Disclaimer: I do not own BSG, nor am I making any profit from this here yarn about them. They are just taken, shaken and then returned (mostly) unmolested to their former places in the universe.
Hi folks!!
I'm new to the whole BSG fandom though I have been following the show since its first season and am now healthily addicted, I hesitate to say this, but I think it's better written than House MD (which my other readers will lynch me for if they find out I said it, so sshh).
This is firmly a Rodama fic so if you don't like, don't read. It's part of a series that will have many, many parts (I may be lying, I haven't planned that far ahead). It's an odd fic that goes AU pretty damn quickly, though I try to keep it in tone with the show.
This is just the first part, it's only five chapters long and I hope you read all of them.
I don't do flames, but if you want to be constructive and/or nice then by all means, click the green bar at the bottom. Other than that, I will return the favour, kick you in the balls, skoosh you over with kerosene and set your ass alight.
Enough nattering from me, on with the show!!
Chapter 1: This Has All Happened Before…
First Cylon War, Tarteran Nebula, Battlestar Cerberus, Then
"Frak!"
Doctor Dana Colton swore violently as she was thrown to the deck of the Cerberus with a clatter. The bulkheads creaked around her and the entire Battlestar heaved and groaned like a harpooned whale. The impacts of the Cylon shells on the hull plating exploded with muted thumps all along the length of the ship and Dana was hauled to her feet again by the two crewmen that had far sturdier space-legs than she did. A haze of red clouded one eye and Colton realised that she must have split the skin at her brow when she had fallen to the floor that last time. She swept it away with one slim wrist and struggled back to her feet with the help from her security detail. Sparks flew from the wall, blown conduits. She could hear the hiss of some gaseous substance leaking from somewhere, red/amber lights flashed insistently and emergency crews scrambled to save their dying ship.
"Come on." The soldier, Colton couldn't remember his name, threw open the hatch and tossed her inside. Colton staggered on the main hanger deck and collided with a yellow overall clad ground-crewman. The man bounced off her with barely a glance in her direction, hitching the hose at his shoulder a little higher and clomping off determinedly on his previous heading. The fuel hose snaked out behind him with a reeling zap and Colton staggered over it rather than become snagged in its coils.
Soldier hands gripped her again and frog-marched her over the seething floor of the flight deck. Colton didn't know how, but somehow they got her through it until he was standing under the wing of…oh Gods, no…
They began to strip her. Right there, in the middle of the horrific chaos of the deck in the middle of a Cylon incursion.
"Please, boys," she tried to laugh it off and snatched her glasses back when someone tried to take them from her. "Dinner first."
They ripped away her white lab coat, her rumpled shirt and pants until she stood there in her underwear and then forced her numb limbs into the silver flight suit that all the pilots anxiously waiting for Vipers or the older Cobra Model Flyers wore as well. The thick helmet seal collar was the last to go on and the bulbous shell of the helmet itself was thrust into her hands.
Then she heard him.
"No frakking way, Admiral!"
Colton turned, with no small amount of dread, and found the two most respected and feared figures in the entire military fleet of the twelve colonies. Alicia and Edric Adama, Admiral of the Caprican Fleet and CAG of the Cerberus respectively.
Edric stood towering over his twin sister, helmet clasped in one hand and the flight suit straining across his broad chest as he jabbed a gloved finger at the tiny navy suited regalia of his sister's petite form. For twins, they couldn't have been more different. Edric was tall, ranging and feral while his sister, the older by a full three minutes, was tiny, compact and had a steel will of icy control that never slipped. The Admiral was accustomed to issuing orders and having them followed to the letter, she followed protocol and got the job done by the book. Her brother, literally at times, flew by the seat of his pants and garnered respect by the steely glint in his scarred eye or on the end of his Cylon inspired left fist.
"You are protecting an important asset to the cause of humanity. Even you can leave a dog-fight if it means a chance to win this war once and for all." The Admiral stepped up, probably the only person in the fleet able or willing to, and went toe-to-toe with Edric without flinching.
"The HELL I will!" The helmet was sent reeling in an arc to emphasise his point. "I've got the best damn flyer you've ever seen and you want me to take it and run AWAY?!"
"Yes!" Alicia took one step forward, stepping into her brother's shadow, practically nose to chest with him but her eyes never leaving his. "She's the best damn hope we have of winning this war once and for all, Godsdamnit, I will NOT have you jeopardise that due to your stubborn pride!"
