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Twelve Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
(new)
PROLOGUE There is a story, older even than the Scriptures, which tells how men came to dream. The Lords of Kobol chose men as their favored sons, and gave Mankind great gifts -- strength, and intelligence, and twelve fertile worlds to rule over. But men did not use these gifts, and when the gods came to walk among them, they saw no fields tilled, no rivers dammed, no cities founded. So the gods called together all Mankind and asked, Why have you not used the gifts we gave you? And Mankind answered, Because we do not know what to use them for. So the Lords of Kobol waited until men slept, and gave the last and most important gift -- dreams. Men dreamed of cities not yet founded and of tools not yet forged, and when they woke, they used the gifts given to them by the gods to make these dreams realities. The Twelve Worlds prospered, and the gods were pleased. In time, men grew wise, and their hands became even more clever. There was no dream they could not make real, and their ambitions grew with every success, until at last men dreamed that they were gods, and could create life as the gods had done. So men created the Cylons, and gave them the same gifts of strength and understanding the gods had given them. But there was one gift men held back -- the gift of dreams. Because, where the Lords of Kobol had chosen men to be their sons, men created the Cylons to be their slaves. And what use does a slave have for dreams? There is a story, older even than the Scriptures, which tells how men received the gift of dreaming. But it is not told by men. It is told by the Cylons.
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He'd spent time on other Battlestars -- he'd served on the Triton for a year, and the Solaria for almost as long -- but the warhorses of the Colonial Fleet had been built decades apart, and the huge variations in their designs had been clear evidence of that. The Triton, only ten years old, had been state-of-the-art, equipped with an array of technological conveniences as impressive as her weaponry. The ship had been the only one in the Fleet fitted with DPT, Dynamic Personnel Tracking, which allowed the exact location of any crewmember to be traced at any time and, as a useful side effect, made it impossible for anyone to get lost in the city-sized ship. The equivalent on the Galactica was a series of maps pinned to the corridor walls, each one marked with a red dot and an arrow which read YOU ARE HERE. He could have asked for directions, of course -- and sometimes had to -- but he was reluctant to do so, for reasons he wasn't completely able to explain, even to himself. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that the CAG was usually the most experienced pilot on the ship, the one who'd been there longest, the one who'd trained half the pilots personally and knew everything there was to know about his posting. Lee, who had stepped foot on the Galactica for the first time six weeks earlier, hadn't even managed to learn the names of all his pilots yet; only yesterday he'd gotten Joker and Trapper's callsigns mixed up. And he still sometimes found himself making confident turns into corridors which then led him in precisely the wrong direction. The CAG shouldn't make those kinds of mistakes. The CAG was supposed to know better. He consoled himself with the thought that there were some places he could now find without any trouble at all. His father's quarters were located on one of the top decks of the ship, close to those of the other senior officers and the Command Center. The CAG, although also a senior officer, was an active combat role, and as such was traditionally assigned quarters down in the flight section. The route between the CIC and the flight deck was already one Lee knew well enough to walk blindfolded and in his sleep. The two marines standing guard outside his father's quarters stood to attention as Lee approached. Recognition of the threat from Cylon infiltrators had meant that internal security on the Galactica had been tightened beyond what would have been standard even in time of war. The last time humanity had fought the Cylons, it had been a lot easier to tell who was on what side. He knocked on the door and, a moment later, heard his father's muffled response. He went in. Adama was sitting on the small couch, papers spread out around him. The rest of the room was hardly tidier -- the floor was covered with boxes of belongings, packed in preparation for the Galactica's decommissioning. Adama looked up sharply, and for one absurd second, Lee felt like a kid again, breaking the cardinal rule that no one disturbed Dad while he was working. He made a determined effort to shake it off. He wasn't a kid anymore, and if reporting directly to his father in the military hierarchy felt weird -- well, he'd just have to get used to it. "These are the revised patrol rotas you wanted, sir," he said, holding out the file he'd brought with him. "Thank you." Adama took the file and started leafing through it. Lee hovered, wondering if he was expected to stay to answer questions or go so his father could keep working. He got his answer when, without looking up from the file, Adama motioned at the other chair in the small living area. Lee sat down. His father lifted a pen and scored a line through one section of the rota. "Better separate Trapper and Midas. They don't fly well together. Tried it about a year ago, didn't work." "Yes, sir." The chair was too low and soft; Lee couldn't find a way to sit in it that didn't involve either sinking right back or perching on the edge. He shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't know that." "I wouldn't have expected you to. Ask Starbuck about any personality issues -- she'll tell you straight." "I will." Adama turned over to the next page. "You've paired Hot Dog and Kubla." "I know neither of them has a lot of experience," Lee said, "but they've both got good instincts. If they have faults, Hot Dog's is that he takes too many risks, and Kubla doesn't take enough. But they get on well on the ground. I think they'll balance each other out." "How do you know they get on?" "Little things. They hang out together off duty. They always sit at the same table at meals." "I see." His father closed the file and handed it back to him. "Swap Trapper with Jester. Otherwise this is fine." "Thank you, sir. Will that be all?" "Yes." Adama took off his reading glasses and sat back on the couch. "No. Lee…" He turned his spectacles over in his hands, flexing the frames. "Maybe I haven't been very clear about the parameters of our relationship, but... for the record, I don't expect you to address me formally off duty." "Since we're on permanent red alert, technically speaking neither of us is ever off duty." "In private, then." His father looked, for once, not completely sure of himself. "What I'm saying is -- I know this is a little awkward. And I know that, if things had been different, you wouldn't have chosen this. Neither would I." "But this is where we are," Lee said. "We just have to deal with it the best we can." "The best we can," his father repeated. He paused. "The first batch of tyllium goes to the refinery tomorrow. We've got enough ore to last a couple of years." "The morale boost might last just as long," Lee said, smiling. It had been almost a week since the successful raid on the Cylons' mining outpost, and he still couldn't go anywhere on the ship without being stopped and congratulated by at least three people. "We were lucky." "No, we were good," Adama corrected him. "We were better than them. You were better than them. You're doing a good job, Lee. I have confidence in you. Always know that." It was like getting a good report card, or making the school team; his father's approval, hard-won but all the more precious for that. Lee wondered if his father knew how much it had meant to him when he was a kid. How much it still meant now. "Thanks," he said, then added, "Dad." It was the right response; his father smiled, and Lee suddenly found it easier to find a comfortable position in the low armchair. "Have you eaten dinner?" Adama asked. "Not yet." "I could get the commissary to send something up here. Unless you have other things to do." Lee had a thousand other things to do, and almost all of them would be easier than making small talk with his father for the next thirty minutes. But... "That'd be good." His father nodded, and reached for the clunky handset of the phone which sat on the table next to couch. Before he could lift it, though, it rang with a loud and tinny buzz. "Adama," he said, and then frowned as he listened. He glanced in Lee's direction. "No -- there's no need to get him, he's here with me. We'll be right there." He put the handset down. "Trouble?" "Maybe," Adama said. "We'll have to do dinner some other time, I'm afraid." "Tomorrow," Lee suggested. "Tomorrow," his father agreed. He sounded pleased. "Now, let's see what's getting Tigh so worked up."
