DISCLAIMER: Battlestar Galactica is the creation of Glen A. Larson, and the reimagined universe of Battlestar Galactica 2003 is the intellectual property of Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. I do not own the rights to the Battlestar Galactica stories or characters. This is an AU work; no copyright infringement is intended, nor is any profit being made. This author does, however, reserve the rights to characters and plots of his own creation.
NOTES: The now complete first season of The Long Journey Home (last posted on 14 October, 2011) opens by branching off from a scene in the season one episode "Six Degrees of Separation," which was more elaborately treated in "The Plan." However, the story actually deviates from canon 35 years before the holocaust, and will remain largely non-canon until it reaches a distinctly different conclusion at the end of season four. Like the series itself, therefore, this story will unfold by seasons, and it will attempt to honor the series breaks as closely as possible. The chapters that follow in this, the second season, will accordingly take the reader from Kobol to New Caprica. For those who have not yet read it, the first season can be easily accessed via "All" for the rating, and "Number Six" and "William Adama" for the characters.
Reviews in general, and constructive criticism in particular, will always be welcome. I WELCOME REVIEWS IN PORTUGUESE, SPANISH, FRENCH, ITALIAN, LATIN, GERMAN, AND THAI AS WELL AS ENGLISH.
WARNING: Some chapters do have adult content, including violence and sexual situations. Individual warnings will preface each such chapter whenever the content so warrants.
THE LONG JOURNEY HOME
THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON
CHAPTER 1
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Having once sliced the brain out of a Cylon Raider, Kara Thrace considered herself an expert on all matter of things weird. She could handle whatever the universe threw her way, and she was proud of it. So, discovering that her mother was a Cylon had not disturbed her equilibrium. Having a blood-splattered centurion now following her everywhere she went failed to intimidate her. Sharing dinner with a trio of Sixes, all of whom regarded her as their daughter, merely meant that she came from a large family. But nothing quite prepared her for what lay in wait in the hybrid's chamber.
In fairness, Leoben had tried his best. He had described the hybrid in graphic detail, and he had even introduced Starbuck to the world of Cylon projection. The experience had dazzled her. They were standing in one of the baseship's corridors when Leoben offered her his hand. Their fingertips touched, and Starbuck was instantly transported into a verdant forest of tall deciduous trees, the path beneath her feet dappled in sunlight. Leoben had invited her to try and add something of her own to the bucolic scene, and the Cylon had laughed out loud when an especially notorious feature of the Colonial fleet's obstacle training course suddenly blocked the path ahead. Delighted with her new-found ability, Kara had promptly tossed in a babbling brook, complete with a tiny footbridge to carry the path on its way. A doe and her fawn materialized on the bank; they were grazing on the succulent grass, but the sound of Leoben's laughter startled them, and they scampered deeper into the forest. His faith in her fully vindicated, the Two humbly confessed to Kara that, in less than a minute, she had already taken projection well beyond the reach of any Cylon. He was no longer surprised that she had been able to pilot a Raider, and he was frankly eager to see how Starbuck and the hybrid would respond to one another. If anyone could consistently find meaning in the hybrid's typically enigmatic turns of phrase, he was convinced that it would be Kara Thrace.
The two motionless centurions that stood perpetual guard in the hybrid's chamber didn't bother Starbuck. The sarcastic Viper pilot mentally decided to name them Mutt and Jeff, and then she turned her attention elsewhere. The trio of identically dressed Threes who hovered around John and the hybrid next caught her eye. Once she would have found this disconcerting, but over the last few hours she had hugged several dozen blond haired Sixes, each and every one of whom looked like Shelly Godfrey without the glasses. They were all wearing the same severely cut two-piece red suit, which made them seem at once both aloof and alluring. No, what drew Starbuck to the D'Annas was the uniformity of their expressions. She couldn't remember ever seeing a look of such deep contentment on a human face. The Threes made her think of travelers who, after years of living among strangers, had finally found their way back to the familiar and beloved surroundings of home. It fleetingly occurred to Kara that this sense of belonging was the true gift that the two children had brought their parents. On this one ship, Cylons had discovered that there were things in life more important than one's own existence. Kara's thoughts turned yet again to Thalia, and she had to fight to control the tears.
Leoben nudged her gently forward, deeper into the chamber. "That's interesting," he whispered as he pointed in the hybrid's direction. "When we first lowered John into her tank, the hybrid physically connected with him … the same way that we did out in the corridor. But now she's using both hands to support him."
Kara carefully studied the hybrid. Leoben had told her that the construct was female from the waist up, and a bewildering variety of cables, tubes and conduits from the waist down. She understood that the hybrid wasn't simply plugged into the ship but in a very real sense was the ship. But now Kara also instinctively grasped a fundamental point that Leoben had alluded to only in passing: the hybrid was emotionally and psychologically female in the most profound sense of the term. The way in which she was holding John Bierns so protectively close made this immediately apparent.
"What do you think it means?" Kara was initially surprised to find that she was whispering as well, but on reflection she decided that this was not a place for loud voices.
"Natalie says that during the battle she could sense John and the hybrid in the stream, two distinct entities standing side by side. I suspect that they're moving beyond that. In some way that Cylons and humans cannot hope to comprehend, their minds are joining. Kara, this may well be the next step on your evolutionary path … two bodies sharing a kind of corporate mind! The implications are staggering! Wonderful, and staggering!" Leoben was still whispering, but he could barely contain his excitement.
"Do you mean that I … I could?"
"Yes! John is older and more practiced, but with time and training you will catch up to him."
"No! Leoben, stop it! I'm me, okay? I'm Kara Thrace, and Kara Thrace does not want to have somebody else's mind floating around inside her skull. I mean … there's barely enough room in there for me as it is!" Kara was trying to keep it light and funny, but this conversation was taking her into territory that lay well beyond the bounds of acceptable weirdness. What Leoben was suggesting was truly bizarre.
