Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica belongs to Ronald D. Moore and the Sci-Fi channel.

The Metal of a Man

Chapter 1: Bleak

President Laura Roslin looked down at the black, radioactive dirt at her feet. Then she glanced over at the others that had come down to the surface with her. Cylons and humans alike shared bewildered, disappointed expressions. From their scans as they walked along the shoreline, it was evident that no one had set foot on the planet in roughly two hundred years. She walked over to Kara Thrace, who sat on what at first glance could have been a rock formation, but on closer inspection was the contorted, melted remnant of a building.

The blonde woman glanced over at Laura. "Madame President, this isn't what I saw. I don't know what happened."

Laura placed a hand on her shoulder. "Neither do I. Is there anything vaguely familiar about any of it?"

Kara shook her head, her eyes focusing on her military-issue boots. "I don't know what went wrong."

Sitting down next to her, Laura folded her hands in her lap. "I thought all five of the supposed Final Five Cylons were supposed to lead us here."

"Maybe we've all been tricked and this is what we deserve for it," Kara grumbled. Seeing that further conversation was not going to help, Laura stood and looked for Bill.

Admiral Bill Adama glared at the landscape as if someone to blame for the mess could materialize in front of him at any second. Black, lifeless dirt crunched under his boots. The sky was gray. The mangled ruins around him were gray. The color seemed to permeate the essence of the scenery, as if the soul had departed and all that was left was the empty corpse. They had left death only to return to it under the guise of hope.

Bill looked around to make a quick mental note of where everyone was. The only one he did not need to see was Tigh. The betrayal of his friend had cut him deeply and he did not need to see it to know that the colonel stood a few yards behind him over to his left. Everyone from his son to Baltar seemed to have the same gray cloud over them that he felt.

Then he noticed Laura walking toward him and saw color again. Even though she wore the same dull colored clothing that he did, to him she appeared in color. When she reached him he took her hands in his like she was his lifeline. "Not what we expected, is it?"

She shook her head. "It's not what Kara remembers. What are we going to tell the fleet?"

"I don't know. We need more recon. With any luck, the whole planet might not be this bad," Bill remarked. He removed a vial of the contaminated dirt from his pocket. "Jack gave me three vials. He wanted samples. Too bad the dirt's all the same from what I can see. The other two vials are empty."

As she looked at the mangled ruins, the wheels in her head began to turn. These are old ruins, and what do you need if you have ruins and you're looking for proof of civilization? "There's got to be something salvageable here. Do we have any archaeologists in the fleet?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, but I think I see where you're going with this. We'll check on it when we get back.

She looked up at the cloudy sky, trying to spot the glowing blob of the sun. Suddenly she saw a flash of light that seemed to be all around her. Blinking, she quickly looked back to Bill. "Did you see that?"

He raised an eyebrow. "See what?"

"The flash," she stated, turning her head to see what could have caused it.

"I didn't see anything," he answered.

"It just doesn't make…" she trailed off and stopped walking as a feeling of nausea took hold of her insides. Resting a hand on a gnarled archway, she leaned over and threw up black liquid.

"Laura!" Bill exclaimed, placing a hand on her shoulder. She turned back to him and he handed her the water canteen.

She took a drink to rinse her mouth out. He bent down to scoop up some of the black liquid in one of the empty vials. "We might want to have Cottle analyze this to make sure you're not bleeding internally."

"Figures that we finally land on Earth and the planet is trying to kill me," she remarked dryly as she put the cap back on the canteen. As she took a few steps around the area, her surroundings started to spin. The canteen fell from her hand.

Then the world went black.