to activate his distress beacon. It didn’t work. That’s when he noticed that nothing else on his ship worked either. He settled into his webbing knowing that there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop the Cylons from killing him, and no one would know what happened here. In a few seconds nothing was left to show that a space station had ever been here.
1200 hours in orbit near Scorpio Shipyards.
Admiral Helena Cain stretched languorously in her bed. She had spent the night with Grace after Hara’s parents had come to pick her up. Gaius was the first to notice, and gave Grace the night off, which surprised his wife. He commented that there was nowhere safer than on a Mercury class Battlestar so why not. Dera got the hint quite quickly, and as soon as the three had left she asked Jurgen to not interrupt for the rest of the evening. Her use of his first name being their code for privacy, he complied. She felt better than she had in years. She watched as the bodyguard slept. The woman was fitful, and sightly restless in her sleep. She actually was breathing sightly heavy.
‘Well, she deserve her rest after last night.’ She kissed the brow of the sleeping goddess as she got up and went to the shower.
When she got out of the shower she saw Grace sitting on the edge of the bed. There was a look in her eye of terror. Helena sat down on the bed beside her. “Bad dream?” Then the thing that she had hoped for became her worse nightmare. Grace spoke. Her voice, like the rest of her was beautiful. But her message wasn’t.
“They’re coming... No... They are here!” Just then the alarms went off all across the fleet. The Pegasus went to Condition One immediately.
Cain jumped up and grabbed her uniform. “You’re an oracle?” Grace nodded. “Get dressed, and come with me, maybe we can do some good together.” She grabbed Grace’s hand to pull her off the bed. She could feel something coming through that contact. She didn’t know what it was, but she liked it. Grace grabbed her clothes and they got dressed faster than they thought possible.
It was only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity before they reached C.I.C. “SITREP!”
“Cylon incursions at every colony with energy levels that are off the scale.” Belzen and Fisk were already in the pit, the signs of the ship coming alive rewarded her vigilance in constantly drilling them to perfection.
“How many?”
“I think ALL of them! I’m reading over fifty here at Scorpio alone. Admiral Nagala has just ordered us to go to a war footing, and prepare to repel the attack.” Fisk replied.
“Admiral, we’re getting a signal from the Cylons. Audio only.”
“Scan it, but put it on.’
The song, full of static had been playing for a few seconds so they heard it from the middle.
“ Oboete imasu ka me to me ga atta toki wo
Oboete imasu ka te to te ga fureatta toki
Sore wa hajimete no ai no tabidachi deshita
I LOVE YOU SO”
“What language is that?” Cain asked. Belzen shrugged. No one else knew either.
“It is a language from thousands of years ago.” The Voice that both is and isn’t Graces’ responded. “It is a love song.” Just then the ships systems started shutting down.
“Well I don’t like it! Shut that off!” She yelled, but it was already too late. The bridge went dark before anyone could move. “Frak!”
Out in the void thousands of Vipers headed to engage the thousands of Raiders that were in turn headed their way. Major on "Dipper" Spence leading the Red squadron out of the Atlanta watched his fighters from up. “Keep your eye’s peeled. They are probably going to engage us with missiles before they get into...” His DRADIS started to blur and distort. “Bandit, are you getting the same distortion I am?”
“Sa..ag...n..per....ou’re....aking..up....”
Suddenly a different broadcast come through. A woman’s voice, singing in a language he’d never heard before. “...Ima anata no shisen kanjiru, Hanaretetemo, Karada-juu ga atatakaku naru no...” He tried to switch it off right before his Viper shut down.
“What the Frak was that?” He looked out to see his wing men and the rest of the squadron in the same situation. All of their fighters are just drifting. He could see the Raiders with his Mark One Eyeball now. He couldn’t believe they were so cruel as to slow down to torture them like this. The Raiders looked nothing like the old ones he studied back in the academy though. They are bigger, and had forward swept wings with some kind of weapon pods on each tip. One slowed to a stop in front of him. He watched the red eye cycle side to side. He wasn’t going to give it the satisfaction of breaking or of shooting himself with his sidearm. He waited...
And then the Cylon did something that shocked the already shocked pilot even more. The fighter transformed into a giant Centurion. Each one was armed with a rifle nearly as long as a Viper’s nose. He watched as it promptly slung the rifle over its shoulder and showed him its empty hands. Then he noticed that each fighter had done so. The one in front of him waved to get his attention.
A voice came over his speakers with a sound like someone clearing their throat. A young girls? It was different from the singer’s of only a moment ago but still very pleasant, and friendly sounding. “Welcome to Cylon transport service. Please sit back and enjoy the ride.” Then each robot grabbed a fighter and flew the disabled craft back to their own Battlestars. He was glad for the Jock smock’s ‘facilities’, because he had just pissed himself, and he was sure that others of his squadron had done the same if not worse. The funny thing was the voice sounded so much like his little sister’s. A friendly Cylon? He didn’t know how this war was going to end, but madness was not an unlikely one.
Galactica’s CIC was a madhouse of contradictory information. Adama couldn’t get a hold of anyone, as it seemed like the entire Colonial system had fallen in minutes. “Damn it Bill what are we going to do?” John had been on his way down to the hanger, still saying goodbye to Laura Roslin, when the feldercarb hit the vertical air impeller. “We don’t have any weapons onboard, and the only working fighters left are museum pieces that I having the deck chief trying to get void worthy.”
“First things first. We jump to Ragnar and see if we can get some ammo. Then we see what the Frak just happened. Is the Secretary still onboard?”
“Yes, there’s more than enough room in the hanger for their ship, so I asked the captain to stick around. He jumped at the chance to have a Battlestar as his bodyguard. What about Sheba, any word?”
“She’s in the infirmary. We don’t know what happened, but she passed out during that gods awful song.”
“What song?”
“They played some kind of song. And it seemed to effect the Vipers, Raptors. We don’t know if it was the song that did it, but she was the only pilot in her Viper. Damn it, she was only there to act as honor guard for the Secretary.”
“Don’t blame her!” The color in his cheeks was getting rather noticeable before he managed to calm himself down. “Sorry sir...”
“Don’t worry, I’m not. I blame that song.” He looked at his friend. “Oh my, you’ve got it bad. This is the strangest time, but congratulations. It’s about time you found someone special.” He looked over to the FTL station. “Gaeta, get us a course to Ragnar. ASAP!”
“Yes sir.”
He turned to John right before they jumped. “You took her to the observation bay didn’t you?” John’s face quickly resumed the same color, but this time for a completely different reason.
The nebulous gas giant know as Ragnar was a tempest on the best of days. When the battlestar arrived over the surface of the gas giant’s storms it was truly a maelstrom. “Secure from FTL, and send the access code to the Anchorage. I don’t want its guns opening up on us.” Cavil ordered. “I hate this place.” He said the last part to Adama in a voice that didn’t carry past the pit.
“You had the flu the last time we were here. You’re fine now. Grow a pair.”
“Mine work just fine thank you.” The look he got from his CO was worth it.
The ship descended into the atmo on contra gravity alone. The winds buffeting the ship made visuals spotty at best. “Dee, have we gotten the all clear yet?”
The communications officer looked over to Adama and shook her head. “I’m not even getting a carrier signal.”
“DRADIS?”
“In this soup?” Cavil shook his head.
“Take us to it’s last known location, and then it’s projected location.” With in fifteen minutes they found that their search proved fruitless. The station was gone. Even the independent beacons were missing. “They must have taken it out. Get us out of here.”
