Authors Notes: Originally, I was going to have a very graphic interrogation/torture scene in this chapter, but honestly, I couldn't do it to the standards which I wanted to. Still a good read tho.
VERY nice little twists listed throughout this chapter. Esp. at the end. Thanks for the reviews everyone.. leave plenty more.
Chapter 8 … Of Human Nature
Osprey 062 – Earth Orbit
To say that Flight Lieutenant Samuel Johnson was confused was an understatement. He had just seen someone who he could swear was his weapons officer's identical twin on the BBC News Bulletin, and a few moments after that was shown on the monitor, he had a gun pointed to his head and Sharon Valerii was holding it.
"Organ. Get in the co-pilot's seat," he heard Valerii demand. He moved his head to turn and look at what was happening, but he instantly the gun barrel was jammed into his skull harder. "Don't move!" Valerii commanded with absolute authority. "Now!" She emphasised towards Captain Organ's direction. Sam Johnson looked out of the corner of his eye as he saw Captain Organ, their communications and navigation officer sit in the seat beside him.
"What's going on?" Organ asked Valerii, with his head facing the front of the cockpit.
"Shut up," she simply replied. "Johnson, steer head towards the far side of the moon. Maximum speed," she demanded after a moment. Johnson didn't respond, and it took a quick moment before he was turned in his chair, and Valerii was behind Captain Organ, gun barrel to the back of his head. "Do it, or I blow his brains out." Johnson slowly swivelled his chair so that it was facing the front of the Osprey and changed their course so that they were heading towards the far side of the moon. "Maximum velocity," Valerii commanded. Johnson moved the throttle for the main engines up to maximum. "Once we reach the maximum velocity, I want you to shut off the engines and let us drift until we're almost on top of Earth's moon."
"This is the Poseidon class ship the Chu-Jung to Osprey 062. You have veered off course. Please state your reasons and perform a course correction," a voice said over the radio after they had been drifting for five minutes.
"Tell them we're investigating the site of strange radar readings near the moon," Johnson heard Valerii say to Captain Organ. He turned his head to see that Valerii had gotten out of the way and was gesturing for Captain Organ to move back over to his station. Slowly, he got up and crossed the small distance to the Communication/Navigation station.
"We're getting strange radar readings from a location near the moon and we've deviated to investigate, over," Captain Organ replied into the radio. They waited for a few moments before the Chu-Jung replied that they acknowledged. When they were asked if they wanted any fighter backup, they respectively declined, at the persuasion of Valerii's handgun.
They had been drifting for fifteen minutes, and Flight Lieutenant Johnson swore that if they didn't activate the engines soon, that they would impact on the moon. He told this to Valerii, who actually agreed with him.
"Bring us to a hover right above the moon's surface," Valerii replied. Once the Osprey was hovering above the moon, Johnson saw Valerii tuck one of the handguns into the waist of her pants. She immediately pointed the handgun at Captain Organ. "If either one of you moves, I'll shoot him," she said, looking directly at him. She walked over to the communications station and started hitting keys on the computer mounted there, glancing up every three seconds or so to make sure that her aim was still trained on Captain Organ, and to make sure that neither of them was going to try anything.
"What's she doing?" Johnson asked to Organ.
"She's sending out a signal," Organ replied. It was just then that Valerii moved back from the terminal and trained both of her weapons on either one of them again.
"Lieutenant Johnson. I need you to take us to an elevation of one hundred metres, and fly North. I'll tell you when to stop," Valerii commanded while stepping forward to emphasise her point. He turned around in his seat, increased their velocity and raised the Osprey to an elevation of one hundred metres.
