Peace?
Commander Adama had been feeling like a stranger during the celebration hosted by President Adar and the rest of the Quorum of Twelve. He had said little despite being one of them, and one of the only military officers of the little celebration while the rest of the fleet left the Twelve colonies to visit the Cylons for the armistice. The idea of a large number of Battlestars leaving the homeworlds was troubling, but what annoyed him was how Adar was conferring more frequently with Baltar.
Why would the Cylons want the entire fleet out there?
Surely the armistice only needed a few Battlestars, including the President's flagship. They didn't need so many. What power did Baltar have over the President to make Adar make such a risky move? Was it the promise of peace with the Cylons which had made him make the decision, to make such a gamble?
He didn't really need to say much. When he had discovered Baltar had been summoned to the Cylons to talk about peace, Adama had been surprised and concerned. The Cylons and the Colonials had been at war with each other for centuries, even when the Cylons had replaced themselves, going from reptilian beings to an army of robots programmed to hunt down and kill anyone who opposed them. Why would they want peace now? What had changed? Why had Baltar been summoned out of so many of the Quorum? What made him so special?
Adama had never liked Baltar. There was something about the other man with his sly countenance and his ambitious attitude that made it impossible for Adama to like him. The Cylons wouldn't notice given how they were not programmed for emotion. But how had they gone for him, Adama didn't understand.
For some time Adama had been quietly asking questions from behind the scenes and openly as well. Adar had listened to his suspicions and his concerns, especially when the increasing reports of the good news of the negotiations between Baltar and the Cylons returned to the Quorum just grew like weeds in an overgrown garden. What worried Adama the most was not just the very fact the Cylons only asked for Baltar to attend was worrying in itself since if the Cylons wanted peace, they could have asked for more members of the Quorum to cement negotiations. If that had happened then news of the armistice coming would have been welcomed fully by him.
But they hadn't.
The Cylons would only speak to Baltar.
Something was really wrong. He could feel it, and nothing Adar or one of his friends on the Quorum could dissuade him from feeling suspicious because he had tried, Adama had really tried to be positive about the armistice. But it was impossible. Adar had never fought against the Cylons while Adama had; Adama had joined the service in the hopes of making a difference against the genocidal robots. Adama had risen through the ranks as a warrior to become one of the top commanders of the Colonial fleet. He couldn't have done that without taking risks, using his initiative in order to turn the tides in a decisive battle, and he had fought battles against the Cylons, both in space and on planets. He had seen so many people die during the battles against the Cylons, and he had lost so many of his friends at the metallic claws of the Cylons.
To Adama, the Cylons were like a plague of destructive insects who didn't care about who and what they destroyed. He honestly wished he could put aside a lifetimes worth of suffering and a militant mindset behind him, but Adama found it impossible.
He had tried to tell Adar the colonials loved freedom, the colonials loved independence to question and oppose oppression. But to the Cylons - their reptilian progenitors, who would later program it into their robot armies and would continue to be one of the foundations of the core programming of their computer-like brains - it was an alien way of existence. They didn't have a hope of understanding it, and they couldn't help it.
They would never accept it, never accept the Colonials way of life. And yet Adar seemed to think it would be accepted; that and the reports were what fuelled Adama's worries. Fortunately, he wasn't alone. Tigh, a life-long warrior and veteran of dozens of battles the same as Adama, had listened to his concerns and shared them, much to Adama's relief; for a moment he had wondered if he had entered an alternate universe or something on his own and he was the only person with any sense.
As he sat in the shuttle on his way back to the Galactica, his ship and his command, Adama was hoping for the best.
Until he heard there was a problem with a routine patrol of viper fighters.
Author's Note - Sadly I don't own Battlestar Galactica in any shape or form.