Thirteen
Chapter Fifteen
Clash of the Cultures
Anastasia "Dee" Dualla was already not in a good mood after she found out that her boyfriend, Billy Keikeya, had turned out to be a Cylon. Unlike when deck chief Galen Tyrol when he found out his girlfriend, Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, was a Cylon, Dee wasn't subject to the same skepticism that the chief had been, mainly because everyone was fooled by not only him, but Cally and Gaeta as well.
She thought about seeing him, but decided the best way to deal with the pain was to avoid him. Besides, in recent weeks, they had begun to drift apart anyway, and she found herself more and more attracted to Lee "Apollo" Adama these days, even though she was a non-com and Apollo a captain. Any relationship between them other than friendship would be against regulations, as Boomer's had been with Tyrol.
However, it seemed like the rules had changed. They had arrived in Earth territory, and they were spending just as much time on Babylon 5 as they were on Galactica. She was grateful for the chance to be away from her ship, because it meant she could better avoid the memories of betrayal.
All the Galactica crew had been issued credit chits and instructed on their usage aboard the station. Crew members were paid according to similar ranks in Earthforce, and the recovering Roslin, Admiral Adama, and EA president Garrison Hollifield had agreed to hire on the Colonial fleet as "temporary employees" of Earthforce.
The Earthforce officers and non-commissioned officers, as well as the enlisted personnel, got along famously with their Colonial brethren, so much so that a lot of Earthforce techs were pitching in overtime to help refit Galactica and Pegasus with Earthforce technologies, as well as systems from the Interstellar Alliance. The Vipers were being overhauled and new ones were being constructed aboard the station, as industrial workers flooded in to help out. None of them knew the whole picture, so they didn't know what really was going on.
Dee was enjoying dinner when William Keikeya came up from behind to speak to her. She jumped when he said, "So you were my copy's galpal, eh?"
The voice was similar, but the real Keikeya was harsher, more sarcastic. "Yeah, I am. What do you want?"
He laughed and said, "Well, at least he had some taste in women! If you ever want to come to Hollywood and want to be in the movies, just look me up!" He winked at her, and her stomach almost lurched at the lame attempt to pick her up.
"No thank you! I like my current job just fine!" She started to walk off, but he blocked her way.
"You don't understand, sweetie! No one says no to me!" He grabbed her and tried to force himself upon her, and it was then she smelled the alcohol on his breath. She screamed for help, and Apollo, who happened to have been walking down the other side of the Zocolo, raced over and grabbed Keikeya.
"Leave her alone!" he cried, and Keikeya threw a drunken punch at him, which he blocked easily. He swung for his jaw and connected, knocking him cold with a single punch. Security personnel were on the scene in seconds, and took Apollo into custody.
At the same time, a little further down the way in the shopping area called the Zocolo, Galen Tyrol was drinking away his sorrows with James "Jammer" Parks when a loud man started screaming about something called "Jesus". "Who the frak is that guy?", Jammer asked.
"I don't know. Maybe a street performer or something? Wished he'd shut up and go away!", replied Tyrol, who drank some more of something called whiskey, which, to him at least, seemed much better than whatever this "Jesus" was.
"The time of tribulation is a-comin', brothers and sisters, and you much make repentance to the Lord before the Rapture comes and you're left behind to burn with the heathens!" preached the Reverend Samuel Christian, who was working himself up into a lather. Decked out in a white summer suit, the dark haired man kept thumping a black book and going on and one about fire and brimstone. No one paid any attention, though, as they seemed to have the collective hope that he would simply take a hint and go away.
Christian, though, was a persistent man, and he decided that, since the broad appeal didn't work, he'd go person-to-person and try to win souls for the Lord that way. His first victim was to be one Galen Tyrol. "Son, have you ever heard of the Good Book?" he asked the chief.
"What Good Book?" replied Tyrol.
This answer perplexed Christian, and he flabbergastedly said, "Boy, ain't you ever heard of the Holy Bible?"
Tyrol looked perplexed and said, "No, I can't say that I have!"
Christian threw his arms up and said, "You mean to tell me you have never heard of the Bible? What planet are you from, son?"
"Gemenon." Tyrol said, trying to keep his cool.
"Gemma-what? Son, that ain't no colony in the Earth Alliance! Are you trying to mock me, because this man of the cloth shall not be mocked!" cried out Christian, who grew louder and louder.
"C'mon Jammer, let's get out of here!" Tyrol said, and put the chit in the reader to deduct the price for their meals. As he turned to leave, Christian grabbed his arm and said, "Don't you leave, boy, until you've heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Unless you really want to go to hell!"
"Let go of me!" said Tyrol, who fought the urge to punch him as he struggled to get lose, but the large man had a firm grasp of his forearm. Tyrol had no choice but to deck him, so he punched him as hard as he could, only to find out the hard way that Christian had a jaw of stone.
"So, you want to learn the hard way, eh boy? I'll teach you to resist the Good Word!" He was about to jump on Tyrol, but Jammer beat him to it and tried to take down the large man. Christian threw him off like a sack of potatoes, but before he could start stomping on him, security personnel swarmed over him and took him away.