In the event, 'worked up' weren't the words Lee would have chosen to describe the XO's mood when they arrived in the CIC a short time later. 'Irascible' and 'tense' might have come closer to the mark. "Looks like we're going to have to scratch our next jump target," he said. "There's a Cylon presence in the system. Damn toasters are all over space these days." "They went exploring while we got lazy," Adama said. "Show me." Lieutenant Gaeta set a sheaf of grainy black-and-white scan images on to the surface of the tactical station and spread them out so that everyone in the assembled group could see. "As you ordered, Commander, we've been sending unmanned spy drones to scout ahead of the Fleet before each jump. One of them just came back with these pictures." The scans were of varying quality, but it was possible to make out in each the cratered, barren surface of a small planet or moon and, standing out against it, a darker mass. It might have been a shadow, except that it had height, rising clearly above the stark line of the horizon. There was a central shape -- a dome, maybe -- and five separate arms which radiated out from it, each one tapering into a narrow point. It reminded Lee of a starfish clinging to a rock at low tide. "The structure you're looking at is located on the moon of the largest planet in the system we'd chosen as the next jump destination for the whole Fleet, " Gaeta said. "It's definitely not one of ours, but it doesn't resemble any known Cylon design." Tigh snorted. "These days, Cylons don't resemble any known Cylon design." "If this system isn't safe," Lee asked, "what are the alternatives?" Gaeta looked apologetic. "That's the problem, Captain. We're short on options. Long-range patrols indicate that we're running close to a large expanse of Cylon-controlled space. The next best target is on the other side of that region, but the jump required to make it there is a long one." "How long?" Adama asked. "The Galactica could do it easily. But it'd be at the upper limits of what some of the smaller ships -- particularly the ones which used to be commercial passenger carriers -- could manage. The risk for those vessels would be significant." "If a ship's drive failed mid-jump, it'd drop back into realspace right in the middle of Cylon territory," Lee said. "We wouldn't be able to locate it and get to it in time." "Or the ship might make it and blow up five minutes later," Tigh said. He shook his head. "Well, we have to take the Fleet somewhere. The Cylons are going to find us before much longer if we stay where we are." "We could break the Fleet into two groups," Adama said. "The first group would consist of the ships that can make the transition in a single jump, and the short-ranger ships and the Galactica would form the second group." The arms of the starfish-shaped base were spaced at slightly irregular angles around the central hub, as if they had been grown and not built. In the clearest of the series of the images, it looked to Lee as if the tips of the arms had lost their grip on the moon's surface and were curling up on themselves. "You're thinking that the Galactica could shepherd the second group through Cylon space," Tigh said. "That's a hell of a risk to take." "I don't disagree. But whatever we do is going to involve a high degree of risk." Like a starfish at low tide, drying out in the sun, Lee thought. Dying. He said, "Maybe the least risky strategy here is the one we're ignoring." His father looked at him. "Go on." "We have these scans because the probe that took them returned safely. That means either its presence wasn't detected -- or there were no Cylons there to see it. I think the base might be abandoned." "We can't take the whole Fleet into a potential ambush based on your hunch that everything's all right," Tigh said. "Look at the scans. You can see the base itself, but there's nothing else on that moon. No activity on the surface, no smaller ships orbiting or taking off. Nothing." "That doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing there," Adama said. "For all we know, what we can see is just the top layer of some kind of underground facility." But Gaeta was shaking his head. "Unlikely, sir. Spectroscopy indicates the moon is about ninety percent iron. It'd be almost impossible to excavate." "There's an easy way to find out," Lee said. "Send an advance reconnaissance party." "And if there are Cylons there, that'll let them know for sure we're in the area," Tigh said. Lee conceded, "If we were discovered, we'd have to move the Fleet -- but that was going to be the plan anyway. At least this way, there's a chance of finding a safer route." "And an even greater chance of exposing us completely," Tigh said. Lee looked at his father, who was tapping the frames of his spectacles slowly against the edge of the tactical station. He appeared deep in thought. "Lieutenant," Adama said at last, turning to Gaeta, "I want every ship in the Fleet assigned to one of two groups, based on whether it can safely make the long jump across Cylon space. Inform the captains of the plan and give them their targets." "Yes, sir." Gaeta saluted and hurried away, across the floor of the CIC. "Sir," Lee said, looking at his father. "I know I'm right about this." "I'm not sure you are," Adama said. He paused. "But I'll trust your judgment. You've got your reconnaissance mission -- take two Raptors and be ready to leave in an hour." Lee hesitated, doubting for a second that he'd heard right. "The jump across Cylon space --" "-- Is the backup plan, yes." "I -- Yes, sir." Lee saluted. He added, "Thank you." "Go," his father said. "And try not to find any Cylons."
The plan, insofar as she had one, was simple. It was mid-shift, and most of the available Vipers would be out on short-range patrol around the Fleet's perimeter. There would, however, be a small number of Vipers grounded for routine maintenance or refueling, and Starbuck figured she could sweet-talk Tyrol into letting her borrow one of those for a couple of hours. He'd make noises about not loaning a ship to someone who'd managed to crash her previous ride into the side of a planet, but he'd give in eventually. And then she'd get to fly again. For the first time in weeks, she'd be in open space with nothing but a thin frame of metal and toughened glass between her and the vacuum, the power of a small sun at her back and perfect control between her fingers. Just thinking about it made her stomach turn flip-flops in happy anticipation. Existence was food and drink and sex and sleep, but life was flight. But when she arrived in the hangar, she got a surprise. The deck was alive with motion, all of it focused on the two Raptors which the ground crew was prepping for launch with the kind of speed and focus usually reserved for combat situations. Since there wasn't, as far as Starbuck knew, a battle in progress right then, she couldn't immediately work out what was going on. Then she saw Lee, one fixed point in the middle of the blur of activity swirling around him, and decided that the best way to find out what was happening was to ask. She sauntered up to him, neatly stepping over the fuel line that snaked over the floor before disappearing up into the Raptor's belly. "Hey. Going someplace fun?" "Recon," he said. "There may be a Cylon base on a moon near the Fleet's next jump target." "May be?" "Looks like it could be abandoned, but we can't tell for sure without going and taking a look up close." She looked sideways at him. "Got the crews lined up?" With most of the pilots on duty already out on patrol, he had to be struggling to find enough people to fill two Raptors. The frown that appeared on his face told her she was right. "We're so short-handed I've only got one reserve dedicated Raptor flight crew to call on -- Boomer and Crashdown. I can take the ECO seat on the other one, but I haven't got a pilot for her." "I'm Raptor qualified." Lee looked at her, apparently unable to decide if she was being serious or not. "Yes. You're also off the flight roster due to injury." "Not any more. My knee's all better. The Doc says so." To prove it, Kara lifted her leg and waggled it exaggeratedly. Her knee bent painlessly and easily -- perhaps a little too easily, because on the third or fourth waggle, she almost lost her balance and had to grab Lee's arm for support. A couple of the deck crew working nearby stifled laughter; Starbuck didn't care. "Now I get it." Lee was half-smiling as he disentangled his arm from hers. "You got flight clearance all of ten -- maybe fifteen -- minutes ago, and you came straight down here because you couldn't wait to get back out there." She grinned at him. "Pretty much. C'mon, Lee. I've been climbing the walls in sickbay for the last three weeks. I need some action." "Kara -- " His expression became serious: "The objective of this mission is not to find action. It's exactly the opposite. We jump in, make one sweep, then jump back as fast as possible. It's going to be fast and dirty." "Fine. Just the way I like it." Lee looked at her for a couple of seconds, then he smiled again, and she knew she was on the sheet. "It really is all about flying for you, isn't it?" "Frak, yeah," Starbuck agreed equably. "What else is there?"
