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A New Angel, a New Fate
"So… we lost a ship?" Fitz looked at the Doctor in surprise. "I mean, that's sad, and I'm not ignoring the fact that people are dead, but… we started that battle with the whole fleet completely powerless, the Cylons had four fully-armed battleships or whatever they call those things against Galactica, and they only managed to destroy one ship?"
"And damage a few others, but I appreciate your point," the Doctor noted, as he sat thoughtfully in his room with Fitz and Compassion. "You have to keep in mind that, as impressive as the Cylons' technology is by the standards of the twentieth century, their weaponry is still comparatively limited, particularly when the vipers were doing their best to stop the missiles actually reaching any of the ships."
"But that doesn't explain it all, right?"
"…True," the Doctor conceded, nodding in acknowledgement of his companion's point. "I would like to say that I had a theory, but to be frank, I'm lost. Even if we assume that the Cylons lost more ships destroying the Twelve Colonies than certain parties would like us to believe they did, they would never have been foolish enough to challenge twelve planets with so few ships that they exhausted them all before they started hunting this fleet. Taking that as read, there's therefore no reason to believe that the baseships sent against us were in anything but full working order, which leaves us with the question of why they retreated when they at the very least had the advantage."
"Well…" Compassion said, looking curiously at the Doctor, "as long as we're talking about strange things, was there any sign of some… signal being sent from the Cylon ships?"
"Signal?"
"I'm not sure what it was, but I… after the power went down, I… the best analogy I can use that you both would understand is that I heard something being sent somewhere in the ship," Compassion explained, looking uncertain in a manner that the Doctor was unused to seeing even after she had undergone such a significant transformation. "I wasn't able to trace the source of it, and it shut down after a few minutes, but…"
"You wonder, huh?" Fitz asked.
"It didn't seem to be anything bad, but take it from the woman who spent most of her life receiving signals; they don't have to be obviously bad to be dangerous."
"The problem is motive," the Doctor noted. "Granted, if the Cylons want to find Earth to destroy it, they've certainly put the fleet in a position where running towards Earth would be the most sensible option, but if that was their goal they've made it fairly obvious."
"Plus, with that resurrection thing they can afford to be patient, so why would they want to hurry us along to Earth?" Fitz noted.
"I will observe that the Cylons seem to sometimes be trying to be more human than machine, which would include impatience, but I concede your point that it still doesn't make sense for them to change tactics so abruptly mid-battle," the Doctor noted. "President Roslin and Admiral Adama are making the occasional semi-random jump while checking the ships that were damaged for any sign that the attacks planted some kind of new tracking device on them, but I think everyone already knows that they won't actually find anything that way; the problem is nobody's sure what to look for instead…"
The three sat in contemplative silence for a moment, only for the silence to broken by a knock on the door. Exchanging curious glances with his fellows, Fitz got up and opened the door to find Galen Tyrol standing outside it, looking anxiously through the hatch.
"Hi," the other man said, nodding briefly at Fitz before looking past him towards the Doctor. "Doctor Smith, I get that this is short notice, but I… need your opinion on something."
"Of course," the Doctor smiled, standing up with a smile. "Shall we-?"
"Just you," Tyrol said firmly. "This is… difficult."
"Of course," the Doctor said again, looking apologetically at his companions before he followed Tyrol out of the room. After a few minutes' walking, the Doctor was led into private quarters that he soon recognised as Colonel Tigh's, where he was surprised to find Tigh along with Lieutenant Anders and Tory Foster.
"Hello, Doctor Smith," the colonel said, looking at the Time Lord with a certain apprehension in his single eye.
"Colonel," the Doctor said, nodding at the Galactica's second-in-command before nodding at the other two. "Lieutenant Anders, Miss Foster; what's this about?"
For a moment, the four exchanged uncertain glances with each other, before the colonel looked resolutely at the Doctor.
"We're Cylons."
The Doctor blinked, assessing the solemn faces staring at him for a moment before he was satisfied that he wasn't being subject to the Colonial equivalent of being Punk'd or whatever the term was.
"You're Cylons?" the Time Lord repeated. "All four of you?"
"There was some kind of… signal back in the nebula, before the basestars showed up," Foster said, looking awkwardly at the fleet's mysterious scientific advisor, clearly unsure why any of her colleagues had suggested talking to the Doctor about this. "We followed this strange song that only we could hear, and then… when we were all brought together in one room…"
"It hit you?" the Doctor finished, looking thoughtfully between them. "You all just… knew you were Cylons?"
"Basically, yeah," Tyrol nodded. "I mean, we know it sounds crazy, but-"
"When you've experienced the life I've lived, it takes more than this to make me dismiss anything as crazy," the Doctor said firmly. "Anyway, I take it you're talking to me now for reasons beyond you just being triggered during our last skirmish?"
"Yeah," Sam nodded. "When I was out in my viper, I couldn't shoot down a raider that was right in front of me… and then it scanned me with its red eye-thing, and the damn thing just cut and ran, along with everything else in the Cylon fleet."
"That's why they retreated?" the Doctor looked at Sam with renewed interest. "I wonder…"
"You wonder what?" Tigh asked.