"Kara, you don't know that," Leoben heatedly whispered, "and you won't until you try! Look!" Leoben was gesturing toward the hybrid, whose right hand was reaching out for her. "Go to her, Kara. She's calling for you."
An expectant hush fell over the chamber. Every Cylon on the ship wanted to bear witness to this moment, for they all sensed that they were standing on the verge of something miraculous. Yes, Kara and John were their children, the firstborn of God's new generation, but the Cylons also desperately wanted to believe that in this iteration their children were destined to put an end to the cycles of violence and destruction.
The hybrid's calm and rhythmic cadence was the only sound to disturb the all-consuming silence; her words were meant for Kara Thrace alone.
"The child of Six, expelled from the womb to the womb returns!"
The hybrid was euphoric. She was pillowing the First Born against her shoulder, and now the Second Born was within arm's reach!
"The grains of sand that are home to unbidden dreams command you to cross the thrice discovered country. The child enters the opera house that forever stages the hope that is always and never disappointed. You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their appointed end! End of line."
Hearing this, the assembled Cylons exchanged surprised looks, but the hybrid ignored them all. She waited until Kara was kneeling at her side, and then she reached up to caress her cheek. A tender, welcoming smile graced her lips and warmed her eyes.
Hopelessly out of her depth and not a little frightened, Starbuck nervously extended her hand towards the hybrid's now outstretched fingers. The slightest touch sufficed, and for the second time the world as Kara Thrace knew it vanished in a blaze of light.
. . .
"We're going to get our people off the surface of Kobol." Adama's tone was crisp and matter-of-fact. "Colonel Tigh, make Galactica ready for jump. Lieutenant Gaeta, please authenticate the jump coordinates for the fleet."
Felix Gaeta and Shelly Godfrey briefly conferred, double-checking that the coordinates distributed to the fleet matched Galactica's own. When they were finished, the lieutenant turned back to Adama.
"Coordinates match, sir. We're good to go."
"Very well," Adama responded. "Dee, signal the fleet to jump."
"Yes, sir!"
In the background, Adama could hear the various stations reporting in, the sequence rigid and unvarying from one jump to the next.
Lieutenant Gaeta had moved to the FTL console, his hand poised over the large key that, with one twist, would send the gigantic battlestar on its way.
"… five … four … three … two … one … jump!"
Galactica led the fleet out into deep space, and paused for the twenty-six minutes that Felix Gaeta and Shelly Godfrey required to calculate the next set of jump coordinates. The fleet would remain in the dark, with a Raptor and six Vipers for nursemaids. Galactica's second jump would put her in high orbit over Kobol.
The commander knew that they would find the debris field of the shattered baseship in orbit above the planet, and probably several hundred scattered and confused Raiders as well. What he did not know was whether the search and rescue mission had succeeded or failed. Two hours prior to Boomer and Racetrack setting out on their own high-risk mission, Bill had ordered a pair of Raptors to jump into Kobol's lower atmosphere. Their insertion point was on the opposite side of the planet from the deadly Cylon warship's last reported position, and it would hopefully keep them far beneath the reach of any Cylon DRADIS. If everything had gone according to plan, by now Chinstrap and Swordsman would have piloted their birds around the planet, located and picked up the downed Raptor crew, and then gone into electronic hibernation pending Galactica's arrival on the scene.
"DRADIS contact," Gaeta shouted. "Correction … multiple contacts, multiple bearings and caroms. DRADIS counts 377 individual bogies … confirming Raiders and a scattering of Heavy Raiders, sir!"
Adama and Tigh were both staring at the large DRADIS screen above their heads, trying to visualize the location of the larger clusters of Raiders in surrounding space. Since they had never encountered large numbers of Raiders without a baseship in attendance, they had no idea what to expect. Shelly Godfrey was also intently studying the DRADIS display, and her Cylon mind was quick to see the pattern taking shape.
"Excuse me, Commander, but they've detected us. They're converging to make attack runs along five different approach vectors."
"They're going to attack?" Adama looked across the console at Saul Tigh. "How obliging of them," the commander acerbically remarked.
Tigh grinned wolfishly, and started to snap out orders. "Weapons grid to full power," he shouted. "Gunnery officers stand by to initiate enemy suppression barrage. Captain Kelly, get all of our birds into the tubes!"
"Seventy-two Cylon Raiders incoming," Gaeta announced. "Multiple bearings and caroms!"
Tigh waited until the Raiders were well inside Galactica's kill zone. "Commence enemy suppression fire," he ordered. "All batteries execute!"
Dozens of rail guns began to spit out their deadly ordnance, filling the space around the battlestar with a nearly impenetrable flak screen. It took less than twenty seconds to annihilate half of the first wave of Raiders.
"Perimeter established," the XO reported.
"Launch Vipers," Adama called out, "and squawk the SAR Raptors."
"All Vipers clear to launch," Dee intoned. Without waiting for a response, she shifted to a second scrambled frequency. "Nightingale, nightingale, take flight your wings! Repeat. Take flight your wings!"
"Yee-haw," Flyboy screamed as his Viper exited the launch tube. "Let's get these suckers!"
"Broken formation," Louanne "Kat" Katraine yelled out. With Starbuck AWOL and Apollo in the brig, she had suddenly found herself promoted to CAG. "Don't let them use their targeting computers—and for frak's sake, stay out of Galactica's firing solution! Hey, Flyboy," she added, "you know that we've got a pool going, right? To see who gets the most kills now that Starbuck's off seeing the sights."
"Hey, hey, hey," Flyboy snickered, "we know that I'm gonna clean up!"
"Flyboy, this is Actual. Shut up and focus. This is not a simulation. Now, blast those Cylon bastards to hell!"
"Weapons free," Kat ordered, "and wingmen, stay with your leaders … let's not get sloppy out here!"
