Three months of very dull travel later, we arrived in the vicinity of Neptune, the furthest outpost of human habitation and possibly the only place in the solar system more depressing than the state of Utah. Fort Victor was our destination, an outlying military facility used mainly as a base for training sorties out near Pluto, plus the odd scientific foray into the Oort Cloud.
Now it'd be nice to report that we were all one big happy family aboard the Galactica -it was my go to do liasion again- but we weren't. Long periods of having nothing whatsoever to do had worn everybody's nerves down quite badly, and the crew and passengers were scratchy and ill-tempered. Sitting alert had gone from dull to dull and pointless, and there was nothing for patrolling pilots to do but bore holes in the sky, because we hadn't heard from the Cylons since the unfortunate business with Sharon. Commander Adama was quite pleased with our solution to the problem of Baltar, by the way; it saved him from the embarassment of either A: having to prevent the good doctor from being lynched despite his inclinations to the contrary or B: being deprived of his command and court-martialled for first degree murder after he'd personally strangled the irritating little prick. President Roslin had muttered about summary justice, but couldn't find it in her to feel sorry for Baltar.
Anyhow, the entire fleet was in an advanced state of cabin fever by the time we got within sight of Fort Victor. The shore leave facilities there were pretty good, and Captain Mukai was negotiating some kind of arrangement as we approached. Since the Galactica's docking apparatus wasn't within a mile of the standardised arrangements that were just about the only thing our two power blocs agreed about, just about every ship small enough to fit into the landing bay was inbound. The usual banter was crackling back and forth over the radios, rank and privilege left aboard the ships by mutual agreement.
"First thing I'm gonna do when I get this ship on the ground is get LAID!" a Viper pilot announced.
"You wish," Moose replied derisively. "It's a military installation. Very few civilians, and definitely no hookers!"
"Did I mention hookers?"
"Did you have to?" Kara laughed. "Or are you just going to rely on your winning personality?"
"Hey, I got a full war load here, so you better watch it!"
I sighed. "Kids. Most shore leaves I've been on, we had to be shuttled out because everybody was too exhausted to fly."
"Dang, but you can be some kinda misr'ble bastard when you wanna, Bob!" Buckshot admonished jocularly.
"Just war-weary," I replied. "Christ almighty. I'm not thirty yet, but these Viper pilots make me feel twice that. They're all so young compared to us, even though there's no more than a three or four year age gap."
"Know what you mean. I was like that once," Moose pointed out. "Feels longer than it really is, I guess."
"Yeah, I agreed, setting up for a final approach.
I noticed with mild surprise that a Coalition Sharov-class heavy cargo ship was in port, squawking military ID codes. I scratched my head over that -in a strictly metaphorical sense, seeing as I was in full flight gear- but concluded that the two powers were in one of their periodic neighbourly phases. It might even last for a few weeks this time.
Our current President was one Admiral George Cauldwell, a former Alliance military leader. I can only profess admiration for his tactical skill, but his political views verge on out and out facism. He had lobbied hard for permission to use nuclear weapons against civilian targets, advocated a reciprocal policy for treatment of prisoners that violated every agreement ever made on the subject and constantly pushed for further aggressive action against the Coalition, which he called 'liberation'. I called it invading another sovereign state, and so did a lot of other people. I was half expecting another war to be raging by the time we got home, knowing Cauldwell. Maybe he'd got religion or something...
There was a general stampede for the bar almost as soon as we'd landed. Fortunately, there had been some careful negotiation over the extension of credit; I think they felt a bit sorry for us. I hung back and waited until the worst of the scrum was over before getting myself a beer and finding a quiet corner where I could relax for a while. I watched the drinking competitions as would a man watching a large crowd of noisy children playing football in the street.
"Kids, huh?" Silky remarked, sitting down heavily in the chair next to mine. "Even after all they've been through."
"And look at us," I replied, shaking my head ruefully. "Sitting here grouching like a couple of old fogies about how in OUR day..." We laughed. "Relatively speaking we haven't gone through half what they did," I added. "Even having your family wiped out is a few orders of magnitude away from your entire civilisation being nuked to hell."