They had breezed over the moon's surface for about five metres before Valerii ordered him to descend into the crater in front of them. From what Johnson could see once they had descended into the crater, this was no ordinary crater. Usually large craters had a lip around the rim, and were either a relatively smooth surface inside, or were littered with smaller craters. Not this one, this one had various, 'objects', sticking up from it's surface. "Land in the clearing in the centre," Valerii commanded. He didn't object as he piloted the craft slowly towards a circular clearing in the centre of the crater. He noticed that Valerii had gone back over to the communications station and was fiddling around with it some more. They slowly settled down onto the surface of the moon, and as soon as they did so, Valerii was manning her own station. Samuel Johnson noticed movement from the upper part of his vision, and he could see that the external telescopic cameras had been turned on, and were focusing in on an object in front of them. He watched, as what appeared to be a remarkably artificial looking rock, a bit larger than their own ship, opened up and two large mechanical walking machines came out of it. He was completely stunned when the robots in front of him began to bound across the moon's surface with an agility and fluidness only seen in living beings. He looked at their heads and noticed that they had a red slit, with a bright section moving from left to right, and then right to left across the front of it. He could easily recall where he had seen that before; on the enemy fighters that had attacked their world.
As Johnson looked around, he began to notice what the 'objects' sticking up out of the crater were. They were enemy fighters, covered in moon dust to disguise their appearance from above. He now recognised the 'rock' that the robots had come out of. It was one of their transport craft, the same type that had been intercepted trying to enter earth's orbit by a wing of Falcons and Tigers, as they had all been briefed about that and the new class of ship.
He saw Valerii open the rear hatch to the airlock, and the two robots walked into it. The rear hatch closed, and the airlock was pressurised. Johnson watched, half in awe, and half in pure fear as the two robots walked into their ship and stood behind Sharon Valerii.
"If either of you do so much as move, they'll shoot you," she said to them while putting her gun away. Johnson looked up to one of the robots, and then to Valerii, who was putting on one of the ship's space suits. Once she was done, she moved back to where she was standing between the two robots.
"Lieutenant Johnson. I saw you looking out of the cockpit. You should know that each one of those smaller objects are missile batteries. If you try to shoot us with the ship's weapons, we'll shoot you down. If you alert anyone to our presence, we'll shoot them down. We have the capacity to stop anything that you send at us," Valerii explained through the suit's external speakers. She moved towards the airlock and opened it. Both she and one of the robots entered into it, but the other remained at the doorway. Johnson watched as a device came out of the robot's arm, and assembled itself over it's hand. Once it was assembled, he noticed what it was; a chain gun. "Just so you know that I'm serious." Valerii said. The robot opened fire, shooting four rounds into Captain Organ as he sat in the co-pilot's chair, helpless. He got up to move towards him. "DON'T MOVE!" Valerii's voice boomed through the speakers of her space suit. "You have five minutes to get this ship out of our sight or we will destroy you," Valerii said. He watched as the robot moved into the airlock, as it was un-pressurised, and all three of them left.
He looked at Captain Organ's body. Blood was oozing out of the bullet wounds on the front of his clearly dead body. Automatically, he turned around in his chair, turned up the throttle on the engines and lifted the Osprey off of the ground. If he could have both flown the Osprey and shoot the weapons at the same time, he would have decimated as much of this hidden base as he could have. Instead, he put the throttle to maximum and shot out of the crater, barely missing the top of the rim.
Half an Hour Later – International Affairs Organisation – Earth
Leoben was an advisor for Dr. Bruce Miller. He was reorganising Miller's files, when he felt a slight vibration within his pocket. He pulled out a small metallic device which contained a red band at the front. The red band activated, sending a bright circle of light moving from left to right, and then backwards.
Instantly Leoben knew what he had to do. He sat down at his computer and loaded in one of the worms that he had previously created. It would go through every network that it could over the entire globe, on it's way, removing all traces of 'Sharon Valerii'
One Hour Later – Osprey 062
After leaving the hidden enemy base, Flight Lieutenant Samuel Johnson had just let the Osprey drift for a while. He was certain that the Chu-Jung would send a scouting party if they hadn't made contact in a while, but he didn't care. Beside him sat the dead corpse of his Communications and Navigations Officer, who he had gone through the academy with when they had both joined the PDO at the same time. He had just found out that for four years, their weapons officer, Sharon Valerii, lied and deceived each of them; that she was a traitor, one of the members of these 'Twelve Colonies of mankind' that the translations from 'The Great Ship' had talked about. He heard a ping from the radar screen, and could see five objects moving towards him from the direction of Earth. The IFF indicated that it was a Baleen class cargo ship, as well a four Falcon fighters. They had come to collect him at last.