In a matter of seconds, the space above Kobol was filled with dueling Raiders and Vipers, the action carrying the adrenaline charged pilots farther and farther away from their battlestar with each successive engagement. And no one noticed the single Heavy Raider that jumped away.
. . .
She was standing on a pearl white strand of beach, which curved gently into the distance before her. A light breeze caressed her face, and the rays of the late afternoon sun warmed her body. Looking off to her left, Kara noted that the beach was fringed with a dense stand of tall palms, while to her right the foaming waters of an unknown ocean gently rolled across the myriad grains of sand, only to retreat slowly back into the sea. At a great distance, she could just make out a chain of islands, tiny dots of green in a vista otherwise dominated by differing shades of blue.
Kara studied the beach ahead of her, and saw three figures farther along the curving shore. A man and woman were seated in the sand, looking out to sea, their arms hugging their upraised knees. A second woman was walking through the surf and steadily drawing closer. Kara took a step toward her—and promptly fell flat on her face.
"What the frak?" The startled pilot screamed out the obscenity, and with difficulty hauled herself to her feet. When she looked up, she saw that the woman had drawn much closer, running across the hard sand at the water's edge. No … not running … bounding? She moved with the natural grace of a predatory cat in full stride across the plains of Leonis, the long mane of chestnut brown hair that reached to the small of her back flying behind her. She slowed as she drew near.
"It takes getting used to!" It was the hybrid, and she was grinning sympathetically at the confused pilot. Then she held out her hand. "Welcome, Kara, I'm Deirdre."
Starbuck was stunned, but somehow she managed to shake the proffered hand. This was the hybrid, all right, but no Cylon had ever seen this creature or even remotely imagined her. She was tall and lithe, with firm, well-rounded breasts that seemed perfectly proportioned for her body. The intelligent blue eyes that held Kara's gaze were joyous and full of life. And the sense of femaleness that Starbuck had glimpsed in the tank was now overpowering. She thought of statues that she had seen in the museums to which she had been dragged in her schooldays. Aphrodite. This is what Aphrodite would look like if one of those statues came to life! To call Deirdre beautiful or even stunning would be an injustice … she was exquisite!
Kara was breathing heavily as she desperately tried to make sense of a universe that no longer made any sense at all. "Can I talk?" "Yeah," she muttered to herself, "I guess I can."
"So … uh, Deirdre … what is this place? Where are we?"
"On Aquaria. Have you heard of Galatea Bay?"
"No," Starbuck admitted. And then her curiosity got the better of her. "Are we really on Aquaria?" Kara's voice had the breathless quality of a small child on the cusp of some great discovery.
Deirdre's smile grew larger. "Well … yes and no," she finally responded. "Look, let's join the others, and I'll explain as we go along…. Oh, yes, just tell yourself to walk. It's easy, Kara, but in this reality you do have to condition your muscles all over again."
Deirdre held out her arm to support Starbuck, but after the pilot had taken a few steps she relaxed her grip. They began to walk slowly along the beach.
"Kara, do you remember the holoband that Daniel Graystone invented? The device that gave admission to the virtual world?"
"We studied them in school, and I actually saw one once in a museum … it's hard to imagine that something so innocuous could have caused so much damage."
"Well, Daniel Graystone made a terrible mistake. He believed that he had invented the virtual universe when in actuality he discovered it!"
"Whoa!" Starbuck stopped dead in her tracks, and reached out to grab the hybrid. "Are you trying to tell me that the virtual world is real … that … that it exists independent of the holoband?"
"Yes, Kara, it's quite real. Try and think of it this way. If you could walk through a mirror, this is what you would find just beyond … a different dimension, but it is no less real than the world on the other side of the glass." Now it was Deirdre's turn to reach out and firmly grasp Starbuck by the arm. "Kara, it's really, really important for you to understand that in this place the rules that govern the world as you know it only apply if you want them to. That's why it all went so wrong before the war. Humans need boundaries, but when they discovered this dimension they threw them all away. For an entire generation of young people, the result was chaos."
Deirdre resumed walking, bidding Kara to keep pace.
"So, is this the world that Leoben was showing me? Cylon projection?"
"Um … think of Cylon projection as a slimmed down version of the real thing … an entry level? They can access Holoband 1.0, let's say, whereas this is Holoband 4.5. The differences are stark."
Kara thought it over quietly for several seconds. "So, is that what Leoben meant when he said that I could do things with projection that he couldn't?"
"Precisely." Deirdre was silently debating how far she should take this, but Kara had impressed her. There's so much of John in her … everything, really, except the self-awareness, and in time that will come as well. I wonder if Hera and Ariadne will be this at ease with who they are.
"Look at me, Kara … really look at me." Deirdre turned to face the pilot head on, and put her hands on her hips. "I have legs. I can walk and run and swim in the sea…. I am a woman in every sense of the word … I can make love. . . ." Deirdre's hands unconsciously drifted towards her stomach while she marveled at the miracle growing inside her. "And I'm pregnant. John and I are going to have a baby … a little girl. And Ariadne will be just as real as Sharon's daughter or any human child. She will need love and support, our guidance … and we will always place her happiness above our own. We'll worry and fret, we'll cope with crises, and we'll pray that in the end it will all turn out okay. We'll be parents, Kara … we'll be a family."
Kara Thrace suddenly found it very hard to draw her next breath. Someone, she vaguely remembered, had once remarked that the universe was not only a wondrous place but that its wonders far exceeded the bounds of human imagination. Indeed. Starbuck couldn't recall having ever been at a loss for words-she was, after all, the acknowledged mistress of the snappy come-back- but she had finally arrived at a place where words simply failed her.
. . .
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. LT, check this out." Chief Galen Tyrol was using his binoculars to study the surrounding forest floor. The survey party, or what was left of it, had taken refuge just inside the tree line. The chief figured that, if there were Cylons about, they would be in the same general vicinity.