"I'll take your word on it," she replied. Her family was still very much alive, and still doing airshows and the odd wedding. If she had any further comment it was forgotten, because several Coalition military personnel entered the bar. I presumed that they were off the Sharov. The Galactica crewmen didn't seem to notice, but the Yamato's personnel did. They hadn't had time to fully adjust to the idea of our two sides being at peace, though I presumed Fort Victor's regulars had, and I had a nasty feeling that this boded ill.
The Coalition officers went to the bar, and there was a brief exchange. I heard an anguished cry of "What? No vodka?" in Russian-accented English. Deadly silence fell, and I could sense holster flaps being unbuckled.
"Well, what did you expect?" I shouted cheerfully in a desperate effort to prevent a brawl. "Do your bars stock Jack Daniels?" There was a dreadful pause, and then virtually the entire bar howled with laughter. Even the people from the Galactica joined in, more out of relief at the avoidance of an unseemly brawl than actually understanding the joke. The Coalition officers then proceeded to drink Jack Daniels with me for the rest of the evening, and the last thing I remember is staggering out of the bar arm in arm with two of them, singing 'The Red Flag'.
I awoke in what I hoped was the transient berth I'd been assigned on Fort Victor. I didn't dare open my eyes yet, because I had the distinct feeling that there was somebody next to me.
"Morning," a groggy but familiar voice said to me. My eyes jerked open, and I looked over towards...
"Michelle, what am I doing in your bunk?"
Silky laughed lightly, and propped herself up on one elbow. "You kind of staggered in and passed out; you must have got the wrong room. I couldn't bring myself to wake you up. You look so sweet when you're asleep." I gave her as powerful a glare as I could manage whilst extremely hung over. On the other hand, at least it hadn't turned out I'd got off with her and couldn't remember. That would have been supremely embarassing. Suddenly we began to laugh.
Feeling slightly dishevelled, I made my way to the bathroom and relieved myself, then drank several glasses of water. The irony of this didn't escape me. Silky joked through the door that my urine must be 90-proof, to which I declined to reply. As we left to find breakfast, she slipped an arm around my waist. "Just making Ned jealous," she whispered to me. To be quite honest, I was a bit disappointed, but then we entered the cafeteria and disappointment became deep and lasting embarassment. It was almost a relief when Bandit threw up.
"What happened to you guys?" Colonel Enriquez asked conversationally. "Something in the food?" Lee threw a bread roll at her.
Over the continental breakfast provided by the French-run station, Colonel Enriquez filled us in on the meeting between the two Presidents. It hadn't been exactly friendly. [Author's note: I'm making a lot of assumptions about President Roslin's political views here, but think Ronald Reagan and Tony Benn in the same room]
"I think he liked Adama better," she admitted. "Went on about how military situations demand military leadership, and stopped just short of implying that he should have staged a coup."
"This is why I voted for the other one," I replied sourly, sipping my coffee. "What did they decide on?" Say what you like about Cauldwell, he made sure that meetings ended with a firm idea about what needed doing and how to go about doing it.
"He recognises her presidency as legal, and the refugees are to be provided with a world to colonise for themselves; anybody who wants to live on Earth has the option of taking Alliance citizenship." I suspected that the presence of the Galactica and Commander Adama's attitude to anybody who tried to tell his boss what to do might have been a contributory factor, and said as much.
"That occurred to me as well," Enriquez laughed. "He didn't say much; just stood at the back of the room and looked menacing for most of the meeting. He wants a full report from the liason officer about the size, capabilities and readiness of the Galactica's forces as soon as possible, by the way. You can borrow my stenographer."
"He needn't expect anything classified; I don't do espionage," I replied vehemently.
