Title: Shadows And Reflections

Author: Manipulator and ViperChickKaliyla

Word count: 47,433

Rating: M

Spoilers: "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Pt. 2" up through "Home, Pt. 2"

Disclaimer: BSG is property of NBC/Universal

Notes: This kicks off Season 2, as it affects Krenzik and those he knows on the Civilian side. ViperChickKaliyla weighs in again, as Diana Thalyka joins the crew of the Lady of Libron II for these pivotal days of the early second season. You should read "Krenzik's War" Part 1-8, if you haven't, already. This story also picks up from "Diana's Tale" by ViperChickKaliyla (posted on the Hangar Deck 5, Ragnar Anchorage, and Colonial One). At the outset of this story, Diana manages to convince Tigh to let her off Colonial One, then goes on the run from ship to ship, ending up on the Gideon.

The raptors disengaged from Colonial One, speeding back to the womb of Galactica. We encircled the scanner, toggling channels, hoping that maybe someone didn't communicate on a scrambled one.

Mangan watched the numbers spin by, after hitting "scan" once again. I joined him, Coursen, and Toby, in lighting up a smoke, so there was at least one thing to focus on, other than watching everything we survived for turn into a huge pile of shit.

"Hey," Marty asked the FTL tech. "What's the point of this? I mean, we're wasting our time since they're scrambling."

Adam Mangan looked over, the tube of ash hanging from the cigarette in his mouth, falling in a clump as he spoke.

"Sometimes they forget. You wanna just gawk out the observation deck? You won't get anymore outta that."

With that, Marty slumped in his seat, crossed his bony arms, and watched the readout with the rest of us.

Caff stood, turned to us.

"There's not much we can do here, except make sure we have our own house in order. But I'm gonna go up top, find out if there's any word since they left."

As he turned, the scanner suddenly crackled to life.

"Galactica/Boomer…"

Boomer. Sharon. The adorable raptor pilot who took me to see the Wall, and brought me home after getting stitched up. I remembered the sadness in her eyes, when I looked over to the captured Raider on Galactica's deck, asked her if it was alive.

Boomer continued: "Mission accomplished, repeat, mission accomplished."

Mission? We looked at one another, Marty, Nick and I, as Mangan just stared at the plastic box, brow creased.

"The basestar is history!"

With that, Galactica ordered her to land, but we barely heard it above our own crosstalk.

"What the frak," Nick yelled, rising. Leave it to him to melt down first. "Basestar? What the hell is goin' on--"

Caff raised his hands to quell the din.

"Look, I'm going Up Top right now. Something big is going down, for sure. I want all of you out on the floor. Adam, get down to your hole, get the old girl spun up. Jeffers'll probably give the order anyway--"

The intercom chimed, vindicating Caffrey's status as the big dog.

"All hands commence jump prep. All hands commence jump prep."

All lights were green on the main turbine's control panel. The old girl was ready to roll. I ran the tests one more time as Nick emerged from the port stabilizer battery's hatch, and gave Caffrey the thumbs-up. All we needed was Marty to come down from the Coolant circulator and give his okay.

The status bar crept toward completion, and Marty came down the ladder that ran parallel with the main coolant line, which snaked its way upward.

"Caff," he said, catching his breath upon landing. "All systems are go, but I had to adjust the mix to the port aft stabilizer. It's acting a little twitchy."

Caffrey nodded. "We'll check that out after the next jump." He called over to me. "How's it comin' Krenzik?"

I didn't hear him, I just watched the little dotted line lengthen, my stomach a twisted, empty pit. I just needed to know, if she was okay. I thought about her, and all the others stuck in the middle, on Colonial One. Whatever happened between Adama and Roslin would hurt them--and us--the most. Those people were under the gun every day, trying to keep the fleet running. They were just doing their jobs, without time to ponder intrigue or power moves. Diana was just doing her job. . .

"Krenzik? Hello?"

I looked up at the screen. All systems were go on the main turbine, once again.

"Main turbine, go, Caff."