Two Days Later – Unknown Location – Presumably Earth
Riley Tuoa had been locked in this room for what seemed like days now, given the bare minimal of food and water to drink, and nothing to look at. The walls, floor, ceiling, and even the desk were a dull grey colour. The only things that stood out were a small device located in one of the upper corners of the room, which he guessed was a surveillance device, and the metallic handle to the door to enter the room, which had only opened once since he had arrived here, and that was to give him a very small plate of food. His legs were chained to the metal poles of the desk, which was firmly fastened to the floor He knew that this was going to drive him insane, if it wasn't already. Thoughts had been playing over and over in his mind, until he had thought of everything there was to think about. The events that his brain was running over the most were the events that had taken place between the Adriatic and here.
After he had been roughly placed in one of Earth's shuttles, they had flown towards an odd looking ship. There, the shuttles had attached themselves to the ship, and they had undergone a different type of FTL travel. Almost instantaneously, they were approaching a habitable world, with vast blue oceans covering most of the planet. Tuoa had no way of knowing if they were even in the same system or not, but he hoped so. As they approached the planet, he had seen what was most obviously a warship in orbit around the planet, and was surprised to see that it was no where near the size of the Galactica, and didn't even match up to the size of a Cylon Basestar, but it appeared to be the best that the people of the Thirteenth Colony had, unless their main warships were somewhere else.
The thing that surprised him the most however was once they had entered the planet's atmosphere. The technology that he could see which was being used on the surface of the world was much different than what he had expected. He had expected a much higher technological level of development of the cities of the Thirteenth Tribe. Instead he saw that all of their transport relied on ground-based vehicles, and that factories still poured chemicals into the atmosphere. There were large 'sky-scrapers' as they had been called on the Colonies, but not anywhere near the architectural level that he would have expected for a space-faring civilization.
He barely had time to take in the surroundings through the front view-panels of the cockpit before they landed at a facility which had very tight security. As soon as they had exited the shuttle, Riley Tuoa had seen guards everywhere. He also noticed a number of what appeared to be military vehicles parked outside the base, as well as what appeared to be a large missile launcher.
After that, he had been put in this room, and given one meal in two days. During that time, he had analysed everything he could remember seeing, and why the people of Earth were acting so hostile towards their brothers from the stars. Sure, a couple of their men had been shot, but that was by a Cylon. He realized that the people of the Thirteenth tribe wouldn't know what the Cylons were, but he should have a chance to explain it to someone.
Riley Tuoa awoke, knowing that he had fallen asleep on the desk, in a very uncomfortable position. He had no way of knowing how long he had been asleep in this place, as there was no way of telling. Once his vision cleared, he almost leapt backwards as he saw that there was someone else sitting on the other side of the table.
"I'm glad you're awake Mr. Tuoa," the person said, Tuoa not knowing how the other person knew his name. He looked up to the other man, who just stared back at him. The two just sat there, staring at each other for a long while, until the man pulled up something from his side of the table. Riley saw that it was a glass of water, and that it had been placed on the table just out of reach of his hands. "Your ship mates have all undergone this procedure already, Mr. Tuoa," the person said to him. "Even the person who killed Colonel Beda, although he went through a much more, testing, process."
"I'll tell you everything you need to know," Riley heard himself reply.
"Good, then let's start," the person replied while sitting back in his chair with an arrogant look on his face.
"The man who killed your Colonel Beda was a Cylon agent…" he started.
"…bent on the destruction of the entire human race, which includes your Twelve Colonies, and Earth," the person in front of him said while leaning forward. "We've heard all this from the other people of the ship, Mr. Tuoa. Now, how about you tell us something a little bit more informative."
"Like what?" Riley replied.
"How did your agents infiltrate this agency, as well as other agencies on this planet?" the person asked.
"What are you talking about?" Riley queried, confused.
"One month ago, your people launched an attack against this world, killing millions. You had the ability to shut down our fighters, and since then, at least one enemy agent has been caught trying to launch nukes towards our allies, and we know that there are more," the person said to him harshly.
