Part Twelve

+05:20:20

(Roslin)

If I'd learned anything since our worlds ended - beyond what a sick sense of humor the Gods had - it was that there was no real difference between what one might think as 'historic' versus the everyday and ordinary. The day of the attacks began no differently than the day before it after all, so why should the day we finally met our cousins have been one where my ever-weakening body actually worked properly?

Both Bill and Secretary Richards moved quickly to catch me before I fell completely forward, having tripped over my own godsbedamned feet. Zeus himself was likely laughing himself hoarse as Secretary Richards' own footing collapsed under him. We very nearly ended up in a decidedly undignified heap on the floor. Fortunately Bill managed to steady me while the Secretary righted himself, barely and with no real grace to him.

This actually made me feel a bit better, as did the clearly-embarrassed glance he and I exchanged. "Um," he tried to break the momentary silence that resulted, only to have the attempt fall flat. This left it to me.

"Perhaps we could...start again, Mr. Secretary?"

"I'd rather not repeat this entrance, if that's alright."

"Er, quite," I smiled, then extended my hand. "Laura Roslin, serving President of the Twelve Colonies."

"Benjamin Richards," he replied, grasping it gently. "Secretary of State for the United Nations of planet Earth." Only once this was out did he return the smile. "I hope you're more prepared for...all this...than I am," he added quietly.

It was an unexpected admission, to say the least. One that had Bill and I exchanging a surprised look. "Um..." was all I could respond with.

Bill came to my rescue. "The Secretary is here at my invitation, Madame President."

"I see." The truth was I didn't and really had no idea how to proceed here. In truth my head was starting pounding like a drum. My discomfort must have shown as Secretary Richards waved towards nearby sofa.

"Perhaps we should sit down?" he offered.

"Perhaps we should," I agreed, which he and I did. Bill and his Terran counterpart remained standing, taking up position behind each of us. It seemed so natural then, as if we were following a long-established protocol.

"So?" I gave him as winning a smile as I could manage.

He returned in kind. "So?" A quick glance towards Bill, who was standing over my shoulder, and he added "Yes and no."

"Pardon?"

"Are we the Thirteenth Colony? I believe that's the question of the hour, right?"

Either he'd put a lot of thought and practice into this exchange or he was a master at improvisation. This sounded entirely too practiced to be anything but the former.

I turned his statement over in my head for a few beats and considered the larger implications. Bill hadn't mentioned anything about leaving either Zarek or anyone else behind, something I'm absolutely sure he'd have mentioned before bringing Richards in like this (even with the more immediate burden he'd been carrying).

And, much as I might have wished to just accept what Secretary Richards was saying right then, the professional in me demanded it be done properly. The absolute last thing I wanted or needed was to wreck any hope we had of reaching Earth. That meant I had to nip this meeting in the bud and get a reasonably coherent debrief from Bill and the others so we could all proceed together. I suspected Bill was still reeling from finding out Kara Thrace was alive and…well…

Summoning as much authority I could under the circumstances, I stated "Mr. Secretary, much as I'd like to continue this dialogue, I should first speak with the Admiral and my Vice-President."

"I completely agree," Richards nodded after barely a heartbeat's consideration. He seemed quite earnest and, if I was reading him right, more than a tad relieved.

I stopped myself right there and looked at him again. For just a heartbeat he looked like a slightly older Billy, albeit one who could dress sedately and stay groomed. A quick glance at the Commodore standing behind him had me thinking of what Bill might have looked like an eon ago if he hadn't been cut out of the Fleet so quickly after that joke of an Armistice. He looked no less relieved at my request and Richards' agreement.

The Secretary in question stood and nodded to Bill. "Admiral? Perhaps you should begin bringing in the materials we brought over?" Something resembling a growl rumbled out of Bill as he nodded and moved to the door.

I was about to ask precisely what 'materials' the Secretary was talking about when several Marines filed in, each carrying large boxes in their arms. They carefully stacked these containers one atop the other wherever they could find the room, ultimately making eight towers of various sizes and virtually filling the Admiral's already cluttered up cabin.

I'd kept my expression carefully neutral throughout this, finally looking towards Richard's with upraised eye-brows. The Secretary gave a small shrug of apology and gestured to the containers surrounding us. "These boxes contain a capsule history of our planet, as well as details on our finding the ship we presumed was used by our mutual ancestors. All of it has been translated into your language. Has the Admiral told you about, ahem, Colonel Thrace?"

"He has," I nodded quickly, not wanting to linger on that particular issue just yet. I knew at some point I was going to need to address the issue with Lee; self-preservation alone compelled me to have an actual strategy to do so. "I presume she's covered in...all this, somewhere?" I asked, mimicing Richard's casual swing.

"She is. In fact I believe all this is equal part's planetary history, the colony ship, and Kara Thrace."

I couldn't help but look slowly this way and that, wondering just how much paper (or whatever they used) we'd have to wade through. I felt faint just at the thought of it. Richard's next words didn't exactly help.

"Perhaps it would be easier if the Commodore and I stepped out and allowed you and the Admiral to review all this?"

I took another look at 'all this' and wondered if this wasn't some kind of perverse joke. His eyes made it clear it was anything but.

+09:30:24

By the time we came up for air, Bill and I had worked our way through a good portion of the planetary history and had a good grasp of the circumstances and work surrounding the colony ship the Terrans had dug up. Likely we'd would not have made it as far as we did if Commodore Avery-Hunter hadn't elected to remain behind to assist us. I was relieved beyond words when Bill had suggested it and Richards had easily agreed.

