I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow, thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 3 One Plus One Equals trouble
Once the door to the lodging house was closed and locked behind Sam, Kara and Tyrol, they all felt a weight lift off their shoulders. The sound of the metal falling home made them feel as if the wooden walled cabin was now wrapped in battlestar armor.
In the center of the main living room was a nice, heavy wooden table that was just low enough it could also serve as a foot rest. That was the perfect height for it to be put to good use at what was not its secondary design function. Kara and her husband took the couch and Galen pulled one of the thick padded chairs over to one side of the short wooden table. Before he sat down he put the two sheets of paper he had been given at the cash cage down on the table. When he took the padded seat he leaned over and pushed the two pages over to Sam. He just had a sudden urge to get off his feet, and up on the hard wood of the coffee table went his muddy boots. He realized that he had been on them since the noon meal today.
Tyrol sat back deeper into his chair, but just enough that he could still reach his paper and the words printed on it and see Sam's face. "I wasn't able to exchange your silver bar for cash to place bets with without going all the way to the cash cage. So I had to use what scrip we had on hand. I don't think you would have wanted me to risk something that valuable on a bet. Even if I could have found someone willing to place a bet of that magnitude. Maybe if we have more time to plan, I could have taken care of that and would have been ready to place some good sized wagers."
The Chief stopped talking and looked at the couple sitting in the leather covered and feather stuff couch. They seemed too comfortable. It was like they were getting ready to finish the day, but a military day was not over until the paper work was done. "Are you going to write down how much you spent today?" He looked at Starbuck, then at Sam and then back to Starbuck. They were just sitting on the couch looking back at him with blank looks on their faces. He again stopped talking, and then waited for a few long seconds. When they still did not move, to say, grab pen and paper, he knew that these little lambs were lost or in over their heads.
"Officers." He shook his head slowly from side to side. "Captain Thrace from what I was told, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're going to be using your skills to get the capital needed to buy items the Fleet needs. This is under the Admiral's direct orders, and funding. You might want to keep a written record of all of your daily transactions, no matter how small they might be. When the Quorum finds out, and they will sooner or later about you and the gambling, they might want to look at the books."
"I take that back. More than a few of them will demand to look at the books. It they find something they don't like, they could use it against the Old Man. You can bet your bottom cubit those lazy frakkers would do that! And any little thing will be blown up, to make it look like you were doing the high living while the rest of us Colonials were starving to death."
The color drained from Starbuck's face, and she flew off the couch. It was like she was still strapped to a Viper, or something had pinched her in that sensitive spot between the big toe and the next one. She went back to the bedroom with boot heals flashing, and returned quickly with a Colonial Military standard ledger.
It was the one that someone from Adama's staff had given to her before the Admiral had showed up for the Raptor flight down to the village. Now she understood what it was supposed to be used for. As she opened it, she thought it would have been nice if they had told her before she had almost frakked up by the numbers.
She made some quick notes about dates, and expenses they had to pay for so far. She even made notes about the different food places, and the information about the issues she had getting the silver bar back out of the cash cage. It did not take that long, maybe six or seven minutes to get all of the information written down into the book. Then she looked back up to the Chief, and gave him a thank you nod for his pointing out the issue.
As she was writing the information down, she remembered that she had, in fact, been told to do just that. She had just forgotten all about it. Having to keep a detailed diary was something she had not done since she was a little girl. She hoped it would not take that long get back into the habit.
Tyrol nodded towards Starbuck and got a little more relaxed. He started giving the two of them a back brief on what he had done, and what he had learned about these people. It was just general knowledge of the village. Most of it should have been briefed to the pair, but after the SNAFU about the log book, Tyrol was not taking any chances. When he was done, he had a sly smile on his face.
"Now, back to business. We should be able to work on getting better bets on you the next time you play, Sam. When you started the game, I could get twenty to one odds on just about everything, but they were only small bets on a low level game. And when you missed your first two shots after that layup, the locals thought they had me in the bag."
Tyrol gave a sly grin. "I was able to make up for the two lost bets with the next one. They thought they were fleecing the sheep. It turns out, they were the sheep tonight. We will have to go re-look at the rules for team betting, when I get some free time. I found out that we were not told all of the little ins and outs. That's because the locals don't like it when people place bets that a team they are on will lose the game, or they may otherwise sabotage the game somehow."
"I do know that you will be moved up with Karl to a higher skill level team. That is if you want that to happen? The money is better, and the other teams will have higher skills. The move would be up to you. I don't know if they will pull Karl up without you. I understand that he is good, but he is better with someone like you that can understand him. Right now you two are the best at this sport so far among the Colonials. And by the way the team you were on tonight had been listed as the expected loser. Them winning tonight, is being laid at yours and Karl's feet."
Sam nodded his understanding. Towards the end of the game tonight, he had started to think that this was almost too easy. And as a sports nut, he always wanted to test himself against the best of anyone that might be around. If he moved to a higher level, he would have better players to test himself against, as well as maybe a bigger payday. "I would like that. What do I have to do?"
Tyrol smiled, that was what he thought Sam would want to do. "All you have to do is check in at the court side referee's desk as early as you can on the day you want to play. And tell them you want to play up today. The desk will give you a time for when your game will start. I have a feeling that they keep a list of names that are better players hidden away somewhere. They are the ones that let the Gambling Hall know who is playing on what team. If you don't want to play at that level, you don't have to. Then you can just show up whenever you want to play. The higher level you play, the larger or more numerous are the bets being put out. I split the money we won tonight eighty-twenty. Your eighty percent share is on account at the Hall, this is your receipt. I put my twenty into my account that I have been using for some time now."
Tyrol reached into one of his outer coat pockets, and passed the silver bar back over to its owner. "If you leave it in the bank it will gain about one percent of value per month on the average of what you keep in it for that month. The Hall is the only place that can act as a bank like we are used to dealing with, but it's respected and it is closely regulated by the Settlement Leadership."
He took a breath and looked over at Starbuck. He thought that he might be crossing a line, but he thought it might be a good idea any way. "I would suggest you open an account with them also, Starbuck. They will give you a little device for free so that when you buy stuff, it will auto-transfer the funds to whoever you might be shopping from. Or you can pay with chits, at any of the market stalls. Both work very well here in the Settlement. What I mean is, that both can be used to purchase items outside of the Hall. They also will be able to give you a third person list of how much you're spending. All you will have to do, is ask someone at the cash cage for a statement. I think it will take about five minutes or so to get a copy. It will depend on how busy they are when you ask for it. "
Sam looked at his receipt, and then looked at Starbuck's own slip of paper. The total numbers were not even close to what she had brought in tonight, but after some quick math in his head, it came to him. Sam's part of the deal had given him ten percent of what his wife won tonight. At first he had been a little let down by how low that number was compared to what his wife had gotten. Then again, she had been able to start with capital in the form of the silver cubit bar, to back her bets. That was not a bad deal for a few hours' worth of fun.
"I think that is fair. How did you do Kara?" He wanted his wife to work the numbers for herself, he did not know why. But it did seem like they had made a good start in getting funds that the Admiral needed them to.
Kara Thrace was checking the paperwork, and was making some notes on the side of the sheet of paper. "I was able to get my seed money back." She stopped talking and her eyes went wide, and her voice went a little bit on the loud side out of excitement. "And looks like I almost doubled my money! Holy frak! If I had not lost those last three hands, I would have doubled my money easily. Too bad you two didn't pull me off the table earlier."
She looked up and smiled at the two other men. It was a surprise to her that she had done so well. It would seem that she had lost count of what she was betting on each hand, after all. About the only thing she had known was that she was winning more than she was losing. She forced her voice to calm down a little. "I would say that I did okay. I want to try a different card game tomorrow."
She made a face as she looked down at her notes, and the loose papers on the coffee table that seemed to have multiplied all on their own. Starbuck was getting excited at how her little experiment had worked out. "They called it Michigan Hold'em. It's not like anything I've seen or heard of before. It looked frakking easy, but I bet that it just means that there are hidden traps in there somewhere." She gave a sly smile, and she was almost bubbling with excitement. "I could get used to being a paid gambler for a living."
Before she could say more, someone knocked hard three times on the door to the cabin. Sam and Kara shot a look at each other, then both reached for their side arms in smooth twin motions of their dominant hands. With weapons in hand, the pair of fighters started looking around the room. They wanted to find what might be the best defensible position for any threat that might be coming through the door in the next few seconds.
Tyrol looked a little sheepish as he realized what happened. "Sorry, I left a message for a friend of mine to come over after we left the Hall. I hope you don't mind. He's pretty smart, and has made a Viper load of money finding minerals that the Settlement needed. That means that he is very rich, compared to most of the Earthers that you're going to meet."
Tyrol looked at each of them, and gave a slight shrug. "He also often works with the Triumvirate. That's when they need something on the odd side found. They call him over, and offer him the job. He takes those jobs most of the time. That's if he is not up to his eyeballs in other deals. I thought he might be of some help to talk with. Is it okay? I could tell him just to meet me for lunch tomorrow, and that you're not ready to have to deal with more people tonight. He'd understand."
Tyrol kept his face still as he talked. He hoped that he would not have to blow his friend off. "I hope he would, anyway. He's been getting touchier lately about people calling him an oracle and all. Now that more Colonials are finding out about his history, he'd been trying to stay away from groups of strangers in general."
Kara nodded her head up and down slowly. The weapon went back into the holster, and she sat back down on the couch with a plop. Sam put his weapon away but he did not return to the couch. When her heart slowed down she looked back at the table. She was already looking at her notes, so she was not paying that much attention to the Chief. There was no threat, so why worry about it?
Sam only nodded to the other man, but knew that he had been given two options on what to do next. And since Kara had not said which one she wanted to do, Sam took that to mean she was leaning towards letting the chief's friend in. "Sure Chief. It would be good to know someone else who might be able to help in communicating with these Earthers. Besides, any friend of yours, Chief, is a person I think would be good to know around here." A little buttering up never hurt, Sam thought though he was careful not to say that last bit aloud. He did not want to offend the Chief.
Tyrol went to the door after leaving the other two Colonials in the main living room. He first looked through the little round hole drilled into the four inches of hard wood, before opening. He just wanted to make sure that it was who he thought it might be. It was a nice little touch, and he wished he had one in his old room aboard the Bucket. Instead of being surprised whenever he opened the hatch every time a bell was rung by someone in the corridor. As it turned out, it was his friend. Tyrol let him in, and the mixed pair of Colonial and Earther walked back to the living room.
Tyrol lead the other man into the main living room of the cabin. Then he stepped off to one side so that the other two could see the new person clearly. With a little bit of flair, he made the introductions. "Kara Thrace, Sam Anders this is Dexter Wood. He's the one I was telling you about tonight."
Dexter walked over to the male and female Colonial standing by the couch and coffee table, and shook hands first with Sam then with Starbuck. That was when it hit the fan in a way no one in the room had seen before. And later, would hope to never happen to any one of them again.
Both of the humans locked eyes, both sets of eyes glazed over, and then they started some kind of chanting together. In both English and Caprican, the pair started talking in sync with each other. "A Heavy Raider returns to this system to scout in 132 days from the next sunrise." Sam and Tyrol just looked at the two of them, like the pair were living two legged bombs of some kind.
As soon as they had finished talking. Dexter reached out and took the pad with cut corners right out of Sam's hands along with its attached pen. His left hand took the pen, activated it, and started to fly across the page. It was moving like an old school ink jet printer. It moved from one side of the pad to the other, sometimes touching the pad and other times it was just slightly above the lined paper.
"What the FRAK!" came from both men at exactly the same second. It was a crazy few seconds, as the two Colonial men's head swiveled back and forth, taking in what was happening. They were between the two oblivious people who were drawing on the long sheets of paper. More and more sheets were quickly filled with line drawings and side notes as the pens flew across the pages at a steady pace. The eerie thing was that their eyes were closed, or close enough that Sam and Tyrol could not tell the difference. The hairs on the back of their necks were standing up like they were in a lightning storm. This was so not right!
Sam looked at Tyrol and used his head to point to the kitchen. Without saying another word they took a few steps away. You did not interrupt oracles in the middle of something, or something bad could happen. The two men just went to the kitchen to have something to drink, and wait and see what might happen next. Maybe Zeus might be knocking on the door before the sun rose again.
If they had been from any other place in the universe, the pair might have tried to stop the man and woman in the trance. That would not have turned out well for the two men. It would have caused violent actions to happen to anyone who might have interrupted them. That was what most likely would have happened, but they would not know that for some time. Also, the two oracles might have ended up in a pair of padded cells for the rest of their lives if they had been on Earth back in the old times. Before the massive energy rifts killed a billion people on that blue marble of a planet. The padded rooms would have been for their own safety of course.
It was late and it was Sam who woke up first with a jolt, going from dead asleep to fully awake in an eye blink. Sam did not know what had woken him up, or even when they had fallen asleep. It might have been the amazingly loud snore coming from the Chief sleeping in a bar chair across from him.
Sam knocked on the table's thick wooden top with two hard raps. Since Tyrol had his ear on the wooden top, it sounded like someone had dropped a heavy book near his head. Twice.
Needless to say he woke up, and would not be needing to go back to sleep to finish removing the cobwebs out of his brain any time soon. It is hard to go back to sleep when you have a loud ringing in your ear. Particularly one showing no signs of going away anytime soonish. He and Tyrol had moved to the kitchen to give the two people with glazed eyes some room. It also served to keep the two men from freaking out even more as the two maybe possessed people worked on their pads of paper with pens flying across the pages. The little kitchen had food, water, and even an entertainment screen to help them pass the time. Sam was surprised that they had fallen asleep, given the situation they had found themselves in.
Sam dropped his feet off his other stool, and did a nice long stretch that had always worked before to get most of the kinks out of his body. His sleepy eyes were drawn to the screen, with its shifting and flashing images of color. The entertainment screen was flashing in white letters captioning in Caprican what was being said in the strange language of the Earthers.
Sam still had no idea why someone would want to watch 'Real Housewives of Chi-town', even if they did not have anything else to do. But it was something to pass the time, if you were tired of hitting your thumb with a hammer or the like. That was when he noticed that he was cold, and that the living room was devoid of all sound. Sam tried to find the notes on how to turn the heat on, but his sleep addled brain was not helping him figure out something that had sounded so simple a few hours ago. There was only one other thing he thought he could do, so he went to check on Starbuck in the other room.
The room was quiet, and the only sources of light in the room were the three bulbs high in the ceiling that had been on since they got back in the night before. Starbuck was asleep on the animal skin covered, feather filled couch. Dexter was splayed out on the floor on the other side of the coffee table, and appeared to be asleep on the bare hard wood floor also.
It looked like they had been some kind of living and breathing puppets with their strings suddenly cut. Letting them fall where they may. Sam checked out the pads of paper near each of the sleeping bodies. They both looked about the same, but somehow different. He could not put his finger on how or why they might be different though.
He put down the pad that the Earther had been using, and spent more time looking at Starbuck's pad. It had been the nearest to her sleeping form. She had gone through a few dozen sheets of almost two foot long, off white rectangle paper. It was the aesthetics of the drawing that drew his attention, as he flipped through the pages of black inch drawings.
It had been Sam's experience that women tended to have better handwriting than the average man. That was until he met Starbuck. He had told her one time, that she could not draw a straight line even if she used a ruler and a T square to do the job. She could do some amazing things with paint. What she had drawn on those sheets of paper were amazing, almost the same quality as what you would see in an art gallery back home.
It was just more proof to him that she had been possessed by one of the Lords somehow. There was one thing about Sam that most people did not know. Until sometime after the Cylons had attacked, he had not believed in any of what his peers would have referred to as a higher power.
He set this pad of paper back down where it had been lying, and started to work on the heat issue. If anything this room was cooler than the building's main kitchen area.
