Things started to go wrong even before we'd taken off. I'd had a truly ghastly night of it. Tigh and Starbuck had BOTH ended up in the brig; she for breaking into his quarters to remove his private stash of booze, he for having the booze in there in the first place- how's that for a legal minefield? Just to make matters worse Lee had burst out laughing when he heard, and his father had been distinctly displeased about this, so there'd been Words. For reasons never satisfactorily explained, my neutral position outside the Galactica's command structure meant that everybody expected ME to sort it out, and I'd escaped into the relative safety of open space at the earliest opportunity.
Sharon got the hang of the slightly different controls very quickly, which is just as well because the Wolverine is just about the worst cockpit configuration for training ever. The copilot has a separate cockpit of his own above and behind the pilot, and the two positions aren't even visible to one another. Useful only if your backseater has excruciatingly severe body odour or has eaten large quantities of chilli beans in the last 24 hours, or if you just don't like each other.
"Okay, there's a group of target drones dead ahead," I told her. "You have three gun options; basic lasers, high velocity railguns with 2500 rounds per gun or the tachyon cannon, which is like an apprentice howitzer. You cycle through them with the selector switch on your right; it should be labelled."
"Got it," she replied. "So, you can fire all of them at once? Cool."
"Yeah, but be careful; they run out of juice after a while, especially when both energy weapons are firing at once. The projectile weapons aren't affected by that, so most of the time I keep it set on full guns and keep my bursts fairly short; you don't have to fire them for very long! Now, select the nearest hostile target... good. See the little arrow on your HUD? Follow it and you'll see your target encased in red brackets."
"I got it," she replied.
"Okay," I said, pressing a switch on my console. The drones began zipping about in wild and unpredictable evasive manoevres. "See the box and line in front of your target? That tells you where to aim so that you hit it. Okay, go zap 'em!" As a first attempt, it wasn't bad. She was surprisingly accurate, though she kept the trigger down longer than she had to. She nailed all eight drones within five minutes, which is well above the average for rookies.
"Good stuff; make your bursts a little shorter, though. Now for some missile practice. There should be some more drones launching any minute now. Can you see the missile selector key? Valierii? Valierii, can you hear me?" The fighter began to pull to the left, a sign that the pilot had their hands off the stick. I began to worry. "Valierii, are you okay?" The cockpit camera activated, and I saw that she was slumped over one side of the controls; she had avoided the yoke, thankfully.
"Shit! Tiger Two to Galactica, I have a medical emergency! Requesting clearance!"
"Roger that, Tiger Two. Bring her in. There's a medical team standing by in the port launch bay." I acknowleged the instruction and turned the ship around, but suddenly felt the Wolverine change course. Sharon had retaken control of the ship. "Hey, what the-?" The afterburners kicked in, and the ship hurtled away from the fleet. "What is this, some kind of joke?" I demanded. "Valierii!"
"Program an FTL jump for Caprica or I'll cut off life support to your cockpit. Don't bother trying to eject." Her voice sounded dull, flat; as if she was repeating something she'd been forced to memorise. I knew what that meant, all right. She was a sleeper agent, kidnapped and brainwashed by God only knew what psychological torture. I tried to think. Could I lower the oxygen level in her cockpit, knock her out, and fly home? Chancy at best; it'd take too long, and her Colonial-issue flight suit had a bigger reserve air supply than mine anyhow. Stall her? Hardly; the pilot could programme the warp engines if necessary, though it's usually the backseater's job, and it wasn't all that different from programming jumps in a Raptor. I gave up trying to outthink her, and programmed the jump.
We emerged in the vicinity of Caprica, where a base-star was waiting for us. I snapped the safety catch off my service sidearm; it was loaded with 15mm AP rounds, and could knock down a Cylon combat droid pretty well. I hoped. I looked down as Valierii brought the Wolverine in to land.
"That's not good," I said slowly.
There were eight of them waiting for us in the landing bay, as well as some fixed gun emplacements manned by a rather older model. //So they're what Baltar meant. The arrogant little twerp had a point about 'walking chrome toasters', at least,// I mused. There were several replicants nearby as well. None of them seemed to be armed, but then they didn't really need to be, did they?