"What do you have, Chief?" Lieutenant Alex "Crashdown" Quartararo was mentally reviewing their options. The loss of Socinus and Tarn had left him with three knuckle-draggers plus the Vice-President. He thought that the chief might be able to hold his own in a firefight, but he didn't have much confidence in Diana Seelix, Cally Henderson, and Gaius Baltar. All they were likely to do was run up the butcher's bill.
"Forty-five degrees east of the launcher … you see that tree stump?"
"What the hell is that?" Crashdown had trained his own binoculars on the target, but he couldn't identify it.
"It looks like a DRADIS dish. Or at least the Cylon version of a DRADIS dish. It's probably salvaged from the nose cone of a ship. They're building an anti-aircraft battery."
"Anti-aircraft?" Specialist Cally Henderson didn't see the point. "For what? There aren't any aircraft around here."
Tyrol sighed, his mind already jumping ahead to the bloody scenario that might well unfold at some point in the next thirty minutes. "Galactica's going to send a search and rescue team. When they do, that's at least two Raptors doing a low level pass over the crash site. When those Raptors come looking for us, risking their lives to rescue us …"
"The Cylons will shoot them down." Crashdown completed Galen's thought; they were on the same wave length.
. . .
As Deirdre and Kara drew near, Major John Bierns stood up, and with him a second hybrid. The spook had a big grin painted on his face, and he stepped forward to wrap his arms around the young woman who, for so many years, he had regarded as his baby sister.
"Hi, Kara … and welcome to that one place in the universe that I think of as home." John stepped back, and spread his arms wide to encompass the natural beauty that lay all around them.
"Thanks, Major … it's good to see you again, too. Oh, and congratulations! Deirdre tells me that the two of you are going to have a baby girl. That's … well, that's simply incredible!"
John laughed, and reached out to put his arm around Deirdre's waist. He pulled her close, and she turned into him. They shared a long, deep kiss. It was obvious that they were utterly devoted to one another.
"I'm sorry, Kara," Deirdre apologized. "Please forgive our bad manners. I would like you to meet my sister, Reun. It's her baseship that you currently inhabit."
"Re-un?"
"No," John protested, his voice alive with good humor, "not 'Re-un'. Her name is pronounced 'Ruh-ahn.' The 'u' is very soft."
Bierns' expression turned quizzical. "Starbuck, haven't you read any of the classics? Reun is the name of the tragic heroine in Kanha's Ying khon chua. It's generally considered one of the finest works in Canceron literature. It was even translated into Caprican. Haven't you ever heard of The Prostitute?"
Kara giggled, and started to wave her hands in the air. "I'm sorry, but this is so funny! I mean, think about it. In one dimension I'm holding hands with a creature that's half machine and half woman, and in another I'm talking with a virtual counterpart who's so beautiful that she puts the goddesses to shame. And now you tell me that she shares her name with a tragic character in a Canceron novel about prostitution! Up until today, I would have sworn that no one could come up with this sort of stuff unless they were washing the chamalla down with ambrosia!"
Kara stared unashamedly at Reun. This hybrid was as tall and shapely as her sister, but she had chosen to pile her mass of chestnut hair into an elegant bun that added several inches to her already imposing height. Reun would make any woman in her presence seem ruffled and untidy by comparison. But the expression on her face in this reality was just as warm and welcoming as the greeting with which her other persona had reached out to Starbuck in the hybrid's chamber. Reun stepped forward, and hugged the Second Born close.
Kara hugged her in return. Something inside her was powerfully drawn to these two strange beings. The connection … it felt like family … sisters whom she was meeting for the first time.
"Hey, wait a second!" Starbuck retreated from Reun's embrace. She looked suspiciously at the two hybrids. "If there are two of you, then that means …"
. . .
Two loud booms suddenly exploded in the air over their heads, and Gaius Baltar all but jumped out of his skin.
"What the hell was that?"
"Spacecraft, Doc." Tyrol kept his voice low and steady. Panic was contagious, and it could easily get them all killed. "That's the sound of spacecraft entering the upper atmosphere."
"It's the SAR mission," Crashdown exclaimed, his voice crackling with urgency. "They're here. They're right up there. We've got to go. There's no time for discussion, we carry out the assault on the launcher's control console right now … just like we planned! Everyone up, we've gotta move out. It's game time! We're taking out these toasters before they kill any more of us!"
Crashdown hissed at Cally Henderson. "Cally, I said move! The left flank, Cally … you've got to distract the toasters, or Seelix and I will never have a chance!"
"I can't," Cally wailed. She was petrified with fear, and her legs had turned to rubber.
"What? Specialist," the Lieutenant snarled, "I gave you an order!
"She doesn't have to, LT! We could just go take out the dish." Tyrol sensed panic all around him, and the frakking officer was only making matters worse.
But Crashdown ignored him. "Cally, you have to move. Cally, this is not a joke. Go! This is not a game, Cally. Go! We have people counting on us. They're up there. Cally, you've got to move!"
"LT, listen to me!" The chief could hear desperation creeping into his own voice. "We don't have the firepower for a frontal assault, and getting ourselves killed will not save the Raptors! We still have time to double back and take out the dish!"
Lieutenant Alex Quartararo just plain frakking couldn't believe it. Insubordination in my command? Not now … not ever! "Shut up, Chief! Cally … Specialist … you have your orders. I need you to get over there and create a distraction right frakking now! Move! Move!"
"There were only supposed to be three Cylons," Seelix bitterly remarked; "that's what you told us, LT, and now there are five. How are we supposed to take on five Cylons?"
"Frak this shit! Our people are up there and we have to save them. We don't have time for any of this crap. Cally, move!"
"I can't do it," she blubbered.
"Cally, move!"
"No!"