As they passed through the outer atmosphere they got a DRADIS contact. Upon reaching the edge they spotted the Berzerk Class ship Dervish in a decaying orbit. “That’s Avan’s ship. Dee see if you can get us a line. Gaeta, how long do they have?”
“No answer sir.” Dee responded immediately.
Felix look at the computer and ran the simulation again. “Three, maybe three and a half days before she deorbits.”
“Then there’s still a chance. Get down to the hanger, and see if you can...” That’s when a seven kilometer long ship appeared over them. “What the frak is that thing! It’s larger than a Warstar!”
“Colonial ships, do you need assistance?” A gruff voice announced.
John leaned over to Adama. “That ship does not look like a Cylon. And they at least sound human. What do you think?” There was an itch in the back of his mind. ‘Why did that ship look familiar?’, he thought to himself.
Adama shook his head. “That it is here, right now, is too damn coincidental.” he motioned to Dee, and picked up the hand set. “Galactica Actual, to unknown ship. We have been invaded by a hostile enemy force, and our sister ship is disabled. Can you led assistance with evacuating the damaged ship?”
“Sir” Dee ran her hands over her controls. We’re receiving a video transmission from the ship. I can patch it in to my station.”
They walked over to her station, and she moved aside. On the screen an older man and woman in an unfamiliar uniform stood on a large bridge. “Hello Commander Adama, if you like I can save both of your ships. All you have to do is hold your orbit. Hi, John.”
“Hello... Father.” John Cavil felt his head get light and his body get heavy, and then the floor threatened to come up and meet him.
Adama caught his friend before he hit the floor. He looked into the monitor. “What did you do to him?”
“I made him remember who he was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t but we will do our best to fix that.”
TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!
John woke up in the medbay surrounded by marines and two guests. One he expected, the other he did not. Laura held his hand. “Good morning. Bill let me stay until you woke up, but he says I have to wait until he ‘debriefs’ you first. She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “I told him I already de-briefed you, but he still won’t let me stay.” The wicked smile warmed his heart... or did he have a heart? He was a Cylon after all. Did he have a pump instead? He turned to Bill. The Commander had that damn Triad face on. He couldn’t read it if he tried.
Adama pulled out a chair, and sat down next to the bed. He unchained the cuffs that had been holding John down. “You deserve that much. So tell me. What do you remember?”
“I’m a Cylon.”
“No... Really?” He pulled back the privacy drape that had been acting as a wall between him and the rest of the medbay. He saw the sleeping forms of Sheba, Boomer, a knuckledragger named Doral and the biggest surprise was their Head Nurse Leroy Conoy. Conoy had been the one to help him get over his grief by getting the counseling sessions. He had been on the Galactica almost as long as Bill and he had. “Why are there so many here? And why are you the only one that has woken up so far?”
“Because I was a spoiled brat.”
“I’m sorry?”
“When my parent made me, I was the first among many. A number One. The first of the first line of Biological Cylons. I felt that I was better than the others... Better than their favorite. I don’t see a Daniel here. I guess they kept him away from me.” He rubbed his hands where the cuffs had chaffed. “I was not a nice man. I wasn’t even a nice Cylon.” He hung his head in shame as he went on. “I had planned on sabotaging his line, and erasing his existence from the minds of the others. I even had grand plans to wipeout humankind to prove that I was better than this body.” Damn it Bill I could have destroyed Elisia even before I met her. Or you , or Laura, or Starbuck, or... or...everyone....” He broke down crying. “I didn’t know what I was doing. And they are punishing me for it. Punishing them for my childish acts.”
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” A woman’s voice from the other side of the curtain spoke.
John lifted his head. “There’s more to that quote... I could never find it though. I looked through every book of scripture in the twelve colonies. Hello mother.”
Two marines stepped back, their weapons ready but not quite pointing at the guest. A woman, apparently in her fifties, stood there wearing the strange white uniform that he had seen on the monitor. “Of course not. That book had never been published in the colonies. It is from a holy book from the original Earth.”
Both Adama, and Cavil looked at her. “The monotheists of the twelve colonies are fallen descendants of the Pre-Kobolian Christians. They only had a few of the books, and none of them were complete after the fall. The colonists had fallen back to a primitive state after their computers lost a lot of data over the centuries it took to travel to the colonies. Others started to worship the very ships of the fleet as gods, as their names came from histories that were written in actual book form. History became legend, which in turn became their religion. In the end they formed the old religions anew. We had copies of that book in our computer. You read it years ago when we gave you access to our database. You read all of the religious books of Old Earth and said they were lies to sooth the masses. It’s ironic that you are now known as the Preacher, since you were an atheist as a child.”
One of the marines mumbled something. Adama pulled him forward. “What was that Mr. Maldonaldo?”
“I said that was dark blaspheme, sir. We should burn them for such...”
“From your mouth to the Gods' ears, now shut the frak up will you?” The look Adama gave him would have ripped armor off of bulkheads.
“Yes sir, sorry sir.”
“Yes you are, you are also relieved, go find me a marine with a brain.” After the marine left, he turned back to the lady in white. “So you are from Earth, or the Earth that was?”
“We are what your scrolls call the 13th tribe. Only there is a bit of history you are missing.”
“Somehow, I feel there is more than a few things...”
She smiled her enigmatic smile and nodded. “You’re right. But first we need to go back to the beginning of Kobol.” She sat down on a chair on John’s right side. “Your hand.”
“Before I do, what was the rest of the quote. Something tells me it’s important, but I can’t remember what.”
She smiled. “Then you did learn. The rest is: ‘For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love these three; but the greatest of these is Love.’ You were never able to love before, nor feel empathy of any kind. Through your years among the humans you learned all of their gifts, and weaknesses. To live is to feel, and to feel is to be open to pain as well as joy. While you were out, your memories were uploaded to your brethren who wished to learn what you have learned these years. Your line may chose to live like you once again.”
She took his hand and spoke out loud to the people gathered around, but in his head images exploded as she spoke. The colony of Kobol was founded after the Great War. The Great War had burned whole systems to cinders and Sol was one of the systems that had only held on by a thread. The outer planets were fine, but Earth and Mars were so badly damaged that it would take centuries before life would be possible on their surfaces. And life on Mars was not a guarantee. It could go either way. Pandora had been shattered back into the asteroid belt from which it had once been built.
The survivors had formed a federation of worlds, and Kobol had been one of the regional capitols. While they were only one of fifteen regional capitols they were one of the largest and most prosperous. The federation was defended by the Planetary Defense Force, a combined arms force that was part space navy, and part guard force. The flag ships were the battle fortresses known as Star Fortresses which were the successors to the Super Dimensional Fortresses of the First wars, and the Great Wars. These massive ships were part cityship, and part battlestation. Built around the idea of a massive ship that would act as a moving fleet base, they provided the shield to protect the federation from the growing treat of the growing universe. Humans had finally stepped out into the dark and brought the light with them.
And then the light showed them the evil they had inside themselves. The First Empire of Humanity was found in a dozen systems far from the rest of humanity. They had run during the First war, and slowly built up a xenophobic empire that rivaled the federation. The first battles were mere matchstrikes in the conflagration to follow.
The great ship Artemis had survived the war only to be nearly destroyed when Kobol itself had been attacked. The ship had escaped but the crew died of radiation exposure. Meanwhile the war raged on Kobol until even the survivors escaped the ruined planet.