We set down. I ran the post-launch checklist out of professional habit, and then popped the canopy. I got out carefully, with one hand on my gun. Enough weaponry to equip a mechanised infantry platoon focused on me, and I resigned myself to capture, easing the pistol from its holster and throwing it across the bay.
"Good. You were much more sensible than she was when we took her," the nearest replicant said seductively. I glared at her. She was certainly rather attractive, but I was in no mood for admiring the scenery.
"You Cylons going in for swallow tactics, then?" I said sarcastically. "What are you, a high-tech version of 'Inflatable Ingrid, Your Polythene Pal'?"
"Oh, now that was low," a worryingly familiar voice observed. A second Valierii moved into view. "Oh, shit," I concluded. "Why make a copy but send the real one back with a reprogrammed brain..." I stopped. "This IS the real Valierii, right?"
"We find that sending out a copy or two is more efficient than using up the original," the blonde one explained. "The original lasted long enough to provide a good supply of copies; a whole new model for us. We currently have only twelve, but you would make a good thirteenth."
The blonde laid a hand on my cheek.
"Aren't you supposed to be screwing Baltar?" Valierii -the one I'd flown in with- observed, having apparently come to her senses. My jaw dropped, but suddenly I began to laugh. "You really ARE using swallow tactics!" I gasped.
It didn't seem especially funny later on, but in the face of almost certain death -and by this stage in my career I could compose an identity kit picture for you- people will laugh at anything.
At this point things began to get complicated. The ship was rocked by a muffled explosion. I used the distraction to dive for my gun, and a 'whump' and a sound like a hand grenade detonating indicated that Valierii had got a shot off. I bellowed at her to get in the rear turret, and scrambled to my feet with gun in hand. I emptied the clip in the direction of the combat droids, doing no appreciable damage, and strapped hastily into the pilot's seat.
"Hold tight!"
I gunned the engine and steered the Wolverine towards the main doors. They remained resolutely closed. The ship bucked as the gun emplacements began chipping away at the aft shields. Valierii returned the fire, whilst I wondered how to get the doors open. Suddenly they opened of their own accord, and Cylon fighters began to lift from their own bays.
"Frak! There's hundreds of them!" Valierii yelled.
"This seems like a good place not to be," I agreed, opening the throttle all the way and kicking in the afterburners. "Keep shooting, try to keep them off our tail! I can't outrun them for long!"
"Hang in there, Tiger Two, the cavalry's on its way!" Colonel Enriquez's voice boomed in my headphones. The Yamato's fighter contingent fell upon the Cylon fighters.
"Up to joining in, Boomer?" I said cheerfully.
"You bet!"
I swung around and loosed a Hawk missile as soon as I had a lock. I didn't especially like the Hawk against fighters with shields -it had a miserably small warhead- but against the relatively fragile Cylon fighter it worked like a charm. They also had the advantage of being four to a hardpoint, instead of my preferred Raptor missile (not to be confused with the Colonial reconissance and FAC craft), which numbered only three. I splashed another ship by pure reflex, and set about blowing up anything I could find. Eventually the Yamato pulled away, and we were ordered to warp out.
Then came the issue of what to do with Sharon.
Along with some of her friends, I crammed into the small lab adjacent to the medical facility where Sharon was being looked after, and debriefed personally by the Commander.
"I've run the tests, and she is definitely a replicant," Baltar concluded. "However, from what I can tell she is quite definitely a direct copy. If we can reverse the effects of the conditioning then there is no reason she shouldn't function as a normal member of society."
"I'll arrange it," I promised. "Just one thing, though: Under no circumstances whatsoever are we to tell anybody about this, because if we do then she'll be fending off lynch mobs for the rest of her life."
The others nodded their agreement, and then Chief Tyrol dug in a back pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it. "Sharon said this is important," he explained. Baltar turned pale. I glanced at the picture, which appeared to be from some glossy magazine devoted to which celebrities were shagging each other this week- nice to know they have that sort of tat here as well. It showed Baltar with... the blonde Cylon.
"Boy, have you screwed up this time, pal!" I said with a broad grin. "That tart on his arm is a Cylon replicant, though in fairness to the good doctor I don't imagine he realised at the time," I elaborated. "What did she tell you, anyway?"
"She said she was from a software firm. They were angling for a military contract, and wanted some back doors into the Ministry of Defence's computer system so they could... well, I didn't really hear the rest; she was performing oral sex at the time. I didn't know she was a bloody Cylon!" Baltar wilted visibly, and I began to feel a little bit sorry for him.