"Specialist, you're disobeying a direct order, and there won't be any frakking court martial!" Crashdown pulled out his gun and pointed it at the knuckle-dragger. "You're going out there, Cally … you hear me, you're going out there, or I'm going to blow your frakking brains out! Right frakking here, right frakking now!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa … hey … put it down, LT! Put it down!" Galen couldn't believe it. They were so close to the toasters that they could practically spit on them, and the LT was threatening to trigger a suicidal firefight by shooting one his own people!
Crashdown cocked his sidearm. He was staring at the back of Cally's head. "I'm going to count to three."
"This is crazy," Seelix moaned, "this is crazy!"
"One."
The chief took out his own weapon, thumbed the safety, and pointed it at the lieutenant's head. "Put it down … right now." There was ice in Galen Tyrol's voice.
"Oh, my gods!" Diana Seelix wanted to scream, but she couldn't—there were toasters everywhere!
"Listen to me, LT! Drop your weapon!" The chief had made his decision. If someone was going to die here, it would not be Cally Henderson.
"Two." Crashdown was on the verge of tears; the cloistered world of Officer Training School had turned out to be light years removed from the realities that Kobol had thrown up to challenge his leadership skills.
"Three." Alex Quartararo steadied his aim, and mentally ordered himself to squeeze the trigger. He never heard the bullet that snapped his upper spine, the shot fired not by Galen Tyrol or a Cylon centurion but by Doctor Gaius Baltar. Crashdown was dead long before his head came to rest against the branch of a nearby tree.
. . .
"That there are two baseships." Reun quietly conceded the obvious.
"But where …?" Starbuck stopped in mid-sentence as an even more fantastic thought struck her. She looked more closely at Deirdre. "How pregnant … no, uh … how far along is your pregnancy?"
"A little over three and a half months."
Kara tried to add it all up. She hadn't been keeping track of the calendar, but she thought that something like ten weeks had elapsed since the Cylon attacks. And that meant …
Kara whirled on John and looked at him with outright horror. "You knew!" Her voice had sunk to a strangled whisper. "Oh, my gods! You knew! The CSS knew, and didn't do anything to stop it!" Kara thought that she was going to throw up.
"No, Kara, you're wrong. Granted, we couldn't prevent the holocaust, but we did everything in our power to insure the survival of the human race." The spook didn't flinch in the face of Kara's accusation, and his tone was unapologetic.
"Cavil hit us with 214 baseships, and nearly 150,000 Raiders. They had enough nukes to wipe the Colonies out a thousand times over. But the fleet gave a good accounting of themselves, Kara, far better than you or anyone else realizes. We deliberately sacrificed thirty battlestars in the first minutes of the attack, just to convince the Cylons that they had achieved complete surprise. After that, they came strolling in like they were out for a walk in the park … and we hammered them. Cavil lost 197 baseships; factor in Deirdre and Reun's, plus the two that he lost today over Caprica and Kobol, and he's got thirteen capital ships left. Right now, he stretched really thin. He's got five ships chasing the fleet, and another three trying to hunt down a second battlestar…."
"There's another battlestar out there?"
"Yes. We believe that it's the Pegasus … Admiral Cain's command. Anyway, there are two resurrection ships trailing these elements, and Cavil has assigned two more baseships to escort each of them. So unless he wants to activate the old first war basestars, the only thing that he's got in reserve is the lone baseship still in orbit around Caprica, and it's tasked to look after a resurrection ship somewhere in the Cyrannus system. We suspect that he will soon abandon the Colonies in order to free up these ships. . . . He's desperate, Kara. He must have pulled two of the baseships chasing Galactica in order to reinforce the pair we fought over Caprica, and now he has to factor a rebel Cylon baseship into the equation."
"We have a window of opportunity here," Reun added, "but it won't stay open forever. Kara, humans can't build more battlestars, but Cavil can grow more baseships. Never forget that you are dealing with organic technology here. The Ones will have three new baseships by this time next year, and four more the year thereafter. The fleet must make good its escape before Cavil rebuilds his forces."
"Maybe … but then again … maybe not." Starbuck's keen tactical instincts had kicked in, and they were leading her in the opposite direction. "We've all become fixated on Earth. What happens if we all find it? It sounds to me like we have a choice. We fight now, when the Cavils are at their most vulnerable, or we fight later, when they have significantly more baseships to throw at us. When you think about it that way, the choice seems obvious, especially if Pegasus is out there somewhere tying up still more of their assets. We should try and bloody their nose while we have the chance."
"Right now, we may have precious little choice in the matter," John gloomily observed, "because we all seem to be heading for Kobol. Once Natalie has topped off our fuel, and taken everything else of value that the asteroid has to offer, Kobol will become our next objective. Galactica will be somewhere in the neighborhood, and Cavil's forces won't be far behind."
"Fine," Kara said, "the more the merrier. But in the interim, would the three of you care to enlighten me about something a bit more practical than the finer points of Canceron literature? I mean … you know … little things like the existence of a second rebel baseship that no one knows anything about? Or you might try explaining how a senior officer of the Colonial Secret Service actually goes about meeting, falling in love with, and eventually impregnating the hybrid on said baseship—the torrid romance occurring weeks if not months before the attack on the Colonies. There's got to be a real story in there someplace! And while we're at it, is there anything else about this frakking war that I should know?"
Kara paused, studying the three of them. John was busily concentrating on the sand beneath his feet, idly drawing and erasing lines with his right foot. He reminded her of a guilty schoolboy whom the teacher had just caught doing something particularly naughty out on the playground. Deirdre and Reun were exchanging equally miserable looks. Starbuck shook her head; she was just being her usual mouthy self, but it was pretty obvious that she had inadvertently stumbled upon a fairly ugly truth.
"Is there anything about this war that I do know," she asked in a terribly subdued voice, "or is it all a pack of lies and misplaced assumptions?"
It was Deirdre who finally found the courage to respond. She looked the pilot squarely in the eye.