Not all of the survivors on Kobol were human. They had had built synthetic humans in one of their many projects to enhance humanity. The Replicants were given equal rights; but humans being humans, not everyone treated them as equals. When the colony fell, so did society. Humans started to treat synths as less than human. Fights turned to near warfare, and when the exodus came not everyone was welcome on every ship.
So the humans went one way, and replicants in the other. Thirteen colony ships out of fifty ships that had been built managed to leave before the fall of Kobol. The replicants didn’t care where the humans went so long as they were left alone. They started another colony fifteen light-years away from Kobol. In five hundred years they had effectively recreated Earth from the data banks of the colony ship, and they began a paradise of sorts.
But no sort of paradise lasts forever. A group of humans had survived in bunkers on Kobol. They had rebuilt enough of an infrastructure to live on and some of them planned to seek out and wipe out the synthetics. The Second Empire had used them as pawns in their effort to ‘cleanse’ the universe of AIs of all types. Kobol’s main export had been weapons of all types. And so their moon’s bunkers were still full of their unused wares... unused until that fateful day. Thousands of nuclear missiles had been launched in the direction of their colony shortly after the Second Empire razed the planet with their own nuclear weapons. The people of Kobol had probably never stood a chance, and they died without getting any kind of message off. The second war of Kobol destroyed not just the last vestiges of civilization on Kobol, and killed the last survivors, but it plunged the planet into a nuclear winter that lasted for centuries. They had used that as a ruse in their own attack on New Earth. The weapons had hidden the Imperial attack until the last moment, and destroyed nearly every ship in the system.
That brought them to the end of the second Earth. They had been finally been hit by the last attack and it wiped out the last of their orbital defenses and the last missiles fell on the now helpless cities below. The five Cylon/replicant survivors were part of a team of replicants that had managed to recover the uploading process they had used in the beginning to program their blank bodies. Now they used it to upload their existing memories into exact copies of their dying bodies; effectively giving them a type of immortality, albeit with certain limitations. Each upload had a chance of data loss. Significant amounts of hard radiation could block the transfer. The upload could wind up in the Hub’s buffer if there wasn’t a body of the same type ready. Later after they had met their robotic brethren, they would find out that the Raider, and Centurion uploads were easier. Easier in they had a lot of the blanks in storage, where as the individual models of Bio-Cylons were somewhat less likely to be on hand.
The replicant’s ship while advanced, did not have an FTL. It was only supposed to be for shuttling to and from their ark. The ark itself would have downloaded every replicant on Earth and allowed them to escape human space. Alas it was not to be. The ark and every soul that downloaded was lost in the attacks that swept through the system from one end to the other. They had awoken in their lunar baser over a hundred years after the battle and fled in the modified shuttle.
Adama rubbed his head as all of the information washed over him. “Pardon me Madam Tigh... All of this happened thousands of years ago. How does it affect us today. I mean, first off, why are you here? Okay you found the Cylons, and they found the ship, but it still doesn’t tell me why you sent in people like John here. I hate to admit it, but if what you are telling me is true then you could have wiped the colonies off the starmaps decades ago and not even tried that hard.” He looked around the medbay. “Instead you sent in your own people without a clue as to who, or what, they were. Okay I can understand teaching them about us... ‘First know your enemy’ is taught to every first year. But why make them stick out. Every person here is a valuable member of my crew, and some of them are like... No they ARE family. John here I would count as both. We still hate the Cylons for what they did to our planets, and people. And knowing that Cylons walk among us will cause unknown numbers of people to see a Cylon in any of their neighbors that they hold a grudge against. Even if you all had chrome skin, there are people in the colonies that will not welcome you at all. Their fear, and hatred of your kind will...” The alarm went off interrupting Adam’s speech. He grabbed a hand set. “Adama here, sitrep!” His normally unflappable stoic face paled. “This may all be for naught. According to comms, the Pegasus just jumped away from Scorpia. And knowing Cain, she will come here first to rally any ships she can. She hates Cylons for killing her entire family. When she finds you here, she will open fire, and maybe ask questions later.”
Pegasus erupted from jump space into the middle of nowhere. Her hull was scared by damage that had left huge gouges in her once pristine armor. Her bow nameplate had a huge horizontal gash that ran through five of the seven letters. Numerous locks were stuck open and air was streaming out until crewmembers could seal them up. The irony was the fact that it wasn’t from combat, but damage suffered pulling away from the shipyards. Cain stood in the pit and fumed. Around her Pegasus slowly came back to life. If it hadn’t of been for Gaius and his family, they would be helpless before the guns of the basestars that jumped into orbit around the shipyards. Grace was standing watch over the comatose bodies of Dera, and Hera. And the look of pain on her face had turned Helena into a Fury incarnate. Between her and Gaius they had managed to purge the last of the corrupted code out of the ship’s systems. It would take days to clean the Vipers, and Raptors, but the Pegasus would be ready when the time came.
Colonel Belzen watched Admiral Cain as she stood on in the pit. “We have half an hour. Go to her before we kick you off the bridge.”
For a second Cain almost thought he was trying to mutiny, but she knew better. He wanted her off the bridge so she could calm down, and in turn so that the watch could calm down before they jumped in to battle. “I could shoot you for that, you know.”
“If you did that, who would be the best man at the wedding? Fisk?” She tried, but failed to keep a straight face. She had announced the engagement right after they finished purging the code, and not even the gods themselves would stop her from protecting the ones she loved. She had failed Lucy, and their parents, but when she put on her uniform she swore to never let the Cylons hurt her loved ones again. Long ago a great officer had taught her to focus, so she took a deep breath and followed her XO’s advice.
“You win, but only half an hour.” It would take nearly that long for the drives to respool after the blind jump. Then she did something she normally didn’t do in public. She patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you. I’m glad you’re here to be my compass sometimes.” Her smile went away from her face, and the fury rose to her eyes again. “I can feel the darkness Jurgen, and if anything happens to that little girl, I don’t know if I can stop myself. It may be up to you to reign me in if I go too far. If I become the Fury again I don’t have the Preacher here to knock me on my ass.”
Jurgen understood. “She reminds you of little Sheba, doesn’t she?” Many years ago Helena Cain had lost her only daughter to a childhood disease. She had been only ten months old, and it had taken a toll on her marriage. Her dark side had nearly cost her commission as it had with her relationship, and they had divorced shortly afterward. She still wore the uniform, but she never saw Garris again. Jurgan and his wife had taken her in for a while, and she owed him a great debt. Their love had quell the Fury within her. Quell, but not quench. The Fury would always be a part of her.
A part that was always on the other side of her walls. It was the part of her that would let her do the hard things if she had to... A sad part of her mind pointed out that if he really had tried to mutiny she would have shot him herself, but she was glad that he was on her side. She looked at his smile and she knew that not only could he see the darkness but he chose to stand next to her anyway. “Nevermind, just go.”
She found herself outside the door to the medbay almost without remembering how she got there. She entered and saw Grace standing in her usual position behind Hera’s bed, but she looked shaken, but not shattered like Cain would have been. She didn’t know if it was the oracle in her that let her roll with the punches like that, but it was strangely calming to watch. The bed next to it was Dera’s and she was as still as a corpse. Only her breathing, and the monitors showed that she was still alive. She stood next to Grace. No words needed to be said. One hand slid in to the other as if they belonged. “She will awaken.” Grace whispered. Her other hand touched the forehead of the sleeping beauty.
“When?”
“When the old and new are seen for what they are.” The Voice again.