"Are you telling me," said Helo in a tone of increasing fury, "that the annihalation of our ENTIRE CIVILISATION is YOUR FAULT?"
"Um, yes."
Helo had to be bodily restrained from killing Baltar with his bare hands. The good doctor fled from the room, leaving Tyrol and myself to convince the others not to lynch him.
An hour later, we headed for his cabin. "Baltar, do you mind if we come in?" Boomer said brightly.
"I'd rather you didn't. There could be a mob waiting with buckets of hot tar and bags of feathers."
"That's why we need to get you off the ship. Commander Adama wants to have you publicly crucified," I replied in my most reasonable tone of voice.
"Ah, Lt. Commander Cole. I was wondering if your captain might be prepared to give me asylum?"
"He usually refers to you as 'that arrogant little shit', so probably not."
"Then if I'm getting off the ship, where am I going to go?"
"You'll see. Ready?"
Tyrol nodded, and broke the door open with a laser cutter. Helo tackled Baltar, and we firmly tied up, gagging him so we didn't have to listen to him complaining.
"Now, we're going to put you in an escape pod with a distress beacon, and if you're very lucky then the Cylons will pick you up before too long. Then you and your girlfriend can go off and have babies or something."
"Mmmmph!"
"Glad you agree. On three, everybody. One... two... three!" We each hauled on a convenient body part and carried him to an escape pod, and we untied him just before shoving him in.
"Okay, we can jettison the pod now," Helo said with a cheerfully homicidal expression.
"But what if they don't find me?" he said in an increasingly whiny voice.
"That's not my problem. The only reason we aren't removing your pubic hair one at a time with tweezers right now is because you're nothing but a vain, self-obsessed little asshole who let his dick override his brain," Boomer said sweetly. "You probably couldn't have betrayed human civilisation if you'd tried, so you aren't worth the trouble of killing."
He bridled a bit at this, but decided not to make an issue of it. "But what about-?" The pod door sealed and it jettisoned.
"I wonder what he'll do when he realises there are no toilet facilities?" I said thoughtfully, and then we all laughed rather nastily and headed for the recreation deck to get a few beers down us.
It'd be nice to be able to report that the Cylons decided to consolidate their gains and stay away from Earth for the time being, or just that we weren't important enough to chase after. But, of course, that would have been too easy...
Sharon got the hang of the slightly different controls very quickly, which is just as well because the Wolverine is just about the worst cockpit configuration for training ever. The copilot has a separate cockpit of his own above and behind the pilot, and the two positions aren't even visible to one another. Useful only if your backseater has excruciatingly severe body odour or has eaten large quantities of chilli beans in the last 24 hours, or if you just don't like each other.
"Okay, there's a group of target drones dead ahead," I told her. "You have three gun options; basic lasers, high velocity railguns with 2500 rounds per gun or the tachyon cannon, which is like an apprentice howitzer. You cycle through them with the selector switch on your right; it should be labelled."
"Got it," she replied. "So, you can fire all of them at once? Cool."
"Yeah, but be careful; they run out of juice after a while, especially when both energy weapons are firing at once. The projectile weapons aren't affected by that, so most of the time I keep it set on full guns and keep my bursts fairly short; you don't have to fire them for very long! Now, select the nearest hostile target... good. See the little arrow on your HUD? Follow it and you'll see your target encased in red brackets."
"I got it," she replied.
"Okay," I said, pressing a switch on my console. The drones began zipping about in wild and unpredictable evasive manoevres. "See the box and line in front of your target? That tells you where to aim so that you hit it. Okay, go zap 'em!" As a first attempt, it wasn't bad. She was surprisingly accurate, though she kept the trigger down longer than she had to. She nailed all eight drones within five minutes, which is well above the average for rookies.
"Good stuff; make your bursts a little shorter, though. Now for some missile practice. There should be some more drones launching any minute now. Can you see the missile selector key? Valierii? Valierii, can you hear me?" The fighter began to pull to the left, a sign that the pilot had their hands off the stick. I began to worry. "Valierii, are you okay?" The cockpit camera activated, and I saw that she was slumped over one side of the controls; she had avoided the yoke, thankfully.