"Kara, you are entitled to answers—to these and a good many other questions. But the knowledge comes at a high price. You cannot reveal anything that you learn here to the others … not to the humans and most assuredly not to the Cylons."
"The second baseship is our most closely guarded secret," John interrupted, "and it must at all costs remain secret. The outcome of the war and the survival of humanity are still very much in doubt, so it is vital that the Cavils remain ignorant of the truth."
John sighed in frustration. In many respects, he knew Kara Thrace far better than she knew herself, and he understood that they were testing her loyalties in ways that were egregiously unfair. Still, it had to be done. Some very tough decisions lay in Starbuck's not too distant future, and she could not be expected to make them without all of the facts to hand.
Kara's agile mind was racing as she tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. She began to think out loud.
"But why is it so critically important to keep the Cavils in the dark? And not just the Cavils," she murmured. "There's also the question of Roslin and Adama. What does the existence of Deirdre's baseship have to do with the survival of humanity?"
Her thoughts surged, and then all at once the pieces began to form a coherent pattern. Once the two questions were posed in tandem, the answer seemed self-evident … almost inescapable, really. But it also defied belief. Kara Thrace stared at Deirdre and John in open-mouthed amazement. They were so much more than lovers. She tried to speak, but for several seconds her voice refused to cooperate. The little, mewing sounds that emerged from her throat stubbornly refused to turn into the questions that she badly wanted to ask.
"How many," she eventually managed, "how many did you save?"
. . .
A hail of bullets began to chew up the ground around them, and ricochet dangerously off the trees. Three of the centurions defending the anti-aircraft battery were steadily advancing on their position.
"Fall back! Fall back!" Galen Tyrol was yelling at Gaius Baltar; Cally and Diana were already in full flight, but the Vice-President seemed rooted to the ground.
"Go! Go! Go! Come on Doc, let's go!"
The chief took off into the woods, running with reckless abandon. He didn't look back; he could no longer afford to worry about Gaius Baltar. He had to take out the Cylon DRADIS before the Raptors locked onto their transponder signal, or the SAR birds would be blown out of the sky.
Baltar remained frozen in place. He couldn't move, but it was horror rather than fear that pinned him to the ground. One death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic. The truism had always struck him as such a sick joke, but now he understood the punch line. He had unwittingly connived at the death of billions and could legitimately be held responsible for the destruction of colonial civilization, but it was all abstract … unreal. There was nothing abstract about the large hole in Crashdown's spine. He had just shot the man in the back … murdered him in cold blood. Long seconds elapsed before Baltar recovered his senses, reached out for the assault rifle lying on the ground just beyond his reach, and then scrambled to his feet. He ran after the chief while madly praying that justice wouldn't take the form of a Cylon bullet cutting him down from behind.
. . .
"What's our ETA?" Rufus "Chinstrap" Ayers had clearly heard the transponder emit its reassuring beep, but he couldn't afford to take his eyes off the view beyond the canopy. They were hugging the ground, winding through a heavily forested valley that twisted and turned within towering cliff walls. One second of inattention might be enough to splatter them all over one of the looming rock faces.
"Five minutes," Hog's Breath yelled in return. The ECO's real name was Jared Dalton, but his shipmates never let him forget that he was just a good ole farm boy from Aerilon.
"Are Swordsman and Ponytail within range?"
"Affirmative! They're at our seven, skirting the top of the cliff." Hog's Breath let out a yelp as another powerful gust of wind caught hold of their Raptor and lifted him off of his seat. "Ain't it just like Luke to be afraid of a little fresh air?"
. . .
The baseship flashed into orbit directly above the tylium processing plant, and Natalie Faust waited anxiously to see whether the preoccupied hybrid would acknowledge her order to launch their Raiders. With fully half of their DRADIS array in ruins, Natalie badly needed eyes in the sky. She couldn't afford to be taken by surprise … she couldn't afford to make mistakes, period. Now that she could no longer afford to access the technology, Natalie could easily take the measure of her lifelong dependence on Cylon resurrection. Its loss crippled her tactical options at every turn, and she suspected that her increasingly acute sense of time passing would at some point begin to take its toll on her judgment and actions. Mortals couldn't be reckless, but prudence came with its own all too transparent costs. The minutes and hours that now slipped away were gone forever; her decisions might buy more time, but postponing death was a far cry from evading it. With careful planning and a fair amount of luck, she might live to an advanced age, but in the end death would assuredly find a way to take her in its cold embrace.
But not today, she vowed … not today. Natalie let out a long sigh of relief when her sister Six reported that the Raiders were away. Better still, her ship was reconfiguring its orbital attitude. The hybrid had turned their FTL's away from the asteroid's surface, and what remained of her DRADIS was positioned both to sweep nearby space and scan the facility's weapons platforms. Natalie knew that she had John to thank for these subtle tactical adjustments. Beneath her fingers, she could still detect their child and the hybrid in the stream, but the gap between them had closed dramatically. The two minds were rapidly becoming one; in a matter of hours the merger would be complete, and a life form unlike any other would be born into the universe. And this miracle would occur on her ship. Natalie badly wanted to take John into her arms, badly wanted to hold this living testament to her own deepest desires, but the enormity of what she was witnessing did not escape her. If God had a plan for His creations, then He had tasked His servant Natalie Faust to play a very specific part in the grand design. She would not fail Him.
"Natalie," the blond-haired Six reported, "the Raiders have established a defensible perimeter around us. Before we dispatch the Heavy Raiders, do you wish to test the asteroid's weapons grid?"
Natalie pondered her options. She hated putting the Raiders in harm's way, but they had to find out whether the Five overseeing the mining operation considered them friend or foe. The baseship had far too few Heavy Raiders to expose any of them needlessly to risk.
"Do it," she replied.