Sam was a city boy and a rich one at that, but after spending several months in the deep backwoods fighting Cylons, let's just say, that he had learned a few things. Different ways to take down a Cylon with the limited weapons they could get their hands on in the first few days of the war, for example. How to make a fire, and make it very quickly if he needed to, was another one.
The one team doctor who had been at the resort, had harped on about how bad hypothermia or the common cold could be. Particularly since they did not have the drugs or hospitals to help them anymore. With the power cut off by the attack, they had to learn a few ways to make fire to fight off the chill. And the back country mountains could be chilly indeed. He went around to one side of the fireplace and found the items he needed to work on taking the chill out of the room.
First was the box of fluffy material to catch the spark or small flame. Next he pulled out some small twigs, and wood parts for the kindling. Then he put some of the bigger logs at the back of fireplace hearth. He was so totally focused on the task before him that in what seemed like no time at all, he had a fire built, burning nicely in the stone fireplace. As the fire built up some of the small wood bits started turning into hot coals. Sam put on larger and larger cut and dried wood on the still growing fire. When he put what seemed to be average sized split wood logs on top of the still smallish but steadily growing fire, he stood up and took a few steps back.
He rubbed his hands together out of habit, and held out his hands towards the top of the fire hearth to test the heat output. This was more out of habit, than of any real use. But the fire was already putting out some heat into the large room, and with the size of the flames, it would really start to warm up nicely over the next few minutes.
With that task done, he walked into the green house for only the second time since he had been on this planet surface. It was dark in the glass and plastic walled room, but only two steps in a light clicked on automatically. Somehow it knew someone was stepping into this room. Sam was used to that type of technology, so he hardly took note of it when it activated. What he did notice right off the bat was that it was even colder in this room than it was in the main house.
That was a major concern for him. He did not want to have to pay for any damages done to the plants because they had been damaged by the cold. From the little briefing they had been given, he had no doubt that there would be some kind of charges for any damage done to the sensitive planets. As he looked around the long room filled with growing things, he saw the back of the stone fireplace, and quickly stepped over to it with his long legs.
Sam checked the back of the chimney. It was covered with rounded stones taken from the river, and also acted as one wall of the greenhouse. He ran his hand down from a point that was as high as he could reach on the stone faced wall, then slowly pulled it down to where he thought the floor of the hearth area might be on the other side of the stone. The area immediately around the back of the chimney was deliberately kept clear. It was so that the hotter rocks would not harm plants, or maybe start a fire in the greenhouse with the heat from a fireplace burning for long hours.
Sam could just start to feel some warmth coming from one layer of the chimney rocks with the back of his hand. He thought it would not take long for the rocks to get warmer, and in turn make the greenhouse warmer by radiating the heat from the rocks out into the cooler air.
What he did not know was that a heater was wired into the greenhouse, and powered by an E-Clip. It was programmed to kick in if the greenhouse temperature dropped one degree lower than it had been when he started the fire. The burning fire would stop the cost of that E-clip from being added to their rental bill, at least for tonight. It would not have been the first time that someone had forgotten to get a fire going in this rental. For people who had lived in those metal cans for so long, a fire burning was not something they were used to having or making for that matter.
Sam reentered the main house through the second door of the Greenhouse, and now had the back of the couch blocking his view of his sleeping wife. He walked just close enough to see that she was still sleeping, before backing away from the couch again. The room still felt cool to him, so he went into the bedroom, and quickly found an extra blanket folded up at the foot of the bed.
If he had found two of the thick coverings, he would have brought both of them into the living room. But he found only the one on the bed. This was a little strange to Sam, after spending so long on this cool damp planet. He was set on who that the blanket was going to go to. It was to go to his wife, even if he had found two. After all, he would not be sleeping with the other guy.
Sam thought it best that he took care of his partner that he had come to know so well. The strange man would just have to understand, and be cold until the still warming up fire did its job on the air of the room. Sam returned to the living room, and was just about to drape the warm blanket over Starbuck when she went from the sleep of the dead, to moving without giving any warning of the upcoming change.
Sam Anders was a pretty stable guy, and nothing much made him jump if he saw it coming. It was a very short list of items, which would make him jump like a little girl in a theater. At the top of that short list, was when his wife sat up and started to move. It was not so much that she had moved. It was how she moved when she shot up off the couch as he was trying to spread the thick blanket over her. It was not the normal way for a human to move, or even the normal way for Starbuck to move. It looked to Sam that she moved like the old lessons and recordings they had played back in his first year of engineering school.
They had been all about how the early model Cylons moved and acted, before and during the first war that man had against their creations. If he had been from Rifts Earth or seen more of the entertainment shows that they had brought with them, he would have said that she moved like an old style movie vampire rising from his coffin after sleeping all day. At least for the part when she had come up off the flat part of the leather couch. It was like someone had her on some kind of remote control. And in a way she was.
When he heard more scratching on paper, he looked over and saw the glassy eyed stranger was also working on the paper pad near him again. He turned to watch his wife find the slightly moved pad of paper and flip to the last sheet she had been working on. With that same glassy eyed looked she found a pen and went back to drawing on the paper. Sam just dropped the warm covering on the floor, and returned to the kitchen where it was not as creepy, at least not yet. Kara had done some crazy things since he had met her, and he had heard even more about her after she had pulled his people off of Caprica. None of them could hold a candle to what was happening with her tonight. Before tonight he would have thought that he was beyond her being able to surprise him.
Somehow Tyrol was sleeping again, but there was no way that Sam was going back to sleep just yet. His creeped out meter was still way too high for anything like sleep to happen. He used the small black remote controller to skip to a show that looked like it would be more his style of entertainment. After being on the run for so long, and with a very limited supply of books and entertainment shows, having a wide selection of entertainment that he had never heard about before was kind of nice. He had no idea what 'The D-Bee Patrol' was, and in the end it did not matter to him. He was asleep again, before the opening credits had finished rolling across the screen and the opening scene had played across the 17 inch screen.
"Hey Sam, wake up." The sound was not loud or shrill. It just was. It was repeated, but took a third time before it achieved its goal. The voice was male, and sounded tired.
Sam had not been sleeping that heavily so he did not jump out of the chair he was using to catch some sleep. When his brain caught up to the real world, he more or less just turned his head, and opened one eye to see who was calling his name. The first thing he noticed was the light streaming into the strange home through a pair of glass covered holes in the roof over his head. Part of his mind knew that they were skylights, and was a good way to add light without using any power. That is as long as it was light outside.
"It must have an auto shutter or something to keep the light from spilling out and being seen by unwanted persons." He thought to himself.
"Well the sun's up," was the only vocal reply to the Colonial Deck Chief waking him up. That was as good a reply as any, given the situation the two men had found themselves in.
Tyrol was standing off to one side so that he could see Sam, but he was also peering around a corner into the living room. "I put some more wood on the fire that you made while you were still asleep. We might want to put a few more logs on in a bit if we need to keep it going for a few more hours. I was worried that it might be putting out a bit too much heat."
Tyrol gave a slight shrug and shot a look over to the ex-resistance leader. "You might have a better idea about that than I do. They are sleeping again, by the way. As near as I can tell they work for two hours, sleep for one hour, and then repeat the cycle."
Now he gave Sam a slight smile. "In case you wanted to know. The sun has been up for a few hours now." Tyrol used his chin to point to the skylights, which might stop Sam from asking a dumb question. Such as if he had left the dwelling while he had been snoring in the bar chair. "How are you feeling?"
"Well I don't think I'm going to be allowed to go back to sleep again," thought Sam to himself. "I'm okay. Won't say I'm good but..." He stopped talking as he yawned and launched into a massive stretch starting from his toes going all of the way to his fingertips. He had to stop talking as his bones audibly popped and ground as the muscles, tendons, and bones moved out of positions they had held for hours. "Okay. What do we do now, Chief? You've been dealing with these people longer than anyone that I know of. So I'm looking for anything in the way of ideas." Sam completed the stretch by throwing both arms into the air over his head. "Because I'm drawing a blank on what to do next."
Tyrol shrugged, and walked away from his vantage point. He moved deeper into the kitchen, giving up a clear view of the living room and its twin occupants. "You're the one married to an oracle, not me. What is normal for her?"
Sam tilted his head to one side, then dropped his feet off the other barstool he had been using to be a little more vertical. "Chief... you know this is Starbuck we're talking about." His voice carried the intent of the statement with a 'you have got to be frakking with me' look. "You've known her a frak ton longer than I have. What do you think is normal for her?" The tone of his voice was just pushing the line between funny and brittle.
A strange look crossed the knuckle dragger chief's face almost too fast for the average person to read. "Uhhh," was his one word reply to the Colonial superstar's question. Sam had just scored a rapid fired point about the Viper pilot on the Deck Chief.
Sam had a self-satisfied and smug look plastered all over his face. He knew he had just scored a good point against the other man. He bet the old chief was not on the receiving end of something like that very often. "That was about what I thought you'd say."
Tyrol made a face with the edges of his lips pointing down. He was in deep thought, and he did not like what was coming to mind no matter what idea he could come up with. When he heard more scribbling coming from the living room again, Tyrol took the sound as an opportunity to change the subject a little. He hooked a thumb towards the direction of the sound, and looked at Sam. He tossed his head a little towards that direction, and without another word, both men went to the room that neither of them really wanted to enter but knew they had to any way.
The two men watched for a while as the two people with glassy eyes made more lines on the off white sheets of paper on the coffee table. They did not know what to do. After some time helplessly watching the pair. Sam sighed and walked over to the fireplace. He put some more logs in, enough to keep the flames going for another couple of hours.
The room was a lot warmer with the fire burning for hours now, and it felt good. Sam did not build the fire up as high as he could have, just enough that it would burn for a few more hours with a high heat output. Besides, there was not that much wood left, so he just put only a few more logs into the hearth to feed the flames slowly. It did give him some time to think, without having the chief watching him. He was looking at the fire as it slowly built up more, with more flames licking at the fresh wood. At some point he felt his head start to move up and down, nodding to himself. When he turned around, he looked at Tyrol. He needed to talk to him but not here.
He did not speak out loud, instead he pitched his voice low so that it would carry only the few feet it needed to and maybe a little further. He did not want to disturb the other two working on their strange drawings. "Chief, they said that there is some cut firewood outside, how about helping restock some of it in here? I don't know if we are going to have a long next few days or not. Having the firewood might be useful to keep it comfortable in here. Keeping it warm enough should not be that hard and it shouldn't take a lot of wood to keep the fire the right size now that that the chill is knocked down."
Tyrol nodded in agreement, and headed for the door only a pair of steps behind the sports superstar. It did not take long for them to find the stack of wood, just around one side of the house. It was a massive stack of cut and split wood of some unknown type that Sam had never seen before. It had been invisible in the night, or shade under the trees.
The Colonial wood cutting details could only pull so much wood into the refugee camp at one time. And that wood had been spread out between tens of thousands of people, with very little in the way of transports to help move it all around as needed. All of this wood was already split and looked to be mostly dry under a little overhang coming off of the rentals roof. Well, about as dry as you could expect on this wet planet. Anyway, now they just needed to get some more of the split wood inside and stacked in its holder near the fireplace.
Galen and Sam carried armload after armload back into the cabin and stacked it next to the fireplace. When that was full, another area was identified and wood started going there also. After each arm load, both men would check the two entranced people. They were going to bring in even more wood in, but someone walked up to them and wanted to enter their cabin.
Sam was not going to let something like that happen. He did not want word to get around about what was happening to his wife. He would protect her at any cost, and no matter what the cost could end up being. Sam was known to be a bit on the stubborn side once he set his mind to something. It had come in handy with the type of sports he liked to play for a living.
Tyrol did not know what was going on, but he did not like the tone or volume coming from Sam. He dropped off his armload of wood and went back outside of the cabin as fast as he possibly could. He just opened his arms and dumped the wood on the middle of the living room floor. He was almost at a run when he turned to the front door.
What he saw, was that Sam and a strange woman in her later years were almost nose to nose. They were yelling at each other in two very different languages. It seemed like she really wanted to come into the cabin. About the only thing he could make out, was that Sam was not going to let that happen. The Chief thought he had heard the words 'over my dead body' come from Sam.
That was bad. Worse, this scene was getting louder and louder with every passing second. Tyrol did not think they could use the attention that a full blown hissy fight out in full public view was sure to get them. This was a small town and news would travel faster than a battlestar's FTL jumps. Tyrol felt his heart jump into his throat, and saw the monster Murphy the Earthers had always been worried about. And he was about to ruin their lives.
Sam was just on the verge of getting physical. When Tyrol came up behind him, and started talking in that frakking language that Sam did not know any off. Whatever the man was saying to the woman, it was calming her down. That was good enough for him, at least for right now. Sam moved a few steps away from the two, and took a few steps to be able to block the door better. Just in case someone else walked up on them while Galen and the woman were talking things out.
Sam watched Tyrol and the woman talk, then all of the sudden she smiled and simply walked away like nothing had been wrong. Tyrol turned and looked at Sam, but he was not smiling at all. He hooked a thumb towards the woman walking away with some pep in her step. "She was supposed to clean the rooms daily, and cook a meal for you and Starbuck. I told her that we were good, and that we could take care of ourselves for now. She will get paid, as long as you log it on the house computer with a code she gave me."
Tyrol smiled, sure that Sam would back up what he had arranged. "She will get paid for the three hours of work she was supposed to be doing here. I didn't think you'd mind sticking with that plan. If you don't want her to come by tomorrow, just leave a note on the door. But you will need to enter the code again into the computer in the kitchen, or her boss is going to come by and want to know what's going on. I think we can work with that, don't you?" Tyrol started shooting sly glances around him as he talked to Sam out in the open in front of the rented cabin. Tyrol made a face and looked back toward Sam. Something felt wrong, but he could not put his finger on it. Not just yet.
Sam smiled a tight smile, and unblocked the way to the door of the cottage. "Thanks for taking care of that, Chief." He could feel the blood to start to cool, and his heart rate start to slow as the stress he had been under for the last few minutes ebbed away.
Tyrol walked back into the cottage and as slapped Sam on the back as he passed the other man. "No problem." Sam followed after Tyrol and the door was closed and locked a few seconds later. Things went back to normal, or at least it looked that way to the two Colonials.
Across from the rental home, two people were sitting at a set of homemade table and chairs in the early morning light. They were just playing a morning game of Cribbage, and taking some quiet time before having to start another day. One that was sure to be filled with all sorts of jobs that needed to be done. They were playing the game, and they did spend the mornings playing that game whenever they could. And they had been doing it for years, going all the way back to when they had first moved off of the ships. One had worked at the small sawmill, while the other had been working on finding local plants that were edible. Nowadays they only worked a few hours at each, then picked up the odd jobs to help who ever needed it.
It just so happened that this time, they were also being paid to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the rental home nearby as part of their normal day. They had been told to report anything that might be on the odd side. The loud commotion coming from the front of the little cottage that was normally rented out to visiting Colonials fit the criteria. So as soon as the door had closed behind the two male Colonials, they looked at each other. They had been together too long, over fifteen years, to need anything like words to communicate. One of them started a slow count to one hundred, before the female of the group picked up the little radio and made the call they had been told to make.
After the call was made, one of the pair moved a token to a certain point off to one side of the playing board. A few eye blinks latter, it was answered by the other person. She put in a different token, in a different area off to one side of the board. This was not part of the game they played each day. This was another game that they liked to play, but only between themselves. They had just made a pair of side bets on the board. It was on how long it was going to take for Major Weston to come out of the woodwork, and pay the little hotel an uninvited visit.
Each moved a second token off to one side of the board. This was a bet on how many people would be with him when he did show up to the cabin. With the side bets completed, all without a word being said, they returned to the primary game. They still kept their eyes on the hotel cottage, just as they had been paid to do. It was an exciting time for them, and the most fun they had had since they had moved into their own little home off the metal hulled ships. Most of the other people from the ships thought they both were a bit odd. They did not care. They were happy, and to them that was all that mattered. Well, besides their game, that is.
