He paused on the shore of the river of time and watched as it flowed past, inexorable and oblivious. Observed the ripples here and there that disturbed its flow. Ripples caused by his fellow Cylons. – This has happened before and it will happen again. – Ripples caused by the humans. – Sooner or later the day comes when you can't hide from what you've done.
It amused him to think of himself by the name he had used among those humans. The most-recent holder of that name had passed his consciousness on to him weeks before, along with memories of the one called Starbuck and another who Starbuck had called Madame President.
The other Cylons might not believe it, but he knew names had power. He thought of the one who called herself Sharon. When she had thought of herself as one among many, differentiated from the other models only by a number designation, she had done as she was told. But once she had been contaminated by humanity, had begun to think and act for herself, she had changed.
Just as he had changed.
xxx
Helo lay in his rack, sucking absently on a lollipop, and stared at the photo he'd brought away from Boomer's locker. It had been almost a week since he'd been back, three days since the execution, and still nothing felt right. The deck crew for the most part were polite but distant, while the other pilots and ECOs all seemed to go out of their way to include him in whatever happened to be going on. It was getting irritating – all he wanted was to be left alone, allowed to adjust to life aboard ship again, life interacting with other people.
Shifting the sucker in his mouth, he sighed. The truth was that all he really wanted was Sharon. Every moment that passed took them farther away from each other, but his own words to her had put an even greater distance between them, long before they had parted on Kobol.
Sharon was a friend of mine. You're not Sharon.
You… You have software.
Whatever twisted thing you are…
…I'm gonna blow your head off.
The worst of it was that he had actually shot her. In a moment of blistering panic, he had put a bullet into her shoulder, but in the end he hadn't been able to kill her. Had, in fact, stopped the bleeding and patched her up, even going so far as to sacrifice some ammunition for the gunpowder, using it and flame to cauterize her wound. To prevent her death.
Gods… Helo forced his mind to other things.
He still hadn't been assigned to the heavy Raider and without that ship, there was no way he'd be able to find the basestar. Frak it. Maybe he should just ask outright to be assigned to it – the idea wasn't the craziest, considering its similarity in design to the Raptors. But he knew that even if Apollo didn't object, Tigh would. When Tigh looked at Helo, he saw the man who had been partnered with the Cylon who had tried to kill his commanding officer, his friend. In Tigh's mind, Helo was guilty by association.
"May I come in?"
Commander Adama's voice made Helo jump. It was so completely out of context and yet so totally in tune with what he had been thinking about that Helo acted on pure reflex. He narrowly avoided knocking himself out on the rack over his as he scrambled to stand. His bare feet hit the floor, his right hand rose in a salute, his left connected with the ladder leading to the rack above and sent the photograph flying. Embarrassed, Helo bit down hard on the stem of his lollipop.
"The guard knocked, but you must not have heard." Adama's voice was amused as he returned Helo's frakked up salute, but his face didn't show it. Helo thanked the Gods the Old Man had never asked to sit in on one of their Triad games. "Relax, son, this is an informal visit."
Helo forced his muscles to loosen. His eyes fell on the photo, the four smiling faces staring up at them from the deck. Before he could move to retrieve it, Adama bent with slow and deliberate motion. Careful as he was, pain asserted its presence in a fleeting wince as he began to straighten.
"Sir, are you all right? Maybe you should sit down…"
Light reflected from the lenses of Adama's glasses as he looked up from the photograph, his expression unreadable. With a lingering look at the glossy reminder of what had been lost, he handed the snapshot back to Helo. "It must be strange for you, being home again."
Home. Such a simple word, Helo thought as he looked again at the picture, at the moment in time that seemed centuries past. He didn't feel like he was home. In fact, he'd never felt so out of place in his life. The Galactica had been his home once, but the Cylons had taken that away along with his family on Tauron.
He thought of home and the only thing that came to mind was Sharon. Her smile. The way her eyes flashed when she was angry. The resolve in her face when he'd last seen her, determined to protect him again, as she'd protected him so many times before. Unconsciously, he brushed his fingertips lightly over the image of Boomer. "But I'm not home, Commander." His voice was low, barely above a whisper. He glanced at Adama. "I don't know where home is anymore."