"They're Cylons. That wasn't us," Tuoa replied.
"We have information which contradicts that," the person instantly replied to him before getting up and reaching for something on the floor. When Riley Tuoa saw what he put on the table, he cringed at the thought of the use of those instruments.
International Affairs Organisation (IAO) Facility – Scotland
Dr. Bruce Miller proceeded to the lower levels of the facility as fast as he could. He had just received word of what was occurring to the crew of an unknown ship which had appeared outside the solar system two days ago. He left the lift and proceeded towards the 'holding cells' which had just finished construction. He came to the door to the rooms and entered, and he saw a sight that would be with him for the rest of his life. Through uni-directional observation window, he could see the interrogator circling the person whose hands were restrained to the chair and table, blood streaming out of his mouth and nose, with lacerations all over his face, and heavy bruising around his wrists. The man's eyes were distant and lifeless, and there was no chance that he'd ever be able to talk for at least a day, probably more. Instantly, Dr. Miller stormed into the room and looked at the interrogator.
"Who ordered this?" he demanded. The interrogator was startled, but didn't reply. "WHO!" Dr. Miller demanded.
"I was just following orders," the interrogator replied.
"Whose Orders?" Dr. Miller questioned, again.
"Dr. MacGuwyre," he simply replied. Dr Miller could feel himself just shake his head and clench his fists.
"Get out," he simply ordered to the interrogator.
Research Vessel Copenhagen – Unknown Location.
Dr. Wotresser awoke to the sounds of metal pounding on metal and a large number of hydraulics working. He looked out of his cell to see six of the large metallic robots running past his cell at full speed. It wasn't long until the blonde haired woman, and the dark skinned man named Simon came to the cell and opened it.
"You're coming with us," the blonde haired woman said while the one called Simon came into the cell and picked Dr. Wotresser up off of the floor. Immediately, he dragged Dr. Wotresser out of the cell and they began to move to the rear of the ship. They made their way to the airlock, occasionally moving to the side when one of the robots needed to run through the corridor. It was obvious that they were all in distress about something, although what that was, Dr. Wotresser couldn't fathom. They arrived at the airlock, and Dr. Wotresser saw that it was already open and that a craft was attached to the other side. He was shoved towards the airlock after the blonde haired woman had entered, Simon directly behind him. It was there that he saw former Commander Doral was already in the ship and sitting in some kind of chair at the front of the ship. As soon as they were aboard, two mechanical robots boarded with them and the airlock was closed. The robots stood to attention on either side of the ship, and seemingly deactivated, save for their glowing red visor for an eye.
Immediately, he could feel the ship jerk upwards and away from the Copenhagen. It was then that he saw the reason for his captor's distress. Around them, were swarms of his captor's crescent shaped fighters, and they were shooting at another kind of fighter, a narrow elongated tri-winged fighter that Dr. Wotresser saw go flying past their ship, just barely missing it with it's stream of ammunition. He looked out of the front visor of the craft some more, and could see the sheer number of fighters on both sides of the battle, and the sheer viciousness of the fighters.
"Stand-by for FTL jump in 5… 4..," Aaron Doral started, before the ship was violently jerked to the side, sending Dr. Wotresser careening into one of the walls. After he had picked himself up off of the floor, he could see his captor's talking between each other.
"They took out our FTL drives. We're now heading away from the battle," Doral said, who appeared to be flying the ship. Wotresser looked out of the front visor of the ship and could see that at least three fighters had joined his ship as escort. They had been flying dead straight, at what he guessed was their maximum speed for at least two minutes when one of the enemy fighters exploded in a ball of fire. Immediately, he saw that their own ship spun around an started firing. On closer inspection, he could see an entire swarm of the elongated tri-winged fighters were approaching them like a swarm of bees, dodging the ammunition being hurled towards them by the shuttle he was occupying. He was sure then that he was dead, that the elongated fighters would blow them out of the sky, or out of the void, so to speak. However, he saw that a number of the fighters surged forward and overpassed the ship. Almost instantly, he was knocked to the floor again as the ship was violently shaken. He picked himself up off of the floor again and looked out of the front visor and saw that the ship was spinning uncontrollably.
