== Part 11 – The Past Is Dead ==
WHAM!
As she stepped into the Galactica's CIC, the now familiar sound of a hand hitting a console drew Sharon's attention to a Petty Officer manning one of the stations. Such sounds had become less frequent during the five month long voyage from the Twelve Colonies as her crew became experts at managing the more common glitches and no longer needed to call a contractor for every little thing.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Gates?" Sharon asked mildly.
"Sorry, ma'am," Petty Officer Gates replied with not a hint of fear that he might have drawn a superior officer's ire. He didn't even look up at his commanding officer. "Secondary display froze and I had to perform some percussive maintenance. And... there we go. Fixed."
"Very well, carry on," Sharon said with a nod, unconcerned. Exchanges like this had become completely normal.
Sharon turned and went to the large holographic projection that dominated the center of the CIC. It was only in the last few years that the Colonial Technology Control Committee - the government body that was responsible for making sure that the Colonies didn't accidentally recreate a new race of rebellious AI as they rebuilt their computer technology and information networks – had finally relented enough to allow computers powerful enough to run holographic displays like this one. The holographic displays had followed quickly after, copied from pre-Cylon War designs. The display in front of Sharon worked flawlessly, mostly because it was an off the shelf commercial model that was only militarized by putting it in an armored, shock absorbing frame so that it could have some proper battle ruggedness.
And as for the network that fed the display information that Sharon needed to see... well, the crew had most of the bugs ironed out now.
Sharon studied the hologram. It really was better at conveying situational awareness to her than the old system of 2D screens, especially once they had gotten rid of all the complex and fancy but superfluous aesthetic animations that had been a source for many of the bugs. At the center of the three dimensional image were icons for the Galactica and everything around her; it only displayed what was in the Expedition Fleet's immediate combat zone, but if Sharon wanted to, she could zoom out and view the entire system they were in, the entire interstellar neighborhood, or even the entire galaxy. Around the central image, various windows were open, showing the Galactica's status as well as the other ships in the fleet, the latter being more useful to Admiral Adama than Sharon.
There was also a window showing a live camera feed of a fueling station that had only just begun construction. The fleet had found a batch of asteroids that were especially rich in tylium ore, enough to supply at least a decade's worth of shipping traffic going between the Twelve Colonies and the Thirteenth. Given that they were just under twelve hundred lightyears from Earth – another month's worth of jumping at the lagardly pace they were keeping more or less - Admiral Adama had decided this would be a good place to put the last refueling station. Being in a system meant increased the probability that the Cylons might find it, but the amount of ore in those asteroids was just too good to pass up, so the station plans had been adjusted to give it far heftier defenses than normal.
And they had the guns to build those extra defenses with because Adama had agreed let Sharon use the "Admiral's Personal Cargo Bay" as an actual cargo bay. It was a shame what happened to all those decorative columns, but the captain of the Expedition's metal refining and forging ship had assured Sharon there was actual useful material in them. And Sharon didn't think the scratch and burn marks in the faux marble paneling from removing those columns were ever going to come out.
"Commander," Sharon's XO, Colonel Slate, greeted her as he joined her at the Display. "The Admiral requested that you join him in Conference Room 16 at your earliest convenience."
Sharon raised her eyebrows in surprise. Conference Room 16 was in the starboard flightpod. There were plenty of other, identical Conference Rooms closer to both the CIC and the Admiral's administrative offices.
"Did he say why?" Sharon asked.
"Yes, ma'am," Slate replied with a grave look on his face. "Commander Gaeta arrived on board an hour ago." Yesterday, Adama had detailed Gaeta and the Pegasus to investigate signs of habitation on a nearby planet. "And ma'am, whatever he found doesn't look good."
"We found what looked like a small farming settlement on the surface." Gaeta told them as he poured himself a shot glass of Ambrosia with a shaking hand. "Given that it was the only settlement on the planet, it was pretty obvious they had come from somewhere else. Not that the derelict they left in orbit didn't already tell us that. But we didn't find any people there, not alive anyway."
"Cylons?" Adama asked as Gaeta downed the whole glass in one go.