When my report was read I recieved a letter of reprimand for supplying inadequate information. My rebuttal stated that to provide further information was to violate the Colonial military's security protocols, and that surely my task was not that of a spy, for the Galactica was under the command of a friendly nation. President Roslin submitted a very strongly worded memorandum through the newly established embassy to the effect that if Cauldwell pulled one more stunt like that then she'd consider it an act of war. Adama backed her up by putting the Galactica in her highest readiness state. My reprimand was hastily withdrawn, Cauldwell apologised magnificently and my liason post was made permanent to keep me out of the way. The dust settled, the Colonials were handed Sedna [albeit because nobody else wanted the miserable lump of rock], and I began to look forward to some peace and quiet.
I should be so lucky.
"Please, please tell me you aren't absolutely certain," I begged Adama. "How the HELL did they track us when the last we saw of the Cylons was three lightyears back and a year ago?" Any sort of homing device was out of the question, as every square millimetre of every ship and every line of computer code we could find had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by techs from the Yamato and Galactica, plus about a hundred vigilante searches. The aforementioned vigilantes had put paid to any suggestion of a replicant hidden aboard; for all the false leads that had required intervention by security personnel more than once to prevent summary lynchings, we'd found and deconditioned exactly twelve. Unless Baltar's lady friend was lying, which admittedly isn't unlikely, we therefore had them all. I wonder if they ever found him?
"A recon drone is my bet," the commander replied. "Your sensor nets are pretty tight, but they're looking inwards, not out. You didn't see our fleet coming until the Yamato called in, so a probe the size of a vidscreen isn't going to exactly stand out. They must have sent thousands of them out to every star system in the red zone."
"Wonderful. Just wonderful," I grated. "Permission to depart for Earth with the sensor logs, sir."
"Granted," Adama replied. You didn't put this kind of thing over a radio channel, no matter how secure.
I hastily buckled myself into the elderly but fast Viper MkII assigned to me for courier missions and screamed out the launch bay, heading for the warp gate erected in orbit of Sedna. There was the usual flickering aurorae and tunnel effect, and then Earth loomed large in my field of view.
"Earth approach control, this is Colonial liason flight Echo Delta Three. Request clearance to the command centre, priority code blue, over."
"Echo Delta Three, this is approach control. Priority code blue acknowleged, stand by for instruction, over." I drummed my fingers impatiently on the control yoke whilst the clearance request worked its way through the overloaded traffic control system. Priority blue was a step down from red, which was only used if there had been an actual enemy attack and I was racing here to tell somebody, so why the hell was it taking so long? If somebody was stonewalling to make a point then I'd go in there and kick arse...
"Echo Delta Three, the command centre's landing bay is unavailable at this time. There has been an incident, and crash response teams are en route from the surface. Alliance One is currently in the area; do you wish to divert, over?"
"Affirmative," I replied. If I could just persuade them to give the sensor data to somebody senior, I reasoned, then hopefully there'd be some action taken the same day. Yeah, right.
I was kept waiting in a small anteroom whilst the President consulted his advisors. I was mildly irritated, but took the opportunity to steal as much of the official stationery as I could conceal about my person. At length, a weaselly-looking guy in a cheap suit appeared. I assumed he was going to escort me to some briefing room to discuss arrangements for a joint command structure, but instead he handed me a sealed envelope.
"This is an official memorandum from the President and his advisory council thanking the Colonial government for bringing this matter to their attention," he explained.
"Please don't tell me that this is all they're doing about it," I groaned. "Does the President realise that this is likely to mean war?"
"The matter has been designated an internal affair, and a formal declaration of neutrality is being drafted. I'm sorry, Lieutenant Commander, but the Alliance has no with to be entangled in other people's wars." I sighed deeply.
"As I believe was pointed out in the accompanying intelligence report, there is a very strong probability that Alliance interests may be threatened," I replied, trying to use the same sort of beauraspeak that civilians working for defence agencies seem to love. "Will any action be taken to safeguard against this?" An Alliance military presence moved into the region to protect commercial traffic, even under peacetime rules of engagement, would provide invaluable backup to the Galactica and what few surface and orbital weapon emplacements the Colonials had brought online.
"The fleet is being moved to a higher state of alert, but the President fears the consequences of deploying a large force close to Sedna." I shut my eyes, counted to ten, and stopped myself making him eat the damned memorandum.
