THE FINAL FIVE
They had retreated to Colonial One. All of them. They were grateful for the ship's autopilot because a human-built computer full of bugs easily topped a fully functioning skin job like Colonial One's pilot.
He'd died hard.
None of them could believe what had gone down in the last few hours.
--------------------------------
Laura Roslin slumped in her presidential chair. It had stopped being comfortable a couple of hours ago, but it was hers.
Over the top of her glasses, and through a pounding headache, she could see the fuzzy figure on the white board: 41, 400. That was gonna have to be revised, downwards.
Hell of a way downwards, in fact.
Trouble was, to do it she'd have to get up, and she was determined not to vacate it while Gaius Baltar was in the room.
It was a point of honour with her.
Not that, technically, she had much honour left.
Or, she supposed, after the transfusion from the Cybrid, much humanity.
But she chose to have some.
-------------------------------
"But ... but..." whimpered Baltar. "If it had been me ... I would have ..."
"Instead of its greatest monster," said Tom Zarek. He sounded bored. He was bored. Twenty years in prison teaches you to tolerate other men's obsessions. Doesn't mean you learn to enjoy them.
They all knew how Baltar's whine ended up. If only he'd been a Cylon, he'd have been a great hero, instead of humanity's greatest monster.
Three of them were bored by Baltar's whining, and the fourth, Lt Gaeta, was rocking in his chair.
In an earlier life, Zarek would have bet a smoke on when Gaeta would snap and stab Baltar. He had nobody to bet with now - no way was Cottle going to chance giving up one of his few remaining smokes.
Zarek gave it another twelve hours max before that whiteboard would be down to 4.
It wasn't like they represented a viable future for humanity either way.
--------------------------------
There should have been a white light, and five brilliant shapes welcoming him with the music of the gods that he'd heard in the Opera House on Kobol.
When Caprica had loved him, and shown him their child, and he'd sworn ... he'd sworn ... something.
What exactly?
He couldn't remember.
It didn't matter.
What was important? D'Anna hadn't told him. Not outright. She'd died first.
All that time on the basestar, she had to have said something. A clue. He would have. For her to follow. Yes, she'd made promises, but they were all vague. Oracular, even.
Maybe God was testing him.
This was his trial.
Not like those stupid humans thinking they could kill him before he had realised his destiny.
Stupid dead humans.
He couldn't erase those memories. Cordite, hot metal, and shit. Was he crying?
The Cylons had exiled him here with humans who were his enemies. By rights he should have been on the Battlestar. Because if Tigh
was - !
Praying. Surrendering himself to God. That had rescued him, once. Or was he beyond that?
He so wanted to be.
He had to be.
If he had been - he corrected himself. As a Cylon. As a Cylon, I'm a great hero.
--------------------------------
Somewhere in the scriptures there was a story of a man who wanted to become one of the gods. The easy way. Stole their fire. Like that was gonna work.
So here in one cabin was the fag-end of the human race, about to be made extinct by the Cylons, and the one human who wanted to be a Cylon, wasn't.
Some small victories you have to savour. Doc Cottle took a drag on one of the rollups he'd saved from the medical room of the Galactica.
No point in staying there when there were no more humans to treat.
'Course, if he'd been the revealed to be the only human in the fleet, he told himself he could have lost himself in studying Cylon biology. Plenty there for a man with an enquiring mind. The whole resurrection process, for one thing. Was it like cloning, or more like bacteria dividing? What little he'd been able to work out of their physiology, could be either. Or something entirely new.
Ah, who was he kidding.
If they'd killed Laura, or if she'd turned out to be - not human, then he'd have gone for suicide by Cylon.
She was way out of his league, he knew that, but still.
Zeus will strike a traitor down.
These days, Zeus might need a little help.
---------------------------
It wasn't easy calculating the odds. First, another Battlestar had to have survived the invasion. Already it wasn't looking good, Gaeta acknowledged, but the Pegasus proved surviving was at least possible.
Then, he reasoned, that surviving Battlestar had to survive the Cylon sweep of Colonial space. And then Galactica had to have missed it during the two years they'd run. Galactica AND Pegasus, because Cain had never mentioned it, not in his hearing.
Two years running, and countless TFL jumps.
How far behind them was the red line? He couldn't even guesstimate.
Baltar's whining changed pitch, and broke Gaeta's concentration on navigation. He was tired, but used to it, and changed his focus. He acknowledged he should have killed Baltar when he had the chance, but everybody in the room could say the same.
They were on a civilian ship. Unarmed. Ramming the Galactica would have been suicide. He calculated relative mass, closing velocity and target site. Suicide, and also futile, given Galactica's armour and the Cylon Viper squadron.
They had to make a run for it. But Colonial One was nowhere near fully fuelled or provisioned. Maybe they could string the Cylons along until they were resupplied, and then make a break for it. He could easily program the jumps.
Maybe they could string the Cylons along.
Maybe.
---------------------------------
BONUS CUT SCENE
It was hard to swallow that Leoben had been right about Bill Adama being a Cylon, but Laura Roslin choked it down.
A good slug of ambrosia helped.
She swore if she ever found that frakking blanket, she'd destroy it.
"Still can't believe Galen Tyrol was a Cylon," said Zarek. A double agent in deep cover in the Resistance was one thing, but there was no evidence that Tyrol had done anything that benefitted the Cylons strategically. Or the humans, come to that. On the other hand, neither had Tigh. So perhaps they'd both been infiltrated into those positions to prevent somebody effective taking the role. Really, he should have seen that. He shrugged, inwardly, and told himself it was too late to matter now.
Gaeta looked up. Seeing Tigh restored to post in the CIC had taught him to say nothing. He dropped his head back into his hands.
That bloated knuckle-dragger, thought Baltar. A Cylon. It was so unfair. Aloud, he said, "And his wife. His wife. His wife as well."
Cottle considered.
"No." He blew a smoke ring. "Not his wife."
Baltar stared at Cottle. Just a sawbones. He wouldn't understand the science if he had access to it. Baltar challenged him. "How can you be sure?"
Cottle blew a smoke ring. "Because I credit the Cylons with some quality control, son."