Moments later, a dozen Raiders broke away from the baseship's perimeter defense and lumbered lazily towards the surface of the asteroid. Flying slow, straight and level, they deliberately offered themselves up to the same anti-aircraft batteries that had recently claimed several of Galactica's pilots. This time, however, the guns remained silent.
This could still be a trap, Natalie mused, but if so, it's a good one. She glanced across the control room's long central console, making eye contact with the lone Cylon standing on the other side. "D'Anna," she remarked, "it's time. Let Creusa and the Sharons know that the door appears to be open."
The Three connected with the data stream and sent out the command. Far out on the baseship's lead dorsal arm, a gelatinous membrane peeled back, exposing one of the ship's huge hangar bays to the vacuum of space. A pair of Heavy Raiders quickly exited the ship; two more remained in the bay, a reserve force that could be sent to the aid of either advance party on a moment's notice.
The Sharons were both fully suited against the vacuum. Their assignment was simplicity itself: land at the entrance to the mine, open the hatch, and send an entire squad of free centurions on its way. The machines equally had but one objective— to work their way around the mine and methodically eliminate the telencephalic inhibitors that enslaved their brothers. If the Cavils had not yet caught on to the ploy and taken steps to counter it, this part of the mission would proceed without incident.
A full squad of free centurions also accompanied Creusa to the surface. Natalie had personally selected her long-haired, ash blond sister for the far more problematic job of breaching the control room. Creusa was well acquainted with the copy of Aaron Doral who had been left in charge of the facility, and with the quartet of Sixes and Eights who kept the refinery operating at peak efficiency on a daily basis. This was hardly surprising since she had shared this very baseship with the five of them since the day of her activation. Still, Natalie calculated, loyalties and friendships would inevitably be tested as soon as Creusa began to requisition food, supplies and vital equipment, and matters would undoubtedly come quickly to a head once she started to liberate centurions. In the event of a firefight in the close quarters of the control room, Natalie wanted someone with combat experience to be in charge. Creusa had run humans to ground in the jungles of Scorpia, and she had fought side by side with the very centurions that Natalie now hoped to emancipate. Sixes might enter battle wearing high heels and stylish white raincoats, but they never hesitated to steep themselves in blood. And in Creusa's case, as Natalie well knew from first-hand experience, the only thing more enjoyable than the hunt was the kill.
But the vacuum of space did not lend itself to white raincoats, stylish or otherwise. When Creusa cycled the inner airlock, she was dressed in the same nondescript, black flight suit that every Heavy Raider pilot habitually wore. Unfortunately for Aaron Doral, Creusa hated black. Overseers wore black, and as a mere warrior she was expected blindly to do their bidding as if she was some kind of frakking machine. The hard-bitten Six was notorious within the collective: she never failed to execute her orders, but she greeted every single one of them with an insolent "by your command." Natalie was the only overseer whom Creusa was prepared to tolerate, but then Natalie Faust had earned the accolade "Hero of the Cylon" the old-fashioned way. Natalie had charmed her way into the bed of the admiral in command of Virgon's space defenses, and breaking her lover's neck less than ten minutes before the first bombs fell had left his headquarters suitably paralyzed when it mattered most. Natalie had been among the first to resurrect, which had earned her Creusa's grudging respect. The warrior had no use for anybody who hadn't been killed at least once. Still, Natalie was always smart enough to don a blue or white dress before she went off in search of her top enforcer.
Creusa was already in a foul mood, therefore, when she entered the long and featureless corridor that led to the control room. Five very confused Cylons awaited her, but the only one that mattered was Doral. She looked him up and down with undisguised contempt. Not a hair out of place … freshly shaven … the usual silk tie … razor sharp creases running down both trouser legs … once a fop, always a fop.
"Six, what are you doing here? Why isn't your ship out searching for Adama?"
Creusa didn't even bother to reply. Delicate negotiations were simply not her style. Instead, she pulled out her sidearm, smoothly released the safety, and put a bullet in each of Doral's knees. Then she patiently waited for the outraged Five to stop screaming.
"Are you done, now?"
Creusa glanced briefly over her shoulder. "You know what to do," she said to the free centurion standing closest to her. Then she stepped aside so that the machines could pass.
"We've had a bit of a quarrel with the Ones," Creusa commented to her four astonished sisters, "and earlier today we blew up one of their baseships in a battle over Caprica. The bastards attacked us without warning. It turns out that they've been systematically lying to us for the last thirty-five years or so. We have fully grown hybrid children, two of them in fact, and there's a third on the way. We're going to try and find the humans, and see if we can work something out. Do you want to tag along, or do you prefer to wait here for the Cavils to show up and box you?"
The four females all made the obvious choice, and their cooperation dramatically speeded up the process of stripping the facility bare. Some four hours later, with the last of the fuel, food, and removable equipment transferred to the baseship, Creusa stood over Aaron Doral for the second and last time.
"Five," she sneered, "I wanted to take this opportunity to compliment you. You really have been running a tidy little facility here. Just out of curiosity, where did the extra two hundred centurions come from?" Creusa had reclaimed the three hundred troops that Doral had originally taken from their baseship, but she had been delighted to discover that the asteroid's work force had swollen to more than five hundred. One could never have enough centurions.
"Frak you," the Five grunted.
"Oh, I don't think so, Aaron. Frankly, you were never my type. Give my love to the Ones." And with that Creusa fired a single bullet into the Five's brain. In truth she didn't know whether there was a resurrection ship within range or not. Nor did she particularly care.
. . .
"We started with 66,214 humans, as well as four thousand of the humanoid Cylons. They're equally divided across the Twos, Threes, Sixes, and Eights. We've suffered a few deaths, but there have been enough births to compensate, so our numbers have actually gone up a bit."
"Sixty-six thousand plus!" Kara let out a long whistle. "That's un … frakking … believable! Where? No, John … I mean … how far? Where are they?"