"Shit! Tiger Two to Galactica, I have a medical emergency! Requesting clearance!"
"Roger that, Tiger Two. Bring her in. There's a medical team standing by in the port launch bay." I acknowleged the instruction and turned the ship around, but suddenly felt the Wolverine change course. Sharon had retaken control of the ship. "Hey, what the-?" The afterburners kicked in, and the ship hurtled away from the fleet. "What is this, some kind of joke?" I demanded. "Valierii!"
"Program an FTL jump for Caprica or I'll cut off life support to your cockpit. Don't bother trying to eject." Her voice sounded dull, flat; as if she was repeating something she'd been forced to memorise. I knew what that meant, all right. She was a sleeper agent, kidnapped and brainwashed by God only knew what psychological torture. I tried to think. Could I lower the oxygen level in her cockpit, knock her out, and fly home? Chancy at best; it'd take too long, and her Colonial-issue flight suit had a bigger reserve air supply than mine anyhow. Stall her? Hardly; the pilot could programme the warp engines if necessary, though it's usually the backseater's job, and it wasn't all that different from programming jumps in a Raptor. I gave up trying to outthink her, and programmed the jump.
We emerged in the vicinity of Caprica, where a base-star was waiting for us. I snapped the safety catch off my service sidearm; it was loaded with 15mm AP rounds, and could knock down a Cylon combat droid pretty well. I hoped. I looked down as Valierii brought the Wolverine in to land.
"That's not good," I said slowly.
There were eight of them waiting for us in the landing bay, as well as some fixed gun emplacements manned by a rather older model. //So they're what Baltar meant. The arrogant little twerp had a point about 'walking chrome toasters', at least,// I mused. There were several replicants nearby as well. None of them seemed to be armed, but then they didn't really need to be, did they?
We set down. I ran the post-launch checklist out of professional habit, and then popped the canopy. I got out carefully, with one hand on my gun. Enough weaponry to equip a mechanised infantry platoon focused on me, and I resigned myself to capture, easing the pistol from its holster and throwing it across the bay.
"Good. You were much more sensible than she was when we took her," the nearest replicant said seductively. I glared at her. She was certainly rather attractive, but I was in no mood for admiring the scenery.
"You Cylons going in for swallow tactics, then?" I said sarcastically. "What are you, a high-tech version of 'Inflatable Ingrid, Your Polythene Pal'?"
"Oh, now that was low," a worryingly familiar voice observed. A second Valierii moved into view. "Oh, shit," I concluded. "Why make a copy but send the real one back with a reprogrammed brain..." I stopped. "This IS the real Valierii, right?"
"We find that sending out a copy or two is more efficient than using up the original," the blonde one explained. "The original lasted long enough to provide a good supply of copies; a whole new model for us. We currently have only twelve, but you would make a good thirteenth."
The blonde laid a hand on my cheek.
"Aren't you supposed to be screwing Baltar?" Valierii -the one I'd flown in with- observed, having apparently come to her senses. My jaw dropped, but suddenly I began to laugh. "You really ARE using swallow tactics!" I gasped.
It didn't seem especially funny later on, but in the face of almost certain death -and by this stage in my career I could compose an identity kit picture for you- people will laugh at anything.
At this point things began to get complicated. The ship was rocked by a muffled explosion. I used the distraction to dive for my gun, and a 'whump' and a sound like a hand grenade detonating indicated that Valierii had got a shot off. I bellowed at her to get in the rear turret, and scrambled to my feet with gun in hand. I emptied the clip in the direction of the combat droids, doing no appreciable damage, and strapped hastily into the pilot's seat.
"Hold tight!"
I gunned the engine and steered the Wolverine towards the main doors. They remained resolutely closed. The ship bucked as the gun emplacements began chipping away at the aft shields. Valierii returned the fire, whilst I wondered how to get the doors open. Suddenly they opened of their own accord, and Cylon fighters began to lift from their own bays.
"Frak! There's hundreds of them!" Valierii yelled.
"This seems like a good place not to be," I agreed, opening the throttle all the way and kicking in the afterburners. "Keep shooting, try to keep them off our tail! I can't outrun them for long!"
"Hang in there, Tiger Two, the cavalry's on its way!" Colonel Enriquez's voice boomed in my headphones. The Yamato's fighter contingent fell upon the Cylon fighters.
