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A New Angel, a New Fate

This whole situation might be completely outside his experience, but the Doctor had to admit that he was rather enthusiastic about that; after so long worrying about keeping Compassion safe and dealing with immediate threats that he had to sort on short notice before anyone else took action, it was refreshing to be faced with a few intriguing questions that wouldn't mean life or death if he didn't answer them immediately.

While he had no real idea what humans were doing this far out in space this far back in the past, he had to admit that the whole situation was rather intriguing. From what he'd seen of their 'Battlestar' as he and his companions were taken up from the planet, their ship was fairly basic compared to some of the technology he had encountered in his past lives, but the sheer scale of it was still impressive despite its battered physical condition. The assembled ships around the Battlestar raised some interesting questions about what was going on here- none of this group struck him as a 'qualified' exploration fleet by any definition- but he had to focus on the main issue right now, which lay in working out where they were and what he could do to keep Fitz safe (Compassion's safety went without saying).

As the small ship they were travelling in landed in one of the 'docking bays' protruding from the side of the main ship, it was lowered into another part of the ship, the three marines waiting for a moment until something beeped and the ship's doors opened. The Doctor only had a moment to speculate that this ship didn't have forcefield technology and must rely on simple hatches to keep pressure contained before he and his companions were forced out of the ship and led towards the medical bay. Fitz looked anxiously around himself as they walked through the ship, but Compassion continued to look around with her usual nonchalance as the Doctor simply kept silent track of the route they were following into the ship. He might only need to enter Compassion to retreat, but old habits died hard, and he'd prefer not to simply dematerialise and run off until he was more aware of the situation and if there was anything he could do to help.

Once he reached the medical bay, he was pleased to find three people waiting for him with a manner that suggested some degree of authority. The old man with white hair in a white coat was probably the local doctor, but the one-eyed bald man had a definite commanding presence, and something about the other man with thick greying hair and a weathered face reminded him of Alistair before he was rejuvenated at Cheldon Bonniface.

"Ah, hello," he said, smiling politely at the three men as Compassion and Fitz were marched in to stand alongside him. "I'm the Doctor, and these are Fitz and Compassion; who are you?"

"'Who are you'?" the one-eyed man said, looking at the Doctor incredulously. "You actually think we'd buy that?"

"Buy what?" Fitz asked, looking at the speaker in confusion. "Who do you think we-?"

"Cut the ignorant act, you fracking toaster!" the man said, walking towards Fitz with a firm glare before the other man in blue placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Colonel," the other man said, his tone firm as he looked at his colleague. "I appreciate your concern, but I think if this was a bluff, the Cylons would try something less obvious if they wanted to trick us?"

After a moment's silence, the one-eyed man sighed grimly as he stepped back.

"Good point…" he said, his tone exasperated as he looked at the three travellers. "Still doesn't explain what they're doing here, though…"

"Oh, we're just travellers passing through," the Doctor explained, smiling politely at the three men. "As I said, I'm the Doctor, and these are my friends, Fitz and Compassion."

"Travellers," the man said (Based on his solemn manner, the Doctor had tentatively identified him as the leader among these three). "From where?"

"Well…" the Doctor said, looking uncertainly between his friends and the three men before he came to a decision. "That's… actually a fairly long story; it might be more appropriate if you… ran a couple of checks to support what I'm going to tell you?"

"A couple of checks?" the old doctor repeated.

"I assume that you have some kind of medical scanner or something that can give you some idea of our internal anatomy?" the Doctor explained, shrugging casually as he turned to look at the doctor. "Please, feel free to run whatever tests you like- beyond cutting us open, obviously- and then I will be happy to answer any questions you have."

It was a risky offer to make, but right now, when he didn't know what he and his companions were being accused of and what kind of situation they'd dropped into, he felt that it was the best way to make his point right now.


Sitting in the main waiting area of the infirmary, Admiral William Adama wondered what it said about him if he was actually considering the idea in his mind.

He had no idea who this 'Doctor' or the other two people with him were or where they had come from, but something about him just…

Despite the questions raised by his presence, something about the Doctor made Adama want to trust him.

It was a strange thing to think, but he just couldn't see the Doctor as some kind of Cylon plant. Lieutenant Agathon might have confirmed that there were still five Cylon models even the seven known models didn't know about for some reason, but as he'd already noted, the Cylons weren't stupid enough to try and plant three new models in the fleet in such an obvious manner. They'd only just discovered the Temple of Five, there was nothing to suggest that the Cylons were here already, and the admiral personally wasn't even sure that the Temple would be that useful to them to begin with; why would the Cylons do something this stupid to try and 'distract' them from analysing it?

"What are you thinking?"

Looking up, Adama smiled slightly as he saw Tigh staring at him, his old friend's expression as intense as ever despite his missing eye.

"How little sense this all makes," Adama answered, his tone solemn as he stood up. "We find the Temple of Five, and then we find three strangers this far from the Colonies after this long? Even if some other ship from home managed to find this planet by chance, there's no frakking way a three-man crew could have made it this far…"

"Don't know about how they got here, but I can answer one thing right now," Cottle said, walking into the waiting room with an expression on his face that actually seemed to be the closest thing Adama had ever seen to shock on his doctor's face. "They're not human."

"So they are Cylon?" Tigh asked.

"Not unless they really screwed up the production line somewhere," Cottle said grimly. "Like that 'Doctor' fellow suggested, I put all three of them through an MRI scan after making sure they didn't have anything in them that might have been 'tripped' by the magnets in the equipment. That Fitz fellow seems straightforward enough, but the scan can't seem to pick up anything about the woman's insides no matter how I configure it, and as for the man…"

Shaking his head, the doctor reached into his coat and pulled out a rolled-up 'print-out' from the machine before handing it over to the admiral. "Well, look at this."

Unrolling the offered image, it didn't take the admiral long to see what had caused the other man's confusion.

"Two hearts?" Tigh said incredulously, studying the image over Adama's shoulder. "This frakker's got two hearts?"

"And that's just the most obvious difference," Cottle said. "There's some kind of extra lobe in his brain, an extra couple of ribs in his ribcage, what should be his lungs are just weird when I look at them more closely, there's something off about his nervous system that I just can't explain, and I think there's even an extra liver in there somewhere…"

"So… what is he?" Adama asked, the possibility swimming through his mind even if he didn't want to be the one to say it first.

"Either he's some kind of weird super-Cylon, which I don't buy because there's no obvious sign of what these additions can do and they'd try and introduce something like this more cautiously if it was part of some plan…" Cottle began grimly.

"Or what?" Tigh asked, when Cottle didn't elaborate further on his own. "He's a frakking alien?"

The silence from Cottle said it all about his thoughts on that idea.

"You're frakking kidding me," Tigh groaned. "We had to go through the end of the worlds to make first contact with some nut who dresses like he's in some old novel? What kind of alien looks that human, and what's with those other two anyway?"

"That," Adama said as he stood up, "is one of the many things I'm going to ask him."

He didn't know what was going on, but if this man was an… alien… of some sort, he wanted to know what the man was doing in the Temple of Five…