"It's not pride that keeps me here!" Edric loomed over his sister but a vein of tenderness threaded his voice. "You're the only damn family I've got, don't send me away to…"
The Admiral's eyes softened, the first time Colton had ever witness that happening. She unhooked her hand from behind her back and touched her brother's wrist with a light hold.
"You're going to Caprica, you're dropping her off and then you're turning right back around to get your ass in gear and scrap some Cylon metal. You understand me?" Her tone was just as steely as it had been a moment before but there was a husked note of farewell in it. She must genuinely believe, or possibly know, that the Cerberus wasn't coming back from this one. Now that she was aware of the situation, Colton could hear it. In the engines, see it in the strain on the crew's faces. Feel it in the tremble of the deck beneath him.
They were all going to die here. On the border between humanity and Cylon. On the line they had drawn in the metaphorical sand and taken an oath to hold no matter the cost.
"You're my best." The Admiral's reply was almost drowned out by another Viper whooshing off-deck. "My best pilot and my best fighter. We need you to get her out. I need you to get her out. You may be the only one who can. You and that frakked up flyer of yours." She wasn't smiling, not in her mouth, but definitely in her eyes. Then she sobered just as quickly and took a half step away from him.
"Now go, Major. That's an order."
He held her eyes for a long moment, nodded once and slowly saluted her. The only person he had ever saluted. He turned away and faced Colton looking at her like she was stabbing him in the heart.
"Get her into Betty. Like I would in the cockpit. We're gonna have to get pretty up close 'n' personal in there, Doc. Hope you're not claustrophobic." He then started snapping orders left and right, slipping readily into the façade of CAG while his superior officer stood behind him, solid on the bucking deck. Legs akimbo and hands draped behind her back. Faintly lined face stoic and giving away nothing.
Betty was linked up to the hauling trollies and wheeled out into the decompression bay. She was too big for the traditional launching chutes of the Cobras or Vipers and since she was the only one of her kind, there had been no modifications made to the Battlestar to accommodate her. She was, quite frankly, the oddest fighter that anyone had ever seen. Everyone had said so and she had either come from the mind of a genius or a madman. There was often heated debate on which Edric was or if it was possible he could very well be both and everyone knew that Colton was both. They had designed the flyer together.
Betty sat crouched on all fours. Two long wings, painted with feathers, acting as 'arms' supporting the weight of the cockpit that was slung under the heavy body of the craft. The tail was split into two and gave the vague appearance of legs. The canopy of the craft was settled between the two fore-wings like a face and two gyro-scopic cannons hung down on either side like arms. In her landed position, Betty was clumsy, ugly and odd looking, but once she was out. Once she was in the black and stretched out into her full extension, she was long, lean and sleek.
Yes, when she flew, there was something of the angelic about her…but Colton had to remind herself, looking at the fierce countenance of Betty's pilot, that angels were no more human than the demons they fought. It was something worth remembering perhaps.
Betty's crew, a specialised unit, got the fighter ready for what could be her last flight. They ran flight checks once, twice, three times and then motioned Colton forward as the cockpit hatch detached from the body with a hiss and swung down to hang open, revealing the innards of Betty's chest.
It was very much a one person craft. Betty's innards were…the wrong way round for a typical fighter, but then, everything about her was. For a start, the pilot climbed in from below and straddled an odd kind of saddle that was the sole comfort inside the cramped fighter. The pilot would then lean forward and up, stretched out in a spread-eagled fashion and slid their feet into the stirrup controls and their hands into the gauntlets. The thing that made Betty so unique amongst fighters was how she moved. Not just in the regular way that a fighter moved with a combustion engine, but with the articulation of a robotic body. She could move her 'limbs' independently of one another and to great effect in a fight.
Colton was ushered up and into the cockpit, straddling it awkwardly so that she was arranged around the controls. Edric would have to get in behind her and still be able to operate the fighter. It would be a tight fit, but they would manage. Especially if they used the FTL drive to get the frak out of dodge and back to Caprica. Colton patted down the documents and data sticks that had been shoved down the front and back of her flight suit for her and double assured herself that they were all still there. Her research. Perhaps the key to ending this whole frakking war once and for all.
"Alright, kids, chairs and tray tables in their upright and secure positions." Edric was suddenly at her side, leaning into the cockpit and adjusting her in minute but no doubt important ways. Helping her on with her helmet and securing it tightly for her.