"They shot out our engines," Doral said to the other humans with him. He watched as two other kinds of ship surged forward out of the swarm of elongated fighters. These looked more like shuttle craft, and he watched as they manoeuvred so that they were above and below the ship he was currently being held in. He suddenly ducked down as he heard a loud clanking sound from above, and then from below. He waited about five minutes before he could see that their ship was re-orientating itself.
"They've locked onto our hull and are towing us towards their fleet," Simon said. Suddenly, the lights aboard the ship went out and he could hear the power plant of the ship turning itself off.
"What's happened?" he heard the blonde haired woman ask.
"They've shut down all of our systems except for life-support," he heard Doral reply.
"That's impossible. How can they do that?" he heard the blonde haired woman reply. They were paying no attention at all to him, which for now, Dr. Wotresser decided was a good thing.
Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Wotresser was staring out the front visor of the craft with his jaw agape at the sight he was seeing. They were approaching a mammoth of a ship, which looked to be a warship. He now knew that Earth hadn't developed new fighters while he had been kept captive, as Earth currently didn't have the capability to construct such a massive ship. He could see that there were other large ships out there as well, and as far as he could count, there were another two similar ships to the one that they were approaching in the fleet in front of him. They were all elongated in shape, one of them looking sleek, the other two being more powerful looking. They all had two large rectangular pods extending out the side, and as they approached the ship in front of them, he could see what appeared to be a runway within the pods. He heard loud clanking from the bottom of the ship, and soon he saw the craft that had attached to their bottom flying in front of them and rotating itself so that it was orientated the same way as it's Mothership.
Dr. Wotresser had never thought that he would see anything such as this in his entire life. He had seen schematics of the Triton, but from what he could tell, the ship in front of him dwarfed the Triton at least by a factor of ten. They entered the pod, and slowly, their ship was set down on a rectangular pad of metal. They then began to sink down into the floor of the pod, and soon enough, he could see that they were underneath it in what appeared to be a futuristic hangar bay. He also noticed what appeared to be marines forming a tight circle around their ship, weapons raised. It was then that he noticed that the mechanical robots had activated and were facing the rear of the ship.
They waited for what seemed like half an hour, but in reality was in fact five minutes before they could hear sounds on the outer hull of the ship. Suddenly, a circular device dropped down from the ceiling and bounced on the ground. He knew what that was, it may have been from a different race, but they had grenades on Earth as well. He took cover, but there was no explosion and he looked at the still grenade and could see that gas was coming out of it. He had covered his mouth, but it didn't do much as soon his body hit the floor of the Cylon Heavy Raider as he was knocked unconscious by the gas.
Colonial Battlestar
As soon as his marine team had determined that the knockout gas would have had it's effect on any human-model Cylons within the raider, they began work on lowering the boarding ramp. The raptor was still clamped to the top of the Heavy Raider and they would detach it after they had captured the occupants within. It was what they had used to drop the knockout grenade into the ship. They had decided to capture the Heavy Raider instead of destroy it, as they had seen that it had an escort of raiders and that it was fleeing the battle by conventional means, without FTL.
Three marines, armed with laser cutting torches began to cut away the ramp, and within five minutes, they were done. They had set up a barricade behind the Heavy Raider, with marines waiting behind it. They had orders to shoot above the floor, so that they wouldn't hit any of the unconscious human-cylon models. As soon as the hatch dropped off of the Heavy Raider, the line of marines opened fire, littering the insides of the Heavy Raider with ammunition. After a minute of sustained firing, they stopped. They saw no red-eyes of any mechanical cylon models moving, and after a group of marines had successfully approached the rear of the Heavy Raider, without being fired upon, they deemed it safe.
"Inform the commanders of the Battlestar Rycon and the Battlestar Cerebus that we've secured the Heavy Raider and are moving their occupants to the brig," Commander Fisk, commander of the Battlestar Pegasus said to his second in command as they watched the marines board the Heavy Raider.