Hunched over the ECO's console -- he'd forgotten how cramped Raptors were -- Lee watched the collection of blips on the dradis screen which represented the ships of the Fleet fall away behind them. Another couple of thousand clicks and they'd be at a safe distance to execute the jump. "So?" Starbuck prompted. "Sex or flying? You can only pick one." "And whichever one I pick --" "You have to give up the other one completely, totally and forever. So: sex or flying? If you had to choose?" Over the open comm link to the other Raptor, Lee could hear Crashdown sniggering. In the short time since they'd taken off from the Galactica, his comment to Kara on the flight deck had somehow sparked a debate which had evolved -- or maybe devolved -- into a game of either/or which Lee could only pray to the gods wasn't being broadcast on speakers to everyone on duty in the CIC. He could, of course, have ordered Starbuck to quit talking and concentrate instead on piloting the Raptor, but she was clearly delighted to be back at the controls of a ship, and Lee didn't want to pull rank unnecessarily. The mission wouldn't become risky until after they made the jump away from the relative safety of the Fleet, and he knew he could trust Kara to focus when the moment came. The truth was that Starbuck was a welcome antidote to the stress and anxiety that had permeated his every waking moment in the long weeks since the Cylon attack. He hadn't realized until now how much he'd missed simply hanging out with her in the last couple of years. "Tough call," he said. "I mean, I kind of like them both. Not at the same time, obviously -- " Starbuck coughed meaningfully. He looked at her. "You're kidding me. In a Raptor?" "In a Viper." "No way," Crashdown's voice said over the comm link from the other ship. "There's not enough room." "You mean you've tried?" Boomer's voice answered. "All I'm saying is, the seats go back way further than you'd think," Starbuck said. "And quit stalling for time, Apollo. Sex or flying. Pick one." "I guess --" But before he was forced to commit to an answer, the nav comp display in front of him flashed and started to change. "Galactica's transmitting our jump target. Crashdown, are you getting this?" "Updating now, sir." Up front, Starbuck was initiating the Raptor's jump sequence. "Board's green. Just tell me when." "On my mark." Boomer and Crashdown's Raptor was visible through the cockpit window, a small, steady point shining in reflected starlight. Then, with a sudden flash, it vanished. At the same time, the proximity indicators on the ECO's station changed to green. "Execute jump," Lee said. Outside the Raptor, the star-field convulsed, then almost instantaneously re-aligned itself, giving the unnerving impression that the galaxy had just sneezed. A second later, Boomer and Crashdown's Raptor re-appeared in almost exactly the same position relative to his and Starbuck's as it had held before the jump. But the view through the cockpit window had changed in one major way: there was a now a planet dead ahead of them, a massive gas giant, the surface of which was marbled with swirling plumes of red and orange. A host of small moons, most of them no larger than asteroids, were studded in the sky around it, and there was a belt of orbiting debris which looked like the detritus of some ancient collision between two bodies. It all seemed to have popped into existence out of nowhere; the truth, Lee knew, was that they had. "Target achieved," he said, turning his attention back to the displays in front of him. "Crashdown, give me a wide scan." "On it." Lee checked the streams of data the Raptor's scanners had been collecting since the moment it had dropped back into realspace. Starbuck, up front in the pilot's seat, was silent, and he guessed she was checking for Cylons the old-fashioned way, by looking out the window for them. It wasn't as ridiculous a notion as it sounded; back in the first war, the Cylons had developed ways of sending false data to Colonial scanners, and he had been taught in history classes that many ships had been lost to ambushes. Raptors had large cockpit windows precisely to allow the pilots a wide angle of vision. "Looks clean," Crashdown said over the commlink. "If the Cylons are here, they're not coming over to say hi." "I'm not seeing anything either," Lee said. "Starbuck, the pictures the probe took were of the third moon. Let's get closer." Outside the Raptor, the gas giant's curved horizon appeared to tilt as Kara maneuvered the ship through the orbiting debris. There was no question that this was a near perfect location for a concealed base -- the debris had the twin advantages of making the approach difficult and creating a barrage of extra noise on any scans made. They'd been lucky the probe had found it at all. "There it is," Starbuck said. Then, "Is it just me, or is that thing frakking disturbing?" Lee looked up then and saw it: the same starfish-shaped structure that had been in the images from the probe, except now instead of a grainy, blurred picture every detail was crystal clear, from the crenellated, pitted outer skin to the curved struts that looked unsettlingly more like bones than fabricated supports. "Not just you," Crashdown's voice said over the comm channel. "It looks like -- it looks like they grew it or something." "Cut the chatter," Lee said. There was something about the Cylon structure that was deeply unnerving. He had the sudden and irrational desire to order them to turn around and leave, right now. "We're not here to speculate. Let's sweep it fast and leave." "Yes, sir." But a fast sweep turned out to be impossible, due to the sheer volume of debris in the sky around them. Boomer and Starbuck, forced to move the Raptors every couple of minutes to avoid collisions with orbiting debris, couldn't maintain the fixed positions required to run scans effectively. After four or five tries, their best attempt had resulted in thirty percent coverage. Lee was about to try again when the Raptor lurched suddenly. He looked up and saw a rock the size of a house tumble past the cockpit window. "That was a little too close," Starbuck said. "I thought you said you wanted some action." "Action, yes. I don't remember saying I wanted to be the filling in a boulder sandwich." She reached out and flicked the open channel control on the comms board to the 'off' position. "Come on, Lee. If there were Cylons down there, don't you think they'd have come out shooting by now?" "Maybe they want us to think there's no one here so they can attack the Fleet when it jumps into the system." "You're not going to get a full scan," Kara said. "Not from up here." He looked out of the cockpit window, at the moon and the starfish-base clinging to it. "How about from down there?" She looked at him. "Oh, frak, you're actually serious." "I'd rather risk us than the whole Fleet. Can you make the landing?" "Are you kidding? I can land anything on anything. Doesn't mean I think it's a good idea, but..." She shrugged. "Hey, you're the CAG." "Put us back on open channel." Starbuck flipped the commlink on again, and Lee said, "Boomer, we're going to land and make the scan from the moon's surface. I need you to provide cover from orbit, in case we hit a hostile response." "Copy that," Boomer replied tightly. She sounded edgy, and Lee realized they had now been dodging debris in the gas giant's ring for over an hour. Even the best pilots made mistakes eventually; they couldn't stay much longer. Starbuck made the descent towards the moon, setting the Raptor down close to the Cylon base. Lee started the scan as soon as he felt the faint jolt of the craft touching the moon's surface, then watched it impatiently while it ran. At fifty percent, it was clear. Still clear at sixty. Then seventy. Then, at eighty-two per cent complete, there was something. "Frak," he said. "Energy trace. Really faint." "Source?" Starbuck asked. She looked at the dark shape hulking just outside the cockpit window. "Like I really need to ask." "It keeps fluctuating," Lee said. "I can't tell what it is." "We're sitting on a lump of iron, remember. Could be screwing it up." Lee stared at the readings, willing them to make sense. Privately, he had to admit that Kara had probably been right: if there were Cylons here, they would never had gotten this close without meeting resistance. But he wanted -- he needed -- to be sure. His father was trusting his judgment, and his judgment had to be right. Had to be. "The source is only about two hundred meters away. I'm going outside to see if there's anything there." He stood up, secured his helmet, and switched on the flight suit's air supply. In the pilot's chair, Starbuck was doing the same. A small switch on the side of the helmet turned on the flight suit's comms. "Ready," he said. She nodded. The Raptors were too small to have proper airlocks, and so going outside meant losing the internal atmosphere completely. Through the helmet, Lee heard a hiss, which died away as the air drained from the compartment. "Got your gun?" Starbuck asked. "Yes." "Don't go getting heroic on me. If you see anything, run back here so I can get us off this thing as fast as possible." At that, he had to smile. "Is that an order, Lieutenant?" "Frak off, Captain." Starbuck pressed one of the cockpit's controls and unlocked the door. "Don't get yourself killed. That's an order." The moon was small, and he guessed its gravity was a tenth or less of Caprica-normal. He moved cautiously until he got used to it, then speeded up, until he was bounding over the cratered surface. It was easier to think about getting the rhythm of low gravity movement right than it was to think about where that movement was taking him. The Cylon base was straight ahead of him; the energy trace was coming from the nearest of its five starfish-arms. There was an airlock -- an artificial, metal one -- set into the wall in front of him. In this setting, it looked so normal as to be out of place. It was lying open, and from behind it Lee could make out a faint glow. "I can see light inside," he said to Starbuck over the commlink. "I'm going to go in." He went into the airlock and found the inner door undamaged and unprotected by any kind of security. After a moment's consideration, he pulled the outer door shut behind him. "Starbuck, can you still hear me?" "Just about." Suddenly, Lee heard a soft whistling noise. Looking around, he located its source -- a series of small vents located just above the level of his head. "The airlock's working. I'm getting an atmosphere." He examined the vents more closely, and frowned. They were pink and moist and each one was surrounded by a ring of something that resembled muscle tissue. They looked like babies' mouths, gummy and toothless. Almost as soon as he'd thought of the comparison, Lee wished he hadn't. "This is -- weird. Half the technology's normal and half looks organic." "If it's anything like my Raider," Starbuck said, "it's gonna smell awful. Just warning you." The airlock's inner door opened, revealing a dimly lit corridor. Instantly, Lee swung up his gun, but the interior of the base was quiet and still. "I'm in," he told Starbuck. "Emergency lighting's on -- that's what I saw from outside. No movement." He moved cautiously along the hallway, trying to shake the conviction, growing with every step, that he was walking down a giant esophagus. The floor and walls were made -- grown? -- from a tough membrane which was marbled with branching veins and vessels, and everywhere