Helo didn't know what Adama saw; all he knew was that he wasn't trying to hide anything from the Old Man. Not that he could have if he'd wanted to – Adama knew his crew, made it a point to know them. It was one of the things that made him such an effective leader.
Taking hold of the ladder attached to the rack across from Helo's, Adama lowered himself cautiously to the thin mattress. He gestured for Helo to sit. "It'll take some time to adjust, Lieutenant. The XO tells me you've been through a hell of an ordeal." That surprised him. Helo had to wonder what Tigh had said, wonder how much it might have been colored by the Colonel's attitude and stress level. Unlike the Old Man, Tigh was never meant to be a leader. "I'm just glad that I have one of my experienced officers back on the duty roster. We've lost so many…"
Belatedly, Helo realized he was towering over Adama and dropped back down to his rack. He shifted his lollipop again – it was almost gone. Changing gears a bit, he said, "Starbuck told me that there're only about 50,000 of us left."
Adama shook his head. "Fewer than that. Speaking of Starbuck, where is she?"
"The rec room playing Triad. Where else?" He grinned. "I didn't feel like getting my ass kicked by her again, so…" He gestured, encompassing the officers' quarters.
With a short bark of laughter, Adama said, "From what I've been hearing the last couple of days, you two are all but joined at the hip." He smiled as he continued, "I came by to see if it was true that you and Starbuck were conspiring to turn the fleet over to the Cylons."
Helo froze, shocked to his core. He felt the blood drain from his face and was glad he sat already, because otherwise he would've fallen. "Sir, I—"
Adama's smile widened and Helo realized that the man was teasing him. "Gods help us all if that were true, son, the way pilots stick together."
With that, Helo could breathe again. Adama's subtle humor helped him come to a decision he had been wrestling with since his debriefing with the XO. "Commander…"
His expression curious, Adama focused his attention completely on Helo.
Helo took a deep breath and forged ahead. "Sir, I… left something out of my report to Colonel Tigh." His eyes met Adama's.
"Go on."
"It's about the bio-Cylons." He pulled the stick from his mouth and swallowed hard, then, "The bio-Cylons aren't just machines, Commander. They're more like us than you know."
"I see. You know this because of your time with the other Lieutenant Valerii."
"Yes, sir." Helo didn't know how to put it other than bluntly. "She's pregnant."
For the first time in the two years Helo had been assigned to Galactica, he saw Commander Adama at a momentary loss for words. Unsurprisingly, he recovered quickly. "That is significant. Yours?"
Releasing the inside of his cheek from between his teeth, Helo nodded. "Yes, sir, but there's more." His gaze still held Adama's. "The last thing Sharon said before she led the toasters away from us was that she loved me."
Adama frowned. "Do you believe that?"
Again Helo nodded. "I do, Commander." Absently weaving the partially chewed stick back and forth between the fingers of his right hand, Helo saw again the intensity in Sharon's eyes when she had said that, willing him to believe her.
He poked his tongue into his cheek as an earlier conversation – one from the day they had found Delphi – echoed in his head. Replaying that conversation in his mind, he heard in her voice what he should have heard then: nervousness, trepidation, fear. Her voice had held the timbre of someone who had something to say but was reluctant because of how it would be received. "The bio-Cylons are capable of complex emotions. Love. Fear. Jealousy. Loyalty…" Again his eyes met the Commander's. Forgive me, Sharon. "I think we may be able to use that against them."
The Old Man chewed on that for a moment before stiffly maneuvering to his feet. Taking a step toward Helo, he gripped the younger man's shoulder, effectively preventing him from standing. "We'll talk again." Adama walked from the room, deep in thought, absently saluting Helo's guard as he left the officers' quarters.
xxx
Where before all had been darkness, now it was constant light. Sharon's captors had been playing with her senses for so long that she no longer had any concept of how much time had passed since she had been cut from the system.
Sitting in the center of the too-bright cell, she rocked back and forth, felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen that subsided just as quickly as it had manifested. At first she had no idea what it was – the morning sickness had passed before they had put down on Kobol; even so, that had never been painful. She realized, when it happened again, that what she felt was the baby kicking. But it was too early in her pregnancy for that.
And then she knew.
The fiery pain Six had given her had passed. In its wake Sharon felt stretched thin, stretched until she was transparent, stretched almost to breaking. She knew with a terrifying certainty that Six had injected her with something to speed up the pregnancy, to make her child develop more rapidly than nature would allow. For the others to have permitted Six to so interfere, they must have decided that the benefits outweighed the potential costs.