"It's the consequences of NOT deploying forces that have me worried," I replied coldly. "Tell the President thanks for nothing!" I departed in high dudgeon, but with some justification. What the hell were we going to do now?
Now it'd be nice to report that we were all one big happy family aboard the Galactica -it was my go to do liasion again- but we weren't. Long periods of having nothing whatsoever to do had worn everybody's nerves down quite badly, and the crew and passengers were scratchy and ill-tempered. Sitting alert had gone from dull to dull and pointless, and there was nothing for patrolling pilots to do but bore holes in the sky, because we hadn't heard from the Cylons since the unfortunate business with Sharon. Commander Adama was quite pleased with our solution to the problem of Baltar, by the way; it saved him from the embarassment of either A: having to prevent the good doctor from being lynched despite his inclinations to the contrary or B: being deprived of his command and court-martialled for first degree murder after he'd personally strangled the irritating little prick. President Roslin had muttered about summary justice, but couldn't find it in her to feel sorry for Baltar.
Anyhow, the entire fleet was in an advanced state of cabin fever by the time we got within sight of Fort Victor. The shore leave facilities there were pretty good, and Captain Mukai was negotiating some kind of arrangement as we approached. Since the Galactica's docking apparatus wasn't within a mile of the standardised arrangements that were just about the only thing our two power blocs agreed about, just about every ship small enough to fit into the landing bay was inbound. The usual banter was crackling back and forth over the radios, rank and privilege left aboard the ships by mutual agreement.
"First thing I'm gonna do when I get this ship on the ground is get LAID!" a Viper pilot announced.
"You wish," Moose replied derisively. "It's a military installation. Very few civilians, and definitely no hookers!"
"Did I mention hookers?"
"Did you have to?" Kara laughed. "Or are you just going to rely on your winning personality?"
"Hey, I got a full war load here, so you better watch it!"
I sighed. "Kids. Most shore leaves I've been on, we had to be shuttled out because everybody was too exhausted to fly."
"Dang, but you can be some kinda misr'ble bastard when you wanna, Bob!" Buckshot admonished jocularly.
"Just war-weary," I replied. "Christ almighty. I'm not thirty yet, but these Viper pilots make me feel twice that. They're all so young compared to us, even though there's no more than a three or four year age gap."
"Know what you mean. I was like that once," Moose pointed out. "Feels longer than it really is, I guess."
"Yeah, I agreed, setting up for a final approach.
I noticed with mild surprise that a Coalition Sharov-class heavy cargo ship was in port, squawking military ID codes. I scratched my head over that -in a strictly metaphorical sense, seeing as I was in full flight gear- but concluded that the two powers were in one of their periodic neighbourly phases. It might even last for a few weeks this time.
Our current President was one Admiral George Cauldwell, a former Alliance military leader. I can only profess admiration for his tactical skill, but his political views verge on out and out facism. He had lobbied hard for permission to use nuclear weapons against civilian targets, advocated a reciprocal policy for treatment of prisoners that violated every agreement ever made on the subject and constantly pushed for further aggressive action against the Coalition, which he called 'liberation'. I called it invading another sovereign state, and so did a lot of other people. I was half expecting another war to be raging by the time we got home, knowing Cauldwell. Maybe he'd got religion or something...
There was a general stampede for the bar almost as soon as we'd landed. Fortunately, there had been some careful negotiation over the extension of credit; I think they felt a bit sorry for us. I hung back and waited until the worst of the scrum was over before getting myself a beer and finding a quiet corner where I could relax for a while. I watched the drinking competitions as would a man watching a large crowd of noisy children playing football in the street.
"Kids, huh?" Silky remarked, sitting down heavily in the chair next to mine. "Even after all they've been through."
"And look at us," I replied, shaking my head ruefully. "Sitting here grouching like a couple of old fogies about how in OUR day..." We laughed. "Relatively speaking we haven't gone through half what they did," I added. "Even having your family wiped out is a few orders of magnitude away from your entire civilisation being nuked to hell."