The hatch above, on the catwalk, opened, and Milt Jeffers, freshly pressed as usual, came down the ladder with his usual crisp efficiency, clipboard under his arm. He called us over to circle around him.

"Based on what we heard, plus some other reports across the fleet, indications show that Galactica has taken the President into custody. All transmissions to and from Colonial One are jammed. Other vessels close by didn't report any indications of muzzle flashes or other signs of gunfire that could be seen from the liner's ports."

Indications, maybes. Too many of those.

"What about what we picked up on the scanner, about the basestar," I asked him.

Jeffers shook his head.

"Galactica is not answering any questions whatsoever. But. . ." He rifled through the papers on the clipboard, paused.

"But, it appears, according to other reports, that before Colonial One was boarded, one of Galactica's pilots, testing their captured Cylon ship, suddenly jumped. Scuttlebutt is that the jump was unauthorized, to points unknown."

Toby shook his head. "Somebody steals a frakkin' Raider, then President gets overthrown. What ARE we gonna do?"

"Any word from Bertrand? What about the Quorum," Ed asked.

Jeffers shook his head. "We haven't gotten any word from Bertrand, but we did contact the Geminese rep. She, and a couple others are trying to get in touch with the rest of the Quorum, too. So far, there's no indication that Galactica will send any ships after the Quorum of Twelve."

I raised my hand. The guys weren't stupid. They knew, especially after Toby's numerous retellings of our trip to Colonial One, that I had a soft spot for Diana, but I had to ask, no matter what they thought.

"What about the President's Cabinet?"

Jeffers' head shook in negation once again. "No one knows, but indications are they were left unharmed, seeing as Roslin appears to have given up without a fight."

Small consolation. Never mind that there was no apparent upside to the vice grip of martial law. The military had their hands full covering our collective asses. How were they supposed to dole out rations, medicine, and insure that ships got repairs beyond the average mechanic's abilities? Forget that was all secondary for me, despite what I knew in my mind. In that hollow knot inside I needed to know that she was at least okay.

Our XO cleared his throat, and continued. "We did receive word from Zenar on the Prometheus. Right now, we're all to sit tight, until we get some real word about what just happened--"

The intercom rang out. It was Moore, this time.

"Cylon incoming! Cylon Incoming! Prepare to jump in T-minus two minutes."

We scrambled, then, for our tool belts, then to our stations. Caff was on the phone to Up Top. No problem. We were spun up, and ready to rock. I was impressed with the flight crew's call for jump prep. Had Boomer not forgotten to send her message over a scrambled channel, we'd be frakked, sitting down here wringing our hands over the unknown. We all knew if the Cylons take a shot in the mouth, they'd come back ready with a boot to our guts. I was overlooking our main turbine's sensor screen, when Briar clomped across the catwalk, as fast as his portly frame could move, then down the ladder.

I looked over to him, but he blew past me, straight to Caffrey.

He paused, face reddened, as his hands came to rest on his knees, out of breath.

"Gal…Galactica isn't making the hard starboard turn. They're just sittin' there! We're screwed! We're--"

Over the intercom, Moore said: "Jump, on my mark. Three, two, one…Mark."

I placed both hands on the console to keep my balance, and fight off the usual sensation of waiting for a stray one percent of me to catch up after the hyperlight jump. One moment of odd inertia later, we were clear.

Before I could breathe a sigh of relief at our latest escape, my ears filled with the hostile keening of the alert klaxon. Red strobes that stayed dark my entire time on the Lady glowed. Fear overtook me, and my heart thundered in my chest. The klaxon only went off in the event of catastrophic failure of the main turbine, the FTL, or the main cooling unit. I forced myself to look at my sensors.

Caff's voice boomed over the alert system's banshee wail.

"Come on! Come on! Talk to me, people!"

I didn't need to see Nick emerge from the port side stabilizer hatch to hear him shout that both thrusters on that side were offline. I could feel the ship slightly, but steadily tilt to the left. I finally pushed the words out of my mouth, after surveying my screens on the engine.

