Chapter 9

                                               Parasites: Ciona Imperixe-part one

The Galactica:

Oshella, daughter of Tarshia, formally of the planet Ligon II, now a citizen of the Maripose-Colonial republic, scanned the surrounding space carefully for any sign of life.  She hadn't been with the ship long, this was her first tour of duty, but she'd already been in two major battles on this floating fortress and those experiences left her with a heightened sensitivity about being caught off-guard.  If one could describe her general demeanor with one word, that word would be 'diligent'.  There were several planets within scanner range, three of them inhabitable.  The planets had abundant plant life and there were signs of civilization, but so far, there was little to no indication of animal life.  Passive scans of the cities uncovered no detectable power sources.  The buildings were in various states of decay and the indigenous plantlife had overtaken most of the buildings.

The dark-skinned twenty-six year old checked the scans once more.  She wanted to perform a more detailed examination but her orders were clear-passive scans until told otherwise.

She touched her communications padd.  "Commander Apollo," she said.  "Scanners find signs of intelligent life but there is no animal life.  The planets are abandoned."

"Please specify."

"There are lots of indications that there were civilizations there once.  They're not there now.  It's as though the entire population simply relocated approximately a hundred Yahren ago."

"Understood.  Keep scanning."

***

Deep in thought, Apollo frowned.  Next to him Starbuck shared a knowing look.  After all the years working with one another and sharing so many experiences on the Galactica, they could almost read one another's thoughts.

"If we had deviated just a few degrees from our original direction, we would have wound up here."

Apollo grunted in agreement.  It wasn't a pleasant sound.

"As bad as the Cylons were, the old ones I mean," he added quickly, "this would have been far worse."  He opened his padd and contacted Oshella once more.  "Please perform a tight-beamed scan when we get a little closer.  We need as much data as possible."

"Yes, sir," she said.  "But Commander," she added. "Just because these planets are abandoned doesn't mean that the entire sector is like this."

"Ensign, we're at the edge of a civilization of intelligent parasites," Starbuck explained.  "Whole sectors has been spit up and chewed out.  They've destroyed hundreds of worlds and an untold number of sentients, so many that our combined loses of the twelve colonies would barely put a dent into the overall numbers.  These things," he added for emphasis, "use their hosts and then discard what's left of them like trash.  Like I said before, they've gone through hundreds of worlds, leaving a wake a weakened, unhealthy, burned out population that will take generations to recover, if they don't all die out first. Throughout their life cycles they are constantly looking for healthy replacements and that requires them to constantly spread themselves out. 

He saw the young lady eyes go wide in understanding.  "And our homes are next on their list," he finished.

The words sent a chill down the woman's and everyone else's spine who heard it.  Both men were now purposely loud enough that the entire bridge crew could hear.  The full extent of the mission hadn't been told to the crew, but now, he wanted them to know exactly what the stakes were.

"This entire galaxy is about to erupt," Apollo continued. 

And that brought up another point he and Starbuck had against Federation policies. Yes, the Federation was a godsend, a safe haven that his people were blessed to find.  However their policies, while honorable, had some major faults in light of the universe around them, the Borg and Cylons being cases in point.  Despite repeated warnings, the Federation chose to try to negotiate with them.  That itself wasn't a problem, in fact it was laudable. 

The problem was the way the Federation approached conflict.  They played a defensive game that lost them time, material and resources.  Recent history with the Dominion wars proved this.  They almost lost the war, playing defense.  With the Cylons, there was another attempt at negotiation and the Cylons played them as much as was possible, building a fortress and a power base strong enough to stand as giants in the Alpha quadrant.  The military had to constantly fight with the politicians who insisted that there was too much research and development in offensive weaponry and not enough in pure peaceful exploration.  Those same politicians didn't want the Federation to appear to openly aggressive, oblivious to the fact that the Romulans, Tholians, Klingons, the Dominion, the Cylons, and a host of others were just waiting around the corner to destroy everything the Federation represented. 