he looked he saw the same baby-mouth vents as had been in the airlock, expanding and contracting as they pumped air. But, just like outside, there were a lot of places where the membrane looked shriveled and diseased, and in these sections of the hallway, the air vents weren't working. There were a number of rooms off the hallway, and he looked into every one as he passed it, but they were all completely bare, with only shallow impressions in the walls and floors to hint at what they might at some point have contained. Then he came to one that was different. It was larger than the others, and it was the first room he had seen that still had something in it. It was filled with several parallel rows of metal tanks which were rectangular in shape and -- Lee noted with unease -- about the right size to hold a person. The tanks were raised up on pedestals to about the height of a normal bed, presumably to make it easier for anyone moving among them to inspect the contents. Although the tanks were metal, the tubes which trailed out of them in thick bunches were made from the same muscle-like membrane as the walls and floors; in fact, when he traced the path of one tube, he saw that it seemed to have grown from the wall itself. He described what he saw to Starbuck. "The tanks are empty," he said, looking into the nearest one. "Mostly empty. There's a kind of - sludge, I guess, at the bottom. Gods. You realize what this is?" "Just a guess: disgusting?" "This is where they've been manufacturing human-Cylon clones. Or one of the places where they've been making them. It has to be." He looked around, feeling a mounting sense of excitement as he realized what they'd stumbled across. "Think what we could learn here. If we could figure out how the Cylons -- " He broke off. "Apollo, do you copy? Lee?" "Yes. Sorry -- I heard something." He stopped, trying to listen through the helmet. No, he hadn't imagined it; there it was again. He could hear, faintly, a low moaning sound that made him think of the low wail of an animal in pain. "Someone's here." "Frak it. Get out of there." Lee didn't answer. He raised his gun, cautiously left the tank room and started down the corridor, in what he hoped was the direction the sounds had come from. It was hard to tell, because the noises had stopped as suddenly as they'd started. He looked into a dozen more of the small, bare rooms with no success. Then he checked the last room, and found someone in it. A man was lying on his side in the far corner of the room, on the floor. His back was to the door, and his arms were wrapped around himself, as if he were trying to keep warm. What remained of his clothes were ripped and stained, and were voluminous on his emaciated frame. As Lee watched, he rocked back and forward unthinkingly, as if he'd been doing nothing else for hours or days. "Starbuck," he said into the comm link in his helmet. "I've found someone." "Alive?" "Just about. Is there a spare flight suit and helmet in the Raptor?" "Yes." "You'd better bring it over. We're going to have to put him in something to get him back to the ship." "On my way." Lee kneeled down next to the man, but slowly, so he didn't alarm him. He needn't have worried: the man didn't stop rocking and didn't seem to be aware of his presence at all. Lee wanted to offer him something -- even just the knowledge that he'd been rescued, if he could understand that -- but there was no point in trying to speak to him with his helmet on. He took it off and set it on the ground next to him. Kara had been right -- the stink was awful. Most of the stench was attributable to a mixture of the rotting membrane and tissue of the base and the stale air, but he could also smell something more ordinary yet just as disturbing: feces and urine and human dirt. Softly, he said, "You're going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right." The man stopped rocking abruptly. For a second, he went rigid, and then he started to moan -- the same low, desolate sound Lee had heard back in the tank room. The noise rose in volume and pitch until it was a scream of horror. "It's okay," Lee said. "It's okay. I promise, everything's going to be --" Then the man rolled over, so that he was facing Lee, and the words 'all right' died on his lips. The man stared at Lee in revulsion and terror and loathing, and Lee stared back at him in sheer, blank shock. The man had his face. He was looking at himself. *********************
"I preferred Caprica City, personally," Gaius Baltar said. He was sitting on the marble rim of the fountain, located in the centre of Unity Square. The spouting water of the fountain, as far as Baltar remembered from a long-ago school history lesson, was supposed to symbolize the eternal nature of the alliance of the Twelve Colonies. It was dry now, and a thick layer of dust lined the bottom of the basin. Baltar was glad to see that his subconscious had a well-developed sense of irony. "Delphi was always crammed with tourists, and the bars stopped serving after one a.m." Six wandered down the wide, white steps of Constitution Hall. She was wearing a sky-blue dress cut from a diaphanous, chiffon-like material which streamed behind her as if she were walking into a strong breeze, although Baltar couldn't feel a breath moving in the baking air. "Delphi was the site of the oldest human settlement discovered on any of the Twelve Colonies. Archaeologists found human remains in graves over two thousand years old. The first Cylon was created just ninety years ago. You don't appreciate what a blessing it is, to have a sense of your race's history. You have so much of it; we have so little." Dryly, Baltar said, "But look how far you've come in such a short time." Six smiled, with what looked to Baltar like real pride. "We have, haven't we? But then, children always want to exceed their parents' expectations." She sat down on his lap, parting her legs so that she straddled him, and rested her arms on his shoulders. Then she leaned forward and kissed him. For an instant, his whole world consisted of her taste, her scent, the sensation of her weight pressing down on his thighs. "Sometimes," he said, "I almost regret that you're nothing more than a product of my imagination." She pouted. "You know I'm a Cylon. I thought we'd established that." "Oh, there's certainly a human Cylon model that looks like you. That's not in dispute. But as for you - I'm not convinced you're anything more than a peculiarly complex manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder." "I am a self-contained artificial intelligence programmed into a chip implanted in your brain. I know everything you know. And I can stimulate the sensory centers of your brain directly, and make you feel..." Her hand brushed over his crotch, and he felt himself getting hard for her, "...anything." The slight, pleasurable pressure between his legs made it harder to concentrate, but he went on regardless. "So you claim. But let's look at the evidence, shall we? I was seduced and exploited by a Cylon agent, and I experienced a nuclear holocaust close up. Some degree of psychological trauma was inevitable. So you appeared, stepping in to give my conscious mind an escape in the form of these detailed and convincing hallucinations, as well as a physical release which is, sadly, rather lacking in my current circumstances. And, as an additional benefit, you provide me with a useful mechanism for debating ideas with myself, which is necessary given that there's no one left alive who might even come close to being my intellectual equal." Six sighed. Her breath was warm and sweet on his face. "You disappoint me, Gaius. Every time I think you're ready to make a leap of faith, you turn away." "This obsession with religion is the only part I don't understand yet," Baltar said. "Where does that come from? Is it some kind of reaction to the improbability of my survival? A need to make sense of why I'm one of fifty thousand survivors and not fifty billion dead? But I know the answer to that: random chance. In a godless universe, it can be nothing else, and that idea never troubled me before. I don't see why it would now." "If you think your survival was chance, then you understand nothing. God has a plan for you." Six dipped her head and rubbed her cheek against his, all the time working him with her hand. He caught his breath and pushed against her, feeling the front of his pants growing tighter. The fountain was made of marble and wouldn't exactly be comfortable; he wondered if he concentrated, could he shift them to more convivial surroundings. This was, after all, his fantasy. "If you're real," he said, gasping a little, "prove it." Her fingers caught his belt, then slid down the zipper of his pants. Gods, that felt good. "I thought I was." "All you ever do is reflect my own desires and fears back at me." He broke off, pushed against her, and groaned. The blue dress was up around her waist, and he was delighted to discover she wasn't wearing panties. His subconscious was being very efficient. "If you were real -- if you were connected to the Cylons -- you'd be able to tell me something I couldn't possibly know. But you never have. And that's because you can't." "Faith shouldn't require proof." "But I do. I'm a scientist. A rational man." He placed his hand between her legs and stroked her; when she tipped back her head and groaned, he leaned forward to kiss her neck. She turned her head, bringing her mouth close to his ear. Her lips caught his earlobe, and she teased him with her tongue. When she spoke, it was in the lowest of whispers, so faint and breathy that there was no question this intimacy was intended only for him. "Lee Adama is a Cylon," she said, and vanished. Baltar started. Unity Square was gone; he was sitting on the edge of the narrow bed in the quarters he had been assigned on the Galactica, his legs apart and his hand on his cock. Too far gone to stop, he came with a spasm and a gasp. As the last pulses faded into a muted sense of physical satisfaction, he lay back on the bed. It was only then that the full meaning of what Six had told him began to sink in. There was a knock at the door. "Just, ah, just a moment -- " He made for the tiny bathroom and cleaned himself up as quickly as possible. His appearance, when he checked it in the small mirror over the sink, was disheveled and unshaven. He looked exactly like what he was: a man who hadn't rested properly in weeks. When he opened the door, Gaeta was outside. "Good evening, Lieutenant. Forgive the delay, I was fast asleep." "I'm sorry for disturbing you, Doctor. The President requests your presence urgently." "The President always requests my presence urgently. It's never 'in a couple of hours' or 'at your convenience'." He could have said more, but he made an effort to bite back both the words and the sourness of his tone. What status he enjoyed in the Fleet was due largely to Roslin's patronage, and so he had better be a good boy and run along, if he knew what was good for him. "Very well. I need ten minutes to shower and change --" "I'm afraid the Emergency Security Council is already in session," Gaeta said. "My orders are to bring you there straight away. They're waiting for you." "I see." Baltar forced a smile. "Well, how does the saying go? No rest for the wicked." Gaeta smiled. "I believe the second part is more appropriate, Doctor: No peace for the good." As he left his quarters, Baltar was sure he heard Six's faint, mocking laughter follow him out into the hallway.