"Turbine…turbine online! Temperature climbing, but still normal--"

Above the catwalk, Marty poked his out the coolant pump hatch, translucent wisps of smoke trailing out behind him.

"Pump motor's frakked Caff!"

The coolant pump's motor had stopped circulating water throughout the system. The port stabilizers overheated first, prompting the brain to take them offline. The temperature was rising in the main turbine, and the FTL, too. If the hyperdrive couldn't cool down, Mangan, and a good portion of aft would blow out into space. Only the bulkheads that separated the FTL from the rest of the ship would save us. Then we would have just enough time to say our prayers before the main turbine blew, and brought about a real sense of closure to our mad dash across the universe--if we didn't take everything offline.

I saw Briar lumbering back up the ladder. I knew where he was going. Within a couple minutes, we would have a new pump motor coming down the freight elevator, carried by a forklift, then straight into the shop. Temperatures, were still climbing in the main turbine, but slowly--still in the green. That wouldn't last much longer.

"Krenzik!" Caff barked, beckoning me over with Ed. "You, me and Coursen are gonna get that thing ready to go. Toby and Nick are gonna help Marty rip out the old one."

Metal clattered to the floor in the shop, as we continued our tilt to port. The temperature spiked into the yellow on the main engine, then. I felt us descending. They probably wouldn't shut down until we were clear of any other vessels. Who knew how long that would take. Caffrey jerked me by the arm.

"Come on!"

Soon, Caff, Ed, and I, were surrounding 700-plus kilos of pump motor. Our foreman and Ed lubricated the shafts that fit into the circulator, while I worked with the mobile test terminal, formatting the new motor's brain. I heard the hydraulic whine of the autolift, as the old one descended to the floor. Briar backed his lift out, to clear the dead hunk to steel, tubes and plastic out of the way, when we were done. The shop phone rang. Caff got the word from Jeffers to take the main turbine offline, along with the starboard stabilizers. Now, we only had to worry about plowing into another ship, instead of exploding.

"Krenzik, how you coming with the CPU," he asked me.

I gave the thumbs up. Systems were apparently go. The Coolant pump would recognize it within a minute of initial startup.

"Good. Go take the main turbine and starboard offline."

I left the shop, and was greeted with the crash of steel against concrete. Toby was operating the autolift, and the dead motor dropped about twenty feet down, in front of Briar's lift forks. I felt a small sense of relief that worrying about a chunk taken out of the floor could be a big deal again. Toby stood, his work shirt stained with grease and coolant, shaking his head.

I slid my ID card in the slot next to the main turbine console. Temperatures were almost in the red as I punched in my code and shut her down. I darted back through the shop, behind the still, to the starboard stabilizer hatch, slid down the ladder, punched in my codes. Again. As the electric hum of the starboard stabilizer units died, the klaxon did too. I sent a silent thank-you to Zeus, Hera, Apollo, the entire Pantheon, for this one. Now, I could get back to worrying about whether Diana was even alive, and think in terms of living for the next day, instead of the next five minutes.

Several Days Later

I was an idiot to talk my way off Colonial One. I had remembered that dispute, with the captain of the Geminon Traveler, a day or two after Galactica had finally rejoined the fleet. And whatever else he was, taking down the President, I had figured, maybe, Commander Adama might be a reasonable man. Because he'd left the rest of us—and the Quorum—in tact, even after he arrested her. A legal fiction on his part, to think one could arrest the President without having it be a military coup. But a legal fiction I had figured I could use in my favor, if he wanted to believe he had left the rest of us with any power. So I'd called up Galactica. But it wasn't Adama who answered, when I finally got past the commtech. It was Tigh--and it was all I could do to keep to my pre-planned request, when he refused to answer my query as to Adama's whereabouts, growling at me with barely contained rage—at what, I wasn't quite sure—that he was "unavailable". But somehow—I still, even now, could barely believe it—I had managed to convince him to let me off Colonial One, for a meeting with the captain of the Geminon ship. Possibly because of the part where I'd told Tigh that if he didn't let me handle it, he'd have to.