That explained the weakness she felt, the constant hunger, the feeling of being drained. Her baby was taking everything she had. Closing her eyes, Sharon prayed for strength.
"Do you really think that'll help?" Helo's tone was inquisitive.
She didn't bother to open her eyes – she knew there was no one else in the room with her. "Leave me alone." He was like a ghost sent to torment her. She still wasn't convinced that he wasn't a recording to keep her off balance, to keep her from planning a way to escape.
"You're weak as a kitten, Sharon. How do you think you're going to escape if you can't even stand on your own?"
"Why are you doing this?" There was no answer. The ghost was right, though. She didn't have a hope of escape if she was so weak that she couldn't function. With a groan at the effort she had to expend to get it done, Sharon struggled to her feet, forcing herself first to her hands and knees, taking it one step at a time.
When finally she had succeeded in standing, her muscles quivering, she heard a sound. Twisting her head to look over her shoulder, she saw that part of one wall seemed to have disappeared and another copy of herself walked through the resulting opening. Dressed in black trousers and white tunic, her hair loose, she held a blue bundle in the crook of one arm.
The Valerii model marched up to Sharon and held out the bundle for her to take. She stared at it, but didn't accept it. "Take it, Sharon. Get dressed. A baseship will be here soon to take us home."
"Home…" Sharon took the blue bundle and shook it out to reveal a shapeless dress. She met her own eyes with a momentary feeling of vertigo. Attempting to lift the dress over her head, she discovered that she truly was as weak as her imaginary Helo had said. The other took it from her and literally dressed her as though she were a child. The heavy fabric fell to just below her knees.
Valerii turned to leave. Having no alternative way to learn what had happened since she'd been taken, Sharon couldn't stop herself. She put out a hand, touched the other's wrist. "What's happening? Did the humans escape? Did they return to their fleet?" Is Helo safe?
Dark eyes dropped to the hand at her wrist. Valerii didn't answer as she easily broke away from Sharon's weak grasp, strode away from her to the open doorway through which Sharon saw only an empty corridor. As the other disappeared through the opening, Sharon instinctively took a step toward it and then another. Before she reached it, the model the humans knew as Doral appeared, blocking her way.
"Going somewhere, Sharon?" He smiled thinly at her, reached out to grip both sides of the entryway, his reddish jacket gaping open to reveal the black shirt beneath. The smile didn't reach his eyes.
Again with the vertigo, this time caused by the appearance of her own personal ghost, right there beside Doral. Helo wore tanks and trousers, no shoes or socks, and sucked on a lollipop – she had never seen him like this before and thought that it must be another product of borrowed memories. He stood calmly between Doral and Sharon, hands on his hips, a silent observer.
Sharon blinked twice, hard, but Helo was still there. Ignoring her hallucination, Sharon addressed Doral. "Why am I being treated like this?" Always before he had been sympathetic, willing to consider her point of view – she hoped to appeal to that now.
Doral cocked his head to the side. "Treated like what, Sharon? Like a traitor? Like the enemy?" His reply dashed her feeble hope. He pushed himself the rest of the way into the room, walking right through Helo as though he weren't there – which, of course, he wasn't – one hand trailing over a section of wall as the opening disappeared. "Like a human?" She tried to note the path Doral's hand took, but the wall – like the rest of the room – was featureless. He stepped closer to her and involuntarily she backed up. "You could return to us, Sharon, resume your place in the system. Save yourself from your just punishment, if you repent of your sins."
She no longer saw Helo, but she felt him behind her, not touching, but there. She hadn't seen him move, only sensed his presence. Dizzy, Sharon felt the room lurch around her. "My sins…?" she repeated, licked suddenly dry lips.
Doral was close enough that she could almost feel the life, the energy buzzing within him. "You tried to steal our future, Sharon." His gaze drifted down to her hands as she brought them to the swell of her growing child in an unconscious and vain attempt to protect it. He was so close that her wrist brushed against the coarse fabric of his jacket. She backed up another step, found she could go no further – Helo was there. He gently placed his hands on her shoulders as Doral continued, "You tried to take both the child and the father. You've denied God's will in favor of your own."