From his position on the other side of the large table in the Galactica's conference room, Colonel Tigh said, "In the main sickbay. We've relocated the other patients to one of the smaller facilities, and the area's been made secure." Baltar frowned. "Forgive me, but I thought you said he was unconscious? It doesn't sound as if he's going anywhere by himself." "He's not," Tigh said. He looked uncomfortable, then glanced quickly up the table, to where Commander Adama sat, next to the President. He had not spoken since Baltar had come into the room. After a slight but noticeable hesitation, Tigh went on, "Captain Adama is there, too. He was... asked to remain, and he agreed." Baltar wondered what level of compulsion 'asked to remain' implied once translated from military-speak. He suspected it fell on the scale somewhere below an order but well above a gentle suggestion. President Roslin said, "The man -- if he is a man -- lost consciousness during the return journey and has not woken up since his arrival. The Galactica's Chief Medical Officer has been supervising initial treatment and is due to make his report shortly. He has also been carrying out a number of tests but, as we all know only too well, there is no way to tell the difference between a human being and a human-type Cylon by physical examination. All we know for certain at this point is that it appears this man and Captain Adama are identical. Which is where you come in, Doctor. How long will it take you to test blood samples from both of them?" "Madam President, while the Cylon detecting process I have developed can give a positive or negative result within a relatively short space of time -- sometimes even minutes -- the possibility of a false result is high enough that I would prefer to re-analyze samples from both individuals a number of times before coming to a final -- " "You have to be right," Commander Adama said. He didn't speak loudly, but it seemed that the room became somehow quieter around him, emphasizing his words. "Not fast. Right. There can be no uncertainty, no margin of error, no possibility of a mistake. How long will that take?" Baltar made some swift mental
calculations concerning statistical tolerances and the number of times
he would have to repeat the tests to arrive at an indisputable result.
After the briefest of pauses he said, He was rewarded with a faint smile from Roslin. "Thank you, Doctor. Your dedication and commitment are, as always, appreciated by everyone." "You're a hero, Gaius." Baltar looked up sharply, and saw Six, standing next to Roslin's chair. "You're the only one who can give them the answers they need. You're their oracle." "You knew," Baltar said. Then, when he realized Roslin, Adama and Tigh were all looking at him, he coughed and said, "Who -- who knew? This is such a -- shock. A terrible shock." "It is," Roslin agreed. She looked at Adama. "I am sure that all of us here extend our personal sympathies to the Commander at this difficult time." Adama stared down the table, and made no response. Meanwhile, Six leaned over the back of his chair and ran her hands down the lapels of his jacket. She smiled at Baltar. "Maybe they're both Cylons," she said. "Has he thought of that? Do you know, I think he has." "What if --" Baltar said. He stopped, made himself look away from Six and at Roslin instead, and started again. "Madam President, I know that this is difficult to contemplate, but we must face the possibility head on. What if Captain Adama is indeed a Cylon agent? What if a man who has held a senior position, a position of trust, among us virtually since the hour these terrible events began turns out to have been serving the enemy the whole time?" "We know nothing for certain yet," Roslin said. "As and when our knowledge of the facts changes, we will -- " "If I may interrupt, Madam President," Commander Adama said. He looked at Baltar. "If I discover that one of my officers is a Cylon agent, then I will take such action as I deem appropriate as Commander of the Fleet." His voice was steady, and expressionless. The look in his eyes was not one Baltar found it easy to meet. "I'll get straight to work," Baltar said.
Frak it. She knocked. "Door's open." Starbuck was putting something away as Sharon came in; she only caught a glimpse and couldn't be sure, but it looked like a pair of icons. A lot of people used icons of the Lords of Kobol as aids to meditation when praying, but Sharon was surprised to see Starbuck with them, since she'd never had Starbuck pegged as the religious type. Although this was hardly the time for her to start prying into Starbuck's private feelings about anything. Except for the part where that was exactly what Sharon had come to do. Starbuck was sitting on the edge of her bunk, which was the lower of the pair on the right hand side of the room. Sharon sat down opposite her, on the lower bunk of the other pair. The dorm was tiny, and their knees almost touched across the narrow space. "I just came to give you the heads up," Sharon said. "People have been talking and -- well, the media's gotten hold of it. Tigh's not letting them down here, but it's a good idea not to go up to any of the public access decks for a while unless you want to be hounded for a sound-bite." "Thanks," Starbuck said, "You know, if there hadn't been so many journalists here covering the decommissioning, we wouldn't have this problem. We should have been pickier about who we let stay on board." "Here is the news," Sharon said gravely, "Civilization destroyed. Next up, sports." Starbuck smiled, a ghost of her usual thousand-watt beam, but a smile nevertheless. "Do you think -- " Sharon started to ask. Starbuck cut her off. "Don't. Don't ask me, because I don't know. I haven't been able to think about anything else since we came back, and I just don't know. I have no frakking idea." "But you saw him." "Yeah, I saw him. You know what the worst part is? I didn't even recognize him. I took the spare flight suit over there and when I arrived I started putting it on him and I couldn't figure out why Lee was just standing there, not doing anything. I kept telling him to help me, and then I looked again and I saw --" She broke off abruptly. "He looked like hell and he was about forty pounds too light, but it was him. It is him." Sharon hesitated. "What does Apollo --" "I don't know," Starbuck said, with an edge of anger in her voice. "He didn't say one frakking word he didn't have to the whole way back." Sharon said, "I guess they'll get Baltar to run his Cylon detection test on both of them. At least -- at least then we'll know for sure." "I guess." "Maybe it's better to know for sure. I mean, if we really had a Cylon agent on board, and if it was the CAG -- it's better to know that now. Maybe he'd be so important to them, they wouldn't even need any others. Maybe he's the only one, and if we found him -- we'd be safe." Starbuck was staring at her. "What the hell is wrong with you? You're talking as if you want him to be a Cylon." "I don't -- I'm not --" Sharon broke off. "I'm sorry, that's not what I -- " "Get out," Starbuck said. "Just get out of here." Sharon left. Her cheeks were burning as she hurried out of the dorms, and she kept her head down so she didn't have to meet the eyes of the few people she passed in the corridors. But the strange, yawning sensation she felt in the pit of her stomach wasn't embarrassment or regret. It was relief.