But that was all in the past….all in the mistakes of the past. Because I had been aboard that ship for no more than half hour when it had happened.

The captain had been arguing with me in his usual bullheaded manner, when one of his crew had come running through the door without so much as a warning. Gasping for breath, he had told the captain to turn on the wireless channel….in time to hear, through the press, Tigh announce to the fleet as a whole the arrest of the President….and the dissolution of the Quorum of Twelve and declaration of martial law.

However much of an ass he had been to me before, the captain looked horrified, as he turned to look at me, as the broadcast ended.

"Get off this ship. Get off this ship, before that Raptor returns, if you want to live."

Maybe I should have thought things through more clearly. Maybe Tigh wouldn't have killed me. Maybe he would have just taken me back to Colonial One, now one vast prison, or locked me up with the President in the brig on Galactica. But maybe, he would have. All I knew is…I'd heard things, about Saul Tigh. And I knew things, about what often happened when governments were overthrown. I couldn't take that chance…and so I'd heeded the captains' advice. I'd left my folders on the table, in the middle of the room, fighting the instinct that cried out against leaving classified and confidential information in plain sight on someone else's ship. Those files had the Colonial Seal on them. I couldn't take them with me, if I wanted to have any chance of moving undetected throughout the fleet.

I had gone to down to the airlock where the shuttles stopped, then. The captain had said one was docked, at that very moment. Before boarding, I had taken off my jacket, and tied it around my waist, taken off my ID, and slipped it into my shoe, and let my hair down from it's tight updo, to hang haphazardly around my face. Unidentifiable. Ragged. Unprofessional. I wanted to blend in, with the crowd.

When that shuttle had stopped on Cloud Nine, I disembarked…and boarded, as soon as possible, another shuttle. I had repeated that process, after that, again and again, for the Gods only knew how long (though I estimated it to have been several days), never staying on one ship for any longer than it too to catch the next shuttle…and always choosing to board the shuttles so underbooked they might allow one to slip aboard without showing ID. But now, I knew, sitting here in the mess hall aboard a ship whose name I couldn't even remember, I had to face the truth. Because all those days I had jumped shuttles, one after another, I had had no food (it could, on most ships, only be gotten by matching one's ID against a registered passenger list), barely any water, and absolutely no sleep. And now, head in my hands, laid atop a table as those around me ate, I had nothing left. I could go no further.

"Madame Secretary."

Despite all my thoughts of having nothing left, my head jerked up at that, and I tried to stand, to get away. Recognized. I had been recognized! I had to get out of here!

But as I drew away, stumbling over my own feet in an effort to run, a hand caught my shoulder, and pulled me around to face its' owner.

"Wait!"

He was a young man, somewhere, I would guess, between 20 and 30, and was wearing cheap chef's whites.

"I'm not gonna turn you in! No one here is gonna turn you in!"

They weren't?

"But, Colonel Tigh—"

"Listen, there's a whole godsdamn lotta the fleet out there that don't agree with what Saul Tigh did. Including, near as I can figure, just about this whole damn ship. You look like hell, ma'am. Come with me. You're safe on this ship…ain't nobody here gonna turn anybody over to Tigh."

I could barely believe it—the paranoia in my mind, so common in situations like this—screamed at me not to trust him. But it didn't matter what Saul Tigh did, or William Adama, or even Laura Roslin. It didn't matter that they couldn't trust each other, or that I couldn't trust Galactica now. These were my people…and if I couldn't trust one of them, when he said he spoke the truth…then I was no better than Tigh.

"How did you—How did you know who I was?"

"I saw you when you were aboard a few weeks ago. Saw you speaking to the captain, here, while I was cooking. And not many people get shadowed by armed goons in suits and ties, so I figured—"

He shrugged, and reached out a hand.

"I'm Pete Simmons, I work in the kitchen here. You stick with me, and everyone else, aboard the Gideon. We'll keep you safe."