"I'll take your word on it," she replied. Her family was still very much alive, and still doing airshows and the odd wedding. If she had any further comment it was forgotten, because several Coalition military personnel entered the bar. I presumed that they were off the Sharov. The Galactica crewmen didn't seem to notice, but the Yamato's personnel did. They hadn't had time to fully adjust to the idea of our two sides being at peace, though I presumed Fort Victor's regulars had, and I had a nasty feeling that this boded ill.
The Coalition officers went to the bar, and there was a brief exchange. I heard an anguished cry of "What? No vodka?" in Russian-accented English. Deadly silence fell, and I could sense holster flaps being unbuckled.
"Well, what did you expect?" I shouted cheerfully in a desperate effort to prevent a brawl. "Do your bars stock Jack Daniels?" There was a dreadful pause, and then virtually the entire bar howled with laughter. Even the people from the Galactica joined in, more out of relief at the avoidance of an unseemly brawl than actually understanding the joke. The Coalition officers then proceeded to drink Jack Daniels with me for the rest of the evening, and the last thing I remember is staggering out of the bar arm in arm with two of them, singing 'The Red Flag'.
I awoke in what I hoped was the transient berth I'd been assigned on Fort Victor. I didn't dare open my eyes yet, because I had the distinct feeling that there was somebody next to me.
"Morning," a groggy but familiar voice said to me. My eyes jerked open, and I looked over towards...
"Michelle, what am I doing in your bunk?"
Silky laughed lightly, and propped herself up on one elbow. "You kind of staggered in and passed out; you must have got the wrong room. I couldn't bring myself to wake you up. You look so sweet when you're asleep." I gave her as powerful a glare as I could manage whilst extremely hung over. On the other hand, at least it hadn't turned out I'd got off with her and couldn't remember. That would have been supremely embarassing. Suddenly we began to laugh.
Feeling slightly dishevelled, I made my way to the bathroom and relieved myself, then drank several glasses of water. The irony of this didn't escape me. Silky joked through the door that my urine must be 90-proof, to which I declined to reply. As we left to find breakfast, she slipped an arm around my waist. "Just making Ned jealous," she whispered to me. To be quite honest, I was a bit disappointed, but then we entered the cafeteria and disappointment became deep and lasting embarassment. It was almost a relief when Bandit threw up.
"What happened to you guys?" Colonel Enriquez asked conversationally. "Something in the food?" Lee threw a bread roll at her.
Over the continental breakfast provided by the French-run station, Colonel Enriquez filled us in on the meeting between the two Presidents. It hadn't been exactly friendly. [Author's note: I'm making a lot of assumptions about President Roslin's political views here, but think Ronald Reagan and Tony Benn in the same room]
"I think he liked Adama better," she admitted. "Went on about how military situations demand military leadership, and stopped just short of implying that he should have staged a coup."
"This is why I voted for the other one," I replied sourly, sipping my coffee. "What did they decide on?" Say what you like about Cauldwell, he made sure that meetings ended with a firm idea about what needed doing and how to go about doing it.
"He recognises her presidency as legal, and the refugees are to be provided with a world to colonise for themselves; anybody who wants to live on Earth has the option of taking Alliance citizenship." I suspected that the presence of the Galactica and Commander Adama's attitude to anybody who tried to tell his boss what to do might have been a contributory factor, and said as much.
"That occurred to me as well," Enriquez laughed. "He didn't say much; just stood at the back of the room and looked menacing for most of the meeting. He wants a full report from the liason officer about the size, capabilities and readiness of the Galactica's forces as soon as possible, by the way. You can borrow my stenographer."
"He needn't expect anything classified; I don't do espionage," I replied vehemently.
When my report was read I recieved a letter of reprimand for supplying inadequate information. My rebuttal stated that to provide further information was to violate the Colonial military's security protocols, and that surely my task was not that of a spy, for the Galactica was under the command of a friendly nation. President Roslin submitted a very strongly worded memorandum through the newly established embassy to the effect that if Cauldwell pulled one more stunt like that then she'd consider it an act of war. Adama backed her up by putting the Galactica in her highest readiness state. My reprimand was hastily withdrawn, Cauldwell apologised magnificently and my liason post was made permanent to keep me out of the way. The dust settled, the Colonials were handed Sedna [albeit because nobody else wanted the miserable lump of rock], and I began to look forward to some peace and quiet.