"At any given moment? Right now, roughly ten jumps away. They're ranging ahead of us, but they're much farther out in the dark."
"And the Cavils really don't know or even suspect? How is that possible?" Kara's eyes narrowed as she studied John intently. "What happened to them … you know … I mean, on Deirdre's baseship … not just the Cavils but all their boot lickers … that public relations guy, Doral, and the Simons?"
"We slaughtered them." John paused, obviously searching for words. "No, that's not quite accurate. We unleashed the centurions, and they rounded up all of the Ones, Fours, and Fives and took them to one of the landing bays. Kara, it took a lot of effort to keep the centurions from tearing them limb from limb on the spot; you simply wouldn't believe how much the centurions hate the Ones. But we got them to wait until we could jump the ship out of resurrection range, and then we let them have their revenge. Things got pretty messy, but when it was all over there was no one left to betray our secrets. Deirdre's ship was one of the two sent to nuke Libran, and that became the focal point of our planning for the exodus."
"So, is everyone packed onto the one baseship?"
"No. There are about seventeen thousand people on the baseship, and that includes roughly half of the Cylons. Everyone else …"
John paused for a long moment. "Kara, in time we'll tell you the whole story, but I suspect that it will have little if any impact upon the choices that you must ultimately make. You cannot fight our war without joining us, and I mean that in the most literal sense of the term. Leoben hinted at the truth, but he misstated it. Deirdre, Reun, and I do not constitute a corporate entity. We are still autonomous beings, but there are tangible links between our minds, and once forged these links cannot be dissolved. They are forever. It is this connection that allows the three of us to reach out to one another and come to this place. In contrast, you are here only by virtue of your physical bond with Reun. Release her hand, and you will instantly be expelled from this dimension. You can come here of your own accord, and I will teach you how to do so. I'll teach you how to create a space of your own if this one is not to your liking. But you'll be alone, Kara. You can only join us at the cost of what you seem to consider an intolerable invasion of your privacy!"
The First Born sighed, his voice filled with regret. "Kara, I just wish that you could experience life as we do for a few seconds. That's all it would take to overcome your fears. Deirdre and Reun both live in my mind as I live in theirs. So I'm never lonely, although I can be alone if I choose to be. I can reach out at any time to find them, and in return they can always find me. The warrior in you should appreciate the advantages this gives us if …"
"I'm not ready for this," Starbuck blurted out. "I'm sorry, Major, but it's too much, too soon. You have to give me time. Gods, John, when I last went to bed I thought I was human! My life has been turned upside down, and I need time to digest everything that's happened."
John Bierns nodded his head in understanding. "You're right. I want this for you so badly that I'm pushing way too hard. I'm sorry. . . ."
An intriguing idea suddenly popped into the major's head.
"Kara, would you like to see your mother? I can pass you my memories … they're really just a series of individual images stacked one on top of the other, but they're quite vivid. I can take you all the way from the moment you were conceived until shortly after your birth, when …"
"When what?"
"When she died." John's expression was haunted; this was old pain.
"Some things at the end … perhaps I should filter the images for you …"
"No!" A very determined look crossed Starbuck's face. "No," she said again, more softly. "Show me everything. Please … don't leave anything out."
. . .
Natalie entered the chamber, and quietly walked up to stand at Leoben's side. The Two had not moved in hours, nor had his attention ever wandered from Kara's face. He had registered every subtle shift in her expression, had cataloged the wide range of emotions that he thought she was experiencing.
"Brother," Natalie whispered, "have you entered the stream since their joining?"
"No." Leoben's gaze remained fixed on Kara's face.
"You should. It's so beautiful. John and the hybrid … their minds … it's so beautiful. And Kara. Leoben, we can all sense her in the stream. Her presence … it's so bright, so intense … it's like watching a star being born. When I touch her I feel like … like I'm being reborn. It's as if nothing that came before really matters. She's the Guide, I'm sure of it. And she's going to lead us home. It's God's will."
. . .
Kara did not even know that she was crying, but her tears fell softly into the hybrid's tank. The images filled her mind, the mother whom she had never known close enough to touch and yet forever beyond her reach. She understood the hybrid now. The hope that is always and never disappointed. The words were so very, very bittersweet. She watched herself being born, being nursed; her mother, always so beautiful, now glowing from some inner light. And she heard Cavil's taunts, the cruel mockery; she saw the muzzle flash, felt the brief but searing moment of incredible pain as the bullet tore into her mother's brain.
Kara was sobbing uncontrollably; she did not even feel the gentle fingers of the Six kneeling at her side and stroking her shoulders, the angelic face etched with sympathy and concern.
The hybrid gently lowered Kara's hand to the deck, and let it go. Kara's mind was instantly transported back into the hybrid's chamber, but the depth of her anguish was so great that for a time she was oblivious to her surroundings. She buried her head against the Six's chest; she was crying and screaming, forcing the words out.
"She's out there! My mother … our mothers … he boxed them!"
Kara was blindly pounding on the Six's back with her fists, shrieking at the top of her lungs. She did not see the looks that passed between the Threes and Sixes in the chamber. Natalie's face went rigid, and there was nothing but death in her eyes. Ten words, just ten … but they were enough to transform the nascent Cylon civil war into a full-blown struggle to the death. There would be no quarter, and no forgiveness.
"I'm going to find her," Kara shrieked. "I swear by all that's holy, I'll never stop looking, never give up! Never!"
Kara began to spasm, her body wracked by sobs that threatened to tear her apart. The Six held her tight, tried to gentle her as best she could. It took a long time.
"The hybrid's name is Reun," Kara sniffled. She had finally regained sufficient self-control to look around the chamber and see their faces. "She's beautiful and kind and wise … and she loves you in ways that words cannot convey. She's so much more than a machine … so much more. You should love her in return."
Kara's eyes settled on Leoben. Surely, she thought, Leoben will understand.
"She's my sister."