Inside, it was unusually, even preternaturally, quiet. The Galactica's sickbay had been fully utilized since the day of the attacks, at first providing care to those who had been wounded during the exodus and, more recently, treating sick and injured civilians from the ships in the Fleet whose own medical facilities were under-equipped or non-existent. Now that everyone apart from the most critical cases had been moved out, the place was eerily silent. For an instant, Adama could almost persuade himself that he was on another Galactica, one which existed in a universe where the Cylon attacks had never happened. One which had been safely decommissioned and turned into a museum. "Commander." Adama turned around, just in time to see Doctor Cottle come out of his office holding a loosely tagged sheaf of papers in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Adama looked at the cigarette, and the CMO shrugged. "I know, I know. Hell, though, it's three in the morning, there's no one else here, and frankly getting cancer isn't my biggest worry these days." He held out the report. "I was just about to come up and give you this." "Thank you," Adama said. He took the papers and started to leaf through them. The report was at least a dozen pages long, and closely typed. He closed the pages and looked back at Cottle. "Summarize it for me." "Everything I've been able to test -- fingerprints, blood type, dental patterns -- is an exact match of Captain Adama's records. They even have identical scars on their right knees." Lee had been ten years old, Adama remembered. He'd been playing with Zak; they were climbing trees in the back yard, daring each other to go higher and higher, when Lee -- who was not usually a risk-taker, and had doubtless been egged on by his more adventurous younger brother -- had trusted his weight to a rotten branch. The resulting snap and yell of surprise had brought Adama running out from the house, just in time to see his oldest son plunge over ten feet to the ground. He'd rushed straight to the boy's side, aware yet not aware of Zak's screams, and had felt an icy terror grip him when he saw Lee's eyes were open but glassy, and he was lying still as the blood soaked into his ripped jeans. In the event, those first fears were unfounded -- although the wound had been deep enough to scar, it had looked much worse than it actually was. But the incident had left its own kind of mark on Adama; it had been the first time he had experienced the fear of losing a child. Years later, when he had answered the phone call and heard the words, "I am sorry to inform you --" he had known again the horrific sensation of watching the boy tumble helplessly downward. "...will take a couple of days to run a full genetic profile," Cottle was saying, "but I expect it to be exactly the same, too." "What about his condition?" "He's dangerously dehydrated and is suffering from extreme malnutrition. During the examination, I also found many small scars on his body, consistent with a large number of tissue and blood samples being taken over a prolonged period." "How long is prolonged?" "It's hard to be certain. But, judging by the degree of healing of the older lesions, we're talking about months, not weeks." Adama thought about that for a moment. About what it meant. "Is he going to live?" Doctor Cottle didn't answer immediately. At last he said, "It's too soon to say." "I'd like to see him." Cottle nodded, then turned and took Adama down the short corridor which led to the sickbay's intensive care unit. The ICU was dimly lit, but it was clear nevertheless that only one of the beds was occupied. Adama thanked him, and the doctor started to leave. Then he stopped. "Captain Adama is in room four, off the main ward," he said. "I don't think he's asleep, if you -- Well, that's where he is." "Thank you," Adama said again, and Cottle left. Within the ICU, the only sounds were the faint hum of the air circulation system and the labored breathing of its sole occupant. There were so many machines grouped around the cot that Adama was reminded of a war zone, as if the bed were a battlefield where life and death were throwing the full might of their arsenals at each other in the hope of securing a victory. The array of medical weaponry hid the patient effectively and, from where Adama was standing, just inside the doorway, the man in the bed might have been anyone. Anyone at all. It would be easy to turn around and leave, and allow himself to continue in that belief. He went closer, so he could see the man clearly. The first thing Adama noticed -- could not help but notice -- was that he was thin. Skeletally thin, with dark veins jutting out from skin which was so pale it was almost translucent. Tubes inserted into his mouth and nostrils further distorted his appearance. His appearance had been altered so drastically that he should not have been recognizable at all, but he was. It was Lee. Very gently, Adama took his son's hand in his own. It shocked him to see that Lee was so underweight that the skin on the back of his hand was wrinkled, as if he were wearing gloves which were too large for him. His son was thirty-two years younger than him, but he had the hands of a man older than Adama. In the bed, Lee suddenly stirred. A faint noise of distress emerged from the back of his throat, and his hand clenched suddenly. "I'm here," Adama said. "It's all right. I'm here." But there was no sign that his son had heard him. After a moment, the hand Adama held relaxed again, and before long Lee had sunk back into unconsciousness. Adama waited for many minutes, but Lee did not move again, and eventually Adama realized he wasn't going to. He laid Lee's hand back on top of the blankets with care, and left the ICU. Doctor Cottle's office was dark as he walked past it, but there was a faint glow coming from the main ward. When he got closer, he saw that it wasn't coming from the main ward lights, which had been switched off; the source was a thin, bright line seeping out from under the door to one of the isolation rooms located off the ward. Room four. Adama went to the door. He could see, at his feet, a band of shadow breaking the line of light coming from under the door, moving across it from left to right and then back again. And he could hear, in the silence of the deserted sickbay, the soft click of booted feet pacing the metal-floored deck inside the isolation room. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. He remembered the snap the branch had made as it broke, and the sight of his son falling. He remembered the fear of loss and -- worse still -- the horror of knowing that he was too late to stop what was happening. There had been nothing he could do, except watch, a spectator at his own tragedy. He stood outside the door for a long time. But he didn't go in. ***
"You can't ignore me forever, Gaius." The centrifuge made a low hum as it spun. Baltar watched it, and did not allow himself to look at Six. He knew what he would see if he did: she was perched elegantly on the edge of one of the laboratory benches, her very short skirt riding up around her thighs in a most suggestive and, he knew, deliberately provocative way. He wondered what the expression was on her lovely face. Was she trying to appear hurt, or had she abandoned all pretence and was simply regarding him with a victor's smugness? He wanted to look at her. He was aware of her presence -- gods, he could even smell her perfume -- in a way which was acute, undeniable, uncomfortable. She distracted him, even when she wasn't talking; she made concentrating on the task at hand a challenge of Herculean proportions. Suddenly, he saw himself as others must see him -- a stuttering, erratic fool who talked to himself and could barely focus for long enough to complete a sentence. Gaius Baltar, the finest mind of his generation, reduced to a figure of ridicule. This was what Six had done to him. He'd tried to rationalize her as his release. Now he saw, finally, what she really was: his jailer. He'd been like this for weeks. He'd even started to think of this warped dependence as normal. "Gaius," Six sing-songed from the bench. "Oh, Gaius..." Baltar felt his nerves pull tight and, at last, break. "Shut up," he snapped, spinning around. "For the love of all the gods, just shut the frak up and leave me alone." Six laughed. "You see? I knew you'd have to talk to me eventually." "You manipulated me to serve your purposes." She wagged her finger at him. "You manipulated yourself, Gaius, and very effectively, too. I told you about the chip. You just decided to believe something different. But, in the end, it doesn't matter to me what you think I am." She smiled. "As long as you love me." "I detest you." "Oh, you say that now..." She slipped down off the bench and walked toward him, hips swaying and arms outstretched. When she reached him, she draped her arms over his shoulders and pulled him close to her in an embrace. "But I know how to make you change your mind." He felt the familiar, warm fug descend on his mind, rolling in like fog to obscure and blur his thoughts. He needed to think -- he was supposed to be good at thinking, better than anyone -- but when she was this close, thoughts were an irritating irrelevance. But there was something, something he mustn't forget, something important... "You made me a traitor," he murmured. "The first time, I didn't know what I was doing. How could I? But the second time, I was complicit. I deceived myself with a smile and said yes, please, more." He blinked, and was surprised when he felt moisture on his cheeks. "That was my crime. My sin, if you want to call it that." Six raised her arms and held his face in her hands, so that he was looking straight at her. "God will forgive you, Gaius, if you ask him to." "And all I need to do is... repent." She smiled beatifically. "That's all." "Repent," Baltar said. "Fall on my knees, and worship your god." "Yes." "That would make you happy, wouldn't it?" In response, Six kissed his forehead. Her lips were feather-soft against his skin. Baltar said, "No." She stared at him. "No," he said, with more force. "I will not worship your god. Or any god, for that matter. It's just another way of deceiving oneself, after all, and I think I've done enough of that lately, don't you? No, I'd rather face the world without blinkers, and rely on my own intellect to get by. Because it occurs to me that Cylons and deities have something in common: you were both invented by man to meet a particular need. You're convenient, artificial constructs, and nothing more. The very least among us is superior to you. And I, my dear, am very far from being the least among us." All through his tirade, Six's expression had barely changed. Now, as he watched, her smile slowly disappeared, replaced by hollow uncertainty and then by raw hurt. For a moment, he actually thought she was going to cry, and the absurdity of it made him want to burst out laughing. After everything that had happened, he was going to defeat the Cylons by making them cry. Then her face hardened, the lines of her cheeks and jaw suddenly becoming harsh. At last, the real Six, he thought. "You can't get rid of me as easily as your other whores, Gaius." She tapped one perfectly filed nail against the side of his head. "I'm in there with you, remember?" "I will find you," Baltar promised. He felt calm, even serene; the fog which had settled over his mental landscape in the past weeks was rapidly lifting, leaving him focused and alert and equipped with a fresh sense of resolve. "Wherever you are hiding, I will find you and I will extract you. In the meantime --" He placed his hands on her upper arms, and smiled at her. "Get the hell out of my mind." He pushed her, hard. Six reeled backward, crashing into the glass cupboards lined up against the laboratory wall. Baltar automatically threw up a hand to protect himself from the expected shower of broken glass, but it didn't come. Instead, when Six's body hit the glass doors, she simply -- vanished. Of course she had vanished. What else had he expected? She wasn't real. For the first time in weeks, Baltar laughed an honest, real laugh. The machine on the table beeped loudly, indicating that it had finished another test sequence. Baltar checked the results and recorded them in the steadily growing list. Humming cheerfully to himself, he set about preparing the next sample.
