Thanks to LONA of the BSGWS for Beta'ing this fic for me.
Okay, thanks to everyone who reviewed, its very much appreciated
thecomputerroom: afraid not: Earthman is in a seperate universe to my Thundersdawn stuff
It was quite a while before other parts of the picture started to show themselves, helped greatly by Starbuck's idea of a souvenir.
It seemed the Cylons had taken Biotech to a whole new level, creating intelligent life forms for the sole purpose of being a ship and god-knows what else.
It meant their knowledge of genetics, of biology and more importantly, of the mind was far in advance of what we had suspected and believe me, we had had some pretty far out ideas.
This was bad. We had up till now thought that the Cylons had just cloned humans then set up their controls but if they knew genetics to the extent which the captured raider suggested, then we weren't just talking about carefully implanting transmitters and sensors into a human mind, we were talking a human mind designed with specific connectors for implanted transmitters and sensors.
It was a concept both Gaeta and I found instinctively repellent. It had touched a nerve, that the only thing we could truly call our own in these dark times was capable of being corrupted, of being used against us.
Well, not us Earthmen in particular but you get the idea.
It was maddening, Humanity's knowledge of the brain was generally restricted to specialist Medical texts in both Earth and Colonial cultures, none of which we had access to and frankly, we probably wouldn't have understood them anyway.
And neither of our cultures showed any sign of the level of knowledge required for the exquisite work the Cylons had evidently managed, mainly because humans tended not to like people poking around in their brains trying to figure out how they ticked. The Cylons had evidently shown no compunctions in directly experimenting on humans in their attempts to better themselves.
It left us rather in the dark.
We knew Biological transmitters were theoretically possible and could have been used in the production of the Cylon humanoid models but it seemed unlikely, especially after a close inspection confirmed that the raider's transmitter was, apart from the control circuits, wholly an electronic construct.
That meant a device would have to be placed inside the minds of the Cylon humanoid models to act as transmitter, something so far beyond human knowledge that it wasn't even in the same universe.
We had to admit it, we had been stalled.
We couldn't do anything more until we had had a look at one of the transmitters and that had to wait until the MRI scanner was completed and brought operational, a project which had suffered a number of annoying delays and accidents, accidents of the kind you call ‘Accidents'.
I hoped it was just me who had spotted the subtle surveillance that was being directed at Baltar, rumours of specific people being watched was not what we needed, the Colonials I had seen were edgy enough already and more importantly, it might get back to Baltar.
I shouldn't have worried. Gaeta and I were relaxing in the Officers Mess over a game of Poker, a game which had become very popular on board simply because Starbuck had been trapped in the sickbay recently and therefore missed Dafyd d introducing it so the other crewmen had a chance of beating her at it, when Tigh dropped by with the news that Baltar had not only been Sectioned, though the Colonial word would literally translate more like ‘Condemned of Mind,' but had been caught sabotaging the MRI project too.
Tigh looked on a little miffed as my pile of cubits suddenly grew, aided by several well-placed bets I had made on the subject on Baltar. He looked even more miffed when I reminded him of who else had placed the same bet and hadn't he better pay up?
As Tigh reluctantly promised to return with the aforementioned money, an ecstatic Donelly showed up, a bemused Dafydd in tow, waving a Viper Pilots pilot's patch gleefully under my nose.
Well, I knew I had been very absorbed with the Cylon projects but I hadn't realised I was so absorbed I had missed Donelly taking Viper lessons.
Nor, to my chagrin, had I previously noticed that Dafydd was now wearing a uniform that marked him quite clearly as one of Tyrol 's deck gang.
As I congratulated Donelly, I promised myself I would try I find more time for my fellow Earthmen.