“What does that mean?” Grace smiled, and brought their hands to her cheek. Helena could feel the love flowing through the contact like an electrical current.
Grace shook her head in the negative, and embraced Helena. They touched foreheads... And Helena’s mind exploded. A Cylon ship unfolded in front of a freighter. She knew that she couldn’t fire missiles without hitting the ship. When Grace pulled away Cain was staggered. She was in love with an oracle. One thing was for sure, it was definitely making her life interesting.
“I need...” Grace’s smile was all the leave she needed. She ran for the CIC.
Belzen looked startled when she came running in, but he also looked relived. “Admiral on the deck... Good news Admiral, we just found the freighter Scylla and managed to convince them that we aren’t Cylons.”
“We need to send them emergency jump coordinates NOW.”
“Yes sir. Shaw, get on it!” While the lieutenant at the TAC station started working on it he looked to her with an arched eyebrow. “Grace have a vison?”
“Yes.” Was all she said. She knew that this was highly irregular, and that she could easily be brought up on charges, or relieved of command if...
“Jump coordinates sent.” They watched as the freighter acknowledged, and jumped away. The young woman behind the display look at them with the same question she saw mirrored on just about all of their faces.
“Prepare to receive guests.” As if on cue four basestars appeared on their DRADIS, one directly behind where the freighter had just been. “Are we spun up?”
“Yes”
“Then let’s not wait around shall we?” The Pegasus vanished before the basestars could do anything. She hated running from a fight, but her ship was in no shape to go toe to toe with a tugboat, let alone a Basestar.
A little over an hour later and just outside of Rangar’s orbit, the Pegasus jumped back into the fray. Deep in Pegasus’ CIC Admiral Cain looked at Ragnar and fumed. It looked like the enemy had beaten her here as well. The enemy ship was huge. It was easily over six or seven kilometers from stem to stern. The Galactica, and Dervish were just sitting there. Obviously they had been disabled by the same attack that had crippled her ship. Dr. Baltar was under the Weapons Control Computer bay, ripping parts out, and Aerilon-rigging the rest. He slid out from under the bay with a roll of vac-tape in his mouth. “Will it work?” She asked the disheveled scientist.
He looked distracted, he looked frazzled, he looked mad, and then he looked at her. “Send them to Hades with my blessing.” He stood up and straightened his formerly expensive suit. The stains, and tears would be impossible to clean or repair, but he wasn’t paying anything but cursory attention to his attire anyway. “You have missiles, and guns at your command.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Mr. Belzen, load all tube with heavies.”
“Loaded, and getting solutions. Admiral, we stand a chance of hitting our own at that range.”
“I know... I know.” She turned to Gaius. “Did you know that I served directly UNDER Adama’s XO John Cavil on my snotty cruise. He was the CAG at the time, and he showed me how to wear a uniform like it was a religious calling. His wife... Was a friend of my foster family. He is the closest thing I have to a father left in the universe. I guess I will be sending him to meet her. FIRE!”
Gaius didn’t know what to say. He had looked at his hands with new eyes. He would be responsible for the death of people that she cared about, and it didn’t matter in the least that she was the one pulling the trigger. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I, but I’m still the one giving the order.”
The ready missiles fired, and the reloads were sliding into the launchers as the first indications something different was happening. Only two fighters came out to meet the massive swarm of missiles. The next launch fired as soon as they were ready, only to be followed by a third. The first accelerated at only half power, while the next wave accelerated a little bit faster, the third even faster. The idea was for all of the missiles to reach the Cylon ship at the same time. Halfway there, the missiles broke open and the smaller seeker heads streaked out on wildly divergent courses. Dozens of the warheads were ECM Dazzlers while the rest were the true nukes.
On the first fighter a red light swept back and forth faster and faster. “Ghost One to Artemis actual. We have radiological’s inbound. Are we free to engage?”
“Artemis actual, target the missiles only.” The gruff voice of Father announced it over an open channel. Ghost One looked to her sister. The red eye on her visor was steady. “Stay away from the flak.” he added. She shook her head. Father had a tendency to state the obvious, but he did it to remind them that he didn’t want them taking unreasonable risks.
“Shall we dance?” Her thrusters shut off and separated from the lower section of her frame. They swung out and down as two arms unfolded from the top of her fuselage. They were halfway between fighter, and solider mode, in a form that Artemis had informed them was called the Guardian mode. Now they got to see why. They might have had only about half of the fighters acceleration, but the nimbleness of the Raider went off the chart. The two arms helped them in their maneuvers, but their main reason to be out was to steady the rifles they had been equipped with. These weren’t the coilguns the humans used, they were relics from the Artemis’ armory. A true energy weapon.
Particle beam canons were still not wide spread since the Cylons still didn’t know how to replicate some of the parts in small enough sizes, but they could use them. As such, only their aces were issued the powerful but short ranged weapons. Hatches opened all over the Raider’s armor as well. Small paint can sized cylinders were arrayed within the armored launchers.
On the Pegasus Belzen watched the two contacts that came out to intercept the swarms of missiles that were headed towards the Cylon starship. He almost felt sorry for the two toasters that were all that stood between the missile swarms, and their ship. He watched as the range grew sorter, and shorter. Then his DRADIS filled with icons as the two fighters just became a swarm of their own.
The micro-missiles were only considered short range inside of a gravity well, as they didn’t carry a lot of fuel, so the two waited until the last second to launch them. Hundreds of micro-missiles leapt from the launchers, shrouding the two Cylons in smoke that slowly dissipated into the void. They didn’t wait for the smoke to finish dissipating before they used their FTL drives to jump half way back to the Artemis. The sudden void of the jump event caused the clouds to collapse back on themselves again.
The missiles intersected each other, and the first wave exploded. It wiped out dozens, and then hundreds of warheads from all three waves out in the first few seconds. Only ten missiles remained, and the two switched into soldier mode to aim their rifles as accurately as possible. Each started to take shots at the approaching missiles. The first missile to die took out one of it’s neighbors, but is was the only one to not die alone. One was hit in the thrusters and sent on a chaotic course before exploding. Another simply died, without even an explosion. Two others exploded in an eye dazzling glare as two shots hit each missile simultaneously.
When their DRADIS and optics cleared up the other four were almost to the Artemis and the colonial ships. A quick communication between the two sent them to jump in front of the defenseless colonial ships. Each took out the missile in their killzone. That left two ship-killer nukes to impact with the gigantic...energy shields? The slower kinetic rounds made circles that looked like rain on glass as they hit the barrier; and that was about as much damage as they did.
On the bridge of the Pegasus Cain stood trembling. “Jurgen, may I have your firearm?” He was so stunned at what he had just witnessed that he handed it to her without question. She checked it, and pointed it at... A powerful hand stopped her arm from reaching her head. A shocked Jurgen stood by as Grace held her arm and looked at him the same way a parent looked at a child that had done something particularly stupid. He retrieved his weapon from the unresisting fingers of the Admiral’s hand.
“Why?” Grace’s sad smile answered her, but her surprise was not over. Grace handed her Lucy’s doll. The only thing she had left of her family.
“Oh we are so fraked!” Frisk commented as no less than fifteen basestars jumped in to the area. The fact that they were dwarfed by the massive war ship didn’t really add anything to their sense of menace.