"If this has anything to do with my current questions regarding the shortcomings of the Cylons' plans," the Doctor explained, turning to address all four of the newly-identified Cylons. "Since I started working with this fleet, there have been several anomalies in everything I've uncovered about the Cylons' history, which includes why their 'Final Five'- which I assume includes you four- have been kept secret from even the rest of their number, various anomalies in the design of the Cylons' biology, and the reason why the Cylons skipped Seven."
"Skipped Seven?" Sam asked.
"This fleet has encountered Cylon models One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Eight, and nobody can give a clear reason why nobody in this fleet or among the Cylons have ever encountered a Number Seven; I think that merits further analysis," the Doctor explained as he looked between the four Cylons. "And on the topic of further analysis, I think I have an idea that might give us further clues on where to go next…"
"Such as?" Sam asked.
"To be blunt, even if you're machines in the sense that you were designed rather than born, what I've read in the files has confirmed that Cylons can be programmed as sleeper agents and the like, which would suggest that there is at least the possibility that you have some mental blocks preventing you from recalling details about your lives before you became part of this fleet," the Doctor explained. "If I can break those mental blocks and unlock whatever memories are being kept from you; at the very least, we might be able to identify the twelfth Cylon, if not explicitly explain why you were left in the fleet with every other Cylon out there cut off from the knowledge of who you even were."
"That… makes a good point," Tory said, looking over at Tigh. "If nothing else, why would the Cylons take out your eye if they had any idea that you were one of-?"
"I am not one of them," Tigh said, glaring resolutely at the young woman in a manner that was made more intense by his single eye. "I am an officer of this Fleet, and I'm going to stay that way…"
"And nobody here questions your loyalty, Colonel," the Doctor said, before looking quizzically at Tigh. "Although I do wonder why you decided to bring this to my attention first. Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to help you, but I'm surprised that you're showing this kind of faith to someone who's been here for such a relatively short amount of time."
"Bill… he's been through a lot recently," Tigh said, his expression twisting in discomfort as he looked at the Doctor. "Didn't want to dump any more crap on his plate until I knew I could give him some answers about any of it, rather than just lump him with another problem to worry about on top of looking for Earth, Lee resigning and the president's cancer."
"We were thinking of trying to find Baltar to see if he knew anything about the other models that Sharon hadn't told us yet," Tyrol put in, "but then I remembered… well, the time you saved me and Cally, and I thought… I mean, you don't seem to mind about stuff like that…"
"You thought right, Chief," the Doctor nodded at the other man, before a thoughtful smile began to spread across his face. "And that gives me an idea…"
"My Gods…" Tory said, staring around Compassion's interior incredulously, Sam joining her shock while Fitz smiled at their reaction and Tigh and Tyrol stood off to the side, their own awe dulled by their previous contact with Compassion's secrets. "This is… this is…"
"Incredible, right?" Fitz grinned at the dark-skinned woman. "I've been with him for the better part of a year and I'm still not used to it."
"But all this…" Tory stared at Fitz. "It's… it's incredible…"
"And Compassion and I appreciate your admiration, but this is what we're here for," the Doctor explained, indicating a series of flat panels on the central console. "These are Compassion's telepathic circuits, which facilitate the telepathic connection I have with her. If I'm right, considering what I've heard about the Cylon ability to connect to some kind of network on their baseships, if the four of you make contact with these, we might be able to do something similar to break down any mental barriers."
"But… won't that risk reactivating any potential sleeper programs they might have left in us?" Tory asked.
"Hardly," Compassion's voice echoed through the console room. "Keep in mind that I'll be in this link as well as all of you; I'll be able to keep the memory access under control, and I assure you that I'll stop any sleeper programs kicking in."
"She can… do that?" Sam said, looking uncertainly at the ceiling.
"Hey, she stopped me being driven totally insane when I was communicating with some entity from a higher dimension of reality," Fitz put in. "Compared to that, making sure there aren't any little secrets in your brains has to be simple."
"Higher dimension-?" Tyrol began.
"Not important," the Doctor said, as he placed Tigh's hand on one of the panels. "Now then, based on what I've gathered from Sharon, all Cylons have the ability to take in information in this manner, so if we assume you four have something in common that merited you being excluded from the other seven Cylons, it makes sense to assume that you share some deeper secrets. By giving Compassion the ability to access all of your minds at once, it increases our chances of unlocking those secrets and working out what exactly we're dealing with here."
"I… see," Tigh said, looking anxiously at where his hand rested on Compassion's console, while Sam, Tyrol and Tory each tentatively took the other's hands and moved into position alongside him. "And… this is safe?"
"As safe as anything can be while you're isolated in here," the Doctor said, waving his hand at the console room around them. "I obviously can't provide any guarantees of anything, but I have no reason to think there are any programming twists in your minds that would be dangerous to anyone…"
"Because if there were someone would have triggered them by now?" Tyrol asked, his hand over the relevant circuit.
"To say the least," the Doctor conceded, as Sam tentatively held out his hand to Tigh, as the last link necessary to complete the circuit. "Well, if you're ready…"
As Sam took Tigh's hand, their heads all reeled back as Compassion gasped in shock…
AN: If this feels like a cheap place to end it, I apologise, but for obvious reasons, explaining the true history of the 'Final Five' is going to be a very difficult issue, so I felt it would be more straightforward (to say nothing of it being more interesting) to show it being explained to the Fleet's leaders once the Doctor and his companions have established the key details among themselves, rather than show it twice over or skip over Adama and Roslin's reactions to such a major development.