With the door safely locked behind them, Tyrol turned to looked at the two glassy eyed humans near the fireplace. It they stuck to their pattern, they would be just about getting ready to go to sleep again, very soon. After watching the pair hunch over the pads of paper for about four more minutes, it happened, just like when they woke up. They both set down their pads and pens, and stretched out to sleep once more not a few feet from those pads and pens. They were like windup toys, and their springs seemed to have just been reset somehow. Sam was the closest to them when they went back to sleep. He checked to make sure they were indeed sleeping, and not something more terminal before Tyrol could reach out to stop him.
Tyrol looked at Sam, as Sam looked around the room with an odd expression on his face. It looked to the Chief that Sam was at the end of his rope, and his grip was quickly giving out. Dealing with the cleaning and cooking maid had been the last mental straw for Sam. All after less than twenty four hours of the ordeal. It was now time to bring up what he had thought of before they started to move the replacement firewood into the house. "Sam, I think we need some help."
Sam looked down at his wife, and then looked back at the Chief. Then looked back to Kara, and back again to Tyrol. "Yeah, I think you're right. But who can help with something like this?" Sam pointed only to his wife laying on the couch, but he was referring to the whole situation. He had been thinking the same thing. The catch was, he was not sure who to call for help. Did he want to call the medicos, or one of the Earther doctors? Who could he trust? And more importantly who would Starbuck trust when she came out of whatever she was in? She was not tracking that well, and waking up seeing a doctor in her face might not be the best thing to happen for the three of them.
"Well that was not that helpful at all. Let's see if I can get something else out of him," thought Tyrol as he kept his face as still as he could. He was hoping that his best plan was workable after he asked the next question. If not, then he was going to have to go straight to Plan C. "Do you have a way to contact Adama directly?"
The Chief did not have to say which of the two men that had the same last name he was talking about. It could only have been the older man. No one else would have had the authority to order this mission they had been given to carry out before things went out the airlock. Bill Adama also was the most respected person in the Fleet. Even more so than his girlfriend Laura Roslin, though she was a close second.
It was even money that the pair would be equal very soon. Even if they did not get married as the betting pools said was going to happen before they left his planet. Tyrol had placed a bet on when that very event might happen. His was the only bet, so far, that had the event happening after the Colonials had left this solar system.
Sam let out a sigh, then nodded. But he did not say anything else to Galen Tyrol. He just turned his back to the Chief, and walked back into the open door of the bedroom with slumped shoulders. It was a lot like a teenage boy having to call his father, because he had broken down or had run out of gas in the family car. It had to be done, but that did not mean it was not going to impact his ego. Sam did not close the door behind him. There was only one other person awake that could hear the former sports star going through some of the items in that normally private room.
When Sam returned to the main living area, he was carrying a dark canvas bag that the Chief had no trouble identifying just by seeing one of the narrow ends. I was a survivor bag. Designed to help a downed Viper pilot or more normally a Raptor crew to survive, evade, and call for help after being shot down by Cylons or some other catastrophic mishap. In other words, it was standard issue to the Colonial Military and that was about it.
Sam put the small bag on the breakfast bar at the end of the kitchen between the Chief and him. After tearing the inspection seal off, he had to pull out a second waterproof pouch from inside the sand colored bag. He pulled out the instruction sheet and started to read it while he fumbled with the hand sized device stored within the bag.
After less than a minute, Tyrol just turned red and stormed over to the end of bar that had been his sleeping area for most of the night before. Mumbling his displeasure about frakking wet behind the ear amateurs mixing with real military people, he did a quick grab with his right hand. A few more similarly quick maneuvers with both hands had the transmitter out of the bag, set up, powered on, and self-tested before Sam had even finished the first paragraph of the device's printed instructions. It was even odds for and against, that Sam had even understood what he had just read anyway. Most civilians had some major problems understanding anything written in military-ese.
The Head Deck Chief and the only known Small Craft Chief left in the Colonial Fleet pulled the mic to his mouth and pressed a button on the side of the hand sized device. He had no idea who would be on shift this time of day or even on any day. He did not even know if any of the old codes were still being used. He just went for it when he knew that the device was ready for operation. "Galactica this is Knuckle Dragger Actual. Over?" Tyrol released the side mounted transmit button, and waited for a reply to his request for contact.
Sam just folded the instructions manual back up, and put them in the proper place in the kit bag. All he could do was wait, along with the Chief. As he waited for the Chief to work his magic with the communication device, he mentally kicked himself. He knew he should have just passed the device over to him in the first place. He had been told it was a survival kit when Starbuck packed it into her almost empty backpack. He did not have to wait for more than a few seconds before a voice replied to Tyrol's request on the emergency transmitter.
"Chief, Galactica CIC this is an emergency channel is everything okay?" The concern came out of the speaker clear as day to both of the men's ears.
Tyrol smiled as the voice reached his ears. He had recognized the young woman's voice, but would not break communication protocol. Besides, Cally was still hurting about how he had treated her when he had been deep in the bottle for so long. "Galactica CIC, please contact Actual. You need to let him know that me and Sam, need to have private line set up with him. It is very frakking important. Pass along the last part exactly. Over?"
The tone he used for the last word was pointed, to remind her to keep with proper communication protocol. He released the transmit button, and he had a slight smile on his face. The job of the senior enlisted persons in the Colonial Military was to enforce training on the younger crewmembers. Tyrol had already fallen back into that mode, now that he was 'back on' as a member of the battlestar's crew. Then Tyrol felt his eyes get larger. Why was one of his knuckle draggers on duty in the CIC, and not working on his craft? Maybe she was cross training or something. He knew that she was smart enough to do almost any job on a battlestar that he could think of off the top of his head.
The voice that came over the speaker sounded a little upset, or maybe it was just a little peeved. The one thing that was for sure, it was not Cally talking now, but someone else. Maybe someone who had come over from the Beast, but Tyrol was sure that he did not know who he was talking to now. The tone that came through the speaker had officer written all over it. "Actual is not on shift for another five hours. What is so important that you think you need to talk to him now? Over." The open carrier wave was now the only sound coming out of the little hand held device and it quietly filled the kitchen.
Sam saw the red go from deep down the Chief's neck, racing upwards, higher and higher until it was lost in his own hair line. Sam could feel the same thing happening to him, but instead of just sitting there, Sam took the microphone from the Chief. Before the shorter man could reply to the jerk on the other end of the device, he took a breath and went old school at the person on the other end of the transmitter. It was just like how his first coach had taught him to do it, back when he had been voted to be the team captain for the first time. You used it when you needed to bring a big hammer to the game to motivate you team.
"I don't know who this is, but you have better get Bill Adama right the frak now! Or the next time I see you, I will turn you into my own private practice dummy! I will use you till I'm tired, then I'm going to use you some more! Right now I'm thinking that I will not be giving you any pads for this little round of training. Am I being frakking clear! Or do I need to go into some more detail about what your future might hold?" Luckily Sam remembered to release the transmit button after he had vented some spleen at the unknown person on the other end. As he took another breath, he realized that he was now feeling better after a little yelling.
The next voice to come over the transmitter was Cally's again, and you could tell the she was trying not to smile as she spoke. Even after getting caught by the Chief for the breach of wireless protocol, she was smiling that no one could see. "Sam, they just sent someone to get the Admiral. He will contact you as soon as he can. Over." The last few words barely covered a laugh building in the woman.
Sam felt a smile come to his face. It felt so good to vent some of the built up stress on someone, at least a little of it anyway. He pushed the button on the side of the device again, but looked at the Chief before he said anything. The Chief just gave him a slight nod, which Sam took to keep going now that he had the transmitter in his hands.
"Thank you, and we will be waiting at the Bar til he contacts us. Sam and Chief out!" Sam knew communication etiquette. Especially after getting roasted by Starbuck a few dozen times when he had frakked it up. Those had been some good times, when they had been working together. When his mind caught back up to the real world, he realized what he had said. He quickly thought maybe he ought to have used a different word, other than 'bar'. The whole CIC had to have known who was with him, and that name and Bar should not be used together in the same sentence. And definitely not this early in the morning, on an open channel.
It was a horse race to see who would contact the two men in the rental cabin first. Sam and Tyrol had absolutely no idea just what they started that morning. With the use of all of that Colonial technology, it was Adama who contacted his people first, and he won that part of the race. Even with the delay caused by the Officer of the Day. In fact there had been two delays caused by that lowly Lieutenant. One was in CIC, and the other was when Bill explained how and why he had screwed up. He did not need to yell, this was just a training event for the young officer.
Bill Adama had had a private line set up so that not even the CIC would know what was being said between the ground and his cabin. This private line had been used a lot by the commander over the last few weeks. Using it to contact anything on the ground allowed him to avoid drawing that much attention. He used it now to find out why the pair had woken him up so early.
Sam and Tyrol did not need long to convince the Admiral that they needed him dirtside to see what was going on first hand. Just hearing more details about the line drawings the two were doing was enough. He agreed to come down without letting many of his staff know why he was getting his feet dirty again so soon after coming back up to the flagship. It was going to take some doing, but he was the Admiral after all.
He did not immediately fly down to the planet's surface. That would have raised some alarms with people whom Bill did not want to get into his business just yet. Bill was not that thrilled to be woken up this early for the normally long duty day that he had gotten into the habit of. He had also been enjoying one of the few great night's sleep he had been able to get in a long time. After putting the handset back into its cradle, he looked back at his bed, and the woman still sleeping in it. He leaned over and touched the hair of the sleeping woman who also was the leader of the last known survivors from the Colonies of Kobol.
What Bill so much wanted to do was just to crawl back into that bed and into her arms again, but now he had work to do. He quietly padded around to collect his things, thinking to himself that the call of duty was finally starting to get very old. He then took a quick shower, cleaned up, and got dressed for what he was thinking was going to be a longer day than he had already planned for. As he was coming out of the small private shower, he was thinking that it was laso going to maybe be an even longer night than he had intended for his shift today. It was just too bad it was all more than likely going to be work related, or a working social meeting.
He slowly closed and dogged the hatch to his cabin making as little noise as he could, and made his way to the CIC. It was a short trip. As with all warships, the master of the vessel's sleeping quarters was close to the ship's beating heart.
It took a few minutes to get an update on the fleet after entering his command center. The team that was in charge of providing that information to him had planned to have a few more hours to get ready before he showed up for duty. However, like the well trained crew that they were, they adapted to his early arrival without any issues.
There had not been many changes from the state the fleet had been in before he had gone to bed, what seemed like only a few hours ago. He was looking at the Raptor schedules when he was interrupted by a physical note passed to him by member of his staff. It had been less than twenty minutes since he had talked to the team on the ground. He had been hoping that he could just catch a regular scheduled Raptor down, but it was going to be a few hours too long of a wait. The slip of paper that was now in his hands said that a Raptor would be ready and waiting for his use in about five minutes. It would take him slightly longer than that to make it to the only remaining flight deck on his ship. "It was good to have a well trained staff around you," thought the Admiral as he put the note in a convenient pocket of his uniform top. He made a mental note to find out who had noticed that he was going to need the use of a Raptor.
He nodded his thanks, and then turned to the rest of the CIC. "I will be at the Settlement for the next few hours. If you need something, get with OD or Colonel Tigh." He looked at the Officer of the Day. The one he had just done some verbal training on. Bill gave him a slight nod to indicate that he had confidence in the man.
Without another word, he turned and walked to the only hangar left operational on his ship at a measured pace. While he was walking he let his mind wander to the subject that had been causing him some trouble. He had been wracking his brain on how to fix his ship back up to full combat capabilities. Everything just kept going back to needing the use of a major Colonial dry-dock facility. As it would happen, they did not have one of those on hand. And he did not know were one might just be floating around in space that was both empty, and that his people could use. They were frakked is all that kept coming to his mind. His ship was not crippled in the technical sense, but she was as close as one could get and still not be labeled as such. He knew that she was almost a liability to the whole fleet in her current condition.
It was all muscle memory for the walk to the hangar pod and boarding the small craft waiting for him. He did not really come back to the real world until the Raptor's hatch reopened and fresh cold air entered the small cabin of the transport. The cold air was like a slap in the face. A Battlestar's environmental systems could maintain an evenly comfortable temperature, somewhat higher during combat operations. Never as cold as Caprica's fresh morning air, though.
While Adama was boarding the Raptor for his trip planetside, Captain Kelly was just getting out of his own hot shower in his own private cabin aboard his ship. His standing orders where that if anything strange happened to Dexter, he was to be notified as soon as possible. He also had orders that if they delayed too long in notifying him, he would know why. And he would do so, in person. It was not an empty threat, and his staff knew every word he had used was true.
This directive had led to more than a few false alarms at first, but it had also already kept a few things from getting out of hand. This was more important now, with the Colonials spending more time with his people. They could see what Dexter had done in the past, and what he still could do with his Oracle or far seeing abilities. It had caused some ugly issues when he had refused to do whatever it was that they had wanted, but they could have gotten a lot worse if they had not been caught early like they had been so far.
When they had woken him up, they told him where Dexter had spent the night. With not only one, but two of the human form cylons that had remained in hiding. That alone had been enough of a reason to wake him up, in his book. The duty officer had not seen it that way, but had noted it to be in the daily brief with attention marks. Add in the report that this morning, the two Cylons had been seen acting so strangely. That had just added sauce for the goose, and he had been quickly updated with the information. Kelly did see the note from Major Weston that Captain Kelly and the rest of the leadership needed to know about the report early this morning.
Major Weston had called Captain Kelly as soon as he had been woken up, earlier than normal. The Major would be waiting for him at the end, or the head of the wooden dock/jetty. They both would be paying a personal visit to the rental house this early morning. Kelly was still finishing getting dressed, when he was notified that Admiral Adama was on his way down off of his damaged flagship by his bridge duty officer. From what the Admiral had told him at the last meeting, the Colonial military leader was not due back down planetside for another five to seven days. Either that, or when the other Colonial battlestar came back from its mission, whichever came first.
Now he was coming back after being gone for less than ten hours. Something was up, and it could be either very good or very bad. And Kelly was not about to put money on which way it was going to break this morning. Kelly notified his fellow leaders about what was going on as best as he could. Neither of the other men were supposed to be getting up for another hour or so. It was even money that their respective staffs would wake them because of the message he had sent.
Captain Kelly walked to the head of the Dock. He could have asked for the use of one of the few cars they had or some other transportation, but he thought that might have drawn too much attention for what he needed to do. So he just walked a little faster than normal when he left his great ship tied in its spot on the jetty. He had always been a fast walker when he was off his ship, so something like this would go unnoticed by the majority of people who might see him. When he made it to the side of the commander of the Settlement's ground based military, the man had his finger to his ear, and eyes closed in either thought or concentration. Kelly made eye contact, but he would wait to find out what was going on.
Major Weston looked to the ship's captain now standing next to him when he finally finished receiving the report sent to him over his high tech micro radio and its earbud speaker. "Adama is on his way down, and on final approach, Sir. Do you think he is coming down because of something that happened in the rental house, or something else?" Major Weston was starting to worry that something bad might have happened between the Cylons and Dexter. Mike knew that Dexter thought of the Cylon called Tyrol as a friend. He thought it was like calling a brown bear a friend, and about as dangerous. Only about fifty people in the whole Settlement knew that Galen Tyrol was another human form Cylon. Dexter was not one of those that were in the know, after the interview that turned up that bit of information.
Kelly kept walking and just shrugged his shoulders in an indication of how he felt. It was a short walk to the center of the Settlement, and the location of the rental house. Kelly was about to knock on the door, when he heard the sound of the Raptor flying low overhead on its way to the landing pad outside of the wall. The sound stopped Kelly in his tracks and made him look up towards the sound going over his head. "It would seem that the Colonial craft made a least time approach today," thought Kelly and Weston as the sound faded away through the tall trees.