"The main attack seems to be focused on our port side so you should duck down and under, fly straight for the heart of the nebula and spool out just before the sharks get you." Colton was surprised to see the Admiral's dexterous hands join Edric's gloved ones on the straps holding the doctor in place.
"Yes, sir."
"Remember, Major, get her back to Caprica safe and sound…"
"Then I'm turning right around and coming back here to save your sorry ass." Edric spoke without looking up. "Sir." He added as an after thought and swung up and onto the saddle behind Colton.
Colton turned away when it became obvious to him that he should not be privy to the look passing between the Admiral and his CAG. Colton glanced up and caught their reflections in the glass canopy of Betty's face.
"Frak it." The Admiral murmured and yanked suddenly on Fallon's collar. He was jerked to the side and down to his admiral, her slim arms crushed around his neck and grabbed him close in a desperate hug. For a moment, Edric was evidently stunned, but then his free hand gripped the Admiral back around her slim shoulders in a bone creaking embrace before pressing a kiss to her forehead.
Then they broke apart, their eyes shining.
"Now go." She ordered them and finally drew away.
"See you on the other side, Admiral." Edric's whispered words became oddly internalised and then echoing once he reached up and clipped his helmet on with a hiss of pressurisation.
Everything that happened after that occurred much too quickly for Colton to properly follow. The saddle rose up and slid forward at an angle into the cockpit so that they were tilted forward as if astride one of the more dangerous motorcycle models back on Caprica. Edric babbled through their comlink to the CIC requesting flight deck clearance to fly. The doors leading back to the main deck clamped shut, the bay depressurised and the bulkhead doors slid apart to reveal Cylon strewn space in front of them. Vipers, Cobras and Cylon Raiders chased each other like sharks swimming through a black ocean. Betty's one of a kind engine roared to life with a fierce bellow. The vibrations kicked through the craft hard enough to rattle Colton's teeth and she gripped the sides of the console in front of her in some vain attempt at feeling safe.
"It's alright, Doctor. You're with an angel now. She'll keep you safe." Edric directed to her even as Betty's engine's throttled up and the craft tilted forward, slicing through the vacuum and out into space proper.
Colton sucked in a breath. She HATED space flight. The irony that her lab had to be on a Battlestar to keep it mobile and better hidden was not lost on her, but working in a windowless Battlestar was a lot different to flitting about in a Raptor or a custom fighter like Betty. She banked sharply, ducking down and swinging under the vast underbelly of the Cerberus. Colton's stomach twisted and she groaned when the wheeling stars did nothing to settle her rioting stomach. They were upside down when the burning plains of the Tarteran nebula loomed into view. Colton felt her every muscle twitch and clench in a nearly uncontrollable urge to be places elsewhere. She had seen what lurked in that gaseous field of space and had no desire to venture any closer. She had felt it madness to hide in the nebula's shadow in the first place and now she felt her belief had been confirmed when the Cylon ships had jumped out of frakking nowhere and pinned them to it like a Caprican King Butterfly to a card.
"Hold on, Doc, you really don't want to be sick in that helmet."
"Why thank you, Major. That would never have occurred to me." Colton snapped and she could feel Edric smirking at her even if she could not turn to see it.
Edric shifted, his flight suit sliding along hers as he stretched out his arms and legs to their full extension. There was a gentle whirring sound as Betty mimicked his movements until she was leaning out to her full stretch. Wings pointing out in front of her, arm cannons hanging ready and lissom under her and her legs tucked back ready to twist in the aid of turning with the rocket jets affixed to them. Colton had to admit that the design, while bordering on insane, was incredibly effective. Not even the sentient Cylon Raiders could twist and turn like Betty could barrel through the air.
The explosion came out of nowhere.
Colton knew, in some small rational part of her brain that wasn't consumed with screaming in terror, that the shot had probably been a lucky one and could have come from either Viper or Raider. Betty's hide was as slick and black as it was durable. She reflected the stars she swam through and was damn near impossible to pick up on either DRADIS or by physically looking.
The engines whined, Edric swore -fluently and at length- and Betty was sent into a crazy tail-spin that Colton knew meant bad things for the unfortunate pilots caught inside.
"Guidance is offline. FTL nota good plan."Betty herself spoke for the first time within hearing of someone other than Edric.
"We've got to, Betty." Edric gritted through his teeth. "You remember where Caprica is. You know what's at stake."
"I could kill you both."
