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A New Angel, a New Fate

As he sat in the room that was clearly an interrogation room no matter what they attempted to label it as, the Doctor had to admit that this was actually one of his more comfortable periods of captivity. Once the initial wave of questions and accusations had been dealt with, he and his companions had been treated fairly well apart from being marched fairly promptly through this ship, and the requested scan had been simple enough.

True, he wouldn't have minded being offered something to eat, but he hadn't been kept here long enough for even a human to get particularly hungry, so he wasn't going to complain just yet…

His musings were interrupted when the door opened and the older, dark-haired man he'd met earlier walked in, an expression on his face that put the Doctor in mind of those other cases where he'd turned someone's world on its head.

"Ah, hello," he said, smiling politely at the older man as he sat down opposite him. "Since you're here alone, I take it your doctor told you about the results of those scans I suggested?"

"He did," the other man said, nodding grimy at the Time Lord. "Two hears, two livers, a third lobe to the brain, a nervous system he admits that he can't even begin to understand…"

The physically older man stared silently at the Doctor for a moment before he asked his first real question. "Who are you?"

"Like I told you, I'm the Doctor," the Time Lord smiled politely at the admiral. "I'm a… traveller, of no fixed abode; my companions and I were just… passing by and stopped in to take a look at that fascinating temple before your men arrived and brought us here."

"A traveller," the other man repeated, looking sceptically at the Doctor. "If you aren't… human… why do you look like us?"

"You'd actually be surprised how many species follow a similar evolutionary line," the Doctor smiled politely. "There are many theories about the reasons for that, of course, but this isn't the time or place for that…"

"And… your companions?" the old man asked. "Where did they come from?"

"Well, Compassion came from a distant colony and decided to come with me after she realised that she didn't fit in with her people any more, and I ran into Fitz on Earth-"

"Earth?" the older man repeated, suddenly looking at the Doctor with a new intensity behind his gaze. "You've been to Earth?"

"Oh yes; it's actually my favourite planet…" the Doctor began, before he registered the full implications of the other man's reaction. "I… take it Earth's important to you?"

"We've… been looking for it for a while," the old man said, still looking intently at the Doctor even as he seemed to regain control of himself. "Can you… take us there? Or at least tell us where it is?"

"Unfortunately, I… can't help you with that," the Doctor said, quickly discarding the possibilities of either lying or giving the man before him the complete truth in favour of a partial truth. "Shortly before I arrived here, my ship's flight records were… well, 'lost' is the best way of putting it; I'm not even sure where I am now, never mind where I am in relation to Earth."

"I… see," the old man said, looking at him for a moment before he spoke again. "And… where is your ship?"

"That's… a very long and complicated story," the Doctor replied, before he looked more curiously at the admiral. "Before I tell you that, maybe you could answer a few of my questions about what this fleet's doing here?"

"What you've seen while coming up to this battlestar are the last survivors of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol," the admiral said grimly.

"The last survivors?" the Doctor repeated incredulously. "This entire fleet represents the survivors of twelve planets? What happened?"

"The Cylons," the old man continued.

"The Cylons?" the Doctor repeated curiously. "What are they?"

"Originally, they were just machines we created to serve as a work force," the other man explained, leaning forward to address the Time Lord. "We kept using them even after we observed evidence that they were becoming sentient… but eventually, they revolted against us about fifty years ago."

"And they won?"

"Actually, that conflict ended in an armistice about forty years ago," the man continued, shaking his head in grim confusion at that memory before he continued. "We never worked out why they backed off like that, but we accepted the deal anyway. Once we'd rebuilt most of the essentials on the colonies, we established a space station on the armistice line to maintain talks with the Cylons, but no word was ever heard from them for the next four decades… until they returned and nuked all twelve of our worlds and unleashed a computer virus that disabled virtually every active Battlestar before they could fight back."

"You… have my sympathies," the Doctor said, bowing his head in brief acknowledgement of the scale of the loss these people must have suffered, before he looked curiously at his new acquaintance. "How did they do that?"