Kelly looked back down from tracking the sound of the Raptor, and made a sour face. "Major, we don't know what happened in there. Maybe having two people show up on their doorstep at the same time might be overkill, or even push them past the point of no return into something we cannot recover from. Do you mind having a seat at the picnic table? If something goes wrong, you're my surprise heavy backup. If the people coming in on the Raptor turn out to be not very friendly, you can stop them. And I can be the surprise reinforcements for you, if I hear any trouble brewing." Kelly's mind was working at a hundred miles per hour. He was betting on Dexter being okay. It did not make sense to him that the hidden Cylons would do something drastic, then call the Colonial commander down to help them out.
Major Weston was about to suggest that same plan, but it would be the Captain that was cooling his heels in safety at the picnic table. And it would have been him knocking on the door to the rental cottage with at least two Cylons inside. Major Weston had been around the block enough, to know that he could not herd this man. He knew that being honest was the best bet to try to win him over to his way of thinking. "I was thinking about the same thing. But the way I was looking at it, is that I'm more easily replaced. If the Cylons in the rental house decide that it is better to cause trouble, than you are Captain." Weston knew he had good points on the military and political arena. It was just a matter of whether this ship's master agreed with him or not.
Kelly smiled and checked his sidearm on his hip. He made sure his thick jacket that also doubling as his body armor was zipped up to his neck. The actions were meant to show Weston that he had a weapon and body armor that was good enough to stop any hand carried weapons that Colonials or Cylons were known to use. "My plan, my risk. If there is any." He used his head to point to the picnic table. When Major Weston moved out of the door line of sight, Kelly knocked hard twice on the wooden barrier. It was not bring the door down hard, but it should do the job today. It was loud enough to let whoever was inside know that the boss or a boss was outside the door and that he or she was waiting on them to allow entrance into the building. He was the wolf, and he was about to huff and puff at the door.
Tyrol and Sam were waiting in the kitchen, but also taking turns keeping an eye on things that were happening in the living room. The two people in the other room were back to drawing on the pads again, and it was unnerving the two men. When the men had checked on them during the last 'rest break', they noticed that they were getting low on paper in the pads they were using.
Sam pulled the last two pads of paper they had brought down from the battlestar out of the bottom of Starbuck's pack. He placed them on the table top, along with a selection of fresh pens just in case. They had no idea if the two workers would notice the new supplies or not. And it was not like they could ask them either, at least not without risking who knew what as blowback. Sam was starting to freak out again, and tried to watch the entertainment screen in an attempt to calm down. He felt the Admiral was taking too long to make his way down. He was just getting ready to ask Chief if they could try contacting the ship again. He stopped dead in his line of thought when two sharp raps on the heavy wooden door echoed throughout the cabin. To him they sounded like gun shots or maybe even the thunder claps from one of the Lords.
Sam jumped off of the tall bar stool like his genitals were on fire, and went to the door almost at a run. While he was almost running for the door, he pulled and worked the action of Starbuck sidearm, which he had attached to his hip after the earlier incident outside with the house lady. The sound of the knock was not any cleaning or cooking person, and he wanted to be prepared if it was not the Admiral. To Sam, it sounded a lot like the knock of the police stopping by because of a loud noise complaint or something along those lines. This was something that had happened to him more times than he could count in his wilder days as a young and not bad looking sports superstar. Now he was wishing it was only a noise complaint notice to be given out by the local law enforcement officer. Sam stopped before he ran face first into the wooden door. He looked through the little glass covered hole in the door, to try to see if it was the Admiral or more trouble that he feared it was.
Through the limited field of view made available by the peephole, Sam could see an older man in what looked like a military uniform of some kind. In short it was not the Colonial officers, whom he was hpping had rapped on the heavy wooden door. Sam had that sinking feeling, for no real reason, that he was looking at the Earther version of the elder Adama waiting for him on the other side of the door. He had heard a lot about the leadership of the Earthers, a lot more than most of the other Colonials had.
Sam almost opened the door right then, but something made him stop just as he was reaching for the metal latch and lock system. With side arm at the ready he looked back towards Tyrol, who had followed him down the short hallway to the door at a little slower pace than he himself had used. Sam was thinking about trying to scare or otherwise run off the person. But what if it was one of the three leaders of this group? That could be bad. Then something popped into his mind, out of the blue.
"Hey, Chief, do you know this guy?" Sam called out just loud enough to carry to the hallway's edge, that the Chief was now halfway standing behind.
Sam and Kelly heard, through the latter's artificial ear, a scrape of a shoulder rubbing against wood paneling from near the living room of cabin. Tyrol quickly walked the rest of the way down the hall towards the main door. He looked out the little glass covered peephole in the door and quickly jerked his head back like he had seen a Medusa in the flesh. His eyes were wide, as he took two quick steps back from the door like it might explode before he could clear the zone of threat. He was able to keep his voice low, just barely, and it still did not hide the fear that was dripping off every word that left his lips.
With a hoarse whisper he pointed over his shoulder. "That's Captain Kelly. He's one of the three leaders of the Earthers. He also commands their most powerful warship. Most of the Earthers think that he is the most powerful person amongst them." Tyrol started to pat his jacket without noticing, like he was looking for his little flask that had not been there in weeks. Sam saw a bit of sweat bead up on the other man's forehead, and it was followed by a second and a third bead of salt water. "Sam, I think we are in way over our heads."
Sam wanted to bolt, but knew he could not and he could not think of a place to bolt to that was safe on this planet. Maybe the Raptor landing area might work, but how would the three of them get out of the mostly locked gates between here and there? The part of Sam's brain that was kicking into gear, was the same one that had kicked into gear the day the Cylons attacked. He had never known that he had those types of skills before that day. They were what had turned his team into the most effective counter Cylon force on that side of the planet. That part also told him that that right now they were truly and totally frakked.
"Looks like we should have called Adama sooner." He took a breath, and gave a quick prayer to the Lords. He could count the number of times that he had prayed before the Fall on one hand. Afterwards he could not count how many times he had had to ask them for help, but he knew it was a lot. With that done, he opened the door wide with a great sweeping movement of his left arm pulling the metal handle. He had forgotten about the side arm in his right hand. That was a mistake.
Kelly could hear most of what was being said behind the heavy wooden door. He had had a high quality ear implant installed his ears almost a decade ago. Just because he could hear what was being said though, did not mean that he understood what was being said. He was about to knock on the heavy door again, when all of the sudden, the door flew open. Just as his fist was coming up to chest level on its way to striking the door again.
Kelly was now standing eye to eye with the newly discovered model of human form Cylon at a whole three paces distance. Oh and it was armed with the dual barrel pistol favored by the Colonial Military in its hand. This was when Kelly remembered that he did not have any body armor that could protect his face, and that this Cylon was a lot stronger than he was. It was a stunning moment for everyone involved at that very moment. Luckily both individuals froze as soon as the door was fully open to the cold morning air. If anyone of them had made a sudden movement, it might have turned out very bad for everyone.
Kelly's eye was locked on the weapon in the hidden Cylon's hand, and he could clearly see that the safety was not engaged on either barrel of the weapon. "Well maybe this was not such a good idea after all," thought Kelly. He did the only thing that came to his mind. He put his hands up a little, opened his palms, and started talking. He was able to keep his face very still, out of pure muscle memory, after the last three years as leader of these people. It had been a skill that he had been forced to use way to often in his opinion. "Morning, did I come at a bad time?"
Tyrol saw the Earther's hands go up, and then he noticed the sidearm that was still fully exposed in Sam's hand. From his location he could even see that the weapon was not on safe, and he already knew that it was fully loaded. Tyrol could feel his eyebrows start to move upwards of their own accord at the images playing out before his eyes. "This could go very bad," thought the Cylon that did not know he was a Cylon. As that thought went through his head, he did not know what his physical body was doing. He just moved smoothly, while one part of his brain took over from the one that normally controlled his body.
Tyrol walked quickly but quietly, sliding between Sam and the too close cottage wall. Then he reached down and touched the other man's arm near the elbow with what his mind judged to be just the right amount of pressure. This had the effect of making Sam look down at that arm, and notice the primed and ready to fire weapon that his fingers were still wrapped around. The blood rushed all the way to Sam's ears, and his mouth went into a large 'O' as he realized how it might look to the power player in sneezing range of him. And it matched the wide eyed look his eyes were giving the Earther Captain.
Sam jerked his head up and then to left and right. He knew that he had frakked up majorly. In a flash he thought what would Bill Adama have done if an Earther had opened a ship's hatch with a weapon like he had just done. With a shock he knew how the elder Adama would have reacted. Sam turned so red, that he could feel the heat coming off of his face. He could even feel it to start to come off the top of his head. It was like when he had been caught making out with his first girlfriend by her father instead of doing homework. He could not bring himself to say anything, yet. But he did slowly lower the weapon, and put it back into its holster on his hip. He had forgotten to put the weapon back on safe, but at least the weapon was no longer exposed. No longer threatening. Luckily it now matched the way that the Earther's weapon was carried.
Tyrol saw the movement of both the weapon and the muscles of Sam's face. Tyrol looked back to at least make eye contact with Captain Kelly. In the best English as he could, and as clearly as he could, he spoke to try to defuse the situation that had raised its ugly head seemingly out of nowhere.
"Sorry Sir, we've had a bad night, and my friends had a very bad first night in the Settlement. Would you mind coming back some time later? My comrades are having a harder than expected time fitting in with the different people that live in the village." Tyrol had no idea where the words were coming from, but not one of those words was exactly a lie. That in itself made it as amazing an attempt at wordsmithing as he had ever done in his life.
Kelly gave a sly smile, now that the pistol had been put away. Holstered at least, even if he suspected it was not on safe. He could see the man/Cylon that had been holding it turn visible shades of red in embarrassment. Now that things had a little less of a chance to turn bloody, he asked an open ended question. "Speaking of a bad night, one of my friends did not come home last night. The last time anyone seen him was late last night, and he had told some people that he was coming over here." Kelly raised one eye brow, and gave a smile at the two Colonials.
Kelly used his smile to defuse any sting that might have been in his words, and his arm to wave around indicating this rental cottage. "You wouldn't know anything about that. Mr. Tyrol?" Kelly did not give any names, but he was counting on them knowing exactly who he was talking about. It was something for the pair to think about. That the man was a friend of Captain Kelly's, and that he knew who he had last been seen with. Sometimes a modern ship's Captain had to be part detective, as well as a ship master.
Tyrol was giving him the old goat eating AstroTurf look, and so Kelly decided that he needed to keep talking after about fifteen seconds of silence. "I can see that you have no idea who I'm talking about." The sly smile was gone from Kelly's face, and it was now deadly serious. "Sorry. I believed everyone in the Settlement knew that already. That Dexter is one of my closest friends from back home, as well as having been one of my heavy weapons turret crews. I take it personally when something happens to him, both good and bad. If you know what I mean Mr. Tyrol?"
The threat was not said, and Kelly did not give anything that a lawyer could call a threat in a court of law. But the two Colonials were picking up the same vibe, which the Old Man gave when having dealings about Starbuck. They both had heard the stories and been in at least one of those stories. They had seen it firsthand, more than once.
Sam had no idea what was being said between the two men, but one word that he did pick up was the word Dexter out of all of the strange words flying around the doorway. Then Tyrol turned gray, and that was never a good sign for Sam. He reached over with his now empty gun hand, and pulled on the man's arm with a sharp downward tug of his coat sleeve. It worked to get Tyrol's attention, and hopefully buy some more time. He just wanted to delay things long enough, until the Admiral finally got there to bail them out of this nightmare. He had thought that he had heard a Raptor fly over not long ago, but the thick walls and roof had deadened the sound enough that he was not sure.
Tyrol did not even turn to look at Sam after the arm tug. He knew what the other Colonial wanted to know, and he repeated what Kelly had said in Caprican. Also wanting to delay things, he did the translation very slowly. He did not know if Sam wanted to delay things, but it seem like the smart move to make for one Galen Tyrol.
"Frak!" was the only thing that came out of Sam's mouth, as Tyrol told him what had been said between the Earther and Tyrol word for word. Much to his surprise, this got a bit of a soft laugh from the Earther Captain. Sam made a mental note about this Earther leader understanding the word he had uttered in Caprican. It reinforced the notion that these Earthers were picking up a lot more of his language than he was of theirs.
Captain Kelly had shifted a little when he looked towards Sam. It was a normal human response to look at whoever had said something. The movement lessened somewhat the amount to which he was blocking the open doorway. Through this larger gap, Tyrol saw what he hoped was his salvation closing in on the door to the cottage. Adama was almost to them, coming across the tree covered area, at not such a slow walk. Tyrol hit Sam in the ribs with an elbow softly, and used his chin to point to the approaching Colonial officer. He might have wanted to do that some way that was less obvious, but that was above his skill set as a deck chief. Not after the night he had just had.
Tyrol still felt that he wanted to buy some time to let his old commander finish closing the distance to the cabin. He did not want just to let them both into the rented cabin. He had gotten the feeling that this was what this Captain wanted, but he wanted to give his commander some time alone with the two people inside drawing away. Deep down he thought that would have been the best for everybody. "Sir, we've contacted the Admiral. He is almost here. Can you wait till we are done talking with our commander in private? We are not sure about having to deal with things at this high of a pay grade." He was talking to the Earther, but he was looking at what seemed like the slowly closing Colonial Admiral.
Kelly turned and looked in the direction that the human form Cylon had pointed to the other one, and saw the well-known Colonial officer closing rapidity on them. Kelly kept his face still, and tuned around to look back at the two male human form Cylons. "Hmmm, maybe we all should all hear what you three have to say, young man."
The look he gave to the two Cylons in hiding had melted more than one man into the deck plates, and amazingly, it worked on these two as well. Even though only one could understand the words he used, the tone and look seemed to have a universal effect. Tyrol also caught the number three, and knew that the Earther knew that Starbuck was still inside of the cabin. Tyrol visibly deflated at this knowledge.
Sam and the Chief just nodded, and waited for the Admiral, though they were still blocking the door, and access to the cottage it should have given. That is until the other officer could help them out from this very sticky situation. It was an impasse or Mexican Standoff as the Earther TV shows from the 20th century would have called it. This current batch of Earthers now called it a Pecos standoff, to better fit with what they knew of their new world.
Kelly did not want to push the taller, thinner, and fitter one of the two males. He looked like he was on the ragged edge of doing something... drastic. So he just waited for the officer and did not say another word for a while. Major Weston seeing the senior Colonial officer, and hearing as well as mostly understanding of what was being said could act to support his boss. He got in a better position, but still stayed out of line of sight from the door.
When the Admiral was closer, Weston stepped out and away from the bulk of the blocking building. He wanted it so that he could now be seen by the Cylons at the door, and that they knew someone was nearby and closing to support Captain Kelly if he needed it. He timed it within seconds of the Colonial officer reaching the door. It was very odd to have five people standing in an open door way, and not talking. It was starting to draw some looks from passersby. Even the odd couple playing a game across the way, had stopped what they were doing. As the number of eyes grew, the number of hands close to weapons also grew in number.
Weston pulled out one of the thin computers that they had loaded the translation software onto and powered it up for operation. A computer like this one almost never left the Major's side these days, even with his growing knowledge of Caprican and more of the Colonials picking up and using English over the last few months. He was hoping that this new one was a powerful enough system to be of use, but it had not been field tested yet. It could not make new word connections between the two languages, but it should be a good ninety percent solution to fill their current needs. If it worked, it was going to almost double the number of translation computers in use across both groups of humans. There was no test like being tossed into the deep end, after all.