"We'll die if we stay. You're our best chance."
"You're aware that you're talking to a machine, right?!" Colton twisted to stare at him, the stars spun around outside the window and nausea rolled up in her throat. She shut her eyes and gripped harder on whatever it was she was holding onto, which turned out to be Edric's muscle bunched arms.
"And I'll say to you what your father said to me when he rolled the first one of those frakking toasters off the production line; 'we're all of us machines'." Edric grunted and tried to wrestle control of Betty again. The plume of a rocket swung into their spinning line of sight and Colton's heart crawled up into her throat and threatened to suffocate her in panic.
"Betty!" Edric yelled.
"I see it." Betty seemed oddly calm about the whole impending doom thing.
"Jump us, now!"
"You could die."
"We definitely will if we stay. JUMP US!"
"Blind?"
"NOW, BETTY!" Edric roared through the com and the booming whine of an FTL spooling up reverberated through the craft. The rocket zoomed towards them. Colton pushed back and thumped against Edric's chest in a vain attempt to get away from its onward rush towards them. Her hand pressed up against the glass and the FTL drive chose that moment to kick in.
Colton watched as her hand seemed to stretch into the distance and the stars bulged in through the canopy towards her. The entire universe ballooned outwards and crushed in all at the same time. The black void of space became white and the stars spatterings of ink. Everything exploded in a second Big Bang and it occurred to Colton that she was about to die without ever fixing what her father had done.
$inister $cribe
Battlestar Galactica, Uncharted Territories, Now
"And you think that this legendary ship, the ah," Here the President flipped open the folder that the Admiral had given her and scanned it until she found the right piece of information. "The Betty, is in Galactica's main hangar right now?" She couldn't resist a small smile. William Adama had just recounted to her the mythic tale of a brave young pilot who had risked everything to bring the last hope of winning the Cylon war (the first one that was) with him back to Caprica despite the crippled state of his unique flyer.
"I'm saying it's a possibility, Madame President." A smile lit his eyes and she was glad to see it. These past few days had been hard on them and it was good to see anybody smile. Monumental to see the President or the Admiral of the Fleet doing it. However, there they both were, moving along the corridors of Galactica, chatting compatibly and their respective entourages trailing behind them at a respectable distance. "A blind jump could have taken them anywhere in the universe. Carbon-dating confirms the flyer's age. Damage to the port wing is consistent with the last black box reports that the Cerberus received before Major Adama and Doctor Colton could bug out…it's interesting." He defended himself against her secret indulgent smile. The one that did nearly as much for him as those frak-me eyes that she sometimes wore.
Thoughts front and centre, he ordered himself and managed to scramble himself back into a vaguely professional frame of mind.
"Uh-huh." She was teasing him. They both knew it. He felt compelled to explain.
"It's an old family story. My grandmother was very close to her brother despite them being so different. She spoke often of him towards the end of her life. She always wondered what had happened to him."
"And you can't resist the urge to find out." She was out and out grinning now as they rounded the bend towards the hatch leading into the pressurised hangar where the possible Betty had been stored. A team of technicians were standing by ready to open the cockpit upon the arrival of the President and the Admiral and it was all Adama could do to contain his excitement.
"I never pictured you for a romantic."
Adama shot her a look that informed her she was flirting with danger there. Or just plain flirting. He wasn't exactly sure where the line stopped them these days. They stepped through the hatch together, laughing gently at one another and then, together, fell silent when the shadow of the behemoth Betty fell over them.
"Good Gods…" Roslin took a step back and reached up to remove her glasses. She stared at the flyer from bow to stern and swallowed hard. "That's…"
"Interesting, isn't it?" Adama finished for her and she turned on him with narrowed eyes.
"You've already been down here." It was not a question but he nodded anyway.
"Then I heard you had a scheduled visit anyway and thought your curiosity could be roused."
Had she imagined the gleam in his dark eyes when he had said that? Surely not? Surely Adama wasn't so openly…flirting with her?
They had arrived just in time to see the techs throwing their backs into opening the hatch to the cockpit. It was dirty work. The once gleaming hull of the flyer was corroded and battered with age. Scorch and blaster marks scored the beaten shell. With a sudden decompress hiss, the cockpit disengaged and swung down from the main body of the flyer.