The communications lit up, and Lt. Shaw examined the signal. She stepped back in shock. “Sirs’ you need to see this, because I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”
The video showed the bridge of the Cylon ship. Humans, or at least they looked human stood beside a gold Centurion from the first war, and surrounded by what had to be newer models. But the biggest surprise was the Colonial Officer standing there among them. Admiral Nagala. He did not look happy. “Hello Helena. It’s a funny thing. The war is over and they won without a shot, but not without cost.” The codewords he used told her that he wasn’t under duress, but not free to talk over the comm.
“So why are we still alive. Are we to be their Baggets?”
“If you two insist in talking in code, why don’t we give you a set of flags, and you can perform semaphore for us.” The balding man next to him looked at the two of them. “Look I’ll make it simple. WE don’t want to fight YOU any more. Frankly you just aren’t worth it. We won, so we are dictating the terms. I want YOU to bring the Baltar family over here. You will find that they are awake. I see your friend is already checking up on that.” Helena turned to see Grace exiting the C.I.C. at a run. Her heart ached to follow her, but her duty was here.
“I will not surrender them to you for anything.” She looked around. The bridge crew nodded their approval. “We would rather die first.” This startled the old man.
“You would die to protect them? You want to hear a funny? So would I.”
Helena felt a little week in the knees. “Why?”
“One always protects family.” He saw the stunned look on her face. “Yes, Dera is one of us. She didn’t even know that she was a part of the plan. We sent biological Cylons to your worlds to learn how to...”
“Kill us? Like your kind always do?” The Fury in her mind left a ringing in her ears.
“No you stupid child. To learn how to love. Turn around.” Grace and the Baltar’s were standing behind her. Hera let go of Grace’s hand and walked to ‘Aunty’ Cain. “Can you honestly say you hate her?”
The Fury warred with something else inside Cain for a moment and died. Belzen visibly relaxed as she slumped her shoulders. He had seen the Fury at it worse. He had never seen it fade like this. She smiled at him before she returned her attention back to the man on the screen. “No, and if you did want us dead, we wouldn’t have been able to stop you any way, would we have?”
“No chance in Hell... Hades, that is.”
“I thought so.” Helena bent down and held her hand out. Hera took it. In that instant she knew that she would do anything to protect her, even if that meant betraying the memory of her parents, and her sister Lucy. She rubbed the child’s hair. “I have someone that would like to meet the whole lot of you. Belzen, you have the conn.” She picked up Hera who hugged her fiercely. “What are your terms.”
“Leave the guns, bring the doll.” Helena Cain nearly laughed when she realized that this whole time she had been holding the tiny doll.
The Pegasus’ hanger had one cargo shuttle that was unarmed. She was tempted to bring a nuke along but she knew they would detect it long before they could run. Grace helped Dera, who was still weak, to her seat. Once they were all seated Cain leaned back in the co-pilot’s chair. Their pilot Johnny “Deep 6” Jensen pulled the hatch closed on his way in. “Pre-check complete Admiral.”
“Good, let’s get this over with.” Once they launched, she hit the switch to swivel the chair around. She looked at Dera. “I need to know what we are walking in to. They said you were a sleeper, do you remember anything?”
The shattered woman sat there holding her husband’s and her daughter’s hands. “My whole life has been a lie. Every single memory from before I arrived on Picon was fabricated by Father, and the other four. Tory dropped me off in front of the hotel five days before the Expo, and wiped even that from my mind. I was only ten weeks old, and they just left me there.”
Gaius held her hand tighter as she sobbed. “You became more than the sum of your programming could ever be. You saved my life at that conference, and after...” His heart ached to see her this way. He pulled her in to as close of an embrace as they could while still strapped into their seats.
She started crying again. Hera started crying as well, and they held each other. Cain looked at the devastated family. She hated doing it but she had a job to do. “You were programmed to find Gaius, why?”
She expect a lot of reactions, laughter was not one of them. “I was supposed to get a job within the defense industry; specifically with him no matter what.” She wiped her eyes. “What I got was a loving husband, a beautiful daughter, and some of the strangest friends.” Her smile disappeared in a flash. “Oh by the gods I can’t believe what they did... They must have used me to get the inside access to see our code. We spent years making the Command Navigation Program flawless, and they knew the code as well as I did.” She continued sobbing as Gaius held her.
Admiral Cain looked at the doll in her hand. It was burnt, and dirty, but she never cleaned it off because some of the blood on it was her sister’s. Hera looked at the doll in her hands. “Sad tales seem to be the rule of the day. See this?” Hera nodded. “This used to be my sister’s. In the last days of the war we were just little children, she was not much older than you are now. We were hiding with our father when the attack came. He was wounded, and dying when he told us to run. So we did. Explosions were happening all around and one of them blew up a building we had been running past. Lucy fell, and hurt her leg. I begged her to get up, but she couldn’t. The Shiny’s were coming... the old Cylons. They shot a man running away in front of me, and my mind snapped. I ran. And I kept running... I ran and hid until it was quiet. When I went back hours later, she was gone. The only thing I found was this doll. So I keep it to remind me of the importance of family.” Grace’s hand touched the tear that was drifting down her cheek. “I think my idea of family is changing.”
“Admiral, story time is over.” The pilot pointed to the hanger bay that opened as they approached.
They entered the bay and had to hit the thrusters as gravity made it presence known. He set the shuttle down on the large yellow and black rectangle that a being that looked like a human in a space suit directed them to. They could see the hatch close, and fans on each side started to spin. It took a few minutes, but once the pressure balanced, they opened the door. The woman in the space suit gestured for them to exit the shuttle. They did, and were pleasantly surprised that there were no centurions in the bay. The woman opened the seal on her helmet and removed it. Dera looked at her face. Except for the lack of a scar, and her short brown hair, they could have been twins... No make that triplets. That meant that Sheba was also a Cylon as well.
“Hello My name is Janet, I will be your tour guide of sorts while you’re here. We need you to exit the bay as John is going to be arriving soon with the other sleepers from the Galactica. You just happened to get here first. It seems that there was a little bit of trouble on the Galactica.”
Half an hour earlier Adama had watched as the twin robots from the mystery ship had somehow saved them from Cain’s foolish attempt to save them from the Cylons. He had remembered how she raw she had been when she was one of Preacher’s Nuggets on the Olympic. Back then he had taken her under his wing and molded her into a decent officer instead of the glory hound she was rapidly turning out to be. He guessed that she had believed that they were dead already when see had attacked. If he had been in command of the Pegasus, he might have made the same call.
He was leading one of the Cylon leaders, and... HIS Cylon officers, along with Apollo, Flattop, and Starbuck (Who looked like she wanted to start a fight, but didn’t know with whom.) to the hanger when he noticed that something didn’t feel right. The corridor was deserted, and at this time of day it should be full of people. “John, Lee, Zak, Kara, we have a problem.” He looked at Boomer and the guards who were following a couple of steps behind to give them privacy for the walk.
“Ambush” John looked around. “Maldonaldo?”
“That or some of Corman’s goons.” he turned to Ellen Tigh. “WE have a situation.”
“So I gather. Our deaths are unimportant, your lives are. We will protect you.” Adama couldn’t help but notice how Boomer stood taller with Ellen’s words.
Looking at the new addition to his crew Adama smiled. ‘Was I ever that squeaky?’
John was having nothing of it. “What? Listen ma’am you are on our ship, so we do it the...” He was interrupted by fire alarms blaring up and down the corridor.
Adama looked at the female Cylon leader with a slight bit of anger. “Are you fraking with my ship?” The ship was supposed to be immune to attacks like the one she was casually doing without even being in contact with the ships systems. Nothing was networked, and there were cutoffs everywhere.