Captain Kelly held out his hand to the Colonial Officer, but he did not smile or frown. He only addressed Adama with a tight lipped look, his tone as neutral as he could make it. "Admiral, it's good to see you again. Looks like we're both checking up on our people too early in the morning for them. I hope everything is going well, and you did not have any surprises waiting on you after our meeting last night?" This was Kelly's way of reminding the Colonial that he did remember that he was not due back planetside for some time.
Adama had not been surprised in the least at seeing one of the Settlement's leadership already there at the cabin. They might seem a little backward sometimes, but they could never be called mentally slow about looking after their people or anyone they had taken under their care. Bill took the other man's hand, and spoke slowly as was normal for high level Colonial/Earther greetings. He only planned on giving a noncommittal one in case things turned out badly. He had been working out what to say, and how to communicate in the event that something like this meeting did happen. He had been more than a little worried that it was not going to be easy, at least not at first.
However, as he looked over he saw another military man with a computer in his hands. That made things a little easier, and with a little computer to translate everything being said, Bill went straight to business after greetings were exchanged. "Looks like we both might have a long day today, Captain. Why don't we all go inside? Then we can find out what happened to our people last night." Bill had walked through a lot of people looking towards this cabin, and unlike Captain Kelly he had a better idea of what was going on. One thing that Bill knew was that he did not want to have too many strangers finding out about it.
The thin computer did its job, and translated the statement for the other two men to understand. In the time it took to do this task, Adama started looking around and noticed even more of the eyes that had turned their way and how close most of those hands were to weapons. Weapons that would have turned heavy marine body armor into so much confetti. Body armor that he was not wearing, nor any of his people for that matter.
Kelly listened to the device, then stepped off to one side and swept his arm to wave the Colonial military officer into the cabin ahead of him. He thought it might make things easier if the Colonial commander entered the home first. The procession going into the living room was led by the elder Adama, followed closely by Captain Kelly, Major Weston, Tyrol and Sam. Sam was the last person in line, because he had made sure that the door was locked and that no one else was coming into this explosive situation.
The group of men made a ring around the wood stump based coffee table and the leather couch that were the center pieces of the room. They all quietly stood and watched the two glassy eyed people draw on the pads of paper. As it turned out, Bill and Kelly got lucky with their timing. Within about ten minutes of their entering the living room, the two people set their pads and pens down and went to sleep again. Again one of the pair stretching out on the couch, while the other one stretched out on the wooden floor. Sam and Tyrol noticed that the way Dexter and Starbuck had moved, had a visible effect on the pair of officers. The two senior leaders did not say anything though, and only passed a knowing look between them.
Tyrol and Sam both checked their wrist watches almost at the same second, and looked at each other in amazement. It was Sam that spoke first of the pair. "That's different."
The tone told everyone that he was getting concerned for his wife. He looked at the two new Earthers in the room first, and then at Adama. "When they first met last night, it started. And I mean it started within seconds of those two meeting. I don't think they even said hello before it all went to frak. They've been drawing for two hours, sleeping for one hour, then repeating the cycle, down to almost the second. Unless I've forgotten how to tell time, they had over half an hour left before there were to go into their next sleep cycle." He started to scratch his chin, working the problem in his head. Nothing was making sense, and it was quickly driving him around the bend.
Tyrol was nodding his head in agreement, and scratching his greasy hair vigorously. He had gotten used to having a shower every day lately, and he was overdue for one. "That's what I thought too. Gods! I hate this frakking oracle stuff! I thought they were always full of crap, back in the day." Now it was Tyrol's turn to sound as if he was at the end of his rope.
Major Weston squinted his eyes a little, and looked at Kelly with a questioning look. He did not mean to say anything, it just slipped out. He should have turned off the computer, but he didn't so the whole room heard it. "Sir, that's a lot like what happened when Dexter and the Colonial President met that first time."
As soon as the words come out in Caprican, Weston looked down at the forgotten computer in his hands like it was a bomb or a snake. He looked back up to Kelly with a sheepish look on his face. He knew that he had just made a bad move. Or did he? When he looked into the eyes of Captain Kelly, they were not giving him that much of a warning look at what he had said.
The two senior men were not too happy, but for different reasons with the Major's statement and translation of his words. Adama did not like it that now, at least two more people knew about what happened with Roslin in that first meeting with the Earthers. Kelly was not happy that now two human form Cylons in hiding might know something about the closely held details of the meeting with President and Dexter. What would the Cylons do, if they knew that a certain pair of people might have something of a strategic value to both groups of humans? Maybe more of a strategic value than they normally had, more than the Cylons had known about before.
Kelly looked at the other military man. "He's right Admiral." He went into full Captain mode now and his body language subtlety changed. "Admiral Adama. I think we might want to limit the number of people who might know about this subject. I don't want to risk too much of this getting out to the rest of our people. It could get out of hand very quickly if they or we do not have all of the facts at our finger tips. You know that we will be asked some very pointed questions, if that happens." He pointed to the two sleeping people to reinforce what he was referring to.
Adama was thinking the same thing, but was still working out how to ask that same question to Captain Kelly. "Yes, I agree Captain Kelly. How do we do that?" Bill Adama was out of his depth, and he hoped that the other man had some idea on how to do just what he had suggested.
It they had been aboard one of this warships or any ship in what was left of the Colonial space assets, he would just have had the pair of Colonials confined to a cabin, if not the nearest brig for a few hours. But he would have come up with something to slow the pace of the leaking that he knew was about to reach the level of a full blown flood in the very near future.
Kelly reached out with a steady hand, and took the thin computer from Weston's hands. He used a softer almost normal voice to address the military commander. "Major, why don't you take these two gentlemen out, and go get something hot to eat for all of you. I will call you when the Admiral and I are done here."
The look Captain Kelly gave the Major was the same look the Admiral was giving to his two people. The little computer translated those words and both Tyrol and Sam look like they had been slapped in the face. All three of the males knew that they were not to return until they were summoned back. That the two senior leaders were not to be interrupted, at least not unless it was for literally earth shattering reasons.
Their wishes made clear, Adama and Kelly turned away from the other three men who were clearly not happy with how things were going for very different reasons. Sam did not want to leave his wife, whom he felt would be in distress with anyone other than himself. That included the Old Man, no matter how much he respected the Admiral. Tyrol also did not want to leave because he felt that he might be blamed for what had happened to the two people, and he would not be there to defend himself. Major Weston was not happy, because he was the ground force commander of all of the Settlement's forces. So he did not like it when he was kept in the dark about things. Any of the things that could get him a terminal case of the deads, he wanted to have a hand in planning.
In the end all three men left the building as commanded, though not one had a smile on their face. One that the thought of a hot meal should have brought to their faces. Orders were orders, and these two commanders were not known to take it very well any time those orders were ignored or questioned for no good reason. Adama would have said that they looked like three wiped Daggits with their tails between their legs as they left the cottage. If things were not so serous, the two commanders might have shared a good laugh at how those three faces looked as they left the building. Sam especially, had the hound dog face as he closed the heavy wooden door behind him. He shot one last look at the Admiral hoping that he might get a reprieve from the exile they had been sent to. It did not happen, and Bill just gave him a sweeping motion with one hand at the look.
Now that they were alone, both commanders let down their guards a little. It was not too much, but it was some. It was also an unconscious show of trust between the two men in this stressful situation. Kelly was the first to speak after they heard the front door close, and lock behind the small group of exiles. "So Admiral let's see what our people have been doing all night." Kelly received a nod of agreement from Bill and a slight smile.
By an unwritten and unspoken agreement, each picked up the pad of paper that was nearest to his subordinate. Kelly picked up the pad near Dexter, and Adama walked over and picked up the one that was nearest to the loudly snoring Starbuck. Bill had to keep from smiling as he looked at the sleeping woman. He had known she had a tendency to snore like a Viper on turbos in an atmosphere. It would seem that they had understated the comparison. She could have drowned out an out of tune battlestar's jump engine.
Each pad was within one or two pages of being full of line drawings on each off white page, front and back. Each person had made almost sixty full pages of those line drawings. It was an impressive amount of work for just for one night. Kelly had no idea what he was looking at as he flipped through the pad of paper. He was hoping to get some clue to what was going on with his old crewmember. With the Colonial military commander here, his gut told him that whatever had happened last night, it was a major event.
Out of the corner of his left eye he saw the Colonial Admiral moving to the kitchen with his legal pad in hand, so Kelly followed only a step or three behind him. They let the two people sleep while they tried to work on this problem that they had been given by the pair of sleepers. The only thing that they were sure of right now, was that there were some strange things going on to their people. It would seem that this group of humans were being given help by powers unknown and more disturbing, for reasons unknown.
Adama put the pad of legal length paper down on the thick hard wood bar top, and reached into an inside pocket of his uniform jacket for something. He had made sure to grab it when Sam said something about the pair drawing on pads of paper. The jacket was a little too form fitting, and cut shorter than most Earth based uniforms. So Kelly did not think he was pulling out a weapon of any kind, but the arm and hand movements caught his eyes. What the Colonial pulled out of that hidden pocket, were two folded pieces of paper. Bill made sure that he first carefully unfolded, than used the bar top edge to get most of the fold lines out of pages. He did not even look up over his glasses when Kelly put his pad of paper next to his on the bar top. Bill was thinking that it was going to take both of them to put the little puzzle together.
After watching Adama for a few long seconds, and seeing him go back and forth between his two pages, and the pad of paper. Kelly wanted to know what might be going on. He put the computer table between them. "So Adama, it looks like you think you're on to something." Kelly gave the shrug of what was called the Intel salute by some of his people. "Me, I have no idea off the top of my head about any of this." He started tapping the top page of the pad of long paper.
"Frak this guy is good," thought the Admiral. "He's not even visibly fazed by the strangeness of all of this. Even after being caught more flat footed, like I suspect he had been." Bill was still hunched down toward the bar, but was looking at the Earther. "My people gave me a heads up about the drawing, before I came down. I picked up my copy of what Dexter and Roslin had done before just in case they might be useful."
Adama flipped through the top couple of long yellow pages, "If you look here and here." He pointed to the loose page he was on, one of the first pages in the thick pad of paper. "Those are some of the central structural support members on my flagship. I think they might even be the ones on my starboard side used to connect the thrust frame to the hangar pod."
Now that this information was pointed out, Kelly could start to make some sense to what he was seeing on the pad that Dexter had worked on. It was like someone had pulled the blind fold off of him. "Okay now I see it. Do you think these could be some kind of building diagrams, to help facilitate the modifications to your ship? What you said last night would take years and a professional staff to do? It would seem that someone is still pushing us along down the river when we hit strategic level roadblocks. I just hope that we are not being pushed off a cliff or something along those lines." The last part had been very low, but was still picked up and translated by the little computer on the bar top. Kelly knew from personnel experience, that powerful beings did not just do things to help mortals, not without some kind of major benefit to them.
Adama looked up, and took his reading glasses off and sighed as he rubbed the temple on one side of his face. "Could be. I'd have to study them more closely to be sure. Then I'd want to compare them to the Battle Damage Control database. But that is what I'm thinking they really frakking are. I'm not even going to touch on who might be helping us. From what I understand from my briefings, your people are used to dealing with things... Let just call them, more on the strange side of things than 99.99 percent of my people."
Kelly was looking at the pages on his pad again, but his mind was on something else. He was trying to figure out how to turn the discussion in a new direction. One he was not sure the Admiral might like that much. But it was one that they needed to address now that another Cylon that was still in hiding was found. "Admiral you're the expert in spaceship construction among what is left of your people. What if the Cylons got their hands on this data, could they use it against us and by us I mean your warship?"
Adama was looking down, and again comparing some of the pages of line drawings. He made a face that was not happy one before half turning to look at the other leader with a very level gaze. It was one that he would give to someone that was his equal or someone who he highly respected. Again Bill was glad he had that little computer for them to work things out.
"If the Cylons had these drawings, we would be so frakked, it wouldn't be funny. These diagrams look to show armor thickness, weapons points, and even the main support lines I think. All of the things that make a ship a ship, and not a death box moving around in space. I wish we had this amount of detail on their current generation of Basestars. I could pinpoint where the best places were to target. I would even know how much firepower it would take, all the way down to the pound of energy output needed to do a given job. After we were able to recover our first mostly intact Heavy Raider, and study it, our kill ratio went up forty-six percent against that class of craft. When one of our pilots recovered a Raider, our kill rate went up about thirty-five percent, but out counter Raider gun kills over doubled."
Kelly was looking at the other man. "That's what I thought. It's much same way with surface ships in my experience. I remember when we recovered our first Kittani War Crab. made getting a more intact second specimen a lot easier. After that, we could pop them, no problem. If things would have worked out differently, getting a look at that one Kittani War Shark. Man that would have been really something to write home about." Kelly was looking at the other end of the kitchen, but he really was not seeing it. He was thinking of a bright blue sky, with a huge moon coming up as the sun set on those warm salt water waves.
He gave himself a shake after too many seconds of daydreaming. Kelly leaned back on the bar stool, almost to the point that it would fall over backwards if his sense of balance was not as good as it should be. He crossed his arms and gave the other naval officer a look and tried not to bite his lower lip as he worked on the right words to say. "How many different human form Cylons did you say there were?" Now Kelly had to wait to see how this was going to work out.
Adama's head shot up, and then over to the computer screen to make sure he had heard the words right. He squinted at the other ship's commander. He felt that this was a trap of some kind, it just had to be. This Earther did not seem like a man who needed to be reminded about something like that. So he must be missing something. The question was, was it as important as it might now seem to be at least to this man?
Bill took the time to read the words twice before he addresses them. "Twelve? What are you driving at Captain Kelly?" He pitched his tone just so, and gave the man a questioning look that was also not hostile. That was a hard look to pull off, but one Bill Adama had had years to work on. He hoped the other man would catch them. Even though they spoke differently, and came from completely different cultures as well, as well as 'only' coming from two different planets. Bill felt like it was his turn to feel completely out of his depth, and he so did not enjoy the experience.
The two men were looking eye to eye now, and only a few feet apart. Kelly was not intimidated at all by being this close to someone like Bill Adama. "Twelve and yet we only have images of only eight of the different Cylon models in human form. The Cylons that we have talked to, all same mostly say the same thing and that there are a dozen of them. But they can only remember the eight faces that both of our people have seen on this planet. Now some of them talk about a group, that they called the Final Five. They at first only would talk about that among themselves, when they thought we could not hear or understand them. Do you know what they may look like?"
Adama sat back in his chair, and his eyes were even narrower now, as he read as well as listened very closely to what Kelly was saying. "What was he diving at? He wants to say something, but he is trying to figure out the best way to cover it. Strange," thought Adama to himself before addressing the issue.
"We have been told something similar and more than once. But to tell you the truth, we have not spent much time or effort into looking deeper into that issue. What do you know, it seems like you have had some people taking the time to dig into this? I think for such a small group, you all spend a lot of time pounding about the oddest things." The tone on the last part of the statement was sharper than he wanted it to come out. But it was out in the open now, and there was nothing Bill could do about it. He had only said what he and Roslin had been talking about just last night.
"Well let's get this over with", thought Kelly with a thin lipped look on his face. "Admiral my people have been dealing with cybernetics for a long time. Maybe we've known about it even longer than you and your people have been dealing with them." Kelly gave a slight smile to take the sting out of his words. "Yes, we know about the stuff your people were working on. Before the cylons rebelled against you, and when they went AI Skynet on your people."
When the Colonial only looked at Kelly and remained quiet, he kept talking. "We did some test runs on some of our more specialized equipment, back when we first found out about the human form Cylons. We had been calling them clones, until we found out what your people called them." Kelly stopped talking and tried to look relaxed, but he was far from relaxed.