Hollifield postponed his departure again as he had to assist Admiral Rissen in dealing with a situation. Rissen was all set to drop charges against Apollo until William Keikeya had contacted his lawyer and threatened to sue Earth Alliance for the assault on his client. He grabbed Judge Nance Vance and escorted her to the courtroom, where he had assembled all the parties involved in the incident.
"Lee Adama, you've been charged with assault on a civilian. How do you plead?" said the judge.
"Guilty, Your Honor!" Apollo said.
Keikeya laughed and said, "Hope you brought some lube and some condoms for the raping you're going to get in prison, kid!" He kept laughing, which made what Hollifield was about to do even sweeter.
"Lee Adama, in the interest in galactic peace and understanding, I hereby grant you a full and unconditional pardon." Hollifield said, and Keikeya predictably exploded.
"You can't do that, you bastard! I'll call my lawyer and he'll…", Keikeya yelled, but was interrupted by the booming voice of the president.
"YOU WON'T DO A DAMN THING! IF YOU SO MUCH AS EVEN TRY TO FILE A CIVIL LAWSUIT, I WILL CONTACT EVERY STUDIO HEAD AND EVERY NETWORK PROGRAMMING EXECUTIVE AND TELL THEM NEVER TO HIRE YOU AGAIN! YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I WILL RUIN YOUR CAREER IN WAYS YOU CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE!" screamed the president, and the sheer volume of his voice took everyone in the room aback.
Keikeya looked like he had seen a ghost from a horror movie, and sheepishly said, "I've got rights…"
"YOU HAVEN'T GOT CRAP, PAL! YOU WANT TO STARVE TO DEATH IN HOLLYWOOD? JUST TRY ME! I HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE IN HOLLYWOOD WHO OWE ME A LOT OF FAVORS, AND THEY'LL DAMN SURE PAY OFF ON THEM BY GIVING YOU THE FINGER!"
Keikeya couldn't handle it anymore, so he stormed out of the room. Hollifield took out the microphone he had activated discreetly for effect and turned it off. "He can thank one of his colleagues in Tinseltown for this trick."
"Do you really mean that about ruining his career if he makes a big deal out of this?" Admiral Adama asked.
"Oh yes, I can if he pushes things. He doesn't realize just how unpopular he is in the entertainment industry. What he did to Dee is nothing compared to the stuff he's got away with back home?"
"What about his lawyer?" Apollo asked.
Hollifield let out a derisive snort. "Him? He may be good on the local front, but I've got enough material on him to clam him up. Especially since his lawyer was one of those worked for Clark back in the day, and he certainly doesn't want to have to go to trial for that! Now, onto the mess with Chief Tyrol…"
"So you aren't going to do squat about what he did to me?" cried Christian.
"Nope, not a thing! Remember, you threw the first punch, reverend, and I use that term very loosely!" Hollifield said.
Christian's face grew redder and redder, but he didn't even try to mess with Hollifield. The president's reputation for self-preservation was well known, and he used that intimidation to stifle the preacher.
"You will go home and keep your mouth shut about all of this, or I'll tell your flock all about what you've been up to here."
"What do you mean by that?" said Christian, and Hollifield produced a data crystal and put it into a reader. There, in an unsavory section of the station, he had picked up a well-known prostitute.
"Ah, yes! Typical hypocritical Southern Baptist preacher! Do as I say, not as I do! You don't keep your mouth shut, not only will I tell them that you slept with a hooker, I'll tell them that you slept with a transgendered one!"
"WHAT?" shouted the preacher in disbelief.
"Tammy's a shemale hooker, and she said you wanted anal sex so bad that you were practically jumping out of your clothes to bang her in her ass! Guess you didn't notice that the plumbing's a little different between her legs, eh?"
"You wouldn't do such a thing!" said the preacher, but he sounded like a defeated man.
"I'd do it and not even break a sweat about it! I've got enough problems without having to deal with small potatoes like you! You get off this station and back to that backwoods church of yours…"
"I resent that! Durham's a fine city!" said the pastor, who had made the misfortune of wearing a Duke pin on his lapel.
"Durham's not fit to serve as a landfill for Chapel Hill, you dumbass! Now get off this station before I get really pissed off and shove you out an airlock!" With that, the preacher fled the chambers and didn't look back.
Tyrol muttered thanks to the president, who waved it off by saying, "Believe me, Chief, it's a pleasure to bust the balls of a guy like that! I grew up having to deal with people like that. Made my uncle's job as a preacher who wanted to bring people together a lot harder! Sadly, even in this supposedly enlightened age, there's too many people like that back on Earth."
"Well, my father was a priest, but he wasn't anything like that."
"Thank God for that, or Gods if you'd rather me say that! I once had to do a history report in class on twentieth and twenty-first century televangelists and it still makes me laugh at how blatantly pathetic these people were. The term con man doesn't even begin to describe them."
They continued the conversation for a while as they waited for the paperwork to be completed. Once that was done, Tyrol made his way back to the Galactica and Hollifield made his way onto a transport to take him to Earthforce One and head to the sector of space where he had some business to transact with an old enemy.