"Up to joining in, Boomer?" I said cheerfully.
"You bet!"
I swung around and loosed a Hawk missile as soon as I had a lock. I didn't especially like the Hawk against fighters with shields -it had a miserably small warhead- but against the relatively fragile Cylon fighter it worked like a charm. They also had the advantage of being four to a hardpoint, instead of my preferred Raptor missile (not to be confused with the Colonial reconissance and FAC craft), which numbered only three. I splashed another ship by pure reflex, and set about blowing up anything I could find. Eventually the Yamato pulled away, and we were ordered to warp out.
Then came the issue of what to do with Sharon.
Along with some of her friends, I crammed into the small lab adjacent to the medical facility where Sharon was being looked after, and debriefed personally by the Commander.
"I've run the tests, and she is definitely a replicant," Baltar concluded. "However, from what I can tell she is quite definitely a direct copy. If we can reverse the effects of the conditioning then there is no reason she shouldn't function as a normal member of society."
"I'll arrange it," I promised. "Just one thing, though: Under no circumstances whatsoever are we to tell anybody about this, because if we do then she'll be fending off lynch mobs for the rest of her life."
The others nodded their agreement, and then Chief Tyrol dug in a back pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it. "Sharon said this is important," he explained. Baltar turned pale. I glanced at the picture, which appeared to be from some glossy magazine devoted to which celebrities were shagging each other this week- nice to know they have that sort of tat here as well. It showed Baltar with... the blonde Cylon.
"Boy, have you screwed up this time, pal!" I said with a broad grin. "That tart on his arm is a Cylon replicant, though in fairness to the good doctor I don't imagine he realised at the time," I elaborated. "What did she tell you, anyway?"
"She said she was from a software firm. They were angling for a military contract, and wanted some back doors into the Ministry of Defence's computer system so they could... well, I didn't really hear the rest; she was performing oral sex at the time. I didn't know she was a bloody Cylon!" Baltar wilted visibly, and I began to feel a little bit sorry for him.
"Are you telling me," said Helo in a tone of increasing fury, "that the annihalation of our ENTIRE CIVILISATION is YOUR FAULT?"
"Um, yes."
Helo had to be bodily restrained from killing Baltar with his bare hands. The good doctor fled from the room, leaving Tyrol and myself to convince the others not to lynch him.
An hour later, we headed for his cabin. "Baltar, do you mind if we come in?" Boomer said brightly.
"I'd rather you didn't. There could be a mob waiting with buckets of hot tar and bags of feathers."
"That's why we need to get you off the ship. Commander Adama wants to have you publicly crucified," I replied in my most reasonable tone of voice.
"Ah, Lt. Commander Cole. I was wondering if your captain might be prepared to give me asylum?"
"He usually refers to you as 'that arrogant little shit', so probably not."
"Then if I'm getting off the ship, where am I going to go?"
"You'll see. Ready?"
Tyrol nodded, and broke the door open with a laser cutter. Helo tackled Baltar, and we firmly tied up, gagging him so we didn't have to listen to him complaining.
"Now, we're going to put you in an escape pod with a distress beacon, and if you're very lucky then the Cylons will pick you up before too long. Then you and your girlfriend can go off and have babies or something."
"Mmmmph!"
"Glad you agree. On three, everybody. One... two... three!" We each hauled on a convenient body part and carried him to an escape pod, and we untied him just before shoving him in.
"Okay, we can jettison the pod now," Helo said with a cheerfully homicidal expression.
"But what if they don't find me?" he said in an increasingly whiny voice.
"That's not my problem. The only reason we aren't removing your pubic hair one at a time with tweezers right now is because you're nothing but a vain, self-obsessed little asshole who let his dick override his brain," Boomer said sweetly. "You probably couldn't have betrayed human civilisation if you'd tried, so you aren't worth the trouble of killing."
He bridled a bit at this, but decided not to make an issue of it. "But what about-?" The pod door sealed and it jettisoned.
"I wonder what he'll do when he realises there are no toilet facilities?" I said thoughtfully, and then we all laughed rather nastily and headed for the recreation deck to get a few beers down us.
It'd be nice to be able to report that the Cylons decided to consolidate their gains and stay away from Earth for the time being, or just that we weren't important enough to chase after. But, of course, that would have been too easy...