There was more evil in the universe than good and what was good had to be strong to defend against those evils.  Because of their experiences, that was a truth that all Colonials understood.  Some sentients in of the Federation hadn't learned that yet, although the Colonials did have hopes for the Starfleet Command.   

The Cylons were openly attacking and there were still those in the Federation who seemed to have its collective head in the clouds, hoping that the whole thing could be resolved peacefully.  It wasn't actually an accurate assessment, but he felt that it was.  What was more very likely was that some of the members had been seduced into believing that they weren't really the main focus of the war. 

Sire Forsen, the newly elected President Forsen of the Republic, now that Adama had officially retired, had made that same observation public.  The resultant furor from a number of Federation ambassadors seemed to confirm that they may have been considering that very issue-that this was a human war which had relatively little to do with them.  After all, the Klingon conflicts, the Romulan wars, the start of the Dominion war, the Cardassian conflicts, the Cylon thousand Yahren war and a host of other smaller conflicts, including the lesser known Xindi war, had one thing in common.  Humanity, in all its flower, was at the center of most of the conflicts.

It also brought home how much the members of the Federation were united together and how much more they all had to mature.  There were several human-like species that probably would have remained more neutral because the bottom line was that most of them were tired of the wars for the last fifteen years or so.  However, the Colonials gave them credit as to how quickly those representatives changed their attitudes when the fact was brought out that just about all of them shared a distant common ancestor-one of the reasons why they essentially shared so many phenotypic and genotypic similarities.  The Cylons knew this and since they wanted to stamp out the life form known as man completely, getting rid of the various incarnations would also be on the list of things to exterminate.

The issue of the new weaponry from the future was another, very controversial and very hot issue. Transphasic torpedoes and ablative armor and a few other innovations like the Doctor's holographic device, made the Temporal Prime Directive Division twitch in ways that reminded some of a new kind of dance craze. The new technologies came from the future, a future timeline everyone understood no longer existed.  Needless to say, the arguments were hot and fierce; and everyone had their own opinion. 

Those technologies were from the future, several Starfleet officers had stated.  And this was a good thing.  They wanted to make sure that they would have those resources to deal with the Borg when-if, wasn't an issue- they came.  However some of the Admirals such as Thomas Winston violently disagreed. 

"We are polluting time," he said in a speech aimed towards the President of the Federation.  "It goes against the very principles that we have fought and died for.  We all understand the dangers of time travel and the possible effects it can have on us.  Rarely has it been for our benefit.  The Xindii example is a perfect case in point of the dangers of time travel.  As advanced as we are, we are not matured enough to handle that kind of power.  Take a small step in that direction and, we will find ourselves trapped in temporal paradoxes that could tear this galaxy apart."

"Those technologies should be destroyed, following the zero tolerance restrictions that we ourselves imposed on and was approved by the Federation.  We should allow for the natural progression of the development of such technologies in their natural course of time.  Pandora's box has been peaked at and we need to slam the lid down before we are irreparably damaged.  We also have to consider how our neighbors would respond to such innovations acquire from the future…"

Although some of his points were valid, clearly his opinion was only shared by the minority.  He was considered by many to be an armchair Admiral who had little clue-and the Colonials were of one accord with this sentiment- as to the danger out here.  Starfleet needed these gifts and had no intentions of destroying this technology in light of the threats that appeared to pop up more and more each and every day.  Adama and the rest understood the dangers of time displacement as well as anyone else, but the future tech was now present reality, just like the holographic Doctor's device from the twenty-seventh century on Voyager.

This was another reason why the Colonials felt an affinity to the Klingons.  In fact, there was a Klingon contingent on the Galactica.  They and the Borellian Nomen hit it off quite well-after a few knock down, drag out fights and one blood feud which ended in a stalemate, since both the Klingon and Noman killed one another before they could be stopped.   But that was months ago while the Colonials and Klingons were establishing their unique relationship. 