“Yes, and you should know that there are twenty-five heavily armed marines up ahead. I just flooded the room they are in with fire suppressant foam, or would you have rather I vented the atmosphere? If you speak loudly I can transmit to your people in C.I.C., the local lines have been severed.”
Adama’s eyebrow went up, and that was the only sign that he was impressed. It took another five minutes for a squad of marines to move in and arrest Maldonaldo and the mutinying marines. Two of the ambushers didn’t survive the arrest, and Adama wasn’t too surprised to find Ares tatoos on their arms.
“We will have to talk about vetting security a little better next time I visit.” Ellen quipped. “A girl could feel like she’s not wanted.”
Lee Adama was not amused. “All jokes aside, that was too close. What if something happened to any one of us. We have people on our side that have been spoiling for a fight for far too long. A fight we can’t win, but by the gods that doesn’t seem to stop them from trying to start it anyway.”
The smile left her face. “Ever since we left the medbay I had been scanning your video feeds. I actually expected something like that. My shuttle has two dozen centurions ready to rescue me, but even if that proved impossible my death is not permanent. Your’s on the other hand would be just the excuse they would have needed so I was broadcasting it as well. Everything I saw your people saw.”
Commander Adama laughed. “That’s why you let me say something first.”
“It wasn’t about ego, it was about politics.” John looked like he was tasting something foul as he spoke. “It always is.”
“I’m not sure which is worse.” She wasn’t sure how he managed it, but the commander managed to look both amused, and disgusted at the same time. The man was an enigma, to be sure, but an intresting one. That he became friend with John Cavil wasn’t a surprise. Both were strategic thinkers, and they didn’t take impossible for an answer. He rolled with the punches and didn’t even let it slow him down. This was a man she was sure that she could learn to like.
Cavil had seen that look before though. He had his own thoughts. “Why did you expect that?”
“Remember order 66?”
“Kill all humans? What Cylon doesn’t?” He facepalmed himself. “What non-sleeper Cylon can forget it, I mean.”
“Did you know that a HUMAN programmed that into the Cylon database?”
“Why would someone be that stupid?”
“What if that someone wanted a war between humans and Cylons?” She stopped in her tracks and looked at the group. “Sheba, if you fought Starbuck here in a knife fight, who would win?”
“I don’t know, we’re both really good. I’m faster, but she more skilled.” The smirk that Starbuck gave her told her who Kara thought would win. She punched her friend good-naturedly. “Okay, a lot more.”
“Okay Boomer, after these two got done fighting, how hard would it be to take out the winner if you had a rifle and cover?”
“One shot if they aren’t expecting it. The survivor would be tired, and not expecting a bullet...” The silence stretched out.
“Someone not only put that code in our programming, but they also made sure we went rouge by making sure that the first Cylons knew about the differences between freedom and slavery, and then pushing your society to treat us as slaves. We found the code, and removed it from their database, but left the line, and the identity of the person who added it to the code. A man named Marvin Karibdis, supposedly a saboteur from a rival company, but in reality a servant of the puppetmaster that has been sent to send both of our races to war. He added the code, and for his reward he was one of the first to die. That’s ironically one of the reasons why we didn’t fire on any of the various ships you’ve sent across the line. We knew that someone was pushing YOUR buttons this time.” Bill and John looked at each other when she mentioned the plural form. Ships, not ship. Bulldog hadn’t been the only one the brass had hung out to dry. “Yes, your’s was just the first. The fleet sent about fifteen probe flights across the line after that.”
“How many did you capture?” Apollo asked. As a JAG officer, her testimony to a Colonial fleet officers violation of the treaty meant that he would have to start an investigation.
“Not a one, young man. We would just jump a base star right on top of them wherever they appeared, and that tended to scare them away. But we do have sensor data to prove it. And to answer the question you’re about to ask, we will not be asking for charges to be brought against the fleet officers. In fact, we have it on good authority, that the person responsible was arrested not too long ago.” Lee and his father traded looks. It seemed that Corman had a few more things to answer for.
Caprica City was a madhouse. People were driving out of the city in droves since no spacecraft seemed to be working after the strange Cylon broadcast. President Richard Adar sat in the bunker under the Quorum building along with ten of the twelve members of the Quorum of Twelve. The other two were in the elevator right now, but Adar didn’t look forward to their arrival. His bodyguards were watching everyone in the room, and that included the other politician’s bodyguards. Adar knew that the tensions between the Colonies had never been the best, and it had only been the Cylon war that brought them together after the centuries of internecine warfare that did nothing but waste resources. The doors opened and Gemini’s Quorum member exited the elevator alone.
He looked inside the elevator to see scorched walls and burnt bodies. Iblis DeCount walked out of the charnel house as if nothing had occurred. Every bodyguard and marine in the room pulled their weapons and aimed them at the impossible image before them. “Sire DeCount, what is the meaning of this?”
“My dear Adar, may I call you Richard.” Adar noticed that it wasn’t phrased as a question. “My time here is finished. And so are all of yours. Soon the Cylons will rain down their nuclear weapons and the colonies will be sterilized of your kind.”
The Tauron representative, Sire Gellar erupted. “Are you one of the Cylon agents?”
“No you pitiful fool, I am as far above them as you are above the common dagget. Although in your case, maybe not.”
Adar stepped forward. “What are you?”
“Let me show you.” He raised his hands. The bodyguards, all of whom he had shaken hands with less an hour ago when he went to meet Sire Domra, saw him blur and when they spotted him again their training kicked in when he attacked their assigned representative. Adar watched as each and every bodyguard killed a Quorum member, then shot each other. The marines held their weapons at the ready, but didn’t move.
“Why?”
“Because, my dear Richard, with them out of the way I can not be countermanded when I order a retaliatory attack from any surviving forces.” Adar laughed in his face. The marines aimed their weapons at him, and he found that he couldn’t move to save his life. Which was literally true. “Why are you laughing Richard?”
“Because they won’t follow your orders.” His giggles were starting to annoy the man, or what ever Iblis was.
The rage in Iblis eyes was a physical force that stifled his breath. “Why won’t they, my dear Richard?”
“Because this room is under constant surveillance by the Admiralty during an emergency.”
“You lie, that would be against the Constitution. You are buying for time. Hoping the nuclear fire will break the hold I have on your men.”
“What nuclear fire? You fool! While you were gone the Cylons offered a Peace settlement.” The rage in Iblis’ eyes was the reward he needed to go on. “This isn’t an Invasion, it’s a Peace Conference. They disabled our ships, so we wouldn’t open fire on them, and to prove that they are serious. Admiral Nagala went with them to round up all of the ships that managed to slip out of their net. My dear Iblis, may I call you Idiot. You, and whoever you work for must be the shared enemy they spoke of. By now, marines who have never met you are on their way here. If you surrender, I promise that no harm will come to you. From what the Cylon leader said, I don’t think you will get the same from him.”
Iblis watched as his plans fell apart one by one. The Cylons must have removed the programming that his agent had installed all those years ago, and now they wanted revenge, not on the Colonials, but on the ones that set them against one another. Just then the second elevator opened to reveal twenty marines.
The marines in the room opened fire on their brethren without hesitation. Each marine seeing a Cylon Centurion charging the President, did their duty and laid down their lives to protect him from the invading metal monsters. One of them even called for reinforcements from the very same men he was attacking. He died believing they must have been killed first, never knowing that he killed three of the very men he was calling for. The last of the marines in the room fell to the second wave of marines. Adar stood next to Iblis as the chaos raged around them.