"No," Gaeta gasp an answer. He didn't pour another drink, but he did look at the bottle as if weighing his chances. "No signs of Cylons. No signs that anyone has been there since everyone died until we came along. What we found were graves. We counted five thousand, two hundred and six of them." Gaeta recited the number like a mantra. "Some of them were very, very small. We only found one body that wasn't buried, locked in what looked like the settlement's admin center. The poor guy had shot himself. And if the tests are right, he shot himself eight hundred years ago.
"It was pretty obvious what happened," Gaeta continued. "Bunch of families came out here hoping to start a new life, scavenged their ships to create some starter infrastructure. But things... didn't work out. There's some chemical in the water that's poisonous to humans. I can't remember what the name is, some long string of words that only makes sense to chemists. But this stuff kills, and kills slowly. If you drink a glass of the local water unfiltered and only one time, you'll probably be fine. But if you keep drinking it day after day..."
"So the settlers all died one by one, the survivors burying each one until there was only one left," Sharon guessed.
"Exactly," Gaeta confirmed, finally putting the glass down. He didn't pour himself a second shot. "It looks like the last guy wrote an entry in the settlement's log book right before he shot himself. We can't read it; the lettering is vaguely Kobollian, but the dialect is like nothing we've ever seen before.
"And the worst thing?" Gaeta continued. "The settlers knew what was happening to them. There's a water filtration plant that has a pile of used up filters next to it that's taller than I am. They ran out and just couldn't make any more."
"They couldn't use their ship to go back to Earth – I'm assuming they're from Earth by the way – and just pick up more filters?" Adama asked.
"No, they gutted their ships for supplies and material to build their infrastructure. I don't think they intended to ever go back," Gaeta replied with a shake of his head. "And yes, they seem to be from Earth. We found some children's books that had pictures suggesting that much.
"The ship they left in orbit was weird though," Gaeta continued. "It was bigger than any of the ones on the ground, so we think it might have been the only real starship and just carried everything else. Even so, half the ship's internal volume was dedicated to refrigerating this weird tylium-steel alloy rod. None of my people could figure out what the thing was for."
"It sounds like a solid core FTL drive," Sharon told him.
"I'm sorry, a what?" Adama said surprised.
"Oh, uh, it's from science fiction," Sharon said, embarrassed. "Ever since that show came out, alternate universe stuff has been popular with all the kids. Mine told me about this alternate universe setting where instead of the tylium gas burning drives we use in real life, the alternate Colonies use some kind of FTL drive with a solid metal core where tylium is used as an active agent. A solid core drive doesn't burn up tylium at all, but just reuses the same tylium over and over again while also having far greater jump range, meaning they'd be faster than our FTL drives. They'd also be far more efficient that our gas burning drives since they don't burn tylium and be almost totally maintenance free since it has no moving parts, not even fuel. You just supply power and go."
"Maintenance free?" Adama said skeptically. They were all in the military and were well aware how much maintenance went on, even – ESPECIALLY - with machinery that had been advertised to be "maintenance free".
"Like I said, sir, it's science fiction," Sharon admitted.
"Wait, I think I read something about this when I was a kid," Gaeta said. "I didn't remember it until Commander Tyrol jogged my memory, but there was an actual serious scientific paper written that solid core FTL drives was possible. But no one could ever get funding for actual development because we already had working FTL drives. Although there were rumors that a small test model was built."
"Did it work?" Adama asked.
"I have no idea," Gaeta replied with a shrug. "I heard the lab station building it blew up with all hands. Totally atomized. No one knows what happened and funding for alternative FTL drive research dried up after that."
"Huh, I guess the only real take away we can get from this is that the Thirteenth Colony uses solid core FTL drives," Adama remarked. He turned to Sharon. "You said these things are supposed to have greater jump range than our FTL drives?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then I guess that's why these settlers were so far out here away from Earth," Adama concluded. "Their FTL drive let them make bigger jumps, so they could come out further. And if they weren't planning to ever go back, they probably didn't want anyone from Earth finding them either, so they traveled as far out as they could until they found a world they liked."
"It's a shame it didn't work out for them," Sharon said sadly.
"Commander Tyrol, can I have a moment of your time?" Adama asked as the meeting broke up. It was phrased as a question, but given Adama's superior rank, it might as well have been an order.
"Of course, sir," Sharon replied. She turned to Gaeta, "The crew should have your shuttle ready to go back to the Pegasus by now. Are you okay to get back to the hangar on your own, or should I call for an escort?"