"We have a way of finding Cylons. Even if they are disguise by anything like major surgery. And by that, I mean even if they have been surgically altered in any way. We can find them, without them even knowing that they have been found out by us. The devices are all part of our advanced medical kit for our combat medics." Kelly could see that this was going to need some explanation to the Colonial commander after those words had left his mouth. With a slight shrug he continued, explaining briefly it worked and why something like it was ever devised in the first place.
"On the battlefield were we come from, sometimes you run across someone who is hurt. And they are hurt too badly to tell you their basic medical information. You need to a way to save their lives. So you had to be able to find it, to help heal them. It turns out these devices work just as well on the Cylons that we have run against also. I think you remember my ships doctor explaining something along those lines when you're President had her issue on our first meeting?" Kelly was watching the other man as closely as he could with every word he spoke.
Adama was gobsmacked, and his jaw as hanging open in the warm dry air of the cottage. Had he just been told that this group of humans had a Cylon detector of some kind? More to the point they claimed to have one, and they claimed that it worked in the real world. On top of that, they might have found more of the human form Cylons. Ones that not one of his people had even thought to look for, yet. The last part was just conjecture on his part, and then he decided to be blunt and get more information from the Earther.
"You have found the rest of the human models? These Final Five, you just referred to?" He did not want to ask more about this Cylon detector, not just yet. He had been sold one of those before, but this time it was not coming from that little frakker Baltar. And he did not have to turn over a nuclear weapon to have one made. He was hoping that he was not going to have to lose another major weapon to finally get a workable and real Cylon detector. At least these people would not be likely to turn a nuke over to a Cylon. He would not have to worry about losing another of the ships in his little rag tag fleet.
Kelly knew he had to tread carefully for the next little bit, or he was going to cause more problems than he was trying to fix at the moment. At least on the short term, but long term? Who knew? Maybe their guardian would step in again. "Maybe. The reason I bought it up, is because I don't want the Cylons finding out about this. And they might be able to find any weakness on your main warship. They might even be able to do this without getting back to their main fleet. We agree that if the Cylons are able to find this data, and exploit it, the first time we run into them again, it might turn out to be the last fight for your people and mine along with them."
Adama was still having hard time, wrapping his head round the part about being able to find any hiding Cylons that might be left and still hiding among what was left of humanity. If he accepted that as a fact, then his mind quickly ran down the ways that they could wipe the rest of them out of the universe. It was a long list of ways, and some were more likely than others. All of the lines on that list ended up with all of the humans dead. "Maybe? Captain Kelly either you have found them, or you have not. Which one is it? I don't like playing games. Just tell me what you're trying to say. Do not treat me like a tylium refinery in a bad mood."
Kelly made a face, and his lips went into a tight line. He was about to tell the first bald faced lie to this man. He was not happy about that, even if it was only a little one for the good of both groups of survivors. "We wanted to do more testing, before we blast about what we might or might not be able to do to the press and the like. I think the last thing we need is a witch hunt among our peoples to take hold and burn everyone out of house and home." For the next fifteen minutes, Kelly had to explain what a witch hunt was. And that he had seen it happen before on his home planet.
Adama had his mental feet under him again, after using the time to find out what the other man had meant by a term that he had used. "Okay Captain. I don't think you're the type to bring something up, without a plan or deeper reason for it. How about you just tell me in plain language what you want, and seem to have already put some planning into doing. That we can talk about it like commanders, and not like overpaid politicos or someone who has spent too much time in an ivory tower."
Kelly hoped that he was not going to torpedo the still young relationship between his people and the Colonials. He sat up a little straighter, and let his arms fall to the bar. It was as relaxing a pose as he could make, without taking that much of the emphasis away from the dangers they were in. "What has been brought up as a final test of the devices, is that you bring down twenty random people, or so to be tested. We will have twenty of our own people, which will join that control group of Colonials. We will have both of our medical personnel run the test, on all of the people in the total control group. I would like to keep it small, so maybe only two medical personnel to come from each of our different groups to run the tests. The raw data will be made available for release to your people only by your say so. The Triumvirate will control the data release to my people. We will tell you before it is released to the general public, and we hope you would do the same."
Kelly took a breath because the next part was going to be the ugly part. "I would like to have these four people specifically in your group for the testing that is going to happen." He had picked up the thin computer, and did some work on the screen that Adama could not see from the way that Kelly was holding the device. Kelly and a lot of other people, had been putting a lot of brain power and days plotting out how to work this idea. Now after finding the new hidden Cylon, the list went from three to four. No one had wanted to think about what were the odds that all five of the missing models would be in this little sample from the Colonies of Kobal.
When the screen was turn back towards the Admiral. Bill felt his blood pressure heading towards the roof, strapped to an out of control Viper with its turbos stuck on full. The screen had four very clear and detailed images, all in one display. The top left one was an image of Anders walking through the Settlement's gate, next an image of Tyrol eating at a table outside on a sunny day. On the bottom row was an image of Tory Foster and the last image was none other than Saul Tigh.
Bill had no idea who, how, or when these images were taken. He had not noticed anyone taking those images, and as far as he knew. Saul had only been dirt side one time. Bill made a note to be on a better lookout, about what might be going on around him. It would seem that these Earthers were keeping some closer eyes on the Colonials. A lot closer than what the Colonials were doing to the Earthers visiting their ships. One part of Bill's mind was a little disturbed about this, and he felt a little violated at being stealthily watched so closely. Another part of his brain reminded him of the security system that was being refitted on the larger warship and civilian ships just before the war had started again.
Adama was fighting not to yell, so his voice came across just strained, as a few select words left his lips. "Captain Kelly, I don't know if this is some kind of joke. If it is, it's in extremely bad form. I take it that you think these four might be some of the missing human form Cylons that you were referring to earlier?" He could only put a few words together in each breath as he spoke, he was frakking pissed! It was just lucky that he had been dealing with the Quorum for so long, that he had picked up more than just some political skills in those dealings.
Kelly could tell that the other man was about to explode in anger. His voice was getting softer and softer as he had spoken. All the time as he said those short sentences. The information they had put together about this Colonial said this was not a good sign. Kelly had to keep his own voice level and his eyes locked with the other man's. "Admiral, this is not a joke. I don't expect you to believe me. You have only known me for a little while. And the pair of us have only been working together for a short amount of time, at least by how you measure time, around the bigger picture of things."
Kelly could see that the anger was not visibly escalating, for now. "That is why we want to do this complex test, with an almost random mix of personnel put together in this test group. And running the test with half of the testers as your people, and allowing them to have access to all of the raw data. As well as having a copy of all of the tests, no matter who is in the control group. Trust me. I hope like frak we are wrong! But what if we were right? And we did not say something to you about it? Exactly how much damage could they do to us, all of us again? Our people cannot afford to take many chances, not from now on. So ask yourself Admiral? Do you want to chance it that, we are right?"
Kelly took a deep breath through his nose, and he felt his lips turn down a little more than he would have preferred. But he did not want to overschool his features. "A little testing now, could prevent a major disaster later. If were wrong, then we're wrong, and we would be keeping the testing as low-keyed enough that it should not be a major issue. But we need to run the tests, and spend the effort now to try to make sure that we do not have any Cylons still spying on us. Or waiting to do something to us, that we both will regret later." Kelly was referring to all of the sabotage that the other human forms had done early in the surprise attack.
Adama had it back under full control. He had been thing again about the frakked up Cylon tester Baltar had tried to build. That might have colored his response to Kelly all without the rest of his brain knowing it. They were not claiming to be right. They only said that something suspicious had come up, and they wanted to do some control testing just to make sure before it was too late. These Earthers were bending over backwards. Only to make sure that everything was on the up and up, when it came to dealing with his Colonials. There was not much more that you could ask for. Even under Colonial law, the owners of a planet could demand any medical testing they wanted done on any visitors to that planet. The idea was that if you did not want to do the testing, then you did not go to that planet. This had stopped more than one major outbreak of disease in their history.
Adama felt his head moving up and down a little, agreeing to what had been said. "We could say they need to come down for a party. I can have Roslin use this as some kind of reward, and select the people to come to the 'VIP party'. I will have to let our ships Doctor know what is going on with this testing. I will have to talk him, and anyone he wants to pick as his second person. That will to be our two medical people to help with the testing. I will have him contact your medical testing team to work out any issues. I will also be one of the ones to be tested in the group." The last part was a command, and left no doubt that it was a not in any way a suggestion. If these people wanted to do some mass medical testing, he was going to go through it right along with the rest of any of his people. No one in the future would ever be able to say with any proof, that he had his people do something that he was not prepared to do himself.
Kelly just smiled an evil grin, and his tone was light, as some light twinkled in his eyes. "We checked you out already Admiral, but if you want to have another test done. That's fine with me. If we do prove that they are Cylons, and they are still hiding with in your group. What do we do with them?" Kelly had an idea of what the response was going to be, but he had to ask any way.
When he only got a puzzled looked from the Colonial, Kelly put his idea on the table. "We were thanking that they are your people, but since they are off of your ships when we do the testing. They should fall under our laws and jurisdiction, by your legal precedent. The problem is that three of them are in very high profile position among your people, so we need to have a GTHP." Kelly saw that Adama was having a problem with the term or word that he had just used. With a sly smile on his face, and in a move to more to defuse some more of the tensions building up between them he clarified the term that he thought might have caused the issue.
"That is what we call a Go To Hell Plan". It is what you do, when it's all going to Hades in a hand basket as you call it. When all of your other plans have failed, it's your last throw of the dice to pull a win out of the teeth of the monster."
Adama looked at the images again, and took another deep calming breath. He tried to come up with something to say. He could feel that the anger was building again, and this time it was not directed at Kelly, but at one image that was standing out to him on the little electronic device. "Normally I would say that something like this would fall under Laura's area. Personally I would say blow them out of the nearest airlock. But how about we do the same thing, that you did to those others human cylons? I understand it was very inventive, and scared the frak out of not only Cylons. A lot of my people are thinking that you might do the same thing to them."
Kelly laid both of his salt weathered hands flat on the hard wood bar top. Kelly was hoping that it was finally time to do some horse trading. This was what he was hoping for, since that first big meeting with the Colonial leadership. "We put those Cylons to death, for major crimes under our laws. If you have proof that any other Cylons have done major crimes to your people, then maybe we can look into something like that as the punishment, but only if it fits the crimes they have been proven to have committed. If not, and we take them, then we will treat them like any of the other Cylon POW's that we have control over. And we will treat them just like any other prisoner of war we have dwelt with. If that is what they are, or we will be deciding what to do by our people and the laws we live under." This was Kelly's opening offer, and he had few areas that he could trade on. But this was where he had been asked to start the negotiations.
Adama's head cracked like a whip as he craned his neck to look at the other man, and away from the thin computer with the images still on display. "What are you frakking talking about?" He could feel the heat rising again and the old school Colonial Military man fought to keep himself under some kind of control. Part of his mind was trying to believe that his longtime friend and second in command to his ship, was suspected to be a human form Cylon. It was starting to slow down his mental capacity, as his mind was being slowly over loaded with emotions.
"Crap. He's not thinking this all the way through," thought Kelly. "Think about it Admiral. Your people and our people, both have run into Cylons that wanted to switch sides away from the models of Cylons that are leading this war against humans. If, and I say again IF. Colonial Tigh is a human form Cylon, then why didn't he turn us in to the Number Ones at the beginning of our contact with him. Or say let slip about our attack plans to the Number One called John, a few days before he left in his flagship? He had his hands in over ninety percent of all of the battle and support plans, up to the day you launched your returning attack." Kelly was trying to put some logic on the table as a possible reason, or action to the observed facts of Colonel Tigh's behavior.
Kelly looked around, and was wishing that he could get some water for his suddenly dry throat. Instead he reached down and pulled a canteen of fruit juice, that luckily was still attached to his uniform top since this morning. After wetting his throat, he passed the still almost full canteen to Adama. Bill refused the container with a slight head shake. He could smell the juice, but he did not feeling like over stressing his bladder, if he did not need to.
Kelly did a slight shrug, put the canteen away, and stated talking again. "Now this Foster is your Presidents right hand, and has been for some time. She must have had a ton of information, on what we were doing out here after we made contact. Like those tunnels we were using to get supplies to your camp under the Cylon's noses. Oh they had been built and managed by Colonel Tigh, but let's go back to your President's Assistant. She could have easily diverted our style of body armor, or maybe even a few weapons to the Cylons we were both fighting at any time."
Kelly now did a little change of subject on the Colonial. "How long do you think that the Cylons would need to make a copy, of one our pulse laser weapons? And then put it into mass production or even into limited production of some kind?" Kelly raised an eyebrow at the Admiral, as he finished connecting a few of the dots for the other military man.
Adama had that tight lip thing he did when he knows he was wrong about something that he did not want to be wrong about. He did not use it often, but it had come up a few times over the last year or so. When he could not avoid giving an answer, he had to relent and say what he did not want to. "They could have done it a lot faster, than we can do the same thing. How do you know we can trust them? Or what if the human forms prove to be some other people on my ships? How would you address something like this among your people?" Adama had just punted the problem, one part of his mind reminded him.
Kelly laughed and his smile reached his eyes for the first time since the sun had come up today. "Trust? Hell no, we won't trust them. Well at least not yet, and maybe never fully for things that can really hurt us. I think that would be a very hard sell, unless we find some, pardon the pun, earth shattering information of some kind. Look Adama we have a saying back home. One that I've fully believed in for some time. Trust, but verify the hell out of them."
"We could also use another old one. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer. Whoever comes up positive on the cybernetics test, I say we separate them as soon and as safely as we can. We put them in a nice out of the way place, and then question them when we have the time. I think we need to find out what they know. We know from talking to the other Cylons we've captured or talked to that most of the sleeper agents don't even know they're Cylons. That is unless they are triggered somehow. I take it that you will turn over all of the people that test positive as Cylons, for us to handle?" Kelly kept his eyes leveled at the Admiral, he was now glad that the computer recordings were legally binding as any written contract. "Thank you Coalition States and your drive to kill reading," thought Kelly as he watched Bill Adama.
"This might not be workable, but it is a good idea. We've also already set a precedent, when we had let them take over the handling of all prisoners." Thought Bill, as he worked out a few different angles in his head. It would keep any hidden Cylons safer, in case someone like Cally went nuts and shot them in the face again. It would also give the Earthers something they seem to want badly, and he could use that later to get something the Colonials need equally as bad.
Bill went from stone still to moving and talking again. "Done," was his one word reply, at the same time giving his consent to the idea. "I am going to have to make sure Laura has had a few drinks in her, before I tell her about what I have just done. She might want to keep them, for pushing out of the airlock," thought the elder Adama to himself as he made sure that he had his best poker face on. He was careful not to let anything show on his face.
He felt his face start to lose control as his mind started to wonder again. He asked a question to give him some cover, if it slipped too much. His body was telling him that he was in a highly distressed situation and that he needed to get out of it as quickly as he could. "So when would we have this event? It would need to be pretty soon. I don't know about your people, but this..." He pointed towards the living room and the two sleeping people there. "...Will get out sooner rather than later, and then we will be open to the damage done to our little secret by any remaining Cylons we do not have under some kind of control."
Kelly smiled at the other man who was going for the main idea that his people had come up with hook, line, and sinker as they used to say. He just hoped that it did not turn out to be a repeat of the case of when the dog finally caught the hover car. "How about in three days? We can use Warehouse One as the event place for it. We have used it before for something similar, and it would not take long to get it set up again. The numbers we were talking about before, are about a third of what we have hosted there before for a rewards dinner."
Adama just nodded, and made a note on a piece of paper, which he put back in his pocket, so that he would remember the high points of this conversation. "Agreed," this was again his one word reply to Captain Kelly. He had not even thought that much about how some might think that this was a civil matter and should have been handled by Laura. Or worse, that it might have fallen under the Quorum's purview to make an agreement like this.