"As it turned out," the old man explained, "while they'd been in isolation, the Cylons had advanced far further than we'd expected. We don't know how, but during those forty years, they'd advanced to the point where they could… essentially, they had developed their technology to the point where they could replicate human form."

"Replicate?" the Doctor repeated. "You mean… they look human?"

"Not just look human," the man said firmly. "According to every test we ran on some of the human Cylons after we killed them, there's no obvious difference between these skinjobs and real humans, apart from them being a bit stronger and being able to resurrect."

"Resurrect?" the Doctor repeated once again, curious at this news.

"Every time we kill a Cylon, its mind downloads into a copy of its body that they keep somewhere else, mostly on these 'Resurrection Ships' specifically created for that purpose," the old man explained. "There's apparently a limit to how far they can be from a ship before they can't be 'uploaded' or whatever the term is, but it's still pretty significant; a Cylon agent on this ship was shot over a year ago, when we'd had no direct contact with Cylons for a couple of weeks, and she was confirmed to have resurrected a few months later."

"Mmm," the Doctor mused, nodding in acknowledgement of this new information. "And this 'resurrection' is a complete memory download?"

"As far as we know," the old man said grimly. "They even gave their fighters the ability; makes it harder for our pilots to fight the things if they keep coming back knowing what tricks they'll be up against."

"Quite…" the Doctor said, nodding in grim understanding. "Twelve worlds nuked and very little in the way of viable alternatives… I see your problem."

"We tried settling on a planet we found in a nebula a year ago, but only about twenty percent of its surface was habitable and even that part wasn't very good at helping us set up any kind of crop," the old man continued. "The world we're orbiting might be more comfortable, but there's not much in the way of food and that star's fairly unstable; we only came here because our food supplies were contaminated a few weeks ago and some of our scientists had the idea that we could recycle the algae here as an alternative source of protein."

"But you must have a plan of some sort…" the Doctor began, before his eyes widened in understanding. "Earth?"

"Earth," the old man confirmed with the warmest smile the Doctor had seen yet. "The world that was said to have been settled by the Thirteenth Tribe when they left the other twelve centuries ago. We've found a few clues and markers to its location in some of the old texts, but we're mostly taking guesses and hoping we're going the right way; it's why I hoped that you might be able to give us… something more."

"I see," the Doctor said, trying not to show just how apprehensive he was at that idea.

He knew from his brief glance at Compassion's console before he left her that he was fairly far in the past at this point, and he'd witnessed alien interference in Earth's history often enough to know that humanity could ignore anything if they couldn't explain it… but how could the human race forget about a mass exodus across the stars to escape an army of killer robots?

Still, whatever was going on here, there were still some interesting questions that needed to be answered… and since the Time Lords could only track materialisation based on Compassion arriving on a planet's surface

"Well…" he began, smiling slightly at the other man before his grin faltered. "I'm so sorry, I can't believe I didn't ask this earlier; what's your name?"

"Admiral William Adama," the old man said, shaking the Doctor's offered hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, Admiral Adama," the Doctor smiled back at him. "I am the Doctor, and you may consider me at your service until your Cylon troubles are over."

"At my service?" Adama repeated curiously.

"I may not be sure where Earth is in relation to us, but I do have a few ideas about dealing with unconventional and dangerous situations," the Doctor explained, trying to look reassuringly at the other man. "Let me see what you have for Earth so far, and I'll see what I can do."

"Why would you do that?" Adama asked, looking critically at the Doctor.

"Because," the Doctor said, ignoring his usual humour in favour of a solemn response, "whatever the Cylons may use to justify their attacks on you, humans are very much my favourite species, and I have no interest in seeing you all get wiped out because a few advanced machines can't accept that you don't deserve to be blamed for the actions of a few."

He'd appreciate a chance to talk to a few of the Cylons when he had the time, but in his book, if one side was willing to nuke twelve planets without any reference to a formal declaration of war, at the very least some of them must have wanted their 'enemies' dead very badly, and that kind of desire wasn't something even he could take them out of…