Laura gave a very un-Presidential squeak of alarm and scooted backwards several steps when a rush of some kind of viscous liquid splashed down out of the canopy and splattered across the floor. Adama stepped between her and it, stretching his arm out across her body as if to shield her. When they both realised how simultaneously ridiculous they both looked, they stepped apart with mutual clearing of throats.
Laura wasn't certain but she was pretty sure she had just heard one of Adama's security detail snigger. She gave the man in question her uninhibited 'I have an airlock and I'm not afraid to use it' glare and he coughed before avoiding her gaze further.
Damn straight. You didn't get to be President of the Twelve Colonies without perfecting that look.
The techs jumped forward in time to catch the two bodies that slumped down and out of the gloop in their baggy antiquated flight suits. The tech that caught the first body grunted in surprise and crashed to one knee.
"Frak, they're heavy!" He grunted hard and then flopped clumsily, the body weighing him down…which made no real sense since he was built like a bull in comparison to the slight remains in evidence in the flight suit. "Hey, hey, look at her face." The tech breathed out when he hefted the body onto the waiting gurney. "She's…" He trailed off as if suddenly remembering the company he was keeping and stepped back from the gurney.
Roslin (who would never admit that the Admiral had so easily ensnared her curiosity) stepped around the slick puddles on the floor and picked her way to the gurney's side. She leant over the reclining body and blinked in surprise.
So this was Doctor Dana Colton. Laura had a gift for absorbing vast amounts of information in a very short time and so had been able to read the lengthy but mostly classified military docket that Colton had built up over her forty year career in the Military Scientific Intelligence Branch on the way down here, but nowhere in that cut and dried file had it said she was so young.
Impossibly young.
Impossibly because her file had said that she was sixty-six years old when she had gone on Betty's final flight, but this woman was…thirty five at the very most. Which made absolutely no sense. Unless she was… not Dana Colton and was instead…a Cylon. Which made everything neat and tidy except for the glaring fact that she matched her sixty year old ID picture in her file perfectly.
Either way, she was quite striking. Pale skin, a smattering of pale freckles over her nose that was slightly too big for her face and lean high cheekbones with a sharp jaw line gave her an almost hawkish appearance if not for her thickly lashed eyes and full mouth that would no doubt soften her features if she had been alive and conscious. She still wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses perched on her nose after all those decades in space and dark brown, almost black hair hung feathery and long about her face like she had cut it if and when she had needed to rather than had it styled. Roslin was reminded strongly of a tale her mother had told her as a child about a princess entombed in a glass coffin, Laura nearly rolled her eyes at herself. Doctor Colton didn't look exactly like the princess type. Well, that was what Chamalla extract did to one after the second or third cup of the day. See? Her memory was going, what had she been thinking about?
Ah yes, the improbable health of the corpse in the flight suit on the gurney.
"She's perfectly preserved." Adama noted in her ear and Roslin swallowed down another un-Presidential squeak. She hadn't realised he was standing so close. She had been too busy pondering that same oddity herself.
"Suits are vacuum sealed aren't they?"
"Hmm…still, you'd expect some desiccation."
"I wouldn't know. Don't spend a lot of time around dead bodies."
Adama just gave her a small glare and she smirked at him, which felt decidedly odd while standing over a body so she backed off a little.
"Take them up to Doc Cottle? He'll be able to better identify them." She asked Adama and he nodded still standing over Colton's body.
"Strange, I expected her to be…"
"Taller?" Roslin demanded dryly.
"Older. I was going to say 'older'." The Admiral quickly put in his defence.
"Do you think autopsies will be necessary?" Roslin folded her arms over her chest and decided that she couldn't be jealous of the way Bill was paying so much attention to a corpse because 1) It was a corpse and that was just weird. 2) Little to no competition to be had from dead bodies and 3) She had no real claim over Bill Adama because of those frakking 'responsibilities'…though she'd airlock anyone of the female persuasion who had the temerity to suggest otherwise.
"If only to discern that they really are human, then yes." Adama agreed calmly.
Of course, calm went out the launch tubes faster than a Raptor emergency launch when the other dead body jumped up off the gurney, unsheathed the knife on his thigh holster and pressed it to the President's neck with a chilling skill. His helmet hit the floor with a clang and his mismatched scarred eyes glared at the occupants of the hanger.
"You might want to rethink that autopsy suggestion, darlin'. I'm not quite dead yet." Edric Adama's voice sounded like it had come from the dead as it rasped throughout the hangar and everyone stilled.
"Well," Roslin muttered. "Frak me."