EarthMan
By ChaosEternus
Thank you to the reviewers, you know who you are.
also, apologies for any formatting problems. is doing weird things to everything i upload
PS I now have an original fic universe going, see my personal archive at chaoseternusdotcodotuk for that
Chapter 22: Contact
Well, we made the first move, Adama quickly sending a message to the Excelsior that, unless you could see the look of concentration on his face, was so smooth and to the point you might actually think it had been prepared in advance.
It was Excelsior and her Commander, Hercules, a name that made me wonder if he looked anything like Kevin Sorbo, who laid down the ground rules by which we would verify each others intentions and loyalties though.
My first impression of the man, from what I heard over the radio, was of someone far too used to independent command. Adama was senior Commander by everyone's terms IE years in rank yet Hercules still sounded like he was giving orders which he expected to be obeyed. Okay, so there was a note of respect in the orders but he certainly wasn't treating Adama as even an equal, let alone the Senior Commander.
Whilst it isn't a problem I've seen before, it is one I have heard whispered about. It isn't uncommon for rumours of Officers of Independent Commands to come back into the mainstream and have to adjust to reporting to others, to having to report to others again. It didn't take a genius to figure out that those who didn't adjust ended up out of the service one way or another.
Unfortunately, if this Hercules' couldn't adjust, then it would be a real problem, whilst as far as we knew we had Excelsior outnumbered ships wise, we had no idea of her actual capabilities other then that she had far more fabrication facilities then was normal and she appeared to have longer ranged sensors and be faster. We didn't know exactly how fast she was, how many weapons she had, how many fighters
I could go on and on saying what we didn't know, but I won't. Sufficed to say, if Hercules couldn't cope and needed to be replaced, we would be in real trouble.
Still...
The parameters he set for us to verify each other, that is a thirty strong team on three Raptors, no nukes or weapons and constant contact between the team and the home ship was reasonable and sound so Adama complied, but I could see the anger in his eyes as he voiced his agreement.
Under the circumstances, I thought it best if I grabbed him to one side for a moment whilst Tigh readied his team, and explained why I thought Hercules was behaving the way he was. Our chances at survival pretty much rested on Adama and Hercules getting along and a little understanding would go along way. It helped; the angry look in Adama's eyes faded and he nodded agreement.
Still, now we would have to wait.
The leader of the team from Excelsior was apparently a surprise to Adama, daughter of some Legendary' Commander named Cain. In all honesty, it meant very little to me, which was in fact one of the reasons I was assigned to show the team around. Whilst I had been around the Colonials long enough now to understand most of the cultural references, not being from the background I wouldn't have the same response to famous names, I would just judge on what I saw and observed and any anomalous they saw in me could be explained off by me being from a lesser colony, there were enough moons and rocks that were colonised other then the big twelve themselves after all.
The fact that I, and my comrades, Dafydd and Donnelly were from earth would be kept secret, at least until Excelsior had been verified. The crew had been briefed; they knew to keep their mouths shut. Of course, there were a few things we didn't bother trying to hide, for one, it would be difficult to hide the little captured cylon tech we had after all and frankly, we wanted, we needed to build trust between our two crews.
Thus, Sheba and her team quickly learnt of the fleet, of Baltar (whom they really didn't like) and of the humanoid cylons. That one had them shocked, they had been briefed on collaborators and agents, they hadn't known that the Cylons could now assume human form. Indeed, Sheba had to do some fast footwork with her team to prevent the sudden fear and paranoia getting out of hand, getting them alone for an hour or two till they calmed back down. Not that I could truly blame them, we at least had gotten used to the idea, they had just had it dumped on them without any warning at all.
Still, the two days were quickly over and we were officially friends' and Comrades with the Excelsior.
Now for the next step, now we had to check on Earth, confirm the current situation and allow the Colonials to try to plan how best to initiate first contact.
Home, for the first time in months I would see Earth again, maybe meet up with my friends and family back on that shining jewel
But first, we had to have a little chat with Hercules.