AN for the new edition: I did a bit of a rewrite of Racetrack's and Athena's dialog towards the end here so that it will mesh better with coming installments.
AN: I was going to have a challenge about the mystery of the three Raiders in the last chapter but decided not to because the correct answer was a bit morbid. But congratulations to Uberscribbler all the same, for at least suspecting that I killed off Bulldog.
It was supposed to be just another routine jump.
Completely uneventful.
A precautionary measure to put some distance between the fleet and the Cylons.
But it seemed as if the fates-as always-were not looking favorably upon the Colonials.
"Jump compl-DRADIS contact!" Hoshi called out in Pegasus' CIC. "We've got a basestar out there."
"Action stations! Launch alert fighters. Helm, move us between the Cylons and the fleet."
The crew immediately snapped into action, with everybody scrambling to carry out Lee's orders.
"The hangar deck is reporting that alert fighters are away and that they're putting the first squad into the tubes now, Commander," came the announcement from Hoshi.
The XO spoke up next, "Sir, it doesn't look as if the basestar is launching any raiders."
He gestured for Lee to look at the DRADIS display. It was true. There was just a single large blip representing the basestar, without the familiar swarm emanating from it.
Lee and his XO stood next to each other, looking at the DRADIS, trying to figure out what was going on.
"What the hell are they doing?" Lee quietly muttered so that only the XO could hear.
"Maybe they're trying to draw our fighters in, sir. Overwhelm them and take them out away from the cover of the battlestars."
"Maybe…"
Then Hoshi spoke again, telling Lee: "Admiral Adama on the line, sir."
He grabbed the nearest handset from its cradle. "Pegasus Actual. Go ahead, Galactica."
He listened to his father talk and then replied, "Yes sir, I can see that the Basestar isn't taking any action. What are your orders?"
He listened a bit more before hanging up and calling out, "Mr. Hoshi."
"Sir!"
"Tell our fighters to remain in a defensive position near the fleet and not to approach."
"Yes, sir."
Just then a lone blip on the DRADIS display began moving away from the cluster of Colonial vessels.
"Who broke from formation?" Lee asked, already prepared to hear that familiar callsign.
The petty officer at the comms station listened in on the air group frequency to hear the chatter and answered Lee's question: "Kat, sir."
Lee's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. He hadn't been expecting that.
Then: "Commander? You might want to hear this."
"Put it on speaker."
"-looks as if they're all dead, Galactica. I say again. Cylon Raiders are just floating around the basestar. It looks as if they're all dead."
Maybe the fates were smiling down on them for once.
Adama had decided that Galactica's personnel would investigate what was going on with the basestar, so most of Pegasus' air group was able to stand down with just four of its fighters flying CAP for the fleet.
And Kara took advantage of the reprieve to pay a visit to Lee in his ready room and vent a little bit.
"Who the hell does Kat think she is breaking formation like that?"
She angrily paced back and forth while he leaned against his desk and watched and listened to his wife's tirade.
"What if it had been a trap? Did she think about that? That bitch is going to get herself killed one day and take a whole shitload of pilots with her."
This felt familiar. He'd done the same thing with his father back when he had still been a fighter pilot, mostly complaining about the antics of a certain blond pain in the ass.
A whole slew of emotions ran through Lee as Kara continued to talk: sympathy, amusement, and most of all pride at seeing how she had completely grown into her role of authority as CAG without even knowing it.
"And-What?" Kara had caught sight of her husband's face and wanted to know why he was looking at her with that odd expression on his face.
"Nothing. I'm just-"
The phone rang, interrupting him.
"Adama."
Kara watched as Lee's expression darken by degrees before he hung up.
"The basestar just self destructed," he told her. "And the away team from Galactica is being put in quarantine. Apparently there's a killer infection on the loose out there."
Twenty four hours after the away team was put in quarantine, they were declared clean and released from Galactica's sickbay. But it didn't mean that they were free to go back to their regular duties. Now they were in a conference room in a meeting with senior officers from the battlestars, their two medical officers, President Roslin, and the three Adamas in attendance.
Kara watched Adama as the meeting progressed from her seat next to Lee. It was odd to see him so quiet in a meeting like this. Normally he was the one taking charge, engaging in a subtle game of one-upmanship with President Roslin. But not today.
There was a heaviness about the Old Man lately ever since Colonel Tigh had disappeared a few weeks before, presumably to drink himself into oblivion on one of the civilian ships. Adama blamed himself for his friend's dropping off the grid. He had been the one who forced Tigh to move down to New Caprica and end up suffering at the hands of the Cylons.
Although Adama clearly held out hope that his friend would turn up and straighten himself out, Helo had been promoted to Major to permanently take over as Galactica's XO.
Photos taken in the basestar's interior were projected onto the conference room screen. Kara felt an odd combination of fear and satisfaction at the images of dead Cylons lying about, especially when models identical to the Leoben that she had interrogated about four years previously came up.