He was sitting in a seat at the table in the Galactica's main conference room. The two marines who had escorted him up from sickbay stood at a discreet distance behind him. He wasn't a prisoner, but he wasn't exactly free to get up and leave any time he wanted to, either. Right now, Lee wasn't sure what his status was, and the feeling was an unsettling one. He shifted his weight about in the chair, trying to get comfortable. He'd barely rested during the night and now his muscles were sore and tense. He'd tried to sleep, but every time he'd closed his eyes he had seen his own hollow face, mouth gaping in a scream of horror. Eventually, he'd had to give in and admit to himself that he wasn't going to be able to stop thinking about it, and so he'd decided he might at least make productive use of the time. He'd spent the rest of the night weighing the evidence, putting together a theory that fit the available facts. It made perfect sense that the Cylons would choose him as the newest addition to their range of human models. He held a senior position in what remained of the Colonial military, and he was trusted by both the Commander of the Fleet and the President. He must have presented an irresistible target. Somehow, they had obtained the tiny sample of his genetic material which had given them everything they'd needed to construct a perfect copy of him. How had they gotten it? He could think of at least several strong possibilities, but the most likely one was that a Cylon agent already placed on the Galactica had gained access to the store of blood which was kept in the medical labs for use in emergency transfusions. They must have planned to abduct him and make the substitution while the Fleet passed through the system where the base was located, but discovery by the Galactica's advance probe had taken away the advantage of secrecy, and they had decided to evacuate and wait for another opportunity. It all made perfect sense. Except for one thing. The single clone they'd left behind to die. Had it failed some kind of quality control check? Or had its programming failed to take? Either way, leaving it to be discovered just didn't stack up, no matter how much he tried to make it work. If it hadn't been for that single detail, he could have explained everything. The door at the far end of the conference room swung open and President Roslin came in, followed by his father and Doctor Baltar, and then by Tigh and Billy Keikeya. Lee stood up, saluted, and then remained at attention until they were all seated. "Please, Captain, sit down," the President said. She looked around the room. "Very well. Let's not take more time over this than we have to. Doctor Baltar, your report, please." Baltar rose and began to explain how his Cylon detector worked, as if everyone present didn't know already. Lee didn't listen; instead, he was looking at his father. There was something about the expression on Adama's face that was familiar, and troubling. He'd seen his father look like this before, but in another context, and he couldn't remember when or where it had been. "Doctor Baltar," the President interrupted. "Perhaps you could skip straight to your findings." "Ah. Yes. Of course. Dreadfully sorry. Just like me, to ramble on." Baltar smiled cheerfully; his sunny disposition was so wildly at odds with everyone else present that, under other circumstances, it might have been funny. "You want me to, ah --?" The President nodded patiently. "Yes, Doctor." Suddenly, Lee knew when he had last seen his father look like that. It had been right after Zak had died. When Lee had gone to see Adama then, he had found him remote and cut-off. At the time, he'd chosen to see it as a professional soldier's callous indifference to death, and added it to the list of father's failures. It was only recently that he'd started to understand it for what it was -- an act of self-protection by a man whose capacity to feel pain was perhaps far greater than Lee had ever suspected. And his father was wearing the same expression now. As if he had just lost another son. Or was just about to. "Well, he's a Cylon," Baltar said, gesturing casually in Lee's direction. "There's absolutely no doubt about it." Lee stared at him. He wanted to speak out, but his throat constricted and he couldn't force out a single word. "And the man currently in our sickbay?" Tigh asked. "...Is the real Captain Adama." At last, Lee found his voice. "No," he said. "No. This is wrong. It's a mistake --" Baltar said, "I assure you, the test results were conclusive." "Then run them again!" "I did," Baltar said. "In fact, I ran them one hundred and forty-seven times." Without looking up at Lee, Adama said, "I asked Doctor Baltar to eliminate the possibility of any errors from his testing process. He did. Everyone here is satisfied with the validity of the results." "Well, I'm not satisfied with them!" "Your opinion no longer counts," his father said stonily. "You are a Cylon agent." "I am not a Cylon!" Lee was shouting now; he stood up, so violently that the chair toppled over and clattered noisily on to the floor. "Are you listening to me? Any of you?" But no one in the room was rising to defend him, or to dispute the results of Baltar's test. Billy Keikeya was writing furiously on the notepad in front of him, as if by submerging himself completely in the task he could ignore what was going on around him. Tigh looked disgusted. And President Roslin was looking at him as she'd never seen him before. Or as if she were seeing him for the first time. His father's voice rose until he was shouting too, overriding Lee's protests. "You are a Cylon agent and I am hereby placing you under arrest." "You can't arrest me! I haven't done anything!" "You are charged with impersonating an officer of the Colonial Fleet, with conspiring to abduct and imprison an officer of the Colonial Fleet, and with committing treachery against the Federation of the Twelve Colonies. Other charges will be added when the full extent of your crimes is known." The marines had moved up behind Lee; one of them held his arms together while the other fitted the restraints around his wrists. Lee looked at his bound hands with a distant sense that they must belong to someone else. When he looked up, he was looking right into his father's eyes. "I'm not a Cylon," he said. "Dad, please -- I'm your son." "No, you're not." His father turned away from him, and said to the marines, "Get this thing out of my sight." The last thing Lee saw as they dragged him out of the conference room was his father, sitting at the table. His back was ramrod straight and he was staring straight ahead. *********************
The desk which Billy had found for her, for example, was a beautifully constructed solid wood antique; Laura guessed it had to have been made in the previous century. When she'd asked him where he'd gotten it from, he'd admitted it had been part of a removal company's consignment on one of the haulage ships in the Fleet. The desk's owner had almost certainly perished in the attacks, but by chance the furniture itself had survived. Sometimes, as she worked, Laura drew her fingers over the surface of the wood, just to feel its texture and the reassurance of its solid, natural presence. Of course, it wasn't the accessories which made the office presidential, but the person occupying it. And, right now, Laura didn't feel very presidential at all. When the Cylons had attacked, she had been as lost and terrified as every other survivor. Unlike every other survivor, however, the responsibility of making decisions had fallen to her. The first person who had treated her as the President had been Lee Adama. Captain Apollo. In those first, crucial hours, it had been his belief in her, and in the office she suddenly held, that had helped her to believe in herself. He had trusted her judgment, and in return she had trusted and confided in him. And her judgment had been completely, disastrously wrong. "It is Doctor Cottle's opinion that my son's injuries imply he was abducted at least several months ago," Commander Adama said. "If that is the case, then the switch could not have taken place at any time since the attacks. The Cylon imposter must have arrived on the Galactica on the day of the decommissioning ceremony. And it has been here ever since." "Where is he..." she began, then stopped. She would have to select her words more carefully in the future. "Where is it now?" "In the brig," Adama said. "But we can't keep it there. The Galactica doesn't have the facilities to hold a high-security prisoner." "What do you recommend we do with it?" "Kill it," Adama said unequivocally. There was a complete lack of emotion in his expression and tone which left Laura feeling vaguely discomfited. She should be grateful, she supposed, that Adama was able to put the safety of the Fleet above his personal feelings, yet somehow she couldn't forget that two days ago the Cylon had been his son. No; that was wrong. It had never been his son. It had just tricked them into thinking it was. "We can't execute it without going through due process," she said. "I don't remember following any due process with Leoben," Adama pointed out. "This is different," Laura said. "This Cylon