Near mesmerized by the tone of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, Sharon could only shake her head in denial. It couldn't be God's will to give her child over to the others, to separate it from either herself or Helo.
She felt his breath as Helo whispered in her ear, "A child belongs with its parents, not the foster family from hell." Sharon shivered.
"You of all of us should know God's will in this, Sharon. Just as Helo was chosen as the father, you were chosen by God as the mother." Doral studied her, his gaze drifting across her face, looking for something. "And yet you throw God's favor to the wind. Six calls you weak, Sharon, but I know she's wrong. I believe you have the strength to do what you know is right, to fulfill God's purpose. But you must repent."
"I haven't done anything w-wrong." She stumbled over her words as Helo gently brushed her hair aside, kissed her neck.
Doral shook his head, laughed softly. "The humans must be destroyed, Sharon, you know that. It's God's will."
"Who the frak is Aaron Doral to decide what is or isn't God's will?" Helo asked as he slid his arms around her, rested his chin on her right shoulder.
"But what if that isn't God's will at all?" There was more she wanted to say, but the baby kicked, restless, agitated. It took her breath away. Between the baby and the ghost of its father, she was finding it increasingly difficult to think.
"And that's why you must be punished. You are misguided, Sharon. You have strayed from the path." Changing tactics, he asked, "How does it feel to be alone?" His tone was plain curiosity, as though they made small talk at a party.
Helo's arms tightened, one hand resting on her stomach. "I'm not—"
"Ah, yes, your baby." Again Doral smiled widely, reminding her unpleasantly of Six. He closed the space that had developed between them and Sharon forced herself to stand her ground. It helped, having Helo there with her, even if he was only an hallucination.
Doral reached out, stroked a hand lightly over her belly. Sharon closed her eyes, not wanting to watch as his hand went through Helo's as through vapor, destroying the comforting illusion. "Cling to it now, Sharon. This is all you'll have. You're quite alone. Even your human has abandoned you."
Her knees felt weak, but she locked them, not willing to give up anything to him. Helo…
"Don't listen to him, Sharon." But she couldn't see him anymore, couldn't feel him; in the space of a handful of seconds, he had become a bodiless voice.
By force of will, Sharon held herself steady, refused to rise to Doral's baiting, and so he continued, "Lieutenant Valerii on Galactica has been executed. Your lover was responsible for the humans' decision."
As Doral turned his back on her, as he left her there, her vision began to fade, a white noise grew louder in her ears and she felt her knees finally give way.
xxx
"He's hot on my tail!" Hot Dog's tone was just short of panic as Helo watched the Mark II maneuver, flying surprisingly intricate evasive patterns for such an inexperienced pilot, but the Raider stayed right there with him.
"Hang on, Hot Dog, I'll be there as soon as I can," came Starbuck's voice over the wireless, but Helo could see from his vantage on the fringes of the fight that she had her own troubles. Not one of the Vipers was free of a Cylon shadow and several – including Starbuck – had two or three.
He turned his head a little, until he could see Racetrack in the periphery of his vision. "Racetrack, can you launch one of our decoys, get that bastard off Hot Dog's ass?"
"We only have two left."
The forward ships of the fleet had stumbled into a hive of Raiders half an hour ago, the vanguard of a Cylon baseship. No doubt the one Boomer had told him was coming for Sharon. The ready fighters had scrambled, Helo and Racetrack with them, but they had been so badly outnumbered that Racetrack had shot off almost all of their physical countermeasures early in the game.
"Do it." He reached out to switch his monitor to another view. "Hot Dog, Helo. Get ready to duck." This would leave them with only one decoy, but they had other options, if it became necessary. "Now."
There was a split-second delay and then he watched as the silver drone Racetrack released sped toward Hot Dog's Viper. Hot Dog pulled his bird up into a vertical climb as the drone shot past, sending out bursts of code to confound the Raider's targeting system.
"It didn't work!" A little closer to panic as the Raider stuck to him like a leech.
"Frak." Helo pounded his fist once on his thigh in frustration.
"It's my fault, isn't it? I waited too long."
"You did fine, Racetrack. The damn things just don't always work." He chewed at his bottom lip as he watched the telemetry figures scroll across his monitor. No one else was in a position to help Hot Dog. Helo directed his gaze through the view port, focused on the Raider. Hot Dog shot at and destroyed a second Raider that had moved into position to catch his Viper in a deadly crossfire, even as he continued to evade the ordnance the toaster on his ass threw at him.