"No, I'm fine," Gaeta replied. He shivered. "It's just seeing that... how all those people died. It really gets to you, you know?"
"You have no idea," Sharon told him, completely seriously.
"Admiral, Commander," Gaeta said in farewell. And then he was out the door.
"So, Admiral, what can I do for you?" Sharon asked.
"Drop the act for one," Adama replied as he half leaned against, half sat on the meeting table. It was a sign he wanted this to be informal and off the books.
"Sir?"
"Sharon, I think we've worked together for long enough now to know that something about Gaeta's story really bothered you." Adama told her with concern. "What is it?"
"Sir, do you know where I'm from?" Sharon asked.
"According to your service record, you're from someplace named Troy, aren't you?" Adama replied. "I've never heard of the place."
"No reason you should," Sharon told him. "Because it doesn't exist any more. An industrial accident killed everyone there including my entire family. The only reason I'm alive today is because I had just shipped out for the Academy."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"Troy was a small settlement, like the one Gaeta found," Sharon continued. "We were miners on an airless rock, not farmers on a planet with breathable atmosphere. We've been there since my grandparents' day when a methane explosion popped the atmospheric dome and killed everyone. Everyone who wasn't killed in the immediate explosion died when their canned air ran out because our frakking corporate sponsors couldn't be bothered to send someone to check up on us until weeks after we went radio silent."
It was all a lie of course. Sharon was a Cylon. She had never been born to Katherine and Abraham Valerii, never had two annoying brothers and a cat named Perkels, never heard her father complain about the corporate budget cuts to miners' safety budget, never nervously kissed her secondary school crush named Willis, and had never been overjoyed when she got that acceptance letter from the Academy.
None of that had been real, but to Sharon, they might as well be real because she remembered all of that. She remembered the grief of learning that everyone she knew she had died. She remembered throwing herself into her course work to relieve the pain. She remembered her anger when the news media shills for the corporations had covered the whole thing up and she got a fat deposit in her bank account to shut her up, as if money could replace family.
After she had learned that she was Cylon, Sharon had done some surreptitious research to see how much of what she remembered was actually real. There had been a real Sharon Valerii who had two parents and two brothers. There were no pictures of course, just names in a personnel file. There was no mention of a cat – pets in Troy had been forbidden in fact – but there were a whole host of disciplinary notes about "unauthorized animals" for many people include her parents.
One leave was spent touring the airless remains of Troy, and Sharon had been creeped out by how much she remembered playing in certain parks under a transparent dome that showed a glorious star filled sky, how she had attended school classes in certain buildings. Even the apartment she had supposedly grown up in was virtually untouched and unchanged from what she remembered except for the painted outlines of bodies found in them. She had even counted the lines to see if there were too many; there weren't.
Sharon's memories of her time as a Cylon prior to her becoming a Sleeper agent were fuzzy, weak, little more than impressions of places and emotions. Details escaped her entirely, such as whatever planning was made to insert her into the Colonies. Talking with the other Sleepers that had stayed behind in the Colonies – and Sleepers made up the majority of them – revealed that they all had similar backstories. And as for the Cylons who had been knowing spies all along – Gina Invierre for example – Sharon never dared ask them about the details of what had gone into making the sleeper agents.
Sharon didn't need to ask anyway. She had already figured it out. Troy was no industrial accident. The Cylons had killed off thousands of innocent people just to give her believable cover. And the only mystery to Sharon was how the hell they had fabricated such detailed memories of a life that she had never lived.
Gods damn the Cylons.
"I'm sorry if I dredged up any painful memories you have," Adama told her apologetically.
"That's alright, sir," Sharon replied. And truly, it was. "It was a long time ago, and I've gotten over it. Mostly."
"Okay," Adama said, apparently accepting Sharon's word. "I guess the next order of business is to put together a memorial service for Gaeta's farmers. But that's my responsibility, not yours, so..."
Whatever Adama might have been about to say was suddenly cut off by the red alert klaxons. Sharon's first thought that another glitch had set them off again. But then the speakers blared with a human voice.
"RED ALERT! ALL HANDS TO ACTION STATIONS! ADMIRAL AND COMMANDER TO CIC! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"
Adama and Sharon scrambled for the door. Given their standing orders, there was only one reason to make an announcement like that.
The Colonials were no longer alone in the system.