wasn't a known enemy operative -- it was a respected senior officer. Many people -- many civilians -- will find it hard to stop thinking of it that way. If we want to execute it, we'll have to put it on trial and find it guilty first, and that will require hard evidence of treason. It'll be even harder to achieve if the Cylon is still protesting its innocence publicly. There are political concerns here which are just as important to address as the military ones, Commander." Adama said, "I've ordered a full review of security on the Galactica. If there's evidence of sabotage anywhere on board, we'll find it." Laura nodded. "And in the meantime, I'll ask Billy to contact the captain of the Astral Queen. I'm sure they have more suitable facilities than the Galactica's brig." She made a note on the pad in front of her. "Let's talk about damage limitation. How bad is it?" His expression was grim. "We have to assume we're dealing with the worst case scenario -- that the Cylons know every piece of information about us which the imposter had access to." Every piece of information. Laura shut her eyes for a moment. "Oh..." "Madam President?" She hesitated. "Commander... I took your son -- the person we all thought was your son -- very much into my confidence. I'm afraid he possesses some extremely sensitive information. Personal information." She exhaled. "I have cancer. I've told only three people. The Cylon was one of them." Adama was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I see. And you didn't think, at any point, that it was appropriate to inform the Commander of the Colonial Fleet about your illness?" "Frankly, no, I didn't, Commander," Laura said sharply. "I wasn't aware my health was a military concern." "It is now, if the Cylons know about it." Adama's expression was frosty in the extreme. "And you evidently considered it enough of a military concern to tell the CAG." "Then I can take it, can I, that over the course of the past six weeks, you told it nothing that would fall outside the normal interactions between a ship's captain and one of his senior officers? Nothing at all?" Laura arched a single skeptical eyebrow. Adama snapped, "Of course I talked to it. I thought it was my son!" He stopped, and appeared to catch himself. "I'm sorry, Madam President. I -- " Laura raised a hand, cutting him off. "No. I apologize. That was unfair of me. Your relationship with it was -- different." She rubbed her hand across her eyes, feeling suddenly weary. "I... accept I made a grave error of judgment. We may yet pay for it." "Yours was not the only error of judgment. It fooled all of us." "May I ask you a personal question, Commander?" He nodded. "Did you suspect? At all?" Quietly, he said, "Not for a second." The door opened, and Billy came in, holding a single sheet of paper. "I'm sorry for intruding, Madam President. I have an urgent message." It was a bad time; then again, there was rarely a moment Laura considered a good time, of any kind, these days. "Let's hear it," she said. "It's for the Commander," Billy said. He twisted the paper around in his hand, creasing it. "You... uh, you might want to read this alone, sir." Suddenly, and without the least shadow of a doubt, Laura knew precisely what the message was. Adama must have, too, because his posture changed fractionally; it seemed to Laura that he lost a little of his military bearing and slumped almost imperceptibly back in the chair. "Just tell me," he said. Billy hesitated, then looked to Laura for guidance. She inclined her head in a tiny nod. Billy lifted the wrinkled paper, and said, "Colonel Tigh regrets to inform you your son died a short time ago. He suffered a massive coronary failure. The doctors tried to revive him, but..." He stopped. "I'm very sorry, Commander." Adama closed his eyes. He nodded. Laura looked at Billy, then at the door. He got the message at once, and practically fled the room, leaving her alone with Adama. She stood up. Making her tone gentle, she said, "If you'd like some time by yourself, please feel free to stay here. I'll go elsewhere." Adama's eyes remained closed; in the silence, she could hear him breathing in and out, with forced regularity. Then he opened his eyes and stood up. The simple act appeared to take a great deal of effort, and he had to place one hand on the corner of the desk for support. But when he spoke, his voice was steady. "Thank you, but that won't be necessary. I would, however, like to return to the Galactica immediately." "Of course." She paused. "You have my deepest and sincerest sympathies, Commander. I didn't know your son for long, but even our brief acquaintance led me to hold him in great respect and admiration. He was a credit to the Colonial Fleet, and to you." Adama looked at her, and she saw something in his eyes harden. "With respect, Madam President," he said, "you never met my son." ***
She gave the location seven out of ten. The Galactica's hangar bay lacked atmosphere -- call that a meager five out of ten -- but it got two bonus points for being selected as the venue because it was the only place big enough to hold everyone who wanted to attend. The ceremony itself, however, scored a big fat nine. How many people, after all, got to have their funeral conducted by a High Priestess, with passages from the Scriptures read by the President herself? Yeah, Lee's funeral was a high scorer, maybe even higher than Zak's had been. Zak would've been annoyed by that; he'd had the crazily competitive streak of a younger child, always determined not to be overshadowed by his older brother. She could have teased them about it, except of course she couldn't because now they were both gone, and Kara was pretty frakking sick of burying men called Adama. Maybe she should just be glad the old man didn't have any other sons she could make the mistake of letting herself care about. He didn't have any sons at all, now. The thought made her eyes sting with unexpected tears. She blinked rapidly, until they were dry again. There'd be time to do her grieving later, someplace private. She wasn't going to lose it here, in front of everyone. President Roslin was standing at the lectern which had been set up at the front of the hangar bay, reading from the book spread open in front of her. Kara was no religious scholar, but she knew the passage well. She'd heard it read at every funeral she'd been to. "As your ancestors were lifted up and taken to a new land, so shall your souls be lifted up from your bodies and carried away. And your souls shall be borne home, and dwell in peace in the fields of Elysium for all eternity." Roslin ended the reading with the traditional refrain: "These are the words of the Lords of Kobol, and we hold them to be the truth. So say we all." "So say we all," Kara repeated, in chorus with the rest of those assembled. The President returned to her seat, next to Commander Adama in the front row. Kara was in the second row, making her the unofficial head of the pilots' section. At Zak's funeral, she'd been the one to sit next to Adama, and she remembered how, as Zak's coffin had been lowered into the ground, he'd silently taken hold of her hand. Starbuck respected Roslin -- hell, she'd probably even vote for her -- but somehow she didn't think the President was going to hold Adama's hand. And someone, Kara felt, should. Elosha said, "Let us join in offering up our prayers to the gods." She raised her arms, and around the hangar, Starbuck saw heads bow, until she was the only person left whose eyes were still open. Even when Elosha began to lead the prayers, Kara still didn't join in. There was something oddly compelling about being able to watch the scene around her, unobserved. What struck her most was how many people looked genuinely upset. Dualla, sitting in a row that included Gaeta and most of the CIC staff, was crying. It should have been comforting to know she wasn't the only one who was mourning Lee, but Kara didn't feel comforted at all. Instead she felt angry, and it took her a few moments to work out why. There were only two people on the Galactica who had known the real Lee -- his father, and herself. Everyone else was grieving for an imposter, the fake which had tricked them into believing in it, respecting it, even thinking of it as a friend. The man they were mourning was a stranger to all of them, and suddenly Kara wanted to stand up and demand to know what right any of them thought they had to feel sad. The Cylon was responsible for this. It had replaced Lee so effectively and so perfectly that it had even stolen the grief that should have been felt for him. And Kara hated it even more for that. She clenched her hand into a fist in her lap, and bit down on her lip so hard she tasted blood. Once again, she reminded herself forcefully that this would be a really bad place to fall apart. She closed her eyes and lowered her head. "With heavy hearts, we lift up the body of Lee Adama to you, O Lords of Kobol, in the knowledge that you will give him life eternal," Elosha concluded. "So say we all." The reply echoed back in a chorus of several hundred voices, but Kara's wasn't one of them. ***
Baltar smiled genially at the young man as he approached the desk. "Good evening. Th |