“You seem to have lost your last pawn.” Adar raged. “You killed all of them, but still you are ours?”
“Who are you talking to sir?” One of the marines watched from his point at the door as the President seemed to be talking to himself.
“Sire DeCount. Can’t you see him? He’s standing right...” The burnt walls, and bodies. “You’re not even here anymore.”
Iblis clapped. “Very good Richard. Go ahead, ask them what they saw.”
The president look at the marines surround the room. “What did the video show Colonel?” He spotted Colonel Bisbe being helped up by one of his men. The wound to his leg didn’t look too bad, but Adar wasn’t a medic.
“Everyone stated talking to the open elevator, then the bodyguards started to open fire on the Quorum members before they shot each other. We managed to unlock the security override by the time the marines pointed their weapons at you, but we still couldn’t figure out who you were talking to. You mentioned Sire Iblis, but he left an hour ago. Is this some kind of Cylon trick sir?”
Adar tried to answer him, but found that his mouth wouldn’t work. He turned to face the image of Iblis. “Do you know the legend of Pandora? Goodbye Adar, it hasn’t been fun.” Adar felt a ringing in his ears, and a burning in his gut. He stumbled slightly, and one of the marines grabbed him before he fell. His eyes grew wide as he felt the pain begin. What he didn’t know was the fact that his fate was sealed the moment Iblis said the word Pandora. Inside him tiny microscopic machines converted his own body into a powerful explosive. In fact, the same was happening inside the bodies all around him. He knew something was wrong, but his mouth wouldn’t work. He flailed at the marine’s shoulder, but his legs gave out from under him as well. The pain became almost unbearable right before he saw the light. Then he never felt pain again.
The bodies in the bunker exploded, shredding the dead and the living indiscriminately. In the watch room a corporal lost his lunch as the video lens was covered in tattered flesh and blood before the blast damage shorted it out. The only clue the people watching would have to the guilty party was Adar’s question to the Colonel.
In a cell in Picon fleet Headquarters sat a man that had once been an admiral. Peter Corman sat on the bench across from his advocate. The man was thin and pale, just the spitting image of the stereotypical lawyer he was. “Sir, they have video evidence of your conversation with Adama, as well as the files they pulled from your home computer. Your co-conspirators had already started to spill the air. If you don’t plead, they may toss you out an airlock the charges are that severe.”
“I don’t care if they think they have video of me kicking babies. I have enough connections to...”
“Do NOT tell me about that. I will try and get you a lenient sentience, but if you tell me anything that might incriminate you or others in a wider conspiracy then you and I are out the airlock along with them. The BEST thing you could do is to tell THEM that.” Pointing out the door to the guards watching his every move. “Sir... Sir you are in big trouble, and frankly I’m doing everything I can to keep you breathing... sir? Sir?” Corman’s eyes bugged out. His mouth opened and closed a few times with nothing coming out. The Lawyer ran to the door and pounded on the comm button. “Get me a corpsman, Corman is having some kind of seizure. He turned around just as Corman exploded. One of the former Admiral’s ribs nearly speared him in the arm. He was covered in bit and pieces of the man when the guards, and the medical corpsman entered. He looked at his blood covered body and started screaming. The corpsman quickly ascertained that the man wasn’t wounded, and sedated him before examining the corpse of the man he had been called to see. He had seen explosive decompression, and combat injuries, but this was the first time a death scene had made him feel ill. One of the guards threw up behind him, and the other looked like she could follow the man.
The Conclave of Elders in the Grand Olympus Cathedral were holding a public mass from the Altar of Zeus to calm the populace down, and to urge calm until the Fleet could fight back against the Cylon’s cowardly attack. Chief Elder Roger Keikeya looked upon the flock and was in his best form. The people were thralled by his well trained voice, and he had them whipped into a fever pitch. If one of the Gods-be-dammed Cylons set foot on Caprica they would find his followers ready. “If anything I have said is wrong may Zeus strike me down!” The crowd rose to his famous line. He had ended his sermons with that line for over fifty years. He raised his hands in supplication and looked up to... Iblis? His body, and the rest of the Conclave’s exploded in a gory spectacle that stunned the crowd.
The congregation sat there for a second in stunned silence. The tableau was shattered when one of the sisters screamed. As if a spell was broken they fled the Cathedral in a panicked mob. Thirty seven people didn’t even make it out of the building. They were crushed by the weight of the crowd as they fled the carnage. They were the first, but not the last. As the mob fled the building they plowed through people watching the vid screens outside the doors, and then out into the pedestrian traffic surround them, and then right into the vehicle traffic surrounding them. The police would not be able to get to the riot for nearly an hour due to the grounding of all air vehicles, but when they arrived the bodies littered the streets all around the temple. The dead and the wounded numbered into the hundreds.
Kellan Brody was watching the Cylon ships on the vid feed in the Caprica 5 news room. The sense of doom hanging over the newsroom was palpable. Sally Kyrol walked in with a fax sheet. He looked up to see her stunned look. “You okay?”
“The Conclave just exploded?”
He pointed to the feed. “I’ve been watching since it started. I didn’t hear anything about a Cylon attack down here.”
“It wasn’t them... At least we don’t think it was. The Elders just ‘exploded’. No one’s sure how. The riot that broke out afterward caused damage to five city blocks. There are reports of fatalities. A lot of them!”
She slid her chair over to his computer. She was actually surprised that the net was still up. Everyone had expected the Cylons to crash the net and then nuke the colonies. Their ships just holding orbit like they were was in many ways worse. The feeling of a Damoclian Sword above their head had been one of the reasons that people had gone to their temples in record numbers. She scanned the new fax network. Rick the Brick from Channel 7 had just posted a story about a Caprica City emergency counsel meeting where someone had snuck a bomb past the security guards. The mayor and her staff were feared dead along with most of the city government. The Galamandy Police Chief’s car went off of a bridge into the Galaman River. A marine general exploded at a fund-raiser for Sagittaron Veterans. Fifteen other people died, four of which could have been saved if they had allowed the doctors to perform surgery on them. A passenger train reported the death of Ginni Avrana the political reporter for Channel 3 on Picon’s Torrent Express Line.
She found story after story about influential people just exploding. It couldn’t be a coincidence, not this many, not close together, and not this way. No, it looked like a pattern. Someone was cutting the heads off of the Colonies’ political, religious, and entertainment... She checked a few of the people that had died. Then a few more... All of them had been vocal in the call for upgrading and uparming the fleet to take the fight to the Cylons. “They’re all anti-Cylon!”
Sally shouted. Kellan nearly jumped out of his seat.
“Not just that. Take a look. Each and every one of them was part of the Daedalus Group.” The group had advocated that the Gods themselves would have wanted humans to keep dominion over their creations. They wanted the Fleet to not only destroy the flawed Cylons, but build new ones without the ability to rebel. “Who else was part of that group?” A quick search found the names of quite a few senators, and nearly all of the Quorum members.
“Do you think the Cylons wiped them out to enslave us?” Sally wrung her hands. Her parents had died in the last war, and she herself was deathly afraid of Cylons. “We need to tell people about this!”
“No, we need to find out the whole story. Otherwise we will be the laughing stock of the biz if we jump the gun, and it’s someone like the Sons of Ares instead. They might see those people as the reason that the Cylons attacked us.” He was so busy researching the names of people on the list that she didn’t notice Sally send a post out on her persacomp. “Wow it looks like they had their fingers all throughout the government. Sally, I need you to go find a cameraman, we’re going hunting.”