Before more could be talked about, they were interrupted by a new threat in the cabin. All of a sudden, noises started to come from the living room. Before the pair of leaders could get within full sight of living room again, the shouting started, and was getting louder by the second. Almost all of it was coming from a well-known female voice. This was both good and bad, neither man knew if any of the people in the other room was armed or not.
"Who the frak spiked my drink! I'm going to seriously frak someone up. Who the frak are you? And why are you lying on the floor, you dumb frakker?" There were a few seconds of quiet, that most people who knew the voice would have known was not a good sign. Then the quiet was broke by a bellow that should have shaken the roof off of the cabin.
"FRAK ME! Get out of my way grunt!" Adama and Kelly were almost taken off their feet by the low flying projectile named Kara Thrace, as she made the corner at just below light speed. She did not make eye contact with any of the two men. She just ran through them, and into the open bedroom door behind the officers.
She was just a blur of pumping legs and arms as she went by. She did not even shut the door behind her. The pair of leaders did not need to ask questions about what she was doing. They could hear almost everything, as she just barely made it to the large bathroom near the bed in time. From behind them they heard another door open and close. This was the one that led to the other bedroom and bathroom combination for this rental unit.
Kelly regained his feet, and gave the other man a sly smile. He replayed what had just happened from a God's eye point of view, and it was extremely funny. That is if you looked at it a certain way, and you had the sense of humor that God gave at least a goat. "Guess they've snapped out of their trance. Want to place a bet on what they will remember from it?" Kelly raised one eyebrow to emphasize the humor as he dusted the seat of his pants off of any dirt it might have just picked up off of the floor.
Adama just shook his head side to side, and he felt a sly smile coming to his own craggy face. He also thought what had just happened to them to be funny, and after so long on the run, his funny bone was easy to tickle, in private. "No Bet. After the last time I was around someone talking to the Gods, I've been talking to people who said they've dealt with an oracle before. She should happy and thankful that she was lucky enough to make it to the bathroom, or can remember her name. After what they've been through, they should be happy that they were not bleeding or otherwise leaking out of every orifice of their bodies." Bill shuddered, unable to hold back the images flashing in his head. The list of possible reactions of an oracle coming out of a trance was long, and not very pretty at the best of times. In fact they read like something out of a horror story or someone with a very warped mind might have dreamed up.
Kelly was doing his best not to laugh, but it was a hard battle to win. Besides, it did not help Kelly to keep a straight face that they could still hear Starbuck ranting and raving like a madwoman in the bathroom only one wooden door away. No one could ever say that she did not have a way with the Colonial language. That ranting and raving kept going right up to the second she returned to the living room threshold. She stopped dead in her tracks, now seeing her boss standing in the room, illuminated by an overhead skylight. In her mad rush to the bathroom, she had not noticed who she had almost run over on her way to emptying her bladder.
She quickly responded in true Starbuck fashion, with the first thing that popped into her mind falling right out of her mouth. "Sir, what the frak are you doing here?" Starbuck was very rarely at a loss for words, but she was having one of those rare moments now. That short string of words, were all of the words that she could string together in any way... for now.
Adama was trying to look stern, hoping that he could get her to stop. That is before she did something, Starbuck-ish. Plus it was sometimes fun when a commander could mess with one of his subordinates without crossing any of the many lines that normally blocked such events from happening. "Captain Thrace, this is one of the three leaders of the Earthers on this planet, Captain Kelly." He pointed to the stranger beside him, who was also in a strange uniform. The stranger had an equally stern look on his face as he made eye contact with the Viper jock still trying to zip up her pants.
Kara straightened up a little as she understood the importance of the words Bill had just said. Her quick mind was trying to remember or just plain get back to normal functions again. What could she have done last night to have both the Admiral and one of the Earther leaders in her rented place? She was not finding anything, but a big gray hole in her memory after they had returned from the Gambling Hall last night. She did not think she had done anything wrong, but the Old Man would not have flown down from his damaged Flagship unless she had done something major, and worse, had been caught doing it. She was kicking herself. She had only drunk two whole drinks with alcohol in them all night! This was just not frakking fair!
"Sir's I don't know what I did last night, but I did not mean to. Someone must have spiked my drink, when I was playing cards last night." She looked at Adama with pleading eyes, but her tone was not whinny at all. "Sir, you have to believe me. I was not causing any trouble. Just ask Anders, he's around here somewhere." She started looking around the areas of the cabin that she could see, but her husband was nowhere to be seen. One part of her mind, noted this to her, as another bad sign about whatever happened last night.
After looking around the cabin, she returned her gaze back to the Admiral. "I was even keeping count on the number of drinks I had, just in case. I swear to the Lords, Sir. I was only just starting to feel them, when we left the Hall. I did not even get a warning or anything. It's all just... grey. I remember all of the frak I raised about wanting to buy my silver bar back. I remember walking back to this place. I even remember someone knocking on the door after I updated my log book on expenses and winnings. After that, it's all just gone!"
Adama was in full bully mode, and used this tone to intimidate her. He knew she would pay him back later for this. Bill knew this from watching Saul and her go at it for a few years now. He knew that you had to take the points when you could get them with Kara. "Captain Thrace why don't you sit down, and tell us everything you can remember about last night."
Bill tilted his head down to look over the top of his glasses at her, and his mouth was just a thin line. "And don't leave one word out, or we will know about it Captain." Inside Bill Adama was having a good time, and was having a hard time keeping his face in the game. He knew how good Starbuck was at gambling, and the slightest slip would blow the game he was playing this morning.
Kara just sat down at the command, and was about to start talking when the other bedroom door opened almost on cue. Kelly turned and pointed an accusing finger back to the bedroom. Dexter's eye went wide when he saw his Captain, standing in the living room he had vacated only a few minutes before. Kelly did not have to say a word when he pointed off to one direction with a slight wave of that one finger.
Dexter knew that he was supposed to go back to the bedroom, and that they would talk to him when the Captain was ready. He would just have to wait to see what had happened to bring Kelly off his ship so early in the morning. The one advantage he had over Starbuck, was that he had already been through this routine a number of times before this morning. So he knew what was coming, if not how long it would take until his grilling was going to start.
The first thing he wanted to take care of was important. He closed the bedroom door, and was going to go spend some time in the bathroom again. Then he had to find some pain killers that should be somewhere in the bedroom. Once he found them, he needed to find some food and water to fill the empty spot in his belly. If all else failed, then he could always just go back to sleep for a while, as he waited for his grilling to start. "At least I have a TV this time", he said out loud to an empty room. He activated the entertainment device, and tried to make the best of the situation he had found himself in again. He would be sleeping, stretched out on the top blankets of the bed in no time.
Kelly and Adama watched as the man turned, and reenter the bedroom that he had just exited. When the door closed behind Dexter, they returned their gaze back to Starbuck sitting on the couch. And she was not enjoying the looks coming from the two highly ranked officers. Kelly was also starting to enjoy this little game that the Colonial commander was playing.
Starbuck looked back and forth between them. She had the look on her face that said she knew she was so frakked. "Well, at least the frakker Colonel Tigh is not hanging around here somewhere," was exactly what she had thought to herself. She would have told Bill Adama more of her secrets, than even her husband knew, but she was not alone with only 'The Adama.'
"Sir, I don't think this is something that we might want to get out to people. You know, that are outside your command." She could not help, but shoot a glance over to the Earther officer. She about jumped out of her skin, when a computer voice came from a few feet away. Her head snapped around, and she could see what had to be an Earther computer on the breakfast bar. It was another thing she had not seen in her rush to the bathroom, or on her way back into the living room.
Adama did not smile. he just tilled his head down some more to get a hard glare going at his target. "Captain Thrace. Captain Kelly probably knows more about what is going on, than you do. So just frakking spill it already." Bill was starting to now get annoyed with Starbuck, for real. Normally he would not have minded that she was being cagey about information getting into the wrong hands. She just was not that good at being subtle about the not wanting to say it.
Starbuck nodded her head in understanding. She could see a subtle shift in the older Adama's body language, and she went all the way back from the time they landed. That was where she started talking, and she kept talking in one long waterfall of words. She covered ever little detail, and as much of the conversations as she could remember them. She went all the way up to the point where she had awakened on the couch a little while ago. And had almost run over the two military leaders as she made a break to the bathroom. She had to back track a few times, but one of the things that made her one of the greatest Viper pilots was that she had a mind like a steel trap. She had a very good ability to recall the memories that her mind held. That was if she did not have too much Ambrosia the night before. Then all bets were off if she could remember her name for the first two hours after waking up after a bottle or three.
As the two leaders had expected, they did not find anything earth shattering from her story as she remembered it. The leaders now knew that Starbuck had some hidden talent, or used to have one even before coming to this planet. Her name would be added to that very secret list of people who might have the talent. Adama did not know about that list of special people, yet. The list had been drawn up as a contingency in case the ability for magic returned to the group whether it be soon or at some point in the future.
It was hoped that the list would stop something that had happened way back at the beginning of the Dark Age. Things had been written in the few books, stories, and notes from that time about the mass confusion caused by emerging magic users. It was hoped that this list might help to avoid some of the troubles that had been reported to have happened back on Rifts Earth.
Now Starbuck took a breath and looked at the two men. "Sirs, that's it, that is all that I can remember. Now I have a question. What happened, and why do I feel like my head was shoved into the jump engine of a Raptor? It's worse than any hangover I've ever had before." As Starbuck talked about her hangover, she started rubbing both of her temples. If she had not, in the past, had to deal with half a hundred hangovers right before flying, she might not have wanted to move, much less be able to talk to someone.
Adama looked to Kelly and shot him what might have been a questioning look. Captain Kelly took it as his turn to fill in a few of the blanks. "Captain Thrace, when you met Dexter last night, it connected something buried deep in both of your brains. As near as we can tell, when two people who have some special Talent meet, they channel 'something' into our little part of the world as we perceive it." Kelly passed over the pad of paper with all of the line drawings on the many pages. "You and one of my people, have been doing this all night." Kelly raised both of this eyebrows, but he tried not to scare this woman too much. "Does this seem familiar, to you at all?"
Starbuck took the offered pad of paper from the Earther. She flipped through the pages and tilted the pad through all sorts of angles, craning her neck every which way. Some of those angles did not seem to be possible with a human neck, but she did it anyway. She was trying to see if anything seemed familiar on those pages. After about a dozen pages, she thought some of them looked like maps of the Bucket, but she was not sure. She did not remember doing any of it, and the lines were a lot neater than was normal for her to draw at the best of times. It did not even look like her handwriting on the few notes or printed captions near some of the lines.
She had done some art work back home on her off time that she always made sure to never to show anyone. Well, Zack had seen some of it, but he had died not long afterwards. It was very much in the impressionist style of art, if you could try to put it in a category. Her artwork had never had the fine detail or realism that these drawings on the pages held. She flipped the pages back to flatten the pad back out, and passed it back to the stranger standing next to her Admiral. She was shaking her head from side to side. "I have no idea what those are. So what happened to me is normal?" The tone she heard in her own ears, sounded both confused and concerned at this recent development.
Kelly gave a soft laugh, but he quickly got the feeling that she was not joking. From what he had read of her dossier, normal and Starbuck were two words that were very rarely used in the same sentence. He let the smile on his face soften just a little bit. "No Captain Thrace, it is not normal. It was more normal back home, but since we've been on this planet? It has only happened a few times, in all of the years that we've been here." He looked at Adama, but he was still talking to the woman sitting on the couch. "I think it is happening more often, now that our two people have started to work more closely together. I would recommend that you take a mild pain pill I left over on the Bar, it will help with the head ache."
That seemed to placate the Viper pilot. She rose from the couch, and headed toward the bar with the little white pill where she stopped dead in her tracks. Kelly turned to look and talk to Bill Adama. "Admiral I think we are done with the Captain Thrace. Would you like to talk to Dexter, before we let the others back in here?"
Adama looked at the other leader, then back to Starbuck who was standing stock still about three steps from the bar and the pain pill that was on it. Bill let his face soften, and even let a small smile cross his lips. "Starbuck, you did well. Why not take the pill Captain Kelly left for you, and go stretch out on a real bed. When we're done. I will make sure your husband knows, and to get back over here to check up on you." The tone that Adama used was one, which he had used on Starbuck before. It was not his command voice, it was his "I am as close to a father that you have ever had, and you are the daughter that I never had" voice.
The two men rose from the chairs they had been sitting on and Starbuck started moving again at the sign that they were indeed done with the questions for her. They each collected the pads of paper from the low table, and went to the other bedroom with the little computer in the Earther's off hand. Starbuck waited for the door to close behind the two leaders, and then took the advice she had been given about lying down and getting some real sleep. Her head was splitting like the worst hangover she had ever had in her entire life, and that was some list of hangovers to compare it to. She walked back to the bar and found two white pills. She knew that there was a short glass in the bathroom next to the bed. It was not long before she was stretched out on the bed waiting for the pills to take effect, and wishing that they would work faster. She was lucky and less than five minutes after she could tell that the pills were working on her. She only heard a door close, but not much more. She marveled at the thick insulation they must have built into this cabin.
She had no way to know that the two senior officers had only spent about ten minutes talking with Dexter in the other bedroom. It was useless to talk to someone who had something like this blackout in their minds or memories. Kelly was mainly wanting to show the Colonial commander that it was okay for his people who had experience this type of thing. And might experience it in the future as more and more Colonials started walking around out in the open air. Everyone would be treated the same, no matter what group they belonged to in these types of events. When the two naval officers finally left the rental home, they took with them the two pads of paper when they closed the heavy front door. It would have been useless to tell either of the two, not to say something with an order. So they did not say a word about keeping it quiet at all. It was a risk, but less risky than giving an order that might not be followed because it was an order that was impossible to follow.
When the two had closed the main wooden door, Adama noticed that a young child was waiting at the oddly shaped table and bench combination outside of the rental cottage. Kelly just gave a nod to the child, and she was off like a shot going deeper into the Settlement like some kind of biological guided missile. Adama just turned and looked at the other commander and waited for an explanation. He could tell that a prearranged order had been given, but what that order was, he did not have a clue. He just had a good idea what those orders might have been.
Kelly saw the look, and pulled out the thin computer from his pocked. He shifted it in his hands to make sure the right program was running. "The child was waiting for us to leave the cottage. I would bet it was Major Weston who sent and paid for her to wait for us to exit. He was probably thinking as soon as we left, that we were done with those two. She will get word back to him, and the others that we are done. Your people should be told soon, that they can come back. A lot sooner than if we had to track them down, and talk to them. If you want to wait for them, you can take a seat on the picnic table." Kelly pointedly did not point out, that the cabin was being watched by the Earthers playing their game not far away.
Adama nodded in agreement. "I would like to go through these engineering diagrams again, but in more detail. Do you have some place, were we can do that and not be interrupted by too many people?"
Kelly nodded, and his face was noncommittal. "I was thinking the same thing, but was going to bring it up later. How about we use my Day Cabin on my ship? We can be alone and still have access to the information network for any additional information or contacts, that we might need while we work. I happen to think that my staff is top shelf, you are more than welcome to avail yourself of them."
The Colonial, did not say anything. He only nodded his head in agreement to what the Captain had said, and the computer had translated it.
The two men walked to the modified warship, and spent the rest of the day in Captain Kelly's day cabin on the Neptune's Revenge. Their only breaks were for food, and to answer high priority messages from the Settlement or the Colonial Fleet. It was during one of these breaks, when the two men were eating in the common mess that something tickled part of Adama's back brain. He was fighting to figure what it might mean, as he had a meal of fish steak and a fresh green salad with an unknown, but very nice tasting type of dressing applied to the leaves. One part of Bill's mind, was thinking about how normal this all seemed, if you did not realize that the people were talking in a completely alien language.