I'd been a school teacher long before I became either the Secretary of Education or the President of the Colonies. I'd written up more lesson plans and edited more text books on history and basic skills than I could count. Yet everything we'd read made me feel like an amateur in comparison. The two thousand year history of the Twelve Colonies, from founding to the Holocaust, seemed almost nothing in comparison to what our cousins had done and undone over the same time period. To say nothing of the dizzying array of civilizations and cultures that had originated before our mutual ancestors arrived.

I could see what we'd read was a heavily truncated history, but it seemed like every other page told of some war breaking out somewhere on their little globe or an empire being founded or destroyed. It was likely a reflection on the fact they had only their own planet upon which to live, whereas we'd had a solar system boasting 12 habitable planets. We'd been fortunate in that it gave us extra 'space' in which grow, and - if I were being honest - to forcibly relocate troublesome elements so they were...out of the way. I wondered how many Terran nation-states had been founded as penal colonies as Aerleron had, or were settled by the excessively devout like Gemmenon began with.

From what I read, it was only in the last century that our cousins had finally reached the point we ourselves had begun with at Landing. Even then they were plagued almost nonstop by political and religious strife, with the added threat of nuclear suicide hanging over them all for the latter half of the century. I couldn't imagine how they'd managed to push out of their atmosphere, even if only to their planet's only moon, under those circumstances.

Atop all this, I was struck by the sheer number of languages spoken and religious creeds practiced by the Terrans. It explained a little as to why they seemed to have such a habit of going to war over what, objectively, were small and even silly reasons. The Colonies had been founded largely through war after Landing, and the First Cylon War saw death and destruction on a scale rarely dreamed of. But just the little I had read was nearly enough to have me re-think wanting to settle among a people who'd spent generation upon generation pointing nuclear arsenals at each other and undertaking the not-so-occasional pogrom.

The Commodore must have sensed my growing reluctance, directing us to reports of more recent events. Fifty years ago, right around the time Auric Cylon had begun tinkering with the first model of Centurion, our Terran cousins had come within a hair's breath of wiping themselves out when a customized virus (apparently originally intended to control some troublesome species of insects) mutated unexpectedly. By some small miracle, this 'Blight' quickly mutated again into something otherwise benign before dying away completely. This was cold comfort to the four-point-eight billion dead, but at least it convinced the survivors to put aside most of their differences and actually come together as a species.

From there on things settled onto more familiar and calmer ground, reading more like our own after the Armistice. They reached beyond their planet, beginning settlements on their moon and next closest planet, while at the same time working to repair much of the harm their parents and grandparents had done to Terra itself.

I lingered over the photos of Earth and its environs that were included. For a planet that was 70% water, their handfuls of continents were home to every conceivable terrain and environment. Tears prickled my eyes at sights that reminded so much of Caprica and Picon. Strange-yet-not wildlife was captured in these images as well, as were all manner of dress and behavior of the Terrans themselves. If I hadn't known better I would have sworn the people pictured were from our own homeworlds, the uniform blue skies overhead being the only sign I wasn't looking at the islands of Aquaria or the wide dunes of Aerleron.

As impressive as all this was, the materials on the colony ship grabbed my attention and held tight. The Find, as it became known, happened entirely by accident. A forest reclamation project far into their northern hemisphere had been delayed due to inclement weather, which had caused a mudslide that uncovered a small portion of the hull of the colony ship. This naturally put the replanting on hold for a bit while academics worked on excavating what was presumed to be some long-buried native settlement or something equally mundane.

Much of the early material were photos and sonar imagery, the latter of which had hand-written scribbles in the Terran's alphabet I didn't even try to decipher. Based on how sloppy said scribbles were, I suspected they were notes written in excitement. A hand-drawn diagram of the dig site was likewise scribbled over with notes and calculations, nearly obscuring the crude but almost familiar outline.

The dig had gone only a month, uncovering more and more of the ship, when the military stepped in. Men and women wearing sky-blue berets, caps, and helmets occupied many of the next batch of photos. I saw no weapons in evidence, so I guessed they were engineers and technicians. Certainly there were plenty of construction vehicles shown, all laboring over the ever-more exposed hull.

Commodore Avery-Hunter explained it took over a year of non-stop work to fully uncover the ship, primarily because they were also looking for bodies or other artifacts that might have been buried in the surrounding area. There were also safety issues that required constant monitoring; after all, who knew what kind of germs or the like might have been lurking inside that long-buried hull?

They'd erected an airtight seal over and explored the ship at length before beginning disassembly of it for transport southwards. All this had taken another four years as the Terrans had been cautious to the point of paralysis; with good cause, I had to admit now, given this discovery came barely a generation after The Blight died out.

I couldn't help but be impressed with the industry and enterprise of our Terran cousins. They'd managed to completely dismantle the ship, airlift it by sections across a continent to some great hole in the desert, and reconnected the pieces perfectly. It left me to wonder how much of their fleet was based on that same source; as Bill was refraining from asking any questions right then, I decided to be prudent to follow his lead.

The Commodore was being generous with his commentary and I certainly didn't want to spook him into shutting up. Some things I could have gone without knowing right then, like how there were at least five different major power blocs at work on Earth and a few weaker ones, each of whom would likely have their own reactions and demands upon us. Avery-Hunter and Richards represented the United Nations, which was just one of the big five but which had been granted authority to make first contact with us.

Upon hearing this, I asked the room "Where is Secretary Richards right now?" I'd directed the question to Bill, but it was the Commodore who answered.

"I believe he said something about finding a Triad game, Ma'am."

My head went light as my throat seized. I had to remind myself to start breathing after a few beats. Bill just went still and pale.

"Um..." was all I could verbalize right then.

TBC...