The Klingons understood the concept of a thousand years of war against an enemy who would do anything to utterly destroy them.  They were realist and if those futuristic technologies had fallen into their hands, they would have wiped out the Cylons and trusted themselves enough to recognize the dangers those weapons represented and the Colonials agreed.  The newly outfitted Galactica was a classic example of this kind of reasoning.

It was an amalgamation of Klingon, Federation and Colonial inspiration controlled by the Colonials.  The massive battleship was armed with Federation phasers, but it also sported anti-capital Klingon disruptors and Klingon style quantum devastator class torpedoes.  And their scientists onboard were now working with Aeriana to generate an increase of energy release equal to an explosion of a high-yield transphasic detonation.  Multiphasic shields and protection provided by a thin coat of tritanium ablative armor, covering the two feet of reinforced armor underneath made the Battlestar a truly formidable weapon. 

Both men shared another look, each silently hoping that the armaments would be enough to keep their charges safe.  It was time to proceed with the mission.  The three would separate, recon the area, and then come together to continue the journey.

***

In the main dining area, Athena stole another look at the man Thomas William Riker, who in her opinion had beefed up nicely.  Her attraction to him was more than just physical but it did help that he filled out his uniform so nicely.  Unlike his opposite William, a man she considered just a bit plump, Thomas was lean, muscular and slightly dangerous.  She rolled her eyes.  Earthlings were so exotic!

"You're doing it again."

"I'm enjoying the view," she responded.  "So let me enjoy it."

"Well," he started with absolute conviction.  "As a representative of Earth, I am happy to accede to your wishes."

Now it was her turn to smirk.  "Are you comfortable enough among us poor less-enlightened Colonials?"

She meant it to be humorous but Riker took it seriously.  "It's like paradise.  I rotted in a Cardie prison for years.  Anything else has to be heaven."

"I didn't mean…"

"I know," he interrupted.  "Admiral Janeway and your father gave me a second chance and I don't want to fail you." 

"I understand that and none of us expect anything less than your absolute best.  But I was talking about me," she said softly.  She brushed her graying brunette hair away from her eyes, then began laughing softly.  "Why is it that we, humans I mean, take so long to express how we feel?"

He thought about that and fact, had done so for years.  "I guess," he said, "it's because we hold on to the past too much.  "For example, your feelings for Starbuck."

She stiffened.  "And yours for Deanna. Point conceded.  Cassie won, if you can call that winning.  Do you know how much that hurt?"

"But do you understand why it hurts?"

"Yes," she answered.  "For the same reason why you still love Deanna after all these years.  She married your copy."

"Yes," he murmured. He never even had a chance to fight for her.  "And I'm still holding on to the past." 

"This makes Cassie the smartest of us all.  She dropped that daggit."

Riker didn't let it show on his face but he didn't agree at all with her comment against Starbuck.  The man made a choice and it wasn't her or Cassie.  He did what he thought best. 

"Yes," he finally said redirecting his answer.  "Just let all of that hostility out.  But consider this, no matter how she felt…"

"Who felt?"

"Cassiopeia," he clarified. "She knew, as did Starbuck that it wasn't going to work out.  She left him and he found someone who has made him happy.  They've moved on, and here we are discussing them. And we are talking decades-yahrens times ten."

Quietly: "Were going to remain prisoners of our own feelings, aren't we?"

"No," he said grabbing her hand with a gentleness that surprised her.  "Because you and I, we intend to live forever.  I've had enough of prisons.  It's time to start looking forward.  Come with me."

"Where?" she asked suspiciously.

"Wherever the stars take us," he answered without a moment's hesitation.  "It may not work between us," Riker stated.  But it won't be because we didn't try."

Looking at him: "you're not stable are you?"

Laughing:  No, but I am sincere."  Then both of them were laughing at that sarcastic comment.  "I am not going to replace Deanna in my life with you.  But, I see something in you that's worthy of my time, effort and respect.  I want to get to know you."

Stunned, Athena was actually considering the proposal.  "How do you define this 'getting to know you' idea you have?"

"Well-" 

He leaned over and kissed her hand.

"It's an Earth thing," he whispered.

***