"They were all dead," Gunnery Sergeant Mathias was saying. "Raiders were just floating everywhere. There were skin jobs lying around and a couple of the Centurions were still jerking about but we took care of that."
The Gunny continued, "I mean…as much as I hate those fraking things, it was kinda hard to see something so…pathetic."
President Roslin spoke, "How did this happen? How could an entire basestar just die like this?"
Sharon joined in on the conversation now, "I tried to access their mainframe, but the data had become so corrupted that all I could get was that a virus infected them and slowly spread throughout the ship. And when the first Cylons died and resurrected, the virus got into the resurrection system and infected all the spare units, meaning that all of them were destined to die over and over again until the bodies ran out."
"A virus? You mean like the one that shut down our defenses?"
"No, sir. This one was wasn't a computer virus. It was biological. But because Cylon technology combines biological and electronic elements, it infected everything. I think the doctors will be able to better explain what it was."
Roslin turned towards the two medical officers sitting at the table and Cottle, the more senior and more experienced of the two, looked down at some of the papers in front of him before speaking, "Tests done on the blood samples taken from some of the dead Cylons show that there was a case of viral encephalitis going around that ship."
"What is encephalitis, Doctor?" Roslin asked, wanting clarification.
"It's an acute inflammation of the brain most commonly caused by a viral infection, Madame President. Most humans built up a natural immunity to the viruses that cause it centuries ago, and there are effective treatments available for the few people who do become infected."
"Is it fatal to humans?"
"If left untreated, it can be, yes. Since we couldn't get any bodies to examine, I can only assume that the Cylons died because the brain inflammation caused their brains to swell against their skulls and that the resulting brain damage killed them."
The President perched her reading glasses on her nose to turn to a page in the report handed to her that had caught her eye.
"And you wrote in your report that Lieutenant Agathon wasn't infected because although she is a Cylon herself, the hybrid blood from her pregnancy rendered her immune?"
"Yes, Madame President."
"Thank you, Doctor. Now, what about this device that you all found that wasn't Cylon technology."
Racetrack, who had led the away mission, grabbed a remote and brought up a picture of a black cylindrical object about the size of a ship-to-ship missile on the screen. "We found it in what Lieutenant Agathon called the main control room. It was broadcasting a simple proximity alert signal. Long range, low intensity, and very low frequency. Almost at the very limit of what can be picked up on the wireless. It's something you would find only if you were looking or it or by complete accident."
"Why would something like this be so for out in deep space?"
"We're still working on that, but we're pretty sure that the virus came from this thing. Doctor Cottle has it in a sealed off room and we're waiting for him to declare if it's still dangerous or not."
"Thank you, Lieutenant Edmondson…I believe that covers everything today. Is there anything anyone would like to add?"
Sharon had something: "Sir, I can't be sure about this because I could only get small fragments of information, but I think that the Cylons know about this virus. A distress signal was sent out but I couldn't find any records of a reply. I can only assume that they were afraid of what the virus could do and moved all the ships in the vicinity out of broadcast range from this basestar because the infection could spread through the data stream to the entire fleet."
There was a moment of silence as everyone digested the sizable nugget of information.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Roslin finally said. "Is there anything else, anyone?"
There was none.
"Then I believe this meeting is at an end."
Roslin stood up and the entire room snapped to attention. "Admiral."
"Madame President."
Once the president was gone, Adama turned to the group and said, "Remember that the nature of this meeting is top secret. You're all dismissed except for Commander Adama. If you would stay behind, please."
Kara turned to Lee with a puzzled look on her face, and he could only shake his head to show that he had no idea what his father wanted.
"I'll wait for you at the Raptor," Kara said quietly, giving Lee's hand a soft squeeze.
He squeezed back. "Okay."
Once everyone had left, Lee turned back to see that Adama had sat back down.
"You wanted to speak to me in private, sir?"
Adama gestured for his son to take a seat as well.
"There's something on your mind," the Admiral said as Lee parked himself on the conference table. "Let's hear it."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"I've been looking at you throughout the meeting, Lee. I know that look. You have an idea and you're trying to figure out a way to frame it before you tell me. Spit it out before you completely sanitize it."
Lee hesitated for a moment before he opened his mouth. This idea was out there by any standard. Even Starbuck's.
"We could use this, Dad."
Adama leaned back in his chair, immediately understanding what Lee was talking about.
"You mean the virus? Germ warfare?"
"Yeah."
"That's a pretty drastic step, son."
"The Cylons don't know that we have this virus. We can infect them, start a cascading effect throughout their entire fleet and it would end this war once and for all. No more running."
"You're talking about committing genocide."
Lee shook his head at that. He saw things differently, "They nuked innocents on twelve worlds. Then they came after us and occupied a thirteenth planet. And Sharon told us herself that everything the Cylons create is geared towards war nothing else. It would be a preemptive strike against an armed enemy that will attack us indiscriminately without warning and without provocation."
"Even if it does turn out to work, there's a flaw in your plan."
Both men sighed. There was a flaw. A big one.
"Yeah…we don't have an infected Cylon."
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