I should be so lucky.
"Please, please tell me you aren't absolutely certain," I begged Adama. "How the HELL did they track us when the last we saw of the Cylons was three lightyears back and a year ago?" Any sort of homing device was out of the question, as every square millimetre of every ship and every line of computer code we could find had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb by techs from the Yamato and Galactica, plus about a hundred vigilante searches. The aforementioned vigilantes had put paid to any suggestion of a replicant hidden aboard; for all the false leads that had required intervention by security personnel more than once to prevent summary lynchings, we'd found and deconditioned exactly twelve. Unless Baltar's lady friend was lying, which admittedly isn't unlikely, we therefore had them all. I wonder if they ever found him?
"A recon drone is my bet," the commander replied. "Your sensor nets are pretty tight, but they're looking inwards, not out. You didn't see our fleet coming until the Yamato called in, so a probe the size of a vidscreen isn't going to exactly stand out. They must have sent thousands of them out to every star system in the red zone."
"Wonderful. Just wonderful," I grated. "Permission to depart for Earth with the sensor logs, sir."
"Granted," Adama replied. You didn't put this kind of thing over a radio channel, no matter how secure.
I hastily buckled myself into the elderly but fast Viper MkII assigned to me for courier missions and screamed out the launch bay, heading for the warp gate erected in orbit of Sedna. There was the usual flickering aurorae and tunnel effect, and then Earth loomed large in my field of view.
"Earth approach control, this is Colonial liason flight Echo Delta Three. Request clearance to the command centre, priority code blue, over."
"Echo Delta Three, this is approach control. Priority code blue acknowleged, stand by for instruction, over." I drummed my fingers impatiently on the control yoke whilst the clearance request worked its way through the overloaded traffic control system. Priority blue was a step down from red, which was only used if there had been an actual enemy attack and I was racing here to tell somebody, so why the hell was it taking so long? If somebody was stonewalling to make a point then I'd go in there and kick arse...
"Echo Delta Three, the command centre's landing bay is unavailable at this time. There has been an incident, and crash response teams are en route from the surface. Alliance One is currently in the area; do you wish to divert, over?"
"Affirmative," I replied. If I could just persuade them to give the sensor data to somebody senior, I reasoned, then hopefully there'd be some action taken the same day. Yeah, right.
I was kept waiting in a small anteroom whilst the President consulted his advisors. I was mildly irritated, but took the opportunity to steal as much of the official stationery as I could conceal about my person. At length, a weaselly-looking guy in a cheap suit appeared. I assumed he was going to escort me to some briefing room to discuss arrangements for a joint command structure, but instead he handed me a sealed envelope.
"This is an official memorandum from the President and his advisory council thanking the Colonial government for bringing this matter to their attention," he explained.
"Please don't tell me that this is all they're doing about it," I groaned. "Does the President realise that this is likely to mean war?"
"The matter has been designated an internal affair, and a formal declaration of neutrality is being drafted. I'm sorry, Lieutenant Commander, but the Alliance has no with to be entangled in other people's wars." I sighed deeply.
"As I believe was pointed out in the accompanying intelligence report, there is a very strong probability that Alliance interests may be threatened," I replied, trying to use the same sort of beauraspeak that civilians working for defence agencies seem to love. "Will any action be taken to safeguard against this?" An Alliance military presence moved into the region to protect commercial traffic, even under peacetime rules of engagement, would provide invaluable backup to the Galactica and what few surface and orbital weapon emplacements the Colonials had brought online.
"The fleet is being moved to a higher state of alert, but the President fears the consequences of deploying a large force close to Sedna." I shut my eyes, counted to ten, and stopped myself making him eat the damned memorandum.
"It's the consequences of NOT deploying forces that have me worried," I replied coldly. "Tell the President thanks for nothing!" I departed in high dudgeon, but with some justification. What the hell were we going to do now?