In his head, the image of another Raider over a cloud-covered planet was juxtaposed with the here and now and he heard Sharon's voice as she told him of a safety net the bio-Cylons had programmed into the Raiders' computer systems.
"Racetrack. Switch to frequency five-five-zero."
"Five-five-zero, sir? It's not a valid frequency. Nobody uses it."
He continued to stare at the Raider, the tracers issuing from its guns. "The Cylons do." It was the frequency Sharon had given him when they had broken away from Caprica. They hadn't been able to shake the Raiders then, either, and Sharon had provided a code to use on that frequency that would momentarily disable the Raiders' navigational systems. It had only lasted a couple of seconds, but it had been enough for Starbuck to break out and he thought it might be enough for Hot Dog.
"Frequency five-five-zero." Racetrack confirmed the change.
"Enter code delta-gamma-two-seven-six-omega."
Racetrack's fingers flew over her keyboard. Through the view screen, Helo saw that the battle was finally starting to turn in their favor, at least for everyone but Hot Dog. Then the Raider seemed to stutter in its course, drift for just a second. "Hot Dog, get outta there!"
"Don't have to tell me twice!" The Mark II shot away, almost immediately circling around as the Raider regained control. But it was too late. The Cylon fighter exploded in a beautiful display of fireworks as Hot Dog flew through the corona of the explosion. "Yeah!"
Helo smiled. "Nice shooting, Hot Dog." The chaos of battle continued to swirl as a blinking telltale on his console caught Helo's attention. He looked up and saw more information scrolling across his monitor, but none of it was Colonial code. "Hey, Racetrack, you seeing this?"
"Yeah. What is it?"
"I don't know. Are you recording it?" It had to be Cylon code coming in on that normally unused frequency.
"I am now."
Before they could do anything else, the call came in from Galactica to return to base. Another wave of Raiders was headed their way and the rest of the fleet had already made the jump to safety. It was time to go.
The telltale blinked its warning of an incoming transmission for another full minute as Helo took the Raptor back to Galactica, bringing up the rear of the squadron. He counted Vipers as he approached, saw that although a couple of them seemed to be damaged, they returned with the same number of birds they'd had when they left.
For a change, the Lords of Kobol had been good to them.
Once the Raptor had come to a full stop and Helo had reported in, he felt the brief disorientation of Galactica's jump to rejoin the rest of the fleet.
He reached up to remove his helmet, then popped the hatch. Behind him, Racetrack set her helmet on the floor beside her as she took up her clipboard and began the post-flight check. Helo shot her a lopsided smile and said, "Hey, why don't you let me take care of that? You go check in with Hot Dog, make sure he's okay." He laughed at her as she blushed to the roots of her hair. Right on target, he thought.
"You sure? It won't take that long…"
"No, it won't, even if I'm the only one doing it. Now go."
She started down the ramp, but then popped her head back in to say, "Helo, I know it sounds kinda weird, but I really enjoyed flying with you today."
Her words echoed Boomer's after their very first flight together and he laughed. "Ah, you rooks all say the same thing," he said, shooing her away. His smile faded as she disappeared, long tail of dark hair swinging with her footsteps. Helo couldn't count all the times he'd seen the same thing when he and Boomer had returned from a mission and she had gone to find the Chief, leaving him to do post-flight.
Wishing for a sucker, he closed his eyes and counted to ten to make sure she didn't come back again before going over to the ECO station. It only took him a couple of minutes to record that Cylon transmission and pop the chip out, slipping it into his pocket. He'd have to tell the CAG about it, but he didn't intend to give up access to something that might lead him to Sharon, when the time came.
Finished with his breach of security, he quickly went through the formality of the post-flight. It didn't take long – not much longer than stealing the data from the Cylon transmission.
xxx
She was here – he could feel it. And that meant that the human would be here soon as well, to take her and their child away from the others. The others, who had brought her aboard the baseship and were even now transporting her to a cell, carrying her because she no longer had the strength to walk, or even stand. If the fools weren't careful, she might die before the child could be born, could survive outside its mother's womb.
He had no intention of allowing that to happen, for it was his place to prepare the way, to set God's plan in motion.
It was not yet her time to die.
TO BE CONTINUED