“What are we hunting?”
“A story.”
Vice Admiral Gordon Truit’s normally immaculate office was a mess. He had died on a shuttle ride back to Picon base, and now his intern was desperately ransacking the room. She opened his fumarello case, and dumped it out on his desk. The expensive and very non-regulation smokes were a gift from one of the main defense contractors that sold the fleet their coilgun turrets. He knew that she loathed the things, but kept smoking them in the presence of his officers just to show how powerful he was. It wasn’t the only thing he held over most of them, or her. In and amongst the fumarellos was a data disk that she grabbed like her life depended on it. Maybe not her life, but at the very least her career.
She jumped when a voice she had hope to not hear spoke from behind her. “Hello Major Cavenaugh. What have you found for us?” She spun around to see two men in black suits and equally black handguns standing in the doorway. One of them flashed a badge. “Jadin Kildare, CBI, and I do believe you have some incriminating evidence?”
“I’m standing on Fleet turf, you have no authority here. This is my bust.”
“Who said I’m here to arrest you? We’re Cleaners.” Cleaners, the euphemism for government killers. “The badge flash was just to distract you before I..” Two shots rang out, and the two men fell to the ground. She didn’t even have to guess as to who was behind the door.
“Jack, come on out. I know it’s you.” A man in a janitors uniform walked out and tipped up his pistol to show he wasn’t a threat.
“I knew you had it under control. I just wanted to be able to write ‘Cleaners wiped up by janitor.’ on the report. They’ll never live it down.”
“Since they are dead, I don’t think they will appreciate the humor. Dammit Jack, I needed them to link me to their boss.”
“No you don’t. Sire Donagal and the rest of the Quorum were killed in an assassination caught on video. All except DeCount, and he is missing.”
“So do we need to find him and tell him that he next in line?”
“Who do you think killed the rest of the Quorum, and I might add Adar.”
“BTG! Adar’s dead?” She looked at the data disk she had spent the best part of a year hunting for, and realized that it was all worthless now. “Who’s next? Governors Sinclar, or Sheridan, or... What?”
“The attackers used the chaos of the Cylon’s arrival and disruption of the military to lop off the head of the Colonial government. Get this, the only one left is the Secretary of Education. Some guy name Rostin Libra.” It was his turn to look confused. “What?”
“HER name is Laura Roslin. Let’s get this fraking card to the chief, and we need to see if someone knows were she is. She was supposed to be part of the party mothballing the Galactica.”
“How do yo know so much about her?”
“I had to guard her a few years ago. When she joined the ranks of Politicians, some of her former friends weren’t so friendly.” She looked down at the two bodies. “What about these two?”
“Paperwork!”
“That’s a foul word. Don’t use it in front of a lady.”
“When I see a lady, I’ll remember that pearl of wisdom.”
The halls of the Artemis felt alive. That was the first thing that John noticed as he entered the ship that he hadn’t been on since he made the foolish decision to try and take over the ship through it’s A.I., Diana. John Bill, and Laura walked with an ‘honor’ guard of the new Centurions. Their thinner frames, and smoother movements told him more about his brethren than the humanoid models he had met so far had. The older models were still here. He met with Scar when they debarked from the shuttle, and Miri led the new models in her new body. He could tell that she still didn’t like him, and he understood why. She was obviously surprised at his apology, but had told him that he still had to earn her trust again. That explained why she shook hands with Adama, and Roslin, but not with him. He didn’t realize it at the time, but it did hurt. All of his questions were ignored, but so were the rest of the parties.
They entered an elevator that was large enough for a raptor or two, but inside the ship. The reason why was made apparent when a ground vehicle entered the lift with them on another level. When they reached the city level, everyone was amazed at the number of Cylons working in the city, but the biggest surprise was the number of humans working there as well. An older gentleman was waiting for the group. This time it was Bill’s turn to be surprised. Major Tomas “Lucky’ Bojay stood there with a stonefaced look. Next to him was an older Number 8 that looked like she could be Boomer’s mother, and two teenage girls that looked suspiciously like the two of them. “Husker I heard you were coming here. And I wanted to tell you something directly to your face.” The woman touched his arm and the facade slipped as he smiled. “I’m sorry for all the hades I must have put you through. I’m sure that for you, not shooting me was the one of the hardest thing you must have ever had to do. And yes, I heard about the Valkyrie and the Stealth fighter mission as well. You kept your humanity in an inhumane Fleet.” He introduced the Eight standing next to him. “This is Freyja and our daughters Hnoss and Gersemi.”
The lady held our her hand and gave him a warm and friendly smile. “How do you do.” Adama did not do too well. Flashbacks were a Baggit after all!
It was near the end of the war, and he and Lucky were doing a photo recon of a Cylon base when Lucky’s luck ran out. His stealth ship lost one of it’s two engines, and the smoke and debris trail was as good as a DRADIS lock for the Cylons below. The fighters were scrambling from the base even as Lucky’s ship was sinking into the atmosphere. Husker had to chose whether to shot down his friend and as much as announce his presence, or get away with the recon data that the Fleet needed for the raid on this place. Lucky’s commlaser was one of the few system still working in the cockpit, and he was begging for Bill to shot him before the Cylons got him. He was still calling him a coward as Bill jumped out of range.
The review board may have cleared him, but he was sure that Lucky’s fate as well as the human prisoners had seen, were responsible for letting Maddog return from his mission. To no one surprise, Bill’s reply was his usual smile. “Good, you still owe me that fifteen cubits.”
After Lucky introduced himself to the others Laura asked the 50,000 cubit question. Were there other P.O.W.’s? The answers surprised them. It seemed that the Cylons had taken quite a few prisoners of war during the last days of fighting. They originally had wanted them for experimentation, especially for their hybrid program. But the arrival of the Five had halted that line of research. They couldn’t return them since a good number of the POW camp had been on Home, and enough military and civilian spacers were among them that they would have been able to find the Cylon homeworld if they were freed. They didn’t want them on Home, and they couldn’t sent them back, and the Five wouldn’t let them kill them so a compromise was settled upon. Another planet in a system far from the colonies was to be settled by the Cylon’s prisoners. Men on one side of the planet, and women on the other. The planet was called Farm, as it was used first to farm food for the POW’s then for the biologicals. Then they found HER, and the Cylons asked for the POW’s help.
“Her?” Laura asked?
“I think this is my cue.” A disembodied voice said. The new arrivals looked around for the source of the woman’s voice. A hologram of a woman in a strange uniform appeared in front of them. “Hello. My name is Diana. I am the voice, and the soul if you will, of the Artemis. And we need to talk. But somewhere a little more private. If you’ll..”
John interrupted. “No, there is something that I need to say, and it should be said in front of as may people as possible. I did something unforgivable, and if you want me boxed, then so be it.” Laura stepped forward, but he stopped her. “I nearly raped her mind, and if I had been successful I would have destroyed the colonies.”
“It’s worse than that John. In a matter of ten or so years from now a massive fleet of ships would have swept through here and wiped every Cylon out of existence as well. You may have heard part of the Sire DeCount event, but you don’t know the half of it. And we wouldn’t have known either if it hadn’t of been for Shadow.” She held up her hand, and he saw a holographic tattoo that was the twin to the one he wore on his ring finger. “I have a story to tell you.”
Reality faded for John as she pulled him into her Projection.