Adama was looking at the painting on one side of the metal wall room. He used his chin to point to the painted wall. The little translation computer had never been more than a few feet away from them all day. "Captain Kelly, your ship's name. It's caused some issues in the fleet already. In some of the few books and databases we still have access to, it is said that Neptune was a god of the seas and oceans, like Poseidon. Others say that it is just another name for Poseidon himself. It is strange how you say that you don't know about the Lords of Kobol, but you still seem to have some sort of a connection to them." Just as he stopped talking, the little itch in the back of his mind jumped into something else. His eyes went wide as something came to him, like a blurry image suddenly becoming clear. He pulled out one of the two pads of paper that Starbuck and Dexter had worked on through the night. No one else was in the dining room with them at that time, so Bill did not feel like he should keep quiet, as he tried to put words to his thoughts as best he could.
He started pointing at different pages, seemingly at random. "With your help we know this is supposed to be the Lucky Find, but look at how she is sitting in comparison to the hull of my ship. I thought about this set up before, late one night. But it is the most difficult line up to pull off, even with the plans we've looked at so far."
Bill pulled over a paper napkin from down the long table. He started to draw on it with a pen out of one of his pockets. Adama drew first the outline of his damaged Battlestar with the missing hangar pod, in rapid but very neat lines on the almost brown colored rough paper. "My first thought, was to have both of your ships' top deck and bridge facing out away from the main hull of my ship and out towards space. It was the about the easiest to do, and would let us use both of the ships' firepower if we were attacked by the Cylons again, or anyone else that we might run into." Bill pointed to an area on the hand drawn diagram absentmindedly.
Kelly was watching and listening. He had read a lot of reports about this man, even if they turned out to be only half true. The Colonial Admiral's resume would be impressive as all hells, but he was a space naval officer. He did not have any experience dealing with blue navy ships of almost any kind.
Kelly looked at what the Colonial had drawn and what he had said. He gave his head a slightly negative shake. "That won't work. The ships are what we called space rigged, because of the high odds that they might run into a Rift back home at any time day or night." Kelly was shaking his head a little harder from side to side. "That does not mean that they can successfully be used in space combat. The cargo holds hatches and lids would or should hold against the pull of vacuum, but they don't have airlocks mounted on them. So you could not use them once the ships are in a full space condition. They are also the weakest structurally areas on the whole ship, and they also would be under the most stress at the same time. Rob and I were thinking that we would need to talk to some of your damage control people. We want to see about what they would take to reinforce all of our hatch covers. I still think they should go over the both ships, to see if they find any issues our people might have overlooked somehow."
Adama looked up at Kelly over his glasses and was quite as his eyes blinked rapidly. "I did not think about that." Then Bill sucked his lips in a little. Bill did not like admitting that he was out of his depth, and he made a more sour face. "I did not think about that. I'm a little short on experience working around large ocean going ships, and turning them into spaceships like machines. I think we need to set up a group to look more closely at this, when we have the time."
Bill started tapping the pen on the table top without noticing it. He was thinking hard about something. "I had already canned that idea for two reasons. One was all of the heavy cranes the Lucky Find is carrying. We will need items like that, when we all find a new home. And we would have to remove them, when we get somewhere safe from the Cylons. I can't tell you how many times I had wished that we had something like them, when we were planning a project down here. I'd bet that they'd be well worth any effort to make sure they stay operational while we're traveling. You know if her captain has any detailed information on those cranes, by the way?" He had not looked up from the line drawing as he was talking.
Now Bill looked away from his line drawing, to make eye contact with the Earther sea captain. "The second reason I had cancelled the plan was that with the way I had envisioned it sitting on the hull, I wasn't sure my jump field would cover her, with those cranes sticking so far out of her main hull like they are. What you said about the cargo hold's hatches, now makes my primary option more difficult to back."
Adama flipped the napkin over, and started to draw on the other side of the thin paper. As he worked, Bill flipped it over and over, to make sure he was working on a sideways view of the battlestar. It did not take long for Kelly to work out, that he was a making a more detailed drawing of the cargo ship called Lucky Find on the other side of the napkin. He could tell that the Colonial had done this drawing more than a few times in the recent past. He had added some details that would only be noticed if you had seen detailed images and had redrawn them a number of times. "I had been working on this version of lining everything up. It would help with the grave plating we use on our ships. If we can work out the cargo hold issue, which I had not thought about, and some of the other issues, that I had been working on, this was the way I had been thinking of what she might look like."
Kelly was flipping through the drawings in the pad that Dexter had done his drawings on. All the while listing to the Colonials translated voice, and looking at the drawings on the pad of paper. He absently mindedasked a question to the Colonial commander. "What other issues would that be Admiral?"
Adama was chewing on the end of his pen, and thinking at the same time. Maybe the Earther captain had some ideas that would help. The worst that could happen was he would just get a blank look. Bill started tapping the end of the pen with the tip of one finger. "I was working on how to connect your ships into the main life support systems of a battlestar. How would we get good air, and good water to your side of the ship? Then we will have to get the bad air and waste water, back into my ship's recycling and support systems. After that the other things are kind of simple. If there were not a frakking ton of them that still needed to be worked out."
While Adama was talking, Kelly was looking at the drawings. Then like a lightning bolt, he knew why the ships were placed the way they were in the drawings. He had to blink a few times and he almost stopped breathing. "Could it really be that easy? It can't be that easy, could it?"
Now it was Kelly's turn to flip through a dozen of the long sheets of line filled pages. When he was surer of his revelation, he looked up to see the Colonial staring at him. "It's the engines. That's why they wanted it set this way." Kelly's eyes went huge, as he worked out a major piece of the puzzle that had been dropped in their laps. Now some things were starting to make sense.
Adama looked at the computer screen, and then back to the other man at the table. His eyebrows were almost touching on his forehead. He did not say something for almost half a minute, but what was on the screen and the line drawings were not making any sense to him. "What about the engines?" He finally asked the blue water commander, and he almost threw his hands up into the air over his head in frustration.
Kelly was looking up from the notepad after flipping through a few more pages. "The Lucky Find was designed to burn petroleum products for power, what we call Oil. Or, like now, we can use wood alcohol to provide the energy for her to do her designed functions. Basically, as long as we have organic material that we can distill into something that can be used as fuel, she can run off that. All of the life support systems are run through, and managed in her main engine room. That is where we pump air, water, and waste to wherever it needs to be. That's why the ship is on her side, facing into the side of your ship, Admiral. You can run your support lines right down her smoke stack, and it leads right into the heart of that ship! All without having to cut and seal all of the holes that you would have to cut in other wise!"
Kelly was looking at what he thought was the right area of the page, and bit his lower lip, and furrowed his brow. "But how will you supply a source of heat in the cold of space to her? I don't think running engines that need to use a lot of O2 and fuel to work will do. All only to provide heat, in the deep of space. I just don't think that might be the best of ideas, if you know what I mean?"
Adama now understood most of what the other man was saying, but he was working on getting better. He had not thought about an engine that burned something with Oxygen to generate usable energy. Colonials for a long time had not had to use anything besides Tyulim to meet there energy needs. It was just not something anyone had done in living memory, or even in the history books. At least not that he could remember, well, for anything larger than a few certain high end passenger transports. It took a few seconds for everything that Kelly had said to come together in Bill's mind.
Adama could not help it, but let a little smile come to his face. He had forgotten that this man had never left his home planet, expect by some kind of magical blue energy rift. "Heat won't be an issue Captain Kelly. When you're in deep space, it's hard to conduct heat away from your hull. Space is one of the best insulators known to man. Well, maybe back in the time when the lords of Kobal were still alive, they might have had a few secrets that man still does not understand. That is one of the reason some spaceships smell like old and well used locker rooms. That's also one of the reasons, we did not have the proper clothes for this cold planet. The Galactica's fine in this regard, but some of the other ships in our old fleet, we had to just get used to sweating bucketloads, while on mission." He traced a line on one of the pages. "This is a supply airline. The air is as cool as we can make it, but it will have problems keeping the temperature even close to comfortable for people used to this cold of a planet. As the air moves around the ship it soaks up the heat from the surrounding area. Your people might have some overheating issues, if we can make these plans workable, that is."
Kelly was taking in the information as fast as Bill was giving it. It had always been assumed, that keeping warm would be a major issue for any space travelers far from the habitable zone of a Solar system. That had been an accepted fact by not only scientists form the Coalition States, but anyone else that had the guts to talk about this crazy of a subject in public. He went over to the second pad of paper and pointed to a specific sheet of drawings. Kelly was going to have to accept that heating to stay warm was not going to be an issue. He did make a mental note that it did make sense now, that the Colonials did not seem to have much in the way of very warm travelling clothes. He was having a hard time thinking about having to deal with heat strokes instead of hypothermia all of the time. Then again it might be a nice change of pace for a little while.
Kelly spun the notepad again. "Look at this ship's placement. I think this is supposed to be my ship, but its angled facing out from your ship. Just like you had first planned for the Lucky Find, before these pads showed up. This set up would work better for my ship, compared to the way it would for the Find. We have a nuclear power plant in our engine room that can supply power, without burning oxygen to do it. So we would only need access ways, some air and water support from your ship. We will have the same issue with the cargo holds, but we only have two, and they both are a lot smaller than even one of the hatch covers on the Lucky Find. The other supply should be nothing like the scale of what the Lucky Find would need, but she still will need some support. Now, how do we get from our nice water filled bay, into orbit high above the planet?"
The last part had been driving everyone that Kelly had talked to so far nuts. Both of the ships were not exactly small, or very aerodynamic in any way that mattered. In short they were beasts of the blue water, and they had only been out of it when they were built or when they had been drydocked for major repairs or modifications. As far as anyone on both ships knew, neither one had was meant for flying through the air, except for a few drug induced dreams of some kind.
Adama pulled his glasses off of his face, and pinched his nose with his right hand. "We are going to need to make extra gravity plates for one, lots of them. We need to mount them on each deck in both of the ships. Then all we have to do is hook them up to strong enough power sources on the boats. When you flip them on, we'll need to make a few adjustments that will lower the effective weight of your ships on the planet surface. It won't do anything about the mass of the ships, but it should work well enough. It's the basic idea of how we can hover our space ships in the atmosphere, without needing much ventral engine thrust to keep them safe on landing or taking off. The problem will be, if your pair of ships can take the stress of the lifting off. After that... it gets a bit more complicated. Nothing that can't be done, it's just going to take a lot of planning and man-hours to make sure we do this right."
Kelly had read a few reports by now that said the Colonials had some kind of antigravity device on their ships. But when Adama had said it, and that they could make more of the devices? This was astounding to hear for the Earther. They might not know anything about real high powered weapons and armor, but they did have some scientific areas very well covered. It was with wide eyes that Kelly interrupted the older Adama. "How long will it take to make enough of these plates for both ships? Can my people do anything to help speed up the process of making more?"
Kelly knew that his people were on a tight timeline, and the clock was not going to slow down any time soon. If was very clear, if they stayed they died. So Kelly did not want to take the slow and steady approach of only doing one thing at a time. They just could not afford it. And it seemed that waiting until the last minute had never been his cup of tea. If he had not been born that way, then it was a deep seated family trait that was taught to all of the kids.
Adama took a breath, and looked at the other man after putting his glasses back on. He wanted to see any clues that might show on the other man's face. It was time to put all of the cards on the table, at least all of the cards that Bill knew about. "I have to get all of the parts, and needed materials for the civilian ships produced first from our limited manufacturing shops. They have to be taken care of as my first priority. We are short and getting shorter on most of the needed material, at least until the Pegasus and her group gets back. That is if she found what we need. After that we should be able to make enough, in a few weeks. But again that is if my other captain has found enough raw materials to do both jobs. If they don't bring back enough on the first run, they might have to make two or more missions to find what we need to make it safer at least for those beer cans. That also does not count any minor or major items that might break down between now and then. I would have said that it would have taken longer to get them made, but with these."
Bill was now patting both long pads of drawings on the table top. "These will make it a lot easier. That's because now they can make them to exactly the sizes we need. With detailed measurements of each open area on both of the ships. They can make all of the standard sized plates now that we have a better idea of how many decks and things we are going to need to cover. After that, they can then work on the special sized ones. We will still have some issues, but it will be a lot less than we would have had to deal with if we had to do everything by hand. If that happens we would need a lot more hands to do the job. The more hands means less experienced hands doing the work, and that can make for some different issues down the road."
Kelly was nodding and was trying to figure out what his people might do to help this move along a little quicker. "When we start measuring and fitting those plates of yours. We could start unloading the Lucky Find at the same time. It would keep people out of the way, and maybe speed up getting her ready to be lifted up. You said the plates help you lower the mass of an object, so that you can get her close to hovering. How will you go from that level? All the way out to orbit, and near your warship?" Kelly needed to know, but he knew that he needed to know it well enough so that he could fill in his fellow leaders when he told them.
Adama was looking at the other man and he gave him a level look. "This man was quick on his feet. He would have been a great battlestar commander, if there was another battlestar to command." He schooled his face to show nothing of what was going on in his mind. "My current thinking is that we are going to use two to four of the heavy cargo shuttles we have on hand. We could use them as the main lift force. Then we could use some Raptors as something like line men, to control spin and add extra lift if it becomes necessary at any stage of the operation. I was thinking we should move the Lucky Find first, when it's time. She is the largest and heaviest, so we should get her moved first. What we learn from her, will help with the moving of your ship. It will be harder to lift the larger ship, but getting her into the right location will be easier. The placing of the second ship will be a lot harder, and with a lot less room for any errors to happen."
Kelly nodded to Adama. He was not smiling, but almost mimicking the tight lipped look Adama had on his face. "That is what we were thinking also in the few informal bull sessions that I've been able to attend. It's nice to know that we were close on some aspects, even though we lack experience in anything related to space matters." Some of the plans that had been kicked around by Kelly, Bob, and Max, had not started with attaching the ships to a Colonial ship from the rag tag fleet. They were thinking that their people would just pack up there things, and anything else of value. Then they would take up some living space in the rest of the fleet just like any other Colonial.
This plan had been flushed when they found out how tight the Colonials had been packed into those cans, before they had found this planet out of pure luck. In short there just was not enough room on one ship to take all of the people from Earth. There might not have been enough room in the whole fleet to take their people and things. Then they had that first meeting with the top Colonial leaders and the idea came up, with possibly some outside help, of a different way to make it possible. The idea was that it might be possible to lift the ships with all of the storage, machine shops, living space, and food protection up into space. Then they can add all of them to the now exposed side of the damaged battlestar. It almost seemed that the damage was done, just so that the Earth made ship would have a place to be attached to.
The two men only spent another few hours together, mostly alone in Captain Kelly's Day Cabin. They had to wait for one of Kelly's crew to print a copy of each of the pads of drawings, so that each group had a complete copy of all of the technical drawings that had been made. This time Adama would have the originals, to go with the copies from the first meeting while the Earthers had the photo copies of the drawings. Adama had just told the other Captain that it made sense for him to have the originals. It was him, and more importantly his people, that would need to the information to get the job done. Kelly and his people would keep the copy they could use, but it was more that they were keeping the backup copy of all the plans. It was just in case something happened to the original copies while it was orbit. After all there might be more human form Cylons in hiding among the fleet, than the five that they were currently looking for.
They spent most of the extra time talking about the large brass astrolabe, that Kelly had been given a long time ago by a close friend. It was strange to both of them, that something small like that would draw them into such a deep conversation. So deep, that Adama did not leave when the copies of the line drawings were done, and delivered to them in Captain Kelly's office. Bill waited until all of his questions were answered by the other man, about the strange brass device. Kelly for his part made a note to see if they had another one in supply, and if not. He would check to see if one could be made from scratch for the other ships commander, and leader of the now Allied fleet. Kelly was pretty sure that it could be done. The one in his office, he knew, had been homemade. Deep down he wondered why the Colonial was so interested in the device. After all it was not useful on this planet, the stars were different.